Six In The Morning Wednesday September 24

24 September 2014 Last updated at 07:26

Islamic State battle could take years, Pentagon says

US-led air strikes have disrupted Islamic State (IS) militants but the fight against them will take years, a Pentagon spokesman has told the BBC.

The comments came as activists reported new strikes around the town of Kobane, near Syria's border with Turkey.

Kobane has been besieged by IS fighters for several days, forcing about 130,000 Syrian Kurds to flee into Turkey.

IS has seized large areas of Syria and Iraq, and the US has launched nearly 200 air strikes in Iraq since August.

However, Monday's strikes expanded the anti-IS campaign across the border into Syria for the first time.

ROBERT FISK

Syria air strikes: America’s attacks on Isis may help Bashar al-Assad keep his regime alive

But the Syrian leader will be watching with concern as the US's use of air power spreads to include more targets outside its original stated aim

The moment America expanded its anti-Isis war into Syria, President Bashar al-Assad gained more military and politicalsupport than any other Arab leader can boast. With US bombs and missiles exploding across eastern and northern Syria, Assad can now count on America, Russia, China, Iran, the Hezbollah militia, Jordan and a host of wealthy Gulf countries to keep his regime alive. If ever that creaking old Arab proverb – that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” – contained any wisdom, Assad has proved it true.

In his Damascus home, the Syrian leader can reflect that the most powerful nation on earth – which only last year wished to bomb him into oblivion – is now trying to bomb his most ferocious enemies into the very same oblivion. Sunni Saudis whose “charity” donations have funded the equally Sunni “Islamic State” now find their government supposedly helping the US to destroy it. As Shia Iran and its Hezbollah protégés battle the Sunni executioners and throat-slashers on the ground, US bombs and missiles rain down to destroy the enemies in front of them.

Yangon’s modernisers wrestle with old and new

On the verge of huge transformation, Burma’s former capital has a rich architectural legacy

Mary Fitzgerald

Few places resonate more in the history of modern Burma than the sprawling red brick Victorian complex at No 300 Theinbyu Road in downtown Yangon.

It was here that the British colonial administration was headquartered, here that the ceremony marking Burma’s independence was held, and here that its parliament sat until the military junta took over in 1962. Known as the Secretariat, the collection of buildings is most famous for one of the country’s darkest episodes – the assassination in 1947 of Gen Aung San, independence leader and father of Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi.

But despite its historical significance, the Secretariat, like so many other colonial edifices in Burma’s former capital, stands crumbling and neglected in a fast-changing city whose skyline is punctuated by new office blocks. Built in the late 19th century, the 16-acre site contains a hodge-podge of architectural styles behind a razorwire perimeter that keeps out any curious members of the public.

'Left To Die': The Survivors of the Malta Refugee Shipwreck

By Julia Amalia Heyer, Walter Mayr, Maximilian Popp and Chrissi Wilkens

Earlier this month, 500 people, mostly refugess from the Gaza Strip, drowned when their ship sank in the Mediterranean. It was the worst such tragedy in a summer full of them. SPIEGEL traveled to Gaza and Crete to find out what happened.

On his third day at sea near the coast of Malta, Shukri al-Assouli began to hallucinate. He saw streets, houses and his mother, who greeted him with a smile back at home in the Gaza Strip. He wore the life vest of a man who had drowned and clung to an empty metal container. He then started to lose his strength. Exposure to the salt water had discolored hisskin, his arms and legs had grown numb from the cold water and his fight to keep from drowning. Finally, a freighter ship saw them and pulled Assouli and five other survivors from the water. He thought it was a hallucination. "I had already figured I was going to die," he says.

Assouli was flown by helicopter to the port city of Chania in Crete, where he spent five days in the hospital. He makes his way down the clinic hallway with unsteady footsteps, his eyes are reddened and the wrinkles on his forehead are furrowed. Although he's been saved, he has also lost everything. He buries his head in his hands and cries. "How could the Europeans allow a crime like that to happen?" he asks. "Where is my wife? Where are my children?"

Sex and scandal make Chinese corruption trial social

media magnet

September 24, 2014

Philip Wen

China correspondent for Fairfax Media

Beijing: He was the former deputy chief of the all-powerful agency tasked with steering the world's second-largest economy, brought down for corruption by a jilted mistress who blew the whistle.

As allegations swirled in the Chinese media around the existence of multiple mistresses scattered around the country and the acceptance of multimillion-dollar bribes, Liu Tienan was branded "morally degenerate" by the Communist Party as it expelled the disgraced National Development and Reform Commission vice-chairman from its ranks.

Most intriguing were the circumstances around Mr Liu's capture. One widely circulated but as yet unconfirmed Chinese news report said he was found with multiple airline tickets and fake passports – including an Australian one – as well as a stash of gold bars, rare jade and diamonds.

Televisa reporter fired after video catches him taking cash from Mexican drug lord

One journalist said he was forced against his will into the meeting with the kingpin. It’s an argument that a parade of political figures have also made after videos of their meetings were made public.

By Tim Johnson, McClatchy

A choppy clandestine video that surfaced Monday is likely to reinforce the widespread impression that the country’s drug cartels have gained a solid foothold in the Mexican news media.

The video, displayed on the website of the MVS radio network, shows two prominent journalists in the troubled state of Michoacán meeting with the fugitive leader of the Knights Templar drug cartel, Servando “La Tuta” Gomez, and holding an animated, friendly discussion with him. At the end, they accept a pile of bills.

One of the journalists, Eliseo Caballero Ramírez, was until midday the correspondent in Michoacán for the powerful Televisa network, the biggest mass media company in the Spanish-speaking world. He also apparently had worked for MundoFox, a subsidiary partly owned by Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox, which also owns the Fox News Channel in the United States.