Six In The Morning Saturday July 16

Turkey: President Recep Tayyip Erdogan denounces coup attempt

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has denounced a coup attempt as an "act of treason" and insisted his government remains in charge.

A faction of the armed forces is accused of trying to seize power, after a night of gunfire and explosions in Ankara, Istanbul and elsewhere.

Acting military chief of staff Gen Umit Dundar said 104 coup plotters had been killed and 1,563 arrested.

He said 90 others had died and 1,154 were injured in the night of violence.

Although the chief of staff had been rescued, several military commanders were still being held hostage, he warned.

Events began on Friday evening when tanks took up positions on two bridges over the Bosphorus Strait in Istanbul, blocking it to traffic. Troops were seen on the streets and low-flying military jets were filmed over Ankara.

Shortly after, a faction of the army released a statement saying that a "peace council" was running the country, and there would be a curfew and martial law.

A failed coup in Turkey could tip the country into authoritarianism

Updated by Ezra Klein

Could the coup attempt in Turkey against President Reccep Tayyip Erdogan’s government end up empowering... President Erdogan? Some analysts think so:

To see why, go back to this excellent July 5th New York Times story by Sabrina Tavernise outlining the growing fears that Erdogan was moving towards "seizing the title of president for life."

At the time of the article, the concern was that Erdogan sought — and could perhaps achieve — authoritarian power in his office. He was trying to purge hundreds of judges from Turkey’s top courts, cracking down on freedom of the press (the editor of the state’s largest newspaper was forced to flee the country), and forging a closer alliance with the country’s military ("the [military’s] chief of staff was a witness at his daughter’s wedding").

Attack in Nice: Photos of fake victims and fake suspects flood social networks

As has been the case with other recent terrorist attacks, many photos of fake victims and fake suspects have been circulating on social networks following the attack in Nice. The photos are most often posted by ill-intentioned trolls, then shared hundreds of times by Internet users who have no idea they are being fooled. So who are the people in these photos? We took a look at a few examples. 


The Sikh “suspect” resurfaces

This man’s photo first showed up after the November 13 attacks in Paris, when internet users claimed he was a suspect. However it was soon discovered that he was actually a man living in Canada whose photo had been Photoshopped to add an explosive belt. He had nothing to do with the attacks. And now, this doctored photo has resurfaced, this time along with false accusations that he is a suspect in the Nice attack.

Thankfully, many internet users remembered this hoax and denounced it. 




16 July 2016 - 09H05

Iran police deny banning sculptor from leaving country

TEHRAN (AFP) - 

Iranian police denied Saturday claims by prominent sculptor Parviz Tanavoli they were behind a legal complaint that had prevented the artist from leaving the country earlier this month.

Tanavoli, one of Iran's top artists, said last week after having been refused passage at the airport that he was told in court "that the police had accused me of publishing false information and disturbing the public peace".

But police spokesman, Brigadier General Saeid Montazer Al-Mahdi, told ISNA news agency on Saturday that the "police has not filed any complaints against Tanavoli and his being banned from leaving the country... is due to a judicial order".

Wani aftermath: Kashmir’s first IAS topper slams media for ‘sadistic propaganda’

• Toufiq Rashid, Hindustan Times, Srinagar
 |  
• Updated: Jul 16, 2016 12:25 IST

Kashmir’s first topper in the Indian civil services examination on Friday accused a section of the electronic media of “pitching one Kashmiri against another and breeding more alienation” in the state rocked by violence over the killing of militant leader Burhan Wani.

Shah Faesal, whose success in the 2009 civil services exams has turned him into a role-model for Kashmiri youngsters, vented his anger in a Facebook post after a section of media juxtaposed his images with the slain militant commander to highlight what they said were two sides of the Valley.

Hunger and child abandonment in north South Sudan

Parents of 300 children have fled without them from Northern Bahr El Ghazal because of worsening mass hunger.

Henry Wilkins

Majook, South Sudan - Three hundred children in South Sudan's Northern Bahr El Ghazal region have been abandoned by parents fleeing the country to escape two years of drought, a collapsing economy, and mass hunger.

The UN World Food Programme (WFP) and UNICEF brought Al Jazeera to a mosque run by the Northern Bahr El Ghazal Islamic Council in the town of Majook, close to South Sudan's border with Sudan, where the children are forced to live after their parents abandoned them to make the journey north alone.

WFP said 5.3 million people in South Sudan are at risk of acute hunger, nearly half the population, which is already causing deaths among the country's most vulnerable, and increasing the number of people fleeing across the border to neighbouring Sudan.