Tag: Evening Edition

An explosion at the ageing Fukushima No. 1 atomic plant blew apart the building housing one of its reactors Saturday, a day after the biggest quake ever recorded in Japan unleashed a monster tsunami.

The atomic emergency escalated Sunday as crews struggled to prevent overheating at a second reactor where the cooling system has also failed, and the government warned that it too could be hit with a blast.

As workers doused the stricken reactor with sea water to try to avert catastrophe, Japan’s Prime Minister Naoto Kan said the chaos unleashed by Friday’s 8.9 magnitude quake was an “unprecedented national disaster”.

The quake, one of the biggest ever recorded, unleashed a terrifying tsunami that engulfed towns and cities on Japan’s northeastern coast, destroying everything in its path.

Kadhafi is “a leader shooting at his own people”, EU president Herman Van Rompuy said at the close of an emergency summit of the 27-nation bloc in Brussels to examine the crisis and seek consensus on how to deal with it.

“The Libyan leadership must give up power without delay,” Van Rompuy said.

He spoke after NATO and the European Union began 48 hours of crisis talks, amid growing calls for the imposition of a no-fly zone over Libya, reports France would even support selective air strikes and more ships being deployed to the area.

“We’re coming,” Seif al-Islam told young regime supporters in Tripoli, referring to the advance of government forces towards the eastern rebel bastion of Benghazi.

“The colonialist countries are hatching a plot to humiliate the Libyan people, reduce them to slavery and control the oil,” Kadhafi said on state television.

He again accused Al-Qaeda of being behind the insurrection that began on February 15 and called on inhabitants of Benghazi, the rebels’ main base, to “liberate” the eastern city.

Drawing inspiration from the boardrooms of Finland and the toppling of autocratic regimes in Tunisia and Egypt, demonstrators staked their claim for equality, education and a better life.

A month before Silvio Berlusconi goes on trial over allegations he paid an underage prostitute for sex, hundreds of Italian women rallied in Rome.

The 78-year-old, one of France’s most popular political figures, did not attend the start of the trial that will examine whether he misused public money to pay people working for his party ahead of a successful election bid.

Presiding judge Dominique Pauthe adjourned Monday’s hearing after a few hours, saying it would resume on Tuesday when he would rule on a constitutional challenge in the case, which if successful could delay the trial by several months.

Rebel forces traded rocket and machine-gun fire with the army as they tried to advance westwards on the Kadhafi stronghold of Sirte, but were beaten back along a dusty desert highway after suffering heavy losses.

The rebels said they had been forced to pull back from the coastal hamlet of Bin Jawad, occupied on Saturday in an advance westward on Kadhafi’s home town, after clashes that doctors said left two dead and around 50 wounded.

As battles raged east and west of the capital and casualties rose on both sides, the national council — the embryonic provisional government — made the proclamation at its first formal gathering.

“The council declares it is the sole representative all over Libya,” former justice minister Mustafa Abdel Jalil said after the meeting in Benghazi, the rebel stronghold in the east of the strife-torn North African country.

A doctor at one of the hospitals in rebel-held territory, where casualties were being treated from the fierce clashes round the refinery town of Raslanuf, said there were “many dead and wounded” by rocket fire from loyalist defenders.

In restive Yemen troops also killed four protesters and wounded seven in the north of the country as nationwide protests raged against President Ali Abdullah Saleh.