Photo: Amazon/ZUMA
MAN DIES AS MIGRANTS STORM CHUNNEL
A Sudanese man died overnight in the French city of Calais after some 1,500 migrants tried to storm the Channel Tunnel, or Chunnel, to reach the UK, Le Monde reports. French police believe he may have been crushed by a truck exiting one of the shuttles that transport vehicles through the tunnel. He is the ninth migrant to have died there since June as illegal attempts to cross the Channel increase. The night before, the company Eurotunnel said that close to 2,000 people had attempted to enter the tunnel. More than 37,000 such attempts have been blocked since January.
For more on the migrant hub, we offer this Le Monde/Worldcrunch article, Calais Crossing: An Inside Look At The Ugly Business Of Human Trafficking.
VERBATIM
"The safe zone is intended to stop the Kurds, not ISIS," Selahattin Demirtas, the leader of Turkey's pro-Kurdish party told the BBC, accusing the government of using the fight against ISIS to hit the Kurdish rebellion. "The Turkish government was seriously disturbed by Kurds trying to create an autonomous state in Syria," Demirtas added, just hours after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told reporters it was "not possible" for Ankara to continue a two-year-long peace process with the Kurds, who he said "threaten our national unity and brotherhood."
EXTRA!
Beirut has been facing a major trash collection crisis for nearly two weeks after the city's primary landfill site was declared full and closed. Without a place to dispose of the 3,000 tons of trash generated daily in Lebanon's capital, it's everywhere. But as the situation begins to change, Lebanese daily Al-Mustaqbal"s Wednesday edition features two contrasting photos. A street filled with garbage is pictured alongside one of a street being cleaned up by employees of Sukleen, a private company in charge of garbage removal in the capital. Read more in our Extra! feature.
TALIBAN LEADER MULLAH OMAR IS DEAD
Mullah Omar, the Taliban leader who backed Osama Bin Laden in 2001, is dead, the BBC quoted official sources in Afghanistan as saying. According to both the government and intelligence sources, the reclusive leader who hasn't been seen in public since the beginning of the U.S.-led campaign in Afghanistan in 2001 died two or three years ago.
AMAZON PROPOSES DELIVERY DRONE AIRSPACE
Online retailer Amazon has laid out plans to create airspace at 200 feet above cities around the world for the exclusive use of drones as part of the company's ambition to deliver orders by flying robots within 30 minutes. Read more from The Guardian.
2,447 EUROS
The European Commission is investigating allegations that Disneyland Paris is overcharging customers from Britain and Germany, in breach of Brussels' laws. According to the Financial Times, British visitors who wish to purchase a premium package are charged up to 1,870 euros and Germans a whopping 2,447 euros while the French pay just 1,346 euros.
U.S. RULES OUT PUERTO RICO BAILOUT
U.S. Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew said the federal government had no intention of bailing out cash-strapped Puerto Rico, as the U.S. territory struggles with $72 billion in public debt that it can't repay. Instead, Lew called on Congress to revise bankruptcy rules so that Puerto Rico's debt could be restructured. Read more from The Wall Street Journal.
MY GRAND-PÈRE'S WORLD
WORLDCRUNCH-TO-GO
With Islam at its cultural and religious core, even a country like Turkey can't find its way into the modern era, Zafer Senocak writes in a provocative Die Welt opinion piece. What remains is a negative, aggressive "discount Islam" that creates problems around the world. "The incurability of the Muslim psyche is directly linked to the loss of Islamic culture's creative forces," Senocak writes. "Muslims grow up in a world that is dominated by dependencies. Women are dependent on men, young Muslims are dependent on their elders, and the entirety of the Islamic world is dependent on the rest of the superior world. … There can be no humility where humiliation reigns. The Islamic culture has lost all its humility because it is subjected to constant humiliation. A part of the incurability of the Muslim complex is the belief in conspiracy theory. Everyone else but them is responsible for their misery. The U.S., the West or Israel are favorite targets of Muslim paranoia. And nowhere else is the fragility of these conspiracy theories more evident than in Turkey."
Read the full article, Modern Islam And The Disease Within.
BRAZIL'S CONSTRUCTION GIANT LEADER CHARGED
The ongoing corruption scandal involving Brazil's state oil giant Petrobras reached new highs yesterday after 13 people were charged, including Marcelo Odebrecht, the CEO of one of Brazil's largest construction firms, O Globo reports. Odebrecht, who was charged with corruption, money laundering and criminal conspiracy, is accused of having paid more than $17 million in bribes between 2006 and 2014 to senior officials at Petrobras in exchange for lucrative construction contracts. Read more in English from the BBC.
ON THIS DAY
Happy birthday, NASA. The U.S. civilian space program was created 57 years ago today. Time for your shot of history.
SPY PAROLED
After serving 30 years of a life sentence for spying on the U.S. on behalf of Israel, former Navy intelligence analyst Jonathan Pollard will be released Nov. 20. Some suggest his release is a sweetener for Israel after the Iran nuclear deal, though officials have denied any such connection.
WINDOWS 10
The long-awaited successor to Microsoft's Windows 8 operating system is here. Meet Windows 10 (not 9), an update many are hailing as the best ever from the company.
