Special Warning for All Indonesian Corruption Suspects

Minister of Law and Human Rights Patrialis Akbar said the government would keep chasing all corruption suspects on the wanted list.
"We will chase all that have been able to flee abroad," he said here on Saturday.
He said the government would hunt for not only Neneng Sri Wahyuni but also others that have fled and "we have instructed the Directorate General to set up a team to hunt for Neneng Sri Wahyuni and other wanted corrupters."
He said to find graft suspect Neneng, who is also the wife of graft suspect Nazaruddin, he would cooperate with the police and the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) as well as the foreign ministry.
"The four institutions are currently still studying the possibility of working together in a joint team like they did when they caught Nazaruddin," he said.
He said the hunt for Neneng Sri Wahyuni would be done like when arresting Nazaruddin abroad recently. "We believe Neneng Sri Wahyuni and her children are now still in Malaysia," he said.
He said the immigration office had not detected Neneng moving to other countries after July 25, 2011. "It is very likely that Neneng Sri Wahyuni is now still in Malaysia," he said.
He said he had held her passport after she was officially declared an Interpol wanted person. Neneng has been banned from traveling abroad since May 31, 2011 and named suspect.
"She has been given a travel ban and this includes the revocation of her passport," the minister said.
The immigration office, he said, has already coordinated with its representative offices abroad to anticipate the possibility of Neneng using the passport to move to other countries. Unlike Nazaruddin who has used other person’s passport to travel abroad Neneng is still using her own passport.
"Foreign representative offices will be informed about it," he said. Neneng has been named suspect in a corruption case linked to procurement at a solar power project in the ministry of manpower and transmigration in 2008.

Explosions, Gunfire Rock Tripoli as Rebels Advance

Explosions and gunfire rocked Tripoli overnight, after days of battlefield defeats left Muammar Gaddafi’s government and troops penned ever more tightly in the besieged capital by a rebel advance. Rebels said the fighting marked a final push in an uprising against the long-time leader that has raged in the North African oil-producing nation for six months, while Gaddafi dismissed it as an ill-fated attempt by “rats”.
“Those rats ... were attacked by the masses tonight and we eliminated them,” Gaddafi said in a live audio message over state television. “I know that there are air bombardments but the fireworks were louder than the sound of the bombs thrown by the aircraft.”
An official at the rebel National Transitional Council said the fighting was the beginning of the end for Gaddafi. “The zero hour has started. The rebels in Tripoli have risen up,” Abdel Hafiz Ghoga, vice-chairman of the rebel National Transitional Council, based in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi, told Reuters.
The clashes inside the city triggered celebrations among Gaddafi opponents elsewhere in the country and in the capital of neighbouring Tunisia, and fed widespread speculation Gaddafi’s 41-year rule was sliding towards collapse. Gaddafi’s information minister said the rebel incursion into Tripoli had been quickly put down, though sounds of gunfire and explosions continued into the early morning.
Fighting was still raging after midnight around Mitiga airbase in Tripoli’s Tajourah district, an area said to be under rebel control, an opposition activist told a Reuters journalist outside Libya. The gunbattles had left a number of rebels dead in the suburb of Qadah and elsewhere, along with at least three pro-Gaddafi soldiers in the Zawiyat al-Dahmania district of Tripoli, he said.
A Tripoli resident told Reuters that imams, or Muslim clerics, in parts of Tripoli called on people to rise up, using the loudspeakers on minarets. The resident said the call went out around the time people were breaking their Ramadan fast.
Earlier on Saturday evening, residents told Reuters of gunfire and street protests in several parts of Tripoli. “We can hear shooting in different places,” one residents said.
“Most of the regions of the city have gone out, mostly young people ... it’s the uprising... They went out after breaking the (Ramadan) fast.”
“They are shouting religious slogans: ’God is greatest!’" This week’s rebel advances on Tripoli have transformed the war by cutting the capital off from its main road link to the outside world and putting unprecedented pressure on Gaddafi.
Defections
Washington says his days are numbered, and reports have emerged of more defections from his ranks. President Barack Obama, on vacation in Martha’s Vineyard, was receiving regular updates on Libya, a senior White House official said.
“If Tripoli eventually falls to the rebels, Gaddafi’s already limited options become even more limited. Pressure on him and his shrinking circle of loyalists has to be taking a serious toll,” a senior White House official said.
The six-month-old war came close to the Tunisian frontier after rebels suddenly seized the coastal city of Zawiyah just 50 km (30 miles) west of Tripoli, surrounding the heavily fortified capital and severing its vital supply routes. In Tunisia, security sources said their forces had intercepted Libyan men in vehicles with weapons and fought them through the night in the desert.
They reported several casualties, but did not say whether the fighters were Libyan rebels or pro-Gaddafi soldiers cut off from Tripoli. Residents of the southern Tunisian desert town of Douz told Reuters by telephone that helicopters were swooping overhead and troops had been summoned from nearby towns to subdue the infiltrators, who rode in vehicles without number plates.
The imposition of a siege around Tripoli has trapped its residents and cut it off from fuel and food supplies. The International Organisation for Migration said on Friday it would organise a rescue operation to evacuate thousands of foreign workers, probably by sea.
Intense fighting continued in Zawiyah, home to an important oil refinery, on Saturday and rebels occupying the centre of the city said pro-Gaddafi forces showed no sign of retreat. “Gaddafi will try to take back Zawiyah at any price. He will keep shelling the hospital,” a rebel fighter said as he prepared for midday prayers in the mosque of Bir Hawisa, a nearby village where many civilians are sheltering.
“We will not let that happen. We will fight.”
East of Tripoli, fighting has been bloodier and rebel advances far slower. On Friday, opposition forces fought street battles in the city of Zlitan but suffered heavy casualties, a Reuters reporter said. A rebel spokesman said 32 rebel fighters were killed and 150 wounded.
NATO bombings
NATO warplanes have hammered Gaddafi military targets since March under a U.N. mandate to protect civilians. Gaddafi’s government has said the bombs have killed scores of innocent people, including 27 during a raid on Tripoli this week.
On Saturday, Libyan Prime Minister Al Baghdadi Ali Al-Mahmoudi spoke to U.N. General Secretary Ban Ki-moon by telephone requesting an investigation into alleged abuses by NATO, Libyan state news agency JANA reported. JANA said Ban had promised to study the proposal.
In another potential blow to Gaddafi, a Tunisian source said Libya’s top oil official, Omran Abukraa, had arrived in Tunisia after deciding not to return to Tripoli from a trip to Italy. If confirmed, it would be the third apparent defection of a senior Gaddafi associate this week. A senior security official arrived in Rome on Monday, and rebels said on Friday that Gaddafi’s estranged former deputy Abdel Salam Jalloud had joined their side in the western mountains.
The siege of Tripoli and the prospect of a battle for the capital have added urgency to the question of Gaddafi’s fate. The leader repeatedly has vowed never to leave the country and rebels say they will not stop fighting until he is gone.
A senior U.S. official said on Saturday that the opposition must prepare to take over power soon. The United States is among more than 30 nations that have recognised the rebels’ National Transitional Council (NTC) as Libya’s legitimate authority.
“It is clear that the situation is moving against Gaddafi,” U.S. assistant Secretary of State Jeffrey Feltman told a news conference after meeting Libyan rebel leaders at their headquarters in Libya’s eastern city of Benghazi. “The opposition continues to make substantial gains on the ground while his forces grow weaker.”

12 Dead in Plane Crash in Canadian Arctic

Twelve people were killed and three others injured Saturday when a passenger jet crashed in the Canadian Arctic, federal police said. A Boeing 737 operated by First Air with 15 people on board, four of them crew members, crashed a few kilometers (miles) from Resolute Bay in the Arctic territory of Nunavut, shortly before 1:00 pm (1800 GMT), police said.
The plane was en route from Yellowknife to Resolute Bay when it crashed. The jet was then scheduled to travel on to Grise Fiord on the southern tip of Ellesmere Island.
Doctors arrived quickly at the scene, according to emergency services at the Trenton military base in Ontario. “Our investigators are already working there. The black boxes have been located,” Transportation Safety Board of Canada spokesman Chris Krepski told AFP.
Investigators have so far refrained from speculating about the causes of the accident. Reports indicated there was fog in the area when the plane crashed.
Police and local officials in Resolute Bay — home to about 200 people — were not immediately available for comment on what may have caused the deadly crash or the identities of the victims. There was also no new information about the condition of the three people injured.
First Air links about 25 communities in Canada’s far north to major cities such as Ottawa, Montreal and Edmonton. The doomed plane was made in 1975, and purchased by First Air in 1989, according to Radio Canada.
Hundreds of military personnel were in the Resolute Bay area participating in military exercises codenamed “Operation Nanook.” Prime Minister Stephen Harper was expected there Monday as part of his annual trip to the Arctic, which coincides with the drills. Governor General David Johnston was also due in the area over the weekend.

Black Box of Indonesian Plane Found under Wreckage

Indonesian police and soldiers stand next to wreckage recovered from the Merpati Nusantara passenger plane crash in Kaimana on May 8, 2011. Indonesian search and rescue teams intensified underwater operations to recover bodies from the plane that crashed on May 7 into the sea in eastern Indonesia killing all 27 people on board, officials said.

Searchers on Sunday found more bodies and one black box from a passenger plane that crashed into the sea off eastern Indonesia with 25 people on board.
The device from the Chinese-made Xian MA60 twin turboprop was found in waters about 50 feet to 66 feet (15 meters to 20 meters) deep, said Efendi Rajaloa, chief of the local Search and Rescue Agency.
The plane belonging to state-run Merpati Nusantara Airlines crashed in heavy rain Saturday in Kaimana Bay about 500 yards (meters) short of the runway at Kaimana's airport. It had come from Sorong, also in West Papua province.
The recovered black box was the flight data recorder, said Bambang Ervan, a spokesman for the Transportation Ministry. The voice data recorder has been located and searchers could retrieve it Monday. The 20 divers have struggled in limited visibility to pull bodies from the wreckage covered in thick mud, said Rajaloa, who has led the search.
Four bodies were recovered Sunday and four are still missing, airline spokesman Imam Turidi said. Seventeen had been found Saturday. The passengers included one child and two infants.
Earlier, 27 people had been reported on board, but the company said Sunday two crewmen were counted twice. Officials have indicated survivors were unlikely given the condition of the wreckage. Air flight is the main transportation in Papua, the second biggest of Indonesia's more than 17,000 islands.
The nation of 235 million people has been plagued by transportation accidents in recent years, from plane and train crashes to ferry sinkings. Overcrowding, aging infrastructure and poor safety standards are often to blame.

Remains of Merpati Airhostess Arrives at House of Mourning

Relatives cry for their beloved one, a victim of a Merpati Nusantara passenger plane crash, in Kaimana on May 7, 2011. A MA-60 aircraft with around 25 passengers and crew crashed into the sea during a downpour on May 7 in eastern Indonesia, killing everyone on board, a navy officer told local radio.

The remains of Sumayani (33), one of the airhosteses of the Merpati Nusantara Airlines MA-60 who was killed in the plane crash in the Kaimana waters, West Papua, arrived at the house of mourning on Monday at 5 am on board a Al Irsyad hospital ambulance. Earlier, the victim’s remains was placed in an Indonesian flag-covered closed coffin flown from Sorong to Makassar and then to Surabaya.
Representatives of Merpati Nusantara Airlines and a number of the victim’s friends came to the house of mourning to express their deepest condolences to the bereaved. According to plan, before being buried at a public cemetery in Pedurungan, Semarang, on the same day at 10 am, the victim’s body will be laid in state and prayed for at a mosque not far from the house of mourning.
Merpati Nusantara Airlines cabin crew manager Sudiyarto said the late airhostess had served the airline company for seven years and known as one of the company’s best airhosteses. Sumayani was the first of three children of Suratmi and late Samim, who married Ranu Adhi (32) in September 2006, but still childless.
Merpati Nusantara Airlines MA-60 crashed from an altitude of 15,000 feet into the sea near Kaimana airport, West Papua province, last Saturday at 2 pm local time in bad weather. The plane was flying from Sorong to Kaimana when it went down killing 18 adult passengers, a boy, and two babies.

Japan Faces Its Next Chore

A picture shows wrecked cars littering a street in Natori, Miyagi prefecture on March 16, 2011 after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami. The official toll of the dead and missing following a devastating earthquake and tsunami that flattened Japans northeast coast has topped 11,000, with 3,676 confirmed dead, police said on March 16.

Where do you even start? Do you start by carting away the Chokai Maru, the 150-foot (45-meter) ship that was lifted over a pier and slammed into a house in this port town?
Do you start with the thousands of destroyed cars scattered like discarded toys in the city of Sendai? With the broken windows and the doorless refrigerators and the endless remnants of so many lives that clutter the canals?
In the first days after a tsunami slammed into Japan’s northeast coast on March 11, killing well over 10,000 people, it seemed callous to worry about the cleanup. The filth paled beside the tragedy. Now, nearly two weeks later, hundreds of communities are finally turning to the monumental task ahead.
The legacy of Hurricane Katrina, which devastated the U.S. Gulf of Mexico coastline in 2005, gives an idea of both the immensity of the job and the environmental hazards Japan could face for years to come.
“In Katrina, you had debris that had seawater, sewage, chemicals, gasoline, oil, that was all mixed together in a toxic soup,” said David McEntire, a disaster expert at the University of North Texas. “And you’re going to have similar problems with the disaster in Japan.”
Three years after Katrina, which spawned enough debris to cover Britain, the U.S. government had said the mess was not even close to being cleaned up. The mess looks endless in Japan, and hauling it away seems unimaginable.
The cost? No one really knows, though the crisis is emerging as the world’s most expensive natural disaster on record, with Japanese officials saying losses could total up to 25 trillion yen ($309 billion). The World Bank says reconstruction could take five years.
So there’s nothing to do but start. Mayumi Hatanaka began with the knee-high mud that had flooded into her little seafood restaurant in the small seaside city of Shiogama.
“It’s been four days, and we’ve been working, working,” she said, standing beneath a sign that promised food “Straight From The Fishery To You.”
She and her daughter were scraping the muck down their driveway and into the street. The thick, dark goo looked almost volcanic. Workers hired by the city used a gargantuan truck-mounted vacuum, normally used for well-drilling, to hose it up. The noise of the pump and the sucking splutter of the hose nearly drowned out her voice, and she had to shout to be heard.
Simply carving out an aisle in the restaurant took three days, Hatanaka said, so she has no idea when she’ll be able to reopen. “I think we’ll never finish,” she said, only briefly willing to set aside her shovel before getting back to work.
Much of the official cleanup effort so far has been to support rescue teams. Soldiers and city crews have cleared streets of debris so rescuers can get through, and some buildings have been pulled apart in search of survivors.
Now, with little chance left of finding anyone still alive, the concern is to avoid accidentally clearing away corpses with the debris. Takashi Takayama is a city official in Higashimatsushima, a port town brutalized by the tsunami, leaving nearly 700 people dead.
He said the city, where the Chokai Maru ship was thrown ashore, is still cleaning up — and footing the bill — from a major earthquake in 2003.
“I don’t know how long it will take,” he said. “The last time it was just parts of houses that were destroyed. Now it’s the whole house. So I don’t know how we’ll do it.”
With city workers desperately overworked, officials turned to a local association of construction companies to help. Those private contractors helped clear the roads and have started piling up debris in small hills, soon to be small mountains, on city land near the port.
Japan is a country where separating trash into its various components is almost sacrosanct: There are the burnables, the food items, the array of different recyclables. Takayama is already dreading the arguments when disaster-weary residents refuse to categorize their garbage properly.
“Sorting everything out will be the first challenge,” he said.
A 2004 tsunami, which killed 230,000 people in 14 Asian and African countries, left thousands of cities and towns facing a task similar to Japan’s today. In Indonesia, the United Nations employed 400,000 workers to clear 1.3 million cubic yards (1 million cubic meters) of debris just from the urban areas of the hard-hit city of Banda Aceh.
Many of the countries affected by that disaster were less developed than Japan and lacked sophisticated waste disposal systems. In the initial cleanups, some burned debris in the open air, dumped it in makeshift landfills and used other environmentally risky methods, polluting wells, inland waterways and the nearby seas.
Japan will presumably use state-of-the-art incinerators and sanitary landfills, though technological prowess doesn’t guarantee there won’t be problems. In the United States, there were allegations of corruption by cleanup companies after Hurricane Katrina, including claims that hazardous debris was improperly dumped in landfills.

Floods Inundate Three Villages in E Java

Floods caused by the overflowing of Lamong river in Dawarblandong subdistrict, Mojokerto district, East Java, caused inundation of three villages on Thursday.
The flood waters had submerged Talun, Banyulegi and Pulorejo villages since early Thursday but it would naturally recede in the next two to three days, head of Banyulegi village Zainuri said.
The flood waters came too sudden and inundated a number of houses, causing some families to take refuge to buildings on higher ground such as mosques and the village community centers.
A local resident, Suparno, said Lamong river usually overflowed and caused flooding of three villages as they were low lying. But there were no reports of fatalities.

Ghost Town of Tokyo

Ghost town: A landmark crossroads in Tokyos Ginza district is eerily dark and empty as people stay indoors after warnings about a radioactive cloud from the stricken nuclear plant 150 miles away

It is one of the great cities of the world, home to 13million and as advanced as any metropolis on the planet. Now Tokyo, usually so full of life by day and night, has the aura of death about it.
Its lights have been cut, supermarket shelves are empty, there are queues for everything and aftershocks come every day.
You could find a few die-hard Brits and other expatriates who wouldn't leave their beers on the counter in the party-time district of Roppongi for any threatening radioactive cloud, but mostly Tokyo has become eerily quiet.
Nobody wants to venture out and the streets are deserted. Everyone, it seems, shares the opinion that something very bad is happening at the Fukushima nuclear power plant 148 miles away, and nobody wants to risk breathing the air.
The British government has joined other nations in urging its citizens to leave the country whatever way they can, including banding together to join a charter flight. Other Britons trapped in the tsunami-stricken Sendai area have been offered the chance of being driven to Tokyo on a chartered bus.
But it will be a long journey because the vehicle will have to skirt around the nuclear power plant which stands between Sendai and the capital.
Some Britons have taken their own steps to get out of Tokyo, among them 23-year-old Kezia Poole, an English language teacher from London who has lived in Japan for 13 months.
'I'm flying to the Australian Gold Coast tomorrow,' she said. 'I'll sit back and breathe in the clean, fresh air. It's just not worth waiting around in Tokyo listening to officials telling us this and telling us that.'
She leaves behind a city in fear – a city that was plunged into darkness last night as electricity was cut to conserve power following the massive loss of production at Fukushima.
In Roppongi, the red-light district which is usually thick with crowds, where English girls play hostess to deceitful Japanese husbands, there was hardly a customer in sight.
A British hostess, who would give her name only as Jenny, was already on her way home before midnight, when usually business is thriving.
'They've said I can leave early,' the blonde, heavily wrapped in leather and furs, said in her north country accent. 'A lot of us haven't seen much of the news – how bad is it, then?'
There was no one in the whole of Tokyo who could tell her that, and even if they did, would it be the truth?
For the words coming from the lips of government spokesmen and the Tokyo Electric Company officials who have been holding daily press conferences carry mixed messages: 'We are working at the problem, the radiation is not harmful to humans, you should stay indoors and keep the windows closed, the levels have gone up, the levels have gone down, we've managed to pour water on the rods and that should cool them, the radiation has gone up again.'
Little wonder that many businesses sent their workers home early in the hope of beating the evening rush hour.
The result was long queues at stations for trains, many of which were suddenly cancelled because of fears that rolling blackouts would affect services.
'I just want to be with my children right now,' said an insurance company secretary waiting in the biting cold in a long queue.
'I don't know if my train is running, there are no cabs available and I have no other means of getting home. Everyone wants to leave Tokyo, or at least be home with their families because of the uncertainty.' Some, braving the cold and whatever they feared might be carried in the air, stood in front of public TV sets to watch government officials trying to explain what was happening at Fukushima. Their reaction was sceptical.
'We're living in modern times. We have robots in the factories, our technology is world famous and yet we end up pouring buckets of water on a nuclear plant,' said one office worker.
'This is taking us back years. We're going to be in darkness for a long time.' Whether he meant darkness at night because of power cuts or darkness because of what lies ahead for the nation, didn't seem to matter.
It is going to be dark in Tokyo and up the coast, where hundreds of thousands shiver and cry for everyone and everything they have lost, for a very long time to come.

Get out of Tokyo

Chaos: Passengers crowd Mar Haneda International Airport outside Tokyo as foreigners scramble to flee the country amid radiation fears 

Plans are being drawn up to evacuate every British national in Japan amid mounting fears of a nuclear catastrophe. Thousands of Britons were last night warned to leave Tokyo and all other areas under threat of radiation poisoning.

The advice – echoed by other countries around the world – followed a meeting of the Cabinet’s emergency Cobra committee to discuss the meltdown-threatened Fukushima nuclear plant.
It heightened suspicions that the crisis at the plant – already ranked the second-worst nuclear disaster after Chernobyl – is worse than the Japanese authorities have publicly let on. Yesterday ‘last-ditch’ efforts were continuing at Fukushima to prevent a catastrophe with a Japanese army helicopter dumping water onto troubled nuclear reactor.
A CH-47 Chinook helicopter began dumping seawater on the damaged reactor of Unit 3 at the Fukushima complex at 9.48am local time, said defense ministry spokeswoman Kazumi Toyama. The aircraft dumped at least four loads on the reactor, though much of the water appeared to be dispersed in the air.
The dumping was intended both to help cool the reactor and to replenish water in a pool holding spent fuel rods, Toyama said. The plant's owner, Tokyo Electric Power Co., said earlier that the pool was nearly empty, which might cause the rods to overheat.
Last night an official at Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said that radiation levels at the plant had fallen steadily over the past 12 hours. However, ministers were due to hold further talks last night on whether an immediate evacuation from Japan should be considered.
About 17,000 British nationals are thought to be in the country, mostly in Tokyo. Last night’s Foreign Office warning stopped short of ordering them to leave the country – a diplomatic gesture which will be welcomed by the Japanese government.
But officials conceded that in reality most Britons will have few options but to leave Japan if they want to heed the advice. Thousands of Japanese citizens are already fleeing Tokyo for the south.
Officials yesterday insisted there was no significant risk to human health in Tokyo, which is less than 140 miles south of Fukushima.
But Europe’s energy chief Guenther Oettinger warned the huge plant was ‘effectively out of control’ – sparking fears of a meltdown, which could send a radioactive cloud into the atmosphere.
He warned of ‘further catastrophic events, which could pose a threat to the lives of people on the island’. Mr Oettinger predicted the dire situation could take a further turn for the worse ‘within hours’.
The Japanese public was also unconvinced by its government’s reassurances. The mayor of Minimisoma, which is 12 miles from the Fukushima plant, said: ‘We weren’t told when the first reactor exploded, we only heard about it on television. The government doesn’t tell us anything. We are isolated. They’re leaving us to die.’
The Foreign Office insisted there was ‘no real human health issue’ outside the 20-mile exclusion zone surrounding the plant.
But it warned that panic caused by the crisis meant there were ‘potential disruptions to the supply of goods, transport, communications, power and other infrastructure’ in Tokyo.
Officials confirmed that contingency plans were being drawn up for an airlift of British nationals if the crisis worsens. Talks have already been held with airlines about laying on extra flights.
The warning came as the Japanese authorities made increasingly desperate attempts to contain the crisis at the Fukushima plant.
Helicopters deployed to dump water on the plant were pulled out amid concerns about soaring radiation levels.
Officials were considering using water cannon – normally used to control riots – in a desperate bid to cool the overheating reactors, which have suffered a series of explosions.
Yesterday a further fire broke out, two more reactors were reported to be overheating and concerns were growing about two pools used to store spent radioactive fuel. If a reactor overheats – and its casing is breached – dangerous radioactive material could be blown for miles. Several countries advised their citizens to evacuate.
France, one of the world’s leading users of nuclear energy, said its citizens should get out Japan. Industry Minister Eric Besson said: ‘Let’s not beat about the bush. They have visibly lost essential control. That is our analysis, even if it’s not what they are saying.’
French Environment Minister Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet described the crisis as ‘catastrophic’ and said the latest information ‘does not lead to optimism’.
There are 2,000 French still in the Tokyo area. Australia also urged its citizens to consider leaving Tokyo and the quake-affected areas.
And the U.S. advised all Americans living within 50 miles of Fukishima to evacuate or take shelter indoors.
Russia said the crisis was moving towards a grim conclusion. Sergei Kiriyenko, who presides over the bulk of the country’s nuclear facilities, declared: ‘Unfortunately, the situation is developing under the worst scenario.’
Explosions rocked the site on Saturday and Monday when hydrogen gas – released to ease pressure inside the sealed cores – ignited at reactors 1 and 3. On Monday hydrogen blasts hit reactor 2 and reactor 4, damaging its roof.
Experts believe that the reactor 2 blast cracked the 80-inch steel and concrete containment unit surrounding the radioactive core – triggering a radiation leak.
Last night temperatures were rising out of control in reactors 5 and 6. Scientists are also concerned about falling water levels in two tanks used to store and cool spent fuel rods.
Water in at least one of the pools is boiling. If its rods are exposed to the air they could overheat, releasing radioactive material into the air.
Steam rose from the pool alongside reactor 3 yesterday. Nuclear experts said the solutions being proposed to prevent leaks were ‘last-ditch efforts’.
But they added that if temperatures inside the reactors are kept down, the plant could be safe within a week.
The chief of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), Gregory Jaczko, warned that all the cooling water had gone from one of the spent fuel pools.
That would mean there is nothing to stop the fuel rods getting hotter and ultimately melting down and if the outer shell of the rods ignite with enough force, it could propel the radioactive fuel inside over a wide area.
'I hope my information is wrong,' said Jaczko. 'It's a terrible tragedy for Japan.'
Japan's nuclear safety agency and Tokyo Electric Power, which operates the complex, denied the claim and utility spokesman Hajime Motojuku said the 'condition is stable' at Unit 4.
Earlier, however, another utility spokesman contradicted that by saying the officials' greatest concerns were the spent fuel pools, which lack the protective shells that reactors have.
'We haven't been able to get any of the latest data at any spent fuel pools,' said Masahisa Otsuki.
'We don't have the latest water levels, temperatures, none of the latest information for any of the four reactors.'

Four Indonesian Sailors Missing in Japan

Overwhelmed: The tsunami engulfs a residential area in Natori, Miyagi

Four Indonesian sailors are reported to have been missing after a 8.9-magnitude earthquake followed by a tsunami hit Japan last Friday, a minister said.
"We recently received news that the fate of the four Indonesian fishermen reportedly working on Kunimaru 3 ship are still unknown," Foreign Affairs Minister Marty Natalegawa said here on Sunday.
The minister said the four identified with their initials S (27), TS (30), RH (30) and AS (29) had their ship anchored in Shiogama city, Miyagi prefecture, when the earthquake and tsunami struck.
"The ship was found around 2.5 kilometers from the shore but the fishermen are missing," said the minister adding that Indonesian Embassy in Tokyo was still trying to find the missing Indonesians while the Foreign Affairs Ministry’s staff in Jakarta would soon contact the families of the poor fishermen.
Earlier, Japanese Police Chief Naoto Takeuchi stated Sunday the death toll from Japan`s devastating earthquake and tsunami was likely to exceed 10,000 in Miyagi prefecture alone.
Takeuchi, quoted by state broadcaster NHK, said he had "no doubt" of that number of fatalities in his prefecture -- the region hardest hit by Friday`s devastating natural disaster. The police said the death toll as of early Sunday had reached 688, with 642 missing and 1,570 injured.
But this figure excluded 400-500 bodies found in two locations in northeast Japan, where the wall of water swept ashore. There are also reports that thousands of people were still unaccounted for. In the small port town of Minamisanriku, which was practically swept away, some 10,000 people were missing, NHK reported earlier.
Meanwhile, the US Geological Survey stated Japan`s recent massive earthquake, one of the strongest and largest ever recorded, appears to have moved the island by about eight feet (2.4 meters). The quake and its tectonic shift resulted from "thrust faulting" along the boundary of the Pacific and North America plates, according to the USGS.
The Pacific plate pushes under a far western wedge of the North America plate at a rate of about 3.3 inches (83 millimeters) per year, but a colossal earthquake can provide force to drastically move the plates, with catastrophic consequences.
"With an earthquake this large, you can get huge ground shifts," Earle said. "On the actual fault you can get 20 meters (65 feet) movement on the two sides of the fault."

Survivors of 2004 Tsunami Shaken by Japan Disaster

Gutted: Smoke billows from vessels off the harbour in Kesennuma

Tears streamed down Maisara Mucharam’s face as she watched aerial shots of the tsunami pummeling Japan’s coast and remembered the day, six years ago, when her youngest daughter was ripped out of her arms by the heavy salty sea.
Survivors of the 2004 tsunami that started off Indonesia sat glued to their TV sets, stroking each other’s hands, as images of last Friday’s disaster in northern Japan flashed repeatedly across the screen.
“I heard someone screaming and ran to see what was going on,” said Mucharam, who also lost her husband and two other daughters. “I tried, but couldn’t stop watching,” the 38-year-old said, her voice trembling. “It was exactly the same, except they have this horrible footage, events unfolding right before your eyes.”
The magnitude 9.0 earthquake that struck on the morning of Dec. 26, 2004, spawned a tsunami that smashed into coastal communities, beach resorts and towns in 12 nations, killing more than 230,000 people.
Two-thirds of them died here in Indonesia’s remote Aceh province, and it took days for images to emerge. Even then, most showed the aftermath: crumpled buildings, flattened landscapes and row upon row of swollen corpses.
“Unbelievable,” whispered 39-year old Cut Chalidah, who lost a son and nine other family members, as she watched the 23-foot (7-meter) high wall of water wash over Japan’s coast, rolling up everything in its path. “So this is what it looked like.”
She sat silent as the television showed cars, ships and even buildings lifted up and carried inland, tossed about in the debris-strewn water like floating toys in a running bath. The images left 13-year-old Zaki Ramadhan, orphaned in the 2004 disaster, struggling to breathe.
“My chest was tight, I couldn’t feel my legs,” said the boy, now being raised by his grandparents. “All I could think of was my mom and dad, my sisters. ... They disappeared under water, just like that.”
In Sri Lanka and Thailand, both also hit by the 2004 tsunami, some survivors said the pictures brought back tears and nightmares that had all but stopped.
“It’s exactly like what happened in my village,” Tharmalingam Komila, who lives in Sri Lanka’s coastal village of Passikudah, said as she watched the rescue operations in Japan on TV.
“I was dragged away by the wave into the sea,” said the 29-year-old, who lost more than two dozen relatives. “I was holding onto a big plastic jar and a log for five hours before people in an army helicopter saw me and saved me.”
For others, the unfolding events reminded them of Japan’s outpouring of support after the 2004 tsunami, the food, medical supplies and other assistance delivered to Indonesia by ship, plane and helicopter even after others had scaled back operations.
“I wish there was something I could do,” said Muhammad Nazri, 42, who lives in Banda Aceh, the provincial capital. “I’d like to go there, really, even if it was just to share my feelings of grief.”
The only piece of good news, some said, was that it appeared the 2004 disaster had raised awareness in coastal area of the dangers posed by tsunamis. Tsunami warnings were issued in many countries and widely heeded after Friday’s earthquake off Japan.
Even in remote corners of Indonesia, far from the epicenter, villages turned into ghost towns as thousands of people, responding to warnings on television or mobile phone text messages, fled to the hills. The waves never came, but at least they knew what to do, said Zainal Abidin Latif, an Aceh resident, who lost all three of his children in 2004.
Others said they hoped the latest disaster would serve as a loud warning to governments to improve alert systems, most of which rely on electronic buoys to detect sudden changes in water levels. Among them was Maitree Chongkraichak, who lost his father, nephew and about 40 other relatives when the 2004 tsunami hit Thailand.
“I feel so sad for what has happened in Japan,” he said. “I know what it’s like for their families right now.”

Compared to Aceh, How Quickly Will Japan Bounce Back?

The wasteland: A few shattered buildings that survived the might of the tsunami stand sentinel over Minami Sanriku, where the devastation stretches as far as the eye can see 

The history of rich countries recovering, albeit painfully, from large natural disasters is encouraging. The resilience of Japan following the 1995 Kobe earthquake is the most obvious--and encouraging--example. The question hanging over Japan and the rest of the world: Is this time different?

Will physical damage, particularly the still-uncertain fate of nuclear-power plants, be more difficult to repair? Has globalization made the world more vulnerable to one big economy? Will the weekend's jarring videos and headlines from Japan, combined with unease about the Middle East and Europe, undermine financial markets already distrustful of global governments' ability to repay debts?
The immediate impacts on Japan are hard to quantify, but relatively easy to sketch out. Production will suffer. Japan's auto makers all but suspended domestic manufacturing. Sony Corp. shut six electronic-component factories. Kirin, Asahi and Sapporo breweries, which account for about 40% Japan's beer production, are out of action. Electricity supplies are disrupted.
Nomura economists had forecast Japan--whose economy contracted in the last quarter of 2010--would “exit the current lull“ in the second quarter of this year. Now they say that won't happen until the third or fourth quarter.
“Considering the major disruption to infrastructure such as roads and electric generation facilities, we think the short-term impact on economic activity could be greater than after the Kobe earthquake,“ they said in a note.
“But,“ added Glenn Macquire, Asia-Pacific economist for Societe Generale, “as we start to see a rebound in investment over the medium term, that will provide a floor under Japanese growth.“
Rebuilding following a disaster adds to measured gross domestic product, but that doesn't mean an economy is better off. If it did, governments could grow economies by blowing up cities and rebuilding them. GDP accounting doesn't reflect destruction in property, environmental damage or the loss of life--only the added output to replace what has been lost.
Scholars who examine the economic aftermath of natural disasters find that rich countries rebound more strongly than poor ones, and sometimes more quickly than anticipated.
“Many, if not most, of the media and others surveyed the broad destruction and predicted it would take as many as 10 years for Kobe to rebuild and for its economy to recover,“ Purdue University economist George Horwich wrote in 2000.
“In fact, in less than 15 months, manufacturing in greater Kobe was 98% of its pre-earthquake trend.“ After 18 months, all the department stories had reopened. The city's major expressway was rebuilt in 21 months. Reconstruction of the port took 26 months.“
Haiti, in contrast, is struggling to recover for the devastation of the January 2010 earthquake. And recovery was far from quick in Aceh, the Indonesian region hit hard by a tsunami in 2004.
Unlike Kobe, this quake hits Japan at a moment of psychological vulnerability, having just surrendered its rank as the world's No. 2 economy to fast-growing China. Among the factors that could make this time different from Kobe:
Will Japan have trouble financing reconstruction?
Japan's gross general government debt already amounts to more than 200% of annual economic output as of 2010, the International Monetary Fund estimates. That's more than double what Japan owed in 1995 when the Kobe earthquake hit.
In principle, Japan should easily be able to handle the bill. It is, after all, a rich country. And even if costs were ten times that of Kobe, they would add only about 7 percentage points to Japan's debt-to-GDP ratio. Japan, unlike the U.S., relies mainly on domestic savers to lend it money, and lately they've been doing that at exceedingly low interest rates.
Much, though, depends on how global markets react. If investors, spooked by high government debt levels in Europe and the U.S., push up Japan's borrowing costs, they could create financial stresses.
“I don't think we can take for granted that the bond markets will take things in stride in the current fiscal environment,“ says economist Maurice Obstfeld of the University of California, Berkeley. “The issue of sovereign default for rich economies was not on the radar in 1995, now the rich economies have put it on the radar.“
Will Japan bring savings home, causing strains in financial markets and troubles for U.S. and other big borrowers?
In 2010, Japanese savers invested $166 billion in other countries, the IMF estimates. Japan is one of the largest buyers of U.S. Treasury bonds. As Japan's government and companies bring home the resources needed to rebuild, those capital flows could wane, pushing down the dollar and increasing U.S. borrowing costs at a time when that country's government-debt level is also a matter of global concern. In early 1995, capital flowed back into Japan for only a couple of months, and then returned to the pre-Kobe direction and size.
One perverse result of money flowing back to Japan from overseas--or simply less Japanese savings leaving the country--could be an increase in the value of the Japanese yen, which would have unwelcome effects on Japanese exporters whose production hasn't been disrupted. Analysts expect the Japanese government to intervene if the yen climbs too rapidly.
“Japanese authorities will not let the yen appreciate with speculative flows. I think they will be very decisive,“ Yuki Hashimoto, an analyst at Morgan Stanley Asia, said by email Sunday. As of Friday, the yen rose 12.8% against the dollar last year, and has risen gradually in the early months of this year.
The Bank of Japan, which vowed “to do its utmost to continue ensuring stability in financial markets,“ was expected by analysts to pump lots of credit into the financial system to keep it functioning and prevent any unwelcome increase in short-term interest rates, now at zero.
Some analysts predict the central bank might buy more government bonds if yields start to rise. Another option is to expand previously initiated purchases of private securities or lending directed at particular sectors.
Are global supply chains so taut that a disruption in the world's No. 3 economy will be felt around the world?
Japan's factories play an outsize role in global production--churning out products and parts for other company's goods, ranging from a fifth of the world's semiconductors to large shares of the world's most advanced machine tools and solar panels. Japan produces parts needed for flat TVs and iPads, as well as the control mechanisms used on everything from industrial machinery and mining machines.
A wide range of industries, from car and steel plants to beer brewers and paper factories, shut down in the wake of the quake and tsunami. How long production is halted depends not just on the direct damage to those plants, but other factors, such as the availability of power needed to run operations.
Japanese officials have warned rolling blackouts could endure for long periods as the nation rebuilds and repairs it electricity network. The result could be shortages of key components around the world, though excess industrial capacity in several big developed economies gives the world some manuevering room.
What will the earthquake do to global energy markets?
Citing the earthquake and the latest in the Middle East, economists at J.P. Morgan Chase on Friday boldly predicted “an unusual amount of volatility in global oil prices in coming weeks.“
The major factor, of course, is what happens next in the Middle East. Japan is the world's No. 3 oil importer, after the U.S. and China; its troubles do nothing to global oil supply. Disruptions in production may limit Japan's near-term demand for energy; oil prices fell in the immediate aftermath of the quake.
Over time, though, the shuttered nuclear plants could lead Japan to increase imports of oil, natural gas and coal. Analysts estimated that replacing all of Japan's nuclear capacity with oil would mean importing 375,000 more barrels a day, on top of the current demand of about 4.25 million barrels.
The worst-case scenario, though, centers on the nuclear plants--and the risk of a catastrophe that would have long-term effects on the people and the land surrounding the crippled plants.

More than 200 Bodies at New Site

Counting the cost: People walk past a car that has been washed into a wall in Miyako 

More than 200 bodies have been found at a new site in northeast Japan, where an earthquake and tsunami caused massive destruction, police said Sunday.

“We have received a preliminary report that more than 200 bodies were found in the city of Higashimatsushima,” a National Police Agency spokesman said, adding that local police are starting to collect the bodies.
Hundreds of other residents in the city’s Nobiru district are unaccounted for, the Sankei Shimbun and other newspapers said. On Saturday police in the city of Sendai said at least 200 and up to 300 bodies had been found on the shoreline there.
Earlier Sunday the National Police Agency said in a statement the confirmed death toll from Friday’s twin disasters is 688, with 642 missing and 1,570 injured. That figure did not include the bodies found at Sendai and Higashimatsushima. Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano has said it was believed more than 1,000 people had died nationwide.
Amid a mass rescue effort there were grim updates indicating severe loss of life along the hard-hit east coast of Honshu island, where the monster waves destroyed or damaged more than 12,250 homes and other buildings. At least 2,400 houses were flooded by the tsunami, while more than 100 houses had been burned, police said, adding that there were 60 landslides.

10,000 People are Missing after It was Swept away by The Megaquake

Just 48 hours ago, it was a picturesque fishing town where tourists flocked to enjoy the coastal air and natural hot springs. But this horrifying picture shows all that remains of Minami Sanriku after it was destroyed by the tsunami that has wreaked devastation across Japan.
Last night, the official death toll from Friday’s 8.9 magnitude earthquake and ensuing tidal wave stood at 1,700 people – although it is feared the final total could rise sharply once a full picture of the catastrophe emerges. In Minami Sanriku alone, 10,000 people could have died – more than half of the city’s population.
It only took a few minutes for the 30ft wave to wash the town away with terrifying force. The locals desperately tried to escape to higher ground. But most did not stand a chance.
It is hard to imagine any life remains among the debris. Where last week fishing boats bobbed in the harbour, it is now impossible to tell where the sea begins and the land ends.
One of the few buildings left standing is the town’s Shizugawa Hospital – the large white building to the centre left of this picture. But the rest of what was once the town centre is flooded with filthy sea water.
Other structures lie battered and smashed in piles of broken wood and twisted metal, but most are now little more than debris. Just visible through the murky waters towards the bottom left of the photograph are the painted stripes of a zebra crossing.
There are vague remnants of roads and the occasional outline of a flooded car, and it is just possible to see the half-submerged outline of the town’s athletics track towards the top left of the picture.
Minami Sanriku lies about 55 miles west of the earthquake’s epicentre and directly in the path of the subsequent tsunami.
And in Fukushima, thousands of people were forced to flee the vicinity of an earthquake-crippled Japanese nuclear plant after a radiation leak and authorities faced a fresh threat with the failure of the cooling system in a second reactor.
The government insisted radiation levels were low following Saturday's explosion, saying the blast had not affected the reactor core container, and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said it had been told by Japan that levels 'have been observed to lessen in recent hours'.
But Japan's nuclear safety agency said the number of people exposed to radiation from the Fukushima Daiichi plant could reach 160. Workers in protective clothing were scanning people arriving at evacuation centres for radioactive exposure.
These pictures reveal the brutal aftermath of the tsunami, but an amateur video posted online, filmed by one of the town’s residents, shows the terrifying moment the wave hit. It shows people desperately driving uphill to escape the wave and the road lined with locals watching open-mouthed as their homes are swept away.
The horrifying footage focuses briefly on those people caught in the traffic, including emergency vehicles, which failed to escape in time. One bus narrowly misses being washed away after speeding uphill as those filming shout ‘Run! Run!’.
Two hundred people were said to have been evacuated from the roof of the hospital and police believe the tidal wave may have washed away an entire train.
One photograph showed the letters ‘SOS’ written on the ground in the car park of the Minami Sanriku Elementary School. The letter H, surrounded by a circle, had also been added, a plea for helicopter assistance.
Tsunami warnings were issued to the entire Pacific seaboard, but the worst fears were not realised. Widespread damage was caused to some coast areas, including California, but there were no reports of fatalities.
President Barack Obama has pledged U.S. assistance and said one aircraft carrier was already in Japan and a second was on its way. Japan's worst previous earthquake was an 8.3-magnitude temblor in Kanto which killed 143,000 people in 1923. A 7.2-magnitude quake in Kobe killed 6,400 people in 1995.
The country lies on the 'Ring of Fire' - an arc of earthquake and volcanic zones stretching across the Pacific where around 90 per cent of the world's quakes occur.
An estimated 230,000 people in 12 countries were killed after a quake triggered a massive tsunami on Boxing Day, 2004, in the Indian Ocean. A magnitude 8.8 quake which struck off the coast of Chile in February last year also generated a tsunami which killed 524 people. Authorities mistakenly told people in coastal regions there was no danger of a tsunami.