LIBYA: Gaddafi's forces attacked the port of Misrata

AFP - The forces pro-Gaddafi on Tuesday bombed Libyan port of Misrata, but the rebellion has ensured that the Libyan leader was entering a "lost battle" and French President Nicolas Sarkozy said he was "optimistic" about the after the conflict.

Around 13:30 local time (1130 GMT), a dozen bullets hit the port 12 km east of Misrata, only link with the outside world for this great coastal city 200 km east of Tripoli with the pro Gaddafi-cut all access roads, according to an AFP photographer.

A ship of the International Organization for Migration (IOM), came to continue the evacuation of thousands of Africans stranded in the harbor, had to move away for safety.

"Many refugees were injured by the bombing. There may be dead," said Dr. Khalid Abu Falra in the main city hospital. On Monday, Washington had estimated that 2,000 African migrants were still waiting on the port.

According to the rebels, "a score of vehicles" government forces approached the port around 15:30 local.

NATO planes flew over the city, where explosions were also heard apart after a lull of 24 hours. According to journalists in the port, they have conducted at least one hit.

Misrata has experienced in recent days of heavy fighting in which rebel soldiers have pushed the pro-Qaddafi on the outskirts of the city.Rockets and artillery shells rained down on the city, seemingly at random.

The explosions and fighting have left dozens dead and hundreds wounded since Friday. According to the Red Crescent Misrata, the conflict has claimed about 1,500 dead, residents and rebels since the uprising in the city on February 19.

"Misrata is the key to Tripoli. If (Gaddafi) abandons Misrata, he will leave Tripoli.He is not crazy enough to do that ", warned Monday the military spokesman Transitional National Council (TNC) in opposition to Benghazi (east), Colonel Ahmed Omar Bani.

But Colonel Gaddafi has embarked on a "lost battle" because the rebels are more numerous, "better equipped, trained and organized, and more determined than ever," said Tuesday another spokesman for the CNT, Jalal al -Gallali.

"Combined with the greater efficiency of NATO, this makes for (Gaddafi), it will be increasingly hard, if not impossible to win," he added.

"In Libya, we are optimistic because the Libyan opposition demonstrated great courage and great skill," saidSarkozy at a press conference in Rome with Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.

While saying that "the struggle" of the insurgents was conducted "each day more efficiently," he refused to make any estimate on the duration of the conflict.

In the West, 30,000 Libyans fled the Mountain region, on the border with Tunisia, said the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), noting that according to the latest arrivals, the border towns of Nalout Wazin and were almost deserted.

In total, more than 600,000 people have fled violence in Libya since mid-February.

In Tripoli, the target of raids since Friday NATO's intensive, five explosions rocked Monday night east of the capital, according to witnesses who were not able to specify the sites covered.

On the night of Sunday to Monday, on President Muammar Gaddafi, in his huge residence located in Tripoli, had been totally destroyed by NATO airstrikes. The raid left three dead and 45 wounded, according to the spokesman of the regime, Ibrahim Moussa.

NATO said Tuesday he had not sought to target the Libyan leader, noting that his mission was to protect civilians, not to impose a regime change.

Libyan television showed footage of Mr Gaddafi, who seem to have been filmed on Monday.Seemingly relaxed, he receives dignitaries of the regime in his tent at his residence.

In Moscow, Russia warned that it would not support any new resolution to the Security Council of UN on Libya calling for an increase of "foreign interference".

In Addis Ababa, the African Union is still trying to find a solution to the conflict, receiving representatives from both sides for a cease-fire. The rebels, however, require the departure of Mr Gaddafi prior to any negotiated solution.

The Italian Foreign Ministry said Tuesday that the next meeting of the Contact Group to lead the political aspects of international intervention in Libya to be held May 5 in Rome.

FRANCE - TUNISIA: "I just dreamed of a better life ..."

"I thought I'd be greeted as a hero," Moez admits, lowering his eyes. Disillusionment could not be greater. This 39 year old Tunisian has participated in the revolution that led to the downfall of Ben Ali on January 14 last. But when he arrived in France in early April, "in the country of the revolution of 1789" is the customs that had welcomed him.

Moez is from Gabes, a coastal city in central Tunisia. Long-term unemployed despite his State diploma Technician clothing, Tunisian revolution has restored the desire to dream. He dreams of Europe, the job he could find, the money he could send to his mother, a widow and retired. He dreams of dignity.And he knows that Tunisia will take years to recover from 23 years of dictatorship.

The wind in its sails

In mid-March, so he left Gabes to the nearby city of Zarzis, where he boarded a small fishing boat for the modest sum of 1,500 dinars, or about 800 euros, saved penny by penny for the whole family . Direction the Italian island of Lampedusa.

"We worked 24-hour crossing. There were people weeping, others vomited. With the weight of passengers, the boat sank in the sea and there was water up to their knees" says he.

The 87 passengers on the makeshift boat arrived safely at Lampedusa. Moez believes in his lucky star. "I am a lucky man," continues he repeated.His face is soft and toothless smile.

In Lampedusa, he is greeted by the Border Police who leads straight into a detention center. A week to wait. A week to sleep in the courtyard on the ground without a blanket, no mattress, before being transferred to Cretonne in central Italy.

Moez but the wind in its sails. He escapes and hits the road: a train to Ventimiglia, the French-Italian border, twenty miles on foot to Menton, France. Then up through France Charleville-Mezieres, where authorities arrested him at the station. Police station, photos, fingerprints ... Moez has seven days to leave the territory.It will not wait so much.

After two days, the police come for him at 7 o'clock in the morning at the friend who hosts it. Three cars and eight police officers were mobilized for the occasion.

"All this for me chuckle there before rebelling, I'm certainly not a terrorist! The police stopped us because of our face, our skin color. But we are not thieves . Take the boat, it's dangerous, it is suicide. It's like Bouazizi Sidi Bouzid.But we do it because we dream of a better life not to steal the bread from the French. "

"Europe must react"

After passing through the detention center (ARC) from Roissy, it is returned to where he received his Ventimiglia sesame after one week: a temporary residence for six months.

His papers in his pocket, he tried again through France.But he did not need a week before being stopped and checked by police.

"Moez beats the record of arrests because he has a mouth of an Arab!" summarizes passionately Samia Maktouf, lawyer Franco-Tunisian volunteer at the Paris Bar, who is fighting to get him a work permit.

"Europe should react and stop doing the ping-pong between France and Italy. It is contrary to the spirit of the Schengen agreement not to allow refugees to move freely. We must take steps to the height of the humanitarian tragedy, "continued the lawyer who took over the back of a twenty Tunisians.

An appeal is likely to remain a dead letter.After the tension between Rome and Paris in recent weeks following the influx of immigrants Tunisian and Libyan, via Italy, France expressed its support for strengthening the provision of temporary suspension of the free movement of Schengen.

"I am a lucky man ..."

For a week, Moez open the walls and just hide all day in the office of his lawyer, legal as well as moral support. And if Samia Maktouf short courts, prefectures and departments to plead his cause, yet it is in the privacy of the office that the solutions are.

Thanks to a Tunisian businessman, Customer Master Maktouf, passing through Paris on that day, Moez spring the firm with a job offer in hand. The interim.Just enough time to recover and return home with dignity. The shining eyes, he whispers quietly: "I am a lucky man ..."

COTE D'IVOIRE: Laurent Gbagbo continues to negotiate his departure

Ivorian President Laurent Gbagbo out Tuesday still refused to concede defeat despite the collapse of his regime and demand a cease-fire of his army, reeling from strikes in France and the United Nations before the advancing forces Alassane Ouattara.

While France and the United Nations require him to sign a document in which he relinquished power and recognizes his rival as president, he warned that he was not concerned.

"I do not recognize the victory of Ouattara.Why do you want me to sign it? "He said Tuesday during an interview on French TV channel LCI.

After days of fighting with heavy weapons that have made "dozens of deaths" according to the UN in Abidjan, and a bloody post-election crisis of four months, the guns are virtually silent in the Ivorian city.

"There is a ceasefire but there is sporadic gunfire from youth groups who are not" fighting forces, said the UN mission ONUCI.

Some heavy weapons fire rang out in the Cocody district (north), which houses the presidential residence.

The people, the vast majority holed up at home, remained suspended on the announcement of the end of the era Gbagbo, while television TCI camp Ouattara broadcast excerpts from "The Downfall", a film about the last days of Adolph Hitler.

"Entrenched" according to the UN in a bunker in the basement of his residence, to which had converged in the morning fighters president recognized by the international community Alassane Ouattara Laurent Gbagbo insisted.

"I find it absolutely astounding that the life of a country hinges on a gamble of foreign capitals," he dropped.

"I go to worship and pray for the wisdom that lives in each other, so that we discuss," he said this fervent evangelical Christian.

"Whether we sit down and discuss it, but it does not sit, because it relies on foreign forces," he said.

"Me, I'm not a kamikaze, I love life. My voice is the voice of a martyr, I do not seek death, but if the death happens, it happens," he further explained.

There are currently "negotiations" about Laurent Gbagbo but "not yet reporting," said the French presidency told AFP. Same story on the side of the UN.

According to a source familiar with the matter, another stumbling block was the destination of M.Gbagbo: Does it remain on his land or the fierce nationalist will he forced into exile?

According to the French Prime Minister Francois Fillon, "two generals close" to Mr Gbagbo were currently "trying to negotiate terms of surrender."

President Barack Obama called the former strongman from Abidjan to "resign immediately", arguing "strongly" strikes the UN and France on Monday on its last strongholds.

The shelling on the heavy weapons of the pro-Gbagbo had precipitated the collapse of his regime after more than a decade of power and eight days in a lightning offensive of the pro-Ouattara, from the north.

Foreign Minister Mr.Gbagbo and among close relatives, Alcide Djedje played a key role in the epilogue in progress.

He went to the Ambassador of France, whose residence adjoins that of Mr. Gbagbo, to negotiate a cease-fire "on demand", he said, the incumbent.

The Chief of Staff of the army loyal to Mr. Gbagbo, General Philippe Mangou shortly thereafter told AFP that his forces had "asked the commanding general UNOCI a cease-fire.""We stopped the fighting," he added.

The former opponent of the "Father of the Nation" Felix Houphouet-Boigny, who became president in 2000 in a ballot already challenged, has never conceded defeat in the presidential election of November 28, 2010, a vote yet certified by the UN.He always refused to resign or go into exile.

But the fierce resistance of his troops in Abidjan, which were before the crisis about 5 million people, has plunged the city into chaos.

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has reported "dozens of deaths" in recent days of fighting with heavy weapons.

The humanitarian situation "has become absolutely dramatic in Abidjan," the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs United Nations.

The UN has estimated that "hundreds" the number of people who perished in massacres last week in Duekoue, in the West - the balance sheets show, according to sources, 330 to a thousand people - and revealed the existence of a mass grave containing 200 bodies.The forces pro-Ouattara have been particularly singled out.

The African Union condemned the "misuse" and "violations of human rights" and again called for "mandatory protection of the civilian population."

A controversy has finally broken out on strikes UN and France.

The chairman of the AU, the head of state of Equatorial Guinea Teodoro Obiang Nguema, has condemned Russia and said their study "legality".

Conversely, Nigeria has supported this commitment. For Senegal, another key ally of Mr. Ouattara, the intervention was responding to a request from West Africa.

GRAPHICS: The revolt in the Arab cause a spike in oil prices

The instability of the regimes in North Africa and the Middle East leading to higher oil prices with the global economy, still recovering from the financial crisis of 2008, is without.

In an attempt to limit the soaring prices, the chairman of the Federal Reserve Ben Bernanke is mounted to the front on Tuesday. In a speech to U.S. lawmakers, he tried to reassure the markets by saying that high oil prices will probably lead to no significant inflation.Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia, the world's biggest oil exporter, pledged to increase its crude production.

But that was not enough to counter rising oil prices, which have continued to rise in the markets. In two and a half months, the price of a barrel of crude has increased nearly $ 20.

Souces: db-markets.com; digitallook.com

17 décembre 2010 to 91.67 dollars (U.S.) - In a gesture of despair, the young unemployed Bouazizi Mohammed himself on fire in Tunisia, triggering a wave of protests against the ruling regime unprecedented in the country.The anger against the ruling regimes is rapidly spreading to neighboring countries.

14 janvier 2011 to 98.38 dollars (U.S.) - Tunisian President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali fled the country.

25 janvier 2011 to 95.35 dollars (U.S.) - Thousands of demonstrators gathered in Tahrir Square, Cairo, call for the resignation of President Hosni Mubarak, in power for 30 years in Egypt.

11 février 2011 to 101.11 dollars (U.S.) - After two weeks of protest, the Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak stepped down under pressure from the street.

17 février 2011 to 104.01 dollars (U.S.) - In Bahrain, riot police violently dispersed demonstrators camp who had moved to the center of the capital, Manama.The same day, police opened fire against protesters in Yemen and Libya.

23 février 2011 to 110.34 dollars (U.S.) - Libya's second city, Benghazi, fell to the opposition.

KOREA: First contact between the two Koreas after months of high tensions

AFP - North Korea and South on Tuesday held their first talks since the deadly bombing in November of a South Island by forces that Pyongyang still had heightened tensions between the two warring brothers.

Hosted discussions in the "Peace House" in the village of Panmunjom in the middle of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), began at 10:00 am (0100 GMT) and continued in the afternoon, according to a carrier word of the South Korean Ministry of Defense.

The two colonels in charge of the debates have shaken hands before opening the discussion, according to photographs provided by the department.

These discussions are intended to prepare a formal high-level meeting, presumably between the two Defence Ministers, at a date yet to be determined.

This initial contact after months of high tensions in Seoul was to test the intentions of Pyongyang, which was launched in late 2010 in a charm offensive and had repeated desire to resume the dialogue.

"The two parties discussed the agenda and organization of an encounter at a high level," said Kim Min-Seol, spokesman for the Department of Defense. "The atmosphere was serious and there were no political discussions".

Mr.Kim recalled that prior to any substantive dialogue, Pyongyang must take "responsible action" after the recent attacks and refrain from conducting further hostilities.

The year 2010 was marked by two serious incidents, the sinking in March of a South Korean corvette in which 46 sailors were killed and the bombing in November of a South Korean island that killed two soldiers and two civilians.

The North's side rejects any liability in the sinking of the sloop despite the findings of an international investigation that put into question.The communist regime also claims that the bombing in November was speaking in response to South Korean laborers in the region.

"It is possible that these discussions will result in a freeze on all positions," said a military official was quoted by South Korean Yonhap news agency before the talks began.

"The two sides could hold a series of preliminary discussions," he added.

China, Pyongyang's only ally, and the United States, an ally of Seoul, have urged the two warring brothers to resume the discussion.

Beijing is pushing for a resumption of six-party talks on nuclear disarmament of North, but Washington insists that the North first discuss with the South.

In response to the bombing in November, South Korea has conducted a series of maneuvers.It also strengthened the defenses of the island referred to Yeonpyeong and four other islands border.

A military source quoted by Yonhap, Seoul also plans to strengthen its marine corps of 2,000 men to reinforce the defense of this sensitive area, the scene of other incidents in the past.

The army has also deployed new batteries of artillery, radar systems for detecting weapons and missiles capable of striking North Korean artillery hidden in underground shelters.

The South also plans to deploy missiles on board a destroyer of 4,500 tons, sailing in the disputed area of the Yellow Sea, according to a source quoted by Yonhap.

Barack Obama calls for innovation in his State of the Union

Two months after the resounding defeat of his party in midterm elections, Bush has urged people to mobilize for the prosperity of the country, in his traditional speech on the state of the Union. Addressing representatives of Congress, Barack Obama made the leap to innovation and investment in education and research. He also expressed hope that Republicans and Democrats work together.

For over an hour, he outlined his policy in 2011 and was applauded repeatedly. "This is a bet that Barack Obama overall has proposed to members of Congress, said on FRANCE 24 Marjorie Spangle, co-founder of the website" I love politics. "He called for innovation in both the economic sphere, creating jobs, and political matters, he calls on all parliamentarians to work together. "

If the Senate is still a Democratic majority, the House of Representatives is dominated by Republicans since the mid-term elections (November 2010). For the first time, representatives from both sides sat side by side on Capitol Hill in Washington, and wore a ribbon in honor of Gabrielle Giffords, a Democratic congresswoman injured in the shooting of Tucson. His seat remained empty."This tragedy reminds us that we are part of a whole, the American family, which goes beyond political parties," Obama said at the outset of his speech.

"Launch our Sputnik!"

While the country is now facing an unemployment rate of 9.4%, the U.S. president has spent most of his speech on the economy. "Yes, the world has changed. The rules have changed. And for many of us, this change has been difficult to manage.I heard the frustration of Americans who have seen their salaries shrink to a trickle and their jobs disappear. "

Barack Obama has especially highlighted the growing competition from India and China - now the largest research center in the world solar industry. "This should not discourage us," he said yet. The United States still the most prosperous economies. "

To meet these challenges and create jobs, Bush has advocated the use of innovation and investment in research, information technology, infrastructure and clean energy.By comparing current America to those of the Cold War, Barack Obama said that if the Soviet Union was capable of launching the satellite Sputnik into space in 1957, the United States had then been able to create new industries and millions of jobs. "Let's launch, we too, our Sputnik!" he said.

Barack Obama has stressed the importance of education, with emphasis on the responsibility of parents and teachers. He also asked Congress to eliminate subsidies for oil companies to invest more in the future of energy. "I do not know if you noticed, but the oil companies are doing well for themselves," he said."I challenge you," he added in 2035, 80% of our electricity will be produced by clean energy sources. "

To reduce the budget deficit of $ 400 billion in coming years, Barack Obama has proposed to freeze all spending "excessive" state over a period of five years. "Republicans continue to claim the reduction of public spending, said William Meyer, FRANCE 24's correspondent in Washington. But the magnitude of this decline will surely not be sufficient for them."

"A campaign speech"

"In his speech, Barack Obama spoke of the crisis, but not negatively," said Marjorie Paillon its side.He stressed how the U.S. would sublimate these expenses, to make investments for the future. "

Steven Ekovich, professor of political science at the American University of Paris FRANCE interrogated on 24 with his State of the Union is like "largely to a campaign speech," while the presidential election will be held in 2012 the United States.

In terms of international politics, finally, Barack Obama affirmed his country's solidarity with the Tunisians. The United States "support the democratic aspirations of all peoples," he said.

He also said the terrorist network Al Qaeda "had never been under greater pressure in Pakistan," since the attacks of Sept. 11.In Afghanistan, "thanks to our heroic troops, there is less of Afghans who are in the grip of insurgents," he said. The United States will work with a fifty countries to establish "a lasting partnership" with the Afghan government. As for American soldiers, they begin to reenter the United States in July, he added.