Six In The Morning

Updated with video on Syria's disappeared

Syria crisis: 28,000 disappeared, say rights groups
Human rights groups working in Syria say at least 28,000 people have disappeared after being abducted by soldiers or militia.

18 October 2012 Last updated at 07:21 GMT
They say they have the names of 18,000 people missing since anti-government protests began 18 months ago and know of another 10,000 cases. Online activist group Avaaz says "nobody is safe" from a deliberate government campaign of terror. It intends to give the UN Human Rights Council a dossier for investigation. Avaaz has gathered testimony from Syrians who says husbands, sons and daughters have been forcibly abducted by pro-government forces. They include Fayzeh al Masri, from a suburb of Homs, whose 26-year-old son Ahmad Ghassan Ibrahim disappeared in February. She said that in his last phone call to his family, he told them they should not call him on that or any other number.

The final hours of Gaddafi
The world saw the video footage of Muammar Gaddafi's last moments. But until now the exact details of how he ended up in a drainage pipe in Sirte – and how he sustained the injuries clearly present before he was killed – were less clear

PETER POPHAM THURSDAY 18 OCTOBER 2012
The outlines of how Muammar Gaddafi died are already well known: gruesome footage of him being abused and manhandled by rebel militiamen after his capture on 20 October 2011 went around the world. But the exact circumstances of how he came to be found, bloodied and bowed, in a concrete pipe in Sirte, his home town, were less certain. Now a report by Human Rights Watch (HRW), released yesterday, drawing on interviews with close associates of the dictator who survived the final battle and rebels present at his capture, provides appalling new detail about his last hours. Only a few years before this man had been courted by Tony Blair and other world leaders. Now he was holed up in the desert with few loyalists, rapidly running out of food, patience and hope. Soon he was to die a hideous, humiliating death.

Leaders debate future reforms at EU summit
European Union leaders meeting at a two-day summit will have plenty to debate when meetings start Thursday. Ways to prevent a further crisis and deal with the effects of the current one will be particularly important.

EUROPEAN UNION
Brussels, for a change, is not beset in panic over the economic crisis. No one expects the eurozone to collapse with a moment's notice. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she expects Greece to remain a part of the European common currency zone despite the troika's latest report that shows Athens is still lagging in implementing reforms and budget cuts. The European Central Bank's decision this summer to take the helm of the eurozone's financial bailout is responsible for creating much of the relaxed atmosphere across the European Union. ECB President Mario Dragi said the institute would buy unlimited amounts of bonds issued by weaker states to give them - and the European Union itself - extra budgetary room to maneuver. The time bought by the ECB has been helpful for the EU, according to European Council President Herman Van Rompuy.

The Hidden Price of Food from China
In recent years, China has become a major food supplier to Europe. But the low-cost goods are grown in an environment rife with pesticides and antibiotics, disproportionately cited for contamination and subject to an inspection regime full of holes. A recent norovirus outbreak in Germany has only heightened worries.

By SPIEGEL Staff
Qufu, the city in China's southwestern Shandong Province where Confucius was born, isn't exactly an attractive place. But its fields are as good as gold. A few weeks ago, a shipment of strawberries left those fields bound for Germany. The air above the cities of the Chinese heartland is blackened with smog, as trucks barrel along freshly paved roads carrying loads of coal from the mines or iron girders from the region's smelters. Fields stretch to the horizon, producing food to feed the world's most populous country.

October peace surprise in Syria
Middle East

By Kaveh L Afrasiabi
As improbable as it seems right now, we may be on the verge of witnessing a much-welcome October surprise in Syria in the form of a three-day cease fire. After months of relentless bloodshed, the warring parties might be persuaded to pause during the upcoming Id al-Adha, starting October 25. A temporary respite is desperately needed for the civilian population throughout the country, many of whom have become refugees or are bunkered inside their homes, as well as by the plethora of stakeholders in the Syrian theater, whose diverse interests may be converging toward a ceasefire.

Exit visas: Finally a political opening in Cuba?
In addition to the economic reforms seen over the past several years in Cuba, easing foreign travel could portend the kinds of political reforms global actors have been clamoring for.

By Melissa Lockhart Fortner, Guest blogger / October 17, 2012
Yesterday Cubans awoke to learn in the daily Granma newspaper that after years of discussion and rumors, the carta blanca policy that requires Cubans to receive permission to travel from Cuba for any length of time will be rescinded. As of Jan. 14, when this new policy goes into effect, Cuban citizens will need only a passport and a visa from a destination country in order to travel abroad. The biggest roadblock to such travel has long been the required exit permit: Permission is hard to come by and often arbitrarily denied, and the cost of the permit itself is largely out of reach.