A man A man walks by a collapsed house and debris at Sendai Port in Sendai, Japan. (AP Photo)

Protesters riot in Ivory Coast

Protest over president's decision to dissolve government turns violent in Bouake. Last Modified: 20 Feb 2010 15:01 GMT

The violence in the town of Bouake is the latest in a series of protests against President Gbagbo [AFP] Thousands of opposition supporters have marched through the central Ivory Coast city of Bouake, setting ablaze cars, smashing shops and looting a local government office. The violence is the latest in a series of protests against the decision by Laurent Gbagbo, the country's president, to dissolve the government and the electoral commission following a row over voter registration. Demonstrators in Bouake on Saturday shouted "We don't want Gbagbo", as a group of them broke into the regional governor's office and stole equipment, the Reuters news agency reported. In the southwestern town of Gagnoa, Ivorian security forces dispersed protesters with tear gas a day after they opened fire on demonstrators there and killed five. "The police are here and they have launched tear gas to disperse us but we stayed," Issa Diomande, a protester, said. "They have not fired their guns yet. We are going to march all day." The military confirmed on national television that five people had been killed and nine wounded in Friday's violent protests in Gagnoa. Gbagbo had set a Friday deadline to form a new government but on Thursday Guillaume Soro, the prime minister, asked for a 48-hour extension. However, an aide said it would not be announced until Monday. "We're saying the new government will be known on Monday," Alain Lobognon, the special adviser to Soro, said. The opposition accuse Gbagbo of stalling on presidential elections, which have been delayed since 2005. Opposition anger His decision last week to dissolve the government has thrown into doubt the political reconciliation process in Ivory Coast. Opposition supporters are angry at the decision to dissolve the government [AFP] Five years after the president's term ended, the country has yet to hold a ballot to replace him. Al Jazeera's Yvonne Ndege, reporting from Abidjan, Ivory Coast's largest city, said protesters are extremely angry about Gbagbo's decision to dissolve the government. "The opposition, who were part of the government of national unity, have said that they will not recognise any new government that is formed by Gbagbo or any new electoral commission," she said. "So the country is entering its sixth night without a government and without an electoral body. "Naturally, a lot of the people who are supporting the opposition have no choice but to take to the streets in defiance of Gbagbo and that decision that he took." Voter eligibility The now-defunct government was the consequence of a peace agreement signed by Gbagbo's government and the New Forces rebels in 2007, following the end of a civil war that had split the country into a rebel-held north and a government-controlled south. The unity government was composed of 33 ministers from all political parties and rebel factions. At the heart of the impasse that has delayed elections for five years is the question of who can qualify to vote. Before its brief civil war, Ivory Coast was one of Africa's economic stars boasting a modern, cosmopolitan capital which lured tens of thousands of immigrants from poorer neighboring nations. At least a quarter of the nation's 20 million people have been disqualified from voting based on the electoral law's convoluted definition for determining eligibility, stoking tension. The opposition says most of those disqualified by the election commission were from ethnic groups in the north who were unlikely to vote for Gbagbo

Hell on Earth- By ALEX THOMSON Last updated at 1:33 PM on 14th March 2011

• Channel 4 News journalist only Western reporter to make it to the shattered coastal town of Minami Sanriku
• Scene is 'reminiscent of the photographs of Nagasaki or Hiroshima after the A bombs were dropped'
• 2,800 confirmed dead and 10,000 missing
  

Witnessing the destruction : Alex Thomson

The first thing you notice is the silence which seems to hang over the place. There is no sound as we approach this once-thriving coastal town.

Driving round the final bend in the mountain road before making the descent into Minami Sanriku, nothing can quite prepare you for the sight of such destruction.

In my 30 years as a war correspondent I have covered more than 20 conflicts and several major earthquakes, but I have never seen anything on this scale.

One minute you are passing through towns and villages completely untouched by natural disaster – not even a pane missing from the windows – and then as you turn the corner it hits you.

The most astonishing view stretches out below towards the sea for at least four miles. An entire town of around 17,000 people has simply ceased to exist here.

At least 95 per cent of the buildings are not merely ruined; they have been reduced to a morass of splintered wood, jagged concrete and twisted metal. All of this is hideously decorated with the details of destroyed family lives: a woman smiles up from her wedding photographs, a smashed guitar lies in the debris. I see a broken doll, and pages from a child’s school exercise book.

Suspended: Japanese Self-Defence Force officers search for victims around a ship swept around a ship swept away by the tsunami in Higashimatsushima City, Miyagi

Debris: The fishing port of Izushima island in Onagawacho was completely wiped out by the tsunami

There is nothing left: A woman surveys the ravaged town of Minami Sanriku

Rescue mission: Japanese fire department personnel gently lift a barely conscious woman from the wreckage in Natori City

The police try to prevent us going any further, but we get out of our vehicle and walk on. All I can see is mile upon winding mile of a town totally pulverised.

An articulated lorry has been concertinaed by the force of the water, the cab ripped off. Four cars have smashed into it and the roof of a house sits on top. Homes have been reduced to matchsticks and driftwood. On the road that leads up to the school, I see another four or five cars hanging perilously over the edge of the hill.

The scene is reminiscent of the photographs of Nagasaki or Hiroshima after the A bombs were dropped during the Second World War. The occasional concrete structure has survived, but nothing else.

Blown away: Local residents walk past debris, including an overturned fishing boat, in Minami Sanrikue walk through the debris of what was once a suburb of Minami Sanriku in Miyagi Prefecture which was hardest hit by Friday's earthquake and tsunami

This should have been a busy Sunday lunchtime with day trippers and local people enjoying this prosperous, beautiful area with its stunning beaches and wooded areas.

Instead there are small knots of people all across the flattened area, quietly searching for victims or returning to what remains of their homes, searching for possessions they had no time to save.

There is no crying, no hysteria, no anger. It is in the psyche of the Japanese people to do what they have to do in silence and with dignity.

The tidal wave water has receded, but the town’s river is spilling all over the place because the force of the tsunami realigned its banks. There are large stagnant pools of seawater, and mud everywhere.

As we look on, rescuers gently retrieve another body, cradled in a filthy blanket – all they had to hand. The love, respect and ceremony with which these people wrap their dead – people they knew – is perhaps more touching than any tears.

Precarious: Like a discarded toy tossed carelessly across a child's room, a ferry balances on the roof of a house in the village of Otsuchi

The body will be taken up the hill to the town’s secondary school and join the others in the college gymnasium, now a mortuary.

Ten thousand people are believed to be missing, but as yet there is no way of knowing if they are dead or by some miracle managed to escape before the tsunami struck.

At the school I meet one of the town’s restaurant owners, Yuchida Takuma. He is helping in the mortuary, delicately tying the bright blue polythene body bags which lie in rows.

Clean up operation: A local resident looks for items from his mother's car amid mud and debris in Sendai, Miyagi today

Aftermath: A market near a port is filled with debris in Fudai, Iwate, northern Japan today while right, an aerial view of the area north of Sendai shows a barren landscape decimated by the tsunami

THE DISASTER AT A GLANCE

1,600 confirmed dead, with fears the final toll could run into the tens of thousands.

Scientists battling to avert a meltdown at Fukushima nuclear plant by pumping in seawater.

Dangerous failures reported at two other nuclear plants.

100,000 soldiers sent in by the government to help in rescue efforts.

10,000 residents – more than half the population – feared dead in port town of Minami Sanriku.

More than 4,000 calls about missing Britons fielded by Foreign Office.

Geological experts warn of further aftershocks of magnitude 6 and above.

‘I am lucky to be alive,’ he tells me. ‘We heard the sirens – the tsunami warning – and drove up the hill to the school, to high ground. The sirens saved my life.’

I ask him what is left of his restaurant down in the town. ‘Oh,’ he says, bravely managing a smile. ‘There is nothing left at all. It is finished, washed away like everything else.’

Outside on the college baseball ground, a Japanese Army Chinook lands to unload supplies of food and desperately-needed blankets – the nights here are sub-zero. On the roof of the high school building the letters SOS are written bold, for the chopper to land.

Across the way in the college reception, we meet English teacher Shinji Saki. ‘I saw it all,’ he says. ‘The whole thing. First there was the quake, the shaking. Then, the sirens warning there would be a tsunami.

‘I was already here, teaching, up on the hill. But in a few minutes you heard this huge roar and then it all began. We watched as our entire town was simply swept away. It no longer exists.’

I look at him, wondering how it must have felt for those gathered on the hill on Friday watching their friends, family, businesses, being washed away before their eyes.

‘There were around 7,000 of us on the hill that day,’ Shinji says. ‘Perhaps a few thousand at the school on the hill opposite. But there are 17,000 in the town. All the others have gone.’ He shrugs: ‘Who knows if there are eight or ten thousand people still missing here. I just can’t comprehend it.’

We are about to walk away when he opens up about the horrors he has just witnessed. ‘You see, there was this man. I saw him going past on the water, sitting on the roof of his house as it floated by. I saw him. I looked at him and there was nothing at all I could do.’

All the schools were full the Friday afternoon the tsunami struck. The buildings are all on high ground, so there are many children who have lost their parents.

Everybody here, absolutely everybody, has lost relatives. People are living in the school now, sitting quietly in rows in the classrooms and gymnasiums, with their blankets. Anyone who needs medical treatment has been flown out by helicopter as there is no hospital left in the town.

People walk through the rubble that will take months to sort out in Rikuzentakakata, Iwate Prefecture

We leave at dusk, trudging back through mile after mile of utter destruction.

Overhead, the buzzards circle, for there is carrion to be had here. Countless bodies have yet to be retrieved from what remains of this town, wiped from the map in a few moments of thunderous horror.

Nowhere to go: A woman stops to study a framed picture found amongst a mountain of rubbish in Ofunato City, Iwate Prefecture, while a dazed man (right) searches for his home in the neighbouring town of Rikuzentakata

An old man is piggy-backed to safety after surviving the tsunami in Tagajo near Sendai, while in Otsuchicho in Iwate Prefecture, a grandmother minds a young child

British rescuers fly in

A veteran team of British search and rescue experts flew into the tsunami disaster zone last night to help the desperate hunt for trapped survivors.

Three days after the great wave struck, hundreds and possibly thousands of people are thought to be clinging to life in air pockets under mountains of rubble and debris.

Today the 63 rescue specialists – handpicked from fire and rescue services across the UK – will join the race against time to locate those who escaped with their lives.

It promises to be an arduous and emotional task for the team, which includes medical staff and rescue dogs. Several members have just returned from earthquake-devastated Christchurch in New Zealand, where they found only bodies.

They touched down at an airbase in the devastated far north of Honshu island after a 12-hour flight from Manchester.

‘At this relatively early stage, just a few days after the earthquake, we are still very optimistic of finding survivors,’ said their spokesman.

‘But it depends very much on the conditions we find – the types of buildings, what the weather has been like, the level of the water, and so on.’

Sent by the Department for International Development, the team joins a massive international effort to help Japan’s overwhelmed rescue services.

It includes a medical unit, two search dogs and 11 tons of equipment, including cranes and scanners able to detect the smallest sign of life deep beneath the wreckage.

They are drawn from Lancashire, Lincolnshire, Greater Manchester, West Sussex, Kent, West Midlands, Mid-West Wales, Hertfordshire and Cheshire.

Pete Stevenson, 49, the team’s operations commander, said: ‘Experience has shown that the first two to five days give the best chances of finding people alive, so it’s crucial for us now to get there as soon as possible.’

The British group is one of only 17 worldwide with equipment to break through concrete and metal. They are also equipped with monitors to detect radiation levels.

Mr Stevenson, a fireman from Royton, near Oldham, added: ‘The disaster in Japan is different to others we have been to.

‘An 8.9-magnitude earthquake is massive by any standards. For the Japanese, earthquakes are a way of life. They carry out drills and they build to withstand them.

‘If this was a less developed country we could expect hundreds of thousands of deaths, if not millions if it hit a major city.’

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1365947/Japan-earthquake-tsunami-Nothing-prepared-Alex-Thomson-Hell-Earth.html#ixzz1IEuvPpdf

Yemeni Security Forces Crack Down, Leave over 80 Killed

19 March 2011 :: staff

Yesterday, there were reports of snipers taking up positions around peaceful, unarmed pro-democracy demonstrators, then firing into the crowd, inflicting fatal headshots and hitting other victims in the neck. At least one journalist was killed and another injured in the crackdown, and dozens of journalists have reportedly been targeted —detained, beaten, shot at— since the Saleh regime’s crackdown began.

The violence yesterday has reportedly left at least 48 people dead, and Pres. Saleh has used the killings to declare a state of emergency. Critics say the snipers were plainclothes government agents sent to kill and to terrorize peaceful demonstrators. It now appears the Yemeni government has been involved in deliberate crimes against humanity, using lethal violence against unarmed civilians.

With the crisis in Libya, these other outposts of the “Jasmine Revolution”, the wave of democratic protest spreading across the Arabic-speaking world this winter, have been pushed to the margins of major global news reports on the region. The Center for American Progress publication Think Progress has studied the incidence of news reporting and found the Yemen protests getting significantly less coverage than Libya.

The al-Khalifa monarchy in Bahrain has also been escalating its deliberate use of violence to crush the protest movement there, putting the US in a difficult situation, as it goes to war to protect civilians in Libya, while two close allies are systematically engaging in brutal and deadly attacks on their own people, to maintain fundamentally undemocratic regimes.

Saleh has denied involvement in the mass killing of civilian demonstrators in Sana’a, and it now appears likely the state of emergency will be used to impose extreme penalties on anyone associated with the protest movement, which the government is characterizing as promoting unrest and violence.

With clear evidence now emerging of a systematic, centrally controlled campaign of extreme violence against civilians, apparently planned and carried out by the Saleh regime, the international community must now face the uncomfortable prospect of imposing harsh sanctions on one of the most unstable states in the world, where major powers have key strategic and security interests and there is currently a war ongoing against an al Qaeda linked insurgency.

UPDATE, 4:02 pm EDT: New reports from the Yemeni capital, Sana’a, suggest a new wave of attacks on civilians, leaving more than 80 people dead in the course of this weekend’s bloody crackdown.

Reports from Fukushima find 10 Million Times Normal Radiation

27 March 2011 :: J.E. Robertson

Reports from Tokyo today have authorities telling residents water is now safe for infant consumption, even as reports from Fukushima show radiation levels may have surged to 10 million times the normal level. Readings taken 30 miles out to sea have found radiation levels in seawater at 1,850 times the normal level. More nations around the Pacific Ocean are expressing concern about the handling of the disaster.

There appears to be a rising tension between Japanese government officials and the operator of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, TEPCo. When three plant workers were reportedly exposed to highly dangerous levels of radiation, two of them hospitalized with severe radiation burns, government officials suggested the radiation may have come from a breach of the reactor core and TEPCo officials retorted that the leak could be coming from a water-pumping system.

It is unclear whether the high levels of radiation can be confirmed, as there may be, at the moment, too much danger for workers to return to the site where the 10-million-times radiation reading was taken. Officials have said they are not concerned about the seawater radiation levels, because ocean currents will “disperse” the radiation. But concern about seafood, Japan’s seafood industry, food supply and the impact on marine life, is mounting.

As reports of the spike in radiation levels went out this morning, there have been more warnings that even the initial process of containment will last for months. It is now becoming clear that the Fukushima disaster will be similar to the Chernobyl disaster in at least one respect: there will be a need for plant workers to continue going into an environment of extreme danger, for many years after the crisis is more or less brought under control, on a daily basis, to make sure the containment operation is running smoothly.

There are increasing calls for a long-term strategy, designed to roll back and contain the release of radiation, on a permanent basis, along with the permanent cool shut-down of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Critics of the crisis response have suggested government and power-company officials may be hoping to avoid that kind of long-term permanent shut-down, and that this reluctance may be hindering the planning for a comprehensive crisis resolution.

As of this writing, several questions remain unanswered:

1. What is the source of intensely radioactive water that hospitalized at least two plant workers last week?
2. Have one or more reactor cores been breached?
3. Are elevated levels of radiation in the Pacific Ocean a permanent contamination?
4. If so, of how wide an area?
5. Of what sort of marine life?
6. Is there any way to prevent radiation in seawater from entering the human food supply?
7. Has meltdown begun in one or more reactor cores?
8. Is there any way to contain radiation emanating from the spent-fuel cooling pools?
9. Will the Japanese government and TEPCo agree to permanently shut-down, secure and seal the Fukushima reactors and spent-fuel cooling pools?
10. Is there a plan in place to achieve long-term containment?

These are just the most urgent questions. There are others that must be asked, by extension. For instance: how is radiation reaching Tokyo in such levels that drinking water was considered no longer safe for infant consumption last week? Then: how can those radiation levels be considered safer now, as levels measured at the source of the radiation —the Fukushima Daiichi plant— soared?

These are difficult questions. No one could possibly envy the officials forced to deal with them, much less the workers who have to do the most dangerous work on the ground. But they are open questions, and tens of thousands of lives will likely hinge on how well and how swiftly they are answered. It is possible to answer these concerns directly, in a forthright manner, and with a scientifically viable crisis response. But it is not possible to do any of that, if authorities do not fully admit to the radical long-term gravity of what they are dealing with.

Myanmar earthquake: Over 70 people dead Associated Press, Updated: March 26, 2011

Naypyidaw, Myanmar: Still pictures of the aftermath of a powerful earthquake that toppled homes in northeastern Myanmar and killed more than 70 people were shown on Myanmar television on Friday. The pictures showed collapsed houses, cracked roads and other damaged structures in the Tarlay and Tachileik towns in the Shan State near the Thai border. There were fears on Friday that the toll would mount as conditions in more remote areas became known. The Thursday night quake, measured at magnitude 6.8 by the US Geological Survey, was centred just north of Tachileik in the Shan State.

• It was felt hundreds of miles (kilometres) away in the Thai capital of Bangkok and the Vietnamese capital, Hanoi. Myanmar state radio announced on Friday that 73 people had been killed and 111 injured. It said 390 houses, 14 Buddhist monasteries and nine government buildings were damaged.
• Earlier in the day, news broadcasts had put the death toll at 74. No explanation was given for the decrease. Significant damage was reported in the villages around Tachileik, including to bridges and roads, which developed massive fissures, complicating relief efforts.
• A United Nations official said a small hospital and bridge were damaged in the nearby town of Tarlay, making it difficult to access the town. On the Thai side of the border, one woman was killed in Mae Sai when a wall fell on her, according to Thai police, but damage was otherwise minimal. The UN official said medicine would be sent to the affected areas as soon as possible along with an assessment team in cooperation with the Myanmar Red Cross Society. He said 95,000 people were estimated to live near the quake's epicentre, but it was unknown how many suffered damage from it.
• The official spoke on condition of anonymity because Myanmar's government frowns on giving unauthorised information to the media. Most of rural Myanmar, one of Asia's poorest countries, is underdeveloped, with poor communications and other infrastructure, and minimal rescue and relief capacity. The country's military government is also usually reluctant to release information about disasters because it is already sensitive to any criticism. In 2008, the government delayed reporting on - and asking for help with - devastating Cyclone Nargis, which killed 130,000 people. The junta was widely criticised for what were called inadequate preparations and a slow response to the disaster.

Over 25 killed in Myanmar quake: officials

By Hla Hla Htay (AFP) – 1 hour ago

YANGON — At least 25 people were killed and dozens of buildings destroyed when a strong earthquake struck Myanmar near the Thai border, officials from both countries said Friday.

Tremors were felt as far away as Bangkok, almost 800 kilometres (500 miles) from the epicentre, Hanoi and parts of China during the earthquake on Thursday, which the US Geological Survey (USGS) measured at magnitude 6.8.

A Myanmar official warned that there could be "many more casualties" in the town of Tarlay, close to the epicentre, as he confirmed 10 men, a boy and 13 women had been killed when the quake struck.

"Five monasteries and 35 buildings collapsed in the town. Those people were killed when the buildings collapsed," said the official, who declined to be named.

Twenty people were injured in Tarlay in the district of Tachileik, and the official said the main road into the area was closed after being damaged in the quake.

Just across the border from Tachileik, Thai authorities said a 52-year-old woman was killed in Mae Sai district after a wall of her house collapsed.

Terrified residents across the region fled their homes, tall buildings swayed and hospitals and schools were evacuated during the tremors.

The quake struck 90 kilometres (60 miles) north of Chiang Rai and 235 kilometres (150 miles) north-northeast of Chiang Mai, Thailand's second city and a popular tourist destination. Tall buildings shuddered in Bangkok during the tremor.

Its epicentre was close to the borders with Thailand and Laos and was just 10 kilometres (six miles) deep.

Thailand's meteorological department on Friday said it had registered six large aftershocks following the initial quake.

Chiang Rai governor Somchai Hatayatanti told AFP late Thursday that efforts were made to evacuate people from tall buildings and he had ordered all patients from Mae Sai District Hospital to be taken to Chiang Rai.

The shaking was felt throughout China's southwest province of Yunnan, according to state-run China National Radio, but no casualties or structural collapses had been reported as of Friday morning.

However, the earthquake reportedly caused cracks in some homes and schools in and around the rugged Xishuangbanna region which borders Myanmar, and fear of aftershocks forced many people in the area to spend the night outdoors.

Some residents of the Vietnamese capital Hanoi fled their homes in panic when the quake shook the city.

Nguyen Thi Hong Hanh, 36, who lives on the 10th floor of a highrise, said her husband noticed their pet fish shaking in their tank.

"We all rushed to the street. All the other people in the apartments also rushed out," she said.

Hanoi felt the tremor at about magnitude 5.0, according to Dinh Quoc Van, deputy head of the earthquake monitoring department.

The quake comes two weeks after Japan was hit by a monster earthquake, which unleashed a devastating tsunami that left around 27,000 people dead or missing and triggered a crisis at its Fukushima nuclear plant.

No tsunami warning was issued after the Myanmar quake as US seismologists said it was too far inland to generate a devastating wave in the Indian Ocean.

The USGS initially recorded the quake as magnitude 7.0, but later revised it down to 6.8.

Copyright © 2011 AFP