Six In The Morning Sunday 23 June 2019

Ethiopia army chief shot dead in Ethiopia attacks

The chief of staff of the Ethiopian army, Gen Seare Mekonnen, has been shot dead in the capital, Addis Ababa, state media confirm.

He and another officer died trying to prevent a coup attempt against the administration in Ethiopia’s northern Amhara region, PM Abiy Ahmed said.

In Amhara itself, the regional governor, Ambachew Mekonnen, was killed along with an adviser.

Ethnic violence has hit Amhara and other regions in recent years.

The prime minister went on TV dressed in military fatigues to denounce the attacks.

Great Pacific garbage patch: giant plastic trap put to sea again

Floating boom is designed to trap 1.8 trillion items of plastic without harming marine life – but broke apart last time

A floating device designed to catch plastic waste has been redeployed in a second attempt to clean up a huge island of garbage swirling in the Pacific Ocean between California and Hawaii.

Boyan Slat, creator of the Ocean Cleanup project, announced on Twitter that a 600-metre (2,000-foot) long floating boom that broke apart late last year was sent back to the Great Pacific garbage patch this week after four months of repair.

A ship towed the U-shaped barrier from San Francisco to the patch in September to trap the plastic. But during the four months at sea, the boom broke apart under constant waves and wind and the boom wasn’t retaining the plastic it caught.

Turkey mayor election: Erdogan’s party faces massive loss in Kurdish vote

Kurds who once voted for the AKP are increasingly abandoning the party, staying home or even voting for the candidate of the CHP

For the third time in less than four years, Ahmet is changing his vote.

Years ago, the 39-year-old Kurdish cook, who works at an Istanbul restaurant, used to vote for the Justice and Development Party, or AKP, of Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who appealed to Kurdish voters by relaxing restrictions on their language and cultural practices.

Then, in 2015, he began voting for the Kurdish-led Democratic People’s Party, or HDP, led by Selahattin Demirtas, the now-imprisoned Kurdish politician.

India rejects critical US religious freedom report

India hit out Sunday at a US report saying religious intolerance was growing under its right-wing government, setting off a new spat ahead of a visit by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

An annual report on international religious freedom released by Pompeo on Friday said Hindu-groups had used “violence, intimidation, and harassment” against Muslims and low-caste Dalits in 2017 to force a religion-based national identity.

But Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government insisted that no foreign country had the right to criticise its record.

Pompeo arrives in New Delhi on Tuesday for a trip intended to strengthen ties, but already complicated by spats over trade tariffs, data protection rules, US visas for Indians and buying arms from Russia.

After 18 years of ‘liberating’ war, Afghanistan’s children are starving to death

Drought, floods and a never-ending war have driven Afghanistan’s poor over the brink again.

By Jacob Saulwick

Using his thumbs, Dr Nesar Ahmed Timory began compressing the chest of three-month-old Safiullah at 10.23am on Tuesday.

Safiullah was severely malnourished. He was fevered and had diarrhoea. A month ago his twin brother, Atiqulla, died from similar afflictions in the same hospital.

On the other side of the bed from where Dr Timory applied a sure but gentle press, a nurse, Shima Osmani, held oxygen to the child’s mouth. Safiullah’s mother, Tahera, stood by and groaned.

I’M A JOURNALIST BUT I DIDN’T FULLY REALIZE THE TERRIBLE POWER OF U.S. BORDER OFFICIALS UNTIL THEY VIOLATED MY RIGHTS AND PRIVACY

I SHOULD HAVE kept my mouth shut about the guacamole; that made things worse for me. Otherwise, what I’m about to describe could happen to any American who travels internationally. It happened 33,295 times last year.

My work as a journalist has taken me to many foreign countries, including frequent trips to Mexico. On May 13, I was returning to the U.S. from Mexico City when, passing through immigration at the Austin airport, I was pulled out of line for “secondary screening,” a quasi-custodial law enforcement process that takes place in the Homeland Security zone of the airport.