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Last surviving crew in US bombing of Hiroshima dies
Carnage at UN school as Israel pounds Gaza Strip
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Russia fights back after sanctions
A Ukrainian serviceman, who was captured and jailed by pro-Russian militants in Gorlivka, eastern Ukrainian Donetsk region, reunites with a relative in the office of the Ukrainian President in Kiev. AFP
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Last surviving crew in US bombing of Hiroshima dies
New York, July 29 Van Kirk was the navigator on the flight that dropped the first nuclear bomb used in warfare. He later told reporters that after seeing one atomic bomb explode in war, he never wanted to see another one used again. But he defended the use of the bomb, describing it as the lesser of two evils when compared to the continued aerial assault of the Japanese main islands and a planned US invasion. “The bomb really saved lives, in spite of the tremendous number of casualties in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, because the destruction that would have been caused in Japan otherwise would have been tremendous,” he said in an oral history for Georgia Public Broadcasting. The US B-29 Superfortress Enola Gay, carrying 12 crew members, dropped the atomic bomb, nicknamed “Little Boy”, on Hiroshima in the closing days of World War II. The death toll from the blast by the end of the year was estimated at about 140,000, out of the total of 350,000 who lived there at the time. Three days after the Hiroshima bombing, the United States dropped an atomic bomb nicknamed “Fat Man” on Nagasaki. Japan surrendered on August 15, 1945, bringing World War II to an end. The Pennsylvania-born Van Kirk flew missions in Europe during the war and visited Nagasaki in the aftermath of the atomic blast there. He studied chemical engineering after the war and became an executive with DuPont. He said the Hiroshima mission was relatively easy, with no anti-aircraft fire coming from the ground. The big worry was whether the plane would blow up after the bomb detonated, he told Georgia Public Broadcasting. He said 43 seconds after the bomb was dropped, he saw a flash from the blast. A shockwave then came and shook the aircraft. Officials at the Park Springs Retirement Community in Stone Mountain, a suburb of Atlanta, confirmed his death, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported. Local broadcasters also quoted his son as confirming the death. A funeral for Van Kirk is planned for Aug. 5 in his hometown of Northumberland, Pennsylvania, the paper said. — Reuters The nuclear fury
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Carnage at UN school as Israel pounds Gaza Strip
Gaza/Jerusalem, July 30 Israel's security cabinet convened to discuss a revamped Egyptian proposal for a truce but it was unclear whether any decision was imminent that could halt a 23-day conflict in which nearly 1,400 people, mostly civilians, have died. Some 3,300 Palestinians, including many women and children, were taking refuge in the school in Jabalya refugee camp when it came under fire around dawn, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) said. "Our initial assessment is that it was Israeli artillery that hit our school," UNRWA chief Pierre Krahenbuhl said in a statement after representatives of the agency visited the scene and examined fragments, craters and other damage. Blood splattered floors and mattresses inside classrooms at the Jabalya Girls Elementary School and survivors picked through shattered glass and debris for flesh and body parts to bury. "I call on the international community to take deliberate international political action to put an immediate end to the continuing carnage," Krahenbuhl said. The Gaza Health Ministry put the number of dead in the school attack at 15 with more than 100 wounded. An Israeli military spokeswoman said militants had fired mortar bombs from the vicinity of the school and troops shot back in response. The incident was still being reviewed. The army said three Israeli soldiers were killed on Wednesday when a booby-trap bomb exploded in a tunnel shaft they had uncovered in a residence in the southern Gaza Strip. UNRWA said on Tuesday it had found a cache of rockets concealed at another Gaza school - the third such discovery since the conflict began. It condemned unnamed militant groups for putting civilians at risk. Krahenbuhl said the Jabalya school's precise location and the fact that it was sheltering thousands of displaced people had been communicated to the Israeli military 17 times, with the last notification just hours before the fatal shelling. The chief Israeli military spokesman, Brigadier-General Motti Almoz, said the offensive against militants in the Hamas Islamist-dominated Gaza Strip had been broadened slightly. In a separate incident, Israeli shelling killed at least 17 people and wounded about 160 others near a fruit and vegetable market in Shejaia, a heavily bombarded neighbourhood on the eastern outskirts of the city of Gaza, the Health Ministry said. Egypt said on Tuesday it was revising an unconditional ceasefire proposal that Israel had originally accepted but Hamas rejected, and that a new offer would be presented to Palestinian representatives. — Reuters
Killing sleeping kids in Gaza a shame: UN body
The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) on Wednesday condemned Israel's killing and injuring refugees, including children in their sleep and women in a UN designated shelter in Gaza, as a ‘serious violation of international law by Israeli forces’ and as ‘a source of universal shame’. Pierre Krahenbuhl, UNRWA Commissioner-General Pierre Krahenbuhl, said in a statement that the precise location of the Jabalia Elementary Girls School and the fact that it was housing thousands of internally displaced people was communicated to the Israeli army 17 times, to ensure its protection, the last being at 10 to nine last night (Tuesday), just hours before the fatal shelling. .
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Russia fights back after sanctions
Moscow/Kiev, July 30 The worst confrontation between Moscow and the West entered a new phase this week since the United States and European Union took by far the strongest international steps yet against Moscow over its support for Ukraine's rebels. New EU and US sanctions unveiled on Tuesday restrict sales of arms and equipment for the oil industry, while Russian state banks are barred from raising money in Western capital markets. Moscow called the sanctions "destructive and myopic" and said Europe and the United States would suffer. On Wednesday it banned imports of Polish fruit and vegetables and said it might expand the ban to the entire EU. Russian banks said they would seek financing in Asia. Novatek, a big Russian gas company that works with French firm Total, said it was studying the impact of sanctions on its international joint ventures. On the ground in Ukraine, heavy fighting has been taking place near the site where MH17 crashed on July 17, shot down by what Washington and Brussels believe was a missile supplied by Russia. — Reuters
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Indian jailed for groping woman at metro station
Two ex-editors charged in UK phone hack case Xinjiang terror attack toll rises to 32 US plans largest ever sale of Hellfire missiles to Iraq Afghan militants storm Pak check-posts, 7 killed 33 dead after Guinea concert stampede China to build a large underground neutrino lab
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Theodore “Dutch” Van Kirk, the last surviving member of the Enola Gay plane that dropped the atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, has died at a retirement home in Georgia at age 93, media reports said.
Moscow/Kiev, July 30
