As pro-Alassane Ouattara forces move into Abidjan, residents who support rival Laurent Gbagbo fear reprisals. Reports of atrocities on both sides are mounting—including people being burned alive.
A US engineer who helped install reactors at Fukushima, speaking anonymously, said he believes the radioactive core in reactor Number 2 may have melted through the bottom of its containment vessel and on to a concrete floor.
The White House and Paris both publicly broached arming the Libyan rebels as Moammar Qaddafi’s forces pushed the insurgent army back in a sweep to the east—despite ongoing Allied air-strikes.
Israel’s Knesset passed a law enabling the courts to revoke the citizenship of anyone convicted of terrorism, espionage or treason. Tel Aviv also pressured Facebook to shut down a page calling for a Third Intifada.
Security forces stormed the provincial council building in Saddam Hussein’s hometown of Tikrit on March 29 after an hours-long shootout with gunmen that left 41 dead and 95 wounded. The gunmen, wearing military uniforms and suicide vests, swarmed into the… Read moreIraq: 40 killed in Tikrit attack
In a long-awaited public address, President Bashar Assad blamed foreign conspiracies for Syria’s unrest, while calling hundreds of thousands of his supporters to the streets in a massive show of force.
Hundreds of thousands again took to the streets in Yemen to demand the ouster of President Ali Abdullah Saleh, as protesters charged official complicity in a deadly blast at a munitions plant that authorities blamed on al-Qaeda.
Activists for women’s rights in Saudi Arabia decried the regime’s decision to keep a voting ban in place at a time when Arab governments are taking steps to avert pro-democracy uprisings.
Plutonium has been found in soil at various points in and around Japan’s stricken Fukushima nuclear complex, officials admitted. The plutonium presumably comes from partially-melted MOX fuel from reactor Number 3.
As Libyan rebels pushed westwards towards Tripoli, an official of the rebel government in Benghazi said that Qatar has agreed to market crude oil produced from the North African country’s eastern fields.
Israeli military authorities handed down orders for the evacuation and demolition of an “unrecognized” Bedouin community east of Tubas in the northern West Bank—amid escalating house demolitions in the occupied territory.
Israeli forces appeared in large numbers around the southern West Bank town of Beit Ummar, installing road gates and fence posts in a move residents fear will close them in and stifle the population center.
