The Teleghraph
A man who tried to hijack a Paris-Rome flight on Sunday night and take it to Libya was overpowered by cabin crew during the flight and arrested when the plane arrived in Rome, officials said.
A statement from Alitalia airlines said the man had assaulted a flight attendant "and asked that the plane be taken to Tripoli".
Other attendants on flight AZ329 then overpowered the man, who was "clearly agitated" and the captain radioed police, who arrested the man when the plane landed, the statement said.
Italian media reports quoting police sources said the man was armed with what appeared to be a small knife.
The flight attendant was taken to a first aid station at Rome airport for treatment of minor injuries. No other injuries were reported
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Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Air strike flattens building in Gaddafi compound
TRIPOLI (Reuters) – NATO forces flattened a building inside Muammar Gaddafi's Bab al-Aziziyah compound early on Monday, in what his officials said was a failed attempt on the Libyan leader's life.
NATO said the attack was on a communications headquarters used to coordinate attacks on civilians. A Libyan spokesman said Gaddafi was unharmed and state television showed pictures of him meeting people in a tent, which it said were taken on Monday.
Firefighters were still working to extinguish flames in part of the ruined building a few hours after the attack, when foreign journalists were taken to the scene in Tripoli.
A press official, who asked not to be identified, said 45 people were hurt in the strike, 15 of them seriously, and some were still missing. That could not be independently confirmed.
Gaddafi's son Saif al-Islam said the Libyan government would not be cowed by such attacks.
"The bombing which targeted Muammar Gaddafi's office today ... will only scare children. It's impossible that it will make us afraid or give up or raise the white flag," he was quoted as saying by the Jana state news agency.
"You, NATO, are waging a losing battle because you are backed by traitors and spies. History has proved that no state can rely on them to win."
Libyan authorities have contacted Russia, China, Italy, Turkey and other countries to complain about the strike on Gaddafi's compound, a government statement said.
The compound has been hit before, but NATO forces appear to have stepped up the pace of strikes in Tripoli in recent days. A target nearby, which the government called a car park but which appeared to cover a bunker, was hit two days ago.
NATO said it was maintaining a "high operational tempo."
Italy said its warplanes would join British and French aircraft in carrying out bombing of Libya. Geographically the closest major NATO member state to Libya, Italy had until Monday provided bases for the operation and support aircraft only.
AU DIPLOMACY; MISRATA BOMBARDED
The attack on the compound coincided with a fresh flurry of diplomacy by countries seeking a way out of the Libyan conflict.
The African Union was holding separate talks on Monday with Libyan Foreign Minister Abdelati Obeidi and rebel representatives in Addis Ababa to discuss a peace plan.
The rebel representatives -- former ambassadors to South Africa and Uganda -- and Obeidi were meeting separately with representatives of the United Nations and the European Union.
"This will be the first time that they (rebels) are attending a meeting here. We will meet both sides one after the other," Ramtane Lamamra, AU commissioner for peace and security, told Reuters.
The rebels rebuffed an earlier AU peace plan because it did not entail Gaddafi's departure, while the United States, Britain and France say there can be no political solution until the Libyan leader leaves power.
The African Union does not have a good track record in brokering peace deals, having failed recently to end conflicts or disputes in Somalia, Madagascar and Ivory Coast.
The talks brought no relief for people in the besieged western city of Misrata, where residents reported intense bombardment in the early hours of Monday which tailed off when NATO planes flew over.
The weekend saw some of the bloodiest fighting of the two-month siege in Misrata despite an announcement by Gaddafi's forces on Friday that they were pulling back.
Medics said more than 20 people were killed on Sunday and 28 on Saturday. A rebel spokesman put the death toll even higher. Three corpses were charred beyond recognition and one child was killed, but many of the shells fell on waste ground.
Residents said Gaddafi's forces had been pushed away from Tripoli Street, center of the recent battles, to the outskirts of the city, from where they were shelling occasionally when NATO planes were not around.
"Bodies of Gaddafi's troops are everywhere in the streets and in the buildings. We can't tell how many. Some have been there for days," said Mohammed Ibrahim, a resident whose cousin was killed at the weekend. He was speaking by phone.
A rebel spokesman, Sami, said the humanitarian situation was worsening rapidly.
"It is indescribable. The hospital is very small. It is full of wounded people, most of them are in critical condition," he said by phone. "The quantity of food available in the city is also decreasing. The state of the city is deteriorating because it has been under siege for about two months."
A government spokesman in Tripoli said the army was still carrying out its plan to withdraw from the city, but had fired back when retreating troops were attacked.
"As our army was withdrawing from Misrata it came under attack by the rebels. The army fought back but continued its withdrawal from the city," Mussa Ibrahim told reporters.
The government says it will leave it to local tribes to resolve the situation in Misrata. Rebels say the announcement may be part of a ruse to mask troop movements or stir violence between rebels and locals in nearby towns.
MOUNTAIN BATTLES
Out of view of international media, Gaddafi's forces have been pounding rebel Berber towns in Libya's remote Western Mountains with artillery.
The capture of a crossing on the Tunisian border by rebels has let refugees flee in cars or on foot along rocky paths, swelling refugee numbers in southern Tunisia to 30,000.
"Our town is under constant bombardment by Gaddafi's troops. They are using all means. Everyone is fleeing," said one refugee, Imad, bringing his family out of the mountains.
Rebel leader Mustafa Abdel Jalil told a news conference in Kuwait the Gulf state had agreed to give 50 million Kuwaiti dinars ($177 million) to his rebel council to help pay workers in the eastern part of the country under its control.
The rebels have been seeking international recognition as well as material support from the west and the Arab world.
Hampered by their lack of firepower, equipment and training, they have been unable to advance from eastern Libya. Fighting with Gaddafi's troops has swung back and forth along the coast road between the towns of Ajdabiyah and Brega.
Abdel Jalil also said the rebels had received weapons from "friends and allies," but did not name them.
(Additional reporting by Guy Desmond and Maher Nazeh in Tripoli, Alexander Dziadosz in Benghazi and Sami Aboudi in Cairo; writing by Andrew Roche; editing by Maria Golovnina)
NATO said the attack was on a communications headquarters used to coordinate attacks on civilians. A Libyan spokesman said Gaddafi was unharmed and state television showed pictures of him meeting people in a tent, which it said were taken on Monday.
Firefighters were still working to extinguish flames in part of the ruined building a few hours after the attack, when foreign journalists were taken to the scene in Tripoli.
A press official, who asked not to be identified, said 45 people were hurt in the strike, 15 of them seriously, and some were still missing. That could not be independently confirmed.
Gaddafi's son Saif al-Islam said the Libyan government would not be cowed by such attacks.
"The bombing which targeted Muammar Gaddafi's office today ... will only scare children. It's impossible that it will make us afraid or give up or raise the white flag," he was quoted as saying by the Jana state news agency.
"You, NATO, are waging a losing battle because you are backed by traitors and spies. History has proved that no state can rely on them to win."
Libyan authorities have contacted Russia, China, Italy, Turkey and other countries to complain about the strike on Gaddafi's compound, a government statement said.
The compound has been hit before, but NATO forces appear to have stepped up the pace of strikes in Tripoli in recent days. A target nearby, which the government called a car park but which appeared to cover a bunker, was hit two days ago.
NATO said it was maintaining a "high operational tempo."
Italy said its warplanes would join British and French aircraft in carrying out bombing of Libya. Geographically the closest major NATO member state to Libya, Italy had until Monday provided bases for the operation and support aircraft only.
AU DIPLOMACY; MISRATA BOMBARDED
The attack on the compound coincided with a fresh flurry of diplomacy by countries seeking a way out of the Libyan conflict.
The African Union was holding separate talks on Monday with Libyan Foreign Minister Abdelati Obeidi and rebel representatives in Addis Ababa to discuss a peace plan.
The rebel representatives -- former ambassadors to South Africa and Uganda -- and Obeidi were meeting separately with representatives of the United Nations and the European Union.
"This will be the first time that they (rebels) are attending a meeting here. We will meet both sides one after the other," Ramtane Lamamra, AU commissioner for peace and security, told Reuters.
The rebels rebuffed an earlier AU peace plan because it did not entail Gaddafi's departure, while the United States, Britain and France say there can be no political solution until the Libyan leader leaves power.
The African Union does not have a good track record in brokering peace deals, having failed recently to end conflicts or disputes in Somalia, Madagascar and Ivory Coast.
The talks brought no relief for people in the besieged western city of Misrata, where residents reported intense bombardment in the early hours of Monday which tailed off when NATO planes flew over.
The weekend saw some of the bloodiest fighting of the two-month siege in Misrata despite an announcement by Gaddafi's forces on Friday that they were pulling back.
Medics said more than 20 people were killed on Sunday and 28 on Saturday. A rebel spokesman put the death toll even higher. Three corpses were charred beyond recognition and one child was killed, but many of the shells fell on waste ground.
Residents said Gaddafi's forces had been pushed away from Tripoli Street, center of the recent battles, to the outskirts of the city, from where they were shelling occasionally when NATO planes were not around.
"Bodies of Gaddafi's troops are everywhere in the streets and in the buildings. We can't tell how many. Some have been there for days," said Mohammed Ibrahim, a resident whose cousin was killed at the weekend. He was speaking by phone.
A rebel spokesman, Sami, said the humanitarian situation was worsening rapidly.
"It is indescribable. The hospital is very small. It is full of wounded people, most of them are in critical condition," he said by phone. "The quantity of food available in the city is also decreasing. The state of the city is deteriorating because it has been under siege for about two months."
A government spokesman in Tripoli said the army was still carrying out its plan to withdraw from the city, but had fired back when retreating troops were attacked.
"As our army was withdrawing from Misrata it came under attack by the rebels. The army fought back but continued its withdrawal from the city," Mussa Ibrahim told reporters.
The government says it will leave it to local tribes to resolve the situation in Misrata. Rebels say the announcement may be part of a ruse to mask troop movements or stir violence between rebels and locals in nearby towns.
MOUNTAIN BATTLES
Out of view of international media, Gaddafi's forces have been pounding rebel Berber towns in Libya's remote Western Mountains with artillery.
The capture of a crossing on the Tunisian border by rebels has let refugees flee in cars or on foot along rocky paths, swelling refugee numbers in southern Tunisia to 30,000.
"Our town is under constant bombardment by Gaddafi's troops. They are using all means. Everyone is fleeing," said one refugee, Imad, bringing his family out of the mountains.
Rebel leader Mustafa Abdel Jalil told a news conference in Kuwait the Gulf state had agreed to give 50 million Kuwaiti dinars ($177 million) to his rebel council to help pay workers in the eastern part of the country under its control.
The rebels have been seeking international recognition as well as material support from the west and the Arab world.
Hampered by their lack of firepower, equipment and training, they have been unable to advance from eastern Libya. Fighting with Gaddafi's troops has swung back and forth along the coast road between the towns of Ajdabiyah and Brega.
Abdel Jalil also said the rebels had received weapons from "friends and allies," but did not name them.
(Additional reporting by Guy Desmond and Maher Nazeh in Tripoli, Alexander Dziadosz in Benghazi and Sami Aboudi in Cairo; writing by Andrew Roche; editing by Maria Golovnina)
American Politics of Destruction - Donald Trump says Barack Obama wasn't qualified for Ivy League
Real estate mogul Donald Trump suggested in an interview on Monday that President Barack Obama had been a poor
student who did not deserve to be admitted to the Ivy League universities he attended.
Mr Trump, who is mulling a bid for the Republican presidential nomination, offered no proof for his claim but said he would continue to press the matter as he has the legitimacy of the president's birth certificate.
"I heard he was a terrible student, terrible. How does a bad student go to Columbia and then to Harvard?" Mr Trump said in an interview with The Associated Press. "I'm thinking about it, I'm certainly looking into it. Let him show his records."
Mr Obama graduated from Columbia University in New York in 1983 with a degree in political science after transferring from Occidental College in California. He went on to Harvard Law School, where he graduated magna cum laude 1991 and was the first black president of the Harvard Law Review.
Mr Obama's 2008 campaign did not release his college transcripts, and in his bestselling memoir, "Dreams From My Father," Mr Obama indicated he hadn't always been an academic star. Mr Trump told the AP that Mr Obama's refusal to release his college grades were part of a pattern of concealing information about himself.
"I have friends who have smart sons with great marks, great boards, great everything and they can't get into Harvard," Mr Trump said. "We don't know a thing about this guy. There are a lot of questions that are unanswered about our president."
Katie Hogan, a spokeswoman for Mr Obama's re-election campaign, declined to comment.
Mr Trump has shaped himself as an ultraconservative candidate, reversing some positions he once held. He now would make abortion illegal, opposes gay marriage and gun control. He advocates repeal of Mr Obama's health care overhaul that became law last year. He wants to cut foreign aid, is highly critical of China's trade and monetary policies and wants to end the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
But he has got the most political traction by latching onto the "birther" movement: those who believe claims initiated by the far-right that Mr Obama was born outside the United States – despite the release of official birth records in Hawaii and other evidence. The U.S. Constitution requires that presidential candidates be "natural-born" U.S. citizens.
Of late, Mr Trump has appeared in interviews on all the major American cable television networks, pushing relentlessly his message that Mr Obama needs to prove he was born in the United States. He points to his rising poll numbers as proof that Americans like what he is saying on that deeply divisive issue.
"I have more people that are excited about the fact that I reinvigorated this whole issue," Mr Trump said, adding "the last guy (Obama) wants to run against is Donald Trump."
Mr Trump is scheduled to travel to the early primary states of New Hampshire and Nevada this week and said he will make a final decision about a presidential bid by June.
The Donald’s fortunes rise as he voices Obama 'birther' suspicions
By Rachel Ray, Washington
Donald Trump was described in the media as 'Poor Donald' almost exactly two years ago as the ratings for his show 'The Celebrity Apprentice' sank concurrently with his real estate empire.
By September 2010, there was no improvement- the show failed to capture even five million viewers against rerun competition.
But since February, ratings have steadily climbed- coinciding with The Donald’s “birther” suspicions about the legitimacy of President Obama’s birth certificate.
By the end of March, Mr Trump flat out told Fox News he was "really concerned" about Obama's citizenship, adding "I'm starting to wonder myself whether or not [Obama] was born in this country."
And in the April 4th week ratings analysis, The Celebrity Apprentice numbers had jumped 15 percent in the adult 18-49 group and 22 percent in total viewers since the same time in 2010.
GOP wise man Karl Rove went on Fox too on Saturday to denounce Trump’s birther talk and label him a “joke” candidate. The Donald may be bad news for the Republicans but things are looking up at NBC.
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