Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Mid Day International News

Mid Day International News

25 years on Chernobyl attracts nuclear tourists

Posted:

A quarter of a century after the world's worst nuclear disaster, the exclusion zone around the shattered Chernobyl atomic plant is not quite as empty as one might think. Deserted towns and villages are remembered at the Chernobyl museum in Kiev -- evacuated when reactor number four exploded just after midnight on April 26, 1986.


Looking back at the past: Portraits of rescue workers, sent to fight
the disaster at the Chernobyl nuclear plant 25 years ago, are hung on
crosses as part of a fake cemetery made by anti-nuclear power activists
during a protest in front of a nuclear power plant in France.


Women activists protest the use of nuclear power in Kiev to commemorate
the Chernobyl disaster. Pics/AFP

The museum's scientific director Anna Korolevska said, "There's a new generation who were born in these territories, a generation who have received small doses of radiation over a long period: first of all in the mother's womb and after their birth. "That's why we have to invest heavily, not only in the new sarcophagus to encase the plant but also to solve the problem of contaminated areas to help these people."

And a new breed has established itself in the exclusion zone. Thousands of tourists are taking what are known as Cherno-tours: 160 euros (Rs 10,000) buys breakfast in the plant's canteen and the chance to take photos outside the infamous reactor. Tour operator Olga Filimonova said, "We call it extreme tourism, or the ecological tour.

These areas are dead and I don't think life is going to return. I'm not sure it's a good idea to advertise this type of trip since at the moment the level of radiation there still isn't known." Some 4,000 people still live in the exclusion zone to maintain safety at the plant. Another thriving population consists of scientists, studying the effects of radiation on wildlife.

Remembering the dead
An international donors conference in Kiev last week raised �485 million of the �653 million needed to build a new shelter and a storage facility for spent fuel. Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovich will commemorate the victims of the nuclear accident with prayers and candle-lighting in Kiev before they travel to the Chernobyl station today.

1.8 million Number of people, which are still defined as contaminated

The Chernobyl accident is equivalent to 500 nuclear bombs used in Hiroshima in 1945.


Under fire Bahrain Prince declines wedding invitation

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The Crown Prince of Bahrain has said he will not attend Prince William and Kate Middleton's wedding on Friday because of ongoing unrest in the Gulf kingdom. Prince Salman bin Hamad Al-Khalifa said it was with "deep regret" that he had reached his "considered decision". He said he had hoped the situation in Bahrain would have improved so he could attend and not "overshadow" the event.



Human rights campaigners had petitioned against his attendance because of his government's treatment of protesters. Human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell said, "The invitations are a massive misjudgement by the monarch. They show the Queen is out of touch with the humanitarian values of modern, liberal Britain. She's putting royalty before human rights."

Beyonce to perform?
Rumours are swirling that Beyonce is set to perform Crazy In Love with husband Jay-Z at the wedding reception of William and Kate Middleton.

WikiLeaks unlocks Guantanamo cages

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Leaked files allege that the US government knew that hundreds of inmates imprisoned for years were either totally innocent or low-risk

The United States held hundreds of inmates who were either totally innocent or low-risk for years and released dozens of high-risk Guantanamo inmates, according to leaked classified files. The new leaks reveal that inmates were held without trial on the basis of often seriously flawed information, such as from mentally ill or otherwise unreliable co-detainees or statements from suspects who had been abused or tortured. In another revelation, a top detainee reportedly claimed that a nuclear bomb has been hidden somewhere in Europe to be detonated if al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden is ever caught or killed. Some media outlets receive 779 documents from the whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks.


Imprisoned without cause: According to the leaked files, prison officials
knew that they were holding innocent men behind bars. The entrance
to the Guantanamo prison. File Pics/Getty images

At least 150 Guantanamo detainees were innocent Afghans or Pakistanis, including drivers, farmers and chefs.
They were rounded up as part of frantic intelligence-gathering in war zones and then detained at the US naval base in southeastern Cuba for years because of mistaken identity or simply for being at the wrong place at the wrong time.

It said that overall, US military analysts considered only 220 of all the suspects in the George W Bush-era "war on terror" ever detained at Guantanamo to be dangerous extremists. Another 380 were deemed to be low-ranking foot soldiers who travelled to Afghanistan or were part of the Taliban. In dozens of cases, senior US commanders were said to have concluded that there was "no reason recorded for transfer" to Guantanamo Bay. Prison officials were aware in at least two cases that they were holding innocent men behind bars and even acknowledged that in writing in their prison files, and yet it took months for them to be returned to their home countries.

Abused
The best-documented case of an abusive interrogation at Guantanamo was the questioning in 2002 and 2003 of Mohammed Qahtani, a Saudi believed to have taken part in plotting the September 11 attacks. Qahtani was leashed like a dog, sexually humiliated and forced to urinate on himself, the files said. "Although publicly released records allege detainee was subject to harsh interrogation techniques in the early stages of detention," Qahtani's file noted, his confessions "appear to be true and are corroborated in reporting from other sources." In a statement, the government said the Obama and Bush administrations had "made every effort to act with the utmost care and diligence in transferring detainees from Guantanamo."

150 Number of Afghan and Pakistani Guantanamo detainees who were found to be innocent
20% Total number of inmates who were jailed without any obvious justification


US authorities describe Pakistan's ISI as terror group

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US authorities have, in secret files to interrogators at Guant namo Bay, described Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) as a terrorist organisation, a media report said Monday.

Recommendations to interrogators at Guant namo Bay rank the ISI (ISI) directorate alongside Al Qaeda, Hamas and Hezbollah groups in Lebanon as threats, the Guardian reported.

Being linked to any of these groups is an indication of terrorist or insurgent activity, the documents say.

"Through associations with these organisations, a detainee may have provided support to Al Qaeda or the Taliban, or engaged in hostilities against US or coalition forces (in Afghanistan)," the Guardian quoted the document called the "Joint Task Force Guant namo Matrix of Threat Indicators for Enemy Combatants", dated September 2007.

The Threat Indicator Matrix is used to decide who among the hundreds of Guant namo detainees can be released. The ISI is listed among 36 groups, including Egyptian Islamic Jihad, led by Al Qaeda deputy leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, the Sabotage Battalion of Chechen Martyrs, the Iranian intelligence services, and the Muslim Brotherhood.

Though the document dates from 2007, it is unlikely the ISI has been removed from the current Threat Indicator Matrix, the newspaper said.

The revelation will cause fury in Pakistan and will further damage the already poor relationship between US intelligence services and their Pakistani counterparts, supposedly key allies in the hunt for Osama bin Laden and other Islamist militants in south Asia, it said.

Relations between America and Pakistan have been tense for years. A series of high-level attempts have been made in recent weeks to improve ties after American CIA contractor Raymond Davis killed two Pakistanis in Lahore in January.

In November, the Guardian published evidence that US intelligence services had been receiving reports of ISI support for the Taliban in Afghanistan for many years. The reports were frequent and detailed, if unconfirmed and sometimes speculative.

In classified memos outlining the background of 700 prisoners at Guant namo, there are scores of references, apparently based on intelligence reporting, to the ISI supporting, co-ordinating and protecting insurgents fighting coalition forces in Afghanistan, or even assisting Al Qaeda. Pakistani authorities have consistently denied any links with insurgents in Afghanistan or Al Qaeda.

The documents detail extensive collaboration between the ISI and US intelligence services. Many of those transferred to Guant namo Bay, including senior Al Qaeda figures such as Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, who planned the 9/11 attacks, and Abu Farraj al-Libbi, one of the group's most capable operators, were arrested with Pakistani help or turned over to American authorities by Pakistani intelligence services, the newspaper said.

The details of the alleged ISI support for insurgents at the very least give an important insight into the thinking of American strategists and senior decision-makers who would have been made aware of the intelligence as it was gathered.

Many documents refer to alleged ISI activities in 2002 or 2003, long before the policy shift in 2007 that saw the Bush administration become much more critical of the Pakistani security establishment and distance itself from Pervez Musharraf, who was president, the Guardian said.
Posted by Harshad at 7:47 AM

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