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LONDON — An adviser to the U.S. military said British troops face an "ugly and embarrassing" withdrawal from southern Iraq in the coming months, a British newspaper reported.

Stephen Biddle, a member of a group that advised U.S. Gen. David Petraeus in Iraq last year, told the Sunday Times that insurgents and militia groups were likely to target British soldiers with ambushes, roadside bombs and rocket-propelled grenades as they leave.

"It will be a hard withdrawal. They want the image of a British defeat," Biddle told the paper. "It will be ugly and embarrassing."

The Sunday Times also quoted a senior British officer as saying that British troops have lost control of the main southern city of Basra.

British forces have already been moving from a combat role to aiding Iraqi forces in southern Iraq, and Britain is expected to hand over control of Basra to Iraqi troops in the next few months.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has also promised to make a statement in October on the future of the 5,500 British troops in the region.

EDINBURGH — J.K. Rowling has been spotted at cafes in this Scottish city working on a detective novel, a British newspaper reported Saturday.

The Sunday Times newspaper quoted Ian Rankin, a fellow author and neighbor of Rowling's, as saying the creator of the "Harry Potter" books is turning to crime fiction.

"It is great that she has not abandoned writing or Edinburgh cafes," said Rankin, who is known for his own police novels set in the historic city.

Rowling famously wrote initial drafts of the Potter story in the Scottish city's cafes.

BEIJING — Rescue teams including about 2,000 soldiers rushed Saturday to a flooded coal mine in eastern China, where 181 miners were trapped and feared dead after severe rains breached a levee and inundated the site.

State-run media, quoting executives of Huayuan Mining Co., reported that 756 miners were working in the main part of the facility when flooding started Friday afternoon but that 584 were able to escape.

In another flooded shaft nearby, an additional nine miners were trapped by the waters.

The official New China News Agency quoted the provincial mine administrator as saying the chances of finding any survivors were slim.

The death toll from the accident in Xintai in eastern Shangdong province could be the highest from any mine accident in more than two years.

ASTANA — Oil-rich Kazakh-stan held parliamentary elections Saturday in an early vote widely considered an attempt by the long-ruling president to improve the ex-Soviet republic's democratic image while retaining his grip on power.

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe has assessed previous elections in post-Soviet Kazakhstan as being less than free and fair.

But President Nursultan Nazarbayev, who wants to see his country win the chairmanship of the OSCE in 2009, had pledged to "do everything to make the elections free and fair" this time. He has led the country for 18 years and has spearheaded changes that would allow him to remain at the top indefinitely.

Exit polls indicated that his party had won an overwhelming majority of votes, but the surveys differed on whether any opposition politicians would get seats.

The stability of Kazakhstan, the most prosperous nation in ex-Soviet Central Asia, is of particular importance to regional powers Russia and China because of its substantial oil and gas reserves. The United States has also sought greater access to Kazakh energy resources.

MALE — Thousands of Maldivians, many of them fed up with the president's nearly three-decade rule, voted Saturday at schools and makeshift gazebos in the crowded capital and on remote atolls in an election seen as a referendum on their leader.

The vote was technically to choose a new form of government. But many here hailed it as their first real expression of democracy and hoped it would lead their tiny Indian Ocean nation to a better future.

President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom is pushing for a U.S.-style political system, with a powerful executive presidency for this Sunni Muslim nation of 300,000 people.

The opposition, wary of giving too much power to another leader — or to Gayoom for yet another five-year term — backs a British-style parliament, which would be led by a more accountable prime minister.

Preliminary results released Sunday morning showed the presidential system leading by a wide margin, with more than 28,000 votes compared to about 13,000 for the parliamentary system.

Turnout had not yet been announced, so it was not clear what percentage of the vote that represented.