| Libyan fighters make limited gains in Sirte |
Anti-Gaddafi forces capture residential area but face stiff resistance in battle for toppled leader's home city.
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Last Modified: 09 Oct 2011
Libyan fighters are continuing their push to capture Sirte, the home city of toppled leader Muammar Gaddafi.
National Transitional Council (NTC) forces managed to take control of a central neighbourhood as well as a main road on Saturday, but faced stiff resistance from Gaddafi loyalists.
Fighting was raging for the Ouagadougou conference centre, which is believed to house the command centre of Gaddafi's forces, Al Jazeera's Zeina Khodr reported from the outskirts of the city.
"Loyalists are not only using small arms fire and snipers to slow the advance, they're also firing mortars to prevent anti-Gaddafi forces from taking control of this strategic complex," she said.
'Bridenapping' – a growing hidden crime
In at least 17 countries around the world, girls are being
abducted, raped and forced into marriage. Emily Dugan
investigates
Sunday, 9 October 2011
Last year, Asana, a 14-year-old from Somalia, popped out to get some meat and milk for her mother. As she walked in a Mogadishu market, a car with blacked-out windows pulled up, a door was flung open and she was dragged inside. A man she had never seen before said to the driver: "This is my wife; we just got engaged." The man was Mohamed Dahir, a leader of the terrorist group Al-Shabaab. Her money was taken, she was locked away and forced to become Dahir's wife.
Asana's story is echoed across the globe in a phenomenon that is still little reported or understood. Bride kidnapping, or "bridenapping", happens in at least 17 countries around the world, from China to Mexico to Russia to southern Africa.
Chinese pendulum swings to the left
John Garnaut In Beijing
October 9, 2011
CHINA is heading into a new Mao-inspired epoch of socialism and nationalism, says the founder of China's most powerful leftist internet platform.
Han Deqiang, who founded and retains behind-the-scenes control over the Utopia website, says most observers have failed to notice a profound shift in China's ideological and political trajectory.
He recited an old saying about the Yellow River dramatically changing its course every generation to describe China's swing from Chairman Mao to Deng Xiaoping and back again.
Secret moves within SADC to get Mugabe to retire
It is becoming increasingly clear that polls are likely to be held only in 2013, when Mugabe will no longer be capable of standing as a candidate.
SADC diplomats at the United Nations (UN) mission in Geneva, Switzerland, told the Sunday Times this week regional leaders had been exchanging notes on how to approach Mugabe to offer him an "irresistible package", which includes the necessary security guarantees and benefits for him to retire.
Restaurateur provides a waystation for North Korean defectors
Restaurateur Dan Kang runs the Seoul City Mongolian Grill, which trains North Korean defectors in the restaurant industry. The long-term goal: Return them to the north after Korea reunifies.
Most nights, service industry veteran Dan Kang arrives home around midnight, stopping off on the way to shoot a merciful game of pool or two.
The moments he spends poised with pool stick in hand are practically the only slivers of time he has to himself all day, a chance to unwind.
These days, Mr. Kang is the managing partner and executive chef at a restaurant that has more than the needs of its brimming clientele to contend with: Its very raison d'être is to empower North Korean defectors who have successfully completed the perilous journey from their homeland to South Korea.
Protests in China over local grievances surge, and get a hearing
The demonstrators have a narrow agenda and concrete demands: Farmers want a stop to confiscations of their land or to get better compensation. Homeowners want to stop demolitions.
By Barbara Demick, Los Angeles Times
In a country with zero tolerance for public displays of disaffection, the 77-year-old retired doctor went very public with her anger over the demolition of her property in a booming Shanghai neighborhood: She stripped naked on the steps of a courthouse.
This might well be called the season of discontent in China. People, many of them middle-class homeowners, have been taking to the streets across the country in the last few months to air their grievances. At times, the protesters have turned violent — overturning police cars or smashing windows with baseball bats — but more often, they are engaging in civil disobedience.
This might well be called the season of discontent in China. People, many of them middle-class homeowners, have been taking to the streets across the country in the last few months to air their grievances. At times, the protesters have turned violent — overturning police cars or smashing windows with baseball bats — but more often, they are engaging in civil disobedience.
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