Journalist Rasha Azab faces charges for criticising Egypt’s ruling military
Ahram Online | 19 Jun 2011
Al Fagr newspaper journalist, Rasha Azab is accused of libel by Egypt’s ruling military, who claim she published incorrect information with the aim to incite public opinion against them.
Azab, as well as Adel Hammouda, the weekly paper’s editor in chief, have been summoned by military prosecution Sunday morning (the start of the work week in Egypt) after Azab published an article in which she detailed the alleged violations by the military police against the protestors in March. Azab claims that she, herself, was subjected to torture last March.
Tens of activists and journalists gathered today in Nasr City outside the military prosecution headquarters in solidarity with Azab and Hammouda.
The protestors condemned the summoning of the journalists, clamouring that it compromises freedom of speech, especially that this is not the first time that a journalist is questioned by the military.
Fukushima: Strontium levels up to 240 times over legal limit near plant
Uninhabitable land area now the size of 17 Manhattans
By Ethan A. Huff | NaturalNews | June 19, 2011
Representing the first time the substance has been detected at the crippled plant, the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) reported on Sunday that seawater and groundwater samples taken near the ravaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power facility in Japan have tested positive for radioactive strontium. And according to a recent report in The Japan Times, levels of strontium detected were up to 240 times over the legal limit, indicating a serious environmental and health threat.
Radioactive strontium, which is known to accumulate in bones and eventually lead to diseases like cancer and leukemia, is one of at least three “hot particles” being continually released by the damaged plant, according to experts. The others include radioactive cesium and plutonium, both of which are implicated in causing birth defects, cancer, and death.
“We are discovering hot particles everywhere in Japan, even in Tokyo,” said Arnold Gundersen, a former nuclear industry senior vice president with 39 years of nuclear engineering experience, to Al Jazeera. “Scientists are finding these everywhere. Over the last 90 days these hot particles have continued to fall and are being deposited in high concentrations. A lot of people are picking these up in car engine air filters.”
TEPCO has allegedly installed a new water decontamination system that it claims will eventually help filter dangerous radioactive isotopes from polluted water, and thus limit environmental and human exposure to the poisons. But that system has already run into several problems as flow rates have been lower than intended.
“Fukushima has three nuclear reactors exposed and four fuel cores exposed,” added Gundersen. “You probably have the equivalent of 20 nuclear reactor cores because of the fuel cores, and they are all in desperate need of being cooled, and there is no means to cool them effectively.”
Al Jazeeraalso reports that a nuclear waste advisor to the Japanese government recently explained that roughly 966 square kilometers (km), or 600 square miles, around Fukushima are now uninhabitable due to the unfolding disaster. This massive dead zone area is the equivalent size of 17 Manhattans placed next to each other.
Israeli occupation authority serves demolition notifications to citizens in Jordan Valley
Palestine Information Center – 19/06/2011
JORDAN VALLEY — The Israeli occupation authority (IOA) delivered demolition notices to Palestinian citizens in northern Jordan Valley on Sunday, locals said.
They told the PIC reporter that the IOA warned four families in Hadidiya area that they should tear down their tents and tin houses within a period of one month and a half and leave the area at the pretext that their land is in the proximity of an army training field.
About 110 Palestinians inhabit the area under severe deprivation of the simplest human rights especially after a Jewish settlement was established on their land with only 35 individuals inhabiting it.
The settlers blocked all routes leading to Hadidiya and prevented its inhabitants from passing through the gate erected by those settlers to separate them from nearby Palestinian cities such Tobas and Tamon.