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UN workers get ‘safe passage’ to Misrata
Yemeni police opens
fire on protesters; 3 killed |
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Pak army to withdraw from Balochistan
Pak test-fires N-capable Hatf-9 missile
Japan starts removing highly toxic water from reactor
LA Times wins Pulitzer for exposing ill-gotten fat salaries
Swearing can help you beat pain!
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UN workers get ‘safe passage’ to Misrata
Tripoli/Washington, April 19 The UN said they have been promised “safe passage” for UN aid workers into Misrata amid severe shortages of food, power, water and medicine in the face of intense shelling by forces loyal to Gaddafi. Valerie Amos, the UN humanitarian chief, secured the deal through talks in Tripoli. The top UN official was told by Libyan authorities that the government was willing to set up “safe passage” out of the city, which remains partially under the control of the rebels after weeks of attacks by the army. The government has promised UN aid workers and their equipment access to all areas under their control, BBC said. Amid efforts to get humanitarian access to Misrata and efforts to evacuate those stranded, Al Jazeera quoted witnesses as saying that the pro-Gaddafi forces today pounded the port city with rockets and artillery. The city, which was living under the threat of bombardment, was facing severe shortages of food, water, fuel and electricity. At least 20 persons died while queuing for bread when Grad rockets rained down on them, it said. “There is no safe place left here,” a Sudannese woman was quoted as saying. Rebel leaders claimed that at least 10,000 people have died since the start of the conflict in February, Al Jazeera said. “Given the intensity of the conflict, it doesn’t come as a surprise,” it said. “We have focused on areas like Misrata, where the humanitarian crisis is well documented, however it is happening throughout Libya, the full extent of the crisis is not known and there is no real idea of (casualty) figures,” the channel said in a report. Britain’s Department for International Development said approximately 300 civilians had been killed and a further 1,000 injured since late February in Misrata. However, media reports said 1,000 people are estimated to have been died in the fighting in Misurata and “80 per cent of the deaths are civilians”. In the eastern battlefront, the opposition and the government forces were involved in a seesaw battle for the control of the strategic city of Ajdabiya, which is being used by the anti-Gaddafi forces as a staging post to regain the strategic oil port of Brega, 80-km west of Ajdabiya. Amid fears of a stalemate in the conflict, Britain today decided to send military officers to Libya to advise rebels. UK Foreign Secretary William Hague said the group would be deployed in Benghazi, stronghold of the opposition’s Transitional National Council. Ten British officers will provide logistics and intelligence training, part of a joint British and French operation, BBC said. — PTI
NATO announces strikes against Gaddafi command sites
Brussels: NATO’s commander in chief for the operation in Libya on Tuesday announced military strikes against Muammar Gaddafi’s command centres, including Tripoli and a brigade accused of leading attacks on civilians. “NATO conducted deliberate, multiple strikes against command and control facilities of the Gaddafi regime last night,” the alliance said in a communique from its Brussels headquarters. It said these strikes targeted “communications infrastructure used to coordinate attacks against civilians, and the headquarters of the 32nd Brigade located 10 kilometres south of Tripoli.” Libya’s official news agency JANA reported earlier that NATO air strikes on Tuesday hit the Libyan capital Tripoli; Sirte, Muammar Gaddafi’s home town; and the town of Aziziyah, south of the capital. Deputy foreign minister Khaled Kaim said these raids were carried out “at the request of the rebels who are preparing to carry out massacres in the region.” Early in the afternoon, AFP journalists in Tripoli reported at least one plane flying over the capital.
— AFP Syria lifts emergency law after five decades, limits protests
DAMASCUS: The Syria’s government passed a bill on Tuesday lifting emergency law after nearly half a century but adopted new legislation to “regulate the right of peaceful protest”, the state news agency said. A senior lawyer said President Bashar al-Assad has to sign the legislation for it to take effect but that his signature was a formality. The official agency said the cabinet, which has little power and rubber-stamps Assad’s orders, also passed a law to abolish a special security court that human rights lawyers says violates the rule of law and the universal right to fair trial. The changes were a response to weeks of protests, inspired by uprisings elsewhere in the Arab world, demanding greater freedom and, more recently, an end to Assad’s 11-year rule. Demonstrations have continued in several cities despite a series of announcements of political concessions by the president, who took over from his late father, Hafez al-Assad, in 2000.
— Reuters
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Yemeni police opens fire on protesters; 3 killed Sanaa, April 19 The latest killings came as a Yemeni Government delegation was in the UAE capital Abu Dhabi for talks with the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) foreign ministers to discuss an exit plan proposed by the oil-rich bloc. In the Yemeni capital Sanaa, medics said two protesters was shot dead and hundreds more were wounded, mostly by tear gas, when security forces dispersed an anti-Saleh march. Earlier, the police killed a man and wounded several other people when they shot at anti-regime demonstrators in the Wadi al-Qadi district of Taez, the second most-populated city of Yemen, south of Sanaa, according to witnesses. “We have one dead, identified as Nasser Mohammed Gahtan, and five wounded by live fire, as well as hundreds of people suffering from tear gas inhalation,” said a doctor in Sanaa treating the injured. Protesters said a large force of riot police swooped on the marchers in Sittin Avenue in the west of the capital. Gunmen in plain clothes were seen firing in the air and also at protesters. Witnesses said the demonstrators still managed to break through the police cordon and reach an anti-regime sit-in at Sanaa university. A pro-regime demonstration also took place in the capital today, with Saleh backers chanting their support for the veteran strongman and for “constitutional legitimacy”. South of Sanaa, the police fired “indiscriminately” on protesters in Taez, witnesses said.Several people suffered gunshot wounds. — PTI
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Pak army to withdraw from Balochistan
Pakistani army will hand over security responsibilities in the insurgency-hit Balochistan province to paramilitary forces within two months after a battalion deployed in the restive Sui town returns to the barracks, its chief Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani has said. In an apparent effort to improve the situation in Balochistan and pacify Baloch nationalists, Kayani said the army had dropped plans to set up four new cantonments and was set to induct another 5,000 Baloch youths by relaxing its laws and standards for recruitment. The powerful army chief, who made the remarks while addressing gatherings at Sui and Gwadar on Monday, said security responsibilities in Sui town will be handed over to the Frontier Corps in two months. Once the battalion posted in Sui returns to the Quetta cantonment, there would not be any army presence in the province outside cantonments, he said. “In future, no (military) operation will be conducted in the province without the permission of the provincial government,” Kayani said at the inauguration of the Government Institute of Technology in the port city of Gwadar. He said that “not even a single army unit was conducting any operation in the province”. Kayani said 4,000 Baloch youths had already joined the army after completing their training and another 5,000 will be recruited this year after the national census, currently under way in parts of the country, is completed. He announced that no new cantonment will be established in Balochistan against the wishes of the people and that the army had dropped the idea of building four cantonments “because people don’t want these”.
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Pak test-fires N-capable Hatf-9 missile
Islamabad, April 19 The Hatf-9 or Nasr missile, with a range of 60 km, can carry "nuclear warheads of appropriate yield with high accuracy" and has "shoot and scoot attributes", the military said in a statement. The "multi-tube ballistic missile" system was developed "to add deterrence value to Pakistan's strategic weapons development programme at shorter ranges," the statement said. "This quick response system addresses the need to deter evolving threats," the statement said. The missile test, conducted at an undisclosed location, was successful, it said. Footage on television showed the missile being launched from a system mounted on a truck.
— PTI
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Japan starts removing highly toxic water from reactor
Tokyo/Fukushima, April 19 TEPCO began removing 25,000 tonnes of highly radioactive water in and around the No.2 reactor’s turbine building, which has an extremely high level of radiation, after sealing cracks in walls of the unit and ensuring that all measures were in place to prevent toxic liquid from leaking. It said it plans to move about 480 tonnes of the water a day and it will take about 26 days to move about 10,000 tonnes to the waste facility near the No.4 reactor. — PTI
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LA Times wins Pulitzer for exposing ill-gotten fat salaries
New York, April 19 But for the first time in the Pulitzers’ 95-year history, no award was given in the category of breaking news the bread-and-butter of daily journalism. In a year when the big stories included the devastating earthquake in Haiti and the Gulf oil spill, the Pulitzer Board didn’t like the entries in the breaking news category enough to honour any of them with the most prestigious award in journalism. The Los Angeles Times won for its series revealing that politicians in Bell, Calif, were drawing salaries well into six figures. The newspaper’s reporting that officials in the struggling city of 37,000 people were raising property taxes and other fees in part to cover the huge salaries led to arrests and the ouster of some of Bell’s top officials. The Times won a second Pulitzer for feature photography, and The New York Times was awarded two Pulitzers for international reporting and for commentary. “The real victors in this are the people of Bell, who were able to get rid of, there’s no other way to say it, an oppressive regime,” said reporter Jeff Gottlieb, clutching a bottle of champagne before about 100 people in the newsroom. Ruben Vives, another staff writer on the story, said: “At a time when people are saying newspapers are dying, I think this is the day when we can say, no, not really. We gave a small town, we gave them an opportunity to speak out. That’s what newspapers do.” One out of six people live in poverty in Bell, while its homeowners paid property taxes higher than those in Beverly Hills. The series showed that the city manager was drawing a salary and benefits package of $1.5 million a year and that four of Bell’s part-time City Council members were pulling down annual salaries of $100,000. The former city manager and seven other ex-officials are awaiting trial on fraud charges. And the entire City Council was thrown out of office in a recall election last month. The Los Angeles Times has been hobbled by the troubles of its owner, Tribune Co, which has been operating under federal bankruptcy protection for the past two years. Tribune Co has been trying to shed most of the debt that it took on in an $8.2 billion buyout of the company engineered by real estate mogul Sam Zell. The Times has also gone through wrenching staff cutbacks before and after the bankruptcy filing, and other turmoil in the newsroom. — AP
No award in breaking news category
For the first time in the Pulitzers’ 95-year history, no award was given in the category of breaking news the bread-and-butter of daily journalism. In a year when the big stories included the devastating earthquake in Haiti and the Gulf oil spill, the Pulitzer Board didn’t like the entries in the breaking news category enough to honour any of them with the most prestigious award in journalism.
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Swearing can help you beat pain! London, April 19 Researchers at the Keele University in the UK found that bad language can act as a powerful painkiller -- at least for those who don't normally use expletives. For them, researchers said, swearing in the face of genuine pain is up to four times more effective than it is for more regular swearers, the Daily Mail reported. For the study, the researchers recruited 71 young adults and divided them into two groups -- those who normally utter fewer than 10 swear words a day, and those who utter up to 40 daily. All of them were asked to dip their hands into ice-cold water and hold them there as long as possible. They were first asked to do so while repeating a non-swear word, then again while repeating a swear word of their choosing. Those who usually swear less often were able to withstand the icy water while swearing for up to 45 seconds longer than when they did not swear. But frequent daily-swearers were able to withstand the icy water for just 10 seconds longer, compared to when they did not swear. Dr Richard Stephens, who led the research, said the findings showed that swearing could release pain-killing endorphins. “Swearing provokes an emotional response in the face of stress akin to the 'flight and fight' response (how the body reacts to perceived threat or danger),” he explained. He added: “I think the benefit of swearing as a response to pain lies in the field either before medical intervention arrives or for minor injuries. You stub your toe, you let fly with some expletives and you move on. But as our new study shows -- if you overdo casual everyday swearing, then it seems that you would not get the benefit of letting fly with an expletive at that moment when you injure yourself.” — PTI
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April 19
Tokyo/Fukushima, April 19
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