Gunmen stormed the Libyan parliament on Tuesday, forcing lawmakers to postpone a vote for a new prime minister to take on the lawlessness gripping the North African nation.
The election was triggered by the resignation of former Libyan prime minister Abdallah al-Thani earlier this month, who quit just five days after his appointment, saying he and his family had come under attack.
Thani, a former defense minister, had only got the job because MPs could agree on a replacement after they ousted his predecessor Ali Zeidan in March to punish his failure to prevent a rebel oil shipment. Zeidan then fled abroad.
There was no immediate word on the identity or motive of the gunmen who carried out the assault on parliament, which came as MPs were preparing to hold a second round of voting to replace al-Thani.
The General National Congress had been preparing to hold a second-round vote between two candidates after the first vote earlier in the day among seven candidates ended with businessman Ahmed Miitig emerging as the frontrunner with 67 votes from the 152 lawmakers present.
University professor Omar al-Hassi, from Benghazi, was runner-up, with 34 votes.
Some MPs said the attack was carried out by partisans of one of the two men after rumors began circulating that he would lose the vote.
Two medieval fortresses face each other across the Narva River separating Estonia from Russia on Europe’s eastern edge. Once a symbol of cooperation, the “Friendship Bridge” connecting the two snow-covered banks has been reinforced with rows of razor wire and “dragon’s teeth” anti-tank obstacles on the Estonian side. “The name is kind of ironic,” regional border chief Eerik Purgel said. Some fear the border town of more than 50,0000 people — a mixture of Estonians, Russians and people left stateless after the fall of the Soviet Union — could be Russian President Vladimir Putin’s next target. On the Estonian side of the bridge,
Jeremiah Kithinji had never touched a computer before he finished high school. A decade later, he is teaching robotics, and even took a team of rural Kenyans to the World Robotics Olympiad in Singapore. In a classroom in Laikipia County — a sparsely populated grasslands region of northern Kenya known for its rhinos and cheetahs — pupils are busy snapping together wheels, motors and sensors to assemble a robot. Guiding them is Kithinji, 27, who runs a string of robotics clubs in the area that have taken some of his pupils far beyond the rural landscapes outside. In November, he took a team
Civil society leaders and members of a left-wing coalition yesterday filed impeachment complaints against Philippine Vice President Sara Duterte, restarting a process sidelined by the Supreme Court last year. Both cases accuse Duterte of misusing public funds during her term as education secretary, while one revives allegations that she threatened to assassinate former ally Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. The filings come on the same day that a committee in the House of Representatives was to begin hearings into impeachment complaints against Marcos, accused of corruption tied to a spiraling scandal over bogus flood control projects. Under the constitution, an impeachment by the
Exiled Tibetans began a unique global election yesterday for a government representing a homeland many have never seen, as part of a democratic exercise voters say carries great weight. From red-robed Buddhist monks in the snowy Himalayas, to political exiles in megacities across South Asia, to refugees in Australia, Europe and North America, voting takes place in 27 countries — but not China. “Elections ... show that the struggle for Tibet’s freedom and independence continues from generation to generation,” said candidate Gyaltsen Chokye, 33, who is based in the Indian hill-town of Dharamsala, headquarters of the government-in-exile, the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA). It
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