Libya: coalition attacks Sirte for first time
Coalition planes launched air strikes on Sirte, Col Muammar Gaddafi’s home town, for the first time on Sunday night.
2:39AM BST 28 Mar 2011
Libyan television confirmed the Gaddafi stronghold had been the target of strikes by “the colonial aggressor”, as had Tripoli, and there was a large deployment of troops on the streets of Sirte.
Nato commanders say Libyan regime forces have begun digging in to make a stand in Sirte, raising the prospect that a bloody battle lies ahead as rebel forces barrel westward.
Regime forces who retreated in the face of the rebel advance have begun locating their armour and artillery inside civilian buildings in Sirte, Nato sources said, a tactic designed to make air strikes fraught with risk.
Sirte, which Col Gaddafi repeatedly tried to turn into Libya’s capital, is dominated by members of his tribe, the Gaddafi, who remain largely loyal to the regime.
How a traumatised Tokyo kept calm and carried on
Touring his adopted city, David McNeill finds a people slowly adjusting to a new reality of power cuts and food shortages
Monday, 28 March 2011
Not every city boasts thousands of citizens ready to converse about safe iodine levels. But then, not every city is Tokyo.“Your drinking water is fine,” shouts Ryosuke Shibato to commuters emerging from Shibuya station, one of the capital’s busiest. Beside him, his friend and fellow science student Takamasa Imai holds a handmade cardboard sign with daily radiation readings written on it in marker. “Iodine is higher than normal, but still well below danger levels,” he says, smiling. “We just want people to stop panic-buying.”
A few metres away, a trumpet player tunes up for the Salvation Army. “I’m too old to worry about radiation,” she laughs. “I’m more worried about the refugees in the north-east. They need our help.”
New Europe: fresh information uncovered in stolen baby scandal
In the headlines: speculation about whether the prime minister will run for a third term and a baby trafficking scandal are making the news in Spain
Giles Tremlett in Madrid
The Guardian, Monday 28 March 2011
The scandal of the babies stolen, trafficked, sold or given into illegal adoption after being taken from Spanish maternity clinics by a network of doctors, nurses and nuns has continued to grow with fresh revelations in several newspapers.The most startling came in El Mundo, which revealed the case of Almudena González, who was deemed to have died aged just four days old in a hospital in Badajoz, eastern Spain, in 1990.
Her parents have done tests to match the corpse they were given with their own DNA only to discover that the baby they buried was not their daughter.
Mugabe: Foreign firms must treat Zim as ‘senior partner’
President Robert Mugabe on Sunday told foreign investors to embrace Zimbabwe’s equity laws and treat Zimbabweans as “senior partners” if they wanted to operate in his country.
HARARE, ZIMBABWE – Mar 28 2011 06:32
“Those whites who want to be with us, those outsiders who want to work with us fine, they come in as partners, we are the senior partner, no more the junior partner,” Mugabe said on Sunday at the burial of a party cadre at the national shrine.“We are taking over. Listen Britain and America: this our country. If you have companies which would want to work in our mining sector, they are welcome to come and join us, but we must have our people as the major shareholders,” he added.
The equity laws took effect in March last year and requires large foreign corporations to give majority stakes to local shareholders.
U.S. cables show grand calculations underlying 2005 defence framework
Six years on, a mixed record of implementation, but military sales hold the key
SIDDHARTH VARADARAJAN
Most observers of the Indo-U.S. relationship remember 2005 for the civil nuclear initiative that was launched during Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit to Washington in July. But the ‘New Framework for the U.S.-India Defence Relationship,’ which was signed at the end of June 2005, was just as path breaking – at least for the U.S. government, which saw expanding military cooperation as central to the growing ties between the two countries.Leaked U.S. Embassy cables, accessed by The Hindu through WikiLeaks, provide an unparalleled insight into the military and strategic considerations that drove – and continue to drive – U.S. administrations towards seeking closer ties with India. There is the sheer size of the Indian market for weapons imports, estimated by U.S. diplomats to be worth more than $27 billion in the ‘near term’ alone. There is also the promise of a closer working relationship with the Indian armed forces in the Asian region.
Frenzy in Washington grows over nation’s debt
There are signs of bipartisan efforts to tackle deficits, but how will they fare in the partisan heat of the 2012 election cycle?
By Lisa Mascaro, Washington Bureau
March 28, 2011
Reporting from Washington-
Not since Ross Perot unleashed his wonky charts has the nation’s heavy debt load received so much attention.Suddenly, it seems, Washington is consumed with the urgent task of lowering the annual deficit and preventing a European-style debt crisis, which experts warn could be but a few years away.
Six senators, meeting behind closed doors, have spent months drafting a bipartisan blueprint that would propose substantial changes to the way the federal government taxes, spends and provides such core services as Medicare and Social Security – all aimed at trying to reduce the nation’s annual $1.4-trillion deficit.
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