Two survivors found nine days after Japan quake

TOKYO: An 80-year-old woman and 16-year-old youth were found alive on Sunday under the rubble in the Japanese city of Ishinomaki in northeast Japan, nine days after the region was devastated by a massive earthquake and tsunami, NHK public TV said.

NHK quoted police in Miyagi prefecture as saying the two had responded to a call from a police rescue team. They were weak but conscious.

On Saturday, Kyodo news agency and the military reported the "miracle rescue" of a young man pulled from the rubble of his home, only to find out that he had been in an evacuation centre beforehand and just returned to his home.

Western warplanes, missiles hit Libyan targets

TRIPOLI: Western forces hit targets along the Libyan coast on Saturday, using strikes from air and sea to force Muammar Gaddafi's troops to cease fire and end attacks on civilians.

Libyan state television said 48 people had been killed and 150 wounded in the allied air strikes. It also said there had been a fresh wave of strikes on Tripoli early on Sunday.

There was no way to independently verify the claims. French planes fired the first shots in what is the biggest international military intervention in the Arab world since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, destroying tanks and armoured vehicles in the region of the rebels' eastern stronghold, Benghazi.

Hours later, US and British warships and submarines launched 110 Tomahawk missiles against air defences around the capital Tripoli and the western city of Misrata, which has been besieged by Gaddafi's forces, US military officials said.

They said US forces and planes were working with Britain, France, Canada and Italy in operation "Odyssey Dawn".

Gaddafi called it "colonial, crusader" aggression. "It is now necessary to open the stores and arm all the masses with all types of weapons to defend the independence, unity and honour of Libya," he said in an audio message broadcast on state television hours after the strikes began.

China and Russia, which abstained in the U.N. Security Council vote last week endorsing intervention, expressed regret at the military action. China's Foreign Ministry said it hoped the conflict would not lead to a greater loss of civilian life.

Explosions and heavy anti-aircraft fire rattled Tripoli in the early hours of Sunday. The shooting was followed by defiant shouts of "Allahu Akbar" that echoed around the city centre.

Libyan state television showed footage from an unidentified hospital of what it called victims of the "colonial enemy". Ten bodies were wrapped up in white and blue bed sheets, and several people were wounded, one of them badly, the television said.

Tripoli residents said they had heard an explosion near the eastern Tajoura district, while in Misrata they said strikes had targeted an airbase used by Gaddafi's forces.

A Reuters witness in the eastern rebel stronghold of Benghazi reported loud explosions and anti-aircraft fire, but it was unclear which side was shooting.

The intervention, after weeks of diplomatic wrangling, was welcomed in Benghazi with a mix of apprehension and relief.

"We think this will end Gaddafi's rule. Libyans will never forget France's stand with them. If it weren't for them, then Benghazi would have been overrun tonight," said Iyad Ali, 37.

"We salute France, Britain, the United States and the Arab countries for standing with Libya. But we think Gaddafi will take out his anger on civilians. So the West has to hit him hard," said civil servant Khalid al-Ghurfaly, 38.

GADDAFI SEEN LOSING GRIP ON LIBYA

The air strikes, launched from a flotilla of some 25 coalition ships, including three US submarines, in the Mediterranean, followed a meeting in Paris of Western and Arab leaders backing the intervention.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy said participants had agreed to use "all necessary means, especially military" to enforce the Security Council resolution calling for an end to attacks on civilians.

"Colonel Gaddafi has made this happen," British Prime Minister David Cameron told reporters after the meeting. "We cannot allow the slaughter of civilians to continue."

Some analysts have questioned the strategy for the military intervention, fearing Western forces might be sucked into a long civil war despite a US insistence -- repeated on Saturday -- that it has no plans to send ground troops into Libya.

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper suggested that outside powers hoped their intervention would be enough to turn the tide against Gaddafi and allow Libyans to force him out.

"It is our belief that if Mr. Gaddafi loses the capacity to enforce his will through vastly superior armed forces, he simply will not be able to sustain his grip on the country."

But analysts have questioned what Western powers will do if the Libyan leader digs in, especially since they do not believe they would be satisfied with a de facto partition which left rebels in the east and Gaddafi running a rump state in the west.

One participant at the Paris meeting said Clinton and others had stressed Libya should not be split in two. And on Friday, Obama specifically called on Gaddafi's forces to pull back from the western cities of Zawiyah and Misrata as well from the east.

"It's going to be far less straightforward if Gaddafi starts to move troops into the cities which is what he has been trying to do for the past 24 hours," said Marko Papic at the STRATFOR global intelligence group.

"Once he does that it becomes a little bit more of an urban combat environment and at that point it's going to be difficult to use air power from 15,000 feet to neutralize that."

The Libyan government has blamed rebels, who it says belong to al Qaeda, for breaking a ceasefire it announced on Friday.

In Tripoli, several thousand people gathered at the Bab al-Aziziyah palace, Gaddafi's compound bombed by US warplanes in 1986, to show their support.

"There are 5,000 tribesmen that are preparing to come here to fight with our leader. They better not try to attack our country," said farmer Mahmoud el-Mansouri.

"We will open up Libya's deserts and allow Africans to flood to Europe to blow themselves up as suicide bombers."

US SAYS NOT LEADING INTERVENTION

France and Britain have taken a lead role in pushing for international intervention in Libya and the United States -- after embarking on wars in Afghanistan and Iraq -- has been at pains to stress it is supporting, not leading, the operation.

In announcing the missile strikes, which came eight years to the day after the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, Obama said the effort was intended to protect the Libyan people.

"Today I authorised the armed forces of the United States to begin a limited action in Libya in support of an international effort to protect Libyan civilians," Obama told reporters in Brasilia, where he had begun a five-day tour of Latin America.

He said US troops were acting in support of allies, who would lead the enforcement of a no-fly zone to stop Gaddafi's attacks on rebels. "As I said yesterday, we will not, I repeat, we will not deploy any US troops on the ground," Obama said.

But despite Washington's determination to stress its limited role, Vice Admiral Bill Gortney, director of the US military's Joint Staff, said the strikes were only a first phase.

Earlier on Saturday, hundreds of cars full of refugees fled Benghazi towards the Egyptian border after the city came under a bombardment overnight. One family of 13 women from a grandmother to small children, rested at a roadside hotel.

"I'm here because when the bombing started last night my children were vomiting from fear," said one of them, a doctor. "All I want to do is get my family to a safe place and then get back to Benghazi to help. My husband is still there."

Those who remained set up make-shift barricades on main streets, each manned by half a dozen rebels.

In the besieged western city of Misrata, residents said government forces shelled the rebel town again early on Saturday, while water supplies had been cut off for a third day.

WC 2011 Final Stage Match - India Hopes His Words

"Being human beings we are always supposed to commit mistakes. Hopefully, the interval between the two will be longer."

                                                   M.S. Dhoni (Indian Skipper)

Japan continues nuclear struggle, fixes key power cable

TOKYO: Exhausted engineers attached a power cable to the outside of Japan's tsunami-crippled nuclear plant on Saturday in a desperate attempt to get water pumps going that would cool down overheated fuel rods and prevent the deadly spread of radiation.

Hopes were dashed of miracle survivors when it turned out that a story was wrong that a young man had being pulled alive from the rubble eight days after the quake and tsunami ripped through northeast Japan, triggering the nuclear crisis.


(Read: Japan mulls Chernobyl-like burial) 

It said he had been in an evacuation centre and had just returned to his ruined home, where he lay down in a blanket.

Beleaguered Prime Minister Naoto Kan sounded out the opposition, which only hours before the quake struck had been trying to oust him from office, about establishing a government of national unity to deal with a crisis that has shattered Japan and sent a shock through global financial markets, with major economies joining forces to calm the Japanese yen.

It has also stirred unhappy memories of Japan's past nuclear nightmare -- the US atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. Japan is the only country to have been hit by an atomic bomb.

Further cabling was under way before an attempt to restart water pumps needed to cool overheated nuclear fuel rods at the six-reactor Fukushima plant in northeastern Japan, 240 km (150 miles) north of Tokyo.

Officials expect to have power from outside drawn to No. 2 reactor first. Then they will test the pump and systems to see if they can be started.

Working inside a 20 km (12 miles) evacuation zone at Fukushima, nearly 300 engineers got a second diesel generator attached to No. 6 working just after 4am, the nuclear safety agency said. They then used that power to restart cooling pumps on No. 5. Reactor No. 6 is drawing power from a second diesel generator.

"TEPCO has connected the external transmission line with the receiving point of the plant and confirmed that electricity can be supplied," the plant's operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co, said in a statement. Another 1,480 metres (5,000 feet) of cable are being laid before engineers try to crank up the coolers at reactor No.2, followed by numbers 1, 3 and 4 this weekend, company officials said.

"If they are successful in getting the cooling infrastructure up and running, that will be a significant step forward in establishing stability," said Eric Moore, a nuclear power expert at US-based FocalPoint Consulting Group.

If that fails, one option under consideration is to bury the sprawling 40-year-old plant in sand and concrete to prevent a catastrophic radiation release.

That method was used to seal huge leakages from the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, the world's worst nuclear reactor disaster.

Underlining authorities' desperation, fire trucks sprayed water overnight in a crude tactic to cool reactor No.3, considered the most critical because of its use of mixed oxides, or mox, containing both uranium and highly toxic plutonium.

"I humbly apologise to the public for causing such trouble. Although it was due to natural disaster, I am extremely regretful," the Mainichi Shimbun newspaper quoted TEPCO CEO Masataka Shimizu as saying in a statement.

Japan has raised the severity rating of the nuclear crisis to level 5 from 4 on the seven-level INES international scale, putting it on a par with the Three Mile Island accident in 1979, although some experts say it is more serious.

Chernobyl, in Ukraine, was a 7 on that scale.

Humanitarian effort 

The operation to avert large-scale radiation has overshadowed the humanitarian aftermath of the 9.0-magnitude quake and 10-metre (33-foot) tsunami that struck on March 11.

Nearly 7,000 people have been confirmed killed in the double natural disaster, which turned whole towns into waterlogged and debris-shrouded wastelands.

Another 10,700 people are missing with many feared dead. Some 390,000 people, including many among Japan's ageing population, are homeless and battling near-freezing temperatures in shelters in northeastern coastal areas.

Food, water, medicine and heating fuel are in short supply and a Worm Moon, when the full moon is at its closest to Earth, may bring floods to devastated areas where the geography has changed.

"Everything is gone, including money," said Tsukasa Sato, a 74-year-old barber with a heart condition, as he warmed his hands in front of a stove at a shelter for the homeless.

Health officials and the U.N. atomic watchdog have said radiation levels in the capital Tokyo were not harmful. But the city has seen an exodus of tourists, expatriates and many Japanese, who fear a blast of radioactive material.

"I'm leaving because my parents are terrified. I personally think this will turn out to be the biggest paper tiger the world has ever seen," said Luke Ridley, 23, from London as he sat at Narita international airport using his laptop.

All Japanese prefectures have begun radiation monitoring. The highest reading outside Fukushima came from Mito to the south. That was 1,726 microsieverts per annum. By comparison, the global average from natural sources is 2,400.

Officials asked people in the 20 km "take cover" zone to follow some directives when going outside: Drive, don't walk. Wear a mask. Wear long sleeves. Don't go out in the rain.

Though there has been alarm around the world, experts have been warning there is little risk of radiation at dangerous levels spreading to other nations.

The U.S. government said "minuscule" amounts of radiation were detected in California consistent with a release from Japan's damaged facility, but there were no levels of concern.

Amid their distress, Japanese were proud of the 279 nuclear plant workers toiling in the wreckage, wearing masks, goggles and protective suits sealed by duct tape.

"My eyes well with tears at the thought of the work they are doing," Kazuya Aoki, a safety official at Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, told Reuters.

G7 intervention for yen 

The Group of Seven rich nations succeeded in calming global financial markets in rare concerted intervention to restrain a soaring yen.

The dollar surged to 81.98 yen on Friday after the G7 moved to pour billions into markets buying dollars, euros and pounds -- the first such joint intervention since the group came to the aid of the newly launched euro in 2000.

The dollar later dropped back to under 81 yen, but it was still far from the record low of 76.25 yen hit on Thursday.

"The only type of intervention that actually works is coordinated intervention, and it shows the solidarity of all central banks in terms of the severity of the situation in Japan," said Kathy Lien, director of currency research at GFT in New York.

Japan's Nikkei share index ended up 2.7 percent, recouping some of the week's stinging losses. It lost 10.2 percent for the week, wiping $350 billion off market capitalisation.

The plight of the homeless worsened following a cold snap that brought heavy snow to the worst-affected areas.

Nearly 290,000 households in the north were still without electricity, officials said, and the government said about 940,000 households lacked running water.

Aid groups say most victims are getting help, but there are pockets of acute suffering.

"We've seen children suffering with the cold, and lacking really basic items like food and clean water," Stephen McDonald of Save the Children said in a statement.

Radiation Plumes to reach California Today

AUnited Nations forecast of the possible movement of the radioactive plume coming from crippled Japanese reactors shows it churning across the Pacific, and touching the Aleutian Islands on Thursday before hitting Southern California late on Friday.

Health and nuclear experts emphasize that radiation in the plume will be diluted as it travels and, at worst, would have extremely minor health consequences in the United States, even if hints of it are ultimately detectable. In a similar way, radiation from the Chernobyl disaster in 1986 spread around the globe and reached the West Coast of the United States in 10 days, its levels measurable but minuscule.

The projection, by the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization , an arm of the UN in Vienna, gives no information about actual radiation levels but only shows how a radioactive plume would probably move and disperse. The forecast, calculated Tuesday, is based on patterns of Pacific winds at that time and the predicted path is likely to change as weather patterns shift.

The forecast shows radioactive plume will probably miss the agency's monitoring stations at Midway and in Hawaiian Islands but is likely to be detected in the Aleutians and at a monitoring station in Sacramento . The forecast assumes radioactivity in Japan is released continuously and forms a rising plume. It ends with the plume heading into Southern California and American Southwest, including Nevada, Utah and Arizona. The plume would have continued eastward if scientists had run the projection forward.

I didn't authorise anyone to purchase votes: PM Manmohan

NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Manmohan Singhtoday appeared to raise doubts over the veracity of diplomatic correspondence cited by the Wikileaksand insisted that he had "not authorised anybody" to purchase votes nor was he involved in any such "transactions".

"I think, people who are affected by them (Wikileaks expose), they have already commented on them, casting serious doubts about the veracity of allegations made in these diplomatic despatches," Singh said here while commenting on the Wikileaks expose which alleged that MPs were purchased during the 2008 trust vote.

"I have no knowledge of any such purchases and I am absolutely categorical, I have not authorised anyone to purchase any votes. I am not aware of any acts of purchase of votes," he said while replying to questions at the India Today Summit.

"I am absolutely certain in asserting that I am not at all, I think, involved in any of these transactions," the Prime Minister insisted.

His response, however, did not categorically clarify whether or not the purchases took place at all during the Confidence Motion on July 22, 2008.

"As far as the events of the last few days (are concerned) and the so-called Wikileaks, I would not like to comment," Singh said about the Opposition onslaught on the government following the Wikileaks expose.

"I would not like to comment on what we are going to do right now or in days to come. These are the matters which are being discussed in Parliament. If I have anything to say, we would say in Parliament first," he said.

Pranab dares oppn to move court on 'cash-for-votes'

T20 Actions for the following years

NEW DELHI: After the World Cup, the subcontinent's cricket fans can continue to look forward to top-notch international cricket for the next five years. Sri Lanka and Bangladesh were to stage the World Twenty20 Championships in 2012 and 2014; now India has been listed to host the 2016 edition of the tournament.

"India will host the World T20 in March 2016," a top ICC official told TOI on Thursday. India's name figures as the host of the event in the ICC's tentative Future Tour Programme 2012-20.

Sources said the ICC has given a copy of the schedule to all the cricket boards. "This is what the ICC board members have tentatively decided. It will be exciting to host the event here in the sub-continent because of the marketing prospects," another ICC source said.

It is also learnt that ICC has short listed England to host the best-of-four Test playing nations' playoffs in June 2013 and 2017. The next 50-over World Cup will be co-hosted by Australia and New Zealand and sources say the 2019 edition will be held in England in July.