Revolutionary Administration Appeals For Foreign Military Aid. As Muammar Gaddafi's army won control of a strategic rebel-held Libyan town and laid siege to another, the revolutionary administration in Benghazi again appealed for foreign military help to prevent what it said would be the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people if the insurgents were to lose. The rebels have retreated from the oil town of Ras Lanuf, captured a week ago, after two days of intense fighting and they believe that the nearby town of Brega is now threatened.

PressTV: Gaddafi regime brutality unfathomable
The Independent: Rebels prepare for last stand in Benghazi

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Pvt. Manning before the torture

Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) has been unable to visit with Private Bradley Manning, the U.S. soldier accused of leaking State Department cables to WikiLeaks, despite being a member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

"I put in a request to the secretary of defense, who referred me to the secretary of the army, who referred me to the secretary of the navy, who referred me to the secretary of defense, and still not an answer on whether or not I can visit Private Manning," Rep. Kucinich explained to Scott Horton of KPFK 90.7 FM Los Angeles on Friday.

He previously announced he would visit Manning to investigate reports that he had been subjected to abuse while in custody. Manning attorney David Coombs revealed last week that for at least two nights in row, the Army private had been "stripped naked" for as long as seven hours at a time. In the mornings, he was left without clothes and forced to stand at attention.

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Interior Minister Pushes for Even Larger Expansions Going Forward. Tensions in the West Bank are on the rise after the Netanyahu government announced it is meeting an attack on a family of settlers in Itamar with a new round of retaliatory settlement expansions further into occupied territory. “They murder and we build,” insisted Netanyahu at a national television broadcast from the funeral. The announcement sparked condemnation from both the Palestinian Authority and the United States, which termed the expansion “illegitimate” and insisted it ran counter to the goal of a peace deal. But the peace deal, realistically, has been dead for months, and the far-right government in Israel seems more interested in pledges that will satisfy its settler-heavy voting base than moves that might resurrect the process. To that end, Interior Minister and Shas head Eli Yishai tried to outdo the revenge settlement announcement by proposing that the government set up an official policy of 1,000 new settlement houses for every person killed in the West Bank.

Haaretz: Palestinians denounce Itamar murders, but lay criticism on Israel

Following are main developments after a massive earthquake struck northeast Japan on Friday and set off a tsunami. Death toll expected to exceed 10,000 from the quake and tsunami, public broadcaster NHK says. About 2,000 bodies found on two shores of Miyagi prefecture, Kyodo news agency reports. Japan battles to prevent nuclear catastrophe. A hydrogen explosion jolts the No. 3 reactor of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, 240 km (150 miles) north of Tokyo. Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) (9501.T) says 11 people were injured.

As survivors of the Japanese earthquake and tsunami grappled with the enormity of the devastation, more footage emerged on Sunday showing the moment the tsunami struck Japan's northeast coast. Residents of the port town of Kamaishi in Iwate prefecture watched in horror as the first huge tsunami waves hit, sweeping away cars and buildings. One group managed to scramble to safety on higher ground, where they watched as the water surged towards them. Others were stranded on the roof of a multi-storey building as the water level rose rapidly below.

Gizmodo: Scary "First-Person" Video of the Japan Tsunami This first-person view is the most terrifying and astonishing video I've seen of the Japan tsunami. Initially everything seems ok, just a mild wave coming towards the camera. But keep watching—the sea goes Godzilla on the city. By the end of it, the raging water is taking entire buildings off the streets of Kesennuma, in the Miyagi Prefecture, Japan. This is the exact point where this video was taken, before the catastrophe.

Google Crisis Response: 2011 Japanese Earthquake and Tsunami

● New blast in unit three at Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant
● Eleven workers injured after hydrogen ignited
● Another reactor loses cooling capacity
● 180,000 people have been evacuated from the area
● Engineers desperately trying to cool reactors with sea water
● Up to 160 people so far exposed to radiation

Fears of a nuclear disaster in Japan were heightened today after a second explosion at the stricken Fukushima Dai-ichi number one plant. A hydrogen explosion rocked Unit three of the plant sending a plume of smoke into the air - as engineers frantically tried to reduce pressure in the overheating reactor. The blast follows a similar explosion at Unit one of the facility on Saturday and another reactor at the plant has also lost its cooling capacity, raising the risk of another explosion. Eleven people, seven plant workers and four army personnel were injured in today's explosion, one of them seriously.

PressTV: Reactor 3 goes down in quake-hit Japan
Deutsche Welle: A third reactor at Japan's Fukushima nuclear plant has lost its cooling capacity
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Google Crisis Response: 2011 Japanese Earthquake and Tsunami

Channel 4 News journalist only Western reporter to make it to the shattered coastal town of Minami Sanriku. Scene is 'reminiscent of the photographs of Nagasaki or Hiroshima after the A bombs were dropped'. 2,800 confirmed dead and 10,000 missing.

The first thing you notice is the silence which seems to hang over the place. There is no sound as we approach this once-thriving coastal town. Driving round the final bend in the mountain road before making the descent into Minami Sanriku, nothing can quite prepare you for the sight of such destruction. In my 30 years as a war correspondent I have covered more than 20 conflicts and several major earthquakes, but I have never seen anything on this scale. One minute you are passing through towns and villages completely untouched by natural disaster – not even a pane missing from the windows – and then as you turn the corner it hits you. The most astonishing view stretches out below towards the sea for at least four miles. An entire town of around 17,000 people has simply ceased to exist here. At least 95 per cent of the buildings are not merely ruined; they have been reduced to a morass of splintered wood, jagged concrete and twisted metal. All of this is hideously decorated with the details of destroyed family lives: a woman smiles up from her wedding photographs, a smashed guitar lies in the debris. I see a broken doll, and pages from a child’s school exercise book.

Daily Mail: Man is rescued TEN MILES out to sea
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AWIP: Amazing Ground video of tsunami in Iwaki City, Japan - VIDEOS
Google Crisis Response: 2011 Japanese Earthquake and Tsunami

The magnitude-8.9 earthquake that struck northern Japan on Friday not only violently shook the ground and generated a devastating tsunami, it also moved the coastline and changed the balance of the planet. Global positioning stations closest to the epicenter jumped eastward by up to 13 feet. Japan is “wider than it was before,” said Ross Stein, a geophysicist at the United States Geological Survey.

Meanwhile, NASA scientists calculated that the redistribution of mass by the earthquake might have shortened the day by a couple of millionths of a second and tilted the Earth’s axis slightly. Not all of Japan jumped 13 feet closer to the United States, said Kenneth W. Hudnut, a geophysicist with the United States Geological Survey. The shifts occurred mostly in the area closest to the epicenter, and stations farther away reported much less movement. That part of Asia, to the surprise of many who look at the geological map, sits on the North American tectonic plate, which wraps up and around the Pacific plate and extends a tentacle southward that part of Japan sits atop. The Pacific plate is moving about 3.5 inches a year in a west-northwest direction, and in that collision — what geologists call a subduction zone — the Pacific plate dives under the North American plate.

Researchers say they might have found the lost city of Atlantis, which is believed to have been swallowed by a tsunami thousands of years ago.

"This is the power of tsunamis," head researcher and Hartford University professor Richard Freund told Reuters. "It is just so hard to understand that it can wipe out 60 miles inland, and that's pretty much what we're talking about," he added.

The US-led team used deep-ground radar, digital mapping and underwater technology to survey the site the mud flats in southern Spain where the legendary city is said to have disappeared. The equipment that Freund describes as "an MRI for the ground," can determine what's in the ground down to about 60 feet.

"It's translated into color-coded maps and tells us what's there," Freund explained. "For example, the resistance of fired pottery is different than resistance of sand; the resistance of bone is different than the resistance of metal. And it all comes up in different colors."

The international team also used a satellite photo which shows a submerged city buried in the vast marshlands of the Dona Ana Park north of Cadiz, Spain. [English]

Ales Mikhalevic, a prominent Belarusian presidential candidate who testified publicly that he was tortured in KGB custody, has fled the country, The Independent has learned. The 36-year-old father of two is just one of several opposition politicians who ran against Belarus strongman Alexander Lukashenko and were promptly charged with mass rioting in the aftermath of last December’s disputed elections. More than 700 pro-democracy activists have been arrested in what human rights groups and foreign governments say is a brutal crackdown opposition forces within Europe’s last dictatorship. In a posting on his own blog, Mr Mikhalevich announced that he was now “out of reach of the KGB” after being summoned to return for questioning at a detention centre run by Belarus’ secret police.

“I have grounds to believe that I would not be able to leave the building of the KGB any more,” he wrote. “So I’m not going to visit the KGB. Now I am in a safe place out of reach of the Belarusian KGB. I am going to continue the work on putting an end to tortures and release of everyone who are unlawfully imprisoned on political reasons.”

AWIP: In Europe's last dictatorship, all opposition is mercilessly crushed