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Monday, March 28, 2011

Zaviews worldwide News (Libya, Syria, Afghanistan, Bahrain, Japan)

Libya Constant air strikes of western allies compelled Gaddafi’s forces to retreat from Ajdabiy. Libyan rebels have overcome Muammar Gaddafi s forces in strategic oil town of Ajdabiya, seizing control of the city on Saturday. The US planes heavily bombed on the Libyan army and destroyed their tanks. A spokesman of Libyan opposition said that they had turned the battle field into a grave yard for Gaddafi’s forces. However, the regime forces said that they evacuated the town for the safety of citizens. The opposition accused that the regime forces were using civilians as human shield. They said that they had also taken control of Brega and were facing no resistance. They claimed that either Gaddafi’s forces were quitting him or joining opposition.

Syria At least 27 people have been left dead amid protests in Syria. A string of protests against President Bashar Al-Assad has been seen in Syria since March 15 and clashes between protesters and security forces marred these protests. The United Nations condemned the use of force against protesters by the regime and confirmed the death of 27 people in clashes with security people. The Syrian authorities called the demonstrations an act to destabilise the country. 

Afghanistan Taliban insurgents abducted around 50 off-duty Afghan policemen in an ambush in a volatile province in northeastern Afghanistan, the militant group and provincial officials said on Sunday. Taliban-led militants have stepped up their fight this year against the Afghan government and its Western backers at a time when Kabul has announced security responsibilities for seven areas will be handed to Afghan forces in July. The policemen were abducted by militants in the Chapa Dara district of remote northeastern Kunar province after returning from neighbouring Nuristan province where they had travelled to collect their salaries, Nuristan governor Jamaluddin Badr said. The latest incident highlights some of the difficulties faced by U.S. and NATO forces as they begin to hand over security responsibility to Afghan troops, allowing foreign troops to withdraw gradually from an unpopular war now almost 10 years old. The process announced this week is programmed to end with the withdrawal of all foreign combat troops from the country by 2014. The transition was agreed by NATO and US leaders last year when the war had reached its bloodiest phase since the Taliban were overthrown by US-led Afghan forces in late 2001, with record civilian and military casualties. Afghanistan’s police force has for years lagged behind the country’s better-trained army. Poorly equipped police are often the only face of the government in remote areas, making them vulnerable to insurgent attacks.


Bahrain largest Shia opposition group Wefaq has accepted Kuwait’s offer to mediate in talks with Bahrain’s government to end a political crisis gripping the tiny kingdom, a member of Wefaq said on Sunday. Bahrain on March 16 ended weeks of protests by mostly Shia protesters that had prompted the king to impose martial law and call in troops from fellow Sunni-ruled neighbours. Jasim Husain, a member of Wefaq, said Kuwait’s Emir Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah has offered to mediate between Bahrain’s Sunni al-Khalifa ruling family and Shia opposition groups. Sunni-led Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, which view Bahrain’s ruling family as a bulwark against regional Shia power Iran, have sent troops to Bahrain to help it quell weeks of unrest following pro-democracy protests. Kuwait, which has a Shia minority of its own, has sent navy vessels to Bahrain under a Gulf security pact to patrol its Northern coast line. Wefaq and its allies also want an elected council to redraft the constitution, a demand over which preliminary talks with Khalifa collapsed shortly before Gulf troops arrived and Bahrain drove protesters off the streets and banned public gatherings. More than 60 per cent of Bahrainis are Shias, and most are campaigning for a constitutional monarchy, but calls by hardliners for the overthrow of the monarchy have alarmed Sunnis, who fear the unrest serves Iran, separated from Bahrain by just a short stretch of Gulf waters. The ferocity of the government crackdown has stunned Bahrain’s majority Shias and angered Iran. A Wefaq delegation is set to meet Kuwaiti politicians including Parliament Speaker Jassem al-Kharafi, Kuwaiti daily al-Seyassah said on Sunday citing unnamed political sources.
Ali al-Matrook, a Kuwaiti Shia businessman is one of the Kuwaiti mediators, Wefaq’s Husain said. Bahrain cut curfew times again, by an hour, on Sunday. From Seef Mall through the financial district to the diplomatic area the curfew now runs from 11 p.m. (0200 GMT) to 4 a.m. (0700 GMT), cut gradually from 12 hours when it was first imposed.


Japan Extremely high levels of radiation were detected in water leaking from reactor two of the stricken Fukushima nuclear plant, forcing the evacuation of workers, its operator said Sunday. A spokesman for Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO) said the level of radiation found in the leaked water in the turbine room was 10 million times higher than it should be for water inside the reactor, indicating damage to the fuel rods. We detected 1,000 millisieverts per hour of radiation in a puddle of water at the reactor number two. This figure is 10 million times higher than water usually kept in a reactor, the spokesman said. We are examining the cause of this, but no work is being done there because of the high level of radiation. High levels of caesium and other substances are being detected, which usually should not be found in reactor water. There is a high possibility that fuel rods are being damaged. A single dose of 1,000 millisieverts can cause temporary radiation sickness, including nausea and vomiting. An exposure of 100 millisieverts per year is considered the lowest level at which an increase in cancer risk is evident. It is an extremely high figure, nuclear safety agency spokesman Hidehiko Nishiyama said of the latest reading of radioactivity. There is high possibility that (the water) came from the reactor, he said. Last week three workers with inadequate protection for their feet suffered burns when they stepped in highly radioactive water at reactor three. The trio, aged in their 20s and 30s, were placing electric cables in a basement as part of efforts to rebuild cooling systems at the quake and tsunami damaged reactor three to prevent high-level radiation from spewing out. Radioactivity levels are soaring in seawater near the crippled Fukushima Daiichi plant, Japan’s nuclear safety agency said on Saturday, two weeks after the nuclear power plant was hit by a massive earthquake and tsunami. Even as engineers tried to pump puddles of radioactive water from the power plant 240 km (150 miles) north of Tokyo, the nuclear safety agency said tests on Friday showed radioactive iodine had spiked 1,250 times higher than normal in the seawater just offshore the plant. A senior official from Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, Hidehiko Nishiyama, said the contamination posed little risk to aquatic life. “Ocean currents will disperse radiation particles and so it will be very diluted by the time it gets consumed by fish and seaweed,” he said. Despite that reassurance, the disclosure may well heighten international concern over Japanese seafood exports. Several countries have already banned milk and produce from areas around the Fukushima Daiichi plant, while others have been monitoring Japanese seafood. The prolonged efforts to prevent a catastrophic meltdown at the plant have also intensified concerns around the world about nuclear power. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said it was time to reassess the international atomic safety regime. Radioactive water was found in buildings housing three of the six reactors at the crippled plant. On Thursday, three workers sustained burns at reactor No. 3 after being exposed to radiation levels 10,000 times higher than usually found in a reactor. The crisis at the nuclear plant has overshadowed the massive relief and recovery effort from the magnitude 9.0 quake and the huge tsunami it triggered on March 11 that left more than 27,500 people dead or missing in northeast Japan. The U.S. Department of Energy said on its website that no significant quantities of radiological material had been deposited in the area around the plant since March 19, according to tests on Friday. Nishiyama said Japanese agencies were trying to work out ways of “safely bailing out the water so that it does not get out into the environment, and we are making preparations.” He initially said the high radiation reading inside reactor 3, where the workers were injured, could indicate damage to the reactor. He later said it could be from venting operations to release pressure or water leakage from pipes or valves. “There is no data suggesting a crack,” Nishiyama said. Reactor number 3 is the only one of the six that uses a fuel mixture of plutonium and uranium. Plutonium is the most deadly radioactive isotope. On Friday, Nishiyama chided plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) for not following safety procedures inside the turbine building. More than 700 engineers have been working in shifts to stabilise the plant and work has been advancing to restart water pumps to cool their fuel rods. Two of the plant’s reactors are now seen as safe but the other four are volatile, occasionally emitting steam and smoke. However, the nuclear safety agency said on Saturday that temperature and pressure in all reactors had stabilised. When TEPCO restored power to the plant late last week, some thought the crisis would soon be over. But Lingering high levels of radiation from the damaged reactors has hampered progress. At Three Mile Island, the worst nuclear power accident in the United States, workers took just four days to stabilise the reactor, which suffered a partial meltdown. No one was injured and there was no radiation release above the legal limit. At Chernobyl in Ukraine, the worst nuclear accident in the world, it took weeks to “stabilise” what remained of the plant and months to clean up radioactive materials and cover the site with a concrete and steel sarcophagus. Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan said on Friday the situation at Fukushima was “nowhere near” being resolved. “We are making efforts to prevent it from getting worse, but I feel we cannot become complacent,” Kan told reporters. “We must continue to be on our guard.” In Tokyo, a metropolis of 13 million people, a Reuters reading on Saturday morning showed ambient radiation of 0.22 microsieverts per hour, about six times normal for the city. That was well within the global average of naturally occurring background radiation of 0.17-0.39 microsieverts per hour, a range given by the World Nuclear Association. An official at the Science Ministry, however, confirmed that daily radiation levels in an area 30 km (18 miles) northwest of the stricken plant had exceeded the annual limit. But experts say it is still below levels of exposure from medical X-rays. The Japanese government has prodded tens of thousands of people living in a 20 km-30 km (12-18 mile) zone beyond the stricken complex to leave. Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said the residents should move because it was difficult to get supplies to the area, and not because of elevated radiation. Kazuo Suzuki, 56, who has moved from his house near the plant to an evacuation centre, said neighbours he has talked with by telephone say delivery trucks won’t go to the exclusion zone because of radiation worries. “So goods are running out, meaning people have to drive to the next town to buy things. But there is a fuel shortage there too, so they have to wait in long queues for gasoline to use the car.” In Japan’s northeast, more than a quarter of a million people are in shelters. Exhausted rescuers are still sifting through the wreckage of towns and villages, retrieving bodies. Amid the suffering, though, there was a sense the corner was being turned. Aid is flowing and phone, electricity, postal and bank services have resumed, though they can still be patchy.