AL JAZEERA

As efforts to forcibly remove Ivory Coast president Laurent Gbagbo have been launched, Ibrahim Coulibaly, a spokesman for the Ivory Coast embassy in France has re-asserted that no French forces were involved in the assault.

Soldiers loyal to Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi have again taken the key oil port of Brega, driving away rebel forces 20 kilometers away to Ajdabiya under a heavy bombardment of rocket and artillery fire.

Libya’s government said it is willing to consider reform, but remained adamant that Moammar Gaddafi must remain in power in order to prevent chaos in the country, as witnessed in Iraq and Somalia.

At least a dozen anti-regime protesters have been killed and thirty wounded in the town of Taiz in Southern Yemen by snipers firing from rooftops, according to a media as cited by Al Jazeera.

Libya is reaching out to Greece in order to seek a resolution to the crisis that is dragging on and has already killed thousands of people.

Rebel forces in eastern Libya have received covert military training from US and Egyptian special forces, according to a report in Al Jazeera.

One day after a dozen people were killed in Mazar-i-Sharif in Afghanistan in a protest related to the burning of a Quran by a U.S. pastor, eight more people died in Kandahar in a similar protest.

The Libyan government adamantly rejected a ceasefire proposal from rebel groups in the eastern part of the war-torn country.

At least eight United Nations staff-members and four protesters have been killed during protests in Afghanistan related to a purported burning of a Holy Quran, according to Afghan officials.

Thousands of Egyptians gathered at Tahrir Square in Cairo to demand that former President Hosni Mubarak and some of his associates be put on trial.

Anti-government protests have broken out across Syria, a day after President Bashar Al-Assad announced he would form committees to study lifting emergency laws and to investigate the deaths of demonstrators in prior rallies during the current unrest.

Libyan rebels have reportedly offered terms of a ceasefire if Moammar Gaddafi withdraws his soldiers from opposition-controlled cities and subsequently permits peaceful protests against the regime, according to a report in Al Jazeera.

As expected, tens of thousands of Yemenis have gathered in the capital city of Sanaa to express their antipathy to the regime of the President Ali Abdullah Saleh, continuing weeks of a protest campaign.

Anti-government groups in Syria are planning massive rallies across the nation Friday, one day after the Bashar al-Assad’s regime said it would begin a process to lift emergence laws, one of the key demands of the opposition.

On the heels of the defection of former foreign minister Moussa Koussa, more high-level associated of Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi have apparently abandoned him, according to a report in Al Jazeera.

Bahrain has stepped up its crackdown on anti-government protesters (almost all of whom are (Shia Muslims) by arresting at least 300 activists in one massive sweep, thereby sending untold others into hiding. Those detained included a prominent blogger, Mahmood al-Yousif.

The Syrian government will establish a judicial committee that will consider the removal of its emergency laws, according to the state news agency.

Amidst reports that the Libyan foreign minister has defected to the west, soldiers loyal to Moammar Gaddafi have recaptured the strategic oil city of Ras Lanuf from rebel factions.

A prominent Shia opposition figure in Bahrain has demanded that Saudi Arabian-dominated foreign troops who were invited by the ruling family to quell disorder leave the kingdom immediately.

In his first public address to the Syrian nation since unrest broke out two weeks ago, President Bashar al-Assad blamed “conspirators” for the ongoing violence and vowed that he would defeat the “plot” against his country.

The president of Syria, Bashar al-Assad, is expected to deliver a TV address to the nation for the first time since anti-regime protests erupted more than two weeks ago.