World News

Australia

• Detainees at an Australian immigration detention center in Sydney have rioted, burning down nine buildings.  They also threw roof tiles and furniture at firefighters, preventing them from putting the fires out.

Japan

• The Japanese government has declared the 20-km evacuation zone around the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant to be a no-go zone.  Anyone breaking the ban can be fined up to 100,000 yen (about $120) and be arrested.

Libya

• The Libyan government responded to threatening talk from NATO by shelling Misrata for several hours.
• Libyan state television is reporting 7 people dead and 18 wounded after NATO airstrikes on the Khallat al-Farjan area of Tripoli.
• The UN's aid chief has rejected offers from the EU to provide military escorts to protect aid deliveries, saying that it would blur the lines between military operations and relief work.

Pakistan

• Admiral Mike Mullen, US Navy, has accused Pakistan's intelligence service of having "a long-standing relationship with the Haqqani network.  Haqqani is supporting, funding, training fighters that are killing Americans and killing coalition partners."  How much of this is accurate, and how much is diplomatic reprisals for Pakistan's expulsion of CIA employees from the country[1] is unclear at this time.

South Korea

• South Korea has sent a warship to the Arabian Sea after the Hanjin Tianjin, a 75,000 ton South Korean freighter, lost contact after emitting a distress call.  It is believed to have been seized by pirates, who have already seized the Italian Rosalia D'Amato.

United States

• BP has marked the one year anniversary of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill by suing Halliburton and Transocean, seeking $42 million in damages from Halliburton and $38 million from Transocean.  "Halliburton's improper conduct, errors and omissions, including fraud and concealment, caused and/or contributed to the Deepwater Horizon incident," BP said in it's filing.  Analysts do not expect BP to win, and assume the company is trying to force the companies to settle.
• Fiat will be paying $1.27 billion for an additional 16% stake in Chrysler, raising their ownership to 46%.
• The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has sued Global Horizons and farms in Hawaii and Washington state for subjecting "the claimants to uninhabitable housing, insufficient food and kitchen facilities, inadequate pay, significant gaps in work, visa and certification violations, suspension, deportation, and/or physical violence."  An attorney for the head of global Horizons said the workers were paid "more money than they ever were in Thailand."
• Not to be paranoid, but it turns out that the iPhone stores timestamped latitude and longitude information of everywhere it goes in a hidden file, which is then backed up to the owner's computer when synchronized.  If you acquire a new iPhone, the data files are moved onto the new system.  The researchers who made the discovery have set up a FAQ web site, if you're interested.

Yemen

• The UN Security council has called for restraint and dialog between protesters and authorities in Yemen, but the talks ended with no consensus.  Separately, President Ali Abdullah Saleh has indicated that he is willing to hand over power, but only to "safe hands".  He has left the meaning of "safe hands" rather vague, however.

[1] For the shooting death of two civilians by one CIA contractor, and for civilian deaths caused by US drone attacks along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.