Libya: UN Experts Demand Release Of Woman DetaineeGENEVA (1 August 2022) – UN experts* today called for the immediate release of Iftikhar Boudra, a Libyan woman arrested in Benghazi four years ago, and demanded that authorities provide her with urgent medical treatment after she suffered various forms of violence during her detention. “We are gravely concerned about the sexual, physical and psychological violence to which Ms. Iftikhar Boudra has allegedly been subjected since her arrest,” the UN experts said. The reported cases of abuse and exploitation include inhuman conditions of detention, widespread torture, including sexual violence, and a critical lack of healthcare for detainees. Despite some progress, human rights abuses are rampant in Libya. UNSMIL has documented killings, enforced disappearances, sexual violence, including rape, arbitrary arrests and detentions, torture, attacks against activists and human rights defenders, and hate crimes.

Last Tuesday, Vuzix entered a distribution deal with Westbase.io to scale its smart glasses product availability for the UK and northern EU customers. Westbase is a proven industry distributor of extended reality (XR) products, including 4G, 5G, and internet of things (IoT) solutions. Customers in Scandinavia, Benelux, the UK, and Ireland will receive access to Vuzix products as part of Westbase’s XR investment goals. In May, the firm entered a significant deal with Automatic SAS, enabling it to exclusively build smart glasses with the world’s first fully integrated colour microLED display. In the same month, Vuzix introduced the integration of 28 new languages on its M-series of smart glasses.

At least 7 people died and more than 50 injured after a fuel truck exploded today in Bent Bayya, a town in southern Libya located between Sabha and Ubari, according to several reports from health officials. The incident took place during early morning hours when, according to eyewitnesses, a crowd of people gathered around a vehicle carrying a fuel container and began unloading fuel from it, before fire broke out. According to Sabha Medical Center, dozens of injured people were rushed into the facility, some of whom were in critical condition. The Libyan National Army (LNA) sent a military plane to transport the critically injured to Benghazi to receive treatment. In many cities citizens have to wait in long queues, sometimes for hours, to refuel their vehicles.

Credit: Molecular Biology and EvolutionThe oldest known seeds from a watermelon relative, dating back 6,000 years to the Neolithic period, were found during an archaeological dig in Libya. "These seeds were a riddle because they were thought to be the oldest true watermelon seeds," Chomicki said. They discovered that the oldest seeds came from a plant known as an egusi melon, a watermelon relative that is currently restricted to western Africa. "Both plant 'fossils' were C-14 dated and, as far as we know, are among the oldest plant genomes ever obtained," Renner said. "This study documents the use of the seeds (rather than the fruit) of a watermelon relative more than 6,000 years ago, prior to the domestication of the watermelon."

At least six people were killed and dozens injured on Monday when a fuel truck exploded in southwestern Libya, medics said. An official at the main hospital in Sebha, southern Libya’s main city, told AFP six people had died. The hospital’s management said on Facebook that “more than 50 wounded were admitted to Sebha hospital”, without indicating the number of deaths. “We have ordered a crisis cell to urgently transfer the wounded to major hospitals,” he said. Libya has Africa’s largest proven oil reserves, but chronic corruption and theft for smuggling to neighbouring countries means that the pumps often run dry.

CAIRO – 1 August 2022: The Serbian embassy in Cairo announced that the agreement on exempting Egyptian tourists from visa had gone into effect on July 30 and that it would last until September 30. However, it is limited to Egyptian tourists travelling in groups, and having a clear itinerary reserved by a travel agency. For his part, Sisi, who was visiting Belgrade for the first time, welcomed cooperation in the fields of the military, economic, trade, and tourism. A joint committee that studies opportunities for economic and scientific cooperation, as well as trading agricultural goods and IT expertise. He also praised buildings communication bridges between African and Arab states on the one hand and European states on the other.

Comment on this story Comment Gift Article ShareCAIRO — A fuel tanker truck caught fire and exploded Monday in central Libya, killing at least five people and injuring 50 others, authorities said. The incident took place in the central town of Bent Bayya, according to the Health Ministry in the capital of Tripoli. The state-run Libyan News agency said the tanker truck overturned before catching fire and exploding. The state-run medical center in the nearby city of Sabha received at least 50 injured people, Halima al-Mahri, a spokeswoman for the center. She urged authorities to help evacuate the injured to the capital of Tripoli for treatment.

TRIPOLI : At least five people were killed and 50 injured late on Sunday when a fire broke out in a truck transporting diesel fuel to a town in southern Libya, medical and security sources told Reuters. The three medical sources said five bodies were found burned either inside or near vehicles, adding that the death toll was expected to rise as there were serious cases among the injured. "The truck was involved in a traffic accident and overturned," the security source said. The source said that after the truck overturned but before it set on fire some people from other cars had approached it to try and take fuel from the truck's tank. In many cities citizens have to wait in long queues, sometimes for hours, to refuel their vehicles.

The Special Advisor to the U.N. Secretary-General on Libya, Stephanie Williams, has appealed to the country’s rivals to agree to hold elections “within a firm constitutional framework”. As her tenure comes to an end, Williams released her last statement as U.N. Advisor on Libya in which she affirmed that her “top priority” was to “listen to the millions of Libyans who registered to vote to go to the ballot box to restore the legitimacy of the country’s institutions via national elections.”“I believe it is only with the establishment of a consensual constitutional framework which sets the milestones, the contract between the governed and those who govern them, and the guardrails for the end of the transitional period through national elections that the current political stalemate and recurrent executive crisis can be overcome,” she said. “I have endeavored to reach out to the broadest possible spectrum of interlocutors and representatives of Libya’s political, security and social domains to listen and understand their concerns, their vision for the future of their country and their ideas and suggestions to help Libya end the long period of transition that has beset the country since 2011,” explained the U.S. native. “I appreciate the commitment of the 5+5 Joint Military Commission, with whom I have had the pleasure to work for over two years, to maintain the October 2020 ceasefire agreement and to press ahead with plans to unify the military institutions and to arrange the departure of mercenaries and foreign forces who violate Libyan sovereignty,” she added. Nevertheless, the U.N. diplomat said that she remains concerned about several issues in Libya, including “efforts to politicize the National Oil Corporation (NOC)” and “many women who have been attacked, abused, illegally detained, disappeared and perished for their political ideas.”

Libyan medical sources reported that five people were killed and dozens injured as a result of the explosion of a fuel tanker in the municipality of “Bint Baya” in the city of Sabha, the capital of southern Libya, at dawn today, Monday. According to a press statement by the spokesman for the ambulance and emergency services, Osama Ali, a fire broke out as a result of a fuel tanker explosion, revealing the death of five people and the injury of about 35 people with varying burns. For his part, the spokesman for the Ministry of Health in Tripoli, Amin Al-Hashemi, said in a press statement that most of the burn cases are critical, and some of them will be transferred to Tripoli for treatment. In the same regard, Osama Ali confirmed that the ambulance branches in the south are heading to Sabha Hospital to transfer a number of cases to the Burns Hospital in Tripoli.

Libya's crude production has returned to 1.2 million b/d after the lifting of force majeure on oil fields and exports on July 15, state-owned National Oil Corp. said July 31, even as the OPEC member still grapples with political mayhem and armed clashes among rival factions. Libya's oil sector has been severely impacted by ongoing political turmoil, with various groups seeking control of NOC and its revenue. Crude production reached a two-year low of 650,000 b/d in June, according to the latest Platts survey of OPEC+ output by S&P Global Commodity Insights, against a capacity of 1.2 million b/d. The return of production to 1.2 million b/d comes amid armed clashes in Tripoli and other cities as the country grapples with having two governments. Given this current political mayhem and clashes in Libya, Platts Analytics forecast that oil production will reach 900,000 b/d in August and 1 million b/d in September.

Oil and Gas Minister Mohammed Aoun told AFP that he 'confirms' production has returned to that level. — Reuters picTRIPOLI, Aug 1 — Libya’s oil production has returned to the volume recorded before a months-long blockade that paralysed the economy, official sources said yesterday. “We are happy to announce that our production rates have reached the pre-force majeure levels” of 1.2 million barrels per day, Libya’s National Oil Corporation said on Twitter. Oil and Gas Minister Mohammed Aoun told AFP that he “confirms” production has returned to that level. Oil production fell to around 400,000 barrels of crude per day during the mid-April to mid-July blockade.

The shambles has also made justice elusive in Tarhuna, where leaders on both sides of Libya’s divide are implicated in the Kanis’ rise. “They don’t even see Libya.”The brothers left behind graves that hold hundreds of bodies, according to a United Nations panel that recently identified several new burial sites in Tarhuna. Libyan investigators said they had found nearly 250 bodies so far, and identified about 60 percent. Ms. el-Hebshi, the retired nursing school head, said her eldest son was kidnapped in 2011 for supporting the anti-Qaddafi rebels. No bodies were ever found, and she continues to hope against hope, she said, that they will turn up alive in some distant prison.

The U.N. Secretary-General’s Special Advisor on Libya, Stephanie Williams, has accused the country’s politicians of being a corrupt class who rather stay in power than leading Libya toward elections. “The current political class wants to keep transitional governments ongoing,” she said, adding that same class have “hijacked the political future of Libya.”The Libyan elections, originally scheduled for December last year, collapsed after the Government of National Unity, led by Abdul Hamid Dbeibeh, failed to organize the vote. Furthermore, Dbeibeh himself violated a pledge not to run for president which he made after being picked for premiership by the U.N.-backed Libyan Political Dialogue Forum. However, Williams notably did not take any responsibility for the failure of elections, which comes at a sharp contrast with her criticism of the Libyan political class since the latter was partially a product of the U.N.-sponsored political process that brought Dbeibeh to power in 15 February 2021. The rumours of bribery at the dialogue forum were rife at the time and have been common knowledge in Libya for two months prior to Dbeibeh’s appointment.

“The migration crisis requires a serious approach and cooperation between the two shores of the Mediterranean,” declared Italian Senator Marinella Pacifico as reported by her country’s AgenPress. Pacifico reportedly made her remarks following a recent meeting in Rome with spokesman for the Tripoli-based government, Mohammed Hamouda. “Common action is needed between countries of origin and transit of migratory flows because the emergency solutions adopted up to now have not given the desired results,” she said. “Closing ports can be a deterrent, but push-backs are just a patch that is turning out to be worse than the hole. The Libyan coast guard, albeit with its frailties, has shown great proof of saving lives at sea.”