Some international law experts are calling the Osama bin Laden killing an illegal “extrajudicial assassination”—as the White House equivocates on whether an effort was made to take bin Laden alive.
The ascension to Langley of Gen. David Petraeus—architect of Bush’s Iraq “surge”—comes just as the Obama administration has explicitly taken on a regime change project in Libya.
Police across the United Kingdom raided squats and community centers on the eve of the royal wedding, apparently fearing a replay of last month’s anti-cuts riots during the media spectacle.
Right-wing websites are jumping on a 2005 UN report predicting that climate change would create 50 million refugees by 2010—and gloating that it hasn’t come to pass. But maybe we are closer to the 50 million than they think.
As “progressives” like George Monbiot pose nuclear power as an alternative to fossil fuels, the big corporations that control both oil and uranium laugh all the way to the bank.
Radioactivity levels skyrocketed in the sea surrounding the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan late last week, raising fears that a new leak in the facility needs to be sealed.
As experts now say the area around Fukushima will be uninhabitable for a generation, protests against nuclear development mobilized in Tokyo, Taiwan, India, California and the Northeast US.
Foreign workers are desperately trying to flee the besieged Libyan city of Misrata—but they may be fleeing attacks by the rebels as well as Qaddafi’s forces. Qatar now acknowledges it is arming the rebel forces.
The Moroccan media are making much of a report in Italy’s Corriere della Sera that Western Sahara guerillas are fighting for Qaddafi—as well as claims from the Tripoli regime that they are fighting against Qaddafi!
Dissident artist Ai Weiwei is being held incommunicado by Chinese authorities after posting a coded protest image to his website. The website remains online, but practically devoid of content—suggesting it has been heavily censored.
AlJazeera reports from a refugee camp in Tunisia, where African migrants who have fled Libya tell both of being expelled from the country by rebels—and being press-ganged into Qaddafi’s military.
A magnitude 7.4 aftershock hit northeastern Japan—raising fears of a deepening of the crisis at the stricken Fukushima nuclear plant, which is now vulnerable to any further destabilization.
