Six In The Morning Monday 24 June 2019

 

 

Erdogan’s party suffers blow after Istanbul re-run poll defeat

Turkey’s ruling AK Party has lost control of Istanbul after a re-run of the city’s mayoral election, delivering a stinging blow to President Erdogan.

With nearly all ballots counted, main opposition party candidate Ekrem Imamoglu had a lead of 775,000 votes, a huge increase on the margin of 13,000 he achieved in the earlier election.

That victory in March was annulled after the AKP alleged irregularities.

The result ends 25 years of AKP rule in Istanbul.

The AKP’s candidate, former Prime Minister Binali Yildirim, conceded to his opponent.

The new drug highway: Pacific islands at centre of cocaine trafficking boom

Explosion in number of boats carrying cocaine and meth from Latin America to Australia is causing havoc for islands on the way

 Cocaine used as washing powder: police struggle with Pacific drug influx

by  in Nadi, Fiji

It is the drug route you’ve never heard of: a multibillion-dollar operation involving cocaine and methamphetamines being packed into the hulls of sailing boats in the US and Latin America and transported to Australia via South Pacific islands more often thought of as holiday destinations than narcotics hubs.

In the past five years there has been an explosion in the number of boats, sometimes carrying more than a tonne of cocaine, making the journey across the Pacific Ocean to feed Australia’s growing and very lucrative drug habit.

Muslim man ‘killed by mob who tied him to tree, beat him and forced him to recite Hindu chants’ in India

Twenty-two-year-old tied to tree and ‘mercilessly beaten’, family says

Zamira Rahim @ZamiraRahim

A young Indian Muslim man has died days after reportedly being beaten by a crowd who forced him to perform Hindu chants.

Tabrez Ansari was assaulted by the mob on 18 June, after being accused of breaking into a house and stealing a motorbike in the eastern state of Jharkand.

Several videos, which appear to be of the assault, spread quickly online in the aftermath of Ansari’s death.

Australian media sue police after raids over leaked documents

Australia’s national broadcaster went to court Monday to challenge a police raid on its offices and demand the return of files seized during the controversial operation.

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) demanded an injunction to prevent police from accessing the seized files, which concern a two-year-old investigative report on war crimes by Australian special forces in Afghanistan.

ABC managing director David Anderson said the suit also challenged the constitutionality of the search warrant used by police to conduct the raid “on the basis that it hinders our implied freedom of political communication.”

‘I don’t want to be considered as an ex-slave or just a survivor’

Some Yazidi women have found the strength to go back and live in Sinjar, years after ISIL carried out a genocide.

by Marta Bellingreri & Alessio Mamo

There is no Sinjar without Yazidis; and there are no Yazidis without Sinjar,” says 25-year-old Shreen, referring to her land of origin, the northern Iraqi province in the Nineveh region.

She survived two years and eight months of sex slavery in the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL or ISIS)-occupied Mosul, but during the battle for the city she managed to escape and later went to Syria to rescue her sister, who had also been taken by ISIL.

“But I don’t want to be considered as an ex-slave or just a survivor. I am now an activist for the Yazidi cause and I will not leave Iraq until I have the corpse of my father.”

As immigrant children go without soap and toothbrushes, Trump and Pence say Congress is to blame

Lawyers visiting a detention center in Texas found children there lacked basic necessities. Trump and Pence blame Congress.

By 

President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence responded separately to criticism over reports that the government is not providing detained immigrant children with adequate food, water, soap, toothbrushes, or blankets. In three interviews that aired Sunday, both men blamed Democrats for the conditions at detention facilities.

Questions about the conditions detained minors are in began to arise following the publication of an Associated Press report that detailed the findings of a team of lawyers that toured a detention facility in Clint, Texas. The lawyers reported they found 250 infants, children, and teenagers being held without adequate access to food, water, or medicine. They also said they saw babies and toddlers being left in the care of slightly older children, and that there was poor access to areas for bathing, places to sleep, and to fresh clothes.