Six In The Morning

For new nuclear chief, concerns over plant safety

　Chairwoman is a geologist who questions the industry's earthquake evaluation

By MATTHEW L. WALD
The new chairwoman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has good news and bad news for the nuclear power industry. The good news is that although an impasse over the storage of nuclear waste now threatens some of the industry’s routine activities, the chairwoman says she believes that a permanent repository can be set up eventually. The bad news is that she considers the industry’s evaluation of earthquake vulnerability — an issue that was once believed to be settled when a nuclear power plant was licensed — to be inadequate.

Gillard revives plans to deport Australia's boat refugees
The Prime Minister wants to make the 'Pacific Solution' even tougher

KATHY MARKS SYDNEY TUESDAY 14 AUGUST 2012
One of the Australian Labor Party's first acts on coming to power in 2007 was to scrap the reviled "Pacific Solution" which saw asylum-seekers sent to remote island nations for processing. Julia Gillard described the policy as "costly, unsustainable and wrong as a matter of principle". Five years on, Prime Minister Gillard is planning to resurrect the Pacific Solution – and make it even tougher. Asylum-seekers assessed as genuine refugees will have to spend years in detention camps – on the impoverished Pacific island of Nauru, or in Papua New Guinea – waiting to be resettled. And their families will no longer be allowed to be join them.

Pope's butler to be tried for 'aggravated theft'
The Irish Times - Tuesday, August 14, 2012

PADDY AGNEW
THERE WAS a major development in the “Vatileaks” scandal in the Holy See yesterday when senior Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi held a news conference at which he confirmed that Pope Benedict’s butler, Paolo Gabriele, will stand trial in the Vatican next month, charged with “aggravated theft”. Mr Gabriele, who is under house arrest in the Vatican, was arrested on May 23rd after the Vatican gendarmerie found a huge quantity of Pope Benedict’s private papers and documents in his Vatican apartment. Many of these documents had featured in the controversial book published earlier this year, His Holiness – The Secret Papers Of Benedict XVI. It portrays a Holy See undermined by corruption, careerist ambition and bitter rivalry between senior cardinals.

Mali president backs transition prime minister
Mali's interim president Dioncounda Traore has "renewed his confidence" in controversial transition prime minister Cheick Modibo Diarra.

13 AUG 2012 12:28 - AFP
With the country split in two after militants wrested control of northern desert regions after a March coup in the capital Bamako, political parties including Traore's have called for Diarra's ouster. "The president of the republic renews his confidence" in the prime minister and asked him "to make proposals on forming a government of national unity", said a statement from the president's office, read on national radio and television. The decision was taken after consultations held on Saturday by Traore with the country's "civil society", including political parties and the junta that overthrew the regime of Amadou Toumani Toure on March 22 before handing over to a transition regime two weeks later.

Silence in court gives wind of reform
SINOGRAPH

By Francesco Sisci
BEIJING - Few things could mark the future of China as much as the process that closed last week in the interior city of Hefei, in Anhui province, far from the international media, over a 1,000 miles from Beijing, against Gu Kailai, the wife of Bo Xilai, the man who wanted to put China on the path of neo-Maoism. After Mao's death in 1981, the trial of his loyalists, the notorious Gang of Four, marked the country's political decision to embrace a policy of economic reforms. Similarly, Gu Kailai's conviction might - after so many controversies and debates - seal the party's decision to launch long-awaited political reforms.

DW

Romania gone astray
Romania is beset by a political power struggle with endless squabbling in a highly-charged political standoff. The stakes are high and the Balkan country's constitutional court has turned to the EU for help.

DW
For weeks, Prime Minister Victor Ponta's government has tried to have suspended President Traian Basescu removed from office, violating laws and rulings by the Constitutional Court as a means to an end. The government's efforts have been blasted as a "revolution of thieves" by Romania's Hotnews website. Forgery of the country's eligible voters and election fraud have meanwhile been added to the list of grievances. On August 10, prosecutors at Romania's Supreme Court made public transcripts of intercepted phone calls made by ministers and senior officials.