had now reached the west of the country. In Zaouia, 35 miles (60km) west of Tripoli, a Tunisian hairdresser described how police had abandoned the town on Sunday after days of confrontation between pro- Gaddafi groups and protesters. Shops were closed, buildings had been attacked and burned and people had stolen police cars.

Souhayr Belhassen, head of the International Federation of Human Rights, said she had gathered accounts from Tunisians and others who had left Libya, describing how property belonging to Gaddafi had been attacked and police stations set alight. "The revolt is heading to the capital," she said. She said senior figures including ambassadors and security forces, were abandoning Gaddafi. "They have jumped ship and the boat is sinking," she said.Gary Johnson, the darkest horse in the 2012 Republican presidential field, has spent most of his adult life setting outrageously ambitious goals and then systematically plodding away until he attains them. After graduating from the University of New Mexico in 1975, he grew his one-man fix-it business into a 1,000-employee commercial construction company, Big J Enterprises. In 1993, with no political experience, he launched a campaign for governor of New Mexico—a state then dominated by Democrats—and won. Back-to-back terms. Before assuming his gubernatorial duties, he trained for and finished the 1993 Ironman Hawaii, his first of five such races. In 2003, shortly after he was term-limited and left office, he summited Mount Everest.

Last April, Johnson, 58, announced the latest item on his bucket list: becoming the 45th president