Japan’s government said it would revise evacuation zones for three cities located around the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant, Jiji press reported on Friday.
Japan introduced a 20-kilometre (12-mile) no-go zone around the facility at the centre of the worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl, after it was hit by the March 2011 tsunami and lost reactor cooling functions.
The evacuation zones currently in place for 11 municipalities will be revised for the cities of Tamura, Minamisoma and Kawauchi in April, the government said, according to Jiji.
The revised zones, based on radiation levels, will be introduced in Tamura and Kawauchi on Sunday and in Minamisoma on April 16, Jiji said.
In December, Japan announced it had achieved a state of cold shutdown at the Fukushima plant after months of clean-up operations.
Tens of thousands of people have moved to shelters from areas in and beyond the no-go zone, including some areas in a wider 30-kilometre radius where people were first told to stay indoors and later urged to leave.
The process of fully restoring the areas around the crippled Fukushima plant is expected to take decades.
The task of restoring towns and villages even in lightly contaminated zones is complicated, with high costs and logistical issues of where to store soil contaminated with radioactive caesium after it is removed.
An Afghan policeman poisoned and then shot dead nine of his colleagues while they were sleeping early Friday in the eastern province of Paktika, police and provincial government officials said.
It was the latest in a series of shootings by Afghan security personnel of their local and foreign colleagues, deaths that have ramped up tensions between the allies even as NATO-led forces prepare to pull out by the end of 2014.
Paktika provincial police chief Dawlat Khan said the shooting happened before dawn in Yahyakhil district.
“A local policeman named Asadullah was persuaded by Taliban insurgents to carry out the firing inside the security check post,” he told AFP.
“First he poisoned his colleagues and then later he woke up for night duty at 3:00 am. Then he used his assault rifle to kill his nine colleagues. They were sleeping inside the post.”
Asadullah fled the scene after the shooting and is on the run, he added, and there were no survivors.
Mokhlis Afghan, spokesman for the Paktika governor, confirmed the attack and that one policeman had fled, adding that two others had been arrested.
Earlier in March, another nine Afghan police were killed, in the southern province of Uruzgan, in an insurgent attack that authorities said was believed to have been facilitated by a fellow officer and suspected Taliban infiltrator.
The gunman in Friday’s attack and his victims belong to the so-called local Afghan police, militias that form part of the government’s security forces but do not come under the national police set-up.
Paktika is a hotbed of the Haqqani network, essentially a faction of the Taliban allied to Al-Qaeda, and neighbours Pakistan’s tribal belt, which Washington considers to be a global hub of Al-Qaeda and Taliban militants.
The Taliban, who have been fighting an insurgency against Hamid Karzai’s government in Kabul and its Western allies for more than a decade, claimed responsibility for the attack.
Spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said in a text message to AFP: “Last night, a mujahid fighter attacked a security check post. As a result, he killed nine puppet local policemen.
“The mujahid fighter has managed to escape and joined the Taliban ranks.”
Members of both Afghan units and NATO’s US-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) have been targeted by Afghan security personnel in a series of attacks this year.
So far this year 17 foreign troops, including at least seven Americans and five French trainers, have been killed in such shootings, more than one in six of the 93 ISAF fatalities since January 1.
The attacks threaten to undermine efforts to train Afghan troops to take over security for the entire country ahead of ISAF pulling out by the end of 2014, the cornerstone of the West’s strategy in Afghanistan.
Relations between the allies have also been strained by a video of troops urinating on Taliban corpses, the burning of Korans at a US military base and a massacre of civilians by a US soldier who has been charged with 17 murders.
NATO troops have been ordered to adopt strict new security precautions to counter the threat.
ISAF commander US General John Allen ordered some advisers to carry weapons and for NATO units to designate one team member as a “guardian angel” to stay armed and on alert for possible fratricidal attacks, officials said.
Coalition troops working at Afghan government or military buildings are required to move desks to make sure their backs do not face the door.
Officials say that despite Taliban claims to the contrary, most of the attacks are not by Taliban infiltrators but by “self-radicalised” individuals, with cultural differences sometimes playing a part.
Underlining that it is not only foreign troops who are targeted, five policemen were poisoned and shot in the city of Kandahar in February, with their cook fleeing and their guns missing.
Elsewhere in Afghanistan, NATO’s US-led force announced the deaths of two soldiers in the south on Thursday, one in a bomb blast and a second in an insurgent attack.
Satellite photos show N.Korea launch work ‘underway’
North Korea has begun preparing for a rocket launch next month despite international condemnation, satellite images show, as Japan vowed to shoot down the projectile if it poses a threat.
The images taken Thursday show that work to prepare the launch pad appears to be under way, according to the 38 North website (38north.org), which published several images taken by private US firm DigitalGlobe.
The nuclear-armed North insists it will go ahead with what it calls the peaceful launch of a scientific satellite from its Tongchang-ri site in the far northwest.
The United States and other nations say the exercise is a disguised long-range missile test, in breach of UN resolutions and of a US-North Korean deal reached last month.
The website, a project of the US-Korea Institute at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced and International Studies, said the detailed images show the mobile launch pad on tracks next to the gantry tower.
It said a crane atop the tower was at a 45-degree angle relative to the pad, indicating equipment was being loaded onto the gantry, and numerous small objects and people could be sighted on the pad.
A work crew appeared to be cutting away brush, possibly to prevent the spread of any fire started by the launch.
At the two largest propellant storage buildings to the right of the pad, containing tanks to supply the Unha-3 rocket’s first stage, trucks could be seen delivering fuel and oxidiser, it said.
38 North said preparation “seems to be progressing on schedule” and the next step would be moving the first stage to the pad, probably on March 30 or 31.
This would be followed by the second stage a day or two later, with the third stage and payload likely following by April 2 or 3.
“Unless some major setback occurs, the North Koreans will be able to launch during the declared launch window starting April 12,” it said.
The North has said it will launch the satellite some time in the morning between April 12-16 to mark the 100th anniversary of the birth of founding president Kim Il-Sung.
It says it will estimate crop yields and collect weather data, among other civilian missions, and rejects strong criticism from leaders including US President Barack Obama.
Pyongyang said the first stage would fall about 140 kilometres (87 miles) off South Korea’s west coast, in international waters between China and the South.
The second stage was expected to splash down 190 kilometres east of the northern Philippines.
Japan fears the flight path may take it over its southern island chain of Okinawa. Defence Minister Naoki Tanaka said in Tokyo Friday he had ordered troops to shoot it down if it threatens Japanese territory.
South Korea has also said it will shoot down the rocket if it strays over its territory.
The United States has suspended plans to start sending 240,000 tonnes of food aid to the North, which in return agreed last month to a partial nuclear freeze and a missile test moratorium.
Pyongyang insists a satellite launch is not a missile test, a stance rejected by other countries who say the rocket technology is dual-use.
South Korea, which currently has icy relations with its neighbour, says the launch aims to test technology which could one day deliver a nuclear warhead.
The North is estimated to have enough plutonium for six to eight weapons, but it is unclear whether it has mastered the technology to create an atomic warhead.
The North fired off long-range missiles in 1998, 2006 and 2009. After the two most recent launches it swiftly followed up with an underground nuclear test, and some analysts see a similar scenario unfolding this time.
Malaysia in religious row over ‘threat of Christianity’
Malaysian state religious and education officials have changed the title of a seminar on “the threat of Christianity” following outrage from non-Muslims in the multiethnic country.
Southern Johor state education officials faced criticism over the school teachers’ seminar to be held Saturday that was titled: “Strengthening the faith, the dangers of liberalism and pluralism and the threat of Christianity towards Muslims.”
The furore over the title follows allegations of Christian proselytisation in the Muslim-majority country after religious police raided a Methodist church event last August fearing Muslims were being converted.
State lawmaker Maulizan Bujang told the Bernama news agency the reference to Christianity would be removed from the title, saying: “The seminar aims to strengthen the faith of Muslims and it does not need to be politicised by any party that claims it (the seminar) is a threat to other religions.”
But co-organisers from the state religious department said the seminar’s content would remain the same.
“The seminar is part of the right of Muslims to defend the faith of its practitioners from any action which may lead to apostasy. It is our responsibility,” an official told Bernama.
Opposition leaders say the ruling coalition, which is expected to announce national polls this year, is trying to woo back Malay support by using fear of other religions, after a swing vote saw the government lose control of a third of parliamentary seats and four states in 2008 polls.
Reverend Hermen Shastri, general secretary of the Council of Churches of Malaysia, said the government had to take a stand against the seminar.
“Of course we are disappointed, it derails the whole idea of harmony and mutual respect and understanding each other,” he told AFP.
Malaysia has largely avoided overt religious conflict in recent decades but tensions have simmered since a court ruling in late 2009 lifted a government ban on the use of “Allah” as a translation for “God” in Malay-language bibles.
The ban had been in place for years but enforcement only began in 2008 out of fear the word could encourage Muslims to convert.
The 2009 ruling triggered a series of attacks on Christian places of worship using Molotov cocktails, rocks and paint.
Muslims make up 60 percent of the country’s 28 million people, while Christians account for about nine percent, most of whom come from indigenous groups in the Borneo states of Sabah and Sarawak.
The Texas Rangers confirmed their starting pitching rotation to open Major League Baseball’s regular season, with prized Japanese import Yu Darvish slated to take on Ichiro Suzuki and the Mariners on April 9.
The Rangers opted not to fiddle with the rotation they have used during Spring Training. Colby Lewis will make the first Opening Day start of his major league career on April 6 against the Chicago White Sox at Rangers Ballpark in Arlington.
He’ll be followed by left-handers Derek Holland and Matt Harrison, and righties Darvish and Neftali Feliz.
Manager Ron Washington confirmed the decisions on Thursday.
“Each one of them has done well,” Washington said. “The only thing I’m looking for is that each time they take the ball they keep us in the ballgame.
“Keep us in the ballgame, and my guys will find a way to put us in a position to win it. That’s what it’s about.”
Darvish, a two-time Japan League Most Valuable Player with the Nippon Ham Fighters, was acquired by the Rangers prior to this season for a total of $107.7 million — $56 million for his six-year deal and the rest just for the right to negotiate with him.
Now he’ll make his first major league start against Seattle and Suzuki, the most successful Japanese player in US major league history.
“Wherever and whenever I’m told to pitch, I’ll just do my best,” Darvish said. “That is all I am thinking about right now.”
Washington said he expected Darvish to rise to the occasion, and not get caught up in the hype of the match-up against Suzuki.
“Ichiro is one of the better players in the American League, and Darvish is trying to establish himself as one of the best pitchers,” Washington said.
“It should be a good match-up, but it’s not Darvish vs. Ichiro. It’s Darvish vs. the Seattle Mariners.”
Osama bin Laden fathered four children as he hid out in Pakistan after the 9/11 attacks, his youngest wife told interrogators, according to a police report seen by AFP on Friday.
Amal Abdulfattah’s account provides rare details of the Al-Qaeda leader’s life from when he fled Afghanistan in late 2001 until his death aged 54 last May during a US Navy SEAL operation in Abbottabad, in Pakistan.
Abdulfattah, from Yemen, was arrested by Pakistani authorities following the US raid on bin Laden’s compound near the Pakistani capital Islamabad, along with two of his Saudi wives, and her five children.
The three detained widows face charges of illegally entering and residing in Pakistan. Abdulfattah, 30, was shot while trying to protect her husband, according to the US.
The Pakistan police report, dated January 19, said Abdulfattah was born into a family of 17 children and married bin Laden because “she had a desire to marry a Mujahedeen”, using the term for “holy warrior”.
The report, from the office of the inspector general of police in Islamabad, recommended Abdulfattah and her children be immediately deported.
After arriving in Pakistan in July 2000 on a three-month visa, in the company of her sister and brother-in-law, Abdulfattah travelled to Kandahar, in neighbouring Afghanistan, at the time capital of the Taliban regime.
The date of her marriage to bin Laden was not specified, but the police report said afterwards she moved in with him and his other two wives.
“She further revealed that after the incident of 9/11, they all scattered and she came to Karachi with one of her daughter’s, Safia,” the report said. Safia, her first child by the Al-Qaeda kingpin, was born in Kandahar in 2001.
She stayed in Karachi for eight to nine months, moving between homes arranged for them by Pakistani families and bin Laden’s oldest son Saad.
Abdulfattah then met back with the fleeing bin Laden in Peshawar, in northwest Pakistan. The report suggests that the pair did not part from that moment until the raid in Abbottabad.
They stayed for eight or nine months in Swat, then for two years in Haripur, 90 minutes from Islamabad, before moving to the garrison town of Abbottabad in 2005.
During this time, Abdulfattah had four other children by bin Laden, by then the most-wanted man in the world.
In Haripur, Aasia, a girl, was born in 2003 and Ibrahim, a boy, was born the next year.
On both occasions Abdulfattah gave birth in a public hospital, the police report said.
The other two children, Zainab, a girl, and Hussain, a boy, were born in Abbottabad in 2006 and 2008.
According to the report, the family movements while they were on the run were organised by “Ibrahim and Abrar”, two Pakistanis given responsibility for the task by members of Al-Qaeda.
Both the men were killed by the Americans during the raid on Abbottabad and had been living in the same compound, along with Ibrahim’s wife, Bushra, and bin Laden’s son, Khalid.
The continued detention of bin Laden’s wives has led to accusations that Pakistan is attempting to muzzle them to stop them from providing details that could embarrass Islamabad or add to suspicions it knew where bin Laden was.
Pakistan was humiliated by the covert American operation that killed the Al-Qaeda leader in the early hours of May 2, practically on the doorstep of the country’s elite military academy.
Narumi Takahashi and Mervin Tran put figure skating giants Japan among the great pairs skating nations on Friday as they won the country’s first senior international medal in the discipline at the world championships here.
The four-time national champions held their third position from Wednesday’s short programme to take bronze after their free skate to Concerto de Quebec by Andre Mathieu.
Germans Aliona Savchenko and Robin Szolkowy claimed a fourth pairs crown by a tight 0.11-point margin over Russian silver medallists Tatiana Volosozhar and Maxim Trankov.
The pair representing Japan scored 124.32 points for an overall total of 189.69, to finish 11.80 points behind the Germans.
“I was very nervous as usual, but there was no pressure,” said Takahashi.
“We’d already won the small medal (third in short programme) and that was good enough for me. But before we went out Mervin said we were not defending but attacking.”
Tran said: “I said ‘we’re not going to defend for the third spot, we’re going to attack’. We knew we had nothing to lose.”
The pair have been skating together since July 2007 and Takahashi moved to Canada to train with Canadian-born Tran, 21, whose father was born in Vietnam and mother in Cambodia, but whose grandparents are all from China.
In the past four-and-a-half years the pair have won a silver and bronze medal at the world junior championships.
However despite their success it is still uncertain whether they will continue skating together to compete at the 2014 Sochi Games as Tran would have to give up his Canadian citizenship.
“I’m not going to make an official decision until the end of the season. Then I’ll decide what will happen,” he said.
Takahashi, 20, said however hoped their performances would inspire more pairs skaters back home.
“This is so special for us. I hope everyone in Japan will see us and they will start thinking about taking up pairs skating.
“Hopefully we will become a strong pairs country in the future.”
Tran added: “It still hasn’t sunk in yet.
“I’m very happy and proud to win this medal for Japan. They have supported us from the beginning.”
North Korea has begun preparing for a long-range rocket launch next month despite international condemnation, according to satellite images published by a US-based website.
The images taken Thursday show that work to prepare the launch pad appears to be under way, according to the 38 North website.
The website (38north.org), which specialises in analysis of the country, published several images taken by private US firm DigitalGlobe.
The North insists it will go ahead with what it calls the peaceful launch of a scientific satellite from its Tongchang-ri site in the far northwest.
The United States and other nations say the exercise is a disguised long-range missile test in breach of UN resolutions and of a US-North Korean deal reached last month.
The website said the detailed images show the mobile launch pad sitting on tracks next to the gantry tower.
It said a crane atop the tower was at a 45 degree angle relative to the pad, indicating equipment was being loaded onto the gantry, and numerous small objects and people could be sighted on the pad.
A work crew appeared to be cutting away brush, possibly to prevent the spread of any fire started by the launch.
At the two largest propellant storage buildings to the right of the launch pad, containing tanks to supply the Unha-3 rocket’s first stage, trucks could be seen delivering fuel and oxidiser, it said.
38 North said launch pad preparation “seems to be progressing on schedule” and the next step would be the movement of the rocket’s first stage to the pad, probably on March 30 or 31.
This would be followed by the second stage a day or two later, with the third stage and payload likely following by April 2 or 3.
“Unless some major setback occurs, the North Koreans will be able to launch during the declared launch window starting April 12,” it said.
The North has said it will launch the satellite some time in the morning between April 12-16 to mark the 100th anniversary of the birth of founding president Kim Il-Sung.
It says the satellite will estimate crop yields and collect weather data. among other civilian missions, and rejects strong criticism from leaders including US President Barack Obama.
West Indies squandered a blistering start to their second Twenty20 against Australia at the Kensington Oval on Friday to be bowled out for just 160.
West Indies had lost the first match of the two-game series by eight wickets in Saint Lucia on Tuesday, but they looked good for a huge score here when they raced to 65-0 from six overs and 110-2 by the 10th.
Openers Devon Smith and Johnson Charles got West Indies off to a flying start.
Charles made 37 off 21 balls with six fours and a six before he was first man out in the seventh over.
Big-hitting Kieron Pollard, who had scored a maiden T20 fifty on Tuesday, was caught behind off Brett Lee after making just one in the eighth over with the total on 76.
Smith top-scored thanks to a 34-ball innings of 63, which featured six fours and four huge sixes, but once he was caught in the deep off slow bowler Xavier Doherty, the runs dried up.
Dwayne Bravo, with 23 off 24 balls, was the only other batsman to reach double figures as West Indies lost their last eight wickets for just 40 runs before they were bowled out with two balls to spare.
Lee was the pick of the Australian bowlers with 3 for 23.
West Indies, who dropped Krishmar Santokie, Nkrumah Bonner and Darren Bravo in favour of Marlon Samuels, Fidel Edwards and Danza Hyatt, won the toss.
An Afghan policeman killed nine of his colleagues in the eastern province of Paktika, police and provincial government officials said Friday.
Paktika provincial police chief Dawlat Khan said the shooting happened in the early hours in Yahyakhil district.
“A local policeman named Asadullah was persuaded by the Taliban insurgents to carry out the firing inside the security check post,” he told AFP.
“First he poisoned his colleagues and then later at 3:00 am in the morning today, he shot dead nine of his colleagues.”
Mokhlis Afghan, spokesman for the governor of Paktika province, confirmed the attack, adding that one member of the local police had fled and two others had been arrested.
The Afghan local police are militias that form part of the government’s security forces but do not come under the national police set-up.
The Taliban, who have been fighting an insurgency against Hamid Karzai’s government in Kabul and its Western allies for more than a decade, claimed responsibility for the attack.
Spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said in a text message sent to AFP: “Last night, a mujahid fighter attacked a security check post. As a result, he killed nine puppet local policemen.
“The mujahid fighter has managed to escape and joined the Taliban ranks.”
It is unusual for Afghan soldiers and police to attack their fellow nationals.
But the killings come in the wake of a series of attacks by Afghan security personnel against members of NATO-led International Security Assistance Force, which have seen 17 foreign troops die so far this year.
Those deaths represent more than one in six of the 93 ISAF fatalities since January 1.
The effort to train Afghan troops to take over security for the entire country ahead of ISAF pulling out by the end of 2014 is the cornerstone of the West’s strategy.
But the so-called “green on blue” attacks have frayed relations between the allies on the ground, with NATO troops ordered to adopt strict new security precautions to counter the threat.
NATO commander General John Allen issued orders in recent weeks calling for some advisers to carry weapons and for NATO units to designate one team member as a “guardian angel”, who remains armed and on alert for possible fratricidal attacks, officials have said.
