Six In The Morning

France launches Syria anti-IS strikes

 

BBC

France has carried out its first air strikes against Islamic State militants in Syria.

The president’s office said that French planes struck targets identified during reconnaissance missions conducted over the past fortnight.

France co-ordinated with regional partners for the operation, a brief statement said.

French jets have previously carried out air strikes against IS targets in neighbouring Iraq.

“Our country thus confirms its resolute commitment to fight against the terrorist threat represented by Daesh,” the French Presidency said, referring to the militant group by another of its acronyms.

 Saudi Arabia rebuffs Iran’s accusations over hajj stampede

Saudi officials have dismissed Iran’s criticism of the deadly hajj stampede, in which several hundred Muslim pilgrims died. Previously, Iran vowed international legal action against its regional rivals.

 DW-DE

The Iranians “should know better than to play politics with a tragedy”, Saudi Foreign Minister Adel Al-Jubeir told reporters on Saturday.

Riyadh has ordered an investigation into the incident that killed 769 people on Thursday, during the annual hajj pilgrimage that draws millions of Muslim pilgrims from around the world.

The kingdom “will reveal the facts when they emerge. And we will not hold anything back. If mistakes were made, who made them will be held accountable,” Al-Jubeir said while meeting the US Secretary of State John Kerry in New York.

“And we will make sure that we will learn from this and we will make sure that it doesn’t happen again,” the minister added, urging Iranian leaders to wait for the investigation results.

  To Progress and Back: The Rise and Fall of Erdogan’s Turkey

 No other state has catapulted itself into the future quite as rapidly, nor relapsed back into its dark past as suddenly, as Turkey. First there was modernization, and now the beginnings of a civil war. The country is divided by mistrust and hate.

By Hasnain Kazim, Maximilian Popp and Samiha Shafy

This is Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s country: a gorgeous mountain scenery on the Black Sea. On lush, green hillsides, people pick tea leaves and only interrupt their work to pray.

Erdogan calls them “his people,” and for them, he erected an Ottoman-style mosque atop one of the highest peaks. It stands so high above the villages that it is barely discernable from below. A death-defying path winds up the mountain and takes about 45 minutes to traverse in a car, but many people here make the climb by foot anyway in order to feel closer to God — and to Erdogan, their beloved president.

Australian filmmaker Christopher Doyle films Hong Kong’s ‘umbrella revolution’

September 27, 2015 – 9:59AM

  Philip Wen

China correspondent for Fairfax Media

Hong Kong:  Christopher Doyle never set out to make an overtly political film about the surging protest movement which saw hundreds of thousands take to Hong Kong’s streets.

The Australian cinematographer and filmmaker, best known for his visually sumptuous collaborations with legendary auteur Wong Kar-wai, had begun acting on an enduring desire to make a film which documented the lives of the city’s people through their own voices. “Then this thing happened,” he says.

 Black hole is 30 times bigger than expected

 

  By Amanda Barnett, CNN

Updated 0104 GMT (0804 HKT) September 27, 2015

This shouldn’t be possible. Researchers say they’ve detected a supermassive black hole at the center of a newly found galaxy that’s far bigger than current theories allow.

The research was done by astronomers at Keele University and the University of Central Lancashire and will be published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

The galaxy, with the very clunky name of SAGE0536AGN, was discovered with NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope. Scientists think it’s about 9 billion years old.

Thousands mark anniversary of missing Mexico students

  March held in Mexico City as protesters demand answers over the disappearance of 43 students one year ago in Iguala.

27 Sep 2015 01:01 GMT

Thousands of people have marched in Mexico City to demand answers over last year’s disappearances of 43 students, piling new pressure on President Enrique Pena Nieto to clear up a case that has battered his image.

A year to the day since 43 trainee teachers went missing in the southwestern city of Iguala after clashes with local police, protesters held up banners ridiculing Pena Nieto’s response to the crisis and accusing him of trying to draw a line under it.

Signs that read “Crime of the State” and “Get Out Pena” peppered the crowd as they streamed down the Paseo de la Reforma, the grand boulevard that runs through the centre of the Mexican capital.