Armwood News Blog

Julius Malema: the man who scarred South Africa | World news | The Guardian

2012-02-12T08:20:00.000-05:00

Julius Malema: the man who scarred South Africa | World news | The Guardian

For as long as anyone can remember, white South Africans have feared that a wild and dangerous black man would get his hands on too much power. He would be charismatic and he would be angry. He would be coarse, garish and corrupt. The ranks of his followers would swell. He would convince them that everything white people have always had – the swimming pools, the cars, the holidays by the sea – should be shared, not at some deferred time, but now, right now.....

Armed westerners have been filmed on the front line with rebels near Misrata in the first apparent confirmation that foreign special forces are playing an active role in the Libyan conflict.

2011-05-31T09:11:00.002-04:00

Settlement reached in Bishop Eddie Long lawsuit | 11alive.com

2011-05-26T18:27:00.002-04:00

Settlement reached in Bishop Eddie Long lawsuit | 11alive.com

2011-05-26T18:27:00.000-04:00

Settlement reached in Bishop Eddie Long lawsuit | 11alive.com

Data From Raid Links Bin Laden to Newer Terror Plots - NYTimes.com

2011-05-05T21:15:00.001-04:00

Image via WikipediaData From Raid Links Bin Laden to Newer Terror Plots - NYTimes.com

By MARK MAZZETTI and SCOTT SHANE

WASHINGTON — After reviewing computer files and documents seized at the compound where Osama bin Laden was killed, American intelligence analysts have concluded that the chief of Al Qaeda played a direct role for years in plotting terror attacks from his hide-out in Abbottabad, Pakistan, United States officials said Thursday.

With Bin Laden’s whereabouts and activities a mystery in recent years, many intelligence analysts and terror experts had concluded that he had been relegated to an inspirational figure with little role in current and future Qaeda operations.

A rushed examination of the trove of materials from the compound in Pakistan prompted Obama administration officials on Thursday to issue a warning that Al Qaeda last year had considered attacks on American railroads.

The documents include a handwritten notebook from February 2010 that discusses tampering with tracks to derail a train on a bridge, possibly on Christmas, New Year’s Day, the day of the State of the Union address or the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, officials said. But they said there was no evidence of a specific plot. An Obama administration official said that documents about attacking railroads were among the first to be translated from Arabic and analyzed. The materials, along with others reviewed in the intelligence cache, have given intelligence officials a much richer picture of the Qaeda founder’s leadership of the network as he tried to elude a global dragnet.

“He wasn’t just a figurehead,” said one American official, speaking only on condition of anonymity, who had been briefed on the documents. “He continued to plot and plan, to come up with ideas about targets, and to communicate those ideas to other senior Qaeda leaders.”

The crash program across the intelligence community to translate and analyze the documents has as its top priority discovering any clues about terror attacks that might be in the works. Intelligence analysts also were scrubbing the files for any information that might lead to identifying the location of Al Qaeda’s surviving leadership.

Since Sunday night, when President Obama announced the killing of Bin Laden in a daring raid, counterterrorism officials have been alert to the possibility of new attacks from Al Qaeda to avenge its leader’s death and prove its continuing relevance.

Department of Homeland Security officials have reviewed potential terrorist targets and deployed extra security at airports. And in response to the new evidence seized at the Bin Laden compound, the Transportation Security Administration issued a bulletin to rail companies.

But officials emphasized that the information was both dated and vague. “It looks very, very aspirational, and we have no evidence that it developed beyond the initial discussion,” said Matt Chandler, a spokesman for Homeland Security.

“We want to stress that this alleged Al Qaeda plotting is based on initial reporting, which is often misleading or inaccurate and subject to change,” he added.

As the Bin Laden trail grew cold and the terror chief stopped broadcasting videos to the world in the last several years, Bin Laden’s status as the world’s most influential terrorist seemed to diminish. Still, in the decade since he fled Afghanistan in late 2001, he managed to release four to six audio messages each year, often making reference to current events, showing that his hideout was not entirely cut off from the outside world.

The only exception was 2005 — the year he is believed to have moved to the compound in Abbottabad — when his silence led to months of speculation that he might be dead.

“If he could get six audio messages out in a year, he could certainly get instructions to his followers,” said Ben N. Venzke, who runs IntelCenter, a Virginia company that tracks terrorist groups’ Internet communications.

“I think the notion that he was completely irrelevant was exaggerated,” Mr. Venzke said. “His role was always as senior leader, giving strategic direction.”

The fact that Bin Laden was found not in Pakistan’s rugged tribal areas but on the outskirts of an affluent town less than an hour’s drive from the capital, Islamabad, has prompted a rethinking of the widespread notion that he had little control over the rest of Al Qaeda.

“Until now, the prevailing wisdom was that he was hiding in a remote, isolated mountain range and cut off from his followers,” said Bruce Hoffman, an expert on Al Qaeda at Georgetown University. “Now we know that was all wrong and reconsider what his role really was.”

Even with his death, American officials and terror experts have warned since Sunday night that that is not the end of Al Qaeda. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, in Rome for talks about the war in Libya, told international donors on Thursday that the United States would continue aggressive operations against militants.

In fact, missiles fired from a Pentagon drone killed several militant suspects driving in a car in Yemen on Thursday. It was unclear who was killed in the strike, although American officials said that the suspects may have been operatives with Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

And, as the Central Intelligence Agency continues its drone bombing campaign in Pakistan, the trove of documents collected at the compound in Abbottabad is likely to produce intelligence for future strikes there.

Thom Shanker, Helene Cooper and Eric Schmitt contributed reporting.

Bin Laden Is Dead, Obama Says - NYTimes.com

2011-05-02T05:59:00.001-04:00

Image via WikipediaBin Laden Is Dead, Obama Says - NYTimes.com

By PETER BAKER, HELENE COOPER and MARK MAZZETTI

WASHINGTON — Osama bin Laden, the mastermind of the most devastating attack on American soil in modern times and the most hunted man in the world, was killed in a firefight with United States forces in Pakistan on Sunday, President Obama announced.

In a dramatic late-night appearance in the East Room of the White House, Mr. Obama declared that “justice has been done” as he disclosed that American military and C.I.A. operatives had finally cornered Bin Laden, the Al Qaeda leader who had eluded them for nearly a decade. American officials said Bin Laden resisted and was shot in the head. He was later buried at sea.

The news touched off an extraordinary outpouring of emotion as crowds gathered outside the White House, in Times Square and at the Ground Zero site, waving American flags, cheering, shouting, laughing and chanting, “U.S.A., U.S.A.!” In New York City, crowds sang “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Throughout downtown Washington, drivers honked horns deep into the night.

“For over two decades, Bin Laden has been Al Qaeda’s leader and symbol,” the president said in a statement televised around the world. “The death of Bin Laden marks the most significant achievement to date in our nation’s effort to defeat Al Qaeda. But his death does not mark the end of our effort. There’s no doubt that Al Qaeda will continue to pursue attacks against us. We must and we will remain vigilant at home and abroad.”

Bin Laden’s demise is a defining moment in the American-led fight against terrorism, a symbolic stroke affirming the relentlessness of the pursuit of those who attacked New York and Washington on Sept. 11, 2001. What remains to be seen, however, is whether it galvanizes Bin Laden’s followers by turning him into a martyr or serves as a turning of the page in the war in Afghanistan and gives further impetus to Mr. Obama to bring American troops home.

How much his death will affect Al Qaeda itself remains unclear. For years, as they failed to find him, American leaders have said that he was more symbolically important than operationally significant because he was on the run and hindered in any meaningful leadership role. And yet, he remained the most potent face of terrorism around the world and some of those who played down his role in recent years nonetheless celebrated his death.

Given Bin Laden’s status among radicals, the American government braced for possible retaliation. A senior Pentagon official said late Sunday that military bases in the United States and around the world were ordered to a higher state of readiness. The State Department issued a worldwide travel warning, urging Americans in volatile areas “to limit their travel outside of their homes and hotels and avoid mass gatherings and demonstrations.”

The strike could exacerbate deep tensions with Pakistan, which has periodically bristled at American counterterrorism efforts even as Bin Laden evidently found safe refuge on its territory for nearly a decade. Since taking office, Mr. Obama has ordered significantly more drone strikes on suspected terrorist targets in Pakistan, stirring public anger there and prompting the Pakistani government to protest.

When the end came for Bin Laden, he was found not in the remote tribal areas along the Pakistani-Afghan border where he has long been presumed to be sheltered, but in a massive compound about an hour’s drive north from the Pakistani capital of Islamabad. He was hiding in the medium-sized city of Abbottabad, home to a large Pakistani military base and a military academy of the Pakistani Army.

The house at the end of a narrow dirt road was roughly eight times larger than other homes in the area, but had no telephone or Internet connections. When American operatives converged on the house on Sunday, Bin Laden “resisted the assault force” and was killed in the middle of an intense gun battle, a senior administration official said, but details were still sketchy early Monday morning.

The official said that military and intelligence officials first learned last summer that a “high-value target” was being protected in the compound and began working on a plan for going in to get him. Beginning in March, Mr. Obama presided over five national security meetings at the White House to go over plans for the operation and on Friday morning, just before leaving Washington to tour tornado damage in Alabama, gave the final order for special forces and C.I.A. operatives to strike.

Mr. Obama called it a “targeted operation,” although officials said one helicopter was lost because of a mechanical failure and had to be destroyed to keep it from falling into hostile hands.

In addition to Bin Laden, three men were killed during the 40-minute raid, one believed to be his son and the other two his couriers, according to an American official who briefed reporters under White House ground rules forbidding further identification. A woman was killed when she was used as a shield by a male combatant, the official said, and two others wounded.

“No Americans were harmed,” Mr. Obama said. “They took care to avoid civilian casualties. After a firefight, they killed Osama bin Laden and took custody of his body.” Muslim tradition requires burial within 24 hours, but by doing it at sea, American authorities presumably were trying to avoid creating a shrine for his followers.

The fate of Ayman al-Zawahiri, the Al Qaeda second-in-command, was unclear Sunday night.

Bin Laden’s death came nearly 10 years after Al Qaeda terrorists hijacked four American passenger jets, crashing three of them into the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon outside Washington. The fourth hijacked jet, United Flight 93, crashed into the Pennsylvania countryside after passengers fought the militants.

“This is important news for us, and for the world,” said Gordon Felt, president of the group Families of Flight 93. “It cannot ease our pain, or bring back our loved ones. It does bring a measure of comfort that the mastermind of the September 11th tragedy and the face of global terror can no longer spread his evil.”

The mostly young people who celebrated in the streets of New York and Washington saw it as a historic moment, one that for many of them culminated a worldwide manhunt that started when they were children.

Some climbed trees and lampposts directly in front of the White House to cheer and wave flags. Cigars and noisemakers were common. One group started singing, “Osama, Osama, hey, hey, hey, goodbye.”

Maureen Hasson, 22, a recent college graduate working for the Justice Department, came down to Lafayette Square in a fuchsia party dress and flip-flops. “This is full circle for our generation,” she said. “Just look around at the average age here. We were all in middle school when the terrorists struck. We all vividly remember 9/11 and this is the close of that chapter.”

Sam Sherman, 18, a freshman at George Washington University originally from New York, also rushed down to the White House. “The feeling you can’t even imagine, the feeling in the air. It’s crazy,” he said. “I have friends with parents dead because of Osama bin Laden’s plan, O.K.? So when I heard this news, I was coming down to celebrate.”

Mr. Obama said Pakistan had helped develop the intelligence that led to Bin Laden, but an American official said the Pakistani government was not informed about the strike in advance. “We shared our intelligence on this compound with no other country, including Pakistan,” the official said.

Mr. Obama recalled his statements in the 2008 presidential campaign when he vowed to order American forces to strike inside Pakistan if necessary even without Islamabad’s permission. “That is what we’ve done,” he said. “But it’s important to note that our counterterrorism cooperation with Pakistan helped lead us to Bin Laden and the compound where he was hiding.”

Relations with Pakistan had fallen in recent weeks to their lowest point in years. Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, publicly criticized the Pakistani military two weeks ago for failing to act against extremists allied to Al Qaeda who shelter in the tribal areas of North Waziristan. Last week, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, head of the Pakistani Army, said Pakistan had broken the back of terrorism on its territory, prompting skepticism in Washington.

Mr. Obama called President Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan to tell him about the strike after it was set in motion, and his advisers called their Pakistani counterparts. “They agree that this is a good and historic day for both of our nations,” Mr. Obama said.

The city of Abbottabad where Bin Laden was found has had other known Al Qaeda presence in the past. A senior Indonesian militant, Umar Patek, was arrested there earlier this year. Mr. Patek was protected by a Qaeda operative, a clerk who worked undercover at the main post office, a signal that Al Qaeda may have had other operations in the area.

As the operation’s start approached, many American officials at the United States consulate in Peshawar, the capital of the northwest area of Pakistan, were told suddenly to depart last Friday, leaving behind only a core group of essential staff. The American officials said they had been told to leave because of fears of kidnapping but were not tipped off to the operation.

Analysts said Bin Laden’s death amounted to a double blow for Al Qaeda, after its sermons of anti-Western violence seemed to be rendered irrelevant by the wave of political upheaval rolling through the Arab world.

“It comes at a time when Al Qaeda’s narrative is already very much in doubt in the Arab world,” said Martin S. Indyk, vice president and director of foreign policy at the Brookings Institution. “Its narrative was that violence was the way to redeem Arab honor and dignity. But Osama bin Laden and his violence didn’t succeed in unseating anybody.”

Al Qaeda sympathizers reacted with disbelief, anger and in some cases talk of retribution. On a Web site considered an outlet for Al Qaeda messages, forum administrators deleted posts by users announcing Bin Laden’s death and demanded that members wait until the news was confirmed by Al Qaeda sources, according to the SITE Intelligence Group, an organization that monitors radicals.

Even so, SITE said, sympathizers on the forum posted messages calling Bin Laden a martyr and suggesting retaliation. “America will reap the same if the news is true and false,” said one message. “The lions will remain lions and will continue moving in the footsteps of Usama,” said another, using an alternate spelling of Bin Laden’s name.

In the United States, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, an advocacy organization, said it welcomed Bin Laden’s death. “As we have stated repeatedly since the 9/11 terror attacks, Bin Laden never represented Muslims or Islam,” the group said in a statement. “In fact, in addition to the killing of thousands of Americans, he and Al Qaeda caused the deaths of countless Muslims worldwide.”

Mr. Obama called to inform his predecessor, George W. Bush, who first launched the war against Al Qaeda after Sept. 11, yet was frustrated in his efforts to capture Bin Laden “dead or alive,” as he once put it. “This momentous achievement marks a victory for America, for people who seek peace around the world, and for all those who lost loved ones on September 11, 2001,” Mr. Bush said in a statement. “The fight against terror goes on, but tonight America has sent an unmistakable message: No matter how long it takes, justice will be done.”

President Obama used similar language and warned that the war against terrorists had not ended. “We will be relentless in defense of our citizens and our friends and allies. We will be true to the values that make us who we are. And on nights like this one, we can say to those families who have lost loved ones to Al Qaeda’s terror, justice has been done.”

The president was careful to add that, as Mr. Bush did during his presidency, the United States is not at war with Islam. “Bin Laden was not a Muslim leader; he was a mass murderer of Muslims,” Mr. Obama said. “Indeed, Al Qaeda has slaughtered scores of Muslims in many countries, including our own. So his demise should be welcomed by all who believe in peace and human dignity.”

Reporting was contributed by Elisabeth Goodridge, Scott Shane, Ben Werschkul, Mark Landler and Michael Shear from Washington; Jane Perlez from Sydney, Australia; and Pir Zubair Shah from New York.

Arizona Governor Vetoes Presidential 'Birther' Bill : NPR

2011-04-18T23:05:00.000-04:00

Image via WikipediaArizona Governor Vetoes Presidential 'Birther' Bill : NPR

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer on Monday vetoed a bill that would have required President Obama and other presidential candidates to prove their U.S. citizenship before their names could appear on the state's ballot.

The bill would have made Arizona the first state to pass such a requirement. Opponents had warned the bill would give another black eye to Arizona after last year's controversy over the state's illegal immigration enforcement law.

Brewer said in her veto letter that she was troubled that the bill empowered Arizona's secretary of state to judge the qualifications of all candidates when they file to run for office.

"I do not support designating one person as the gatekeeper to the ballot for a candidate, which could lead to arbitrary or politically motivated decisions," said Brewer, who was secretary of state until she became governor in 2009.

"In addition, I never imagined being presented with a bill that could require candidates for president of the greatest and most powerful nation on Earth to submit their 'early baptismal circumcision certificates' among other records to the Arizona secretary of state," she said. "This is a bridge too far."

The certificates were among the documents a candidate could have submitted under the bill in place of a birth certificate.

So-called "birthers" claim there's no proof Obama was born in the United States, and he is therefore ineligible to be president. But Hawaii officials have certified Obama was born in that state.

The U.S. Constitution requires that presidential candidates be "natural-born" U.S. citizens, be at least 35 years old, and be a resident of the United States for at least 14 years. Opponents questioned whether Arizona's bill would have added additional requirements.

The measure would have required that political parties and presidential candidates hand in affidavits stating a candidate's citizenship and age. It also would have required the candidate's birth certificate and a sworn statement saying where the candidate has lived for 14 years.

If candidates didn't have a copy of their birth certificates, they could meet the requirement by providing baptismal or circumcision certificates, hospital birth records and other documents.

If it couldn't be determined whether candidates who provided documents in place of their birth certificates were eligible to appear on the ballot, the secretary of state would have been able to set up a committee to help determine whether the requirements were met. The names of candidates could be kept off the ballot if the secretary of state didn't believe the candidates met the citizenship requirement.

The bill didn't explicitly provide an appeals process for a candidate whose name was kept off the ballot.

The bill's sponsor, Republican Rep. Carl Seel of Phoenix, declined immediate comment on Monday's veto. But he previously said that the president's birth record wouldn't satisfy the requirements of his proposal and that Obama would have to provide other records, such as baptismal certificates and hospital records.

The measure, however, wasn't intended as a swipe against the president — it was meant to maintain the integrity of elections, Seel said.

Federal Budget Deal Reached, Government Shutdown Averted At Least Temporarily

2011-04-08T23:24:00.001-04:00

Federal Budget Deal Reached, Government Shutdown Averted At Least Temporarily

Perilously close to a midnight deadline, the White House and congressional leaders have reached agreement to cut billions of dollars in spending to avoid the first government shutdown in 15 years.

House Speaker John Boehner informed the GOP rank and file of the accord, reached in grueling negotiations over several weeks, an official said.

"We have an agreement," concurred a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Jon Summers.

Because drafting and then passing the broader legislation could take days, congressional leaders raced to approve a stopgap measure to prevent the onset of the first shutdown in 15 years, due to begin at midnight. Officials said it would keep the government in funds through the middle of next week.

Boehner told reporters just before 11 p.m. EDT that the House would continue working.

Republicans said the deal called for $39 billion in spending cuts, a measure that one official said Boehner told his rank and file marked the "largest real-dollar spending cut in American history."

Over a decade, the agreement would cut more than $500 billion from the federal budget, Boehner added, according to a participant in the meeting.

The agreement marked an extraordinary reach across party lines and the first test of a new era of divided government that includes Obama in the White House, control of the Senate by fellow Democrats and a tea party-flavored Republican majority in the House.

U.S. Sees Array of New Threats at Japan’s Nuclear Plant - NYTimes.com

2011-04-05T23:01:00.001-04:00

U.S. Sees Array of New Threats at Japan’s Nuclear Plant - NYTimes.com

By JAMES GLANZ and WILLIAM J. BROAD

United States government engineers sent to help with the crisis in Japan are warning that the troubled nuclear plant there is facing a wide array of fresh threats that could persist indefinitely, and that in some cases are expected to increase as a result of the very measures being taken to keep the plant stable, according to a confidential assessment prepared by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Among the new threats that were cited in the assessment, dated March 26, are the mounting stresses placed on the containment structures as they fill with radioactive cooling water, making them more vulnerable to rupture in one of the aftershocks rattling the site after the earthquake and tsunami of March 11. The document also cites the possibility of explosions inside the containment structures due to the release of hydrogen and oxygen from seawater pumped into the reactors, and offers new details on how semimolten fuel rods and salt buildup are impeding the flow of fresh water meant to cool the nuclear cores.

In recent days, workers have grappled with several side effects of the emergency measures taken to keep nuclear fuel at the plant from overheating, including leaks of radioactive water at the site and radiation burns to workers who step into the water. The assessment, as well as interviews with officials familiar with it, points to a new panoply of complex challenges that water creates for the safety of workers and the recovery and long-term stability of the reactors.

While the assessment does not speculate on the likelihood of new explosions or damage from an aftershock, either could lead to a breach of the containment structures in one or more of the crippled reactors, the last barriers that prevent a much more serious release of radiation from the nuclear core. If the fuel continues to heat and melt because of ineffective cooling, some nuclear experts say, that could also leave a radioactive mass that could stay molten for an extended period.

The document, which was obtained by The New York Times, provides a more detailed technical assessment than Japanese officials have provided of the conundrum facing the Japanese as they struggle to prevent more fuel melting at the Fukushima Daiichi plant. But it appears to rely largely on data shared with American experts by the Japanese.

Among other problems, the document raises new questions about whether pouring water on nuclear fuel in the absence of functioning cooling systems can be sustained indefinitely. Experts have said the Japanese need to continue to keep the fuel cool for many months until the plant can be stabilized, but there is growing awareness that the risks of pumping water on the fuel present a whole new category of challenges that the nuclear industry is only beginning to comprehend.

The document also suggests that fragments or particles of nuclear fuel from spent fuel pools above the reactors were blown “up to one mile from the units,” and that pieces of highly radioactive material fell between two units and had to be “bulldozed over,” presumably to protect workers at the site. The ejection of nuclear material, which may have occurred during one of the earlier hydrogen explosions, may indicate more extensive damage to the extremely radioactive pools than previously disclosed.

David A. Lochbaum, a nuclear engineer who worked on the kinds of General Electric reactors used in Japan and now directs the nuclear safety project at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said that the welter of problems revealed in the document at three separate reactors made a successful outcome even more uncertain.

“I thought they were, not out of the woods, but at least at the edge of the woods,” said Mr. Lochbaum, who was not involved in preparing the document. “This paints a very different picture, and suggests that things are a lot worse. They could still have more damage in a big way if some of these things don’t work out for them.”

The steps recommended by the nuclear commission include injecting nitrogen, an inert gas, into the containment structures in an attempt to purge them of hydrogen and oxygen, which could combine to produce explosions. The document also recommends that engineers continue adding boron to cooling water to help prevent the cores from restarting the nuclear reaction, a process known as criticality.

Even so, the engineers who prepared the document do not believe that a resumption of criticality is an immediate likelihood, Neil Wilmshurst, vice president of the nuclear sector at the Electric Power Research Institute, said when contacted about the document. “I have seen no data to suggest that there is criticality ongoing,” said Mr. Wilmshurst, who was involved in the assessment.

The document was prepared for the commission’s Reactor Safety Team, which is assisting the Japanese government and the Tokyo Electric Power Company, which owns the plant. It says it is based on the “most recent available data” from numerous Japanese and American organizations, including the electric power company, the Japan Atomic Industrial Forum, the United States Department of Energy, General Electric and the Electric Power Research Institute, an independent, nonprofit group.

The document contains detailed assessments of each of the plant’s six reactors along with recommendations for action. Nuclear experts familiar with the assessment said that it was regularly updated but that over all, the March 26 version closely reflected current thinking.

The assessment provides graphic new detail on the conditions of the damaged cores in reactors 1, 2 and 3. Because slumping fuel and salt from seawater that had been used as a coolant is probably blocking circulation pathways, the water flow in No. 1 “is severely restricted and likely blocked.” Inside the core itself, “there is likely no water level,” the assessment says, adding that as a result, “it is difficult to determine how much cooling is getting to the fuel.” Similar problems exist in No. 2 and No. 3, although the blockage is probably less severe, the assessment says.

Some of the salt may have been washed away in the past week with the switch from seawater to fresh water cooling, nuclear experts said.

A rise in the water level of the containment structures has often been depicted as a possible way to immerse and cool the fuel. The assessment, however, warns that “when flooding containment, consider the implications of water weight on seismic capability of containment.”

Experts in nuclear plant design say that this warning refers to the enormous stress put on the containment structures by the rising water. The more water in the structures, the more easily a large aftershock could rupture one of them.

Margaret Harding, a former reactor designer for General Electric, warned of aftershocks and said, “If I were in the Japanese’s shoes, I’d be very reluctant to have tons and tons of water sitting in a containment whose structural integrity hasn’t been checked since the earthquake.”

The N.R.C. document also expressed concern about the potential for a “hazardous atmosphere” in the concrete-and-steel containment structures because of the release of hydrogen and oxygen from the seawater in a highly radioactive environment.

Hydrogen explosions in the first few days of the disaster heavily damaged several reactor buildings and in one case may have damaged a containment structure. That hydrogen was produced by a mechanism involving the metal cladding of the nuclear fuel. The document urged that Japanese operators restore the ability to purge the structures of these gases and fill them with stable nitrogen gas, a capability lost after the quake and tsunami.

Nuclear experts say that radiation from the core of a reactor can split water molecules in two, releasing hydrogen. Mr. Wilmshurst said that since the March 26 document, engineers had calculated that the amount of hydrogen produced would be small. But Jay A. LaVerne, a physicist at Notre Dame, said that at least near the fuel rods, some hydrogen would in fact be produced, and could react with oxygen. “If so,” Mr. LaVerne said in an interview, “you have an explosive mixture being formed near the fuel rods.”

Nuclear engineers have warned in recent days that the pools outside the containment buildings that hold spent fuel rods could pose an even greater danger than the melted reactor cores. The pools, which sit atop the reactor buildings and are meant to keep spent fuel submerged in water, have lost their cooling systems.

The N.R.C. report suggests that the fuel pool of the No. 4 reactor suffered a hydrogen explosion early in the Japanese crisis and could have shed much radioactive material into the environment, what it calls “a major source term release.”

Experts worry about the fuel pools because explosions have torn away their roofs and exposed their radioactive contents. By contrast, reactors have strong containment vessels that stand a better chance of bottling up radiation from a meltdown of the fuel in the reactor core.

“Even the best juggler in the world can get too many balls up in the air,” Mr. Lochbaum said of the multiplicity of problems at the plant. “They’ve got a lot of nasty things to negotiate in the future, and one missed step could make the situation much, much worse.”

Henry Fountain contributed reporting from New York, and Matthew L. Wald from Washington.

Alleged Libyan Rape Victim Eman al-Obeidy On CNN: ‘I Refused To Be Silent’

2011-04-05T09:37:00.002-04:00

Afghans Angry Over Florida Koran Burning Kill U.N. Staff - NYTimes.com

2011-04-01T17:02:00.001-04:00

Afghans Angry Over Florida Koran Burning Kill U.N. Staff - NYTimes.com

By ENAYAT NAJAFIZADA and ROD NORDLAND

MAZAR-I-SHARIF, Afghanistan — Stirred up by a trio of angry mullahs who urged them to avenge the burning of a Koran at a Florida church, thousands of protesters overran the compound of the United Nations in this northern Afghan city, killing at least 12 people, Afghan and United Nations officials said.

The dead included at least seven United Nations workers — five Nepalese guards and two Europeans, one of them a woman. None were Americans. Early reports, later denied by Afghan officials, said that at least two of the dead had been beheaded. Five Afghans were also killed.

The attack was the deadliest for the United Nations in Afghanistan since 11 people were killed in 2009, when Taliban suicide bombers invaded a guesthouse in Kabul. It also underscored the latent hostility toward the nine-year foreign presence here, even in a city long considered to be among the safest in Afghanistan — so safe that American troops no longer patrol here in any numbers.

Unable to find Americans on whom to vent their anger, the mob turned instead on the next-best symbol of Western intrusion — the nearby United Nations headquarters. “Some of our colleagues were just hunted down,” said a spokesman for the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, Kieran Dwyer, confirming that the attack.

In Washington, President Obama issued a statement strongly condemning the violence against United Nations workers. “Their work is essential to building a stronger Afghanistan for the benefit of all its citizens,” he said. “We stress the importance of calm and urge all parties to reject violence.” The statement made no reference to the Florida church or the burning of the Koran.

Afghanistan, deeply religious and reflexively volatile, has long been one of the most reactive flashpoints to perceived insults against Islam. When a Danish cartoonist lampooned the Prophet Muhammad, four people were killed in riots in Afghanistan within days in 2006. The year before, a one-paragraph item in Newsweek alleging that guards at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, had flushed a Koran down the toilet set off three days of riots that left 14 dead in Afghanistan.

Friday’s episode began when three mullahs, addressing worshipers at Friday Prayer inside the Blue Mosque here, one of Afghanistan’s holiest places, urged people to take to the streets to agitate for the arrest of Terry Jones, the Florida pastor who oversaw the burning of a Koran on March 20.

Otherwise, said the most prominent of them, Mullah Mohammed Shah Adeli, Afghanistan should cut off relations with the United States. “Burning the Koran is an insult to Islam, and those who committed it should be punished,” he said.

The crowd — some of its members carrying signs reading “Down with America” and “Death to Obama” — poured into the streets and swelled. Gov. Atta Muhammad Noor of Balkh Province, of which Mazar-i-Sharif is the capital, later put the number at 20,000. According to Lal Mohammad Ahmadzai, spokesman for Gen. Daoud Daoud, the Afghan National Police commander for the country’s north, the crowd soon overwhelmed the United Nations guards, disarming some and beating and shooting others.

Gen. Abdul Rauf Taj, the deputy police commander for Balkh Province, put the death toll at eight foreign United Nations staff members, but he said there had not been any beheadings. “Police tried to stop them, but protesters began stoning the building and finally the situation got out of control,” General Taj said.

Mr. Ahmadzai, however, put the death toll at ten foreigners in the United Nations compound, eight killed by gunshots and two beheaded.

Mr. Dwyer confirmed that some United Nations staff members had been killed, but he declined to provide a number or the nationalities of the victims until next of kin had been notified.

Mirwais Rabi, director of the public health hospital in Mazar-i-Sharif, said 20 wounded and 5 dead Afghan civilians were brought to the hospital in all.

The mob also burned down part of the United Nations compound, toppled guard towers and heaved blocks of cement down from the walls. The victims were killed by weapons that the demonstrators had wrestled away from the United Nations guards, Mr. Noor said. He said those killed included five Nepalese guards and two European staff workers for the United Nations, one of them a woman.

Mr. Noor also blamed what he said were Taliban infiltrators among the crowd for urging violence and even distributing weapons; he said 27 suspects were arrested on charges of inciting violence, some from Kandahar and other provinces where Taliban are more common.

Mr. Jones, the Florida pastor, caused an international uproar by threatening to burn the Koran last year on the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. Among others, the overall commander of forces in Afghanistan, Gen. David H. Petraeus, had warned at that time that such an action could provoke violence in Afghanistan and could endanger American troops. Mr. Jones subsequently promised not to burn a Koran, but he nonetheless presided over a mock trial and then the burning of the Koran at his small church in Gainesville, Fla., on March 20, with only 30 worshipers attending.

The act drew little response worldwide, but provoked angry condemnation in this region, where it was reported in the local media and where anti-American sentiment already runs high. Last week, President Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan condemned the burning in an address before Parliament, and President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan on Thursday called on the United States to bring those responsible for the Koran burning to justice.

A prominent Afghan cleric, Mullah Qyamudin Kashaf, the acting head of the Ulema Council of Afghanistan and a Karzai appointee, also called for American authorities to arrest and try Mr. Jones in the Koran burning.

The Ulema Council recently met to discuss the Koran burning, Mullah Kashaf said in a telephone interview. “We expressed our deep concerns about this act, and we were expecting the violence that we are witnessing now,” he said. “Unless they try him and give him the highest possible punishment, we will witness violence and protests not only in Afghanistan but in the entire world.”

Mr. Jones was unrepentant. “We must hold these countries and people accountable for what they have done as well as for any excuses they may use to promote their terrorist activities,” he said in a statement. “Islam is not a religion of peace. It is time that we call these people to accountability.”

Last year, even though Mr. Jones called off his burning of the Koran, a subsequent wave of protests at NATO facilities in Afghanistan led to at least five deaths. In several of those episodes, Taliban agitators played a role; they were said to have spread rumors that the Koran burning had taken place. However, the Taliban have had little or no presence in Mazar-i-Sharif.

In other developments in Afghanistan, six American soldiers were killed in a single operation in the country’s east on Wednesday and Thursday, a spokesman for the international coalition said Friday.

“I can confirm that six coalition soldiers have been identified as U.S. soldiers, and were all killed as part of the same operation, but in three separate incidents,” said Maj. Tim James.

The operation, a helicopter assault into a remote part of Kunar Province close to the Pakistani border, was continuing. The area is frequently used to infiltrate fighters from Pakistan. The purpose of the operation, Major James said, was to “disrupt insurgent operations.”

The governor of Kunar Province, Said Fazlullah Wahidi, said the operation began Wednesday as a joint Afghan and American air and ground operation in the districts of Sarkani and Marawara, close to the border of Pakistan. He said that 14 insurgents were killed and 10 were wounded, but he had no information about casualties among Afghan forces.

Enayat Najafizada reported from Mazar-i-Sharif and Rod Nordland from Kabul, Afghanistan. Sharifullah Sahak contributed reporting from Kabul, and Timothy Williams from New York.

Unemployment Rate Dips To 8.8 Percent In March : NPR

2011-04-01T09:27:00.002-04:00

Unemployment Rate Dips To 8.8 Percent In March : NPR

The unemployment rate fell to a two-year low of 8.8 percent in March and companies added workers at the fastest two-month pace since before the recession began.

The Labor Department reported Friday that the economy added 216,000 new jobs last month, offsetting layoffs by local governments. Factories, retailers, education, health care and an array of professional and financial services expanded payrolls.

The second straight month of brisk hiring is the latest sign that the economy is strengthening nearly two years after the recession ended.

Private employers, the backbone of the economy, drove nearly all of the gains. They added 230,000 jobs last month, on top of 240,000 in February. It was the first time private-sector hiring topped 200,000 in back-to-back months since 2006 more than a year before the recession started.

The unemployment rate dipped from 8.9 percent in February to 8.8 percent in March. The rate has fallen a full percentage point over the last four months, the sharpest drop since 1983.

Economists predict employers will add jobs at roughly the same pace for the rest of this year. That would generate about 2.5 million new positions. But that will make up only a small portion of the 7.5 million jobs that were wiped out during the recession.

And the economy faces other pitfalls. Local governments, wrestling with budget shortfalls, cut 15,000 workers last month and are expected to keep shedding jobs. Home prices are falling amid weak sales and a record number of foreclosures. Higher food and gas prices are leaving consumers with less disposable income to spend on other goods and services.

The number of unemployed people dipped to 13.5 million in March, still almost double since before the recession began in December 2007.

Including part-time workers who would rather be working full time, plus people who have given up looking altogether, the percentage of "underemployed" people dropped to 15.7 percent in March.

Unemployment Rate Dips To 8.8 Percent In March : NPR

2011-04-01T09:27:00.000-04:00

Unemployment Rate Dips To 8.8 Percent In March : NPR

The unemployment rate fell to a two-year low of 8.8 percent in March and companies added workers at the fastest two-month pace since before the recession began.

The second straight month of brisk hiring is the latest sign that the economy is strengthening nearly two years after the recession ended.

The unemployment rate dipped from 8.9 percent in February to 8.8 percent in March. The rate has fallen a full percentage point over the last four months, the sharpest drop since 1983.

The number of unemployed people dipped to 13.5 million in March, still almost double since before the recession began in December 2007.

Including part-time workers who would rather be working full time, plus people who have given up looking altogether, the percentage of "underemployed" people dropped to 15.7 percent in March.

Bob Herbert Leaving New York Times

2011-03-25T21:11:00.001-04:00

Bob Herbert Leaving New York Times

Bob Herbert is leaving the New York Times after 18 years as an op-ed columnist for the paper, the Times announced Friday.

Herbert's final column will run on Saturday. He has been a writer for the Times since 1993, becoming one of the country's most prominent progressive columnists.

In a message to staffers, Herbert said that "for some time now I have grown eager to move beyond the constriction of the column format, with its rigid 800-word limit, in favor of broader and more versatile efforts.” He said that he wanted to write "more expansively and more aggressively about the injustices visited on working people, the poor and the many others in our society who find themselves on the wrong side of power.”

He said he will also work on a new book, as well as a "soon-to-be-announced effort to help bolster progressive journalism.”

Herbert's departure is the second high-profile exit from the Times' op-ed page this month. Frank Rich also bolted the paper for New York magazine, citing the same feeling of constriction and the desire to try new things. It also comes as the Times is dramatically overhauling its opinion pages, both in print and online.

Japan Reactor Nuclear Core May Have Been Breached : NPR

2011-03-25T09:37:00.001-04:00

Image via WikipediaJapan Reactor Nuclear Core May Have Been Breached : NPR

The operators of the damaged Fukishima Dai-chi power plant say there's evidence that radioactive water leaking from the third reactor came from its core. This reactor has been the source of major concern since the March 11 earthquake and tsunami that devastated northern Japan, and led to the current crisis at the power facility.

Officials say they have not found evidence of an actual breach in the reactor. There are many pipes and connections leading to the core that could be the source of leaking water.

But the utility also found extremely high levels of radiation in the water, and detected radioactive isotopes that are not ordinarily present in cooling water.

Since the accident began, there's been considerable speculation as to whether radiation leaks are coming from the reactors themselves, or from spent fuel stored in pools that may have been damaged.

The news comes a day after three workers were exposed to high levels of radioactivity while laying electrical cable in the basement of a building near Unit 3. Two of the men were taken to a local hospital for treatment of possible radiation burns. They were then brought to Japan's National Institute of Radiological Sciences in the Tokyo area.

In a statement on Friday, Tokyo Electrical Power Co., or TEPCO, which runs the plant, indicated that the workers had ignored high readings on their dosimeters, which measure the presence of radiation. The men were employed by a contractor for TEPCO. Their condition since they were brought in for treatment on Thursday is unknown.

The Nuclear Safety Commission of Japan also expanded its call for a voluntary evacuation around the plant, to a radius of 30 kilometers, about 18 miles. Since March 15, residents living within 20 kilometers — about 12 miles — have been urged to leave the area, and those living within the 30-kilometer range had been told to remain indoors.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano says local governments are being told to call for voluntary evacuations 30 kilometers out. The government said that the main concern was not radiation exposure, but that services in this area had been severely disrupted by the earthquake, tsunami and the nuclear crisis.

The U.S. government has also told its citizens to stay 50 miles away from the plant.

Food And Water Concerns

Radiation leaks have contaminated some food and water around the plant. Tokyo residents were warned on Wednesday that tap water had tested high for radioactivity, and that they should not allow infants to drink the water.

That order was rescinded the next day when readings dropped. But water systems in a number of cities continue to test above the levels considered safe for small children.

Japan has restricted the sale and consumption of produce, fruit and milk produced around the plant. And the United States and other countries have banned the import of some food products from the affected area.

Damage To Reactor Buildings

Japan's Self-Defense Forces released a video of the damaged reactor buildings, shot from a military helicopter. The film shows extensive damage to many of the buildings.

The roofs of several reactor buildings have been reduced to the steel framework, and steam is clearly leaking from a number of places. Since the earthquake, there have been a number of explosions traced to leaking hydrogen within the reactor buildings.

Official say that work continues to revive the cooling equipment that lost power after the natural disaster struck. External power has been restored to all six reactors.

Technicians are also beginning to pump fresh water, instead of seawater, into Unit 1. TEPCO has been injecting seawater into some of the reactors to keep nuclear fuel from overheating, but there's concern that salt deposits from the seawater could make it more difficult to move heat away from the fuel. The company plans to replace seawater with fresh water at Units 2 and 3, which have also suffered fuel damage.

Relief officials now say the confirmed death toll from the earthquake and tsunami has reached 10,000, with more than 17,000 people still missing. Nearly 300,000 people are believed homeless, and the number of evacuees will now increase, with the government's decision to expand the safety zone around the plant.

U.S.-Led Assault Nears Goal in Libya - NYTimes.com

2011-03-22T07:55:00.001-04:00

U.S.-Led Assault Nears Goal in Libya - NYTimes.com

By ELISABETH BUMILLER and KAREEM FAHIM

WASHINGTON — An American-led military campaign to destroy Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s air defenses and establish a no-fly zone over Libya has nearly accomplished its initial objectives, and the United States is moving swiftly to hand command to allies in Europe, American officials said Monday.

But the firepower of more than 130 Tomahawk cruise missiles and attacks by allied warplanes have not yet succeeded in accomplishing the more ambitious demands by the United States — repeated by President Obama in a letter to Congress on Monday — that Colonel Qaddafi withdraw his forces from embattled cities and cease all attacks against civilians.

Libyan government forces continued to engage in scattered fighting on Monday, defying the United Nations resolutions authorizing the allied strikes. The resolution demands an immediate cease-fire by Colonel Qaddafi’s forces and an end to attacks on civilians.

Pentagon officials are eager to extract the United States from a third armed conflict in a Muslim country as quickly as possible. But confusion broke out on Monday among the allies in Europe over who exactly would carry the military operation forward once the United States stepped back, and from where.

In Washington, lawmakers from both parties argued that Mr. Obama had exceeded his constitutional authority by authorizing the military’s participation without Congressional approval. The president said in a letter to Congress that he had the power to authorize the strikes, which would be limited in duration and scope, and that preventing a humanitarian disaster in Libya was in the national interest.

At the United Nations, the Security Council rejected a request from Libya for a meeting to discuss the situation.

Qaddafi forces were holding out against the allied military campaign to break their grip. Rebel fighters trying to retake the eastern town of Ajdabiya said their advance was halted on Monday by tank and rocket fire from government loyalists still controlling entrances to the city. Dozens of fighters fell back to a checkpoint about 25 miles north of Ajdabiya, in Zueitina.

By the early afternoon, the fighters said at least eight of their confederates had been killed in the day’s fighting, including four who were killed when a tank shell struck their pickup truck.

In the western city of Misurata, forces loyal to Colonel Qaddafi were still at large and were using civilians as human shields, Reuters reported, but that could not be immediately confirmed.

At the Pentagon, officials said that the intensive American-led assault unleashed over the weekend was a classic air campaign, chosen by Mr. Obama among a range of military options, which was intended to have coalition aircraft in the skies above Libya within days and without fear of being shot down. “You don’t do that piecemeal,” a United States military official said. “You do it all at once, and you do it as fast as you can.”

The targets included radar installations, fixed and mobile antiaircraft sites, Libyan aircraft and hangars, and other targets intended to make it safe for allied aircraft to impose the no-fly zone. They also included tanks and other ground forces engaged with the rebels around the country, reflecting the broader aim of pushing Colonel Qadaffi’s forces to withdraw from disputed cities. Communications centers and at least one Scud missile site were also struck.

Explosions and antiaircraft fire could be heard in and around Tripoli on Monday in a third straight night of attacks there against Colonel Qadaffi’s forces.

United States military officials said that there were fewer American and coalition airstrikes in Libya on Sunday night and Monday, and that the number would probably decline further in coming days. But Gen. Carter F. Ham, the head of the United States Africa Command, who is in charge of the coalition effort, said that there would be strikes on Colonel Qaddafi’s mobile air defenses and that some 80 sorties — only half by the United States — were flown on Monday.

General Ham also said he had “full authority” to attack the regime’s forces if they refused to comply with President Obama’s demands that they pull back from Ajdabiya, Misurata and Zawiya.

By Monday night, explosions and antiaircraft fire could be heard in and around Tripoli in the third straight day of attacks.

In Santiago, Chile, Mr. Obama restated that the United States would soon turn over full responsibility to the allies to maintain the no-fly zone. He also sought to distinguish the stated goals of the United Nations-authorized military operation — protecting Libyan civilians, establishing a no-flight zone and forcing Colonel Qaddafi’s withdrawal from the cities — with his own administration’s demand, not included in the United Nations resolution, that Colonel Qaddafi had to leave office.

“It is U.S. policy that Qaddafi needs to go,” Mr. Obama said at a news conference with the Chilean president, Sebastián Piñera. “And we’ve got a wide range of tools in addition to our military effort to support that policy.” Mr. Obama cited economic sanctions, the freezing of assets and other measures to isolate the regime in Tripoli.

United States military commanders repeated throughout the day that they were not communicating with Libyan rebels, even as a spokesman for the rebel military, Khaled El-Sayeh, asserted that rebel officers had been providing the allies with coordinates for their airstrikes. “We give them the coordinates, and we give them the location that needs to be bombed,” Mr. Sayeh told reporters.

On Monday night, a United States military official responded that “we know of no instances where this has occurred.”

Earlier in the day, General Ham repeatedly said in answer to questions from reporters that the United States was not working with the rebels. “Our mission is not to support any opposition forces,” General Ham said by video feed to the Pentagon from the headquarters of Africa Command in Stuttgart, Germany.

Mr. Sayeh said that there were no Western military trainers advising the rebel fighters, but that he would welcome such help. He added, with evident frustration, that the rebel fighters on the front in Ajdabiya “didn’t take orders from anybody.”

Like other rebel military officials, Mr. Sayeh said the rebels had been working to better organize their ranks to include members of specialized units from the Libyan Army that would attack Colonel Qaddafi’s forces when the time was right. But evidence of such a force has yet to materialize.

The rebels appeared to have fallen into some disarray as they returned from Ajdabiya, with one commander at the checkpoint trying to marshal them with a barely functioning megaphone. He tried organizing the assembled fighters into columns for an attack, but nearly fell off the truck as he ordered the fighters to move.

“I know most of you are civilians,” he said. “But we have to charge.” Only a few trucks inched forward as other fighters stood and argued among themselves.

At NATO headquarters in Brussels on Monday, members of the military alliance came to no agreement on who would take the lead on a no-fly zone or how to proceed on enforcing a United Nations arms embargo against Libya.

Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain said responsibility for the no-fly zone would be transferred to NATO. But France objected to that, with its foreign minister, Alain Juppé, saying: “The Arab League does not wish the operation to be entirely placed under NATO responsibility. It isn’t NATO which has taken the initiative up to now.”

Turkey, a NATO member that has opposed the use of force in Libya and was still seething over being omitted from a planning meeting in Paris on Saturday, refused on Sunday to back a NATO military plan for the no-fly zone. But its prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, denied that his country was against NATO participation in the operation, saying only that he wanted assurances that it would be brief and not end in an occupation.

Elisabeth Bumiller reported from Washington, and Kareem Fahim from Benghazi, Libya. Contributing reporting were David D. Kirkpatrick from Tripoli, Libya; Eric Schmitt and Thom Shanker from Washington; Steven Erlanger and Alan Cowell from Paris; Clifford J. Levy from Moscow; and Julia Werdigier from London.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: March 21, 2011

An earlier version of this article gave an incorrect title for Alain Juppé. He is the foreign minister of France, not its prime minister.

Arab League condemns broad bombing campaign in Libya - The Washington Post

2011-03-21T06:10:00.001-04:00

Image via WikipediaArab League condemns broad bombing campaign in Libya - The Washington Post

By Edward Cody, Sunday, March 20, 1:01 PM

CAIRO — The Arab League secretary general, Amr Moussa, deplored the broad scope of the U.S.-European bombing campaign in Libya and said Sunday that he would call a league meeting to reconsider Arab approval of the Western military intervention.

Moussa said the Arab League’s approval of a no-fly zone on March 12 was based on a desire to prevent Moammar Gaddafi’s air force from attacking civilians and was not designed to endorse the intense bombing and missile attacks — including on Tripoli, the capital, and on Libyan ground forces — whose images have filled Arab television screens for two days.

“What is happening in Libya differs from the aim of imposing a no-fly zone,” he said in a statement carried by the Middle East News Agency. “And what we want is the protection of civilians and not the shelling of more civilians.”

Moussa’s declaration suggested that some of the 22 Arab League members were taken aback by what they have seen and wanted to modify their approval lest they be perceived as accepting outright Western military intervention in Libya. Although the eccentric Gaddafi is widely looked down upon in the Arab world, the leaders and people of the Middle East traditionally have risen up in emotional protest at the first sign of Western intervention.

A shift away from the Arab League endorsement, even partial, would constitute a major setback to the U.S.-European campaign. Western leaders brandished the Arab League decision as a justification for their decision to move militarily and as a weapon in the debate to obtain a U.N. Security Council resolution two days before the bombing began.

As U.S. and European military operations entered their second day, however, most Arab governments maintained public silence, and the strongest expressions of opposition came from the greatest distance. Presidents Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua and Evo Morales of Bolivia and former Cuban president Fidel Castro condemned the intervention and suggested that Western powers were seeking to get their hands on Libya’s oil reserves rather than limit the bloodshed in the country.

Russia and China, which abstained from the voting on the U.N. Security Council resolution authorizing military intervention, also expressed regret that Western powers had chosen to get involved despite their advice.

In the Middle East, the abiding power of popular distrust of Western intervention was evident despite the March 12 Arab League decision. It was not clear how many Arab governments shared the hesitations voiced by Moussa, who has said that he plans to run for president in Egypt this year. But despite Western efforts to enlist Arab military forces, only the Western-oriented Persian Gulf emirate of Qatar has announced that it would participate in the campaign.

The Qatari prime minister, Hamad bin Jasim al-Thani, told reporters that the kingdom made its decision in order to “stop the bloodbath” that he said Gaddafi was inflicting on rebel forces and civilians in opposition-controlled cities. He did not describe the extent of Qatar’s military involvement or what the mission of Qatari aircraft or personnel would be alongside U.S., French and British planes and ships that have carried out the initial strikes.

Islam Lutfi, a lawyer and Muslim Brotherhood leader in Egypt, said he opposed the military intervention because the real intention of the United States and its European allies was to get into position to benefit from Libya’s oil supplies. “The countries aligned against Libya are there not for humanitarian reasons but to further their own interests,” he added.

But the Muslim Brotherhood and its allies in the youth coalition that spearheaded Egypt’s recent upheaval took no official position. They were busy with a referendum Saturday on constitutional amendments designed to usher democracy into the country. Similarly, the provisional military-run government took no stand, and most Cairo newspapers gave only secondary space to the Libya conflict.

When the Arab League approved imposition of a no-fly zone, only Syria and Algeria opposed the decision, according to Egyptian officials. Syria’s Foreign Ministry on Thursday reiterated its government’s opposition, as diplomatic momentum gathered for the U.S.-European operation, saying the country rejected “all forms of foreign interference in Libyan affairs.”

Al-Qaeda, which could be expected to oppose foreign intervention in an Arab country and embrace Gaddafi’s description of the Western campaign as a new crusade, made no immediate comment. This was probably due in part to the difficulty for the al-Qaeda leadership to communicate without revealing its position. But it also has brought to mind Gaddafi’s frequent assertions that al-Qaeda was behind the Libyan revolt and that he and the West should work hand in hand to defeat the rebels.

Iran and its Shiite Muslim allies in the Lebanese organization Hezbollah, reflexively opposed to Western influence in the Middle East, also were forced into a somewhat equivocal position, condemning Gaddafi for his bloody tactics but opposing the Western military intervention.

“The fact that most Arab and Muslim leaders did not take responsibility opened the way for Western intervention in Libya,” declared Hasan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s leader, in a video speech Sunday to his followers. “This opens the way for foreign interventions in every Arab country. It brings us back to the days of occupation, colonization and partition.”

At the same time, Nasrallah accused Gaddafi of using the same brutal tactics against his opponents as Israel has against Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

The Iranian Foreign Ministry, which previously criticized Gaddafi’s crackdown, expressed “doubts” Sunday about U.S. and European intentions. Like the Latin American critics, it suggested that the claims of wanting to protect civilians were just a cover for a desire to install a more malleable leadership in Tripoli and make it easier to exploit Libya’s oil.

U.S. Missiles Strike Libyan Air-Defense Targets - NYTimes.com

2011-03-19T22:28:00.001-04:00

U.S. Missiles Strike Libyan Air-Defense Targets - NYTimes.com

By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK, STEVEN ERLANGER and ELISABETH BUMILLER

This article is by David D. Kirkpatrick, Steven Erlanger and Elisabeth Bumiller.

TRIPOLI, Libya — American and European forces began a broad campaign of strikes against the government of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi on Saturday, unleashing warplanes and missiles in a military intervention on a scale not seen in the Arab world since the Iraq war.

The mission to impose a United Nations-sanctioned no-fly zone and keep Colonel Qaddafi from using air power against beleaguered rebel forces was portrayed by Pentagon and NATO officials as under French and British leadership.

But the Pentagon said that American forces were mounting an initial campaign to knock out Libya’s air defense systems, firing volley after volley of Tomahawk missiles from nearby ships against missile, radar and communications centers around Tripoli, the capital and the western cities of Misurata and Surt.

Early Sunday, the sound of antiaircraft fire and screaming fighter jets echoed across Tripoli, punctuated by heavy explosions.

Speaking on Libyan state television, Colonel Qaddafi said the international action against his forces was unjustified, calling it “simply a colonial crusader aggression that may ignite another large-scale crusader war.”

Muhammad Zweid, secretary of the Libyan Parliament, said the intervention had “caused some real harm against civilians and buildings.” But he declined to specify which civilian buildings or locations were hit.

Later, state TV quoted the armed forces command as saying 48 people had been killed and 150 wounded. The accuracy of the report could not be verified.

Officials took pains to show reporters a group of civilians whom they portrayed as volunteers who had flocked to Mr. Qaddafi’s compound to shield him from the attacks. President Obama, speaking during a visit to Brazil, reiterated promises that no American ground forces would be used.

“I am deeply aware of the risks of any military action, no matter what limits we place on it,” he said. “I want the American people to know that the use of force is not our first choice, and it’s not a choice that I make lightly. But we can’t stand idly by when a tyrant tells his people that there will be no mercy.”

The campaign began with French warplanes, which started their attacks even before the end of an emergency meeting among allied leaders in Paris. The officials, reacting to news that Colonel Qaddafi’s forces were attacking the rebel capital of Benghazi despite international demands for a cease-fire, said they had no choice but to defend Libyan civilians and opposition forces.

But there were signs of disagreement among the allies in Paris. Some diplomats said that French insistence on the meeting had delayed military action against Colonel Qaddafi’s forces before they reached Benghazi, a charge that French officials denied.

Benghazi residents interviewed by telephone reported a relentless artillery barrage before government tanks entered the city from the west on Saturday morning. There was heavy fighting in the city center, and pro-Qaddafi snipers could be seen on the building that the rebel council used as a foreign ministry, not far from the courthouse that is the council’s headquarters.

“Our assessment is that the aggressive actions by Qaddafi forces continue in many places around the country,” Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said after the Paris meeting. “We saw it over the last 24 hours, and we’ve seen no real effort on the part of the Qaddafi forces to abide by a cease-fire, despite the rhetoric.”

Western leaders acknowledged, though, that there was no endgame beyond the immediate United Nations authorization to protect Libyan civilians, and it was uncertain that even military strikes would force Colonel Qaddafi from power.

Many of the leaders who were in Paris had called for Colonel Qaddafi to quit, and it may be that military intervention leads to negotiations with the opposition for the colonel and his family to leave — or, at the least, buys time for the rebels to regroup.

There are risks, though. One widely held concern is the possibility of a divided Libya with no clear authority, opening the door for Islamic extremists to begin operating in a country that had been closed to them. The assault may also present a double standard: While the West has taken punitive action against Libya, a relatively isolated Arab state, the governments in Bahrain and Yemen have faced few penalties after cracking down on their own protest movements.

The main barrage of missile strikes began around 2 p.m. Eastern time, when the United States Navy fired cruise missiles that struck Libya roughly an hour later, Vice Adm. William Gortney told reporters in Washington. He said the Pentagon had not yet assessed the damage that the missiles had caused and would not be able to do so until dawn broke in Libya.

The missile strikes were the start of what Admiral Gortney called a “multiphase operation” to create a no-fly zone that would allow coalition aircraft to fly over Libya without the risk of being shot down. He would not say whether American aircraft would be involved in enforcing the no-fly zone, but he said that no American aircraft were directly over Libya on Saturday afternoon.

Admiral Gortney cast the United States as the “leading edge” among coalition partners in the opening phase of the attack. But in keeping with Mr. Obama’s and Mrs. Clinton’s emphasis that the administration was not driving the efforts to strike Libya, the admiral and other Pentagon officials repeated that the United States would step back within days and hand over command of the coalition to one of its European allies.

The United States has at least 11 warships stationed near Tripoli, including three submarines — the Scranton, the Florida and the Providence — and the destroyers the Stout and the Barry. All five fired cruise missiles on Saturday, the Navy said. Other coalition ships in the Mediterranean included 11 from Italy and one each from Britain, Canada and France.

Earlier Saturday, Colonel Qaddafi issued letters warning Mr. Obama and other leaders not to use military force against him.

The tone of the letters — one addressed to Mr. Obama and a second to Mr. Sarkozy, Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain and Secretary General Ban Ki-moon of the United Nations — suggested that Colonel Qaddafi was leaving himself little room to back down.

“Libya is not yours. Libya is for all Libyans,” he wrote in a letter that was read to the news media by a spokesman. “This is injustice, it is clear aggression, and it is uncalculated risk for its consequences on the Mediterranean and Europe.

“You will regret it if you take a step toward intervening in our internal affairs.”

Colonel Qaddafi addressed Mr. Obama as “my son” in a letter that was jarring for its familiarity. “I have said to you before that even if Libya and the United States enter into war, God forbid, you will always remain my son, and I have all the love for you as a son, and I do not want your image to change with me,” he wrote. “We are confronting Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, nothing more. What would you do if you found them controlling American cities with the power of weapons? Tell me how would you behave, so that I could follow your example?”

In Paris, the emergency meeting included the prime ministers or foreign ministers from Britain, Canada, Germany, Norway, Italy, Qatar, Morocco, the United Arab Emirates, Denmark, Belgium, Spain, Poland and Mrs. Clinton for the United States.

Amr Moussa, who recently resigned as secretary general of the Arab League to run for president of Egypt, was also there, along with the league’s incoming leader, Hoshyar Zebari, the foreign minister of Iraq. Also attending were the European Union foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, and Mr. Ban of the United Nations.

But there were no African leaders there. The African Union chief, Jean Ping, instead traveled to Mauritania for a meeting with the continent’s leaders who sought to mediate a peaceful end to the Libyan crisis.

The United States, France and Britain had insisted that at least some Arab governments be involved in the Libyan operation, at least symbolically, to remove the chance that Colonel Qaddafi would portray the military action as another Western colonial intervention in pursuit of oil. But there was no sign that any Arab military would explicitly take part.

The initial French air sorties, which were not coordinated with other countries, angered some of the leaders in Paris, according to a senior diplomat from a NATO country. Information about the movement of Colonel Qaddafi’s troops toward Benghazi had been clear on Friday, but France blocked any NATO agreement on airstrikes until the Paris meeting, the diplomat said, suggesting that the flights could have begun before government forces reached the city.

But Bernard Valero, a spokesman for the French Foreign Ministry, said that there had been no delay because of the Paris meeting and no political decision to make the no-fly zone a NATO operation, which Paris has opposed from the start.

Perhaps in an effort to provide political cover before the allied strikes began, the Libyan government spokesman in Tripoli, Moussa Ibrahim, denied that pro-Qaddafi troops were attacking Benghazi, and he said that only the rebels had an incentive to break the cease-fire.

But in Benghazi, residents said the fighting was heavy as soldiers reached the city center along the main road, which is named for the anticolonial Egyptian leader Gamal Abdul Nasser. And a Soviet-era MIG-23 fighter jet that rebels said they had captured in the early days of the uprising and that they had sent on a mission against government forces went down in flames in the city. The pilot ejected, but was reported to have died from his injuries.

“We didn’t know which side the shooting was coming from,” said Umm Muftah, who escaped from Benghazi with her family about 2 p.m. A neighbor told her the balconies had been blown off her building. “We saw black smoke,” Ms. Muftah said. “They said a plane crashed down in one of the streets.”

Nearby, in the rebel-held city of Bayda, crowds cheered the news that French planes were attacking pro-Qaddafi forces in the east while allied missiles were falling in the west.

“Sarkozy is bombing them!” one rebel fighter told drivers passing his checkpoint on the way to Bayda. “They’re bombing Bab al-Aziziyah!” other fighters yelled, referring to Colonel Qaddafi’s fortified compound in Tripoli.

Refugees fleeing the fighting in Benghazi were greeted by young men holding house keys, offering empty homes for shelter.

Abdul Qadi al-Faydi drove his family and two others in a Mitsubishi truck that was packed with what seemed like everything the families owned, including a refrigerator and a washing machine.

“My entire street was destroyed,” he said. Ahead of them, young men huddled in the back of a delivery truck, under floral blankets. A minivan shuttled a group of traumatized neighbors toward the Egyptian border. As they entered Bayda, they were met by young men cheering and chanting, as if victory were at hand.

“One, two, three,” a group chanted in English. “Thanks, Sarkozy!”

David D. Kirkpatrick reported from Tripoli, Libya; Steven Erlanger from Paris; and Elisabeth Bumiller from Washington. Kareem Fahim contributed reporting from eastern Libya, Steven Lee Myers from Paris and Jackie Calmes from Brasília.

U.S., Britain launch first missiles against Gadhafi forces - CNN.com

2011-03-19T17:41:00.001-04:00

Image via WikipediaU.S., Britain launch first missiles against Gadhafi forces - CNN.com

Tripoli, Libya (CNN) -- French, British and American military forces made good Saturday on international warnings to Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, using fighter jets and cruise missiles to hammer military positions in the first phase of an operation that will include enforcement of a no-fly zone.

More than 110 Tomahawk missiles fired from American and British ships and submarines hit about 20 Libyan air and missile defense targets, U.S. Vice Adm. William Gortney said at a Pentagon briefing.

The U.S. will conduct a damage assessment of the sites, which include SA-5 missiles and communications facilities.

The salvo, in an operation dubbed "Odyssey Dawn," was meant "to deny the Libyan regime from using force against its own people," said Gortney, who declined to detail future operations.

France convenes summit on Libya crisis Libya cease-fire ignored Libya forces advance on main rebel base Warplane falls from sky

Prime Minister David Cameron said late Saturday that British forces also are in action over Libya. "What we are doing is necessary, it is legal and it is right," he said. "I believe we should not stand aside while this dictator murders his own people."

While there were no U.S. warplanes flying over Libya late Saturday, the allies were preparing for enforcement of a no-fly zone, Gortney said.

A Libyan government spokesman said Saturday that instead of sending international observers to witness a cease-fire, the coalition of international allies chose military aggression.

Air attacks on several locations in Tripoli and Misrata have caused "real harm" to civilians, the spokesman said.

"I am very sorry and saddened that my country is facing a barbaric and armed attack," he said, adding that "this aggression will not weaken our spirits."

Shortly after the first missile attacks, U.S. President Barack Obama informed the American people of the efforts by a "broad coalition."

"The use of force is not our first choice," the president said from Brasilia, Brazil. "It is not a choice I make lightly. But we cannot stand idly by when a tyrant tells his own people that there will be no mercy."

Obama reiterated that the Pentagon has no plans to deploy ground forces in Libya.

Obama is planning for the U.S. portion of the military action in Libya to only last for a few days, according to a senior administration official.

"In terms of the heavy kinetic portion of this military action, the president envisions it as lasting days, not weeks," the senior official said. "After that we'll take more of a supporting role."

Coalition partners say Gadhafi has failed to adhere to a United Nations resolution that imposed the no-fly zone and ordered him to stop attacks on civilians.

"He's clearly been on the offensive," a senior U.S. military official said of Gadhafi. "He said that he was going to do a cease-fire and he continued to move his forces into Benghazi."

A Libyan army spokesman said on state TV that "the crusader army has bombed fuel tanks."

The international show of force is much welcomed by besieged rebel forces who have called for backup to help them stave off a government offensive against their positions in Benghazi and other rebel-held enclaves.

An opposition spokesman in Benghazi said Gadhafi forces that assaulted the city earlier Saturday are now positioned outside the town. However, the forces are preparing for more attacks.

Earlier Saturday, Gadhafi issued defiant messages to international powers.

"I have all the Libyan people with me and I'm prepared to die. And they are prepared to die for me. Men, women and even children," Gadhafi said in a letter addressed to Obama and read to reporters by a government spokesman in Tripoli.

Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Gortney used the term "unique capabilities" to describe the U.S. part of the coalition effort. Officials have said American military forces are meant to augment Arab, European and other Western troops -- but not take a lead role.

The French Defense Ministry said its attack aircraft being used to take out tanks and artillery have deemed Benghazi and the surrounding area an "exclusion zone."

The French are using surveillance aircraft and two frigates in the operation to protect civilians. The aircraft carrier Charles De Gaulle will soon depart Toulon, France.

"Our air force will oppose any aggression by Colonel Gadhafi against the population of Benghazi," said French President Nicolas Sarkozy, speaking after an international, top-level meeting in Paris over the Libyan crisis.

"As of now, our aircraft are preventing planes from attacking the town," he said, calling the intervention a "grave decision."

Canada will be one of four principal partners helping to enforce the no-fly zone over Libya. Six Canadian CF-18 fighter jets are en route to an Italian base in Sicily and the HMCS Charlottetown will be in position to help with the naval blockade against Libya.

"America has unique capabilities, and we will bring them to bear to help our European and Canadian allies and Arab partners to stop further violence against civilians including through the effective implementation of a no-fly zone," Clinton said.

Sarkozy said Gadhafi still has time to stop its activities. As of Friday, France, Britain, the United States and Arab League nations passed along a warning for Gadhafi to stop his operations immediately.

But "Gadhafi has totally ignored the warning" and "in the last few hours his forces have stepped up their deadly offenses," Sarkozy said.

The international coalition meeting in Paris -- which included Western and Arab partners -- focused on how to take on a Libyan government bent on destroying the fledgling opposition movement under the U.N. resolution authorizing force to protect civilians against the Gadhafi government.

Herman Van Rompuy, president of the European Council, said the European Union is ready to give a "new Libya" economic help and aid in building new institutions.

In Rome, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's office confirmed to CNN that Berlusconi has proposed the use of the NATO base in southern Italy as a command center for allied action in Libya.

After Gadhafi forces earlier Saturday assaulted Benghazi, the opposition said the military repositioned itself far outside the city.

Earlier Saturday, incoming artillery rounds landed inside the city, and pro-Gadhafi tanks rolled into the town firing rounds, witnesses said. Plumes of smoke rose in Benghazi as civilians said buildings came under small arms fire. Many fled their homes in fear of a full-blown assault there.

A flaming fighter jet plummeted from the sky, nose-diving to the ground. Khaled el-Sayeh, the opposition military spokesman, said the plane was an old MiG-23 that belonged to the rebels.

As night fell over Benghazi on Saturday, the city became quiet and calm. While plumes of smoke could be spotted, the pro-Gadhafi tanks seen earlier were not in sight. El-Sayeh told CNN that "tens" have been killed in Benghazi on Saturday and opposition forces found 13 men clad in Libyan military uniforms bound and executed in a building that had been used by pro-Gadhafi forces to launch artillery assaults.

He said Gadhafi forces have withdrawn from the city and that they are now positioned 50 kilometers (31 miles) outside Benghazi on the road east to Ajdabiya. CNN could not independently verify those details.

In western Libya, pro-Gadhafi forces subjected the city of Misrata to heavy shelling, an opposition member said.

In Tripoli, Gadhafi's supporters took to the streets.

Libyan state TV now showed images of pro-Gadhafi demonstrations, and broadcast pictures of fireworks by pro-Gadhafi demonstrators over the Libyan leader's military compound in Tripoli. On the streets in Tripoli, people were waving green Libyan flags and singing pro-Gadhafi songs.

Fighting has raged in Libya over the last day despite the government's announcement of an "immediate" cease-fire on Friday.

The declaration -- which came hours after the U.N. Security Council resolution authorized the use of force, including the no-fly zone -- was seen by rebels as simply a move to buy itself time.

Gadhafi -- in a separate letter addressed to Sarkozy, Cameron and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon -- called the U.N. moves "invalid" because the resolution does not permit intervention in the internal affairs of other countries.

"Libya is not yours. Libya is for all Libyans," said the letter, also read by the spokesman. "You will regret it if you take a step toward intervening in our internal affairs.

"It is not your country. We could never and would never fire one bullet against our people," the letter said.

Violence has raged in Libya following protests calling for democracy and freedom and demanding an end to Gadhafi's almost 42-year-long rule. It's a conflict spurred by anti-government protest and resulting regime violence against civilians -- which the U.N. resolution cites as "outrageous" and Sarkozy calls "murderous madness."

But Gadhafi defended his actions in his note to Obama. He said his opponents are from al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, the group's North African wing, and asked Obama what he would do if such an armed movement controlled American cities.

"Tell me, how would you behave so I could follow your example?"

U.N. Nuclear Chief: Japan 'Racing Against The Clock' : NPR

2011-03-18T08:57:00.001-04:00

Image via WikipediaU.N. Nuclear Chief: Japan 'Racing Against The Clock' : NPR

The head of the U.N.'s nuclear energy agency called the effort to cool overheating reactors at Japan's crippled power plant a race against the clock that demands global cooperation Friday, and Japan reached out to the U.S. for help in reining in the crisis.

Japan's nuclear safety agency raised the severity rating of the disaster at the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant from Level 4 to Level 5 on the seven-level International Nuclear Event Scale, putting it on par with the Three Mile Island accident in Pennsylvania in 1979, said agency spokesman Ryohei Shiomi.

EnlargeJiji Press/AFP/Getty Images

Yukiya Amano, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, arrives at Narita airport near Tokyo on Friday. He is visiting to assess the extent of the devastation and how best the agency can help.

The scale defines a Level 4 incident as having local consequences and a Level 5 incident as having wider consequences. A partial meltdown at Three Mile Island also was ranked a Level 5. The Chernobyl accident of 1986, which killed at least 31 people with radiation sickness, raised long-term cancer rates, and spewed radiation for hundreds of miles, was ranked a Level 7. France's Nuclear Safety Authority has been saying since Tuesday that the crisis in northeastern Japan should be ranked Level 6 on the scale.

At the stricken complex, military fire trucks sprayed the troubled reactor units for a second day Friday, with tons of water arcing over the facility in desperate attempts to douse the units and prevent meltdowns that could spew dangerous levels of radiation.

"The whole world, not just Japan, is depending on them," Tokyo office worker Norie Igarashi, 44, said of the emergency teams at the plants.

Last week's magnitude 9.0 quake and tsunami in Japan's northeast set off the nuclear problems by knocking out power to cooling systems at the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant on the northeast coast. Since then, four of the troubled plant's six reactor units have had fires, explosions or partial meltdowns.

The unfolding crises have led to power shortages in Japan, forced factories to close, sent shockwaves through global manufacturing and triggered a plunge in Japanese stock prices.

"We see it as an extremely serious accident," Yukiya Amano, the head of the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency, told reporters Friday just after arriving in Tokyo. "This is not something that just Japan should deal with, and people of the entire world should cooperate with Japan and the people in the disaster areas."

EnlargeAP

In this photo taken Wednesday and released Friday by Tokyo Electric Power Co. via Kyodo News, smoke billows from Unit 3 at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant. Emergency crews worked to reconnect electricity to cooling systems and spray more water on overheating nuclear fuel Friday.

"I think they are racing against the clock," he said of the efforts to cool the complex.

One week after the quake and tsunami — which left more than 6,500 dead and over 10,300 missing — emergency crews are facing two challenges in the nuclear crisis: cooling the reactors where energy is generated, and cooling the adjacent spent fuel pools where used nuclear fuel rods are stored in water.

Both need water to keep their uranium cool and stop them from emitting radiation, but with radiation levels inside the complex already limiting where workers can go and how long they can remain, it's been difficult to get enough water inside.

Water in at least one fuel pool — in the complex's Unit 3 — is believed to be dangerously low, exposing the stored fuel rods. Without enough water, the rods may heat further and spew out radiation.

"Dealing with Unit 3 is our utmost priority," Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano told reporters.

Officials also reported that temperature levels in pools at Units 5 and 6 have gone up but not enough to cause immediate concern.

Edano said Friday that Tokyo is asking the U.S. government for help and that the two are discussing the specifics.

"We are coordinating with the U.S. government as to what the U.S. can provide and what people really need," Edano said.

A U.S. military fire truck was used to help spray water into the crippled Unit 3, according to Air Force Chief of Staff Shigeru Iwasaki, though the vehicle was apparently driven by Japanese workers.

The U.S. vehicle was used alongside six Japanese military fire trucks normally used to extinguish fires at plane crashes.

The fire trucks allowed emergency workers to stay a relatively safe distance from the radiation, firing the water with high-pressure cannons. The firefighters also are able to direct the cannons from inside the vehicle.

Officials shared few details about the Friday operation, which lasted nearly 40 minutes, though Iwasaki said he believed some water had reached its target.

The U.S. also is sending specialized aircraft to help determine the scope of the nuclear contamination. The converted Boeing C-135 plane, called Constant Phoenix or "the Sniffer," will fly over Japan's nuclear plants and take samples from the atmosphere. Another Air Force plane, a drone called Global Hawk, is already circling above the plants. Its infrared sensors can detect heat and help determine the effectiveness of attempts to cool the reactors.

Low levels of radiation have been detected well beyond Tokyo, which is 140 miles south of the plant, but hazardous levels have been limited to the plant itself. Still, the crisis has forced thousands to evacuate and drained Tokyo's normally vibrant streets of life, its residents either leaving town or holing up in their homes.

What Went Wrong With Japan's Nuclear Reactors

Officials are scrambling to get water into the Japanese reactors to cool the nuclear cores.

At times, Japan and the U.S. — two very close allies — have offered starkly differing assessments over the dangers at Fukushima. U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chairman Gregory Jazcko said Thursday that it could take days and "possibly weeks" to get the complex under control. He defended the U.S. decision to recommend a 50-mile evacuation zone for its citizens, wider than the 30-mile band Japan has ordered.

Crucial to the effort to regain control over the Fukushima plant is laying a new power line to the plant, allowing operators to restore cooling systems. The operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co., missed a deadline late Thursday but said Friday that workers hoped to complete the effort in 10 to 15 hours, said nuclear safety agency spokesman Minoru Ohgoda.

But the utility is not sure the cooling systems will still function. If they don't, electricity won't help.

President Obama appeared on television to assure Americans that officials do not expect harmful amounts of radiation to reach the U.S. or its territories.

"When we see a crisis like the one in Japan, we have a responsibility to learn from this event and to draw from those lessons to ensure the safety and security of our people," Obama said Thursday. He also said the U.S. is offering Japan any help it could provide.

On Friday, Obama called on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to conduct a "comprehensive review" of the safety of all U.S. nuclear plants.

At the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant, a core team of 180 emergency workers has been rotating out of the complex to minimize radiation exposure.

The storage pools need a constant source of cooling water. Even when removed from reactors, uranium rods are still extremely hot and must be cooled for months, possibly longer, to prevent them from heating up again and emitting radioactivity.

NPR's Tom Bowman in Washington, D.C., and Christopher Joyce in Tokyo contributed to this report, which contains material from The Associated Press.

U.N. Approves Airstrikes Against Libya - NYTimes.com

2011-03-17T19:03:00.001-04:00

U.N. Approves Airstrikes Against Libya - NYTimes.com

By DAN BILEFSKY and KAREEM FAHIM

UNITED NATIONS — The United Nations Security Council approved a measure on Thursday authorizing “all necessary measures” to protect Libyan civilians from harm at the hands of forces loyal to Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi.

The measure allows not only a no-fly zone but effectively any measures short of a ground invasion to halt attacks that might result in civilian fatalities. It comes as Colonel Qaddafi warned residents of Benghazi, Libya, the rebel capital, that an attack was imminent and promised lenient treatment for those who offered no resistance.

“We are coming tonight,” Colonel Qaddafi said. “You will come out from inside. Prepare yourselves from tonight. We will find you in your closets.”

Speaking on a call-in radio show, he promised amnesty for those “who throw their weapons away” but “no mercy or compassion” for those who fight. Explosions were heard in Benghazi early on Friday, unnerving residents there, Agence-France Presse reported.

The United States, originally leery of any military involvement in Libya, became a strong proponent of the resolution, particularly after the Arab League approved a no-fly zone, something that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton called a “game changer”

With the recent advances made by pro-Qaddafi forces in the east, there was a growing consensus in the Obama administration that imposing a no-fly zone by itself would no longer make much of a difference and that there was a need for more aggressive airstrikes that would make targets of Colonel Qaddafi’s tanks and heavy artillery — an option sometimes referred to as a no-drive zone. The United States or its allies might also send military personnel to advise and train the rebels, an official said.

In the most strident verbal attack on Colonel Qaddafi to date by an American official, Mrs. Clinton said Thursday that the Western powers had little choice but to provide critical military backing for the rebels. “We want to support the opposition who are standing against the dictator,” she told an applauding audience in Tunisia on Thursday. “This is a man who has no conscience and will threaten anyone in his way.”

She added that Colonel Qaddafi would do “terrible things” to Libya and its neighbors. “It’s just in his nature. There are some creatures that are like that.”

The Qaddafi government responded to the potential United Nations action with threats.

“Any foreign military act against Libya will expose all air and maritime traffic in the Mediterranean Sea to danger and civilian and military facilities will become targets of Libya’s counterattack,” it said in a statement carried on Libyan television and the official news agency, JANA, Reuters reported. “The Mediterranean basin will face danger not just in the short term, but also in the long term.”

There were reports on Thursday that warplanes were already bombarding the outskirts of Benghazi for a second day, opening shots, perhaps, in the battle. And after days of batterings at the hands of Qaddafi loyalists, the opposition forces welcomed the promise of Western assistance.

Rebel leaders doubted that the loyalist forces could mount an assault on Benghazi tonight, in that they were still contesting Ajdabiya, 100 miles to the south, on Thursday morning. But witnesses said there were skirmishes on the road to Benghazi in the afternoon, about 30 miles from Ajdabiya.

Mohamed, a rebel spokesman in the embattled, rebel-held city of Misurata — the last major rebel foothold in the west — welcomed the new American tone. “We are very heartened yesterday by the moves in the United Nations Security Council and the urgency of the American stand,” he said, speaking over a satellite phone.

Forces loyal to Colonel Qaddafi massed outside Misurata on Thursday, apparently in preparation for an attack. Musa Ibrahim, a spokesman for the Qaddafi government, confirmed that its forces were preparing to take the city in the same way they did Zawiyah, another western town that had been held by the rebels.

“It starts in the beginning by surrounding the city,” he said, “then moving slowly to avoid casualties.” Rebels in Zawiyah described heavy casualties — at least dozens — during the Qaddafi forces’ siege of that city.

“It should be finished up tomorrow if not today,” Mr. Ibrahim added.

Rebels in Misurata said that Qaddafi forces had so far appeared to hold back, though electricity, water and telecommunications remained severed a day after fighters held the town against an onslaught of tank and artillery fire.

Loyalist military units surrounded the strategically located town of Ajdabiya in the east, and were massing for a push up the road to the rebel stronghold of Benghazi, 100 miles distant, rebel officials said.

On Wednesday the rebels had seemed to make some gains in Ajdabiya, the gateway to Benghazi and the Egyptian border. The Qaddafi forces, which had appeared to capture the city with ease on Tuesday afternoon, had withdrawn to the perimeter by Tuesday night, residents said, as rebel fighters patrolled the city streets and the battle flared at surrounding checkpoints.

The Qaddafi forces delivered an airstrike, followed by shelling by tanks and mortars on Wednesday, residents and rebel leaders said. Doctors said at least two people were killed Wednesday in addition to 26 deaths the day before.

By day’s end, it appeared that the rebels held control within the city, but that the loyalist forces had the city surrounded and could penetrate their opponents’ feeble defenses at will. Shortly after midnight on Wednesday, however, the explosions in Ajdabiya had given way to the sound of sporadic gunfights.

“The quiet is uncomfortable,” said Dr. Ahmed al-Jnashi, a doctor at the hospital there. “It’s abnormal. The streets are empty. People are afraid.” He said 38 people had died in two days of fighting, including two children in a car hit by a mortar round.

Dr. Jnashi said witnesses who came to the hospital on Wednesday night said government troops controlled the city’s eastern gate, on the approach to Benghazi, securing it with four tanks. “There is no media in the city,” he said. “No photographers.”

Rebel leaders boasted about their broader arsenal of weaponry — some aged warplanes and a helicopter — as well as their putative gains n Ajdabiya. But there were signs that the Qaddafi forces were simply massing for a renewed assault. The Associated Press, brought to Ajdabiya by the Qaddafi government to document its progress against the rebels, reported hundreds of pro-Qaddafi troops with tanks and artillery waiting outside Ajdabiya’s western gates. Truckloads of ammunition and equipment were reported to be arriving as well.

In Tripoli, the Qaddafi family sounded increasingly confident of victory. In an interview with a French television station, one of Colonel Qaddafi’s sons, Seif al-Islam el-Qaddafi, told the rebels: “We don’t want to kill, we don’t want revenge. But you, traitors, mercenaries, you have committed crimes against the Libyan people: leave, go in peace to Egypt.”

He added: “Military operations are over. Within 48 hours everything will be finished. Our forces are almost in Benghazi. Whatever the decision, it will be too late.”

Colonel Qaddafi commands wide support in Tripoli, the capital and government stronghold, but perhaps not so deep. It seems divided between the manic celebration of those who shouted their allegiance and the shrugging resignation of those who admitted that they did not.

Asked how many Tripoli residents opposed Qaddafi, one shopkeeper said “100 percent.” But he was fatalistic. “Qaddafi is very strong. He killed many people. What can we do? He is the president,” even though Colonel Qaddafi holds no official title of office.

At a cafe in the neighborhood of Tajura — an anti-Qaddafi stronghold — patrons initially insisted with unmistakable sarcasm that everything in Tripoli was just fine. One man beckoned a friend to come talk to the foreign reporter, and his friend declined with a gesture signaling police handcuffs and a finger drawn across his neck.

Then, in whispers, the patrons acknowledged the protests staged there after midday prayers on recent Fridays, and said not to expect any more this week. They asked whether the West would launch airstrikes.

Despite the bluster by rebel leaders, some in the rebel strongholds were growing fatalistic about their hopes without international help. “People here are terrified,” said Ahmed al-Hasi, a former diplomat who left Benghazi on Wednesday for Bayda. “People are saying, ‘We fight until we die, or we surrender and we are humiliated and then we are killed,’ ” he said. “It will be a very, very bloody fight, and I know I will fight to the end.”

Dan Bilefsky reported from the United Nations and Kareem Fahim from Tobruk, Libya. David D. Kirkpatrick contributed reporting from Tripoli, Libya, and Steven Lee Myers from Tunis, Tunisia.

St. Louis Beacon - Analysis: Lessons and memories from Three Mile Island

2011-03-17T09:30:00.000-04:00

St. Louis Beacon - Analysis: Lessons and memories from Three Mile Island

By Martha Shirk, special to the Beacon

Posted 9:53 am, Tue., 3.15.11

As I’ve watched Japan’s nuclear drama unfold over the last few days, I’ve found myself thinking about the similarities with the accident 32 years ago at Three Mile Island in Central Pennsylvania.

Even though we don’t yet know the full extent of the nuclear contamination in Japan and the potential for true catastrophe, it is already clear that the situation there is far more serious than it was at Three Mile Island. The cooling systems at three separate reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station have malfunctioned, and several explosions left the fuel rods exposed. As this is written, Japanese officials are worried about the potential release of more radioactive material – and even the possibility of a full meltdown at one or more of the reactors. Eleven reactor workers have been injured, and at least 22 nearby residents have been found to have higher-than-normal levels of radiation.

What is strikingly similar between Japan today and Three Mile Island 32 years ago is the inescapable perception that the situation is out of control. As at Three Mile Island, human error is compounding mechanical malfunctions.

It’s very possible that the operator of the Fukushima plant was too complacent about the risks. We learned on Monday that these particular reactors were not built to withstand an earthquake of the magnitude of the one last week. Nor, apparently, were they built to withstand the force of a tsunami, which is shocking, since a tsunami is a predictable event on a coast, where many of the world’s nuclear plants perch.

Government photos

Three Mile Island before the accident - the accident would shut down the reactor at right.

Perhaps the most important lesson of Three Mile Island was that complacency about risk contributed to the problem there. TheKemeny Commission(note: Link is to a pdf) concluded in its authoritative report on what went wrong that both Metropolitan Edison, the plant’s operator, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission weren’t sufficiently on guard.

“After many years of operation of nuclear power plants, with no evidence that any member of the general public has been hurt, the belief that nuclear power plants are sufficiently safe grew into a conviction,” the commission concluded. “One must recognize this to understand why many key steps that could have prevented the accident at Three Mile Island were not taken. The Commission is convinced that this attitude must be changed to one that says nuclear power is by its very nature potentially dangerous, and, therefore, one must continually question whether the safeguards already in place are sufficient to prevent major accidents. A comprehensive system is required in which equipment and human beings are treated with equal importance.”

GOING TO HARRISBURG

I was a 27-year-old reporter in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch’s Washington bureau when the early reports of an accident at Three Mile Island came in over the AP teletype machine on the morning of March 28, 1979. (This was the pre-internet, pre-Twitter, pre-Facebook era.) A minor malfunction had occurred in the second reactor, triggering the automatic release of steam. The control room operators not only misread what was happening, but also mistakenly believed that the cooling system was continuing to work. It wasn’t, however, and to compound the problem, a backup system was inexplicably turned off, leaving the fuel rods uncovered for 2 ½ hours.

Just under three hours after the initial malfunction, high radiation levels were detected in several areas of the plant, indicating that a partial meltdown of the fuel rods had occurred. At 7 a.m., a site emergency was declared, and by 7:24 a.m., it had been expanded to a general emergency -- an "incident that has the potential for serious radiological consequences to the health and safety of the general public"

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Martha Shirk reported for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch from 1975-96.

She is an author and journalism consultant in Palo Alto, California.

However, at 8:24 a.m., a utility official told a local radio station’s traffic reporter that there was no reason for concern. "There was a problem with a feed water pump,” he said. “The plant is shut down. We're working on it. There's no danger off-site. No danger to the general public."

At 12:45 p.m., state police closed the state road nearest the plants. At 1:50 p.m., a hydrogen explosion occurred in the reactor’s containment building. Utility officials initially believed that the noise had been caused by ventilation damper slamming and ignored it.

By this time, I was on the road to Harrisburg from Washington, D.C., in my 1973 VW bug. Nuclear power was one of my minibeats. I had spent considerable time during my four years at the paper covering the regulatory process connected to Union Electric’s construction of a nuclear plant in Callaway County (Union Electric is now Ameren Missouri).

By the next day, the situation was becoming increasingly murky as officials with the state, the utility, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission contradicted each other. The Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency announced regularly that the situation was improving even as the Nuclear Regulatory Commission suggested that it wasn’t.

To calm the public, then-Lt. Gov. William P. Scranton III toured the damaged reactor’s control room and auxiliary building, but his visit had the opposite effect, since he wore a protective suit and a respirator. And at a press conference afterwards, he contributed to the growing sense of alarm by reporting erroneously that radioactive steam had been released. That night, Walter Cronkite told the American public: “It was the first step in a nuclear nightmare; as far as we know at this hour, no worse than that. But a government official said that a breakdown in an atomic power plant in Pennsylvania today is probably the worst nuclear accident to date…”

By later that evening, the NRC learned that the damage to the core damage was much worse than expected and that there was a strong possibility that radiation had been released. As a result, the Food and Drug Administration announced that it would monitor food, dairy products, and water for signs of contamination. My editors at the Post-Dispatch arranged with Mallinckrodt Chemical Co. to loan me a dosimeter to measure any radiation to which I might be exposed.

CONFUSION

By Day Three, March 30, total confusion reigned in Harrisburg. There had been radioactive iodine released, some official said; no, there hadn’t been, said another. The NRC advised Gov. Richard Thornburgh to order the evacuation of Harrisburg, and then said it wasn’t necessary. Thornburgh instead advised people within 10 miles of the plant to stay inside.

Then, two and a half hours later, Thornburgh amended his recommendation and advised pregnant women and preschool-aged children living within five miles of the plant to leave the area and everyone else to stay indoors behind closed windows. That triggered a panic.

At the time, the Post-Dispatch was an afternoon newspaper, with three editions. I needed to file a new story every few hours. In search of a pay phone, I had gone into the Pennsylvania State Capitol to file my story. As I was dictating it to Eric Zoeckler, a colleague at the Post-Dispatch, sirens went off, and people started running out of the building. Eric wrote a gripping story about being on the other end of the phone while other people’s panic engulfed me. Within hours, schools and the local universities shut down, disgorging their students to shaky parents, who loaded them into cars and headed out of town. Police were placed on alert; banks reported massive withdrawals of cash, and the local telephone system became so overloaded that calls couldn’t go through.

Meanwhile, Met Ed officials continued to minimize the situation in their comments to reporters. As the Kemeny Commission reported, “Many reporters suspected the company of providing them with erroneous information at best, or of outright lying.” After a utility official, John Herbein, told reporters on Friday that the radioactivity released earlier was only a quarter of what NRC officials had told them it actually was, the utility lost all credibility. When challenged, Herbein said, "I don't know why we need to tell you each and every thing that we do specifically.”

President Jimmy Carter's limousine leaves Three Mile Island.

Clearly a victim himself of conflicting advice, Thornburgh asked President Jimmy Carter to designate someone who could filter all the conflicting reports and speak with authority about what was actually happening. That man was Harold Denton, whom I still remember, 32 years later, as a beacon of calm and straightforwardness. Most reporters (including myself) didn’t have the technical knowledge to cover the unfolding events with authority; Denton was the first person to brief us who talked in plain English. He arrived in Harrisburg just as rumors began being spread about the formation of a hydrogen bubble in the Unit 2 reactor. What that meant, he said, was that there was a "remote" possibility that a meltdown could occur. NRC Chairman Joseph Hendrie said that he might order an evacuation of residents within 20 miles as a precaution.

By that evening, one-quarter of the area’s nearly 1 million residents had fled. The Associated Press was reporting that the hydrogen bubble might explode within days.

On Day 4, President Carter arrived to reassure the residents who had stayed behind. But in several less-than-reassuring developments, priests granted general absolution during Sunday Mass – an act generally taken only during war or in circumstances when people can’t get to confession. Area hospitals began to discharge patients so they’d have open beds if they had to admit people suffering from radiation poisoning. Behind the scenes, we learned later from the Kemeny Commission report, NRC’s experts were in disagreement about the potential for an explosion and the need for a complete evacuation.

On Day 5, Denton announced that NRC officials believed that the hydrogen bubble had shrunk dramatically, though he didn’t say it quite so definitively in case his experts were wrong, as they had been so many times in the previous week. “We wanted to go slow on saying it was good news,” an NRC official later told the Kemeny Commission. “We wanted to say it is good news, do not panic, we think we have got it under control, things look better, but we did not want to firmly and finally conclude that there was no problem. We had to save some wiggle room in order to preserve credibility.”

But by Day 6, the potentially explosive bubble was actually gone. On Day 7, the schools outside the 5-mile radius reopened, Harrisburg’s curfew was lifted and Thornburgh announced on NBC’s Today Show that the "threat of any immediate catastrophe is over." On Day 8, pregnant woman and preschoolers were told they could safely come home.

AFTERMATH

The official toll: No one is known to be been injured by at Three Mile Island. The Kemeny Commission concluded that "there will either be no case of cancer or the number of cases will be so small that it will never be possible to detect them. The same conclusion applies to the other possible health effects… We conclude that the most serious health effect of the accident was severe mental stress, which was short.”

In the end, the most lasting effect of Three Mile Island was on the U.S. nuclear power industry, which went into a vegetative state for nearly three decades. It took 12 years and cost about $973 million to clean up the destroyed reactor, which has been mothballed in situ. Plans to build dozens of nuclear power plants – including a second reactor at Callaway – were canceled because of increased regulatory scrutiny and investors’ jitters.

There have been recent signs that the nuclear power industry is gaining strength as the nation looks for ways to lessen its dependence on fossil fuels. Today, there are 104 nuclear power plants operating in the United States – 32 more than when Three Mile Island began to melt down - and there have been applications for 30 new reactors filed since 2007. But the catastrophe in Japan seems likely to change all that.

If you want a good read, take a look at the Kemeny Commission’s report. And reflect on whether you’re convinced by what’s unfolding in Japan that anything has changed.

Clinton Foundation Is Moving Out of Harlem Office - NYTimes.com

2011-03-17T09:13:00.001-04:00

Cover of Bill ClintonClinton Foundation Is Moving Out of Harlem Office - NYTimes.com

By MANNY FERNANDEZ

When Bill Clinton officially began his post-presidency in Harlem in 2001, he was greeted with open arms — thousands of them. At a plaza near his new office, at 55 West 125th Street, a crowd of 2,000 residents and civic leaders gathered on a hot July afternoon to celebrate the arrival of a neighbor whose presence, two blocks from the landmark Apollo Theater, seemed to put a presidential stamp of approval on the neighborhood’s revival.

In his speech there in 2001, Mr. Clinton said, “Harlem always struck me as a place that was human and alive, where there was a rhythm to life and a song in the heart, where no matter how bad it was, people held up their heads and went on, and where, when things got good, people were grateful and cared about their neighbors.”

Nearly 10 years later, Mr. Clinton is leaving Harlem. Or, at least part of him is.

The William J. Clinton Foundation is moving most of its offices from Harlem to 77 Water Street in the financial district, in Lower Manhattan. But Mr. Clinton will keep a toehold in Harlem: his office as a former president will remain on the top floor of 55 West 125th Street.

The nonprofit foundation will occupy space on the 18th floor of 77 Water Street. The move will give the foundation more space — 25,227 square feet downtown versus 18,000 square feet uptown — and will help it cut costs. The foundation’s rent will be cheaper than the $40 a square foot it pays in the Harlem building, though it is unclear what the exact new rent will be, since the deal is not yet official, said a person familiar with both office locations who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak about the details.

The foundation did not respond to requests for comment. CB Richard Ellis, the real estate brokerage firm representing the foundation, declined to comment.

A spokeswoman for the General Services Administration, which oversees office space for former presidents, said that although the foundation was moving, the office space afforded Mr. Clinton as a former president would remain in the building in Harlem. The lease for that space — 8,715 square feet at the top of the 14-story building — was renewed in May 2010 and takes effect in August 2011, the spokeswoman, Emily Barocas, said. The 10-year lease expires in July 2021.

Ms. Barocas said the General Services Administration had no role in the foundation’s use of the Water Street space. The New York Post reported the move on Wednesday.

It remained unclear how Mr. Clinton would divide his time between the two offices. On 125th Street near his office, Harlem residents interviewed on Wednesday said Mr. Clinton had been a positive force in the neighborhood, although not a regularly visible one. Abuk Auk, 35, who works at a hair salon near 55 West 125th Street, said she saw Mr. Clinton walking into the building once years ago.

“We were so happy,” Ms. Auk said of Mr. Clinton’s arrival in Harlem in 2001. “We thought it was going to change everything for us.” She pointed across 125th Street at a row of shuttered storefronts and added: “You see those shops that are closed? It’s too bad he couldn’t do more to help small business here.”

Assemblyman Keith L. T. Wright, a Democrat whose district includes the Harlem building, described Mr. Clinton as a great neighbor, adding that there were no sore feelings.

“We love him dearly,” Mr. Wright said. “The community will always love him. We would catch a glimpse of him from time to time, and that added a special flavor to the neighborhood. We wish him well.”

Harlem had not been the former president’s first choice. In February 2001, Mr. Clinton abandoned his plans to move into a skyscraper in Midtown after he was criticized for his decision to rent office space at one of Manhattan’s most lavish office towers. He had planned to rent the 56th floor of Carnegie Hall Tower for $738,700 a year, compared with the $210,000 asking rent in 2001 for the space in Harlem.

Colin Moynihan contributed reporting.

U.S. Calls Radiation ‘Extremely High,’ Sees Japan Nuclear Crisis Worsening - NYTimes.com

2011-03-16T23:10:00.001-04:00

Image via WikipediaU.S. Calls Radiation ‘Extremely High,’ Sees Japan Nuclear Crisis Worsening - NYTimes.com

By DAVID E. SANGER, MATTHEW L. WALD and HIROKO TABUCHI

WASHINGTON — The chairman of the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission gave a far bleaker appraisal on Wednesday of the threat posed by Japan’s nuclear crisis than the Japanese government had offered. He said American officials believed that the damage to at least one crippled reactor was much more serious than Tokyo had acknowledged, and he advised Americans to stay much farther away from the plant than the perimeter established by Japanese authorities.

The announcement opened a new and ominous chapter in the five-day-long effort by Japanese engineers to bring the six side-by-side reactors under control after their cooling systems were knocked out by an earthquake and a tsunami last Friday. It also suggested a serious split between Washington and its closest Asian ally at an especially delicate moment.

The Congressional testimony by Gregory Jaczko, the chairman of the commission, was the first time the Obama administration had given its own assessment of the condition of the plant, apparently mixing information it had received from Japan with data it had collected independently.

Mr. Jaczko’s most startling assertion was that there was now little or no water in the pool storing spent nuclear fuel at the No. 4 reactor of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, leaving fuel rods stored there exposed and bleeding radiation into the atmosphere.

As a result, he said, “We believe that radiation levels are extremely high, which could possibly impact the ability to take corrective measures.”

His statement was quickly but not definitively rebutted by officials of Tokyo Electric Power, the Daiichi’s plant’s operator, and Japan’s nuclear regulatory agency.

“We can’t get inside to check, but we’ve been carefully watching the building’s environs, and there has not been any particular problem,” said Hajime Motojuku, a spokesman for Tokyo Electric. Speaking on Thursday morning in Japan, Takumi Koyamada, a spokesman for the regulatory agency, said that when it was checked 12 hours earlier, water remained in the spent fuel pool at reactor No. 4.

“We cannot confirm that there has been a loss in water,” he said.

On Wednesday night, Mr. Jaczko reiterated his earlier statement and added that commission representatives in Tokyo had confirmed that the pool was empty. He said Tokyo Electric and other officials in Japan had confirmed that, and also stressed that high radiation fields were going to make it very difficult to continue having people work at the plant.

If the American analysis is accurate and emergency crews at the plant have been unable to keep the spent fuel at that inoperative reactor properly cooled — it needs to remain covered with water at all times — radiation levels could make it difficult not only to fix the problem at reactor No. 4, but to keep servicing any of the other problem reactors at the plant. In the worst case, experts say, workers could be forced to vacate the plant altogether, and the fuel rods in reactors and spent fuel pools would be left to meltdown, leading to much larger releases of radioactive materials.

While radiation levels at the plant have varied tremendously, Mr. Jaczko said that the peak levels reported there “would be lethal within a fairly short period of time.” He added that another spent fuel pool, at Reactor No. 3, might also be losing water and could soon be in the same condition.

On Thursday morning, Japan’s Self-Defense Forces started dumping water from a helicopter on reactor No. 3. The helicopter made at least several passes, according to images shown on NHK, the public broadcaster.

On Wednesday, the American Embassy in Tokyo, on advice from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, told Americans to evacuate a radius of “approximately 50 miles” from the Fukushima plant.

The advice to Americans in Japan represents a graver assessment of the risk in the immediate vicinity of Daiichi than the warnings made by the Japanese themselves, who have told everyone within 20 kilometers, about 12 miles, to evacuate, and those 20 to 30 kilometers to take shelter. While maps of the plume of radiation being given off by the plant show that an elongated cloud will stretch across the Pacific, American officials said it would be so dissipated by the time it reached the West Coast of the United States that it would not pose a health threat.

“We would recommend an evacuation to a much larger radius than has currently been provided by Japan,” Mr. Jaczko said. That assessment seems bound to embarrass, if not anger, Japanese officials, suggesting they have miscalculated the danger or deliberately played down the risks.

It was not immediately clear how many people live within the zone around the plant that American officials believed should be evacuated. But the zone gets far closer to the city of Sendai, with its population of one million, which took the brunt of the earthquake last week.

At a hearing on Wednesday, Senator Barbara Boxer, chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, pointed out that 50 miles could take in a huge number of people; San Onofre, in her home state, California, has seven million people living within that radius, she said.

American officials who have been dealing with their Japanese counterparts report that the country’s political and bureaucratic leadership has appeared frozen in place, unwilling to communicate clearly about the scope of the problem and, in some cases, unwilling to accept outside assistance. Two American officials said they believed that the Japanese government itself was not getting a clear picture from the Tokyo Electric Power Company.

“Everything in their system is built to build consensus slowly,” said one American official who would not be quoted by name because of the delicacy of discussions with Japan. “And everything in this crisis is about moving quickly. It’s not working.”

United States Air Force officials announced Wednesday that a Global Hawk remotely piloted surveillance plane would be sent on missions over Japan to help the government assess damage from the earthquake and the tsunami. A Pentagon official said the drone was expected to fly over the stricken nuclear plant.

American officials were careful to offer no public comparisons to past nuclear accidents when discussing the Fukushima disaster. But clearly the crisis in Japan already far outstrips what happened at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania, where very little radiation escaped a crippled reactor. The effort now is to keep the Japanese crisis, involving at least three reactors that had been in active use before the quake, and three others that were inactive but had storage pools for spent fuel, from escalating to the levels of the worst nuclear disaster in history: Chernobyl.

Though the plant’s reactors shut down automatically when the quake struck on Friday, the subsequent tsunami wiped out the backup electronic pumping and cooling system necessary to keep the fuel rods in the reactors and the storage pools for spent nuclear fuel covered with cool water.

The spent fuel pools can be even more dangerous than the active fuel rods, as they are not contained in thick steel containers like the reactor core. As they are exposed to air, the zirconium metal cladding on the rods can catch fire, and a deadly mix of radioactive elements can spew into the atmosphere. The most concern surrounds Cesium-137, which has a half-life of 30 years and can get into food supplies or be inhaled.

Mr. Jaczko (pronounced YAZZ-koe) said radiation levels might make it impossible to continue what he called the “backup backup” cooling functions that have so far helped check the fuel melting inside the reactors. Those efforts consist of using fire hoses to dump water on overheated fuel and then letting the radioactive steam vent into the atmosphere.

Those emergency measures, carried out by a small squad of workers and firefighters, represent Japan’s central effort to forestall a full-blown fuel meltdown that would lead to much higher releases of radioactive material into the air.

Mr. Jaczko’s testimony, the most extended comments by a senior American official on Japan’s nuclear disaster, described what amounts to an agonizing choice for Japanese authorities: keep sending workers into an increasingly contaminated area in a last-ditch effort to cover nuclear fuel with water, or do more to protect the workers but risk letting the pools boil away — and thus risk a broader meltdown.

According to Tokyo Electric’s data, the spent fuel pool at the No. 4 reactor contains 548 fuel assemblies that were in use at the reactor until last November, when they were move to the storage pool on the site. That means that the fuel rods were only recently taken out of active use and that their potential to burn and release radioactivity is higher than spent fuel in storage for a longer period.

Experts say workers at the plant probably could not approach a fuel pool that was dry, because radiation levels would be too high. In a normally operating pool, the water not only provides cooling but also shields workers from gamma radiation.

Earlier in the day, Japanese authorities announced a different escalation of the crisis at Daiichi when they said that a second reactor unit at the plant might have suffered damage to its primary containment structure and appeared to be releasing radioactive steam.

The break, at the No. 3 reactor unit, worsened the already perilous conditions at the plant, a day after officials said the containment vessel in the No. 2 reactor had also cracked.

David E. Sanger and Matthew L. Wald reported from Washington, and Hiroko Tabuchi from Tokyo. Keith Bradsher contributed reporting from Hong Kong.

Fukushima nuclear plant owner falsified inspection records | The Australian

2011-03-16T23:05:00.001-04:00

Image by haribote via FlickrFukushima nuclear plant owner falsified inspection records | The Australian

HE Japanese owner of the stricken Fukushima nuclear plant falsified safety data and "dishonestly" tried to cover up problems there.

Tokyo Electric Power Co injected air into the containment vessel of Fukushima reactor No 1 to artificially “lower the leak rate”. When caught, the company expressed its “sincere apologies for conducting dishonest practices”.

The misconduct came to light in 2002 after whistleblowers working for General Electric, which designed the reactor, complained to the Japanese government. Another GE employee later confessed that he had falsified records of inspections of reactor No1 in 1989 - at the request of TEPCO officials. He also admitted to falsifying other inspection reports, also on request of the client. After that incident TEPCO was forced to shut down 17 reactors, albeit temporarily.

Dale Bridenbaugh, a GE employee who was not the whistleblower, resigned 35 years ago after becoming convinced that the design of the Mark 1 reactor used at Fukushima was seriously flawed. Five of the six reactors were built to that design.

Mr Bridenbaugh told ABC News: “The problems we identified in 1975 were that, in doing the design of the containment, they did not take into account the dynamic loads that could be experienced with a loss of coolant.”

In a document entitled Lessons Learned from the TEPCO Nuclear Power Scandal, released by the company and seen by The Times, TEPCO blamed its “misconduct” in 2002 on its “engineers' overconfidence of their nuclear knowledge”. Their “conservative mentality” had led them to fail to report problems, the company said, resulting in an “inadequate safety culture”.

In 2007, TEPCO ran into trouble again after misinforming government officials about breakdowns at its Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant, which had been damaged after a magnitude 6.8 quake. In a cable released by WikiLeaks, a US official said: “TEPCO issued a corrected statement on July 18 in which it admitted it miscalculated the amount of radiation leakage.”

WikiLeaks cables also reveal that Japan was warned in 2009 that its power plants could not withstand powerful earthquakes.

The US was highly critical of Japan's senior safety director at the International Atomic Energy Association “particularly with respect to confronting Japan's own safety practices”, according to confidential documents obtained by WikiLeaks. In July 2009, in a cable to Hillary Clinton, the Secretary of State, the US mission at the IAEA said Tomihiro Taniguchi, the deputy director of the IAEA department of nuclear safety and security, was a “weak manager” and in a cable sent later that year said that the department had suffered because of his “weak management and leadership skills”.

Armwood News Blog

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