UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay, joined by Amnesty International and Doctors Without Borders, charged that several detainees have been tortured to death in recent weeks by forces of Libya’s transitional government.
Landlocked South Sudan has ordered oil production shut down, at an impasse in talks with Khatroum over terms for use of the pipeline linking the two countries. South Sudan accuses Khartoum of stealing $815 million worth of oil.
Violent protests erupted in Senegal after the Constitutional Council cleared octogenarian President Abdoulaye Wade to seek a third term and opposition leaders vowed to “make the country ungovernable” to force him from power.
Japan’s last nuclear power plant will close in April as reactors are shut for safety checks. Meanwhile, the mayor of Hakodate on Hokkaido called on the Industry Ministry to freeze a nuclear plant slated for the town of Oma in Aomori prefecture.
The US appeals court in Manhattan lifted an injunction won by Chevon Corporation to block enforcement of what the US oil company claims is a fraudulent, multibillion-dollar judgment in Ecuador for polluting the Amazon rainforest.
A federal judge in Louisiana ruled that BP will be held liable for a portion of the damages owed by Transocean stemming from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. The company will not be held liable for any punitive damages.
President Obama effuses about turning the US into “the Saudi Arabia of natural gas”—as new EPA studies find water wells contaminated with toxic chemicals from “hydraulic fracturing” across the country, sparking anger from affected residents.
This Australia Day—marking the 1788 establishment of the New South Wales colony, derided by Aborigines as “Invasion Day”—saw the establishment of a “Tent Embassy” encampment outside the Old Parliament House in Canberra.
Although the details and even the death toll are disputed by Chinese authorities and Tibetan exile and support groups, a wave of protest and repression has left several dead in the Tibetan ethnic areas of Sichuan province this week.
The Free Syrian Army is taking control of territory just outside Damascus, while the US and allies protest Russian arms sales to Assad’s regime. IWPR interviewed one activist in rebel territory who called for NATO intervention.
Two men in Azerbaijan were arrested in an alleged Iranian-backed plot to kill two Jewish educators and the Israeli ambassador—as Obama in his State of the Union address made an oblique threat to use nuclear weapons against Iran.
Anti-government protesters stormed the NTC offices in Benghazi, demanding that former Qaddafi-loysalists step down from the ruling body. Meanwhile, Qaddafi-loysalist fighters reportedly took the desert town of Bani Walid.
