Topic: War and Peace News - on March 29, 2011 at 10:51:00 PM CEST
US launches new missile barrage at Libya
As the United States and other nations build ties with rebels and political opponents trying to oust Libyan strongman Moammar Gadhafi, intelligence suggests al-Qaida and other terrorists have a small presence within the opposition group, a top military commander said Tuesday.
Adm. James Stavridis, the NATO Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, told Congress that officials have seen "flickers" of possible al-Qaida and Hezbollah involvement among the rebel forces, but no evidence of significant numbers within the political opposition group's leadership.
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Topic: War and Peace News - on March 29, 2011 at 9:58:00 PM CEST
Qatar has offered to send ships to evacuate all of the ~6,000 Egyptians stuck in Misrata, to prevent a humanitarian crisis
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Topic: War and Peace News - on March 29, 2011 at 7:36:00 PM CEST
Powerful blasts rock Libyan capital Tripoli
A series of powerful explosions rocked Tripoli on Tuesday and state television said several targets in the Libyan capital had come under attack from "crusader aggressors".
Reuters reporters heard at least three explosions from their location in central Tripoli at around 1540 GMT.
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Topic: War and Peace News - on March 29, 2011 at 7:24:00 PM CEST
A Vision of a Democratic Libya
The Libyan opposition's Transitional National Council has released a two-page political platform, called "A Vision of a Democratic Libya."
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Topic: War and Peace News - on March 29, 2011 at 7:15:00 PM CEST
President's Assad's speech on Wednesday will include "immediate reforms on corruption within the government" according to an official.
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Topic: War and Peace News - on March 29, 2011 at 5:56:00 PM CEST
NATO is to delay its takeover of the Libya operation.
NATO will now take control of the Libya operation at 0600 GMT on Thursday – 24 hours later than first announced.
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Topic: POLITIK - on March 29, 2011 at 5:31:00 PM CEST
Hausdurchsuchung bei Strasser
In der Affäre um Ex-Innenminister Ernst Strasser hat es am Montag an mehreren Orten in Österreich Hausdurchsuchungen gegeben. Das bestätigt die Korruptionsstaatsanwaltschaft in Wien, die gegen Strasser wegen des Verdachts der Bestechlichkeit ermittelt. Die EU-Betrugsbekämpfer von OLAF stoßen hingegen auf rechtliche Hürden.
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Topic: War and Peace News - on March 29, 2011 at 5:11:00 PM CEST
Syrian cabinet resigns amid unrest
Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president, has accepted the resignation of the country's government, following two weeks of anti-government protests that have gripped Syria.
"President Assad accepts the government's resignation," an announcement on state television said on Tuesday.
Naji al-Otari, the resigning premier, has been chosen by Assad as caretaker prime minister.
The government has little power in Syria, where power is concentrated in the hand of Assad, his family and the security apparatus. Otari has been prime minister since 2003.
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Topic: NATURE - on March 29, 2011 at 4:54:00 PM CEST
The penis festival (Kanamara Matsuri) in Kawasaki was cancelled this year for respect of the disaster in Tohoku.
The annual Kanamara Matsuri parade, a raunchy procession of giant phalluses borne aloft on omikoshi (portable shrines), which are marched down the streets of Kawasaki, Tokyo’s southern neighbor, has been cancelled.
Tokyo Sports (Mar. 30) reports that the parade, organized by the Kanamara Shrine, had been planned for the first Sunday in April (falling on April 3 this year), but will not be held out of respect for the victims of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami.
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Topic: War and Peace News - on March 29, 2011 at 4:48:00 PM CEST
Operation Unified Protector (was Odyssey Dawn) explained (Day 10)
The situation hasn’t changed much since yesterday. Coalition aircraft are more or less continuosly pounding loyalist around Sirte and Sabha, which yesterday early morning were (probably) “visited” by 2 B-1Bs from Ellsworth AFB which crossed the Atlantic ocean on their way to the Libyan airspace. The pair of “Bone” (from “B-one”) were initially accompanied by another flight consisting of 2 B-1, acting as spares, and were supported by various tankers along the way. If the Global Power “show of force” was worth the effort (in terms of fuel, flight hours, involved crews and, above all, required tanker force) is hard to say.
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Topic: War and Peace News - on March 29, 2011 at 2:20:00 PM CEST
Document - Libya: detainees, disappeared and missing
He is in their (the forces of Colonel Mu’ammar al-Gaddafi) hands and we have no idea where he is being held and what kind of treatment he is being subjected to. We are very worried that he is being tortured and if we speak about his case they may further punish him, and that the safety of his wife and children in Tripoli may be endangered.
Relatives of a man arrested from his home in Tripoli, in the late afternoon of 22 February 2011, in front of his wife and children.
Many people have been subjected to enforced disappearance1 by forces loyal to Colonel Mu’ammar al-Gaddafi since the current unrest began in Libya in mid-February 2011, including dozens who were arrested and detained in eastern Libya and are believed to have been transferred to the Tripoli area that are controlled by al-Gaddafi forces. These detainees and disappeared persons are at grave risk of torture and other serious human rights abuses. The true number is impossible to calculate as the authorities in Tripoli generally do not divulge information about people they are detaining and because many areas of the country are not accessible for independent reporting; indeed, a number of Libyan and international journalists have been detained and ill-treated for seeking to report from areas in which al-Gaddafi forces have carried out arrests and attacks against civilians, and some are also still missing and unaccounted for having been detained by al-Gaddafi forces. Other journalists who have been released as a result of international pressure, including journalists from the BBC and The New York Times, have reported that they were tortured or otherwise ill-treated. Some were subjected to mock executions.
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Topic: War and Peace News - on March 29, 2011 at 1:29:00 PM CEST
Libya: special forces poised to swoop in - SAS 'Smash' squads on the ground in Libya to mark targets for coalition jets
Officials from the Foreign Office were locked in frantic efforts to locate the remaining UK nationals thought to be oil workers marooned in remote desert compounds in the south of the troubled country.
On Saturday, following days of criticism over the Government's handling of the crisis, members of the special forces, who had been in Libya for almost a week, pressed the button and rolled out a text-book extraction of 150 people – a third of them British.
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