.Live Blog - Libya Feb 25 Live Blog - Libya Feb 25

(All times are local in Libya GMT+2)

February 25, 2011

10:33am EU chief diplomat Catherine Ashton has joined those calling for sanctions against Libya in a bid to stop the bloodshed.

10:14am Libyan state television reports Libyan families will receive 500 dinars each, while wages for some public workers could increase by 150pc.

10:12am Germany is preparing sanctions against Libyan leaders over the attacks on protesters, Guido Westerwelle, Germany's foreign minister, said on Friday ahead of a UN Security Council meeting.

"It's no longer about setting deadlines, it's about acting now," Westerwelle told Deutschlandfunk radio. "Therefore I have decided that sanctions should be prepared now."

10:10am Libya's government has spent years strengthening relations with Latin America, mostly through investments. But now, Al Jazeera's Gabriel Elizondo reports from Sao Paulo on the region's divided reaction to Gaddafi's crackdown on protests in Libya.

10:06am France and Britain are to ask the UN for a Libyan arms embargo, financial sanctions and an indictment from the International Criminal Court against Libyan leaders for crimes against humanity, the Reuters news agency reports, citing an interview with French foreign minister Michele Alliot-Marie on France Info radio.

10:00am NATO has called an emergency meeting for Friday afternoon to discuss the situation in Libya.

"I have convened an emergency meeting in the NATO council this afternoon to consult on this fast-moving situation. So I will return to Brussels in a few hours," NATO secretary-general Anders Fogh Rasmussen told the Reuters news agency. adding that NATO has "assets that can be used in a situation like this".

9:41am Life.com has compiled a photogallery and list of what it calls "Gaddafi's Craziest Quotes" including such gems as:

“There is no state with a democracy except Libya on the whole planet.”

9:30am Not everyone is pleased with our coverage of Libya. One man left this voice note, posted on the Alive in Libya site, saying:

"I would like to remind Al Jazeera channel about the spotlight it has created on Libya and creating division because the people will come out and they will die. The colonel Muammar al Gaddafi will remain and he will not change ... And we are happy with what he wants."

However, just a short while later, the same site posted a voice note from a citizen of the UK, who praised Al Jazeera for being a "beacon of light".

"I would like to inform the Al Jazeera channel to continue being a beacon of light for transmitting and informing other channels as they were in Egypt so that there is no media cover up and the truth reaches the people."

9:00am Al Jazeera Arabic has learned that Libya’s chief prosecutor and head of judicial inspection have resigned.

8:45am As we mentioned in an earlier post, residents of Tripoli report receiving text messages from the government urging people to "get back to normal" and "go to work".

One resident left an audio message, posted on the site Alive in Libya, saying just that:

"If you notice, they started cleaning the streets and painting over the writings on walls and the marks of the fire that happened in the past few days all at once to make the city look like nothing happened. But if you look closely you can still see that they did a very bad job painting it over. It looks like they are hiding something."

8:26am Bloomberg's Business Week cites Al Jazeera in this story on the protests in Libya and elsewhere, saying:

The channel, together with the Arabic-language only Al Arabiya, has been influential enough to cause Qaddafi, 68, to interrupt his hour-long, rambling televised speech on Feb. 22 to criticize their real-time coverage of his remarks after he was handed a note by an aide.

8:02am Stephanie Bernstein, a rabbi in Bethesda, Maryland, has been one of the most outspoken victims of the Lockerbie bombing and says she hopes the Libyan leader will be held accountable. Monica Villamizar blogs about it, citing Bernstein:

"All those people in the diplomatic world who thought somehow [Gaddafi] would be a modern progressive leader should be ashamed of themselves."

5:56am This was first posted by the UK's Guardian two weeks ago, but remains an informative interactive map of tweets from protests across the region - collected from top bloggers, experts and journalists.

5:50am As Libya descended further into chaos, Muammar Gaddafi for the second time addressed the nation on state TV. However, as Al Jazeera's Laurence Lee reports, Gaddafi's argument that he was not the leader is simply a denial of responsibility:

5:06am China has so far evacuated 12,000, or about two-thirds, of its citizens from turmoil in Libya, many of them workers for Chinese-run projects and businesses in the oil-rich nation, official media said on Friday.

5:01am Venezuela's top diplomat on Thursday echoed Fidel Castro's accusation that Washington is fomenting unrest in Libya to justify an invasion to seize North African nation's oil reserves.

Nicolas Maduro, the Venezuelan Foreign Minister said:

They are creating conditions to justify an invasion of Libya.

4:27am Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan president, has backed Muammar Gaddafi on Twitter.

Chavez tweeted:

Gaddafi is facing a civil war.

Long live Libya. Long live the independence of Libya.

3:30am The UN Security Council will meet on Friday to consider actions against Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi's government that could include sanctions aimed at deterring his violent crackdown on anti-government protesters.

Possible measures include an asset freeze for government figures, travel and visa bans, investment and export restrictions or tough Security Council action.

3:01am There are reports doing the rounds on the internet of "texts being sent in Libya, purportedly by the government, saying: [However, its veracity has not been confirmed yet]

You will receive 100LYD credit if you send a text saying to people to remain indoors tomorrow.

2:53am According to posts on the microblogging site Twitter, an ad hoc government in Benghazi has set up committees to deal with security, public health, food supplies and evacuating foreigners.

2:46am According to witnesses, pro-Gaddafi forces took control of Misrata town late on Thursday after evicting forces loyal to leader Muammar Gaddafi from the Mediterranean coastal city, prompting street celebrations, a witness said.

2:45am In a speech on Thursday, the embattled dictator said he was like the Queen of England.

You need to listen to your parents. If people disobey their parents they end up destroying the country, he said. The same case as in Britain (where) for 57 years the Queen has been ruling. I have been in the same situation.

2:40am Twitter user @_Noura posted this to Twitpic:

2:32am Libyans say they risk arrest or even death for talking to the foreign media because the authorities are desperate to stop information about their violent crackdown reaching the outside world.

1:33am According to UK based newspaper, The Telegraph, Muammar Gaddafi's assets worth billions of pounds will be seized by Britain.

In total, the Libyan regime is said to have around £20bn in liquid assets, mostly in London, according to the newspaper report.

1:26am Twitter user @Farrah3m posted this to Twitpic:

1:22am Barack Obama and Timothy Geithner, the Treasury Secretary, have sought to quell fears that unrest in Libya would put oil prices on a long term upward trajectory.

12:30am Barack Obama, the US president, spoke on Thursday with the leaders of France, Britain and Italy to discuss their "range of options" as they considered how to respond to the crisis in Libya, the White House said.

12:00am Canada defended its efforts to evacuate its citizens from Libya on Thursday amid problems getting a charter flight into Tripoli. The charter was supposed to pick up some 200 Canadians in the Libyan capital, and Lawrence Cannon, the Foreign Affairs Minister, had planned to welcome them back at Rome's airport.

11:30pm As per latest reports, the US government has asked its citizens to leave Libya immediately.

URL du live: http://blogs.aljazeera.net/africa/2011/02/24/live-blog-libya-feb-25