Six in The Morning Saturday October 4

4 October 2014 Last updated at 07:42

Hong Kong protests: Police arrest 'triad gang' members

Police in Hong Kong have arrested 19 people, including suspected members of triad gangs accused of attacking pro-democracy protesters.

The scuffles on Friday led to the postponement of talks between the demonstrators and the government.

Police officers deny claims that they have colluded with those who used violence against the demonstrators.

Activists are protesting against plans by China to vet election candidates and have been occupying parts of the city.

Hong Kong's leader earlier this week offered talks to defuse the situation in China's special administrative region.

Georgia’s Pankisi Gorge feels pull of Islamic State

For young men in impoverished region, jihad can offer a tempting escape from a grim life

Daniel McLaughlin

 Like tearaways in the west gunning their cars away from the lights, the young Kists spurred on their steeds and tore off down Duisi’s main street. The horses clattered over the bleached concrete, trailed by the longing gaze of a pair of boys who had no ride, but sat at the village bus stop to while away another empty day in Georgia’s Pankisi Gorge.

“We knew him,” one of the teenagers muttered, of a boy their age whose parents were now mourning in a village higher up in the Caucasus mountains, which surround Pankisi Gorge and rise to the border with Russia. The Kremlin’s most troubled territory lies beyond: the republics of Dagestan and Chechnya.

Beso Kushtanashvili (18) was at least the sixth young Muslim from Pankisi Gorge to die fighting in Syria. His parents told Georgian media they thought he was working in Turkey, like many others from this beautiful but impoverished region. But the lads at the bus stop – who declined to give their names – said they knew where Beso was. “He died when they bombed his camp or base,” said one.

Islamic State reportedly on Baghdad's outskirts after week of victories

October 4, 2014 - 3:05PM

Mitchell Prothero

Irbil, Iraq: Islamic State militants have taken control of key cities in Iraq's western province of Anbar and have begun to besiege one of the country's largest military bases in a weeklong offensive that's brought them within artillery range of Baghdad.

IS,  also known as ISIS, and its tribal allies have dominated Anbar since a surprise offensive last December, but this week's push was particularly worrisome, because for the first time this year Islamist insurgents were reported to have become a major presence in Abu Ghraib, the last Anbar town on the outskirts of the capital.

"Daash is openly operating inside Abu Ghraib," according to an Iraqi soldier, who used the common Arabic term for IS . "I was at the 10th Division base there two days ago, and the soldiers cannot leave or patrol," he said, asking that he be identified only as Hossam"Daash controls the streets."

Can Pakistani 'VIPs' learn to wait in line? They may be forced to.

Well-connected elites ​are used to preferential treatment. After passengers on a delayed Pakistan International Airlines flight pushed back last month, ​tolerance for the so-called 'VIP culture' may be waning.

By Saba Imtiaz, Correspondent

KARACHI, PAKISTAN — Ordinary Pakistanis have long been annoyed at motorcades that hold up traffic for well-connected elites, and of street barricades that lead to politicians’ residences. But anger at what is dubbed the “VIP culture” in Pakistan may be reaching a tipping point.

Last month, a video that showed passengers blocking legislators from boarding a Pakistan International Airlines flight went viral. The plane had been delayed to accommodate the late VIPs. This rare example of push back drew widespread TV coverage and debate about class divisions and poor governance.

Anger over Pakistan’s VIP culture is mainly about governance, says Ayesha Tammy Haq, a Karachi-based lawyer who hosts a political talk show. “If you had a good governance system and provided services, people wouldn’t mind waiting,” she says.

Finally, a flying car for everybody? It's the idiot-proof aerial commuter

By Peter Shadbolt, for CNN

There may be plenty of idiots on the road, but is putting them in the skies taking it, quite literally, to the next dimension?

For Dr. Heinrich H. Bülthoff -- one of the leading researchers on the'MyCopter' project -- it's a serious question.

Making an idiot-proof flying car that anyone can pilot has involved years of painstaking research and may be the secret to the long-held dream of firing up the rotors, levitating and simply flying out of the bumper-to-bumper grind.

Now the European Union wants to make the dream a reality, researching the feasibility of small commuter air vehicles to ease the world's traffic congestion.

Report: ISIS Puts Literal Price Tags on Abducted Girls

 

By Lee Ferran15 hours ago

Members of the terror group ISIS are literally putting price tags on abducted women and girls to sell them as merchandise in a major Iraqi city, according to allegations cited in a new UnitedNations human rights report.

"UNAMI/OHCHR received a number of reports that an office for the sale of abducted women was opened in the al-Quds area of Mosul city," says the report by the U.N. Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) and the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR). Mosul is Iraq's second-largest city, much of which is controlled by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

"Women and girls are brought with price tags for the buyers to choose and negotiate the sale. The buyers were said to be mostly youth from the local communities. Apparently ISIL [ISIS] was 'selling' these Yezidi women to the youth as a means of inducing them to join their ranks," the report says.