In This Edition

 

?The UN Security Council calls on Turkey and Syria to excercise restraint after Syrian troops launched artillery shellings on a Turkish border town.

 

?South Korea sends food aid to North Korea following the North's appeal for help from the international community in the wake of severe floods.

 

?The European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso urges poorer European countries to fight hard to secure development aid.

 

?Emergency teams in China's Yunnan continue to search for survivors of a landslide in which 18 school students were killed.

 

 

Hot Issue Reports

 

?UN Security Council condemns Syrian shelling of Turkey 'in the strongest terms'

The United Nations Security Council has released a statement, calling on Turkey and Syria to excercise restraint after Syrian troops launched artillery shellings on a Turkish border town.

 

Members of the Council are strongly condemning the attack, which so far killed 5 and injured the other 13.

 

After negotiating the exact wording of the statement since Wednesday evening, Gert Rosenthal, the Security Council president, said that the council expresses their condolenscences.

 

The members of the Security Council underscored that this incident highlighted the grave impact the crisis in Syria has on the security of its neighbours and on regional peace and stability. The members of the council demanded that such violations of international law stop immediately and are not repeated. The members of the Security Council called on the Syrian government to fully respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of its neighbours.

 

Syria's UN Ambassador Bashar Ja'afari says his government is still investigating the source of the attack and is not seeking any escalation with any of its neighbors.

 

The Security Council is calling on the Syrian government to fully respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of its neighbors.

 

Meanwhile, Turkey is demanding the UN Security Council and NATO take action against Damascus.

 

Turkish troops also took retaliatory military actions against Syria by shellings back on the Syrian soil.

 

?Erdogan: Turkish Troops into Syria not Declaration of War

In the wake of the border attacks, Turkey's Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan has issued a statement, saying the authorization of Turkish troops into Syria is not a declaration of war.

 

Erdogan's comments came after a Turkish border town was shelled this week, killing 5 people.

 

"The parliamentary authorization of foreign deployment of Turkish troops is intended solely as deterrent. As you are aware, one of the most important instruments to prevent clashes is deterrence."

 

The Syrian government has formally apologized for the shelling of the border town.

 

Military activity is already increasing along the Turkish-Syrian border, which is creating a new sence of fear among some of those living in southern Turkey.

 

?South Korea to send aid to DPRK

The South Korean government has allowed seven local civic groups to send 500-tonnes of flour as aid to North Korea.

Twenty trucks have been sent to the North Korean border city of Kaesong, from where the food is to be delivered, to flood-stricken areas in Pyungan Province.

 

Kim gi-jin, the President of the Join Together Society, one of the aid-providers, says they will check to ensure the flour reaches the people in need.

 

"We agreed to send 3,000 tonnes of flour to North Korea, which is suffering from floods in summer and we are on the way to deliver the first batch of 500 tonnes of flour. We will deliver the flour to Kaesong and in the future we will check whether the flour will be provided to residents.

 

The country's official figures state that crops are down by 40-percent compared to last year.

 

North Korea has been appealing for help from the international community since severe floods hit the country throughout the summer.

 

 

?US unemployment rate to four-year low

US President Barack Obama has hailed a drop in the U.S. jobless rate to the lowest level since he took office, as he seeks to bounce back from a lackluster debate performance against Republican challenger Mitt Romney.

 

Obama made the remarks during his campaign in Virginia.

 

"More Americans entered the workforce. More people are getting jobs. Now, every month reminds us that we've still got too many of our friends and neighbors who are looking for work. And there are too many middle-class families that are still struggling to pay the bills -- they were struggling long before the crisis hit. "

 

A government report released on Friday showed the unemployment rate had declined to 7.8 per cent, the first time it has gone below 8 per cent in nearly four years.

 

The news gives Obama a potential boost with the election a month away.

 

Romney had made the president's failure to drive the rate below eight percent a key plank in his campaign.

 

The sluggish labor market was a grave concern for the U.S. Federal Reserve to trigger the third round of quantitative easing. The eagerly-awaited September job report was one of the two before the election. With only a month to go until the election, a decline in jobless rate bodes well for Obama.

 

?Barroso Urges More Prosperous EU Nations to Support Poorer Regions

The European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso has urged poorer European countries to fight hard in the weeks ahead to secure the flow of development aid in the coming years.

 

Barroso made the remarks during a meeting in Slovakia when prime ministers from eastern Europe rallied support for the commission's proposal to slightly increase spending in 2014-2020.

 

"The more prosperous countries, the net contributors, should agree to continue with an ambitious cohesion policy supporting the less prosperous regions of Europe. They should show their determination because it is a contribution for growth all over Europe and it is a contribution to reducing balances. This is the part of the deal that we are asking to net contributors to make."

 

Barroso also warned recipient countries to shore up their capacity to absorb the funds in a timely fashion or face the prospect of cutbacks.

 

EU subsidies for infrastructure projects have been a boon for the poor new member states, although the flow of funds has been hampered by widespread misuse and a lack of cash-flow on the part of the EU.

 

Germany is the biggest net contributor to the EU budget, paying 9 billion euros per year.

 

Poland is the biggest net recipient, getting 10.9 billion euros last year, followed by Greece, Hungary and Spain.

 

?12,000 striking miners fired by largest platinum producer in South Africa

The world's largest platinum producer is firing 12,000 workers for taking part in a three-week strike, following through on tough talk over wildcat stoppages in South African mines.

 

Anglo American Platinum spokesperson Mpumi Sithole said the decision was made after the company repeatedly called for the miners to resume work.

 

Those dismissed miners have failed to attend the disciplinary hearings instituted against them for embarking on what the authorities called illegal strike.

 

The spokesperson said the company is suffering losses in revenue since the strike started more than a month ago.

 

More than 75,000 miners, or 15 percent of the workforce in a sector that accounts for 6 percent of output, have been out on unofficial strikes, and tensions with security forces and mining bosses are running high.

 

Meanwhile, oil giant Shell said it could not honor fuel delivery contracts around Johannesburg because of a two-week truckers' strike.

 

"It's so sad because I am going to Pretoria now and I don't have petrol, it's very bad."

 

"This is the second garage that I have gone to for petrol...and it's really an inconvenience, I must say."

 

The rand fell two percent to within sight of a three-year low against the dollar as investors pulled back from Africa's biggest economy amid fears the ruling African National Congress is powerless to manage the spreading labor unrest.

 

? American Gunman Shot Dead by Israeli Troops

Israeli troops shot and killed an American citizen who opened fire in a seaside hotel packed with tourists in southern Israeli city of Eilat.

 

Police surrounded the hotel after the American gunman grabbed a weapon from a security guard and shot a hotel worker.

An eye witness from Ashkelon, Avi, who did not want to give his last name, says he tried to restrain the shooter before he got the gun.

 

"All of a sudden we heard screaming we looked back and saw a man with cap on his head and a bag on his back hitting the security guard as the security guard was on the floor. I ran immediately to the place and jumped on the person and restrained his hands from the security guard and then we struggled and in the meantime he managed to take the security guard's weapon."

 

Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said the motive for the attack was unclear, but that a criminal reason seemed possible as the gunman had once been employed at the same hotel.

 

?Emergency teams continue to search for survivors buried in landslide

Emergency teams continue to search for survivors of a landslide in China's south western Yunnan Province in which 18 school students were killed.

 

One person is still missing from Zhenhe village where the landslide hit.

 

Rescue workers in Yiliang County used excavators and their bare hands to clear rubble from Tiantou Elementary School.

 

The Mayor of the affected area which has often been hit by earthquakes and heavy rain, Liu Jianhua, did not rule out human liability in the incident:

 

"To investigate the cause of the accident, we have set up two teams. One is organised by the Discipline Inspection Commission to investigate if there is anyone who should be held responsible for this accident and if so, who exactly that might be."

 

The government says 800-people have been evacuated and rescue efforts have been affected by high water levels after the landslide dammed a river.

 

Last month 81 people died in earthquakes which hit the quake-prone county.

 

?Georgia outgoing government accuses election winner of staging violent protests

Georgia's new leader is appealing for calm among his supporters.

 

The country's prime minister-elected Bidzina Ivanishvili is making the call following his party's victory in the country's parliamentary election this week.

 

"We are in power now; it simply takes some time to go through the technical procedures to complete the handover. Therefore I ask my supporters to stop street protests in order to restore justice."

 

Georgia's outgoing government is accusing Ivanishvilli's party of staging violent protests at several counting centres following Monday's vote.

 

Georgian National Security Council member Giga Bokeria.

 

"We welcome the statements which were done recently by leaders of the winning opposition party, and its leader in particular, calling its activists and party representatives to refrain from this kind of actions - from intimidation, from threat of violence or violence - and to use only legal means. Unfortunately we haven't seen implementation of that on the ground as we speak."

 

Electoral officials say they need to deal with the allegations of vote rigging before they can continue the tally.

 

President Mikhail Saakashvili has already conceded defeat.

 

Ivanishvili will become prime minister after the new parliament goes into session later this month

But under the current political system, Saakashvili will remain Georgia's president for another year.

 

?At least five people dead from meningitis linked to steroid shots for back pain

The US government is warning doctors and hospitals not to use products from a pharmacy that makes Depo-medral, a steroid linked to a fatal meningitis outbreak.

 

The Food and Drug Administration have urged medical staff not to use any products from the New England Compounding Centre in Massachusetts.

 

A Medical Epidemiologist from the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr John Jernigan, says that people who may have been injected are being informed about the symptoms:

 

"And symptoms are usually having their onset somewhere between one and four weeks after the injections. The symptoms that they are experiencing are those that we sometimes see in cases of meningitis, such as fever, new or worsening headache, sometimes neck stiffness. We've also seen in a few patients, signs and symptoms of stroke, sudden onset of slurred speech, dizziness, difficulty walking, sudden weakness, etc.

 

A batch of fungus-contaminated injections is suspected of causing the outbreak, with 35 cases in six states of which five people have died.

 

?Zhoushan's Tourism Based on Marine Culture

As the largest island group along China's coast, the Zhoushan islands include a total of 1390 islands. Numerous beaches and biological resources have given birth to a rich marine culture, which also stimulates the development of marine tourism in Zhoushan.

 

?Zhejiang's shipbuilding industry booms

Located in the coastal area of Ningbo, a port city in east China's Zhejiang Province, Zhejiang Shipbuilding Company Limited has distinguished itself from similar companies in the country thanks to its own efforts as well as national policy.