President Felipe Calderon has initiated a sweeping purge of Mexico's federal police forces, replacing nearly 284 senior and middle-level commanders. The move was announced June 25 by Public Security Secretary Genaro Garcia Luna. "We are conscious that Mexicans demand honest, clean and trustworthy police," Garcia Luna told a press conference. "We have strategies and directions in the struggle against crime. One of the keys to that strategy is the professionalization and cleansing of the police forces." He said the commanders will be replaced by officers who have undergone months of rigorous vetting, including background checks, psychological exams and drug tests. The replaced commanders will be relocated inside the federal police forces, which number at least 12,000 agents. (Houston Chronicle, June 26)

Eritrean state radio reports that fifty-three weyane (Ethiopian) soldiers, including officers, have defected to Eritrea over the last few months. The soldiers are said to include three lieutenants, a second lieutenant, a sergeant, four corporals and 14 lance-corporals, who all object to Ethiopia's Somalia intervention and the regime's ethnic favoritism. Eighteen of the defectors are said to be ethnic Oromo, 15 Tigrayans, 15 Amhara and the remainder from the Gurage and southern Ethiopian peoples. The Ethiopian regime is dominated by members of the Tigray ethnic group. (Voice of the Broad Masses of Eritrea, Asmara, in Tigrinya, via BBC Monitoring, June 11) Ethiopian state television, in turn, reports that a small guerilla group in the pay of sha'biyyah (Eritrea's ruling party) operating in Teru District in Ethiopia's northeastern Afar Region has surrendered peacefully to government forces. (Ethiopian TV, Addis Ababa, in Amharic, via BBC Monitoring, June 21)

The UN has now vindicated the recent findings of a British study on the roots of the Darfur conflict. From Guardian Newspapers, June 25:

LONDON — The conflict in Darfur has been driven by climate change and environmental degradation, which threaten to trigger a succession of wars across Africa unless more is done to contain the damage, according to a U.N. report.

Somali police fired on a crowd of people trying to storm a food warehouse in Mogadishu June 25, killing five civilians, witnesses reported. Hundreds of people had gathered at a police station that was serving as a food distribution center, said Halima Mudey, who was in the crowd. "People were waiting for the distribution of the food, but some of them tried to storm and steal the maize and cooking oil, then police opened fire and killed five people including my brother," Abdiqadir Mohamed Ilbir said as he wept. He said his brother was shot and killed by the police. Mudey also said five people were killed. (AP, June 25)

Welcome to the promised land, Gonpo. From the New York Times, June 23 (emphasis added):

From Tibet to New York, a Youth Now Faces a Long Journey to Recovery
Gonpo Dorjee, 16, arrived in America on May 26. But he has seen little of his new home, New York City. The sights he sees most often are a small swath of the East River and part of the industrial skyline of Greenpoint, Brooklyn — the view from the window of his room at Bellevue Hospital Center in Manhattan.

Two people were killed, including a three-year-old girl, and seven wounded June 24 when presumed leftist guerillas detonated a bomb in a tourist area of Colombia's main Pacific port, Buenaventura (Valle del Cauca department), the latest in a series of attacks over the weekend. Seven bombs or grenades exploded at commercial centers around the city and a police station in the previous attacks, which began June 22, leaving 23 injured. Authorities blamed the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the country's largest guerilla group. "This is retaliation from the FARC for the killing of one of their key leaders," Interior Minister Carlos Holguin told local Caracol Radio. "These bandits have decided to attack the civilian population and create acts of terror." (Reuters, June 24)

"Chemical Ali" Hassan al-Majid has been convicted of genocide and sentenced to death by hanging for his role in the 1988 "Anfal" counter-insurgency campaign in Iraqi Kurdistan, in which up to 180,000 Kurds were killed—some in poisonous gas attacks, some gunned down en masse at detainment camps. Majid is to be the seventh associate of Saddam Hussein to face the gallows. The location of the trial and identity of the prosecutors were secret.

A number of Sunni tribal leaders from the Anbar Salvation Council are among 12 people killed in a suicide bombing at the Mansour Hotel in central Baghdad June 25. Although the hotel is also home of the Chinese embassy and several political parties, the meeting of the Anbar sheikhs is believed to have been the target of the attack. The hotel bombing was one of five such attacks in Iraq today that killed more than 40 and injured scores. In the deadliest incident, suicide car bombers detonated outside the Baiji police station, killing 22, some 12 of them police officers. Eight people were killed in a blast in the southern city of Hilla. None of the bombings appeared to cause any US deaths. But the US military reported that one of its soldiers was killed in a small-arms attack. (BBC, WP, June 25)