Tripoli, Libya (CNN) — Explosions and anti-aircraft fire thundered in the skies above Tripoli early Sunday, but it was not clear whether they resulted from another round of cruise missile attacks by allies determined to stop Moammar Gadhafi‘s offensive against Libyan opposition forces.
CNN’s Nic Robertson witnessed the development a few hours after nearly 1,000 people gathered at Gadhafi’s palace in the capital. The crowd chanted, waved flags and shot off fireworks in support of the government.
A defiant Gadhafi said Libya will fight back against undeserved “naked aggression.” His military claimed nearly 50 people, including, women, children and clerics, were killed in Saturday evening’s attacks.
American, French and British military forces, convinced that Gadhafi was not adhering to a United Nations-mandated cease-fire, hammered Libyan military positions with missiles and fighter jets in the first phase of an operation that will include enforcement of a no-fly zone.
An eyewitness in Tripoli reported seeing signs of gunfire rising Sunday morning from the direction of nearby Mitiga Airport. The anti-Gadhafi activist said she heard “continuous gunshots” and at least two loud explosions. It was not clear if the airport was also being used as a military installation.
U.S.-led coalition forces have launched more than 100 Tomahawk missiles on key air defense sites across Libya as part of operations to protect the population from the forces of long-time leader Moammar Gadhafi.
U.S. Vice Admiral William Gortney outlined what is being called “Operation Odyssey Dawn” several hours after he said the missiles started hitting more than 20 Libyan sites.
“The United States military has and will continue to use our unique capabilities to create the conditions from which we and our partners can best enforce the full measure of the U.N. mandate. Our mission right now is to shape the battle space in such a way that our partners may take the lead in execution,” he said.
He said Admiral Sam Locklear was leading the operations from the USS Mount Whitney in the Mediterranean Sea.
Thanks to Qaddafi,US need not manufacture evidence, Qaddafi has provided it.
Go ahead,make another mess ,leave and leave Libyans sort out the mess if they can.
The Libyan leader Colonel Gaddafi has once again appeared on state TV, vowing to fight on. A series of blasts have reportedly rocked the Libyan capital as Colonel Gaddafi continues to hold on. Several towns near Tripoli are now in the hands of the opposition. Butwitnesses say one of them has come under air attack, and forces loyal to Gaddafi have retaken a nearby oil facility. Meanwhile, the US is flexing its military muscle, moving its naval forces closer to Libya, and triggering speculation of possible strikes. The UK’s also not ruling out the use of force. The international storm’s gathering over the Libyan leader, with the UN suspending the country from its Human Rights Council. It also calls for a mass humanitarian evacuation for people caught up in the crisis. As world pressure mounts, RT’s Laura Emmett reports on whether NATO’s ready for a new war.
Residents of Madoor village in Andhra Pradesh, India. Leaders in the state have accused microloan lenders of impoverishing customers.
Problem for micro financing falling into dire straits is due to
-Egged by Politicians who consider people as vote banks(a bane of Democracy), the borrowers do not repay.
and
the borrowers lend the money to others not covered by micro finance who can not repay.
As far as the first one is concerned ,even the select groups are hand-picked by politicians for political ends and the those who recommend sanctioning of the amount get a cut.
No body bothers as they know they need not repay, for their party is in power.Even if the opposition were to come back to power, they dare not collect from the defaulters for fear of losing votes.over a period of time those who pay also see the wisdom(?) of not repaying.
Groups as the Self Help Group in Tamil Nadu,India are being promoted vigorously with an eye on the election and in fact many benamis of those in power form a consortium by linking many groups and siphon off money.
The principle of making people depending on State with out working must end as also freebies by the Government.
This will play havoc with the Economy.
Story:
Microcredit was once extolled by world leaders like Bill Clinton andTony Blair as a powerful tool that could help eliminate poverty, through loans as small as $50 to cowherds, basket weavers and other poor people for starting or expanding businesses. But now microloans have met with political hostility in Bangladesh, India, Nicaragua and other developing countries.
In December, the prime minister of Bangladesh, Sheik Hasina Wazed— who had championed microloans alongside Mr. Clinton at talks in Washington in 1997, while Mr. Clinton was president — turned her back on them. She said microlenders were “sucking blood from the poor in the name of poverty alleviation,” and she ordered an investigation into Grameen Bank, which had pioneered microcredit and which, along with its founder, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006.
In India, until recently home to the world’s fastest-growing microcredit businesses, lending has slowed sharply since the state with the most microloans adopted a strict law restricting lending. In Nicaragua, Pakistan and Bolivia, activists and politicians have urged borrowers not to repay their loans.
The hostility toward microfinance is a sharp reversal from the praise and good will that politicians, social workers and bankers showered on the sector in the past decade. Philanthropists and investors poured billions of dollars into nonprofit and for-profit microlenders, which were considered vital players in achieving the United Nations’ ambitious Millennium Development Goals for 2015, which world leaders set in 2000. One of the goals was to reduce by half the number of people in extreme poverty.
The attention lavished on microcredit helped the sector reach more than 91 million customers, most of them women, with loans totaling more than $70 billion by the end of 2009. India and Bangladesh account for half of all borrowers.
But as with other trumpeted development initiatives that have promised to lift hundreds of millions from poverty, microcredit has struggled to turn rhetoric into tangible success.
Done right, the loans have shown promise in allowing some borrowers to build sustainable livelihoods. But it has also become clear that the rapid growth of microcredit — in India, some lending companies were growing at 60 percent to 100 percent a year — has made the loans much less effective.
Most borrowers do not appear to be climbing out of poverty, and a sizable minority of them are getting trapped in a spiral of debt, according to studies and analysts.
“Credit is both the source of possibilities and it’s a bond,” said David Roodman, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development, a research organization in Washington. “Credit is often operating at this knife’s edge, and that gets forgotten.”
And with the results for borrowers mixed, some lenders have minted profits that might make Wall Street bankers envious. For instance, investors in the largest microcredit company in India, SKS Microfinance, sold shares last year for as much as 95 times what had been paid for them a few years earlier.
Meanwhile, politicians in developing nations, some of whom had long resented microlenders as competitors for the hearts and minds of the poor, have taken to depicting lenders as profiteering at the expense of borrowers.
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