Libyans call woman who claimed gang rape a prostitute

Tripoli:  The Libyan authorities on Sunday attacked the character and credibility of a Libyan woman who burst into a hotel full of foreign journalists to say that she had been abducted and raped by militia members working for Col. Moammar el-Gaddafi, calling her "a known prostitute and a thief."

The woman, Eman al-Obeidy, has become well known in Libya and around the world since the episode at the hotel on Saturday.

She told journalists that she had been raped by 15 men and displayed large bruises on her face and legs, as well as deep scratches. But as she tried to talk, security officials and people who had previously appeared to be hotel workers raced to silence her, at one point even attempting to place a coat over her head.

Her pursuers scuffled with journalists attempting to interview, photograph and protect her. Security officials ultimately dragged her screaming from the hotel and drove her away. But her accusations were heard and the scuffle seen on television networks and Web sites worldwide.

And the experience she described was consistent with longstanding reports of human rights abuses in Libya under the Gaddafi government.

Ms. Obeidy's mother, Aisha Ahmed, a resident of the rebel-held town of Tobrok, told The Washington Post that Ms. Obeidy was a 26-year-old law student in Tripoli. "I am very happy, very proud," her mother said, calling Ms. Obeidy a hero.

Ms. Obeidy's parents reportedly said government officials had called them early Sunday to offer her money and a new house if she recanted. Relatives reached through a rebel activist late Sunday declined to talk.

A cousin, Wadad Omar, told Reuters that Ms. Obeidy worked in the tourism industry, and said that three other women, all lawyers, were abducted with her at a checkpoint outside Tripoli and were missing. As she was dragged from the hotel Ms. Obeidy screamed that others with her were in captivity.

Musa Ibrahim, a government spokesman, has cycled through a series of contradictory characterizations of Ms. Obeidy and her case. He initially suggested that she appeared drunk and may have fabricated her story, or "her fantasies."

Later on Saturday, he said that police detectives had found her sane, sober and in good health. He called her complaints credible and said detectives were investigating them. And he said she would be offered a chance to meet again with journalists.

On Sunday, however, Mr. Ibrahim told reporters that detectives had learned she was a prostitute, with "a whole file of prostitution cases and petty theft."

"The girl is not what she pretended to be," he said. "This is her line of work. She has known these boys for years."

"I can't see anything political about her situation," he added, "The men have been questioned, but since she is refusing the medical examination they can't prove the rape case." Asked at a press conference about his earlier statements, Mr. Ibrahim declined to repeat them, saying he now wanted to protect her privacy, "without talking about people's previous crimes, their lifestyles."

He said that she had been released to relatives in Tripoli, but that could not be confirmed.

In Benghazi, the center of the rebellion challenging Colonel Gaddafi's four decades in power, residents held a rally supporting Ms. Obeidy. "Eman, you are not alone," one sign read.

In Tripoli, several residents said they had heard about the episode from satellite news channels. Some said they did not believe that in Libya's traditional culture a woman would speak so openly of a sexual crime. But others said they believed her. They pointed to her brutal treatment as an example of Colonel Gaddafi's tight grip on the capital.

Japan fears Nuclear reactor is leaking contaminated water

Tokyo:  Highly contaminated water is escaping a damaged reactor at the crippled nuclear power plant in Japan and could soon leak into the ocean, the country's nuclear regulator warned on Monday.

The discovery poses a further setback to efforts to contain the nuclear crisis as workers find themselves in increasingly hazardous conditions.

In another new finding, plutonium was detected in soil at five locations at the plant, Tokyo Electric Power Company, which runs the complex, said. The company asserted that the plutonium, found in samples taken a week ago, posed no threat to public health and that only two samples appeared to have plutonium that came from the plant. Tests of nuclear weapons in the atmosphere, which ended in 1980, left trace amounts of plutonium around the world.

The contaminated water threatening the ocean had radiation measuring 1,000 millisieverts per hour and is in an overflow tunnel outside the plant's Reactor No. 2, Japan's nuclear regulator said at a news conference. The maximum dose allowed for workers at the plant is 250 millisieverts in a year.

The tunnel leads from the reactor's turbine building, where contaminated water was discovered on Saturday, to an opening just 180 feet from the sea, said Hidehiko Nishiyama, deputy director-general for the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency.

The contaminated water level is now about three feet from the exit of the vertical, U-shaped tunnel and rising, Mr. Nishiyama said.

Contaminated water was also found at tunnels leading from the No. 1 and No. 3 reactors, though with much lower levels of radiation.

"We are unsure whether there is already an overflow" of the water out of the tunnel, Mr. Nishiyama said. He said workers were redoubling efforts to first remove the water from the Reactor No. 2 turbine building. Government officials have said that the water is probably leaking from broken pipes inside the reactor, from a breach in the reactor's containment vessel or from the inner pressure vessel that houses the nuclear fuel.

The nuclear safety agency also reported that radioactive iodine 131 was detected Sunday at a concentration 1,150 times the maximum allowable level in a seawater sample taken about a mile north of the drainage outlets of reactor units 1 through 4. It also said that the amount of cesium 137 found in water about 1,000 feet from plant was 20 times the normal level, roughly equal to readings taken a week ago.

Mr. Nishiyama said there were no health concerns because fishing would not be conducted in the evacuation-designated area within about 12 miles of the plant, the Kyodo news agency reported.

The disclosure about the escaping contaminated water came as workers pressed their efforts to remove highly radioactive water from inside buildings at the plant. The high levels of radioactivity have made it harder for them to get inside the reactor buildings and control rooms to get equipment working again, slowing the effort to cool the reactors and spent fuel pools.

Workers pumped less water into the reactors Monday in an attempt to minimize the overflow of radioactive water from them, slowing the cooling process, Tokyo Electric said.

Alarm over the radiation levels grew last Thursday when two workers were burned around their feet and ankles after they stepped into highly radioactive water inside the turbine building of Reactor No. 3. A third worker who was wearing higher boots did not suffer the same exposure. Japanese news media reported that the three workers were released from the hospital on Monday.

Over the weekend a worker trying to measure radiation levels of the water at Reactor No. 2 saw the reading on his dosimeter jump beyond 1,000 millisieverts per hour and left the scene immediately, said Takeo Iwamoto, a spokesman for Tokyo Electric Power.

Under normal conditions the average amount of radiation workers at the plant are allowed to be exposed to is at most 50 millisieverts a year. In emergency situations the limit is usually raised to 100 millisieverts but it has been raised to 250 millisieverts during the crisis.

There was no evacuation of the workers stationed at Daiichi after the high radiation levels were discovered. Of the workers at the site on Monday, 381 were from Tepco and 69 from a contractor. Firefighters and members of the Japanese military have also been helping at the plant. Naoki Sunoda, a spokesman for Tokyo Electric, said that since the crisis began on March 11, 19 workers had been exposed to radiation levels of 100 millisieverts.

Mr. Sunoda said workers on Monday were still trying to determine a way to approach the turbine building of Reactor No. 2 to extract the contaminated water.

The source of the plutonium found at the plant was unclear. All three kinds of nuclear fuel at the complex could leak plutonium. Reactor No. 3 is fueled partly by mixed oxide fuel, or mox, which is made from plutonium and uranium. Most reactors' fuel is uranium.

But plutonium is a regular byproduct of a reactor's splitting uranium atoms in two. In a kind of nuclear alchemy some of the speeding subatomic particles of the fission process turn uranium into plutonium.

So reactor fuel rods that undergo atomic fission get riddled with plutonium -- though less than in mox fuel. Thus any of the reactors at Fukushima Daiichi could leak plutonium -- as could spent fuel rods in cooling pools atop the reactor buildings.

The most abundant type of plutonium, the 239 form, has a half-life of 24,000 years and emits alpha rays. If deep inside the body alphas can cause healthy tissue to turn cancerous. But the rays are so weak that outside the body they can be stopped by skin or tissue paper.

The Fukushima Daiichi plant has been leaking radiation since a magnitude 9.0 quake and ensuing tsunami struck northeastern Japan's coast on March 11. The tsunami knocked out power to the plant's system that cools the nuclear fuel rods.

Yukio Edano, the government spokesman, said on Monday that it was too early for people to return to homes within a 12-mile radius of the plant.

"We cannot guarantee safety at the moment as the situation is still under evaluation," he said.

The chairman of the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Gregory Jaczko, was in Tokyo on Monday meeting with senior Japanese government officials and representatives from Tokyo Electric, also known as Tepco. Mr. Jaczko reiterated that the commission is prepared to provide assistance but did not provide details.

"The unprecedented challenge before us remains serious and our best experts remain fully engaged to help Japan address the situation," he said in a statement.

Mr. Jaczko's visit came as Japan asked the French nuclear industry for help. A spokeswoman for the French nuclear power company Areva said the firm was providing support to Tepco.

"The whole French nuclear industry has received a request for help from Tepco," said Fleur Floquet-Daubigeon in Paris. "We're not sending people at this time; we are just sharing technical expertise."

"We're basically in a brainstorming phase right now," she added.

The French energy minister, Eric Besson, said the call for help had also come from the Japanese government, Reuters reported. "Japan explicitly asked EDF, Areva and France's nuclear research body (CEA) to help them," Mr. Besson said.

Areva and other French companies, including the giant state utility EDF, the world's largest operator of nuclear plants, have already provided boron, which can help choke off a nuclear reaction, gloves, measuring equipment and other gear.

Relief supplies are reaching more earthquake survivors, but low temperatures and aftershocks continue to make life miserable.

On Monday morning an aftershock with a magnitude of 6.5 off the coast of northeast Honshu triggered a tsunami alert, which was later canceled.

The public broadcaster, NHK, said the death toll from the quake and tsunami had grown to more than 10,800, while more than 16,200 remained missing. More than 190,000 people remained housed in temporary shelters, it said.

Yemen: Blast at explosives factory kills 78

Sanaa, Yemen:  A powerful blast at a factory making explosives and weapons in southern Yemen killed at least 78 people on Monday after the facility was briefly taken over by Islamic militants and then looted by residents of the area, officials said.

Many women and children from the surrounding villages were killed in the explosion, which left bodies blackened and burned, said medical and security officials in Abyan province. The blast appeared to be accidental, and one factory worker said it was caused by a looter who dropped a lit cigarette that ignited a heap of gunpowder.

The tragedy was rooted in Yemen's rapidly deteriorating security under a surge of unprecedented protests that threatens to topple the autocratic president who has ruled the impoverished and divided nation for 32 years.

On Sunday, militants took over the factory and the nearby the town of Jaar, taking advantage of the growing lawlessness in a part of Yemen that was already largely beyond the government's reach. Like several other parts of Yemen, police and security forces there had melted away in the face of the political unrest.

The militants are adherents of the ultraconservative Islamic movement known as Salafism. The allegiance of their particular group is bought by Yemen's government, while other Salafis agitate for overthrowing and the establishment of Islamic rule. Nonetheless, seeing an opening to seize weaponry, the group took what they wanted and left.

They made off with two armoured cars, a tank, several pickup trucks mounted with machine guns and ammunition, said 28-year-old factory worker Hakim Mohammed.

Later, dozens of locals entered the facility and looted whatever they could find, including cables, doors and vehicle fuel, Mohammed said.

The factory makes munitions, Kalashnikov assault rifles and explosives used in road construction in the mountainous area.
Some of the looters emptied large barrels of gunpowder because they wanted to use the containers for storing water, Mohammed said.
A cigarette ignited what he said were massive piles of the explosive.

Among the wounded, 27 people were in critical condition, said officials at al-Razi hospital in Jaar. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to journalists.

Chinese specialists working at the factory left several days ago because of the political turmoil and the absence of security in the area, said resident Walid Mohammed Muqbil.

Another resident, Seif Mohammed, said the blast could be heard 10 miles (15 kilometres) from the factory.

Yemen has been hit by weeks of unrest and unravelling security as protesters throughout the country demand the president's ouster and the introduction of political freedoms. A government crackdown has killed 92 protesters, according to the Shiqayiq Forum for Human Rights.

As the situation has escalated, police and security forces have withdrawn from some towns and cities in Yemen, chased out by protesters in some cases.

The area around the weapons factory was one of the places where units abandoned their posts.

The deputy governor of Abyan province, Saleh al-Samty, blamed the national government for the tragedy, saying it was a result of the lack of order resulting from the security pullback.

Obama defends military action in Libya, says stopped Gaddafi's deadly advance

Washington:  US President Barack Obama defended his decision to launch military action in Libya, declaring on Monday night that the United States intervened to prevent a slaughter of civilians that would have stained the world's conscience.

But he ruled out targeting leader Moammar Gaddafi, warning that trying to oust him militarily would be a mistake as costly as the war in Iraq.

Speaking before an audience of military members and diplomats in a televised address to the nation, Obama announced that NATO would take command over the entire Libya operation on Wednesday, keeping his pledge to get the US out of the lead fast.

But the president offered no estimate on when the conflict might end and no details about its costs despite demands for those answers from lawmakers.

"I said that America's role would be limited; that we would not put ground troops into Libya; that we would focus our unique capabilities on the front end of the operation, and that we would transfer responsibility to our allies and partners. Tonight, we are fulfilling that pledge," Obama said.

He declined to label the US-led military campaign as a "war," but made an expansive case for why he believed it was in the national interest of the United States and allies to use force.
Obama said the US-led response had stopped Gaddafi's advances and halted a slaughter that could have shaken the stability of an entire region.

Obama cast the intervention in Libya as imperative to keep Gaddafi from killing those rebelling against him and to prevent a refugee crisis that would drive Libyans into Egypt and Tunisia, two countries emerging from their own uprisings.

"To brush aside America's responsibility as a leader and - more profoundly - our responsibilities to our fellow human beings under such circumstances would have been a betrayal of who we are," Obama said.

"Some nations may be able to turn a blind eye to atrocities in other countries. The United States of America is different," he said. "And as president, I refused to wait for the images of slaughter and mass graves before taking action."

The president reiterated the White House position that Gaddafi should not remain in power but the UN resolution that authorised power does not go that far.

That gap in directives has left the White House to deal with the prospect that Gaddafi will remain indefinitely. Obama said the US would try to isolate him other ways.

"Of course, there is no question that Libya - and the world - will be better off with Gaddafi out of power. I, along with many other world leaders, have embraced that goal, and will actively pursue it through non-military means. But broadening our military mission to include regime change would be a mistake," he said.

Obama then raised the issue of Iraq and the move to rid Iraq of Saddam Hussein, a war that deeply divided the nation and defined the presidency of George W. Bush.

"Regime change there took eight years, thousands of American and Iraqi lives and nearly a trillion dollars," he said. "That is not something we can afford to repeat in Libya."

Obama's speech was his most aggressive attempt to answer the questions mounting from Republican critics, his own party and war-weary Americans - chiefly, why the US was involved in war in another Muslim nation.

High levels of radiation found in water at n-plant

Fukushima/Tokyo:  Workers at Japan's damaged nuclear plant raced to pump out contaminated water suspected of sending radioactivity levels soaring as officials warned on Monday that radiation seeping from the complex was spreading to seawater and soil.

Contaminated water inside Unit 2 has tested at radiation levels some 100-thousand times normal amounts, plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. said.

Workers also discovered radioactive water in the deep trenches outside three units, with the airborne radiation levels outside Unit 2 exceeding 1,000 millisieverts per hour, more than four times the amount that the government considers safe for workers, TEPCO said on Monday.

The pits are designed as pathways to allow workers to lay out drainage pipes or electrical wires.

As officials scrambled to determine the source of the radioactive water, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said the contamination in Unit 2 appeared to be due to a partial meltdown of the reactor core.

A TEPCO spokesman said the presence of radioactive chemicals such as iodine and cesium point to damaged fuel rods as the source.

However, pressure inside the containers holding the reactors was stable, indicating any meltdown was only partial, a spokesman said, suggesting that the core remains largely intact.

Edano also said that the mistake made by TEPCO in measuring radiation at the plant "cannot be forgiven".

TEPCO officials reported early on Sunday that radiation in leaking water in the Unit 2 reactor was 10 million times above normal, a spike that forced employees to flee the unit.

But by the end of the day, officials said the huge figure had been miscalculated and a new test had found radiation levels 100,000 times above normal - far better than the first results, though still very high.

New readings show contamination in the ocean has spread about a mile farther north of the nuclear site than before.

Experts believe it could take weeks to clear out the radioactive water.

Travelling to Thailand is cheaper than Mohali

Mumbai:  Travelling to Mohali to catch the much-awaited India-Pakistan World Cup semi-final on Wednesday will cost you nearly as much, if not more, than a trip to a foreign destination.

Airlines, hotels and tour operators are cashing in on the fans' craze for seeing the clash of the archrivals, pushing up tour prices to nearly Rs. 50,000 for just a day.

Operators have witnessed a nearly 40 per cent rise in business and are charging very high rates for rooms and air tickets.

Confirming the same, Iqbal Mulla, treasurer, Travel Agents Association of India and owner, Treasure Tours and Travel Pvt Ltd said, "An India-Pakistan match is taking place after a long time and all the hotels and airlines have hiked their prices because of this.  The cost of travel packages, too, has shot up to such an extent that you can make a trip to Thailand for the same amount or less."

Mulla said the economy class airfare has gone up to as high as Rs. 30,000 and room rates, too, have nearly tripled in the last few days.

"Most of the flights are full and agents have also hiked their commission to make the most of the opportunity. The entire package costs between Rs. 50,000 and Rs. 60,000," he said.

Anjana Desai, director, Cutting Edge Events, which specialises in sports tourism, echoed Mulla's sentiments. "The demand for tickets and travel packages for the India-Pakistan tie is tremendous."

The VIP and chair block for the match has been sold out, according to information on Cutting Edge Events' website.

For a price of Rs. 20,000, they were offering one match ticket, merchandise a t-shirt or cap and return stadium transfer from a central point of the city in an AC Coach.

People going to Chandigarh or Mohali for reasons other than the cricket match have been badly hit and tour operators say they have advised them not to travel to these places until Wednesday to save on airfare.

Simran Chadda, a Juhu resident who wanted to travel to his hometown Chandigarh on Wednesday, had to do exactly that.

"My kids have a few holidays around that time and we had planned a trip to Chandigarh to meet my relatives. We had to postpone it, however, as the airfares are very steep because of the match.

Spending Rs. 20,000 for a one-way ticket doesn't make sense. I would get a return ticket for much less on a normal day," he said.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his wife Gursharan Kaur are likely to stay at the Punjab Raj Bhawan - the Governor's House, while President Pratibha Patil, if her visit is confirmed, will be put up at the adjoining Haryana Raj Bhawan.

Hyderabad youth arrested for defaming girl on Orkut

Hyderabad:  Cyberabad police today arrested a 25-year-old youth for allegedly harassing a girl through

abusive/vulgar messages and obscene pictures after creating a fake account on a social network website in her name.

The accused S Praveen Kumar alias Raju, a MSc graduate, created a fake email-Id and later opened an account using the photo of the victim in Orkut and pasted her photographs and some obscene scenes collected from different websites and wrote vulgar comments in that account.

He even used to respond to the messages and emails to that account, a release from the Cyberabad Police said.

"The accused with an intention to defame the girl created an account on her name with vulgar comments and obscene photographs," it said adding Praveen Kumar was nabbed fromGandhi Nagar.

The Cyber Crime Police station of Cyberabad Commissionerate registered a case against Praveen Kumar under Section 509 (Word, gesture or act intended to insult the modesty of a woman) of IPC and under relevant sections of the IT Act.