Saudi Arabia is quietly telling oil market participants that Riyadh is comfortable with markedly lower oil prices for an extended period, a sharp shift in policy that may be aimed at slowing the expansion of rival producers including those in the U.S. shale patch. ● Some OPEC members including Venezuela are clamoring for urgent production cuts to push global oil prices back up above $100 a barrel. But Saudi officials have telegraphed a different message in private meetings with oil market investors and analysts recently: the kingdom, OPEC’s largest producer, is ready to accept oil prices below $90 per barrel, and perhaps down to $80, for as long as a year or two, according to people who have been briefed on the recent conversations.

DWN: USA wollen Putin mit niedrigem Öl-Preis in die Knie zwingen

Turkey has granted the United States access to its airbases near the Syrian border "to conduct bombings on Islamic State militants". This follows international pressure on Ankara to do more to help the Kurds in Kobani. ● US troops have long operated out of Incirlik Air Base, with roughly 1,500 air force personnel stationed there. The US airstrikes against "IS" are currently reportedly flying out of air bases in the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Qatar. NATO member Turkey had so far refused to get involved in the fighting, calling instead for a joint strategy against the militants. At a donors' conference for the Gaza Strip on Sunday evening, US Secretary of State John Kerry stressed the seriousness of the situation in the border town of Kobani.

PressTV: Iran: US efforts against ISIL not real
McClatchy: Kurds hanging on in Kobani as Islamic State presses offensive

Rûdaw: German deputy speaker: NATO must stop Turkey support for ISIS || Claudia Roth said in an interview with Rudaw that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government is pursuing a “murky” policy in Syria because it wants the Kurds weakened and their fighters “annihilated.” Erdogan’s “dealings with the ISIS are unacceptable. I could not believe that Turkey harbors an ISIS militant camp in Istanbul,” Roth said. “Turkey has also allowed weapons to be transported into Syria through its borders. Also that the ISIS has been able to sell its oil via Turkey is extraordinary,” she [said].

Barry Grossman: In an interview with CNN on Sunday, McCain said that ISIL terrorists are “winning and we're not.” “There has to be a fundamental re-evaluation of what we're doing because we are not -- we are not ‘degrading and ultimately destroying ISIS’.” [...] “That the rogue US elements represented by McCain are now prepared to sacrifice Kurdish lives so that scenes of the now almost inevitable massacres can be run on US Prime Time TV in order to stampede President Obama into a full Libya style assault, not on ISIL, but rather on Syria, only stands out as still more clear proof that those beating the war drums in Washington and Tel Aviv are advancing a dark agenda which is concerned about anything but ISIL.”

The international community must press for a thorough probe into crimes against civilians in south-eastern Ukraine, Russian politicians believe. ● On Friday the State Duma (lower house of parliament) unanimously adopted a corresponding appeal to the parliaments of the world and international parliamentary organizations. “Such crimes as the Odessa fire, the use of prohibited means of warfare, the shellings of residential areas with multiple rocket launchers and scores of civilians in south-eastern Ukraine shot or tortured to death cannot but remain unpunished,” State Duma Speaker Sergey Naryshkin said. “The political leadership of Western countries refuses to see an impartial picture of events underway in Ukraine and leaves Russia’s calls for investigating crimes against civilians without due attention,” the deputy chairman of the Federation Council’s international affairs committee, Andrei Klimov, told TASS.

RIAN: Russian-Ukrainian Probe of Donetsk Mass Graves Needed: Russian Human Rights Council Head

Die Bundesregierung hat in der Antwort auf eine Anfrage der Links-Partei zugegeben, dass sie nichts Genaueres über den Abschuss von Flug MH17 weiß. Allerdings räumt sie ein, dass AWACS-Flugzeuge eine Rakete geortet haben, wie sie sich im Besitz der ukrainischen Armee befindet. Emirates-Chef Tim Clarke schließt nicht mehr aus, dass die MH-17 von einem ukrainischen Raketenabwehrsystem abgeschossen wurde.

A Texas health care worker who treated the first state’s Ebola patient, has been tested positive for the virus, officials said blaming a breach in of treatment protocols for the new case. ● "A health care worker at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital who provided care for the Ebola patient hospitalized there has tested positive for Ebola in a preliminary test at the state public health laboratory in Austin,” said a statement from Texas Department of State Health Services. According to the state’s health services, the woman had “a low grade fever Friday night and was isolated and referred for testing.” The Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital worker has tested positive for Ebola in a preliminary exam later confirmed by the CDC.

El País: Diferencias entre España y EE UU ante un caso de contagio de ébola
SCMP: Texas health care worker tests positive for Ebola, becoming second US case
The Guardian: Texas healthcare worker diagnosed with Ebola as CDC suggests breach of safety protocol
Paul Craig Roberts: Ebola Safety Protocol Appears To Be Defective

A new documentary about American whistleblower Edward Snowden reveals that there is a second National Security Agency leaker within the ranks of government intelligence. ● American journalist Glenn Greenwald talked about the second leaker at the end of the film during a meeting between him and Snowden in Moscow, The Guardian reported. The documentary, Citizenfour, from filmmaker Laura Poitras, is about former NSA contractor Snowden which had its world premiere on Friday. Snowden “expresses surprise at the level of information apparently coming from this new source. Greenwald, fearing he will be overheard, writes the details on scraps of paper,” according to The Guardian.

The Guardian: Second leaker in US intelligence, says Glenn Greenwald

Auf Drängen der USA hat Saudi-Arabien seine Öl-Produktion massiv ausgeweitet. Dies hat entscheidend dazu beigetragen, dass der Ölpreis seit Juni um rund 20 Prozent eingebrochen ist. Der Preisverfall schadet vor allem Russland, das den Großteil seiner Staatseinnahmen aus dem Export von Öl und Gas bezieht. Sollte Saudi-Arabien den Öl-Krieg fortsetzen, droht Putin erstmals ein deutliches Staatsdefizit. ● Saudi-Arabien hat seine Ölproduktion zuletzt massiv erhöht und dadurch zu dem Verfall des Ölpreises um rund 20 Prozent beigetragen. Grund dafür ist offenbar eine strategische Zusammenarbeit mit den USA, die Russland durch einen Ölkrieg in die Knie zwingen wollen. [...] Saudi-Arabien wird den Ölpreis drücken, um politischen Druck auf den Iran und Russland auszuüben, zitiert die türkische Nachrichtenagentur Anadolu den Präsidenten des Zentrums für Saudi-arabische Ölpolitik und Strategische Aussichten, Rashid Abanmy.

Anadolu Agency: Saudi Arabia to pressure Russia, Iran with price of oil

STANDING in front of Dublin's iconic GPO building, tens of thousands of anti-water charges protesters roared as one: "You say cut back - we say fight back!" ● With a Garda helicopter flying over head, tens of thousands of people from all corners of the country marched from Parnell Square to Leinster House and back to O'Connell Street where Independent TD Clare Daly and People Before Profit TD Richard Boyd Barrett led a series of speeches. "This day will go down in history as the day that the people decided to roar," said Clare Daly. "We are here in our tens of thousands to say water is a human right, based on need, not an ability to pay."

St. Louis police have arrested at least 17 people for an “unlawful assembly” as activists staged a spontaneous sit-in outside a convenience store following a mass march, part of a four-day “Ferguson October” public event to protest police brutality. Early on Sunday morning between 100 and 200 people marched on a QT (QuikTrip) convenience store at Vandeventer and Chouteau. Protesters sat down, surrounding the convenience store. They staged a brief a sit-in at around 1 am local time, which local police spokeswoman Schron Jackson has called an “unlawful assembly”.

PressTV: Videos of NYPD police brutality go viral

■ The Fairfax press revealed last week that the inscribed Arabic sword seized during unprecedented police raids on September 18—and portrayed by the media as the weapon that would be used in an Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS)-inspired plot to kidnap a random person and behead them in the street—was actually a plastic ornament. Moreover, it is a plastic Shiite ornament. Its inscription pays homage to the first Imam, Ali, who is considered by the Sunni Wahhabist extremists who make up ISIS as an apostate to Islam. ■ The revelation adds to the numerous, disturbing questions about the raids on 15 homes in five Sydney suburbs, which was the largest anti-terrorism operation ever carried out in Australia and involved some 800 state police, federal police and Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) agents. ■ Police armed with military assault rifles and supported by armoured vehicles cordoned off entire neighbourhoods. People were ordered to lie on the ground as their homes were ransacked. Fifteen people were arrested and hauled off to police stations for interrogation. Video footage and photographs of some of the detainees were published by the police on Twitter and the official police media site and then re-published by every television and print outlet. ■ The media went into a frenzy, recounting sensational information they received from “unnamed” sources. However, it was the photo of the sword, being carried by police officers in a transparent evidence bag, which provoked some of the most lurid assertions. The Daily Mail breathlessly headlined its report: “Was this the lethal sword terror cell planned to use to behead an innocent victim on a Sydney street?”