TUNISIA

Libyan rebels seized an oil refinery in Zawiyah Thursday and took control of Sabratha further west on the main highway from Tripoli to Tunisia as NATO aircraft struck targets in the capital.

Rebels to the west and east of Tripoli battled Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi's forces Wednesday night for control of oil facilities vital to the civil war's outcome. The United States also deployed two more Predator drones for surveillance operations.

Libyan rebels launched an assault on Zawiyah's oil refinery on Wednesday to drive the last of the forces loyal to Muammar Gaddafi out of the city west of Tripoli and tighten their noose around the capital.

Benghazi Council Says Dictator's Departure Is Only Option

Forces loyal to Muammar Gaddafi fired a Scud missile for the first time in Libya's civil war, a U.S. defense official said, after rebel advances left the Libyan leader isolated in his capital.

Libyan rebels said on Monday they had seized a second strategic town near Tripoli within 24 hours, completing the encirclement of the capital in the boldest advances of their six-month-old uprising against Muammar Gaddafi.

For 12 hours, Libyan rebel Ahmed Oraybee had been moving from one building to the next in the town of Zawiyah, trying to hunt down the pro-government snipers stalking its neighbourhoods.

Muammar Gaddafi urged Libyans Monday to free the country from "traitors," as rebels in the west began to strangle a major lifeline to his capital.

Libyan regime denies talking to insurgents about dictator's departure.

"Just Like a Woman," a movie starring Sienna Miller, is the first in Oscar-nominated director Rachid Bouchareb's planned trilogy about the changing relationship between Americans and the Arab world.

Rebels on the eastern front of Libya's civil war lost 11 men in the past 24 hours fighting to capture the strategic oil terminal and refinery at Brega on the Mediterranean coast, hospital sources said.

Syrian forces killed at least 30 people and moved into a town near the Turkish border on Tuesday, an activist group said, even as Turkey's foreign minister pressed President Bashar al-Assad to halt assaults on protests against his rule.

Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan has an unspoken pact with the Turkish electorate: he delivers rapid economic growth, jobs and money, and voters let him shape what kind of democracy this Muslim nation of 74 million people becomes.

The images of former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak attending court proceedings lying down on a hospital stretcher, placed inside a meshed cage full of defendants, complete the story of mighty backlash. The court proceedings were televised live across the world, adding insult to his injury. But the majority of Egyptians are reckoning that Mubarak, who ruled the country with an iron fist, has got his comeuppance.

Epidemics of HIV are emerging among gay and bisexual men in the Middle East and North Africa and high levels of risky sexual behavior threaten to spread the AIDS virus further in the region, researchers said Tuesday.

Forces loyal to Libya's Muammar Gaddafi killed seven rebels in a counter-attack in a key town on Tuesday, hospital sources said as the leader's camp vowed to push on with a war to crush a five-month uprising.

Forces loyal to Libya's Muammar Gaddafi killed seven rebels in a counter-attack in a key town on Tuesday, hospital sources said as the leader's camp vowed to push on with a war to crush a five-month uprising.

North Africans are flocking to Italy and Europe in large numbers, testing the continents infrastructure.

Eman al-Obaidy, an alleged rape victim from Libya who fled the country and is currently staying in the U.S., remained tight-lipped though she publicly accused Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi's forces of gang-raping her in March.

Overthrow of dictator in Egypt is an example of the phenomenon

Grain prices will likely remain elevated at the end of this year, a Reuters poll showed, providing little relief to food prices while continuing to challenge policymakers battling to tamp down inflation.