Libya’s parliament on Wednesday approved the country’s new Cabinet in a vote of confidence, the parliament spokesman said, but armed protesters cut the main road leading to the parliament, vowing not to leave until members of the ousted regime of dictator Muammar Qaddafi are excluded from political life.
Omar Humidan said five of the 27 ministers would be reconsidered after concerns were raised over their ties to the deposed regime.
That was not good enough for the protesters, who tried to storm the parliament building, but were turned back by security forces firing in the air. Then they camped outside the convention center that houses the parliament sessions.
The vote on Wednesday approving the Cabinet was 105 in favor, nine against and 18 abstentions, after parliament’s main political blocs gave their support to the new prime minister, Ali Zidan.
The new Cabinet faces the daunting task of imposing control over armed groups, mostly former rebel fighters who defeated Qaddafi’s forces during last year’s eight-month civil war.
A year after the overthrow and death of Qaddafi, Libyans are seeking a broader distribution of political power among the country’s three main regions, after decades of domination and discrimination by the dictator’s highly centralized state based in the capital, Tripoli.
Zidan said he had talks with Libya’s largest political blocs in parliament, the Alliance of National Forces by Western-minded and wartime prime minister Mahmoud Jibril and the Muslim Brotherhood’s political arm Justice and Construction Party, to ensure support for his Cabinet.
Zidan, a former human rights lawyer, is the second prime minister to be named by the 200-member parliament. Legislators dismissed his predecessor, Mustafa Abushaqur, after they said he had put forward unknown people for key Cabinet posts and proposed a government lacking diversity.
Protesters said they would hold an open-ended sit-in until Zidan presents a new Cabinet, with only “nationalist figures” and no remnants of the old regime.
French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said in a statement late on Wednesday that France “expresses its support for the new government” and called for a “rapid re-establishment of security in Libya.”
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was