Six In The Morning Monday October 15

The Kremlin’s comeback

Thirty years after the Soviet Union’s humiliating defeat in Afghanistan, Moscow wants back in.
Story by Missy Ryan and Amie Ferris-Rotman

Russia has been cultivating ties with the Taliban to increase its influence in Afghanistan three decades after Moscow’s humiliating defeat there helped hasten the Soviet Union’s collapse.

Russian engagement with the militants drew attention, and some flak, when the Kremlin invited Taliban representatives to Moscow for a meeting in September. That invitation was rescinded — at least temporarily — after the Afghan government objected, saying it must take the lead in any talks.

SAUDI MEDIA CASTS KHASHOGGI DISAPPEARANCE AS A CONSPIRACY, CLAIMS QATAR OWNS WASHINGTON POST

Lee Fang

IN SAUDI ARABIA, major media outlets have cast the disappearance and apparent murder of Saudi dissident and Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi as a foreign conspiracy to denigrate the image of the kingdom. The media accounts, which come from outlets run with the backing of Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf monarchies, are spinning the coverage of Khashoggi’s disappearance as a plot by rival governments and political groups to hurt the kingdom — going so far as to make false claims about the Washington Post’s owners.

The English-language arm of the news channel Al Arabiya, for instance, claimed that reports of Khashoggi’s detention inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul were pushed by “media outlets affiliated with the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood and Qatar” — the pan-Arab Islamist political movement and rival Persian Gulf monarchy, respectively. A subsequent story on Al Arabiya casts doubt that Khashoggi’s fiancée, Hatice Cengiz, is truly who she says she is, claiming that her Twitter profile shows that she follows “critics of Saudi Arabia.”

Shitty Media Men list: lawyer wants to expose women who contributed

Andrew Miltenberg, lawyer for writer Stephen Elliott, says Kavanaugh hearings make case ‘more relevant than ever’

Gabrielle Canon

 @GabrielleCanon

Stephen Elliott, a writer and film-maker who claims his life was ruined after his name appeared on the “Shitty Media Men” list that circulated online last year, is now making moves to identify the spreadsheet’s anonymous contributors. In a libel suit filed Wednesday against Moira Donegan, the crowd-sourced spreadsheet’s creator, Elliott and his attorney, Andrew Miltenberg, claimed they could legally unveil the currently unnamed “Jane Doe” defendants – and expose those who added, edited, or shared the list.

Miltenberg is a high-profile sexual assault attorney and has represented hundreds of accused men, many of them college students dealing with Title IX claims. He told the Guardian he believed this suit had important implications, especially because of how soon it comes after the Kavanaugh hearings. “I think it became very relevant – more so than ever – in light of what we as a nation watched unfold over the past weeks,” he said.

10 ways to accelerate progress against climate change

From pricing carbon to shifting diets, here’s what we need to prioritize now.

By Eliza Barclay and Umair Irfan 

Climate scientists told us this week in a long-awaited United Nations report that limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius would require a gargantuan global effort — and that we have roughly 12 years to do it. But how?

One bright spot in the report is that we already have the tools we need.

Let’s make something clear, though: The emissions we need to focus on now are the ones at the industrial, corporate level, not at the individual level.

Afghan Taliban officials: 'US agrees to discuss troops pullout'

US agrees to discuss pullout of troops from Afghanistan as part of talks to end 17-year war, Taliban officials say.

by Shereena Qazi

The United States has agreed to discuss the withdrawal of its troops fromAfghanistan in a direct meeting with Talibanrepresentatives in Qatar, officials from the armed group say.

In a preliminary meeting in Doha on Friday, Taliban representatives and US envoy Zalmay Khalilzad discussed the Taliban's conditions to end the 17-year war in Afghanistan, two top Taliban officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told Al Jazeera.

"Six US delegates arrived in Doha to have a meeting with our [Taliban] leaders [and] agreed to discuss all issues, including the pullout of foreign troops," one of the officials said.

Can female surgeons dismantle stereotypes in Japan?

BY PHILIP BRASOR

CONTRIBUTING WRITER

The long-running American TV series “Grey’s Anatomy” is popular because of the way it mixes standard medical drama with mushy romantic intrigue, but another part of its appeal is the makeup of its characters. The drama takes place in the surgical department of a Seattle hospital, and half the doctors are women. About half are also African-Americans, with other minorities thrown in, as well as some LGBT characters.

As with the romantic elements’ relation to real life, the cast is not representative of the American medical world as a whole. Only 19 percent of practicing U.S. surgeons are female. As a field, surgery has always been something of a boys club.