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19 Feb 2011 16:32

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World: Libyan violence: The painful scenes journalists can’t directly report

  • Many of the dead and the injured are relatives of doctors here. They are crying, and I keep telling them to please stand up and help us.
  • A Libyan medical official • Describing the scene at a poorly-equipped hospital in the country. The official reported fifteen dead. As painful as this quote is, this one is nearly as gut-wrenching: “The blood of our martyrs is still leaking from coffins over the shoulders of the mourners,” said a protester in Benghazi, the epicenter of the current crisis, in the wake of an attack on protesters who were mourning during a funeral. Libya is a hard country to get accurate information from, because journalists are not allowed to freely work in the country. In other words, much of this information is coming from phone calls and informants and can’t be independently confirmed. Libyan protesters are facing a very tough road; stand with them. source

19 Feb 2011 15:03

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Tech: Libya’s unrest won’t affect Bit.ly’s domains at all, guys

  • NO Libya’s unrest won’t affect Bit.ly’s URL-shortening source
  • » When clever names go bad: As we have noted in the past, Bit.ly’s name is tied very closely to Libya. However, as the Interwebs have gone down of late in the country, many are wondering if this means anything bad for the URL shortener market, which also counts owl.ly and ht.ly as potential victims, among others. We’ll let Bit.ly’s CEO, John Borthwick, take it from here: “For .ly domains to be unresolvable the five .ly root servers that are authoritative *all* have to be offline, or responding with empty responses. Of the five root nameservers for the .ly TLD: two are based in Oregon, one is in the Netherlands and two are in Libya.” And plus, they have backup plans in place, like j.mp or bitly.com. So no, nothing to worry about.

19 Feb 2011 14:49

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World: A tale of two conflicts: Bahrain, Libya seem headed in different ways

  • Bahrain In a major symbolic victory for protesters, the military has pulled out of Pearl Square in Manama, allowing the protesters to re-enter amidst much international anger over the violence against the peaceful protests.
  • Libya As fresh violence continues to break, at least 84 have died at the hands of the Libyan military, according to Human Rights Watch. “We’ve never heard of anything like this before. It’s horrible,” one eyewitness said to Al Jazeera. source

18 Feb 2011 12:55

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World: Things get even worse – and deadly – for protesters in Bahrain

The AP is reporting that at least 50 people have been injured in attacks on protesters in Bahrain. “People started running in all directions and bullets were flying,” one person said. source

17 Feb 2011 10:40

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World: Middle East update: What’s happening in Bahrain, Yemen and Libya?

  • » Journalists still in danger: Reporting from Bahrain, ABC News reporter Miguel Marquez found himself in the middle of the worst of it. “I just got beat rather badly by a gang of thugs,” he said in a phone call, as he was attempting to hide from his attackers.

16 Feb 2011 09:41

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World: Middle Eastern unrest reaches Libya, but will it go any further?

  • Last night was a bad night. … There were about 500 or 600 people involved. They went to the revolutionary committee (local government headquarters) in Sabri district, and they tried to go to the central revolutionary committee … They threw stones.
  • An anonymous Benghazi, Libya resident • Describing the scene during the riots that took place in the city the night before. Leader Muammar Gaddafi has been in power for over 40 years, and his country neighbors Egypt and Tunisia, so he’s obviously a key target for protests in the current spate of them. However, Libya is different from those countries in that their oil revenues are so significant that they could just throw money at the problem to placate unhappy citizens. Still though, this is obviously a huge issue for Gaddafi’s government. source

15 Jun 2010 10:37

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World: Were the Kyrgyzstan riots orchestrated by the ousted leader?

  • It was a carefully planned operation conducted by the enemies of the interim government. The information available to our special services confirms that all of these measures were funded by the Bakiyev family, particularly his youngest son, Maksim Bakiyev.
  • Kyrgyzstan interim first deputy head Alzambek Atambayev • Claiming that the deadly riots were caused by the son of ousted leader, Kurmanbek S. Bakiyev. The arrest of Maksim Bakiyev in Britain today supports this theory. Atambayev also said that the interim leadership has had trouble handling the crisis, partly due to the fact that some police in the southern part of the country were still loyal to the old government. source
 

12 Jun 2010 11:33

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World: Post-coup, Kyrgyzstan falls into another state of emergency

  • 65+ number of people killed in a spate of ethnic violence between Uzbek and Kyrgyz youths that bubbled over Thursday night
  • 500+ number of people hospitalized; a curfew has been set and Roza Otunbayeva has asked Russia for assistance source

19 May 2010 12:06

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World: Despite riots, Thailand’s situation not as deadly as it could’ve been

  • 30 number of buildings that were set on fire
  • 52 number of people that were injured in the riots
  • five number of people that were killed source

19 May 2010 11:51

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World: Thailand’s political situation totally hits the crapper

The good news for the Thai military: They captured the leaders of the Red Shirt movement. The bad news: They caused mass riots. source