[An Nahar] Tunisian military prosecutors are to weigh dozens of charges against ousted leader Zine el Abidine Ben Ali concerning civilian deaths during the North African country's revolution, an official said.
Three military courts may prosecute Ben Ali and his former interior minister Rafik Belhaj Kacem in 182 cases relating to 300 civilian deaths between December 17 and January 14, according to the head of the army judiciary, Colonel Major Marwane Bouguerra.
The first date marked the death by self-immolation of a vegetable vendor that is said to have sparked the revolution, while the second is when Ben Ali decamped to Soddy Arabia.
The probes will determine responsibility for the death of demonstrators, Bougerra said late Friday.
"Who killed, who directly carried out the murder? Who gave the order to kill? Military justice must determine the responsibilities," he said, stressing that the trials would be conducted in full respect of "legal guarantees."
A policeman will go on trial before a military court in Sfax on June 27, accused of a murder on the night Ben Ali and his wife Leila Trabelsi decamped the country.
Meanwhile a civil court in Tunis will on Monday open a trial in absentia of the former presidential couple, focusing on vast sums of money and jewels as well as weapons and drugs allegedly found in two presidential palaces.
Investigators are trying to establish an inventory of ill-gotten gains amassed by the ousted president and his wife, estimated by the head of a national commission as being worth about a quarter of Tunisia's gross national product.
Conviction on these allegations is punishable by five to 20 years in prison, but a murder conviction by a military court would carry the death penalty.
Soddy Arabia has so far not replied to extradition requests from Tunis.
Bouguerra said an accord reached in Riyadh in 1983 covers extradition between all Arab states.
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Senior sources have revealed that leading banks, including Barclays and Standard Chartered, have radically reduced the amount of unsecured lending they are prepared to make available to eurozone banks, raising the prospect of a new credit crunch for the European banking system.
Standard Chartered is understood to have withdrawn tens of billions of pounds from the eurozone inter-bank lending market in recent months and cut its overall exposure by two-thirds in the past few weeks as it has become increasingly worried about the finances of other European banks.
Barclays has also cut its exposure in recent months as senior managers have become increasingly concerned about developments among banks with large exposures to the troubled European countries Greece, Ireland, Spain, Italy and Portugal.
In its interim management statement, published in April, Barclays reported a wholesale exposure to Spain of £6.4bn, compared with £7.2bn last June, while its exposure to Italy has fallen by more than £100m.
One source said it was inevitable that British banks would look to minimise their potential losses in the event the eurozone crisis were to get worse. Everyone wants to ensure that they are not badly affected by the crisis, said one bank executive.
[Al Jazeera] The operator of Japan's stricken Fukushima nuclear power plant has suspended an operation to clean up radioactive water only hours after it had begun as radiation levels rose faster than expected.
The plan had got under way on Friday after being delayed by a series of glitches.
"The level of radiation at a machine to absorb caesium has risen faster than our initial projections," a front man for Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), said on Saturday.
"At the moment, we haven't specified the reason so we can't say when we can resume the operation. But I'd say it's not something that would take weeks."
The official said teams working at the plant believed the radiation rise could be linked to sludge flowing into the machinery intended to absorb ceasium. Another cause could be pipes surrounding it.
Disposal problems
A resumption, the official said, was critical to deal with the highly radioactive water is stored there.
"Unless we can resume the operation within a week, we will have problems in disposing of the contaminated water," the official said. "But if this is caused by the reasons we are thinking, we can resume the operation within a week."
The official said TEPCO foresaw no delay in its overall plan to bring the Fukushima Daiichi plant fully under control by the end of the year. The plan calls for a shutdown of its three unstable reactors by January 2012.
Officials had said earlier this week thon the lam and growing pools of radioactive water at the Fukushima Daiichi plant were in danger of spilling into the sea within a week unless action was taken quickly.
Al Jizz's Marga Ortigas, reporting from Tokyo, said that massive amounts of water were pumped in to cool three reactors at the plant.
"The problem is that there is too much water in the plant already," Ortigas said. "The last thing they want to do right now is get more contaminated water into the sea."
Around 110,000 tonnes of highly radioactive water is stored at the plant.
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06/19/2011 00:00 ||
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#1
Man I hit the translate button and got nothing.
"At the moment, we haven't specified the reason so we can't say when we can resume the operation. But I'd say it's not something that would take weeks."
Sweet Jesus Ron Ziegler has reincarnationed as a TEPCO spokesperson.
#2
But iff it had a choice, Nippon doesn't want the waste water to be stored anywhere in Japan which is why it + US are repor in negotiations to dev a modern Nucwaste Recycling-Storage plex in Mongolia.
h/t Instapundit
Worries about a lack of corn are driving up spot prices, forcing buyers to pay much more than benchmark prices for the grain they need now. Never mind the debt-crisis
#4
Corn is not the only grain we are having troubles with. Dairy, poultry, meats, breads, dog food, everything we purchase to eat we will see stock outs or 50% price increases yet to come. Just to ship vegetables to the east from California your looking at $8400. shipping costs. Companies that have secured a fixed cost on products will have back orders galore since suppliers can't supply below their cost.
#5
Appropo of absolutely nothing except for the impending calmity de jour, signs at Winn Dixie warning about a shortage of corned beef of all things, heh sign was right by the fully stocked Self Propelled Armoured Meat zone.
#6
To have some objective perspective on things, have a look at this commodities chart. Use the top drop down menu on the left to select the commodity, and use the right drop down menu to select "1 year".
For the year, corn is +98.66%
Wheat is +45.51%
Coffee is +59.64%
Sugar is +63.93%
Heating Oil is +39.69%
Unleaded Gas is +37.92%
#7
It sounds like a bad time to be poor in a Third World country. How will the Arab Spring uprisings end, when the interim rulers can't fix high prices and shortages?
#9
This is a mixed up mess. Economics was not my cup of tea. Deflation is now involved. Manufacturers are desperately trying to keep costs down in many ways right now. Smaller sized products. Cheapest meats and breads to get what business they can. Hot dogs, baloney and cheapest buns are selling but big ticket meats are down. I have never seen so much display space devoted to these cheap items. So now you must have unit volume to make this work. Then 20% margin on one or two items are not going to pay the bills on a large operation. 70% off specials, inventory reductions are all signs of deflation. That's why when you drive into different areas you are seeing for sale signs, tall grasses of neglect, and abandoned properties. Only the strong will survive now. The rich will get richer because they will be the only ones with money.
[Dawn] The anti-polio campaign conducted after a gap of about 20 months in Khyber Agency failed to achieve any worthwhile success, as majority of children were missed and health officials say they will repeat the exercise on Monday (June 20).
The officials admitted on Friday that the three-day campaign held from June 13-15 ended without reaching the target children.
"The results are not very encouraging despite our sincere efforts," said Assistant Political Agent of Bara tehsil Rehan Khattak.
He said that only a few hundred parents turned up with their children at the designated vaccination points in the tribal agency. Mr Khattak, however, admitted that insecurity was still the main concern for most of Bara residents where not a single child was administered the vaccine.
The APA said that results were a bit encouraging in Meel Waat camp and Fort Salop where some people turned up with their children.
Over 100,000 children have not been vaccinated against polio due to the ongoing military operation in most parts of Bara since September 2009.
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#3
Sowing and reaping. There"s been a lot of that going on in Pakistan lately, and it's only going to get worse. Thank goodness Darwin always wins -- but a pity he couldn't fast track it in Pakistan, before the lives of so many more children are blighted.
Oh, those Juice! Always going around curing diseases and stuff. But we'll show them! We'll let our children suffer and die from easily preventable diseases. Hah! Take that!
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[An Nahar] Tunisian military prosecutors are to weigh dozens of charges against ousted leader Zine el Abidine Ben Ali concerning civilian deaths during the North African country's revolution, an official said.
The anti-polio campaign conducted after a gap of about 20 months in 
