Harrowing film of the death of the world's most famous polar bear emerges amid fears over his treatment

This is the moment Knut, the world's most famous polar bear, died as he had lived his controversial life - in captivity and in front of a crowd of human spectators.

After compulsively turning in circles, he convulsed violently on his favourite rocky perch, let out a blood-curdling scream then fell dead into his enclosure's water pool.

The final, horrific moments of the world's most famous polar bear were captured on a tourist's video camera at Berlin Zoo on Saturday.

In the deeply harrowing film, spectators' whoops turn to screams as the realisation dawns that Knut's wild convulsions are not one of his usual playful performances.

Colonel Gaddafi's son 'killed in kamikaze pilot attack on Tripoli barracks'

# Claims sixth son Khamis, leader of crack loyalist unit, died of burn wounds
# Gaddafi's whereabouts remain unknown after attack on his compound after his promises of a 'long war'
# Rebels say Gaddafi's men have been using civilians as human shields
# RAF Tornado turned back when it was realised residents were in danger
# William Hague refuses to say if Gaddafi was a target of aerial bombardments
# US Defence Secretary Robert Gates says getting rid of Gaddafi is 'unwise'
# UN Secretary-General clarifies support for air attacks but not ground troops
# Cameron tells Commons air strikes stopped assault on Benghazi

Two pilots of a B-2 bomber flew for 25 hours on the 12,000 mile round trip to bomb Gaddafi targets

One of three Air Force Global Strike Command B-2 Spirit bombers returning to base at Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri

Bombs on their way to Libya earlier today as an RAF Tornado GR4 takes off from RAF Marham in Norfolk

Colonel Gaddafi suffered a massive personal setback today when one of his sons was allegedly killed in a suicide air mission on his barracks.

Khamis, 27, who runs the feared Khamis Brigade that has been prominent in its role of attacking rebel-held areas, is said to have died on Saturday night.

A Libyan air force pilot crashed his jet into the Bab al-Aziziya compound in Tripoli in a kamikaze attack, Algerian TV reported following an unsubstantiated claim by an anti-Gaddafi media organisation.

Khamis is alleged to have died of burns in hospital. The regime denied the reports.

It was claimed he died in the same compound hit by RAF cruise missiles hit by coalition forces last night.

Loyalists have been photographed with shrapnel from the missile that struck the building and throughout the day there has been no information on Gaddafi's whereabouts.

Libyan state TV has claimed that 48 people were killed in the weekend attacks, causing friction between the west and the Arab world but the Ministry of Defence said it wasn't aware of civilian casualties.

But it exposed fractures between the U.S. and British positions, with U.S. Defence Secretary Robert Gates saying getting rid of Gaddafi would be unwise while the UK refuses to rule out any course of action.

Two rescued from the rubble in Japan after missing for ten days

Akira Abe was away from home visiting Gunma when the earthquake hit Japan. Mr Abe's eighty-year-old mother and sixteen-year-old son were at their home in Kadonowakimachi, in the southern part of Ishinomaki, near the coast. The house collapsed and was ...

In between meetings on Libya, Obama continues Latin America trip in Chile

- President Obama will arrive here Monday afternoon, continuing his Latin America tour even as he and his national security staff closely monitor the situation in Libya.

Some progress at Japan reactors as disaster toll rises

A man looks at a locomotive found 30 metres away from the railway after last week’s earthquake and tsunami in Minamisanriku town, Miyagi Prefecture in northern Japan March 20, 2011.


Engineers restored electricity to three reactors at a crippled Japanese nuclear power plant and hope to test water pumps at the quake-damaged facility soon, the first clear signs of progress in tackling the world’s worst atomic crisis in 25 years.

Japan suffered an estimated US$250 billion (RM760.38 billion) in damage from the earthquake and tsunami on March 11 that left more than 21,000 people dead or missing, while radiation leaks from the Fukushima nuclear plant have caused global alarm.

US Energy Secretary Steven Chu, asked by CNN whether the worst of Japan’s 10-day nuclear crisis was over, said: “Well, we believe so, but I don’t want to make a blanket statement.”

US Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chairman Gregory Jaczko added that radiation levels at the plant appeared to be falling.

However, the situation was far from under control on Monday.



Japan’s nuclear safety agency said pressure was rising in the most threatening reactor, No. 3, which contains highly toxic plutonium, and this may have to be released by “venting” steam, a step taken last week that discharged low levels of radiation into the atmosphere.

Other problems have also emerged, especially from contaminated food and water.

The health ministry urged some residents near the plant in Fukushima prefecture to stop drinking tap water after high levels of radioactive iodine were detected, Kyodo news agency said today.

Cases of contaminated vegetables and milk have already stoked anxiety despite assurances from officials that the levels are not dangerous. The plant lies 240km north of Tokyo.

The government prohibited the sale of raw milk from Fukushima prefecture and spinach from another nearby area and might announce more restrictions on food today.

“The contamination of food and water is a concern,” said Gerhard Proehl of the Vienna-based UN watchdog the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

In a much-needed boost for Japan’s battered stock market, billionaire investor Warren Buffett said the earthquake and tsunami were an “enormous blow” but should not prompt selling of Japanese shares. Instead, he called the events a “buying opportunity”.

“It will take some time to rebuild. But it will not change the economic future of Japan. If I owned Japanese stocks, I would certainly not be selling them,” Buffett said during a visit to a South Korean factory run by a company that is owned by one of his funds.

Japan’s crisis spooked markets last week, prompted rare intervention by the G7 group of rich nations to stabilise the yen, and fuelled concerns the world economy may suffer because of disrupted supplies to the auto and technology industries.

Tokyo’s markets are closed for a holiday on Monday. The Nikkei index shed 10 per cent last week, wiping US$350 billion off market capitalisation.

NO POWER YET TO REACTORS 1,3 AND 4

At Fukushima, 300 engineers have worked around the clock inside an evacuation zone to contain the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl, Ukraine, in 1986.

They have been spraying the coastal complex with thousands of tonnes of sea water so fuel rods will not overheat and emit more radiation. Hopes for a more permanent solution depend on electricity cables reactivating on-site water pumps at each of the six reactors.

“There have been some positive developments in the last 24 hours but overall the situation remains very serious,” said Graham Andrew, a senior official of the IAEA.

Working in suits sealed by duct tape, engineers have connected power cables to the No. 2, 5 and 6 reactors and plan to start testing systems soon, officials say. Officials earlier said a cable had been connected to reactor No.1 but engineers today said this was not yet the case.

The most badly damaged reactors are No. 3 and 4, which were both hit by explosions last week.

If the pumps cannot restart, drastic and lengthy measures may be needed like burying the plant in sand and concrete.

Some expatriates, tourists and local residents have fled Tokyo over radiation fears. Those who remain are subdued but not panicked.

“There’s no way I can check if those radioactive particles are in my tap water or the food I eat, so there isn’t much I can really do about it,” said Setsuko Kuroi, an 87-year-old woman shopping in a supermarket with a white gauze mask over her face.

AID TRICKLE

Easing Japan’s gloom briefly, local TV yesterday showed one moving survival tale: an 80-year-old woman and her 16-year-old grandson rescued from their damaged home after nine days.

Official tolls of dead and missing are rising steadily — to 8,450 and 12,931 respectively.

The death toll could jump dramatically since police said they believed more than 15,000 people had been killed in Miyagi prefecture, one of four that took the brunt of the tsunami.

Scores of nations have pledged aid to victims, but little foreign relief supplies are visible in some devastated towns and villages.

“All we have had is the clothes on our backs. But they are good enough. They’ve kept us warm through all of this,” said Machiko Kawahata as she, her daughter and granddaughter looked for clothes at a drop-off point in Kamaishi, a coastal town.

“We will make do and we will make it through this.”

The 9.0-magnitude quake and ensuing 10-metre (32-ft) tsunami made more than 350,000 people homeless. Food, water, medicine and fuel are short in some parts, and near-freezing temperatures during Japan’s winter are not helping.

While Japanese have been focused on the rescue operation rather than recriminations, media and others have raised questions over the government and plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Company’s (TEPCO) performance.

There have been suggestions the nuclear drama was taking priority over the human suffering, and that the early response of some officials was slow and opaque.

TEPCO head Masataka Shimizu apologised at the weekend for “causing such trouble” at the plant but has not visited the site or made a public appearance in a week.

Bahrain king says forces have foiled foreign plot

Bahrain's King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa said a foreign plot against his kingdom had been foiled and thanked troops brought in from neighbouring countries to help end increasing unrest after weeks of protests.

"An external plot has been fomented for 20 to 30 years until the ground was ripe for subversive designs ... I here announce the failure of the fomented plot," the state news agency BNA quoted him overnight as telling troops.

King Hamad (picture) told the forces that such if such a plot succeeded in one Gulf Arab country, it could spill into neighbouring states, BNA said.





The ferocity of a crackdown last week by Bahrain forces, aided by the entrance of troops from Sunni-ruled Gulf countries, stunned Bahrain's majority Shi'ites, the main force of the protests, and angered the region's non-Arab Shi'ite power Iran.

Iran, which supports Shi'ite groups in Iraq and Lebanon, has complained to the United Nations and asked neighbours to join it in urging Saudi Arabia to withdraw forces from Bahrain.

King Hamad's announcement came after a day of tit-for-tat diplomatic expulsions between the Gulf island kingdom and Iran.

In a sign of rising tensions between the countries, Bahrain expelled Iran's charge d'affaires yesterday, accusing him of contacts with some opposition groups, a diplomatic source said.

He left shortly after the Iranian ambassador, asked to leave last week. Iran expelled a Bahraini diplomat in response.

Bahrain has also said previously that it arrested opposition leaders for dealing with foreign countries.

Video of coalition fighter jets, military planes activity in Italy, France - Gaddafi compound hit by missile as dozens die in coalition strikes - Video of anti-aircraft fire lighting up the sky in Libya

Western powers strike Libya for second night- Libyan rebels welcome air strikes, no ground troops

A rebel fighter points his gun at a suspected Gaddafi supporter as other rebels try to protect the suspected supporter, on a road between Benghazi and Ajdabiyah, near Ajdabiyah, today March 21, 2011.

Libyan rebels welcome more air strikes by foreign forces against Muammar Gaddafi’s army but do not want foreign ground troops to intervene in the war, a rebel spokesman said today.

“The committee rejects foreign troops on the ground but we encourage the bombardment of Gaddafi’s army,” Ahmed El-Hasi, a spokesman for the February 17 opposition coalition, said in the eastern city of Benghazi.

The rebels’ aim was still to capture the capital Tripoli, but they wanted to achieve that without foreign offensive action, he told a news briefing.



Western powers launched a second wave of air strikes on Libya early today after halting the advance of Muammar Gaddafi’s forces on Benghazi and targeting air defences to let their planes patrol the skies.

The UN-mandated intervention to protect civilians caught up in a one-month-old revolt against Gaddafi drew criticism from Arab League chief Amr Moussa, who questioned the need for a heavy bombardment, which he said had killed many civilians.

But the United States, carrying out the air strikes in a coalition with Britain, France, Italy and Canada among others, said the campaign was working and dismissed a ceasefire announcement by the Libyan military yesterday evening.

Britain’s Defence Ministry said one of its submarines had again fired Tomahawk cruise missiles last night as part of a second wave of attacks to enforce the UN resolution.

“We and our international partners are continuing operations in support of the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973,” a ministry spokesman said.

The intervention is the biggest against an Arab country since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Withdrawal of Arab support would make it much harder to pursue what some defence analysts say could in any case be a difficult, open-ended campaign with an uncertain outcome.

Asked about Moussa’s comments, Michele Flournoy, Under Secretary at the US Department for Defence, told the BBC: “I think that may be the case that people don’t understand the military dimensions of what was required to establish the no-fly zone but I can tell you that we continue to have messages of support, statements of support from a number of Arab countries.”

French government spokesman Francois Baroin said today: “There is no information about killed civilians that the French command is aware of.”

Italy said it had warplanes in the air, after US and British warships and submarines launched 110 Tomahawk missiles on Saturday night and yesterday morning.

Benghazi not free from threat

Vice Admiral Bill Gortney, director of the US military’s Joint Staff, told reporters there had been no new Libyan air activity or radar emissions, but a significant decrease in Libyan air surveillance, since strikes began on Saturday.

Benghazi was not yet free from threat, said Gortney, but Gaddafi’s forces in the area were in distress and “suffering from isolation and confusion” after the air assaults.

Late last night, Libyan officials took Western reporters to Gaddafi’s compound in Tripoli, a sprawling complex that houses his private quarters as well as military barracks, anti-aircraft batteries and other installations, to see what they said was the site of a missile attack two hours earlier.

“It was a barbaric bombing,” said government spokesman Mussa Ibrahim, showing pieces of shrapnel that he said came from the missile. “This contradicts American and Western (statements) . . . that it is not their target to attack this place.”

A Libyan military spokesman announced a new ceasefire yesterday, saying that “the Libyan armed forces . . . have issued a command to all military units to safeguard an immediate ceasefire from 9pm (1900 GMT) this evening”.

Both before and after he spoke, heavy anti-aircraft gunfire boomed above central Tripoli.

Outside Benghazi, smouldering, shattered tanks and troop carriers from what had been Gaddafi’s advancing forces littered the main road. The charred bodies of at least 14 government soldiers lay scattered in the desert.

But with Gaddafi having vowed to fight to the death, there were fears his troops might try to force their way into cities, seeking shelter from air attacks among the civilian population.

In central Benghazi, sporadic explosions and heavy exchanges of gunfire could be heard in the streets late yesterday evening. A Reuters witness said the firing lasted about 40 minutes.

In Misrata, the last rebel-held city in western Libya, government tanks moved in after a base used by Gaddafi’s forces outside was hit by air strikes on Saturday, residents said.

“There is fighting between the rebels and Gaddafi’s forces,” Abdelbasset, a spokesman for the rebels in Misrata, told Reuters yesterday afternoon. “Their tanks are in the centre of Misrata . . . There are so many casualties we cannot count them.”

Civilian casualties

A Libyan government health official said 64 people had been killed by Western bombardment on Saturday and yesterday morning, but it was impossible to verify the report independently.

Libyan state television showed footage from an unidentified hospital of what it called victims of the “colonial enemy”. Ten bodies were wrapped in white and blue bed sheets, and several people were wounded, one of them badly, the television said.

The Arab League’s Moussa called for an emergency meeting of the group’s 22 states to discuss Libya. He requested a report on the bombardment, which he said had “led to the deaths and injuries of many Libyan civilians”.

“What is happening in Libya differs from the aim of imposing a no-fly zone, and what we want is the protection of civilians and not the bombardment of more civilians,” Egypt’s state news agency quoted him as saying.

There was no immediate public backing for his call from any government in the region, however.

Arab support for a no-fly zone provided crucial underpinning for the passage of a UN Security Council resolution last week that paved the way for Western action to stop Gaddafi killing civilians as he fights an uprising against his 41-year rule.

US President Barack Obama spoke to Jordan’s King Abdullah, while Vice President Joe Biden telephoned leaders in Algeria and Kuwait to shore up Arab support.

A spokesman for the rebel movement, Abdel Hafiz Ghoga, criticised Moussa’s comments, telling Al Jazeera that more than 8,000 Libyans aligned with the rebel movement had been killed.

“What is the mechanism that stops the extermination of the people in Libya, what is the mechanism, Mr Secretary-General?” he said. “If the protection of civilians is not a humanitarian obligation, what is the mechanism that you propose to us?”

‘Colonial enemy’

The US chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, said the no-fly zone was now in place.

But Defence Secretary Robert Gates said the United States would not have a “pre-eminent role” in maintaining it, and expected to turn over “primary responsibility” within days, perhaps to Britain or France.

US officials, eager to avoid similarities to the invasion of Iraq and the toppling of Saddam Hussein, have been playing down Washington’s role and emphasising that overthrowing or killing Gaddafi is not the goal of the attacks on Libya.

Mullen told CBS television the endgame of the campaign was “very uncertain” and acknowledged it could end in a stalemate.

Gates told reporters: “I think this is basically going to have to be resolved by the Libyans themselves.”

In Brussels, Nato envoys failed to agree on any alliance involvement in enforcing the no-fly zone.



Nato members Turkey and Germany have spoken out against the zone, and diplomats said France had argued against involvement by an alliance whose reputation in the Arab world had been tainted by its involvement in the war in Afghanistan.

French planes fired the first shots of the intervention on Saturday, destroying tanks and armoured vehicles near Benghazi.

France sent an aircraft carrier towards Libya and its planes were over the country again yesterday, defence officials said. Britain said its planes had targeted Libya’s air defences, mainly around the capital Tripoli.

Other countries, including Qatar, also dispatched aircraft to participate in the operation, US officials said.

US panel says Japan nuclear crisis stabilising

IAEA director general Yukiya Amano at the extraordinary board of governors meeting today, March 21, 2011


The top US nuclear regulator today said the Japanese nuclear crisis appeared to be on the verge of stabilising.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission also said it was preparing for additional inspections and a 90-day review of the status of US nuclear reactors in light of the disaster at the nuclear plant in Japan.

In Vienna, Yukiya Amano, head of the UN atomic agency, said today that the situation was still very serious but there was no doubt Japan “effectively overcome” the crisis.

Speaking at an emergency meeting of the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency’s 35-nation governing board, the director general said he was starting to see positive developments in the stricken nuclear power plant, 240km north of Tokyo.



“The crisis has still not been resolved and the situation at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant remains very serious,” Amano, a Japanese national, said.

“In addition, high levels of contamination have been measured in the locality of the plant,” he said at the closed-door meeting. But, “I have no doubt that this crisis will be effectively overcome”, he said according to a copy of his remarks.

Amano, who visited Japan last week urging the government to provide his office with more and faster information, stressed that it was member states that were responsible for safety issues, and that the IAEA was not a “nuclear safety watchdog”.

But he also said the agency’s role in nuclear safety and standards might need to be re-examined.

“Lessons will need to be learned and the IAEA is where that discussion should take place. A thorough review of the accident will be necessary, in which peer review will have an important role to play,” Amano said.

Nuclear still ‘important’ energy option

The IAEA has faced criticism for failing to provide fast information at the beginning of the crisis to both its member states and the public. The agency had said it was reliant on the information given to it by Japan.

Amano, whose agency draws up safety standards and recommendations but cannot enforce them, blamed the media for misinterpreting the IAEA’s role in nuclear safety, and said these “misunderstandings” had fuelled criticism of its handling of the crisis.

But he acknowledged changes were needed.

“The current international emergency response framework needs to be reassessed. It was designed largely in the wake of the Chernobyl disaster in 1986, before the information revolution,” he said.

In Japan, engineers managed to rig power cables to all six reactors at the Fukushima complex, and started a water pump at one of them to reverse the overheating that has triggered the world’s worst nuclear crisis in 25 years.

Some workers were later evacuated from one of the most badly damaged reactors when gray smoke rose from the site. There was no immediate explanation for the smoke, but authorities had said earlier that pressure was building up at the No. 3 reactor.

The amount of smoke later receded and Japan’s nuclear safety agency said there was no significant change in radiation levels at the site.

Amano said some countries were reviewing their nuclear energy plants after Japan’s nuclear crisis. But, he said, “nuclear power will remain an important and viable option for many countries as a stable and clean source of energy”.

Some Gaddafi forces pulling back, says US official

Spanish ground crew work on an F-18 jet fighter plane at the Nato air base of Decimomannu, in the southern Italian island of Sardinia, March 20, 2011. Nato ambassadors on Sunday approved an operations plan for the alliance to help enforce a UN arms embargo on Libya, a Nato statement said.

Forces loyal to Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi “pulled back” from the rebel stronghold of Benghazi and two other towns after UN-authorised airstrikes, a US national security official said today.

The official, who declined to be identified, said advances by Gaddafi’s forces against Benghazi, Ajdabiya and Misrata had “stalled” as a consequence of the military action by US and European forces that began on Saturday.

But he said Gaddafi’s forces remained active and the United States did not believe the Libyan leader was fulfilling promises to implement a ceasefire.