US fighter jet crashes in Libya due to technical problems
Four journalists who work for the New York Times were freed Monday and recounted their five-day ordeal, after being captured by Libyan soldiers 15 March. Turkey was instrumental in freeing the four, one of whom is a woman and who said she was constantly groped by soldiers while held captive.
A US Air Force jet crashed over Libya Tuesday due to technical failure. The two pilots are safe. The Pentagon announced the news: “Two crew members ejected from their US Air Force F-15E Strike Eagle when the aircraft experienced equipment malfunction over northeast Libya, March 21, 2011 at approximately 10:30 p.m. CET. Both crew members ejected and are safe.
The aircraft, based out of Royal Air Force Lakenheath, England, was flying out of Aviano Air Base in support of Operation Odyssey Dawn at the time of the incident. The cause of the incident is under investigation. The identities will be released after the next of kin have been notified.”
Links to other sites: New Yorker, Yahoo News
Prime minister declared nuclear emergency late Friday
A small amount of radiation has leaked from one of two Fukushima-based nuclear plants owned by Tokyo Electric Power Company, the firm says.
People are being evacuated from an area within 2-3km of the plant, as a precaution.
The company says the coolers at the plant have not cracked and they are not melting down, IB Times reports, after Japanese news agency reports said they could be melting down.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton says the US Air Force has delivered coolant to Japan as part of emergency supplies.
Japan’s prime minister declared a “nuclear emergency” late Friday when a nuclear reactor failed to cool after four nuclear power plants shut down automatically, following the 11 March major earthquake. Japanese law calls for an emergency to be declared if a cooler fails to shut down.
Links to other sites: BBC, Economic Times of India, International Business Times, Hong Kong
Two US airmen died after a man opened fire on a US Air Force bus in front of terminal 2 at the Frankfurt international airport Wednesday afternoon. Two other airmen were injured.
The driver and a passenger were killed, both of them shot in the head and the chest, apparently after fight broke out on the bus, and while German authorities have not identified the gunman, Kosovo’s interior minister says he was told by German police the man is from Kosovo, although the information was contradicted by others.
The gunman fled the scene of the shooting and a suspect was arrested inside the airport shortly afterwards.
Links to other sites: Guardian, Washington Post
AP video
An off-duty US Air Force seargeant was among six people shot to death 4 November at a striptease bar in the Mexican border town of Ciudad Juarez, the country’s most violent. Witnesses say masked gunmen entered the bar, targeted and shot the six victims several times, then left in the ensuing panic. A US military spokesman said it appears that drugs were being sold at the bar.
Three dozen US citizens have been murdered in the first six months of the year in Mexico, mostly along the border. More than 2,000 people have died in Ciudad Juarez since the beginning of the year as drug gangs fight for control of the lucrative drugs trade to the US. Houston & Texas News, New York Times, Reuters
© British Red Cross/Ash Sweeting/af-
Geneva, Switzerland and Washington DC (GenevaLunch) – The US military has begun a policy of handing over to the International Red Cross (ICRC) the names of detainees held in two camps in Iraq and Afghanistan, the New York Times reports. ICRC has broad access to all detainees held by the US military, but two camps that are part of the US Defense Department’s Special Operations programme are off-limits, until the detainees are formally transferred to a prison in either country. The military name for the camps is “temporary screening sites”, camps in which high-level combat detainees are interrogated. The new policy affects about 30 to 40 prisoners at any time in camps at Balad, Iraq and Bagram air force base in Afghanistan, according to the newspaper, which cites unnamed sources.
