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The mercurial & eccentric LIBYAN strongman
World hails Gaddafi’s death as end of despotism, war
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Pilot blown away from stairs of his plane by passing jet
It’s a baby girl for Bruni, French Prez Sarkozy
 French President Nicolas Sarkozy has become a father for the fourth time after his wife Carla Bruni gave birth to a baby girl on Wednesday.
Proud papa Sarkozy, the first French president to have a baby while in office, today said he and wife Carla Bruni-Sarkozy feel "a very profound happiness" over the birth of their first child and added that mother and daughter are doing "very well."
The proud parents: France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy and his wife Carla Bruni-Sarkozy. — File photo Dawood aide Mirchi
released on bail
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The mercurial & eccentric LIBYAN strongman For four decades, the willful, mercurial figure of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi ruled Libya with an iron grip while remaining a persistent thorn in the side of the West. Branded "mad dog" by Ronald Reagan, the outlandish antics, flamboyant dress and bombastic pronouncements of the self-styled "Brother Leader" made him a figure of ridicule at times. During his travels abroad, a blonde Ukrainian nurse accompanied him and he insisted on staying in his Bedouin tent, protected by his team of glamorous female bodyguards. When he was interviewed by the BBC's John Simpson, he noisily broke wind throughout their encounter. But he has also been associated with some of the most notorious terror acts of the pre-9/11 era. He shipped arms to the IRA during the troubles in Northern Ireland and his regime took responsibility for the Lockerbie bombing. At home in Libya, he ruthlessly crushed dissent against his autocratic rule while his agents hunted down and killed opponents abroad. When his people — inspired by the Arab Spring — finally rose up against him earlier this year, he responded with a characteristic mixture of bluster and brutality calling for the "devils" to be cleansed. But for all the outrage over his flouting of international norms, he was also seen by diplomats as a wily political operator, proving to be one of the great survivors in a turbulent region. Through assassination attempts, sanctions and US air strikes, he doggedly clung to power. Born in the desert in 1942, 27-year-old Gaddafi became the leader of a small group of junior army officers who in September 1969 staged a bloodless coup, overthrowing King Idris while he was abroad for medical treatment. Fiercely anti-western and inspired by Egypt's President Nasser, he governed according to his unique political philosophy — set out in his Green Book — based on a combination of socialism and Arab nationalism. He quickly showed he would brook no dissent to his idiosyncratic rule, reportedly having students who marched against his regime publicly hanged. In one of his most infamous atrocities, 1,200 prisoners were massacred in a Tripoli jail in 1996. Abroad, his outspoken public support for a range of terrorist organisations, including the IRA and the Palestine Liberation Organisation, attracted growing international criticism and concern. The increasingly erratic nature of his regime was underlined in 1984 when diplomats at the Libyan embassy in London opened fire on a demonstration outside, killing Yvonne Fletcher. In 1986, the bombing by Libyan agents of a Berlin nightclub, in which two off-duty American servicemen died, prompted President Reagan to launch air strikes on Tripoli and Benghazi. Gaddafi's adopted daughter was among 35 Libyans killed. Two years later, on December 21 1988, came the most notorious incident of all — the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over the Scottish village of Lockerbie, killing 270. The attack prompted global outrage. For years Gaddafi denied any involvement, leading to UN sanctions and international pariah status for his regime. He finally began to emerge from the cold when South African president Nelson Mandela helped to broker a deal which saw two Libyan intelligence officers handed over in 1999 to stand trial before a Scottish court. In 2003, after one of the men had been convicted, the Libyan government wrote to the UNSC formally accepting responsibility for the actions of its officials in the attacks. Gaddafi's rehabilitation seemed complete when the same year, following the overthrow of Saddam Hussein by US and British forces, he admitted that Libya had an active weapons of mass destruction programme which he offered to dismantle. In 2004, Tony Blair travelled to Tripoli to welcome the West's new ally in the so-called "War on Terror". Despite his newfound respectability, Gaddafi soon showed he had lost none of his capacity to outrage. There was fury in the UK and US in 2009 when the Lockerbie bomber was given a hero's welcome in Tripoli after his release from a Scottish prison on compassionate grounds. At his first appearance at the UN General Assembly, Gaddafi tore up a copy of the UN charter, likened the Security Council to Al-Qaida, and demanded $7.7 trillion in compensation to Africa from its former colonial rulers. During an official visit to Italy, he courted further controversy when he paid a modelling agency to find 200 young Italian women to attend a lecture he gave urging them to convert to Islam. When his own people rose against him and he responded with brutal repression, any lingering international approbation swiftly vanished. His isolation was complete. Gaddafi came to power
in a bloodless coup against King Idris in 1969 when he was
a 27-year-old army captain Born in a desert near Sirte in
1942, he was the longest-serving leader in the African and Arab
world He was known for his flamboyant dressing style and
gun-toting female bodyguards as much as for his iron clasp over the
country His relationship with the world saw some dark phases.
Former US president Ronald Reagan had called him a “ mad dog” (By arrangement with
The Independent)
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World hails Gaddafi’s death as end of
Rome, October 20 As Libyans on the streets of Tripoli and Sirte fired automatic weapons into the air and danced for joy, the death of the man who had ruled the oil-rich north African nation for 42 years was widely welcomed. British Prime Minister David Cameron said Gaddafi death was an occasion to remember his victims, while hailing it as a chance for a "democratic future" for Libya. "I think today is a day to remember all of Colonel Gaddafi's victims" including those who died in the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am jet over the Scottish town of Lockerbie, Cameron said in a statement outside his office. French President Nicolas Sarkozy hailed the death of Gaddafi as a major step forward for the people of Libya and urged the country to pursue democratic reforms. "The disappearance of Muammar Gaddafi is a major step forward in the battle fought for more than eight months by the Libyan people to liberate themselves from the dictatorial and violent regime imposed on them for more than 40 years," Sarkozy said in Paris. In Rome, Libya's former colonial ruler, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said after the death of his onetime ally: "Now the war is over. Sic transit gloria mundi (Thus passes the glory of the world)," Berlusconi said, quoting a Latin tag. In Brussels, the European Union said Gaddafi's death "marks the end of an era of despotism". The news means an end also to the "repression from which the Libyan people have suffered for too long", EU president Herman Van Rompuy said.
— AFP
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Pilot blown away from stairs of his plane by passing jet Melbourne: A Virgin airliner pilot was blown away from the stairs of his plane by the engine thrust of a passing jumbo that was taxiing close by, in a freak accident at an Australian airport.
The pilot suffered a fractured arm and leg when the aluminum stairs were blown over by the force of the Qantas 747 jumbo's engine blast. He was going through pre-flight checks on a 737-passenger jet in Brisbane last week when the aluminum stairs he was standing on were blown over by the force of the Qantas plane's engine. The 747 had been taxiing to a runway and was awaiting clearance to take off when the incident occurred. "Our plane was in the right place at the right time," a spokeswoman of the Virgin airliner said. Experts are looking into how the Qantas jumbo came close enough to the Boeing 737 to blow over the stairs on which the First Officer was standing. — PTI
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It’s a baby girl for Bruni, French Prez Sarkozy Paris, October 20 Proud papa Sarkozy, the first French president to have a baby while in office, today said he and wife Carla Bruni-Sarkozy feel "a very profound happiness" over the birth of their first child and added that mother and daughter are doing "very well." He did not give the baby's name, in keeping with the couple's coyness throughout the pregnancy and labour. "We are lucky to have been blessed by a new arrival," Sarkozy told journalists on a visit to a recycling plant in Normandy. "All parents can understand the very profound happiness Carla and I feel, and at the same time everyone can understand that this happiness is all the more profound because it is private." Privacy was the guiding principle of the baby's hush-hush birth. Police officers posted outside the maternity clinic for the past weeks kept journalists at bay, and it was largely Sarkozy’s frequent visits on Wednesday that tipped off the news media. The tight control over news of the birth appears to be part of a strategy aimed at portraying Sarkozy as fully absorbed in resolving the problems gripping France and Europe. The debt crisis took priority over the baby yesterday, as Sarkozy jetted off to Frankfurt for a last-minute meeting with the German Chancellor while his wife was in labour. The girl is the French First Couple's first baby since their marriage in 2008, although Bruni has a 10-year-old son from a previous relationship and thrice-married Sarkozy has three aged 14 to 26. — Agencies
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Dawood aide Mirchi released on bail London, October 20 Mirchi (61), who is said to manage Dawood's drug business, is wanted by India in multiple cases of murder and extortion. Mirchi was granted bail by the Red Bridge Magistrate Court on Tuesday. He was released shortly after getting the bail. After his arrest from Romford in Essex on October 13, he was remanded in judicial custody till October 20. The Metropolitan police have charged him with threatening to kill his 41-year-old associate Nadeem Kader. According to reports, Kader had called off the marriage between his daughter and Mirchi's son. A higher court will hear the case on November 10. Mirchi escaped from Mumbai in the early 1990s and has been on the run since then. — PTI
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Muammar Gaddafi ruled Libya with an iron grip while remaining a persistent thorn in the side of the West.
Branded "mad dog" by Ronald Reagan, the outlandish antics, flamboyant dress and bombastic pronouncements of the self-styled "Brother Leader" made him a figure of ridicule at times. During his travels abroad, a blonde Ukrainian nurse accompanied him and he insisted on staying in his Bedouin tent, protected by his team of glamorous female bodyguards. 
