Worldcrunch
SIDI ALI BEN AOUN — Ali Chadli opens his eyes wide, incredulous even now. No, he had no idea his sons were planning to leave for Syria, where they eventually died. “They were praying as usual,” he says. “I hadn’t noticed anything particular.” The aging man invites us to take a seat next to the […]
From local politics to the the battle against polio to a banned prostitution film, here’s a quick tour of what has been happening in Morocco in recent days.
Photo: Hamza Turkia/Xinhua/ZUMA NATO DISCUSSES TURKEY BORDER CRISIS In an emergency meeting in Brussels today, NATO is holding talks to discuss Turkey’s campaign against both ISIS and Kurdish forces across its border in Syria.Reuters reports that both NATO and Turkey are downplaying the idea of a call for military help from the alliance. “Turkey requested […]
MISRATA — It’s a strange city where 15-year-old kids can be seen jumping behind the wheel of semi-wrecked cars, where the scenery they pass is made mostly of building facades blackened by mortar shells. In Misrata, the screeches of tires at the roundabout resemble the piercing sound of war sirens. The Libyan revolution here is […]
GARABULLI — Two unfinished houses on the sand, facing a Mediterranean sea in shades of grey. So this is where they left from. According to various Libyan sources, the vessel carrying more than 800 people left Libya on what became its fateful crossing between Saturday April 18 and Sunday 19 from this long stretch of […]
-Analysis- TURIN — Thousands of people — calling them people, i.e. men, women and children, is the first step — have died in the Strait of Sicily since 2010. Sunday saw the worst tragedy yet, but it was not the first, and unfortunately it won’t be the last. Many of these people are fleeing the […]
La Repubblica, April 20, 2015 “The Migrant Apocalypse.” Rome-based daily La Repubblica, like other newspapers around Italy and the world, featured the deadly accident in the Mediterranean Sea on the front page of its Monday edition. Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi called the traffic of undocumented immigrants a “new slave trade.” The newspaper featured both […]
Newspapers around the world featured the tragedy in the Mediterranean Sea on the front pages of their Monday edition, after as many as 700 migrants reportedly died when their boat capsized. Sunday’s tragedy is believed to be the worst maritime disaster in Europe since World War II. ITALY FRANCE GERMANY CHILE U.S.
-OpEd- PARIS — There’s something both pathetic and surrealistic about France’s obsession, at the moment, with a rather unremarkable economic reform bill (the “loi Macron“) while to the east and to the south, in Ukraine and Libya, real threats are edging closer to our continent. It’s time to wake up! Twenty-five years after the fall […]
Deadly attacks in Tripoli are prompting fears that ISIS is spreading north and west. Others however warn of the spectre of a “counter-revolution” of Gaddafi nostalgics similar to what’s happened in Egypt.
A dozen baboons escaped Sunday from Benghazi’s zoo and roamed around the city amid deadly clashes between the army and anti-government militias that have killed more than 300 people in the past three weeks. All but two were returned to their enclosures by Tuesday — but not before they baffled residents and posed for pictures […]
-Analysis- Over the past few days, armed gangs have been setting Libya ablaze. The slogans sound familiar: “May the martyr’s blood not be shed in vain!” Nothing could be less certain. The country is sinking into chaos, and many Libyans say things are worse than the era of Muammar Gaddafi — the dictator who was […]
Hundreds of thousands of Libyans fled to Tunisia after the 2011 revolution that toppled Muammar Gaddafi. A visit with those who mourn the fallen dictator, including his relatives.
Following its 2011 revolution, Libya has struggled to establish a democratic rule of law as it navigates the political divisions sowed through the decades-long bloody reign of Muammar Gaddafi. Religion, per se, had not been seen as a major source of conflict in a country that is 97% Sunni Muslim. Roaming jihadist groups, however, would […]
Post-Gaddafi Libya is a mix of newfound freedom and political instability. The latest news includes worries of an impending coup d”état after a top general suggested that the way forward for the country was to suspend Parliament. Still, Libyans celebrated – or at least were free to acknowledge – the third anniversary of their 2011 […]
ZUWARAH — Proudly dressed in his military uniform, Ali Abou Soud looks out toward the sea as cargo ships sail around in circles off the coast of this Libyan town. “That one,” he points out, “is sailing under the Sierra Leone flag.” The 26-year-old dentist explains why he has stopped working for the past two […]
Your weekly shot of what the Arab world is saying, hearing and sharing.
The disaffected youth and religious radicals in the Muslim world are obsessed with Europe’s top football leagues. Testimony of an Italian reporter, who was held hostage earlier this year in Syria.
ARABICA: Your weekly shot of what the Arab world is saying, hearing and sharing.
One native of Sierra Leone, who arrived in Italy via the now notorious island of Lampedusa, is trying to find peace in a Roman slum.
Thursday, July 17, 2014 GAZA’S SHORT-LIVED CEASEFIRE A temporary ceasefire that was planned to last at least five hours was broken less than three hours after it started, with the southern Israeli town of Eshkol targeted by what the Israeli military says were three mortars. The Guardian says there are conflicting reports about the attack […]
20 MINUTES, LE MONDE, LE FIGARO (France), REUTERS Worldcrunch PARIS – French President François Hollande has condemned a car bomb attack that hit France’s embassy in Libya’s capital Tripoli early Tuesday, injuring two French guards. “France expects the Libyan authorities to shed light on this unacceptable act so that the perpetrators are identified and brought […]
A French war correspondent’s new book recounts the horrors of the Libyan dictator’s rape and torture of women, which was yet another way to subjugate the population.
DIE WELT (Germany) Worldcrunch TRIPOLI – Libya’s former dictator Muammar Gaddafi has been dead since Oct. 2011, but Libyans are still faced with his image daily on their one, 20 and 50 dinar notes. However on Feb. 17 – the second anniversary of the start of the revolution – the Libyan National Bank put new […]
NIAMEY – The small restaurant sits on the corner of two sandy streets in Niger’s capital city, Niamey. It is here, at Le Toulousain, that two Frenchmen were kidnapped by AQIM (Al Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb) on Jan. 7, 2011. The two young hostages – an aid worker and his friend – were killed during […]
– Editorial – PARIS – A revolution is a riot that has succeeded. A riot is a revolution that has failed… For the second time since 1990, Algeria has missed another rendezvous with history, the Arab Spring. Like Saudi Arabia, it remained mostly extraneous to the unrest that overwhelmed the Arab world and led to […]
LOS ANGELES TIMES, VOICE OF AMERICA (USA), REUTERS Worldcrunch WASHINGTON – Four senior U.S. State Department officials resigned after an independent review board determined their operational responsibility for “grossly inadequate” security when Islamic militants killed four Americans at the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, reports the Los Angeles Times. Among them is Eric Boswell, the […]
US STATE DEPT. (USA), AFP Worldcrunch An independent inquiry has criticized the State Department for inadequate security at the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, on the day of the September attack that killed four American government personnel including Ambassador John Christopher Stevens. The 39-page unclassified report, which also cited intelligence failures, focused much of its […]
TUNIS – Overnight, the name of their organization, Ansar al-Sharia (Partisans of Islamic Law), became famous. They were brought into the spotlight after the deadly attacks on several U.S. embassies that they were accused of organizing after the broadcast of the Islamophobic movie “Innocence of Muslims.” In 2011, in the course of just a few […]
PARIS – Naive or arrogant? Daring or cautious? Four years after he entered the White House, Obama remains an enigma. Naive or cunning?“I never saw someone so competitive. What is the only thing that Barack Obama hates more than losing? Losing twice,” confides Robert Gibbs, his former press advisor. But Obama wants to win fair […]
LE MONDE (France), ANSA, MISNA (Italy) Worldcrunch TRIPOLI – Some 100 armed men stormed Libya’s parliament late Tuesday, preventing the confirmation of 30 cabinet members for the new government of prime minister Ali Zeidan, Italian news agency ANSA reported. Fighters have invaded parliament several times before, each time bringing proceedings to a halt. “This has […]
AP, CBS (USA) Worldcrunch CAIRO – Egyptian official sources say a militant suspected of involvement in the deadly U.S. consulate attack in Benghazi was killed in clashes in Cairo. An Egyptian interior ministry source told CBS News on Thursday that the suspect in Egypt, known only by his first name, Hazem, was killed after neighbors […]
MEDIAPART (France), CORRIERE DELLA SERA (Italy) DREAM TV (Egypt) Worldcrunch PARIS – The former intelligence chief for Libya’s National Transitional Council (NTC) has alleged that a French secret agent working with the complicity of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad killed the Libyan leader, Colonel Gaddafi. NTC spy chief Rami el-Obeidi told Paris-based news website Mediapart on […]
TEL AVIV – A small synagogue nestles in a dead-end street near the ocean promenade in Tel Aviv. The synagogue, used by Jews from Aleppo, Syria, was crowded last week for prayer services on Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. As in the other 10,500 places of worship in Israel, the congregation recited a special […]
BENGHAZI – At noon, the poster with the Kalashnikov is still hanging under the veranda: “People of Benghazi, return your weapons to Freedom Square from ten in the morning until seven in the evening.” The Minister of the Interior has asked. The Defense Ministry has asked. The Religious Affairs Ministry has asked. There was even […]
BBC NEWS (UK), AL JAZEERA (Qatar), LE MONDE (France), THE AUSTRALIAN, THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD (Australia) Worldcrunch BEIRUT – Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Lebanon’s Shiite Muslim movement Hezbollah, has called for new protests over the controversial anti-Islam film which has sparked furor in the Muslim world. The religious and political leader called the […]
Essay: The fury of fundamentalist Muslims should not obscure efforts to consolidate democracy.
BBC, REUTERS (UK), AL JAZEERA (Qatar), CNN (US) Protestors enraged by an anti-Islam film have stormed the U.S. Embassy in Yemen, following similar rounds of violence in Libya and Egypt that had left four American diplomats dead in the Libyan city of Benghazi. The BBC reported Thursday morning that protesters have stormed the embassy’s security […]
AL JAZEERA (Qatar), EGYPT INDEPENDENT (Egypt), ABC (US), SYDNEY MORNING HERALD (Australia), AFP (France) Worldcrunch BENGHAZI – The US Ambassador to Libya and three other staff members were killed following an attack on the US Consulate in Benghazi amid protests against an American amateur film denouncing the Prophet Muhammad. Al Jazeera reported that US Ambassador […]
TRIPOLI – Nafisa Muhammad knows all too well that vengeance is alive and well in post-revolution Libya. “One of my brothers was kidnapped by rebels from Misrata at Benghazi airport,” she says. “On his first day at a local detention center, he was beaten to death.” The 31-year-old woman now lives in a refugee camp […]