Heavy fighting and NATO air-strikes continue in Tripoli, and two Qaddafi sons earlier reported as captured by rebels are now apparently free. China meanwhile expressed concerns that its oil investments in Libya will be honored by the new regime.
In a land and sea offensive closely coordinated with NATO, Libyan rebels advanced into the heart of Tripoli. Thousands of jubilant citizens filled the Green Square to cheer their convoys of armed pick-up trucks, with fighters firing in the air.
The Turkish military has resumed air raids against suspected strongholds of the PKK guerillas in northern Iraq, with one air-strike killing a Kurdish family of seven in a border village.
The government of Peru’s newly elected President Ollanta Humala announced that it is suspending the US-backed coca eradication program in the Upper Huallaga Valley, the only ongoing eradication campaign in the country.
Egypt registered a formal complaint with Israel over the killings of three Egyptian officers at the Sinai border and demanded an immediate investigation, as Israel bombed Gaza for a second day.
Mounting reports indicate that Moammar Qaddafi has dispatched an envoy to Tunisia to meet with British and French officials and negotiate his exile from Libya. The reports come as rebels seized the strategic refinery city of Zawiya.
Israel carried out air-strikes across the Gaza Strip in response to the militant attack on Eliat—and admonished Egypt for allowing the militants to infiltrate from its territory. The US has meanwhile postponed planed military drills with Egypt.
Syrian government forces cracking down on the opposition may be committing crimes against humanity, according to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, which is urging an investigation by the International Criminal Court.
A Shell Oil spokesman in Aberdeen, Scotland, assured that “everything” possible is being done to contain a massive oil spill from a North Sea pipeline. But officials acknowledged that the pipeline is still believed to contain up to 660 tons of oil.
BP is denying blogosphere reports that the company has contracted 40 vessels to contain a new “oil sheen” near the site of last year’s Deepwater Horizon disaster—but the denials are full of “wiggle words” and obfuscation.
Authorities boast that radiation readings in the Fukushima area are now a minute fraction of what they were in March. But a new survey shows that 45% of children and infants in the area absorbed radiation.
US Sen. Patrick Leahy is promoting a bill to suspend Washington’s assistance to three elite Israel Defense Forces units, alleging they are involved in human rights violations in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
