International

• Monday, March 21st 2011 - 06:46 UTC

  Gaddafi’s compound destroyed in air strike; Libyan military announce cease-fire

  

  A three-storey building in a military command centre used by Muammar Gaddafi has been destroyed in an air strike by coalition forces. The Sunday-night strike was the first reported attack on the Bab al-Azizia, a sprawling compound in the Libyan capital, Tripoli, that Gaddafi has used several times as a setting for televised addresses, and which was bombed by the United States in 1986.

• Monday, March 21st 2011 - 06:42 UTC

  Words Can Be Deadly: ‘African’ is no synonym for ‘Mercenary’

  By Younes Abouyoub, Ph.D.
  
  Shortly after the popular uprising started in Libya, the situation quickly turned violent. At first rumors, then confirmed reports talked about mercenaries wreaking havoc in different cities in Libya.

• Sunday, March 20th 2011 - 07:36 UTC

  In spite of reform promises and repression, Mid East and north Africans take to the streets

  

  It’s not only Libya. Turmoil and unrest is escalating in the rest of the Middle East and North Africa with violent repression and promises of reform as people take to the streets in growing numbers. Such is the case in Algeria, Yemen, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and Syria.

• Sunday, March 20th 2011 - 01:23 UTC

  US, UK and France begin bombing Libyan military targets following UN resolution

  

  The US, UK and France on Saturday began attacking Libya as enforcement of the UN-mandated no-fly zone gets under way. Pentagon officials say the US and the UK have fired more than 110 missiles.

• Friday, March 18th 2011 - 16:46 UTC

  EU/Mercosur negotiations stumble, but both sides determined to continue

  

  The fourth round of European Union/Mercosur negotiations for a trade agreement concluded in Brussels Friday with no major advances which could be a setback for the original plan to have a deal sealed by the end of the year.

• Friday, March 18th 2011 - 04:05 UTC

  US, UK, France prepare to implement UN Security Council no-fly zone over Libya

  

  United States President Barack Obama called his British and French counterparts on Thursday and the three agreed Libya must comply with a new U.N. Security Council resolution, the White House said.
  Obama, British Prime Minister David Cameron and French President Nicolas Sarkozy also agreed that violence against the civilian population of Libya must cease.

• Friday, March 18th 2011 - 03:45 UTC

  Wikileaks: Argentina’s self centred attitude almost had her thrown out of G20

  

  Disappointed and shocked with the self-centred performance of President Cristina Kirchner at the G-20 summit in Washington in 2008, a group of powerful countries seriously considered kicking Argentina out of the industrialized and emerging countries’ Group of Twenty.

• Friday, March 18th 2011 - 03:29 UTC

  If power is restored and if pumps work Fukushima reactor could be cooled

  

  Engineers at Japan's stricken Fukushima nuclear power plant have managed to lay a cable to reactor 2, the UN's nuclear watchdog reports. Restoring power should enable engineers to restart the pumps which send coolant over the reactor.

• Thursday, March 17th 2011 - 15:27 UTC

  Brazilian industry creates a Chinese Studies Centre to monitor bilateral trade

  

  Brazil’s powerful Federation of Industries of Sao Paulo State (Fiesp) is set to create a Chinese Studies Centre in partnership with the federal government, the president of the federation said in Sao Paulo.

• Thursday, March 17th 2011 - 07:44 UTC

  Japanese tsunami surprises Midway atoll killing thousands of albatrosses

  

  Thousands of albatrosses and other endangered species at a wildlife sanctuary north-west of Hawaii have been killed by the tsunami which devastated Japan, US officials say.