Libya

A flimsy boat sank off Libya’s coast, leaving at least 30 people including women and children missing and feared dead.

Africa is suffering a severe shortage of gasoline and petroleum-based fuels generally despite being home to some of the world’s largest oil reserves — a product of being unable to consistently refine all of its crude.

The government of Russia complained in anticipation of a vote to expel it on Thursday that its potential exit from the United Nations Human Rights Council would “discredit” the body and erode public “trust” in it, despite some of the world’s worst human rights violators remaining on the Council even with Russia’s ouster.

Italian Interior Minister Luciana Lamorgese has reported that so far this year, at least 6,701 migrants have arrived in Italy by sea, with around half of the migrants needing to be rescued. According to Minister Lamorgese, 3,323  of the 6701 migrants were

Libya’s state-run National Oil Corporation (NOC) announced on Monday that militia fighters shut down the Sharara oil field, the largest in the country, plus another vital oil field at el-Feel.

Police detectives were aware of the Machester Arena bomber’s ties to terrorism three years before the 2017 attack that left 22 dead.

Libyan authorities intercepted 30,990 migrants heading for Europe in 2021 according to UN statistics, a trebling of the year prior.

Reuters on Thursday pointed to a particularly grim indicator of Libyan government malfunction: a pile of 742 dead Islamic State fighters have been rotting in refrigerated food containers outside the city of Misrata since 2016 – and growing quite fragrant due to intermittent power outages. Some of the bodies are foreign nationals who remain uncollected by their home governments.

Israel’s Mossad spy chief David Barnea met with Libyan Prime Minister Abdulhamid Mohammed Al-Dabaiba in Jordan to discuss normalization, Saudi Arabian and Libyan media outlets reported Wednesday night.

35,000 illegal migrants landed on the Italian island of Lampedusa in 2021, an all-time record for arrivals.

Several of the world’s free nations will greet the year 2022 under the immediate threat of conquest by authoritarian forces, either through military invasion or subversion from within.

Libya’s High National Electoral Commission (HNEC) dissolved all of the country’s electoral committees on Tuesday, effectively canceling the presidential election that was scheduled for December 24.

An appeals court reinstated the presidential candidacy of Saif al-Islam Qaddafi, son of late dictator Muammar Qaddafi, after he was disqualified from running in this month’s Libyan presidential election.

Saif al-Islam Qaddafi, son of late dictator Muammar Qaddafi, was disqualified Wednesday from running in Libya’s upcoming presidential election.

Drones are the hot new item in the Middle East’s perpetual warfare, deployed by national armies, militias, and terrorist groups with increasing confidence and proficiency. 

Ten people were found dead at the bottom of an overcrowded wooden boat packed with 99 surviving migrants and refugees.

Libyan Gen. Khalifa Haftar announced on Tuesday that he is officially a candidate for the presidency of the government he tried to overthrow by force less than two years ago.

Seif al-Islam Qaddafi, son of deposed and slain Libyan dictator Moammar Qaddafi, filed the paperwork on Sunday to stand as a presidential candidate in Libya’s presidential election next month. 

CAIRO — The son and one-time heir apparent of late Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi announced Sunday his candidacy for the country’s presidential election next month, Libya’s election agency said.

Hundreds of bodies have been discovered in mass graves in Tarhuna, Libya, following the liberation of the city from the militias of General Khalifa Haftar, the Vatican’s L’Osservatore Romano newspaper announced Wednesday.

MI5 has admitted that Salman Abedi should have been put on a “ports action list” to alert police of his return from Libya four days before he killed 22 people on May 22nd, 2017, at the Manchester Arena in an Islamist suicide bombing.

Pope Francis said Sunday that he hears the cries of migrants in Libya and appealed for an end to repatriation and the establishment instead of “regular migration routes.”

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan took a four-day tour of Africa this week, trashing the former colonial powers of Europe and presenting Turkey as a more loyal and understanding development partner for Africans.

John Atkinson, 28, spent more than an hour dying on the floor on the night of the 2017 Manchester Arena terror attack before he was taken to hospital, where he succumbed to his wounds.

Nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan died in a Pakistani military hospital on Sunday at the age of 85, apparently a victim of the Wuhan coronavirus or one of its comorbidities. He was celebrated by Prime Minister Imran Khan as a “national hero” for turning Pakistan into a “nuclear weapon state.” Left unmentioned in the PM’s eulogy was AQ Khan’s role as a dangerous proliferator who sold nuclear secrets to Iran, North Korea, and Libya.

ABOARD GEO BARENTS (AP) — Libya’s coast guard Sunday intercepted a wooden boat carrying around 500 Europe-bound migrants off the country’s shore, the U.N. refugee agency said.

Hunter Biden reportedly demanded $2 million retainer plus “success fees” to unlock Libyan assets frozen by the Obama-Biden administration, according to newly discovered emails obtained by Business Insider. Though President Biden has claimed ignorance about Hunter’s family business schemes, the emails suggest otherwise. 

Libya’s eastern “parliament” – essentially a rival government based in Tobruk, with its own Libyan National Army (LNA) headed by warlord Khalifa Haftar – voted on Tuesday to withdraw its confidence from the “unity government” in Tripoli.

The Libyan National Army (LNA), the military force loyal to warlord Khalifa Haftar, reported losing two helicopters on Sunday during a military operation against their former allies, the front for Change and Concord in Chad (FACT).

Libyan warlord Khalifa Haftar, who laid siege to the capital city of Tripoli for 14 months until Turkish military intervention pushed his forces back in June 2020, has hired former Bill Clinton senior aide Lanny Davis and former Republican congressman Bob Livingston of Louisiana as lobbyists. Haftar is apparently trying to exert some influence over the next Libyan election, or possibly run for the presidency himself.

Italian Interior Minister Luciana Lamorgese has called on the European Union to develop an economic aid plan to funnel cash to Africa in the hopes of mitigating illegal migration.

Italy’s Interior Ministry has revealed that from August 1st, 2020, to July 31st of this year, 49,280 arrived illegally in the country.

At least 57 people have drowned off the coast of Libya after another boat carrying migrants capsized in the Mediterranean Sea, as people smugglers continue to operate in the area.

Libyan government officials, militia leaders, and officials in states involved in proxy battles there are increasingly concerned Saif al-Islam Qaddafi, son of late dictator Muammar Qaddafi, may run in a presidential election scheduled for December, Voice of America reported Monday.

Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi is expected to back a proposal to replicate the widely criticised European Union migrant deal with Turkey in North Africa as migrant numbers continue to surge, primarily into Italy.

The much-ballyhooed meeting between U.S. President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin was a disaster of optics and theatrics for Biden, despite frantic U.S. media efforts to spin straw into gold.

The White House confirmed President Joe Biden mistakenly referred to Libya three times during a press conference on Sunday when he meant to refer to Syria.

Turkish mob boss Sedat Peker, who became a social media sensation in May with a series of YouTube videos dishing dirt on powerful politicians, dropped his heaviest bombshell yet on Sunday with a new video accusing a top adviser to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of sending weapons to the Nusra Front, Al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria.

Italian media have accused NGOs of exploiting photographs of dead children to increase public support for migrant taxi operations in the Mediterranean Sea.

(AFP) — Italy is pushing EU partners to revive migrant burden-sharing deals as it seeks to stave off a summertime surge in landings from North Africa, Prime Minister Mario Draghi said Wednesday.