Suicide bomber kills constable in Pakistan: police

QUETTA, Pakistan (AFP) – A suicide bomber targeting a senior police officer in militant-infested southwestern Pakistan killed a constable Thursday and wounded five other people, including two children, the force said.

The attacker rammed an explosives-laden car into the house of a senior investigations officer near a police headquarters in Quetta, the main town of Baluchistan province.

“The constable on duty was killed and five people were injured. It was a car suicide attack,” Daud Juneju, Quetta police chief told AFP.

“The officer and his family are safe, the house was badly damaged. The suicide bomber was trying to hit his house,” he added.

The injured include two school children, he said.

Impoverished Baluchistan, which borders Afghanistan and Iran, is wracked by an insurgency waged by ethnic Baluch tribes seeking greater autonomy from the federal government and a greater share of profits from natural resources.

Hundreds of people have died since a rebellion broke out in 2004.

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Military rapped over Australia sex scandal

SYDNEY (AFP) – Australia’s defence minister Thursday berated senior military officials for their “serious error of judgment” in mishandling a sex scandal as claims of a new case emerged.

It follows a young female cadet at the elite Australian Defence Force Academy (ADFA) going public after a male recruit allegedly filmed himself having sex with her and broadcast it via Skype to his friends.

As Smith defended the woman’s actions in airing her allegations on Wednesday, it emerged that she was being hauled before a disciplinary hearing on alleged claims of drinking and being absent without leave.

Smith said holding the unrelated hearing while the 18-year-old was distressed over the sex scandal was “inappropriate, insensitive or completely stupid”.

“This is really a very serious error of judgment,” he said.

“It was somewhere in the range between being completely insensitive and completely stupid and I could not be stronger on that.”

He refused to offer support to the head of the ADFA Bruce Kafer when given the chance Thursday.

“I want to come to a concluded view about the issues that I’ve raised before I’m drawn on that particular point,” Smith told reporters.

The case is being examined by police and defence officials have warned that anyone found to have committed a crime faces termination of their military career.

In unrelated allegations at the same academy, ABC radio ran an interview with a woman who claimed her 19-year-old niece was raped at the facility.

Rather than being offered counseling, her commanding officer reportedly told her to “suck it up”.

“Defence did absolutely nothing — in fact she was told by her commanding officer to suck it up,” the woman said, adding that the culture was that if you pursued action, you were embarrassing the Army.

“(The culture was that) it was a boy’s club and that women shouldn’t have been there, and that was the attitude that they had,” she said.

Australia’s military has gained an unwanted reputation for having a drinking and sexist culture, underscored in a recent 400-page report about incidents on the supply ship HMAS Success in 2009.

The report examined allegations of a “predatory culture” and drunken misconduct among sailors, including the keeping of a list known as “The Ledger” which put dollar values on sexual conquests with female colleagues.

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Cambodian ex-king returns from China

PHNOM PENH: Cambodia’s ailing former king Norodom Sihanouk returned home on Wednesday from Beijing where he spent nine months receiving medical treatment, officials said.

Sihanouk and his wife were given a red-carpet welcome by family members, Prime Minister Hun Sen and other senior government officials upon arrival at Phnom Penh airport.

A smiling Sihanouk, 88, pressed his hands together and kissed them in a traditional greeting to well-wishers before getting into a car that whisked him off to the royal palace.

One of Asia’s longest-serving monarchs, the revered king abruptly quit the throne in October 2004 in favour of his son, citing old age and health problems.

Prince Sisowath Chivan Monirak, deputy president of the Cambodian senate, told reporters Sihanouk had kept his promise “to come back for Khmer New Year” and that the ex-monarch’s doctors “had no problem” with his return to Cambodia.

The new year festivities, which start on April 14 and last for three days, are a popular time for families to get together.

Sihanouk has suffered from a number of ailments, including cancer, diabetes and hypertension.

He has received the bulk of his treatment in China and several Chinese doctors have accompanied him back to Phnom Penh, according to Sisowath Chivan Monirak.

The prince said he did not know how long Sihanouk planned to stay in the country this time.

“For the Cambodian people, the longer he stays, the better,” he said.

Despite abdicating, Sihanouk remains a prominent figure in Cambodia and regularly uses his website to comment on matters of state.

Sihanouk said in 2009 that he had lived too long and wished to die as soon as possible, according to a personal handwritten note on his website. “Lengthy longevity bears on me like an unbearable weight,” he said.

- AFP/de

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Cambodian girl dies from bird flu: WHO

PHNOM PENH : An 11-year-old Cambodian girl has died from bird flu, officials said on Wednesday, bringing to four the number of fatalities from the virus since the start of the year.

The girl, from eastern Kampong Cham province, died on March 31, the health ministry and the World Health Organisation said in a joint statement.

Tests confirmed she had contracted H5N1 avian influenza.

“The girl is the 14th person in Cambodia to become infected with the H5N1 virus and the 12th to die from complications of the disease” since 2003, the statement said.

In early February, Cambodia reported its first bird flu fatality in nearly a year with the death of a five-year-old girl.

Later that month a mother and her 11-month-old son also fell victim to the virus.

The H5N1 strain of avian influenza has killed more than 300 people worldwide since 2003.

- CNA/al

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Obama, Karzai deplore Afghanistan Koran violence

KABUL (AFP) – US President Barack Obama and President Hamid Karzai on Wednesday deplored an explosion of violence in Afghanistan over the torching of a Koran by an American pastor, after a sixth day of protests.

The two leaders held an hour-long video conference to discuss the wave of demonstrations against last month’s burning of a Koran at a church in Florida which have left at least 24 dead, including seven United Nations employees.

Protests continued for a sixth day Wednesday, while a woman died in a car crash involving a NATO military convoy in the Afghan capital Kabul, triggering a demonstration in which stones were thrown at the international forces.

The White House said that “both leaders deplored the desecration of the Koran, strongly condemned the April 1 attack on (the United Nations compound) in Mazar-i-Sharif and expressed deep regret for the tragic loss of life.”

“The two presidents were clear that to attack and kill innocent people is an affront to human decency and dignity,” it said.

But tensions between Karzai and his Western allies have been growing in recent months, and a statement from the Afghan president’s office differed in nuance to the US interpretation.

The Afghan statement said the presidents discussed “the desecration of the Koran by the American pastor and the subsequent unpleasant incidents that followed in Afghanistan.”

It said that Obama had “strongly condemned the desecration of the Koran by an American pastor and regretted the casualties at protests in Mazar-i-Sharif and Kandahar.”

It reiterated that Karzai would investigate the violence.

The White House has this week called the burning “un-American”, after Obama had earlier branded it an act of “extreme intolerance and bigotry.”

There has been little violent reaction in the rest of the Islamic world to the Koran burning, but protests began in Afghanistan eight days after Karzai condemned it as “disrespectful and abhorrent.”

The violence comes as Afghan forces are due to assume control of security in a handful of Afghanistan’s safer areas — including Mazar-i-Sharif — from July, allowing limited foreign troop withdrawals to begin.

Around 130,000 international troops, some two-thirds of them from the United States, are in Afghanistan fighting a nearly 10-year Taliban insurgency. Afghan forces are due to take complete control across the country in 2014.

Obama and Karzai also discussed progress in the transition, the White House said.

In Afghanistan’s southern Zabul province, around 1,500 people gathered in the town of Qalat for a peaceful demonstration over the Koran burning, deputy provincial governor Mohammad Jan Rasoulyar said.

And in Nimroz province in the southwest, hundreds more protested, shouting anti-American slogans and throwing stones at police in Dilaram district. No-one was injured, said deputy provincial police chief Musa Rasouli.

The road accident in Kabul left one woman dead and another woman and a child wounded, according to city police spokesman Hashmat Stanikzai.

“The wounded were taken to hospital. People gathered at the accident site and started throwing stones at the military convoy. After the crowd started forming and throwing stones, the convoy left the area,” he added.

The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) confirmed that one civilian had been killed and two wounded in the crash but stressed: “No shots were fired by ISAF service members.”

It did not comment on the nationality of the troops involved, but local police said they were British.

Elsewhere in the troubled country, seven insurgents were killed overnight after launching a rocket attack on a military airport in the eastern city of Jalalabad, where the local provincial governor was present.

Also in the east, an ISAF spokesman said that at least 80 insurgents and six international troops had been killed over the last ten days in the strategically crucial Kunar province, which borders Pakistan.

He did not give further details of the operations being carried out, but Pakistan’s border areas are used as rear bases by insurgents.

Separately, ISAF said that two international troops had died in a friendly fire incident in the south of the country. It did not identify their nationality.

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Japan plugs leak from nuclear plant

TOKYO (AFP) – Workers at Japan’s crippled atomic power plant on Wednesday plugged a hole spewing highly radioactive water into the ocean, boosting efforts to contain the world’s worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl.

But in an illustration of how fragile progress is at the Fukushima plant, operator Tokyo Electric Power said it was concerned a build-up of hydrogen gas at a different reactor could cause another explosion at the site.

The water leak was thought to be a source of spiking radiation levels in the sea, which prompted Japan to announce its first seafood radiation safety standards following the discovery of fish with high levels of contamination.

TEPCO workers had injected sodium silicate, a chemical agent known as “water glass”, to solidify soil near a cracked pit where water was escaping into the Pacific.

The pit, which has a 20-centimetre (8-inch) crack in its wall, is linked to the plant’s reactor No. 2, one of several that had their cooling systems disabled by a catastrophic earthquake-tsunami disaster on March 11.

Several unsuccessful attempts had been made to try to stop the leak, including an effort to seal the crack with cement.

Despite the rare sign of progress at the plant, shares in TEPCO continued to tumble on Wednesday, closing down 6.9 percent at 337 yen, a new record low, amid expectations of huge compensation claims.

TEPCO, whose shares have lost around 85 percent of their pre-quake value, has said it may need state help to meet claims some analysts say could reach 10 trillion yen ($118 billion).

The government is considering using around one trillion yen in reserves set aside by TEPCO for reprocessing and disposing of spent nuclear fuel to finance part of the compensation, Kyodo news agency reported.

On Wednesday, the government promised compensation for the fishing industry, a day after increasing unease about the contamination led it to impose a legal limit for radioactive iodine in seafood for the first time.

Levels of radioactive iodine-131 and caesium in seawater immediately outside the plant have spiked, raising fears over marine life in a country whose diet depends heavily on seafood.

TEPCO officials are also concerned that a hydrogen build-up in the housing around reactor No. 1 could react violently with oxygen, creating an explosion.

Workers began pumping in nitrogen, an inert gas abundant in the atmosphere, which they hope will displace the oxygen, reports said.

A TEPCO official explained earlier than the plan involved “injecting nitrogen into the container of the reactor number 1 because hydrogen gas has possibly accumulated in the container”.

In the days after the earthquake and tsunami crippled the plant, large explosions resulted from hydrogen accumulation near the reactors, damaging the outer buildings housing them.

A small US drone, of a type used for reconnaissance in Iraq and other countries, is to be deployed at the plant to check radiation levels, Kyodo reported, citing Japanese government sources.

A 20-kilometre (13-mile) exclusion zone around the plant has forced tens of thousands of people to evacuate.

The plant has emitted radioactive material into the air, contaminating drinking water and farm produce, with radioactive iodine above legal limits detected in vegetables, dairy products and mushrooms.

Nuclear concerns continue to distract from the March 11 disaster that has left more than 12,000 dead and over 15,000 missing.

TEPCO continued a separate operation to release 11,500 tonnes of lower-level radioactive water into the sea to free up urgently needed storage space for water so toxic that it is hampering crucial repair work.

The water dumping has angered the fishing industry and on Wednesday Ikuhiro Hattori, the head of Japan Fisheries Cooperatives, visited the company’s headquarters to protest.

Meanwhile, new government figures showed the crisis has slashed the number of foreigners travelling to Japan’s two main airports by two-thirds to a daily average of just over 5,000.

The wider economic fallout from the quake, tsunami and nuclear crisis is likely to drive the country into recession in the coming months, many economists now say.

Even the brewing industry has been hit, after many Japanese opted to forgo the traditional alcohol-fuelled picnics held at this time of year to celebrate the cherry blossom, fearing the parties would be inappropriate.

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Grim search for dead three weeks after Japan quake

TOKYO (AFP) – Thousands of Japanese and US troops launched an intensive air and sea operation on Friday to recover bodies still left from the huge earthquake and tsunami three weeks ago.

The grim search came as the government revealed radiation from a nuclear power plant crippled by the twin disaster had been found in groundwater, with contamination already reported in the air, ocean and food.

Japan is still struggling to cope with its worst post-war crisis three weeks after the seafloor quake struck on March 11, leaving about 28,000 people dead or missing.

In the search for bodies, Japanese and US armed forces deployed 120 aircraft and 65 ships for a three-day operation along the northeast coast, where houses, ships, cars and trains still lay scattered across the muddy wastelands.

Prime Minister Naoto Kan was to address the nation and then on Saturday fly to the devastated port of Rikuzentakata, and “J-village”, the base for hundreds of emergency crew who have battled at great risk to prevent a nuclear meltdown at the crippled Fukushima power plant.

Kan, who had donned emergency worker uniform since the disaster, switched to business attire Friday, showing that he now was looking to “the next stage” of restoration, government spokesman Yukio Edano said.

At the Fukushima plant, which has been leaking radiation, workers readied to spray resin on the rubble of blast-hit reactor buildings as part of their tense stop-and-go effort aimed at shutting the plant down.

The environmental impact was worsening, with high levels of iodine-131 found in groundwater 15 metres (50 feet) below the plant’s reactor number one, and at more than 4,000 times the maximum safe level nearby in the Pacific Ocean.

Vegetable, dairy and other food shipments from four prefectures in the area have been stopped because of radiation, which the health ministry said has now also been found in beef from 70 kilometres (40 miles) away.

The government has issued assurances that no water or food contamination had yet reached levels that would have an immediate impact on public health.

Japan’s nuclear safety agency said Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO), the much-criticised operator of the Fukushima nuclear plant, had for a time not had enough radiation meters for workers battling to stabilise the facility.

The agency had admonished TEPCO, instructing it “to do the utmost to manage workers’ exposure levels,” and by Friday it had sourced enough meters for its emergency crew, said agency spokesman Hidehiko Nishiyama.

TEPCO, one of the world’s largest utilities, could face huge costs and compensation claims, but it may end up receiving taxpayer money because of the need to maintain a stable power supply, local media said.

“It’s not an option we’ve ruled out so far,” Yukio Edano told a regular press briefing, responding to media reports stating that a fund injection was under consideration.

Japan has resisted a nudge from the UN nuclear watchdog this week to widen the 20-kilometre evacuation zone around the nuclear plant and clear people out of the village of Iitate, 40 kilometres northwest of the facility.

Of the village’s 6,000 residents, 3,800 were still there on Thursday, said local official Takashi Kobayashi by telephone.

“We are aware that a high level of radiation has been detected. But residents feel it’s best to stay home… They need to take care of their cattle and other livestock,” he said.

Up to 1,000 bodies were still lying amid the tsunami’s muddy debris on the coastline within the 20-kilometre exclusion zone, out of reach of rescue workers who cannot enter because of the high radiation, Kyodo News reported.

The bodies had been “exposed to high levels of radiation after death”, one official was quoted as saying, and there was concern that they were now too contaminated to be safely recovered, or even to be cremated.

In Tokyo, meanwhile, cherry trees started to blossom, usually a treasured spring event that symbolises the fragility of life, but any celebrations in the capital promised to be muted this weekend.

Tokyo’s Ueno park, which usually attracts some of the largest crowds to revel below the “sakura” trees’ pink canopy, has cancelled the parties for the first time since World War II, organiser Masahiro Kayano told AFP.

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Japan’s PM vows to win battle against nuke plant

TOKYO – Japan’s prime minister sounded a resolute note Friday, promising to win the battle against an overheating nuclear plant even as atomic safety officials raised questions about the accuracy of radiation measurements at the complex.

Naoto Kan was grave a week ago when he addressed this nation rattled by fears of radiation that has contaminated food, milk and tap water. But three weeks after a massive tsunami disabled a nuclear power plant’s cooling systems, Kan vowed that Japan would create the safest system anywhere.

Japan will “do whatever it takes to win the battle” at Fukushima Dai-ichi, Kan said in a televised news conference. And when the crisis ends: “We will establish a system that could respond to any situation based on an assumption that anything could happen.”

While a massive earthquake and tsunami set off a series of events that disabled the plant, the accident has been exacerbated by several missteps along the way. Apparently spotting another mistake Friday, the nuclear safety agency ordered the Tokyo Electric Power Co. to review its recent radiation figures, saying they seemed suspiciously high.

TEPCO has repeatedly been forced to retract such figures, fueling fears over health risks and eroding confidence in the company’s ability to respond effectively to the crisis.

Among the measurements called into question was one from Thursday that TEPCO said showed groundwater under one of the reactors contained iodine concentrations that were 10,000 times the government’s standard for the plant, the safety agency’s spokesman Hidehiko Nishiyama said. Seawater and air concentrations from this week also are under review.

“We have suspected their isotope analysis, and we will wait for the new results,” Nishiyama said, adding that the agency thinks the numbers may be too high.

TEPCO has conceded that there appears to be an error in the computer program used to analyze the data, but spokesman Junichi Matsumoto insisted that the glitch only affected readings for two radioactive isotopes, neither of which was iodine or other readings that have raised recent radiation concerns.

The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency has held out the possibility that a complete review of all radiation data collected since the tsunami might eventually be ordered.

In any case, it appears radiation is still streaming out of the plant, underscoring TEPCO’s inability to get it under control. The company has increasingly asked for international help in its uphill battle, most recently ordering giant pumps from the U.S. that were to arrive later this month to spray water on the reactors.

Though experts have said radiation seeping into the ground under the plant is unlikely to reach drinking supplies, there are two ways that could happen.

One is if it were to seep into wells in the area. For now, a 12-mile (20-kilometer) radius around the plant has been cleared, though residents of the area are growing increasingly frustrated with evacuation orders and have been sneaking back to check on their homes.

The other concern is that contaminated water from the plant could eventually make its way into rivers used for drinking water. Tomohiro Mogamiya, an official with the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare’s water supply division, said that was “extremely unlikely” since groundwater would flow toward the ocean, and the plant is right on the coast.

The two closest filtration plants for drinking water have both been shut down because they are just inside the exclusion zone.

“When people return to the area we will test the water to make sure it is safe,” said Masato Ishikawa, an official with the Fukushima prefecture’s food and sanitation division.

Radiation concerns have rattled the Japanese public, already struggling to return to normal life after the earthquake-borne tsunami pulverized hundreds of miles (kilometers) of the northeastern coast. Three weeks after the disaster in one of the most connected countries in the world, 260,000 households still do no have running water and 170,000 do not have electricity. Officials fear up to 25,000 people may have been killed.

In the latest report of food becoming tainted, the government said Friday that a cow slaughtered for beef had slightly elevated levels of cesium, another radioactive particle. Officials stressed that the meat was never put on the market.

Contamination has also affected work at the plant itself, where radioactive water has been pooling, often thwarting the vital work of powering up the complex’s cooling systems.

Despite the leaks, TEPCO hasn’t had enough dosimeters to provide one for each employee since many were destroyed in the earthquake. Under normal circumstances, the gauges, which measure radiation, would be worn at all times.

Officials said Friday that more meters had arrived and there are now enough for everyone.

“We must ensure safety and health of the workers, but we also face a pressing need to get the work done as quickly as possible,” said nuclear safety agency spokesman Hidehiko Nishiyama. Until now, sharing meters “has been an unavoidable choice.”

TEPCO has repeatedly relaxed safety standards during the crisis in order to prevent frequent violations. That is not uncommon during emergencies.

Though the company has acknowledged that it was initially slow to ask for help in dealing with the nuclear crisis, experts from around the world are now flooding in. And two giant pumps, typically used for spraying concrete, will soon arrive from the U.S. They are being retrofitted to spray water first, according to Kelly Blickle, a spokeswoman at Putzmeister America Inc. in Wisconsin. At least one similar pump is already in operation at the plant.

U.S. troops also are involved in the search for the dead. Japan’s defense ministry said that, starting Friday, the two militaries will create joint teams to look for bodies from the air. So far 11,500 people have been confirmed dead. Of those, more than 9,000 have been identifed. Another 16,400 are missing, and many may never be found.

Hundreds of thousands more people are living in evacuation centers, some forced to leave their houses near the plant because of radiation concerns.

Some residents are growing angry and frustrated with the government and are increasingly violating the bans to return to their homes to gather whatever they can find.

“There is no doubt in my mind that it is dangerous in there,” said Kazuko Hirohara, a 52-year-old nurse from Minami Soma. “I just wish they would have thought about safety before they ruined our lives.”

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Japan PM vows funding to tackle long nuclear crisis

TOKYO (Reuters) – Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan said on Friday he was ready for a long fight to bring a quake-hit nuclear plant under control but was convinced Japan would overcome the world’s worst nuclear crisis since the Chernobyl disaster in 1986.

“I am prepared for a long-term battle over the Fukushima nuclear plant and to win this battle,” he said in a nationally broadcast news conference as the country marked three weeks since a massive earthquake and tsunami triggered the crisis.

“We cannot say that the plant has been sufficiently stabilized. But we are preparing for all kinds of situations and I am convinced that the plant can be stabilized,” Kan said, promising a quake relief budget by the end of April.

As Tokyo Electric Power Co tries to regain control of its stricken nuclear plant in the face of mounting public criticism and a huge potential compensation bill, the government was reportedly moving to take control of the utility.

Kan said the government had to “responsibly” support TEPCO as it faced obligations to compensate for the accident. But he said he wanted the firm to continue to “work hard as a private company.”

The utility may have to deal with compensation claims topping $130 billion, according to one U.S. investment bank.

In the devastated northeast, many Japanese still see only the splintered remains of their homes and lives after a 9.0 magnitude earthquake and tsunami on March 11 that left more than 28,000 people dead or missing and damaged six nuclear reactors.

Japan’s Nuclear and Industry safety Agency (NISA) says radiation may be continuously flowing out into the sea.

Radiation 4,000 times the legal limit has been detected in seawater near the plant as contaminated water used to cool down reactor rods leaks into the ocean, and high levels of radiation outside a 20 km (12 mile) exclusion zone have put pressure on Japan to widen the restricted area.

“They are throwing water on what they can’t see and hoping that they don’t get more radiation out. They are flying blind, partially, at least,” said Ed Lyman, senior scientist with the Union of Concerned Scientists, a U.S. nuclear safety watchdog group.

SHATTERED LIVES

More than 172,400 people were still living in shelters around northeast Japan. Many devastated areas looked like rubbish-strewn junk yards, with cars lodged in the side of toppled buildings and boats still high and dry on roads.

More than 70,000 have been evacuated from the exclusion ring and another 136,000 who live in a 10-km (6-mile) zone beyond that have been encouraged to leave or to stay indoors.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said the evacuation of people from near the damaged Fukushima Daiichi complex, 240 km (150 miles) north of Tokyo, would be a long-term operation.

Nuclear experts say it could take years, possibly decades, to make the area around the plant safe.

With thousands still missing and many areas off-limits to rescuers due to the high levels of radiation, Japanese and U.S. forces will soon begin a joint search for bodies.

The recovery of the bodies of up to 1,000 people killed by the tsunami has been delayed by fears that they are contaminated, police told Kyodo news.

The damage bill may top $300 billion, making it the world’s costliest natural disaster and raising concerns about the world’s third-biggest economy.

Japanese manufacturing activity slumped to a two-year low in March and posted the sharpest monthly fall on record as the quake and tsunami hit supply chains and output.

Japan’s government may need to spend over 10 trillion yen ($120 billion) in emergency budgets for disaster relief and reconstruction, the country’s deputy finance minister, Mitsuru Sakurai, signaled on Thursday.

EMERGENCY NUCLEAR WORKERS RECRUITED

Nuclear workers have been offered up to 400,000 yen ($5,000) per day to work in risky high-radiation conditions inside reactors at the Fukushima plant, according to Japanese media.

TEPCO says it was considering using “jumpers,” or workers who rush into highly radioactive reactors for quick jobs, such as installing water pumps, then “jump” out to avoid prolonged exposure to radiation. The practice was common in the United States in the 1970s and early 80s.

France is a global leader in the nuclear industry and Paris has flown in experts from state-owned nuclear reactor maker Areva to work with Japanese engineers.

Areva has also shipped 11,000 hazmat suits and thousands of protective breathing masks to be used in and around the nuclear plants.

The United States and Germany are sending robots to work in the highly radioactive parts of the reactors. Kyodo said around 140 U.S. military radiation safety experts would arrive.

U.S. nuclear workers were also being recruited to join the recovery teams at Fukushima and will begin flying in on Sunday.

“These are not ‘jumpers’ rushing into a room. TEPCO is bringing in robots to help limit human exposure to high levels of radiation,” said Joe Melanson, a recruiter at specialist nuclear industry staffing firm Bartlett Nuclear in Plymouth, Massachusetts.

Japan’s NISA has warned TEPCO to ensure the health of workers after it was reported the company did not have enough radiation dosemeters.

The Japanese disaster has revived the debate over the safety and benefits of atomic power. In Switzerland a parcel bomb exploded at the office of the national nuclear lobby, injuring two employees. It was not known who sent it.

France — the most nuclear-dependent country in the world — has called for new global nuclear rules and proposed a global conference in France.

Illustrating the terrible, surreal times through which Japan is living, one newborn baby’s first medical appointment was not with a paediatrician but a Geiger counter.

“I am so scared about radiation,” Misato Nagashima said as she took her baby Rio, born four days after the earthquake and disaster, for a screening at a city in Fukushima prefecture.

Food and milk shipments from the region have been stopped, devastating the livelihoods of farmers and fishermen. Various countries have banned food imports from the area.

But life in Tokyo, Japan’s capital of 13 million people, was slowly returning to normal after the early days of the disaster when train services were patchy, workers stayed home and groceries like bread, milk, toilet paper and diapers were rare.

Yet Tokyo residents still worry about the spread of radiation and another big quake.

“I only go as far from home as I can walk back and I take emergency gear with me,” said Noriko Ariura, rummaging in a bag holding a radio, flashlight, bottled water and medicine.

(Additional reporting by Linda Sieg, Jon Herskovitz, Terril Jones and Yoko Nishikawa in Tokyo, Eileen O’Grady in Houston, Scott DiSavino in New York; Writing by Michael Perry; Editing by Alan Raybould)

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‘Thirteen dead’ in Vietnam rockslide

HANOI (AFP) – At least 13 people were killed and several others trapped beneath large boulders after a rockslide at a quarry in Vietnam, an official said Friday.

Troops were helping the rescue efforts but the chances of survival for the five missing “is very low,” said Ho Duc Phuoc, chairman of the provincial People’s Committee, the local government.

“The search is very difficult because there are several huge rocks and we have had to mobilise soldiers to help,” Phuoc said.

The accident happened when hundreds of tonnes of rock fell onto workers at Len Co quarry in Nghe An province, north central Vietnam, a district policeman told AFP, refusing to be named.

“Continuous rains over the past few days might have been the reason for the rockslide,” he said, adding that hundreds of rescuers had joined the search for the remaining victims.

Five workers were freed from the rocks and rushed to local hospitals, Phuoc said.

Two of them had multiple injuries and broken bones, said a health official at the provincial hospital.

Deadly accidents frequently occur in quarries in the communist country where labour and safety regulations are often disregarded.

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