The Star Online: World Updates
The Star Online: World Updates |
- Pakistan army believes NATO attack planned - reports
- China unrest spreads to bamboo furniture factory
- Fukushima nuclear plant scraps plan to dump water into sea
| Pakistan army believes NATO attack planned - reports Posted: 08 Dec 2011 08:25 PM PST ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - A senior Pakistani military officer said a NATO air strike that killed 24 Pakistani troops on the border with Afghanistan last month was pre-planned, newspapers reported on Friday, in comments likely to fuel tensions with the United States. Major General Ashfaq Nadeem, director general of military operations, also said Pakistan, a strategic U.S. ally, would deploy an air defence system along the border to prevent such attacks, the newspapers said. The newspapers said he made the remarks to a Senate committee on defence on Thursday. Military officials were not immediately available to confirm he had made the comments. The Daily Times said Nadeem described the attack as a plot while another newspaper quoted him as saying it was a "pre-planned conspiracy" against Pakistan. "We can expect more attacks from our supposed allies," Nadeem was quoted as saying during his briefing, The Express Tribune reported. U.S. and Pakistani officials have offered differing initial accounts of what happened in the attack. Pakistan said it was unprovoked, with officials calling it an act of blatant aggression -- an accusation the United States has rejected. Two U.S. officials have told Reuters that preliminary information from the ongoing investigation indicated Pakistani officials at a border coordination centre had cleared the air strike, unaware they had troops in the area. Nadeem ruled out the possibility that NATO forces may have thought they were firing on militants, who often move across the porous frontier and attack Western troops. One newspaper reported that he told the Senate committee that militants do not leave themselves exposed on mountain tops, like the ones where the Pakistani border posts were located. The United States, which sees Pakistan as critical to its efforts to stabilise Afghanistan ahead of a combat troop pullout in 2014, has tried to sooth fury over the NATO incident. President Barack Obama has called Pakistan's president to offer condolences over the strike that provoked a crisis in relations between the two countries. He stopped short of a formal apology. Pakistan boycotted an international conference in Germany on the future of Afghanistan because of the NATO attack. U.S.-Pakistani ties were already frayed after the secret U.S. raid in May that killed al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. (Writing by Michael Georgy; Editing by Nick Macfie) Copyright © 2011 Reuters Full content generated by Get Full RSS. | ||
| China unrest spreads to bamboo furniture factory Posted: 08 Dec 2011 07:28 PM PST HONG KONG/SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Hundreds of Chinese workers at a bankrupt furniture factory staged a mass rally on Thursday, facing off with riot police in the latest flare-up of industrial unrest. Workers at the bamboo and wood furniture factory in Anji in the eastern province of Zhejiang took to the streets to demand back wages after the plant went bankrupt, Hong Kong's Ming Pao Daily said on Friday. Chinese microblogging sites showed large numbers of riot police surrounding workers at the scene and postings said some workers had been beaten. A rash of highly organised and potent strikes have hit the factories of a number of global brands including PepsiCo Inc, Japanese watchmaker Citizen Holdings Co Ltd, and shoemaking giant Yue Yuen Industrial (Holdings) Ltd. While the reasons for the strikes have varied from factory to factory, workers have often complained that jobs and wages are under pressure as manufacturers and exporters look to cut costs in response to slowing Western orders, especially from debt-ridden Europe. At least two strikes were still simmering at the Singapore-owned Hi-P International Ltd factory, which makes electronics for clients including Apple Inc, with workers demanding compensation for a factory relocation they fear could lead to layoffs. About 100 Hi-P workers gathered outside a Shanghai government office on Thursday to petition the authorities for help, but dispersed without incident after police arrived. In the Pearl River Delta plant of Hitachi Ltd-owned Hailiang Storage Products, nearly 800 workers continued to strike, staging a peaceful sit-in in front of the factory on Thursday, labour advocacy group China Labor Watch reported. Workers were angered that their seniority and benefits may be eroded once a takeover of the factory by Western Digital Corp goes through in March next year. The group urged "both factories to address their workers' problems with their opaque and unfair management styles and bring their workers into the decision-making process." (Reporting by James Pomfret in HONG KONG and Royston Chan in SHANGHAI; Editing by Chris Lewis and Nick Macfie) Copyright © 2011 Reuters Full content generated by Get Full RSS. | ||
| Fukushima nuclear plant scraps plan to dump water into sea Posted: 08 Dec 2011 07:21 PM PST TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan's crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant said Friday it has scrapped a plan to dump water it treated for radiation contamination into the sea following fierce protests from fishing groups. Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco), the utility operating Fukushima's Daiichi plant, had said Thursday it was considering discharging some treated water into the sea because it was running out of storage space.
That caused an uproar among Japanese fishing cooperatives. "Treated" means once-high radioactive content has been reduced considerably, but not completely. The Fukushima plant was struck by a devastating quake and tsunami in March and has released radiation into the atmosphere, carried by winds, rain and snow, ever since. "The decision not to include the plan was made after talks Thursday with the federation of fishing cooperatives and opposition from the government's Fisheries Agency," a Tepco spokeswoman said. Tepco general manager Junichi Matsumoto told reporters on Friday that the company would try to build more tanks and recycle more of the treated water for cooling purposes. Tens of thousands of tonnes of water contaminated with radiation have accumulated at the plant, 240 km (150 miles) northeast of Tokyo, after Tepco, early in the crisis, tried to cool reactors that suffered nuclear fuel meltdowns by pouring in water, much of it from the sea. Tepco estimates that the amount of treated water requiring storage is increasing by 200 to 500 tonnes every day. It says the plant is likely to reach its storage capacity of about 155,000 tonnes around March. The utility released more than 10,000 tonnes of water tainted with low levels of radiation in April to free up space for water with much higher levels of radioactivity, drawing sharp criticism from neighbors such as South Korea and China. (Reporting by Shinichi Saoshiro; Editing by Chris Gallagher and Nick Macfie) Copyright © 2011 Reuters Full content generated by Get Full RSS. |
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