Six In The Morning Monday July 6

Greece debt crisis: Finance Minister Varoufakis resigns

• 6 July 2015
 
• From the sectionEurope

Greece's combative finance minister has resigned, hours after voters backed his call to reject creditors' demands for more austerity in a referendum.

Yanis Varoufakis said it was felt his departure would be helpful in finding a solution to the country's debt crisis.

Eurozone finance ministers, with whom he repeatedly clashed, had wanted him removed, Mr Varoufakis explained.

Meanwhile, global financial markets have fallen over fears that Greece is heading for an exit from the euro.

The European Central Bank (ECB) is to meet to discuss whether to raise its emergency cash support for Greek banks, which are reportedly just days away from running out of funds and collapsing.

A year after the war, Gaza grieves for its child casualties

At a school where six boys were killed during last summer’s Israeli offensive, the loss is an open wound. For other young Palestinians, the scars are psychological

Peter Beaumont in Rafah

Monday 6 July 2015 05.00 BST

The walls of the office of Salim Abu Rous, headmaster of the Doha boys’ secondary school in Rafah, in the south of the Gaza Strip, are decorated with medals and trophies. He has photo albums of the boys in football teams and other clubs.

About 1,000 pupils attend his school, arriving in two shifts – so many that he struggles to remember the names of all the boys killed in last summer’s war.

“I remember Haitham Abdul Wahab,” he says finally, flicking through one of the picture albums to try to find him. “He was a good boy. He was well loved in the school. He was killed at his uncle’s house with his brother and mother.”

War with Isis: The 'international brigade' of foreign fighters joining up to help Kurdish Peshmerga tackle Islamists

A legion of foreigners, many with little or no military experience, are volunteering to fight Isis alongside the Kurdish Peshmerga. But it’s weapons that receive more of a welcome. Cathy Otten reports from Kirkuk

CATHY OTTEN

 

KIRKUK

 

Monday 06 July 2015

On Iraq’s northern front, a marksman with the Kurdish Peshmerga looked down at the body of the dead Isis fighter, examining his weapon with keen interest. It was not just an unusual find on these front lines, a submachine gun dating from the Second World War, but it had also been curiously decorated by its previous owner, with pieces of what looked like human bone.

“It had a piece of spinal cord for a forward grip,” said the marksman, an American ex-soldier volunteering with the Kurds to fight Isis. “If that doesn’t sound satanic then I don’t know what does.”

Scott, who asked for only his first name to be used, joined the Peshmerga six months ago after watching the war unfold from his home in Minnesota, and was talking to The Independentfrom his frontline position.

Panama's former dictator Manuel Noriega trying to get out of prison

July 6, 2015 - 1:05PM

Tim Johnson

Panama City:  Now in a wheelchair, and in prison, 81-year-old Manuel Antonio Noriega cuts a far more docile figure than he did during his years as a machete-waving dictator. Yet still he evokes passions in his countrymen.

He recently appeared on television to read a statement asking for forgiveness for his dictatorship, which ended when US troops invaded Panama in late 1989, and for a release from prison.

Panamanians are parsing whether Noriega displayed true contrition when he pleaded to leave prison for house arrest. Now they face a challenge: whether to demand a full accounting from Noriega, including details of the beheading of a hated foe, or to turn the page on a history that is a generation old.

Pope Francis begins South America trip in Ecuador

Leader of Catholic church arrives in Ecuador as he starts three-nation tour, that also includes Bolivia and Paraguay.

06 Jul 2015 05:17 GMT

Pope Francis has arrived in Ecuador, in his first visit since becoming pope to the Spanish-speaking part of South America, bringing a message of solidarity with the poor in the region, while trying to rally his church amid dwindling numbers. 

Francis, history's first South American leader of the Catholic church, arrived in the capital Quito at 19:40 GMT on Sunday for a week-long tour of the continent, which also includes stops in Bolivia and Paraguay. 

Crowds had begun gathering on Sunday morning along the route from the airport to the papal nuncio's residence, where Francis will be staying.

More than a million Roman Catholics are expected at mass in Quito on Tuesday.

Africans seeking better lives pass through Ethiopian town

 

By ELIAS MESERET

The mood in the border town of Metema these days is quiet and watchful.

Dozens of houses on the hot, dusty main road that stretches from Ethiopia into Sudan look like they have been hastily closed. Guards grimly patrol the border, stopping anyone who looks like an illegal migrant. The nightclubs and bars are emptier than usual, although they still attract Sudanese who are not allowed to drink alcohol in their own country under Shariah law.

Metema, with about 100,000 people, is one of a handful of towns across the region that serve as feeders for a booming trade in migrants from Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia and Sudan, many hoping to make their way to Europe. Life here is now a cat-and-mouse game: The authorities are cracking down, yet the migrants just keep coming, often risking death.

Since 30 Ethiopian Christians who passed through Metema were killed by the Islamic State group in Libya a few months ago, the Ethiopian government has become far more vigilant. It claims it has detained 200 smugglers across the country, and police say about 28 of them are from Metema.