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NTC forces celebrate capture of Gaddafi bastion Bani Walid

A Reuters team that drove into the heart of Bani Walid, in desert hills 150 km (90 miles) south of Tripoli, saw no signs of resistance from supporters of the deposed leader who have been holed up inside the town for more than six weeks.”Bani Walid is completely free. It is liberated, 100 percent,” said Mohammed Shakonah, a military commander with the National Transitional Council (NTC).The apparent capture of Bani Walid brought Libya’s new rulers a step closer to being in full control of the vast, oil-producing North African country almost two months after rebels entered Tripoli and ended 42 years of one-man rule by Gaddafi.Along with Gaddafi’s home town of Sirte, Bani Walid was one of Libya’s last sources of armed resistance to the NTC.Bursts of gunfire, fireworks and car horns merged into a cacophony on streets littered with empty bullet casings and lined with buildings damaged or destroyed by the fighting.Some buildings were still ablaze just before sundown on Monday, others were flattened by NATO air strikes. Several shops looked like they had been looted. Thick black smoke billowed in the distance.An NTC fighter in camouflage fatigues and with an AK-47 assault rifle hanging from his shoulder, embraced a medical worker and both men wept in joy.”If Gaddafi could see this, he would give up,” said Abdelfattah, another NTC fighter in the central square.There was no evidence of civilians joining in the street celebrations in Bani Walid, home to the Warfalla, Libya’s biggest tribe, whose members are traditional supporters of Gaddafi.”This is a very important day because it now means Gaddafi doesn’t have even one town in Libya,” said Ayad Sayed al Russi, a senior NTC commander. “We hope that the residents who fled will come back now that the town is free.”The town had been under siege for weeks, with hundreds of Gaddafi loyalists dug into its steep valleys and hills resisting advancing interim government forces.NTC officials had been negotiating with Bani Walid’s tribal leaders for its surrender.SIRTE FIGHTS ONIn Sirte, where Gaddafi loyalists have been under siege for weeks, there was little or no indication of the often disorganized NTC forces making any progress on Monday. Chaos and confusion forced them to retreat in some places.A doctor for the medical aid charity Medecins Sans Frontieres in Sirte has estimated that 10,000 people remain trapped in the city of 75,000. Many are women and children, some are sick or injured.NTC tanks and rockets bombarded a small area of central Sirte where they have boxed in the remaining Gaddafi loyalists. Libya’s new leaders say they will only begin the transition to democracy after they capture the city.Frustration is growing on the front line. Some fighters are irritated that their commanders have not ordered a big push to take the rest of the city.There is also anger between NTC forces from Misrata to the west and from Benghazi to the east, who have accused each other of hitting their allies in “friendly fire” incidents.”What we are trying to do is to limit attacks from the east and west to avoid friendly fire, and instead attack from the south,” said Mohammad Al Sabty, a field commander.”We have lost a lot of martyrs in recent days,” said Mustafa Salim from a Misrata brigade. When Misrata units get close to Benghazi units “it gets harder,” he said. “They fire at us and we fire at them.”Government forces captured 15 Gaddafi loyalist fighters on Monday, all of them black, a Reuters witness said. Gaddafi armed many sub-Saharan Africans to fight for him and black people have been subject to arbitrary reprisals by the NTC forces.Some government fighters present tried to hit the newly captured prisoners, but were held back by more senior officers and the 15 men were marched off to the rear as NTC forces laid down suppressing fire at nearby snipers.The new government’s forces have been accused of mistreating prisoners and Amnesty International said in a report last week it was in danger of repeating some of the abuses of Gaddafi’s rule, particularly through the use of arbitrary detention.The often chaotic struggle for Sirte has killed scores of people, left thousands homeless and laid waste to much of what was once a showpiece Mediterranean city where Gaddafi entertained foreign leaders.

UPDATE 1-Northrop pulls out of Farnborough air show

By Andrea Shalal-EsaWASHINGTON, Oct 13 (Reuters) - Northrop Grumman Corp on Thursday pulled out of the 2012 international air show in Farnborough, England, a dramatic move underscoring the company’s drive to cut costs as it prepares for leaner times in the global defense market.Northrop has participated in the air shows — which alternate between Paris and Farnborough — each year since it merged with Grumman in 1994, said spokesman Randy Belote.Belote said the company had already been reducing its footprint at the international air shows in recent years, but pulling out completely would save millions of dollars.He said it did not diminish the company’s commitment to Britain or other international customers.Virginia-based defense consultant Loren Thompson said it would be the first time in decades that the company — one of the five largest U.S. defense contractors — was not present at the big international showcase of commercial and military aircraft.”This is just the latest indication of how determined Chairman Wes Bush is to cut costs,” Thompson told Reuters. “They’re going to break the model in terms of what is expected in terms of industry leaders.”Bush has realigned the company around four business areas focused on cybersecurity, logistics, communications and intelligence, and unmanned systems, and recently spun off the company’s shipbuilding business.Belote said Northrop was reevaluating its participation in other international air shows as well, but was only prepared to announce its decision about Farnborough at this point.

Bernanke and bank rules: lessons sort of learned

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke on Wednesday gave a speech on the lessons about sustained growth that can be gleaned from the experience of emerging markets. Bernanke said not all of the “Washington consensus” policies pushed by multilateral lenders in the 1990s had proven fruitful. In particular, he said the Asian financial crisis showed the risks of opening up financial markets to foreign capital flows until a country has implemented measures to strengthen banks and regulation. Yet Bernanke missed an opportunity to link his speech back to the recent experience of the United States. For while his message was tailored for the developing world, he may as well have been describing the U.S. banking sector in the run-up to the 2008-2009 financial crisis: Dismantling controls on the domestic financial industry has proven counterproductive when important complementary factors — such as effective bank supervision … were absent.  

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