Six In The Morning Thursday August 2

Zimbabwe: tense calm in Harare after post-election violence

President Emmerson Mnangagwa says he is in talks with opposition leader to calm the situation

Jason Burke in Harare

Thu 2 Aug 2018 08.57 BST

A tense calm has returned to Harare a day after three people were shot deadas soldiers and police fought running battles with hundreds of protesters, firing live ammunition, teargas and water cannon.

Not even 72 hours after polls closed in Zimbabwe’s presidential election – the first following the fall of Robert Mugabe last year and billed as the beginning of a new era for the impoverished country – soldiers patrolled the streets of the capital.

Many shops were closed and traffic remained light on Thursday. Scattered debris, scorch marks from fires and a few dozen soldiers marked the scenes of violence of the day before.

Amnesty accuses Turkey of 'turning blind eye' to abuses in Afrin

Amnesty International says Turkish forces in the northern Syrian city of Afrin are giving Syrian militias "free rein" to commit serious human rights abuses. The group alleges torture, forced disappearances and looting.

Human rights organization Amnesty International accused Turkey on Thursday of allowing Syrian armed groups to commit a wide range of violations against civilians in Afrin.

Turkish forces aided by allied rebels captured the northern Syrian town in March from the US-backed Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG), which Ankara considers a terrorist group. According to Amnesty's research, scores of displaced residents have since returned to their homes, only to be subjected to rights abuses.

Colombia's Santos admits defeat in ELN rebels ceasefire talks

Outgoing Colombia President Juan Manuel Santos admitted defeat on Wednesday after failing to secure a ceasefire with ELN Marxist guerrillas before handing over the reins to hardline right-wing successor Ivan Duque next week.

Santos had made it his goal to achieve a "complete peace" to end the 50-year conflict with left-wing rebels before stepping down on August 7.

He won the Nobel Peace Prize for negotiating the historic accord signed with FARC guerrillas in December 2016, ending their insurgency.

"We hope that the next government decides to continue" negotiating with the ELN, the last recognised armed group fighting government forces in Colombia, to "start a real and verifiable ceasefire," said Santos.

How Republicans trick Facebook, Twitter with claims of bias

By Nikki Usher

2 August 2018 — 11:13am

Last week Jack Dorsey, Twitter's co-founder and CEO, responded to accusations that Twitter was "shadow-banning" right-wing content and prominent Republican accounts by limiting their appearances in search.

While Dorsey explained that Twitter has its own algorithm to rank particular tweets and accounts and to minimise the appearance of harmful and hateful ones, he maintained that the company's sorting isn't based on political ideology.

The fact that Dorsey had to speak up at all was a consequence of Republican outrage, which holds that social media platforms discriminates against the right. These arguments and accusations should sound familiar: Republicans are taking a page out of their tired, true and effective media strategy of "playing the ref."

Iran readying massive military exercise in Persian Gulf, officials say

By Barbara Starr and Ryan Browne, CNN

Updated 0850 GMT (1650 HKT) August 2, 2018

Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard is expected to soon begin a major naval exercise that could demonstrate its ability to shut down the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial conduit for global energy supplies, US officials say.

The exercise in the Persian Gulf could begin as soon as the next two days, according to two US officials directly familiar with the latest assessment of the Revolutionary Guard's troop movements.

"We are aware of the increase in Iranian naval operations within the Arabian Gulf, Strait of Hormuz and Gulf of Oman. We are monitoring it closely, and will continue to work with our partners to ensure freedom of navigation and free flow of commerce in international waterways," Capt. William Urban, chief spokesman for US Central Command, told CNN.

Google in China: Internet giant 'plans censored search engine

Google is developing a version of its search engine that will conform to China's censorship laws, reports say.

The company shut down the engine in 2010, complaining that free speech was being limited.

But online news site The Intercept says Google has being working on a project code-named Dragonfly that will block terms like human rights and religion, a move sure to anger activists.

One state-owned newspaper in China, Securities Daily, dismissed the report.

What has The Intercept said?

Citing internal Google documents and inside sources, it said that Dragonfly was begun back in the spring of 2017 and accelerated in December after Google's CEO Sundar Pichai met a Chinese government official.