Monday, April 18, 2011

106 even though it's so oh, yesterday's news, and he's oh, so yesterday's evil villian - an update on Qaddafi and the Libyan situation



Qaddafi forces continue shelling of Misrata as rebels lose momentum

Top news: Sunday marked a month since the U.N. Security Council passed a resolution protecting civilians in Libya, but Muammar Qaddafi continued attacks on his own people. Forces loyal to Qaddafi continued to shell the rebel-held city of Misrata. Seventeen people were reportedly killed in Sunday's bombing. The New York Times reports on the city's growing humanitarian crisis. The British government hasagreed to fund the evacuation of 5,000 migrant workers, stranded in Misrata by the fighting.
Large numbers of rebels are fleeing the eastern city of Ajdabiya, which anti-Qaddafi forces had hoped to use as a staging ground to retake the key oil refinery town of Brega. Rebel leaders complained of a lack of NATO airstrikes against Qaddafi forces in recent days. Nearly all of NATO sorties over the weekend were concentrated in the West, around Misrata, Tripoli, and Sirte.
In an interview with the Washington Post, the leader's son, Saif al-Qaddafi, rejected the notion that government forces were attacking civilians. “We want the Americans tomorrow to send a fact-finding mission to find out what happened in Libya. We want Human Rights Watch to come here and to find out exactly what happened,” he said. “We are not afraid of the International Criminal Court. We are confident and sure that we didn’t commit any crime against our people.”
Japan: Robots inside the damaged reactors at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plantrecorded radiation readings still to high for humans to work. Engineers will needsix to nine months to repair to repair the damaged reactors, the plant's owners say.

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