TURKEY - Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan set off a new controversy on Monday, declaring that women are not equal to men and accusing feminists of not understanding the special status that Islam attributes to mothers. Addressing a meeting in Istanbul on women and justice, Erdogan said men and women are created differently, that women cannot be expected to undertake the same work as men, and that mothers enjoy a high position that only they can reach. "You cannot put women and men on an equal footing," Erdogan said. "It is against nature. They were created differently. Their nature is different. Their constitution is different." Erdogan added: "Motherhood is the highest position ... You cannot explain this to feminists. They don't accept motherhood. They have no such concern."
USA - The St Louis suburb of Ferguson has seen rioting and looting after a jury decided not to bring charges over the killing of Michael Brown. A police chief said violence in the Missouri town was "probably much worse" than the worst unrest after the black teenager was killed in August.
USA - Data from a five-year period is painting a disturbing picture of a deadly trend among Utah police officers. Up until this year, killings by police officers ranked second only to homicide of intimate partners. However, this year, including a Saturday shooting in South Jordan, deadly force by police surpassed even violence between spouses and dating partners.
USA - Another milestone has been reached in the ongoing war against suspected terrorists in the Middle East and elsewhere — the United States has launched 500 attacks, or “targeted killings” in government speak. Micah Zenko at the Council on Foreign Relations published an accounting of attacks, overwhelmingly by drones, against people in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. The “targeted killings” aren’t as well targeted as they might be; 473 civilians are among the 3,674 who have died in the attacks. Four hundred fifty of the attacks have come during the administration of President Barack Obama with George W Bush ordering the first 50.
USA - Police departments that use civil forfeiture to pad their treasuries are getting more selective in the items they seize, thanks to special training they’ve gotten in how to maximize their piles of loot. For instance, agencies are advised not to bother with jewelry and computers. Rings and necklaces are reportedly “too hard to dispose of,” The New York Times reported, while laptops and desktop systems are too common, and not valuable. Not as valuable, that is, as flat-screen TVs, cars and especially cash.
AUSTRIA - Iran and Western nations failed to reach a final nuclear deal by Monday’s deadline and have now agreed to extend talks into December and potentially further, according to Western officials and the Iranian state media.
UK - A decorated army veteran renowned for rescuing youths from Islamic State today warned that the terrorist group is placing 'sleeper cells' in European countries including the UK. Dimitri Bontinck, who is known as the 'Jihadi Hunter', spoke out as he prepared to support his own teenage son in a criminal trial after bringing him home from Syria. It came as Home Secretary Theresa May and senior British police chiefs also said that a terrorist atrocity involving an ISIS-style beheading or bomb attack on civilians is now 'almost inevitable'.
USA - I’ve never been one for apocalyptic theories. I scoffed at films like ‘The Day After Tomorrow’ and sucked my teeth at the doomsday theory of ‘2012’. However, when a NASA-funded study comes out stating that civilization will end in the next few decades, even I have to stop and pay attention.
UK - Creationism suffered its greatest crisis in 1859 when Charles Darwin published his work – ‘On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection’. The work, which had taken him 20 years to complete, became an overnight bestseller.
ISRAEL - From the beginning of Zionism in the late 19th century, the Jewish nation in the Land of Israel has been growing stronger in terms of demography and territory, despite the ongoing conflict with the Palestinians. We have succeeded in doing so because we have acted with wisdom and stratagem rather than engaging in a foolish attempt to convince our foes that we were in the right.
UK - Ministers will be able to force universities to ban extremist preachers from speaking on campus under new powers to be unveiled this week. Schools, colleges, prisons and local councils will also be required by law to have anti-radicalisation policies in place to prevent vulnerable youngsters turning to fanatics. The powers are part of a raft of new measures that will be included in the counter-terrorism and security bill on Wednesday to combat the growing threat of Isil and Islamist jihadists who want to attack the UK. [Theresa May, UK Home Secretary] said the “struggle” against terrorism is the greatest it has ever been, is being fought on “many fronts” and will continue for years to come.
UK - The Law Society has withdrawn controversial guidelines for solicitors on how to compile “Sharia compliant” wills amid complaints that they encouraged discrimination against women and non-Muslims. Andrew Caplen, president of the society, apologised and said the criticism had been taken on board.
USA - A Missouri grand jury has made a decision on whether to indict a white police officer in the fatal shooting of an unarmed black teenager in Ferguson, a killing that sparked angry protests in the St Louis suburb, prosecutors said on Monday. The grand jury's decision will be disclosed later on Monday, said Ed Magee, a spokesman for St Louis County Prosecutor Bob McCulloch, in an e-mailed statement. He did not say what the decision was. The victim's father, Michael Brown Senior, told a group of protesters outside the Ferguson Police Department that he had been told the grand jury had reached its decision but said he did not know what it was.
USA - 3-star General Daniel Bolger helped to lead the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The first sentence of his new book - Why We Lost: A General’s Inside Account of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars – starts: “I am a United Sates Army general, and I lost the Global War on Terrorism. It’s like Alcoholics Anonymous; step one is admitting you have a problem. Well, I have a problem. So do my peers. And thanks to our problem, now all of America has a problem, to wit: two lost campaigns and a war gone awry.”
HOLLAND - The Dutch central bank has secretly brought a large part of the national gold reserves being held in a secure depot in New York back to Amsterdam. In total, 120 tonnes of gold valued at €4 billion has been brought back to the Netherlands by ship, Nos television said. The high security reparations for the move took months.