Six In The Morning

Former Tepco chief to be grilled over Fukushima disaster

　Investigative panel seeks to uncover causes of worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl

By Aaron Sheldrick
The former president of Fukushima plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co will face questioning for the first time on Friday by a high profile investigative panel seeking to uncover the causes of the world's worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl. Members of the panel appointed by parliament will likely grill Masataka Shimizu over whether he planned to abandon the tsunami-devastated Fukushima plant at the height of the crisis in March 2011, as reactors melted down and the situation was in danger of spinning out of control, threatening Tokyo itself. Then-prime minister Naoto Kan and two other ministers handling the disaster response have told the panel that Shimizu had planned to withdraw all of his utility's workers as explosions rocked the plant and three reactors melted down, spewing radiation across northeast Japan.

Dutch football team subjected to racist abuse from fans in Krakow
Netherlands complain to Uefa over monkey chants while training near England's Euro 2012 camp

Krakow Friday 08 June 2012
The racism controversy which has stalked the Euro 2012 championships reached England's own base last night as the captain of the Dutch national side, who are also located here, said his national football association would complain to Uefa about monkey chants directed at players during a training session. Mark van Bommel was deeply angered by the abuse and it has left the Football Association on alert for any abuse of England's players, who will today appear before at least 350 people in their first public training session – a ticketed event at the stadium of Hutnik FC, in Krakow's Nowa Huta district.

State demolishes 18 homes
A complaint to the International Criminal Court has turned the spotlight on King Mswati III's alleged human rights violations.

08 Jun 2012 00:01 - Lungile Dube
The demolitions – in the Manzini district in 2010 – left more than 200 people homeless, according to the anonymous victim who laid the complaint. In a letter dated November 27 2010, she asked the Swaziland Solidarity Network to report the king to the court for investigation and prosecution. The network duly forwarded the letter to the court, which said it could not take the matter forward unless further evidence was provided. In her complaint, the victim said residents had not been compensated. “Nobody can explain to us what happened because even the chief [of the area] is in the dark about it.”

Can we declare the war on terrorism over?
Or at least stop spending so much money on it?

By Dan Murphy, Staff writer
This week terrorism continued its descent from the greatest, scariest threat known to man to its proper place in the order of things: A bloody tactic that is as old as man and that is declining in frequency as most other forms of violence are. The National Counterterrorism Center's annual report for 2011 was released on Tuesday and what it points to is a less violent (though still plenty violent) world. Total "terrorist" attacks fell 12 percent from the previous year and are down 29 percent from 2007, which the center says is a five year low. There were over 10,000 attacks classified by the government as terrorism across the world last year, claiming 12,500 lives. None of them were in the US, and three-quarters of the fatalities were in just four countries: Afghanistan (3,353), Iraq (3,063), Pakistan (2,033), and Somalia (1,101).

Back to the brink in Thailand
ASIA HAND

By Shawn W. Crispin
Thailand's politics have returned to the streets, threatening new rounds of instability amid a contested parliamentary push for national reconciliation. While the return of protestors opposed to former premier Thaksin Shinawatra may on the surface signal a repeat to the run-up of the 2006 coup, the latest mobilization at least initially lacks crucial military support. Establishment forces, including the opposition Democrat Party, the People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD) protest group, and a section of the royal palace, stand opposed to four national reconciliation bills they believe aim narrowly to give amnesty to, and restore the court-confiscated assets of, the self-exiled Thaksin, who is the real power behind his sister Yingluck's Peua Thai party-led government.

Earth may be near tipping point, scientists warn
A group of scientists warns that population growth, climate change and environmental damage are pushing Earth toward calamitous and irreversible changes.

By Bettina Boxall, Los Angeles Times
A group of international scientists is sounding a global alarm, warning that population growth, climate change and environmental destruction are pushing Earth toward calamitous — and irreversible — biological changes. In a paper published in Thursday's edition of the journal Nature, 22 researchers from a variety of fields liken the human impact to global events eons ago that caused mass extinctions, permanently altering Earth's biosphere.