Six In The Morning Monday August 31

No regrets, no remorse: Isis mastermind who sent out 15 suicide bombers

In prison interview, Baghdad commander is defiant as he details his deadly campaign that left more than 100 people dead, including children

Martin Chulov Baghdad

Monday 31 August 2015 07.00 BST

For almost a year Abu Abdullah was the most wanted man in Baghdad. He was known among his bosses inside Islamic State as “the planner” – the man responsible for dispatching suicide bombers to attack mosques, universities, checkpoints and market places across the Iraqi capital.

Now his home is a cramped cell in a high-security prison on the city’s fringe, where he has spent the 11 months since his capture. From there Abdullah outlined to the Guardian his role as the man who consigned more human bombs across Baghdad than, perhaps, any other throughout the decade-long insurgency.

Abdullah is one of the most sensitive of Iraq’s security prisoners and securing access to him took three months of negotiations with intelligence officials. Once permission to meet him was granted, he acknowledged that he had not chosen to be interviewed, but claimed to be speaking freely. In the wide-ranging, 90-minute discussion that followed he detailed his role as the architect of one of Iraq’s most savage and remorseless terror campaigns.

ROBERT FISK

In treating needy refugees like invaders, we risk losing our humanity

Barbed wire along the Hungarian border. Barbed wire at Calais. Have we lost the one victory which we Europeans learned from the Second World War – compassion?

The Great Wall of China, the walls of Rome and every medieval city, the Siegfried Line, the Maginot Line, the Atlantic Wall; nations – empires, dictatorships, democracies – have used every mountain chain and river to keep out foreign armies. And now we Europeans treat the poor and huddled masses, the truly innocent of Syria and Iraq, Afghanistan and Ethiopia, as if they are foreign invaders determined to plunder and subjugate our sovereignty, our heimat, our green and pleasant land.

Barbed wire along the Hungarian border. Barbed wire at Calais. Have we lost the one victory which we Europeans learned from the Second World War – compassion?

Since our latest cliché-rag is to tell the world that the refugee “crisis” is the greatest since that war, I was reminded of how Winston Churchill responded to the German refugee columns fleeing through the snows of eastern Europe in 1945 before the advance of the avenging Soviet Army.

Refugee crisis: rescued at sea, searching for a safe haven

August 31, 2015 - 5:55PM

Ruth Pollard

Middle East Correspondent

Taranto: Some fled the civil war in Syria, others escaped repressive governments in countries like Sudan, making the treacherous journey across the desert and into the lawless state of Libya.

They all dreamt of crossing the Mediterranean and finding safety in Europe.

In Libya they were joined by foreign workers forced to leave the country as it descended further into civil war.

There are two governments in Libya and each have their rival armies - the "official" Libya Dignity army, led by General Khalifa Haftar, and Libya Dawn, a coalition of Islamist militias including al-Qaeda militants.

But since October 2014, when Libyan insurgents pledged allegiance to the Islamic State, there are new dangers for those who remain in the country. IS has embarked on a campaign of kidnapping foreign workers, public beheadings and suicide bombings. Their campaign of terror has forced thousands to flee.

Museum showcases traditional Arab dresses, and stories of female creators

The founder of a new museum in Amman wants to keep the intricate dress patterns alive. Her other goal is to reintroduce Jordanians and Palestinians to their material heritage.

By Jane Arraf, Correspondent

AMMAN, JORDAN — Growing up on the West Bank of the Jordan River in the 1940s, Widad Kawar would pass by Palestinian women sitting on balconies and under trees embroidering the intricate panels of traditional dresses.

The patterns and colors were unique to each region. The skill required for the tiny stitches was considered a test of how a potential bride would fare at housekeeping.

“This embroidery kept the generations together,” says Ms. Kawar, who over decades has amassed the world’s largest collection of Arab heritage dresses.

“Everybody was needed – particularly the grandmothers. They would teach the young.”

Boom to bust? Factory town feels pinch from China's slowdown

By Will Ripley, CNN

Updated 0749 GMT (1449 HKT) August 31, 2015

After decades of explosive growth fueled by cheap exports, China's economic slowdown is taking a toll on factory workers who've found themselves left behind.

Ma Xinqing and Wang Dishan each spent 20 years working at a machine factory in Tengzhou, an industrial city in the northern province of Shandong.

The industrial plant closed earlier this year. Today, they are are the only remaining employees on site, working as security guards. The rest were laid off or transferred.

They spend their days walking amongst silent, empty factory buildings. Leftover pieces of machinery are piled up, collecting dust. Weeds are slowly taking over.

Slasher King Wes Craven, Creator of Freddy Krueger, Dies at 76

by M. ALEX JOHNSON

Wes Craven, who haunted the nightmares of two generations of teenagers — and their parents — with his creation of Freddy Krueger in the "Nightmare on Elm Street" films, died Sunday at age 76. He had brain cancer and died in Los Angeles, his family and William Morris Endeavor Entertainment told NBC News.

Craven helped popularize a new style of bloody horror movie that emerged in the 1970s and 1980s, far more graphic than the indirect, mainly off-screen chills of earlier classics like Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho" and the classic Hammer Studios monster movies.

Among his other enormously popular slasher films were the "Scream" movies, "The Last House on the Left" and "The People Under the Stairs."