Tag: Evening Edition

Evening Edition is an Open Thread

1 Deaths reported as demos held in Syrian cities

by Natacha Yazbeck, AFP

2 hrs 8 mins ago

I’ll be sitting in for ek hornbeck who is Live Blogging the NCAA Championship Games for the next few days.

• West strikes deep in Libya, Misrata, Ajdabiyah besieged
  
  By Maria Golovnina and Michael Georgy

  TRIPOLI (Reuters) – Western warplanes hit military targets deep inside Libya on Thursday but failed to prevent tanks reentering the western town of Misrata and besieging its main hospital.

  Air strikes destroyed government tanks on the outskirts of rebel-held Misrata, but other tanks inside the city were not hit, a resident said, underlining the difficulty of the U.N. backed military mission to protect Libyans from Muammar Gaddafi.

• Turkey and France clash over Libya air campaign
  
  by Ian Traynor

  Tension mounts over military action as Ankara accuses Sarkozy of pursuing French interests over liberation of Libyan people

  Turkey has launched a bitter attack on French president Nicolas Sarkozy’s and France’s leadership of the military campaign against Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, accusing the French of lacking a conscience in their conduct in the Libyan operations.

  The vitriolic criticism, from both the prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and the president, Abdullah Gül followed attacks from the Turkish government earlier this week and signalled an orchestrated attempt by Ankara to wreck Sarkozy’s plans to lead the air campaign against Gaddafi.

I’ll be sitting in for ek hornbeck who is Live Blogging the NCAA Championship Games for the next few days.

• Air strikes silence Gaddafi guns at besieged city
  
  By Maria Golovnina and Michael Georgy

  TRIPOLI (Reuters) – Western warplanes silenced Muammar Gaddafi’s artillery and tanks besieging the rebel-held town of Misrata on Wednesday after an American admiral warned that the Libyan leader’s armor was now in the cross-hairs.

  Breathing defiance, Gaddafi earlier said Western powers carrying out air strikes on Libya were “a bunch of fascists who will end up in the dustbin of history.”

• Japan nuclear crisis still a serious concern
  
  By Shinichi Saoshiro and Yoko Kubota

  TOKYO (Reuters) – Tokyo residents were warned not to give babies tap water because of radiation leaking from a nuclear plant crippled in the earthquake and tsunami that devastated northeast Japan in the world’s costliest natural disaster.

  The U.N. atomic agency said there had been some positive developments at the Fukushima nuclear plant 250 km (150 miles) north of Tokyo but the overall situation remained serious. Some countries have started blocking imports of produce from Japan, fearful of radiation contamination.

I’ll be sitting in for ek hornbeck who is Live Blogging the NCAA Championship Games for the next few days.

• Gaddafi shells towns, rebels pinned down in east
  
  By Maria Golovnina and Michael Georgy

  TRIPOLI (Reuters) – Muammar Gaddafi’s forces attacked two west Libyan towns, killing dozens, while rebels were pinned down in the east and NATO tried to resolve a dispute over who should lead the Western air campaign.

  With anti-Gaddafi rebels struggling to create a command structure that could capitalize on the air strikes against Libyan tanks and air defenses, Western countries had still to decide who would take over command once Washington pulled back in a few days.

• Japan battles crippled nuclear plant, radiation fears grow
  
  By Risa Maeda and Kazunori Takada

  TOKYO (Reuters) – Rising temperatures around the core of one of the reactors at Japan’s quake-crippled nuclear plant sparked new concern on Tuesday and more water was needed to cool it down, the plant’s operator said.

  Despite hopes of progress in the world’s worst nuclear crisis in a quarter of a century, triggered by an earthquake and tsunami that left at least 21,000 people dead or missing, plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) said it needed more time before it could say the reactors were stabilized.

I’ll be sitting in for ek hornbeck who is Live Blogging the NCAA Championship Games for the next few days.

• Arab League criticizes West’s strikes on Libya
  

  TRIPOLI (Reuters) – Western forces pounded Libya’s air defenses and patrolled its skies Sunday, but their day-old intervention hit a diplomatic setback as the Arab League chief condemned the “bombardment of civilians.”

  As European and U.S. forces unleashed warplanes and cruise missiles against Muammar Gaddafi’s air defenses and armor, the Libyan leader said the air strikes amounted to terrorism and vowed to fight to the death.

• Japan dead, missing tops 21,000 amid atomic crisis
  
  by Olivia Hampton

  KAMAISHI, Japan (AFP) – Workers were close to restoring power to a nuclear plant’s overheating reactors as the toll of dead or missing from Japan’s worst natural disaster in nearly a century passed 21,000.

  Amid the devastation on the northeast coast left by a massive quake and tsunami, there was an astonishing tale Sunday of survival with the discovery of an 80-year-old woman and her 16-year-old grandson alive under the rubble.

I’ll be sitting in for ek hornbeck who is Live Blogging the NCAA Championship Games for the next few days.

• West pounds Libya with air strikes, Tomahawks
  
  by Imed Lamloum

  TRIPOLI (AFP) – French air raids and US Tomahawk missiles pounded targets in Libya on Saturday, in an international campaign to prevent Moamer Kadhafi from crushing a month-old uprising against his rule.

  A US warship fired Tomahawk cruise missiles into Libya, targeting Kadhafi’s air defence sites, a senior US military official said.

  Two days after a UN Security Council resolution authorised military action, French planes carried out an initial four air strikes, destroying several armoured vehicles of Kadhafi’s forces, the French military said.

• Power line connected to stricken Japan reactor
  
  by Hiroshi Hiyama

  KITAKAMI, Japan (AFP) – Crews fighting to cool reactors at Japan’s stricken nuclear plant managed to connect a power line Saturday as the government revealed that leaking radioactivity had reached the food chain.

  The Fukushima No. 1 plant was crippled eight days ago by a terrifying earthquake and tsunami which according to the latest police tally left nearly 20,000 people dead or missing in Japan’s worst natural disaster since 1923.

I’ll be sitting in for ek hornbeck who is Live Blogging the NCAA Championship Games for the next few days.

• Japan battles nuclear crisis, power effort crucial
  
  By Kiyoshi Takenaka and Yoko Nishikawa

  (Reuters) – Exhausted engineers scrambled to fix a power cable to two reactors at Japan’s tsunami-crippled nuclear station on Saturday in a race to prevent deadly radiation from an accident now rated at least as bad as America’s Three Mile Island in 1979.

  In a crude tactic underlining authorities’ desperation, fire engines also sprayed water overnight on a third reactor deemed to be in the most critical state at the Fukushima plant in northeastern Japan, 240 km (150 miles) north of Tokyo.

• Obama warns Gaddafi to comply with U.N., halt advance
  

  (Reuters) – President Barack Obama warned Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi on Friday to comply with U.N. demands for a ceasefire or else face consequences that include military action.

  He said Gaddafi must stop advances on the rebel capital of Benghazi.

  “All attacks against all civilians must stop,” Obama said in a White House speech.

  Obama, offering his first justification to Americans for getting the U.S. military involved in Libya, said the goal is to protect Libyan citizens from what he called Gaddafi’s campaign of repression against his people.

Evening Edition is an Open Thread

Now with 55 Top Stories.

1 Five dead as Bahrain police clear Pearl Square

by Ali Khalil, AFP

23 mins ago

Evening Edition is an Open Thread

Now with 54 Top Stories.

1 Blasts, fire escalate Japan’s nuclear crisis

by Hiroshi Hiyama, AFP

54 mins ago

Evening Edition is an Open Thread

With 49 Top Stories.

1 Japan reels as second blast rocks nuclear plant

by Hiroshi Hiyama, AFP

1 hr 41 mins ago