LA Times News

LA Times News

As Libya war widens, Obama stays in background

Posted: 19 Mar 2011 08:10 PM PDT

Barack Obama goes out of his way to imply that the U.S. is taking a supporting role in the whole affair, even as it directs events and launches missiles on the North African nation.

This is not the way American presidents go to war. The opening act is supposed to feature the president sitting solemnly in the Oval Office, explaining the reasons, laying out the goals, talking tough.

One family's ordeal through Japan's procession of calamities

Posted: 19 Mar 2011 07:58 PM PDT

Kazuhisa Takeuchi was badly shaken, but unhurt, when the massive quake hit. Over the coming days, however, his family would be touched by the temblor and by the tsunami and nuclear crisis that would follow.

Kazuhisa Takeuchi was taking advantage of a rare moment of calm between the afternoon and evening shifts at his Sendai dialysis clinic, chatting on the telephone with a colleague about a patient, when he felt himself lifted from his chair by a force immediately recognizable to anybody who grew up in this part of Japan.

Haitian double amputee returns from Israel with new legs

Posted: 19 Mar 2011 07:33 PM PDT

After Sounlove Zamor lost her limbs in last year's quake, an L.A. group arranged for her to get prosthetics. She's grateful to be walking well, but in her impoverished homeland, she feels there is nowhere to go.

She can climb stairs and hike blocks to a bus stop. The beat-up wheelchair is gone.

Moammar Kadafi's thinning human shield

Posted: 19 Mar 2011 04:32 PM PDT

'We never get scared,' says one of the supporters in Tripoli speaking of allegiance to Libya's leader in the face of international threats. And then the rumors start.

It was to be a human shield, a massive gathering of Moammar Kadafi's supporters at his Bab Azizia compound, and the Libyan leader was to give a late-night speech of defiance against the international forces arrayed against him.

As France takes the reins on Libya, Sarkozy triumphs

Posted: 19 Mar 2011 03:56 PM PDT

The French president, in need of a political boost, called world leaders to an emergency war council in Paris to agree on military action against Moammar Kadafi in Libya, then his planes struck.

With his popularity at a record low and facing an election next year, French President Nicolas Sarkozy was in desperate need of a boost to his political stature.

Tokyo sees steady exodus amid nuclear crisis

Posted: 19 Mar 2011 03:24 PM PDT

With radiation still leaking from the Fukushima plant, more Tokyoites, especially foreign residents, are heading for southern Japan or leaving the country.

Marco Gutierrez was taking no chances. With radiation still leaking this weekend from the damaged Fukushima nuclear plant 150 miles away, the Tokyo resident joined the legions of foreigners — and a growing number of Japanese — fleeing the world's most populated city.

Japan firefighters wrap up water-spraying operation at nuclear plant

Posted: 19 Mar 2011 02:59 PM PDT

Crews use seawater in a 13-hour operation aimed at cooling a spent fuel rod pool at the Fukushima Daiichi plant's No. 3 reactor.

Firefighters ended a 13-hour operation in which they shot water at a spent fuel rod pool at Japan's crisis-ridden nuclear plant early Sunday.

Hamas fires mortars at southern Israel

Posted: 19 Mar 2011 02:54 PM PDT

The militant group that rules the Gaza Strip acknowledges firing dozens of shells into Israel, the first time it has done so since the Israeli assault on the territory two years ago. Israel responds with tank fire. Two Israelis and five Palestinians are wounded.

The Islamist militant group Hamas said Saturday it had resumed mortar attacks against southern Israel for the first time in more than two years, as tensions escalated between Israel and the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.

Egyptians cast votes on constitutional amendments

Posted: 19 Mar 2011 02:54 PM PDT

With independent election monitors and 36,000 extra security personnel at the polls, Egyptians vote on amendments that could pave the way for parliamentary and presidential elections.

They waited for hours in long lines, but they weren't impatient. They knew that when they emerged from polling stations and proudly waved fingers stained with pink ink, they would have freely expressed their will at the ballot box — at last.

U.S. takes lead in Libyan airstrikes

Posted: 19 Mar 2011 02:15 PM PDT

Even as President Obama sought to assure Americans that the U.S. would only play a supporting role, the U.S. took the lead in the initial assault in an effort to cripple the Kadafi regime's air defenses along the coast.

WASHINGTON -- Even as President Obama assured a war-weary public that American forces would play only a supporting role in a no-fly zone over Libya, there was no avoiding a prominent opening assignment: Only the United States had the resources to degrade Moammar Kadafi's air defenses, a key to seizing control of Libyan airspace.

Sarkozy announces action against Kadafi; international force flies missions over Libya

Posted: 19 Mar 2011 11:21 AM PDT

French President Nicolas Sarkozy, speaking after an emergency summit of world powers in Paris, announces 'our planes are stopping attacks' on Benghazi and that France and its partner nations are determined to stop Moammar Kadafi's 'killing frenzy.' Sarkozy says the summit agreed to demand and enforce an 'immediate cease-fire' in Libya.

Breaking news update: U.S. launches missile strike on Libyan air defenses, Pentagon says. --AP (12:29 p.m.)

Workers at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi plant exposed to radiation above previous limit

Posted: 19 Mar 2011 09:34 AM PDT

Six workers at the nuclear power plant have been exposed to radiation beyond the previous limit for an emergency operation, Tokyo Electric Power Co. says. The power company says the workers have shown no symptoms from exposure.

Six workers at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant have been exposed to radiation beyond the previous limit for an emergency operation, Tokyo Electric Power Co. said Saturday.

Electric power partially restored at Japan nuclear plant

Posted: 19 Mar 2011 02:59 PM PDT

Engineers restore power to cooling pumps at two of the buildings at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, but not to the most troublesome reactors yet. Meanwhile, manual spraying of seawater seems to be reducing radiation levels.

Working overnight into Sunday, engineers have successfully restored power to cooling pumps in two reactors at the disabled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, the first genuinely hopeful sign in the week-long battle to prevent a full-scale meltdown at any of the six reactors at the site.

World leaders launch military action in Libya

Posted: 19 Mar 2011 09:18 AM PDT

French President Nicolas Sarkozy said after an emergency summit in Paris that French jets were already targeting Kadafi's forces.

French warplanes swooped over the heart of Libya's uprising on Saturday as top officials from the United States, Europe and the Arab world launched a risky military operation to protect civilians from attacks by Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi's forces.

Defiant Kadafi resolves to defend Libya

Posted: 19 Mar 2011 08:10 AM PDT

The dictator tells world leaders not to interfere with what he calls a fight against Al Qaeda. Over Benghazi, a warplane is shot down.

Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi said he was "prepared to die" to defend his nation and warned the international community to stay out of his country's' internal affairs in a pair of letters sent to President Obama and other world leaders Saturday.

Egypt to vote on constitutional amendments

Posted: 19 Mar 2011 12:20 AM PDT

Egypt's first fully free vote in decades Saturday is to decide whether to accept the ruling military council's proposed democratic reforms. The vote features a bloc of eight constitutional amendments.

Egyptians will head to the polls for their country's first fully free balloting in decades Saturday, charged with deciding whether to accept the ruling military council's proposed democratic reforms.

Bahrain funeral turns into defiant protest

Posted: 19 Mar 2011 12:01 AM PDT

Defying a ban and violent crackdown, Shiite Muslim mourners at a funeral for a man killed by state security turn it into a protest against Bahrain's Sunni Muslim royal family.

Days after the Bahraini government banned demonstrations by opponents, about 2,000 residents of the mostly Shiite Muslim village of Sitra turned a funeral into the first protest under a new three-month state of emergency, a show of deepening resistance against the regime.

Obama's Latin America trip raises eyebrows

Posted: 19 Mar 2011 12:01 AM PDT

White House officials find themselves on the defensive about the five-day, three-nation trip amid Japan's nuclear crisis and possible Western military action in Libya.

There may be no good time for a busy president to leave the country, but President Obama arrives Saturday in Brazil for a five-day, three-nation swing that comes as jittery Americans brace for a military showdown in Libya and clouds of radioactivity waft eastward from Japan.

Japan still struggling to restore power to cool down reactors

Posted: 18 Mar 2011 10:01 PM PDT

In Fukushima, earthquake survivors and rescue workers observe a moment of silence to mark the week since the temblor and tsunami. The death toll tops 7,000, surpassing that of the 1995 Kobe quake.

Fighting exhaustion and radiation fears, engineers struggled anew Saturday to complete the crucial task of hooking a crippled nuclear plant to the electricity grid to help cool down damaged reactors. The official count of dead and missing in the quake and tsunami soared above 18,000, making this Japan's worst disaster since World War II.

On West Coast of U.S., much ado about very little radiation, so far

Posted: 18 Mar 2011 09:23 PM PDT

U.S. scientists and sensors are poised to detect radioactive fallout from Japan's nuclear accident, but aside from a 'miniscule' amount at a Sacramento station, they've found none.

Sensors in the United States stood ready Friday to detect any trace of radioactive material blowing across the Pacific from Japan's stricken Fukushima nuclear plant, 5,000 miles away.