 |
|
Radioactive leak in UK plant goes unnoticed for 9 months
Tariq Aziz pleads innocence
Two Pakistanis deported from US
Blair, Cherie accused of ‘profiteering’ from US visit
Oliver Stone held for drunken driving
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Sir Creek
talks end without headway Islamabad, May 29 India and Pakistan today ended two-day talks on Sir Creek without making any headway on differences over the coastal strip off Gujarat coast, despite the two sides reviewing the results of a joint survey.
Iraqi forces launch biggest mission
Injured Zarqawi has fled Iraq, says report
Switzerland for increased links with India
£ 1-m jewellery looted in London
|
|
Radioactive leak in UK plant goes unnoticed for 9 months
London, May 29 The leak, detected last month, was the outcome of a catalogue of human and engineering errors which resulted in a pool of nuclear liquor, half the volume of an Olympic swimming pool, being accidentally discharged, the Independent on Sunday reported. The magnitude of the incident throws the future of the troubled reprocessing plant into doubt this weekend as copies of an internal investigation circulate among senior ministers and officials. The report said British Nuclear Group, the company that runs the plant, last night admitted that workers failed to respond to “indicators” warning a badly designed pipe had sprung a leak as long ago as last August. The pool of nuclear liquor, 83,000 litres, was eventually discovered on April 19. The company has ordered a review to check for other potential leaks caused by metal fatigue and an urgent drive against staff “complacency.” But ministers privately concede that Thorp, now owned by a Quango, may never re-open as a result of the incident, classified as “serious” by the International Atomic Energy Authority. In a statement released yesterday, the Nuclear Decommissioning Agency (NDA), the Quango that inherited Thorp on April 1, said it needed time to assess the report’s findings before “discussing their implications” with the company and the Government, adding that “safety is the NDA’s absolute priority”. The nuclear clean-up agency is thought to be fighting a battle with Downing Street to close the plant for good in a move that would cost taxpayers billions of pounds, the report said. The leak comes just as ministers and nuclear firms are preparing to seek public support for a new generation of nuclear power stations to help meet climate change targets. It explains why Prime Minister Tony Blair and Alan Johnson, the new Secretary of State for Trade, have been so reluctant to start making the nuclear case, the paper said. The company has stressed the leak was contained and that the incident did not pose a threat to the public. The company may yet face a criminal prosecution. A spokesman for the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate said “I can confirm we will be seeking to find out what monitors were in place, whether they were working and, if so, why they were not acted on.” Four inspectors have been on the Cumbrian site since the incident happened. In addition to human error, they are concentrating on why engineers failed to modify pipes leading to moveable tanks. Metal fatigue in the pipework was the principal cause of the leak, the report said. — PTI
|
|
London, May 29 The English-speaking Aziz said he was being quizzed in jail about whether figures, including French President Jacques Chirac, benefited from the UN oil-for-food programme. The urbane, cigar smoking, bespectacled face of the former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s regime, Aziz pleaded for international help to end his “dire situation” and claimed he was innocent and being held unjustly without being allowed contact with his family. The letters, two in Arabic and three in English, are printed in today’s Britain’s Observer newspaper and addressed to “world public opinion”. They have been scribbled on pages from a dairy of Aziz’s lawyers in Camp Cropper, the Baghdad prison where many top former members of Saddam’s regime are being held. He wrote the letter on April 21, when he was being interviewed by US senators investigating the allegations of corruption concerning the UN oil-for-food programme. Writing in Arabic, Aziz said: “We are totally isolated from the world. There are 13 other detainees here, but we have no meetings or telephone contacts with our families. I have been accused unjustly, but to date no proper investigation has taken place.” “It is imperative that there is intervention into our dire situation and treatment. It is totally in contradiction to international law, the Geneva Convention and Iraqi law as we know it.” — PTI
|
|
Two Pakistanis deported from US
Washington, May 29 Kamal (23), was living in San Francisco when he was arrested in January, 2004, for overstaying his visa by eight months, according to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement, an arm of the Homeland Security Department. He entered the USA in 2001, a year after he was allegedly trained to use pistols, rifles and grenades in a Harkat camp in Afghanistan. The US Justice Department did not pursue criminal charges against Kamal. “Knowledge or connection to a terrorist activity may not be sufficient to prove a terrorism crime,” said Justice Department spokesman Kevin Madden. US immigration officials also deported another Pakistani the same day after he finished serving a 16-month sentence for lying to federal agents about the whereabouts of a militant leader. Hamid Sheikh (41) had refused to help federal agents in Philadelphia locate Agha Ali Abbas Qazalbash who US authorities said was a member of the Sipah-i-Mohammed Pakistan.
|
|
Blair, Cherie accused of ‘profiteering’ from US visit
London, May 29 Cherie is set to earn a share of the £ 80,000 proceeds from a ticket-only event initially billed as ‘an audience with the First Lady of Downing Street’ scheduled to be held during the same week that Blair is pencilled in for a high-profile meeting with US President George W. Bush, ‘The Mail on Sunday’ reported. The Opposition Tories last night accused the Prime Minister of “cashing in on his position”, it said. “This is the sort of thing that really calls into question his judgment. Surely he must realise how bad it looks for his family, making money in a way which is so clearly linked to his duties as Head of the Government,” the daily quoted Shadow Commons Leader Chris Grayling as saying. Almost all tickets - priced from £ 30 to 330 package, including dinner and coffee with Cherie - have been sold for the June 6 event at the 2,450-seat Kennedy Centre. Though the exact dates of the Bush-Blair meeting one yet to be confirmed, sources in Whitehall and Washington said it could take place as soon as
June 7. Maintaining that no dates for the Prime Minister’s visit to Washington have yet been confirmed, a Downing Street spokeswoman, said “If he and Ms Blair are in Washington at the same time then it would be a pure coincidence”. For Americans, it has added interest because under US law, their First Lady Laura Bush is barred from paid speaking engagements.
— PTI
|
|
|
Oliver Stone held for drunken driving
San Francisco, May 29 Stone, who won the best director Oscars for “Platoon” and “Born on the Fourth of July,” was released this morning after posting $15,000 bond, said Sergeant John Edmundson, a spokesman for the Beverly Hills Police Department. The police arrested Stone, 58, on Friday night at a checkpoint on Sunset Boulevard, near the border of Beverly Hills and West Hollywood, he said. Stone, driving a Mercedes, was one of nine arrests at the checkpoint set up as part of a statewide crackdown on drunken driving during the Memorial Day weekend. The Police did not release the details of an intoxication test on Stone or the type of drugs in his possession. A local court ordered Stone into a rehabilitation programme after a 1999 arrest on driving while intoxicated and drug possession charges. — Reuters
|
|
Sir Creek talks end without headway Islamabad, May 29 “The talks were held in a frank and cordial atmosphere. The two sides exchanged views on various issues involved,” said a brief joint press statement issued at the end of talks in Rawalpindi. “The two sides agreed to continue their discussions aimed at an early resolution of the issue for the mutual benefit of the two countries,” it said. This is the eighth round of talks on the subject and the second under current round of the Composite Dialogue process. Expectations of progress were high this time as the two sides, in a rare agreement, conducted a joint survey of the disputed marshy creek in January to determine the pillars installed in 1925 to settle the dispute between then rulers of Rune of Kutch and Sindh. But it appears that the officials made no headway this time too on the 22-year-old dispute despite jointly reviewing the results of the survey. Officials here said India asked Pakistani side to accept the land delineation on the basis of the joint survey but Pakistani officials said they had not yet analysed the technical aspects of the survey. Pakistan side also maintained that the demarcation of land and maritime boundary at Sir Creek needed to be addressed as one package and not separately. An agreement on Sir Creek would help both countries to finalise their respective Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ) in that coast between Gujarat and Sindh to file their claims before the UN Convention of Laws of Seas, which had set the deadline to settle maritime disputes by 2009. The joint survey was conducted to identify the pillar installed in 1925 to help demarcate Sir Creek coastal strip. India argues that the centre of the navigable channel of Sir Creek should be the boundary line while Pakistan contends that the eastern Bank of Sir Creek should be the line of demarcation. The dispute actually began between the Government of Sindh and Rao Maharaj of Kutch and they reached an agreement in 1914 fixing a line running through the middle of the Creek as a border between the two states.
|
|
|
Iraqi forces launch biggest mission
Baghdad, May 29 Backed by the 10,000 US troops in the capital, Iraqi soldiers will block major routes to Baghdad and search the city district by district, looking for foreign Arab fighters and Iraqi guerrillas, Iraqi officials say. But by this evening, there was little sign of any heightened security presence in Baghdad. Officials said the operation would gather steam in coming days. The launch of the crackdown comes after a sharp increase in suicide bombings and ambushes by insurgents who have killed around 700 persons in the past month since a new Shi’ite Islamist-led government was announced. At least 70 US troops have been killed in the same period. — Reuters
|
|
Injured Zarqawi has fled Iraq, says report
London, May 29 Al-Zarqawi has a shrapnel lodged in his chest and may have been moved to Iran, The Sunday Times newspaper reported yesterday, adding that his supporters may try to move him on to another country for an operation.
— Reuters |
|
|
Switzerland for increased links with India
Berne, May 29 Though Switzerland, for time being, chose not to make any commitment on the UN issue, it stressed boosting up its bilateral links with India, particularly in the fields of economic relations, Information Technology, science and technology and defence. Addressing mediapersons after their high-level meeting, the Swiss President said though his country was in favour of enlarging the UN Security Council, there were “several points to be discussed before India could be considered for the seat.”
— UNI |
|
|
£ 1-m jewellery looted in London
London, May 29 Graff’s other shop, in Mayfair, was hit in May, 2003, by one of the biggest recorded robberies in the UK. In that heist, it took three minutes for two members of an international crime cartel dubbed ‘The Pink Panther’ gang to steal 47 items worth £ 23 million from the Graff Jewellery Salon on New Bond Street.
— PTI |
| HOME PAGE | |
Punjab | Haryana | Jammu & Kashmir |
Himachal Pradesh | Regional Briefs |
Nation | Opinions | | Business | Sports | World | Mailbag | Chandigarh | Ludhiana | Delhi | | Calendar | Weather | Archive | Subscribe | Suggestion | E-mail | |
Videos
