Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, son of ex-Libyan leader, reportedly shot dead

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Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, the son of late Libyan dictator Moamer Gaddafi, was killed on Tuesday, his political office has said. Saif al-Islam was killed in a “treacherous and cowardly” act, in which four masked men stormed his residence in the western Libyan city of Zintan, the office said. His lawyer Khaled al-Zaidi confirmed to dpa that Saif al-Islam Gaddafi was “assassinated at his home.” The al-Arabiya news channel reported that the 53-year-old was shot dead in the garden of his residence in Zintan, citing sources close to the Gaddafi family. Saif al-Islam was the second-eldest son of the long-time Libyan leader, who ruled the North African country for more than four decades. Before his father’s overthrow and death in 2011, al-Islam led a reform project aimed at modernizing the country politically and bringing it closer to the West. Many of these efforts were soon reversed in order not to upset the balance of power in his father’s government. Gaddafi’s death followed months of m...
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Moscow records heaviest snowfall in over 200 years

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Russia’s capital Moscow has this month seen the largest snowfall in more than 200 years, Moscow State University meteorologists said on Thursday.

AFP images from the city of around 13 million people showed residents struggling to make their way through heavy piles of snow on the streets in its central district.

Commuter trains in the Moscow area were delayed, AFP reporters witnessed, and cars were stuck in long traffic jams on Thursday evening.

“January was a cold and unusually snowy month in Moscow,” the university said on social media.

“By January 29, the Moscow State University Meteorological Observatory had recorded almost 92 mm of precipitation, which is already the highest value in the last 203 years,” it added.

Snow piles on the ground reached as high as 60 centimetres (24 inches) in some parts of the capital on Thursday.

Snow is mostly air, meaning the level of settled snow far surpasses scientific measurements of precipitation — which measures the amount of water that has fallen.

The record snowfall was “caused by deep and extensive cyclones with sharp atmospheric fronts passing over the Moscow region”, the observatory said.

“There was much more (snow) when I was a kid, but now we practically don’t have any snow at all, there used to be much more,” Pavel, a 35-year-old bartender and Moscow resident, told AFP, grumbling about a feeling of “emptiness” in the dark, snowy winter.

Earlier this month, Russia’s far east Kamchatka region declared an emergency situation due to a massive snowstorm that left its major city partially paralysed.

Images, widely circulated online, showed huge snow piles reaching up to the second storey of buildings and people digging their way through roads as snow blanketed cars on either side.

SOURCE: AFP AND AGENCIES



from The Times Of Earth https://ift.tt/2HqUTkj

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