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The General Union of Air Traffic Controllers threatened on Sunday to suspend all air traffic in Libya if the Central Bank of Libya did not approve the financial measures for buying new equipment for air traffic control towers in all over Libya, in addition to training programs for the air traffic controllers.

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car bomb in Benghazi on Sunday killing two Al-Saiqa militants and wounded four others including senior commander Mahmoud Al-Wirfalli.

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Flights at Tobruk Airport in east Libya were suspended on Sunday due to job protests. Local sources said the protesters shut down the aviation fuel depot at the airport demanding jobs at Brega Oil Marketing.

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Libyan national football team player Moaed Al-Lafai was freed Sunday night after one day of abduction. No further details about hisabduction were given.. Al-Lafi, a local footballer for Tripoli-based Al-Ahli club, was abducted Saturday evening after finishing his training session in the club.

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The EU High Representative/Vice-President Federica Mogherini has welcomed the ceasefire agreement in Abu Salim district of Tripoli. She said in a statement on Saturday: Violence will not resolve any of Libya's political challenges. What is expected by all parties is that they refrain from unilateral acts of violence and ensure the protection of the Libyan, civilian population.

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The Libyan Iron and Steel Company said it had deposited LYD 200 million of cash sales in banks in just 10 days to provided income for citizens.

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The UN-Presidency Council appointed Brig. Idriss Saleh Abu Khamada as Chief of Petroleum Facilities Guard to replace late Brig. Ali Al-Ahrash, who was died of cancer last month.

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Tripoli residents on Saturday the 6th anniversary of February 25 anti-Gaddafi regime protests.

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The Head of High Council of State Abdul-Rahman Al-Swaihli held talks in Tunis on Saturday with US Ambassador to Libya Peter Bodde. Both sides discussed joint relations and the Libyan political stalemate. Bodde said his country is ready to train Libyan Army and police personnel under the command of a civilian authority.

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The Legal Office of Finance Ministry has suspended the Director of Customs Authority Mustafa Al-Torjoman and another official from work until a probe into alleged corruption takes place.

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The UN-proposed Presidency Council has decided to set up a government university in Murzuq town in Fezzan region, southwest Libya.

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News Roundup - Sun, Feb 26, 2017 - The Libya Observer

The Ambassadors of France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States reiterate our commitment to preserving the sovereignty, territorial integrity, unity, and national cohesion of Libya and our support for the Libyan Political Agreement of 17 December 2015 as the basis for an inclusive political solution of the current conflicts.

We continue to support the Presidency Council as the legitimate governing body, recognised as such by UNSCR 2259. We continue to stand by UNSMILs efforts to address the political, security, economic and institutional crises facing the country.

We condemn the clashes which took place in Tripoli on February 23 and 24, as well as the indiscriminate use of violence against the Libyan people across Libya.

We welcome the cease-fire reached between the forces on the ground in the Abu Selim neighbourhood of the Capital, thanks to the intervention by the Presidency Council, and we reiterate that the use of force is the sole prerogative of State institutions and its security forces.

We condemn the use of violence and any threat levelled against Prime Minister Sarraj and Libyan institutions, as was the case in the attack of February 20th 2017.

We further call on all parties to cease violent acts which result in the loss of civilian lives, and undermine the prospects for political and social reconciliation of the country.

We reaffirm our position that Libyans should decide their own future, and we stand ready to support their efforts to build a strong, prosperous, and unified Libya and implement the Libyan Political Agreements vision for a peaceful transition to a new, elected government.

Link:
Libya - Joint Statement by the Ambassadors of France, Germany ... - France Diplomatie (press release)

Internetgiant Google has pledged to donate $11.5 million in grants to four organizations combating racial disparities in the criminal justice system. While Google would not phrase their grants in this way, one of the recipients has praised the Black Lives Matter movement as "civil rights demonstrations," andthe cause of these organizations does overlap with the Black Lives Matter movement.

"There is significant ambiguity regarding the extent of racial bias in policing and criminal sentencing," Justin Steele, principal with Google.org, the company's philanthropic arm, told USA Today. "We must find ways to improve the accessibility and usefulness of information."

Steele presented the grants as a way to quantify the racial disparity in the justice system. It is hard to know the full extent to which black people are treated differently than white people. Even South Carolina Republican Senator Tim Scott has sharedpersonal stories of "frustration" with cops, in the nation's capital!

"It's hard to measure justice," Phillip Atiba Goff, co-founder and president at the Center for Policing Equity (which will receive $5 million, the largest share of Google's grants), told USA Today. "In policing, data are so sparse and they are not shared broadly. The National Justice Database is an attempt to measure justice so that people who want to do the right thing can use that metric to lay out a GPS for getting where we are trying to go. That's really what we see Google as being a key partner in helping us do."

Naturally, USA Today had to report that Google "is trying to address the racial imbalance in the demographics of its workforce. Hispanics make up 3% of Google employees and African Americans 2%." USA Today likely omitted the number of whites (61 percent), because the number of Asians (30 percent) is so high, according to a 2014 PBS report.

But rather than confirming a racial bias against minorities, the fact that Google, a majority-white company, is nevertheless heavily subsidizing efforts to quantifyracial disparities in criminal justice should be heartening, especially to the Black Lives Matter movement.

Indeed, one of the groups Google is supporting, the Equal Justice Initiative, explicitly endorsed Black Lives Matter in one of its videos, calling the group "civil rights demonstrators." That video linked slavery to mass incarceration, lamenting that "many states celebrate the era of slavery with Confederate holidays and by honoring the defenders and architects of slavery, while ignoring the history of enslavement."

This is a horrifying insult to all those who commemorate the Civil War and view the battle as a fight over states' rights. While I consider their viewpoints incorrect, I do not dismiss as racist those who commemoratethe Confederacy, and neither should the Equal Justice Initiative.

See original here:
Google Pledges $11.5 Million to Make Sure Black Lives Matter - PJ Media

Uber leadership is scrambling to react this week to the sexual harassment allegations of former employee Susan J. Fowler, whose blog post on her experience at Uber has gone viral. Fowler describes how she was repeatedly sexually harassed and discriminated against yet every time she made a report to her managers or to human resources, she was dismissed. Fowlers story throws a spotlight on sexism in an industry that loves to paint itself as forward thinking and inclusive, and her experience was not an isolated caseas Fowlers blog gained traction, women from a range of companies began sharing their experiences with sexual harassment in the tech world.

Ubers reputation already took a hit this winterwhen #deleteUber began to trend after Uber failed to condemn the Trump Administrations immigration ban and continued sendingcars to airports during a tax driver protest. After Fowlers blog post, the deleting trend is back in full force. With rival Lyft picking up some of theclient base that was once so loyal to Uber, the companys reputationand financial successcould begin to crumble.

Uber CEO Travis Kalanick has stated that he was disturbed and shocked by Fowlers experience and within a matter of hours had hired former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to conduct a review of sexual harassment claims at the company. This will be Holders second venture into creating a more inclusive Silicon Valley brand. After Airbnb received widespread complaints of discrimination from hosts, Holder and Laura Murphy, former head of the ACLU, were hired to craft ananti-discrimination policy for the company. Airbnb now has hosts accept its anti-discrimination rules before they can become part of the Airbnb community, and while there have been arguments that the rules are not actually effectiveand that they dont go far enough, the new rules were at least a step in the right direction. Holder has always been a staunch advocate for civil rights and was fully committed to womens rights during his tenure as attorney generalbut is he truly being asked to overhaul Ubers culture or simply being brought on for publicity reasons?

There are doubts that Holders team will be able to defeat sexism in an industry where women are rarely given a seat at the table within a nation where sexual harassment has gone unpunished for decades and where the sitting president has bragged about assaulting women. Uber, like most companies across Silicon Valley and around the world, prioritizes results over respect for women in the workplace. Multiple interviews from current and former Uber employees have revealed that the work environment can be very hostile but that no one reports it out of fear of retaliation.

Now that Fowlers case has shone a spotlight on a reality that we often ignore, Uber has at least taken steps to acknowledge the problem immediately, both by hiring Holder and by issuing a message that acknowledges Fowlers case when users try to delete the app. However, over the coming weeks as media attention shifts, Uber mayhave minimal incentives to improve its sexual harassment policies. Uber is still an exciting company for any young developer to work at, and while Fowlers case may give female programmers and engineers pause, there is little reason to think that many male candidates will choose not to work at Uber because of Fowlers story.

The most effective boycott would be taking #deleteUber a step furtherdont work for Uber. If Uber takes a hit in its hiring pool, that is when it will truly feel the pressure to reform. It is the responsibility of young, qualified candidates who are working in Silicon Valley to turn down offers at companies that subscribe to a toxic work environment that devalues female voices. Holder will be working to create new policies and investigate past offenses, but his investigation will be futile if we continue to ignore the results and sign up for Uber just the same.

Jillian Sequeira was a member of the College of William and Mary Class of 2016, with a double major in Government and Italian. When shes not blogging, shes photographing graffiti around the world and worshiping at the altar of Elon Musk and all things Tesla. Contact Jillian at Staff@LawStreetMedia.com

Continued here:
Why Eric Holder Can't Save Silicon Valley Alone - Law Street Media (blog)

A call by a leading Republican lawmaker for a special counsel to investigate possible Russian interference in 2016 elections highlights the growing pressure facing lawmakers on the issue as they return this week from a recess.

Rep. Darrell Issa (R., Calif.), an early supporter of President Donald Trumps whose district narrowly voted for Hillary Clinton last year, said over the weekend that the Justice Department should consider appointing a special counsel to probe any links between the Kremlin and Trump associates.

A new WSJ/NBC News poll released Friday shows a growing concern among Americans, and core-Trump supporters, over President Donald Trump's connections with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Photo: Press Pool/Kremlin

I would expect that the attorney general will find a career U.S. attorney, appoint him or her to head that up, and to do that job in an independent way, Issa told reporters on Saturday. That is historically the right way to deal with something like this.

Issas position, which he also aired Friday in an appearance on HBO, was a notable crack in Republican ranks. GOP leaders have said for months that the Senate Intelligence Committee and its House counterpart are equipped to probe allegations of Russian tampering, brushing aside calls for an independent commission, a select congressional committee or a special counsel.

An expanded version of this report appears on WSJ.com.

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See original here:
Leading Republican calls for special counsel for Trump-Russia probe - MarketWatch