Six In The Morning Friday October 2

International partners urge Russia to stop targeting opposition and civilians in Syria

By Don Melvin, CNN

Updated 0857 GMT (1557 HKT) October 2, 2015

An international coalition is urging Russia to immediately cease attacks on the Syrian opposition and civilians and focus instead on fighting Islamic State extremists.

The joint statement adds new emphasis to global concern over Russia's true aims in Syria -- and whether it is concerned primarily with attacking the terrorist group ISIS or with propping up Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and protecting its military base in Syria.

"We express our deep concern with regard to the Russian military build-up in Syria and especially ‎the attacks by the Russian Air Force on Hama, Homs and Idlib since yesterday which led to civilian casualties and did not target Da'esh," said the statement, jointly issued late Thursday by the U.S., UK, Turkey, France, Germany, Qatar and Saudi Arabia.

New York prisoner was kicked so hard in the genitals by guard that he had to have part of his right testicle removed

The prison officer that kicked the inmate at a New York prison is still a state employee

• Doug Bolton 
• Thursday 1 October 2015 23:56 BST

A prisoner in a New York correctional facility was struck so hard by a prison officer that he had to have part of his genitals surgically removed.

20-year-old Ramon Fabian, who was serving a one-year sentence for a drugs offence, was kicked by prison guard Michael Bukowski after he was caught talking to another inmate during a morning head count, something the prisoners at Ulster Correctional Facility were not supposed to do.

After the head count, Bukowski took Fabian out of the view of prison security cameras, and told him to face the wall in a 'stop and frisk' position. Once he was in position, Bukowski kicked him hard in his genitals.

Iran troops said to join Syria ground war as Russia airstrikes hit rebel positions

There are reports of Iranian troops arriving in Syria to join Hezbollah fighters in a major ground offensive in support of President Bashar al-Assad's government. Russia has launched airstrikes on rebel positions.

According to two Lebanese who spoke with the Reuters news agency, hundreds of Iranian troops have arrived in Syria over the past ten days. They are reported to have weapons to mount a major ground offensive.

The Lebanese sources added that "The vanguard of Iranian ground forces began arriving in Syria - soldiers and officers specifically to participate in this battle. They are not advisers ... we mean hundreds with equipment and weapons. They will be followed by more."

Until recently, direct Iranian military support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has been mostly in the form of military advisers. Iran had also mobilized Shiite militia fighters, including Iraqis and some Afghans, to fight alongside Syrian government forces.

Madagascar takes climate change battle to the kitchen

Andry Andriamanga

 

Manantsoa Tiana

 The kitchen has become the latest battleground in the fight against climate change. In south-eastern Madagascar, an NGO has come up with a prototype clay oven that could significantly reduce the island's reliance on firewood for cooking, which would help lower carbon emissions and reduce devastating deforestation. The pioneering project is a beacon of hope in a country that has lost over four-fifths of its forests in the last century.

Tandavanala - the NGO spearheading the project - has been working to protect the environment in the region of FIanarantsoa in recent years. The organisation has had its work cut out trying to get both reforestation and carbon storage programmes up and running.

In 2011, several members of the NGO banded together to work on designing an oven built from clay. The idea was to take advantage of clay's heat-storage properties to create an oven that would consume far less firewood. The results speak for themselves: Tindavanala's oven, named 'Tsinjo Harena, consumes 69% less wood than a traditional oven. According to data compiled in collaboration with Madagascar's National Centre for Technological and Industrial Research (CNRIT), each oven stands to save around 1.27 tons of wood each year while reducing carbon emissions by 2.73 tons over the same period of time. The NGO aims to sell around 5,000 of the new ovens. But to hit such an ambitious target, it first needs to secure additional funds, as Tandavanala's president Andriatsihoarana Manantsoa Tiara explains. 

Australian journalist Frank Palmos: first witness to 1965 Indonesian massacre

October 2, 2015 - 6:32PM

Jewel Topsfield

Indonesia correspondent for Fairfax

Jakarta: Australian journalist Frank Palmos was one of the first foreigners in the world to witness the scale of the communist purge that started in Indonesia this month 50 years ago.

In a chilling account in The Sun News-Pictorial, then Melbourne's largest newspaper, Dr Palmos put the number who died at "more than one million".

"Once the killing started the youths were uncontrollable … Beheading was the most common form of killing, but for large scale executions shooting was normal."

Dr Palmos was a rarity in the foreign press corp: he spoke fluent Indonesian and a reasonable amount of Javanese and Sundanese which gave him access to the countryside to which his desk-bound colleagues in Jakarta could only dream.

"(Canadian Broadcasting Corporation journalist) Don North and I were the first by far to go into Western and Central Java and see what was going on," Dr Palmos, now 75, recalls from his Perth home.

Jeremy Haft Become a fan 

Author Of "Unmade in China," Georgetown Professor

Why Trump Is Wrong About China, China, China

After the devaluation of the yuan and the dive in China's stock exchanges, the blowback on American markets and the presidential candidates lining up to blame China, President Xi Jinping may be wishing he'd booked his visit for another time. But now is the perfect opportunity to set the record straight. The latest round of China bashing -- that China is "killing us," stealing our jobs and money -- overestimates China's clout and distorts our discourse.
 
It's easy to see why we fear China's economic might. Take a walk down the aisle of your local Walmart and just about everything appears to be "Made in China." If China can make anything we can, only cheaper and at the click of a mouse, we must be racing to the bottom in wages, jobs and quality of life. It's no wonder campaign themes like Donald Trump's "Make America Great Again" are resonating this election season. We feel like we're on the ropes and China has us beat. Polls like the 2012 Pew Global Attitudes Project Survey confirm this notion, showing more Americans believe China is the world's leading economic power today.