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[News] from [guardian.co.uk]

[Environment > Activism]
Drax climate change protesters sentenced today
The 22 men and women found guilty of obstruction are expected to be handed heavy community service sentences
Adam Vaughan
guardian.co.uk, Friday 4 September 2009 12.55 BST Article history

Climate protesters who hijacked a coal train on its way to Drax power station in June 2008 are expected to be sentenced today at 4.30pm. The 22 men and women, including a senior university lecturer, teachers and film-makers, were convicted in July of obstructing an engine or carriage using a railway. The judge has already ruled out prison and they are likely to receive heavy community service sentences.

Their hopes of repeating the "Kingsnorth Six" judgment last September, when activists who defaced a power station chimney were acquitted by a Kent jury, were dashed by a judge in July, who refused to admit arguments that the hijack was "necessary and proportionate to prevent the greater crime of carbon pollution".

At the end of the July trial, chief crown prosecutor North Yorkshire, Rob Turnbull, said: "This was not a peaceful demonstration about the environment, but a well planned and executed crime where two defendants impersonated railway employees and went onto the trackside to stop a train lawfully delivering coal to the power station."

However, Judge James Spencer did compliment the group, who conducted their own defence, on making an "eloquent, sincere, moving and engaging" case to the court. After the verdicts, he said that sentencing would definitely not include jail terms.

Speaking in the protesters' defence at the trial in July, defendant Jonathan Stevenson said: "The prosecution have not challenged the facts we presented to you on oath about the consequences of burning coal at Drax. 180 human lives lost every year, species lost forever. There is a direct, unequivocal, proven link between the emissions of carbon dioxide at this power station and the appalling consequences of climate change."

Those expecting to be sentenced today are: Theo Bard, 24; Amy Clancy, 24; Brian Farelly, 32; Grainne Gannon, 26; Bryn Hoskins, 24; Jasmin Karalis, 25; Ellen Potts, 33; Bertie Russell, 24; Alison Stratford, 26; Jonathan Stevenson, 27 and Felix Wight, all of London; Melanie Evans, 25; Matthew Fawcette, 34; Robin Gillett, 23; Kristina Jones, 22; Oliver Rodker, 40 and Thomas Spencer, 23, all of Manchester; Paul Chatterton, 36, and Louise Hemmerman, 31, of Leeds; Melanie Evans, 25, of Stockport; Paul Morozzo, 42, of Hebden Bridge; Christopher Ward, 38, of Newport Pagnell and Elizabeth Whelan of Glasgow.

[Environment > Pollution]
Local governments keep Chinese public in the dark about pollution
China's environment ministry says polluters are protected by a 'black box' of secrecy as local governments withhold information
Jonathan Watts, Asia environment correspondent
guardian.co.uk, Friday 4 September 2009 11.54 BST Article

Polluters in China are operating in a "black box" of secrecy, the Ministry of Environmental Protection has warned amid a rash of violent protests related to industrial poisoning.

Offenders are protected by the vast majority of local authorities defying Beijing and violating state law by refusing to disclose information about pollution, with a study showing just 4 out of 113 local governments complied.

The ministry said this lack of transparency was partly to blame for recent riots over lead and manganese poisoning in Shaanxi, Hunan and Fujian, which has affected thousands of children.

"Environmental impact assessment was meant to prevent these kinds of harm, but EIA has repeatedly failed to carry out its duties," the ministry noted on its website after the riots. "In the battle between illegal polluters and their opponents, the disparity in power is too great for the public interest to be effectively protected."

An information transparency law introduced in May 2008 was supposed to ease public concerns about the environment and to hold polluters to account.

But more than a year after it came into effect, a survey by leading NGOs and academics found that only four local governments provided comprehensive details about pollution violations as they were obliged to do.

Eighty-six failed to respond beyond claiming the information was secret or an inappropriate subject to raise in an economic downturn. Others simply ignored the request.

Ma Jun, who founded the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs which carried out the survey with support from the US-based National Resources Defence Council, said local government transparency was at a very basic level. But he emphasised the success of the four who met the targets first year around – Ningbo, Hefei, Fuzhou and Wuhan – and claimed progress should be put in a historical perspective.

"China has never had a tradition of opening up government information before," said Ma, a winner earlier this week of the coveted Ramon Magsaysay Award for integrity in government. "The conclusion from our survey is that this is doable. If the local governments share best practice they can easily improve."

The environment ministry was less guarded in its criticism of local governments. Citing the results of the survey and the recent pollution disturbances, it said more information was vital.

"The absence of comprehensive, timely environmental data has given polluting companies and local authorities the chance to operate in a 'black box'. To break this practice, we need to bring everything out into the sunlight," it said.

[News > Science]
Global warming has made Arctic summers hottest for 2,000 years
The Arctic has warmed as a result of climate change, despite the Earth being farther from the sun during summer months
Ian Sample, science correspondent guardian.co.uk, Thursday 3 September 2009 19.00 BST Article history

Warming as a result of increased levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere has overwhelmed a millennia-long cycle of natural cooling in the Arctic, raising temperatures in the region to their highest for at least 2,000 years, according to a report.

The Arctic began to cool several thousand years ago as changes in the planet's orbit increased the distance between the sun and the Earth and reduced the amount of sunlight reaching high northern latitudes during the summer.

But despite the Earth being farther from the sun during the northern hemisphere's summer solstice, the Arctic summer is now 1.2C warmer than it was in 1900.

Writing in the US journal Science, an international team of researchers describe how thousands of years of natural cooling in the Arctic were followed by a rise in temperatures from 1900 which accelerated briskly after 1950.

The warming of the Arctic is more alarming in view of the natural cooling cycle, which by itself would have seen temperatures 1.4C cooler than they are today, scientists said.

"The accumulation of greenhouse gases is interrupting the natural cycle towards overall cooling," said Professor Darrell Kaufman, a climate scientist at Northern Arizona University and lead author of the study.

"There's no doubt it will lead to melting glacier ice, which will impact on coastal regions around the world. Warming in the region will also cause more permafrost thawing, which will release methane gas into the atmosphere," he added.

Scientists fear that warming could release billions of tonnes of methane from frozen soils in the Arctic, driving global temperatures even higher.

On a tour of the Arctic this week, UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon urged nations to support a comprehensive accord to limit greenhouse gas emissions ahead of the organisation's climate summit in Copenhagen in December. The accord has been drawn up as a successor to the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.

The latest study comes months after scientists at the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) warned that within the next 30 years Arctic sea ice is likely to vanish completely during the summer for the first time.

Kaufman and his colleagues reconstructed a decade-by-decade record of the Arctic climate over the past 2,000 years by analysing lake sediments, ice cores and tree rings. Computer simulations of changes in seasonal sunlight levels caused by the Earth's elliptical orbit and the shifting tilt of its axis verified the long-term cooling trend.

The scientists showed that summer temperatures in the Arctic fell by an average of 0.2C every thousand years, but that this cooling was swamped by human-induced warming in the 20th century.

"This study provides a clear example of how increased greenhouse gases are now changing our climate, ending at least 2,000 years of Arctic cooling," said Caspar Ammann, a climate scientist and co-author of the report at the National Centre for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado.

The Arctic began cooling around 8,000 years ago as natural variations in the Earth's orbit and angle of tilt reduced the amount of sunlight reaching high latitudes. Today, the planet is one million kilometres farther away from the sun during the northern hemisphere's summer solstice than it was in 1BC. This natural cooling effect will continue for 4,000 more years.

Previous research has shown that temperatures over the past century rose nearly three times as fast in the Arctic as elsewhere in the northern hemisphere. This is due to an effect called Arctic amplification, whereby highly reflective sea ice and snow melt to reveal darker land and sea water, which absorb sunlight and warm up more quickly.

news20090904gc2

[News] from [guardian.co.uk]

[Environment >Climate change scepticism]
Miliband's new mayor poo-poos global warming 'scam'
Mayor Peter Davies has urged local residents to halt plans for wind farms 'blocking out sunlight' and encourages driving as we are 'in the age of the car'
Allegra Stratton, Political correspondent
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 3 September 2009 17.24 BST Article history

The newly elected mayor of Doncaster has described global warming as a "scam", posing a direct challenge to the town's MP, climate change cabinet minister Ed Miliband.

While Miliband pursued international diplomacy in India, ahead of December's crucial climate change summit in Copenhagen, mayor Peter Davies urged local residents to use the law to halt the building of wind farms whose effects he said included "blocking of sunlight". On hearing of Davies's intervention, Miliband replied immediately on Twitter: "Disgrace given the science and the scale of the threat."

Davies's comments came in a statement issued earlier this week making clear to voters where he stood on forthcoming plans to erect wind farms in the Doncaster region. Davies, who represents the English democrat party, made clear neither he nor his council had a role in the decision-making process but said; "These [wind farm] developments have little or no benefit in terms of contributing to decreased energy consumption, nor do they have any beneficial effect on the planet's climate in response to the great global warming scam."

Davies went on: "I would certainly not want one of these monstrosities anywhere near my property, nor do I want to see them blotting the landscape of the English countryside and waterways and causing grief and concern to local people in terms of noise and the blocking of sunlight.

"I therefore urge the public to oppose these developments through legal means provided so that good old-fashioned English justice and common sense may prevail."

Davies was elected in June with 25,344 votes as mayor and his cabinet oversees the carbon intensive portfolio of transport. In a recent newspaper interview he suggested he wanted to encourage car use within Doncaster, saying it would boost business. "Like it or not," he told the Daily Mail, "we live in the age of the car".

Under his stewardship, Doncaster council has announced plans for more parking spaces and a review of bus-only routes. Doncaster's town centre is currently pedestrianised.

Since entering office he has cut his own salary by 60% from £73,000 to £30,000; given up the use of a chauffeured mayoral car and abolished the council's free newspaper.

In a full statement, Miliband said the greatest threat to Doncaster's natural environment was climate change not wind turbines. Miliband has previously said in March that opposing wind farms should become as socially unacceptable as failing to wear a seatbelt.

Allegra Stratton, Political correspondent guardian.co.uk, Thursday 3 September 2009 17.24 BST Article


[Environment > 10:10 climate change campaign]
Entire cabinet signs up to 10:10 climate change campaign
Alok Jha guardian.co.uk, Thursday 3 September 2009 21.33 BST Article history

Gordon Brown and his senior ministers all committed to cutting their personal carbon emissions today as the entire cabinet signed up to the 10:10 climate change campaign.

The cabinet pledge came as the number of individuals who have signed up to cut their greenhouse gas emissions by 10% in 2010 passed the 10,000 mark.

Climate change secretary Ed Miliband, who had already promised to cut his emissions and those of his department, urged his colleagues to join the Guardian-backed campaign at today's cabinet meeting held on the London Olympics site.

He said: "There was a real sense that this is the right thing to do, and that this has very powerful symbolism, but you've got to put your policy money where your mouth is. David Cameron has a wind turbine on his roof but all round the country Tory councils are turning down wind farms."

The Tory frontbench as well as the Liberal Democrat leader, Nick Clegg, have signed up to the campaign which is aimed at increasing pressure on governments to take strong action ahead of December's crucial summit in Copenhagen.

Last night Franny Armstrong, director of the climate change film Age of Stupid and the 10:10 founder said: "It's amazing that within 48 hours of the campaign's launch, the leaderships of the three main political parties have committed to cut their 10%. Who said people power was dead? These politicians clearly recognise that each person in Britain must start cutting their emissions as part of a national war-effort-scale response to the climate crisis. But ministers have a responsibility far beyond their individual emissions – they must now introduce the policies to ensure Britain cuts its overall emissions by a similar amount."

In a case of art imitating life, Peter Capaldi, the actor who plays the Alastair Campbell figure Malcolm Tucker in The Thick of It was among several thousand people today who pledged to cut their emissions, joining high profile backers including Delia Smith, Colin Firth, Radio One DJ Sara Cox and Nicholas Stern.

In addition to the 10,000 individuals, more than 400 businesses and organisations including charities, schools and hospitals have so far signed up to cut their carbon footprint in 2010. Olympics minister Tessa Jowell said she signed up because 10:10 was a way for Britons to feel more involved in the run-up to the international climate talks in Copenhagen.

"I used to be addicted to my car but even though I have cut back on using it recently, I plan to cut back even more now. At home I want to replace my light bulbs with energy efficient ones and will be turning down my thermostat by a degree as soon as I get back. I will also be thinking very hard before booking more than one private international flight a year."

Health secretary Andy Burnham said: "I'm signing up to the 10:10 campaign because it gives me a chance to really show I can make a difference on a personal level to tackling climate change. Everyone who signs up can be part of a big national effort – all of us pulling together to prevent global warming."

The organisations that have signed up so far range from small charities with a dozen employees to major multinationals with many thousands of people.

The Roald Dahl Museum and Story Centre in Buckinghamshire signed up so it could influence its visitors over the coming year. In 2010, the lighting in the museum will be attached to motion and daylight sensors and the heating will be turned down. "People come here because they're inspired by Roald Dahl and we'd like to inspire our 50,000 visitors a year to make some changes in their life too," said director Amelia Foster.

news20-090904gc3

[News] from [guardian.co.uk]

[World news > Japan]
Japan's first lady: 'Venus is a beautiful place'
Miyuki Hatoyama, wife of the new PM, on UFOs and meeting Tom Cruise in a previous life
Justin McCurry guardian.co.uk,
Thursday 3 September 2009 20.13 BST Article

As Japan's new prime minister, Yukio Hatoyama, agonises over the formation of his government, he is unlikely to be losing much sleep dreaming up a role for his first lady. While Michelle Obama, Carla Bruni and Sarah Brown have all had to strike an awkward balance between supportive wife and public figure, Miyuki Hatoyama has cultivated a third role – that of pedlar of new age bunkum.

With the dust barely settled on last Sunday's election, Miyuki – whose husband will officially become Japan's leader on 16 September – is already emerging as a gloriously eccentric foil to her humdrum hubby. While he reassures the US that his country is committed to the bilateral alliance, she regales the media with tales of interplanetary travel and, er, solar breakfasts.

"I eat the sun," Miyuki says, raising her arms as if to tear pieces off an imaginary sun. "Like this: yum, yum, yum. It gives me enormous energy. My husband has recently started doing that too." Clearly, this is where Gordon Brown has been going wrong.

When she isn't tucking into the centrepiece of our solar system, the 66-year-old former dancer pens cookbooks with humble titles such as Hatoyama Miyuki's Hawaiian Spiritual Food. She makes her own clothes (including a skirt made from hemp coffee bags) and, as she demonstrated during the election campaign, can also do a very passable Moonwalk.

But it is her extraterrestrial experiences that have triggered an avalanche of media coverage her husband could never hope to match. In a book entitled Very Strange Things I've Encountered, his wife has claimed that she was abducted by aliens as she slept one night 20 years ago, then whisked off to the final frontier. "While my body was asleep, I think my soul rode on a triangular-shaped UFO and went to Venus," she wrote, adding: "It was a very beautiful place, and it was very green."

By happy coincidence, Miyuki is married to a man whom his parliamentary colleagues once nicknamed "the Alien", a comment on his sometimes otherworldly manner and an unkind reference to his prominent eyes. His wife's revelatory book was published last year, but only now have her foibles become staples of daytime television. Perhaps revealingly, she says that when she recounted her Venusian encounter to her first husband, he suggested it had probably been a dream. But her second, the 62-year-old Hatoyama, is more accommodating: "He has a different way of thinking and would surely say, 'Oh, that's great.'"

Michelle Obama, too, will surely be delighted to learn that Miyuki sees in her a kindred spirit. "I think she is so natural and has a kind of sensibility similar to mine. If I get the chance to meet her, I'd look forward to it."

Hatoyama appears admirably unruffled by his wife's idiosyncrasies, saying: "I feel relieved when I get home. She is like an energy-refuelling base." Miyuki, too, paints an idyllic picture of life chez Hatoyama, where her husband indulges his love of animal movies and feeds his addiction to prawn crackers.

She honed her theatrical delivery back in the 60s when performing for the Takarazuka Revue, an all-female theatrical troupe that specialises in kitsch adaptations of classics such as Guys and Dolls and The Sound of Music. After six years on the stage, she moved to the US with her Japanese restaurateur husband. It was there that she met Hatoyama, then a graduate student of engineering at Stanford University. They married in 1975.

The popular notion that Japanese women are demure and subservient is a lazy stereotype, but Miyuki's behaviour would seem bizarre in any country. Judged by the standards set by previous Japanese first ladies, it borders on the impertinent. In a TV interview earlier this year,she claimed she had met Tom Cruise in a previous life, in what must have been an unnerving meeting of Scientology and new age spiritualism.

"I have a dream that I still believe will come true, which is to make a film in Hollywood," she said. "The lead actor is Tom Cruise, of course. Why? Because he was Japanese in a previous life."

Cruise, whose closest professional brush with Japanese culture was a leading role in the ludicrous 2003 film Last Samurai, "would recognise me when I see him and say: 'Long time, no see!'" Michelle Obama may not be quite so effusive.

news20090904nn

[naturenews] from [nature.com]


News
India says no to HIV drug patents
Patent office rejects applications from two US drug companies.
Declan Butler

India has rejected applications from two US companies for patents on two key AIDS drugs in a move that could mean more people in poor countries will have access to life-saving medicines.

The decisions are the latest in a string of legal victories for Cipla, India's largest generic drug maker. The move could also signal that patent offices in emerging economies are set to take a tougher line than industrialized countries on which drugs deserve patents.

India's patent office rejected claims by Gilead on Tenofovir — a nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor, which is a frontline drug against HIV/AIDS in poor countries — and by Tibotec on Darunavir, a newer and more expensive protease inhibitor used as a second-line drug. Both drugs block enzymes that HIV needs to replicate.

The rejection of patents on the two drugs opens the way for India to not only produce cheaper generics for its own population, but also export them to countries where the drug is not patented — reaffirming India's role as the 'pharmacy' of poor countries. "I only fight cases where I'm sure I've a very strong wicket," says Yusuf Hamied, chairman and managing director of Cipla. "We are delighted that we have been vindicated."

Karen Manson, a spokeswoman for Tibotec, says the company is still "studying the decision" and it is too soon to comment. A Gilead spokeswoman said the company has yet to receive an official notification of the decision from the Indian patent office.

Double-edged deal

The major battle was over Tenofovir, given its extensive use. In 2006, Cipla and a group of Indian and Brazilian non-government organizations (NGOs) independently filed oppositions to Gilead's patent applications on the drug — marking the first time foreign NGOs had joined Indian ones in contesting a drug patent, a move motivated by the fact that the decision could impact pricing of the drug in Brazil. Gilead responded by striking a deal the same year with 13 other Indian generic manufacturers, giving them a license to make the drug for a 5% royalty.

{“I only fight cases where I'm sure I've a very strong wicket.”
Yusuf Hamied
Cipla}

"Gilead was worried that they might lose, so they offered licenses, but these came with a sting in the tail," says Michelle Childs, director of Médecins sans Frontières's Access to Essential Medicines Campaign. Manufacturers could only buy the active ingredient — the most expensive part of a drug — from Gilead-approved suppliers, and they could only sell the drug to 95 of the poorest countries, not to middle-income countries such as China and Brazil which nonetheless have substantial poor populations.

Together these restrictions limited the price reductions the generic makers could offer, says Childs. The Indian patent office decision now guarantees such countries access to a cheap generic supplier, she says.

"Cipla decided to fight rather than sign up to the license; it took a risk and it has paid off," says Childs, noting that Cipla risked patent infringement if it lost. The patent office decision — taken on 30 July but communicated to Cipla on 29 August — appears to vindicate the company's case. The decision threw out Gilead's patent claims and upheld the opponent's assertion that the drug was not sufficently novel to deserve a patent.
On a roll

In both claims on Tenofovir and Darunavir, the office also turned down patent applications on variants of the drugs. The decision is seen as a strong rejection of a process known as "evergreening", where companies seek new patents on minor modifications to drugs that may offer only small increases in clinical efficacy. The tactic can effectively extend the patent life of a drug and block competitors from producing cheaper, generic counterparts to these drugs.

The rulings mark a significant application of a little-known provision in the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreement, which allows countries flexibility in setting the criteria for what is patentable. India is using the provision in ways that put it ahead of industrialized countries in dealing with evergreening, says Childs.

The decisions come on the heels of two other major legal victories notched up by Cipla. On 19 August, the Delhi High Court threw out a suit brought by Bayer against both Cipla and the country's drug regulator, the Drug Controller General of India, for approving Cipla's generic version of Bayer's patented kidney cancer drug Nexavar. And on 29 August, the Supreme Court of India rejected a challenge by Roche to a High Court decision in April that allowed Cipla to market a generic of its lung cancer drug Tarceva.

The former ruling sets a significant precedent for future drug approvals in India because it suggests that those decisions should not be influenced by the status of the drug's patent. And all three cases underscore the current struggle in emerging economies to balance the need for patents to reward innovation while ensuring they do not prevent access to affordable medicines.


[naturenews]
Published online 3 September 2009 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2009.881
News
'Overwhelming' evidence for monopoles
Multiple experiments reveal materials with single points of north and south.
Geoff Brumfiel

One of those facts of life that physicists live with is that every magnet ever made has a north and a south pole. When researchers try to split the two, they simply get another magnet with poles of its own. There's no reason that should be the case, and for decades they have been on the hunt for a single pole, or monopole.

"People have been looking for monopoles in cosmic rays and particle accelerators — even Moon rocks," says Jonathan Morris, a researcher at the Helmholtz Centre for Materials and Energy in Berlin.

Now Morris and others have found the strongest evidence yet for magnetic monopoles, in small crystals about the size of an ear plug. When the crystals are chilled to near absolute zero, they seem to fill with tiny single points of north and south. The points are less than a nanometre apart, and cannot be measured directly. Nevertheless, Morris and other physicists believe they are there. They make their case in two papers published today in the journal Science^1,2, and other work published on the pre-print server arXiv.org^3,4.

The crystals are made of materials known as 'spin ice', because their atoms are arranged in a way similar to those in water ice. Specifically, its atoms sit at the vertices of four-sided pyramids. Each atom behaves like a tiny bar magnet, and when the crystal is cooled to near absolute zero, the atom-magnets align. Sometimes, three of the pyramid's four corners align together and create a region of north or south magnetic charge at the centre of the pyramid. The charge isn't attached to any physical object, but it behaves just as a monopole would.

Unquestionable evidence?

Theoretical work had shown that monopoles probably exist, and they have been measured indirectly. But the Science papers are the first direct experiments to record the monopole's effects on the spin-ice material. The papers use neutrons to detect atoms in the crystal aligned into long daisy chains^1,2. These daisy chains tie each north and south monopole together. Known as 'Dirac strings', the chains, as well as the existence of monopoles, were predicted in the 1930s by the British theoretical physicist Paul Dirac. Heat measurements in one paper¹. also support the monopole argument.

The two, as yet unpublished, papers on arXiv add to the evidence. The first provides additional observations³, and the second uses a new technique to determine the magnetic charge of each monopole to be 4.6x10-13 joules per tesla metre<sup>4. All together, the evidence for magnetic monopoles "is now overwhelming", says Steve Bramwell, a materials scientist at University College London and author on one of the Science papers2 and one of the arXiv papers4.

"This sort of measurement makes monopoles more substantial, at least in my mind," says Peter Schiffer, a researcher at Pennsylvania State University in University Park. Whether the monopoles will be seen directly is another question, says Schiffer. Like any charged particle, opposites attract, and the north and south poles typically cluster together less than a nanometre from each other. That makes them extremely hard to detect individually. But, Schiffer says, "I'm very hesitant to say that anything is impossible."

Even without directly seeing one, Bramwell says that he is certain that the monopoles are there. "I don't think anybody could question it after this flurry of papers," he says.

References
1. Kadowaki, H. et al. preprint at http://arXiv.org/abs/0908.3568v2 (2009).
2. Fennell, T. et al. Science advance online publication doi:10.1126/science.1177582 (2009).
3. Kadowaki, H. et al. preprint at http://arXiv.org/abs/0908.3568v2 (2009).
4. Bramwell, S. T. et al. preprint at http://arxiv.org/abs/0907.0956 (2009).</sup>

news20090904bn1

[One-Minute World News] from [BBC NEWS]

[Asia-Pacific]
Page last updated at 07:10 GMT, Friday, 4 September 2009 08:10 UK<Many die in Afghan tanker blasts At least 90 people have been killed after a Nato air strike blew up two fuel tankers hijacked by the Taliban in northern Afghanistan, officials say.

Nato confirmed to the BBC that an air strike happened in Kunduz province on the main road to Baghlan.

The governor of Kunduz told the BBC senior Taliban commanders were killed. Witnesses said villagers also died.

A spokesman for the Nato-led coalition said it was investigating reports of civilian deaths.

A Taliban spokesman confirmed to the BBC that its fighters had stolen two Nato fuel tankers on Thursday night, which then got stuck, although he did not say how.

The Taliban decided to empty the tankers and local people arrived to take some of the fuel, he said.

At this point, a Nato air strike hit the tankers causing a huge explosion.

An International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) spokesman in Kabul told the BBC that Isaf forces had spotted the hijacked tankers on the banks of the Kunduz river and the local commander ordered an air strike in which both tankers were destroyed.

{ ANALYSIS
Chris Morris, BBC News, Afghanistan
If it emerges that a number of civilians have been killed then that will obviously be very disappointing to Nato.
The issue of civilian casualties caused by international military action is extremely sensitive here. It has caused great anger.
It is something military commanders have said they are determined to clamp down on, because they say if they win territory and not the people then they are not doing their job.}

The spokesman said a number of "insurgents" were killed.

One of the drivers of the tankers told the BBC that two of his colleagues had been beheaded when the Taliban carried out the hijacking.

Kunduz province Governor Mohammad Omar said most of the dead were Taliban fighters - including Chechen fighters - although other sources say many villagers had been killed while collecting fuel from the tankers.

Seriously burned people are crowding a hospital in Kunduz, AFP reported.

Rush for fuel

Witness Mohammad Daud, 32, told AFP that the militants had been trying to transport the tankers across a river to villages in Angorbagh.

"They managed to take one of the tankers over the river. The second got stuck so they told villagers to come and take the diesel," he said.

"Villagers rushed to the fuel tanker with any available container that they had, including water buckets and pots for cooking oil.

"There were 10 to 15 Taliban on top of the tanker. This was when they were bombed. Everyone around the fuel tanker died."

The incident came days after the top US general in Afghanistan reiterated calls for a fresh approach to the conflict.

"The situation in Afghanistan is serious, but success is achievable and demands a revised implementation strategy, commitment and resolve, and increased unity of effort," Gen Stanley McChrystal wrote.


[Asia-Pacific]
Page last updated at 06:40 GMT, Friday, 4 September 2009 07:40 UK
N Korea 'in final uranium phase'
North Korea has entered the final phase of uranium enrichment, the country's state media has reported.

"Uranium enrichment tests have been successfully carried out and that process is in the concluding stage," the North's KCNA news agency said.

Uranium enrichment would give Pyongyang a second way to make a nuclear bomb - but it also said it was continuing to reprocess and weaponise plutonium.

The UN passed tougher sanctions after a nuclear test by Pyongyang in May.

Both that test and an earlier nuclear test by North Korea in 2006 were understood to have been carried out with plutonium.

The worry is that uranium enrichment is a process that can be easily hidden, and in addition, North Korea has ample natural reserves of the raw material, says the BBC's John Sudworth in South Korea.

Defiance

KCNA reported that North Korea's delegation at the United Nations had written to the UN Security Council, saying Pyongyang was now ready "for both sanctions and dialogue".

"Reprocessing of spent fuel rods is at its final phase and extracted plutonium is being weaponised," it said.

"If some permanent members of the UN Security Council wish to put sanctions first before dialogue, we would respond with bolstering our nuclear deterrence first before we meet them in a dialogue," the delegation said.

South Korea's Foreign Ministry condemned what it calls "threats and provocative acts."

The United States' special envoy for North Korea, Stephen Bosworth, said the enrichment claim was "of concern".

"Obviously, anything that the North is doing in the area of nuclear development is of concern to us," he said.

North Korea has gone from completely denying that it was enriching uranium just three months ago to admitting processing, says our correspondent.

The statement may seem to be at odds with recent gestures from Pyongyang that many observers saw as an attempt to lower tensions.

But South Korea's defence minister warned in June that "it is clear" the North was going ahead with plans to enrich uranium.

Lee Sang-hee said an uranium enrichment programme would be far easier to hide than reprocessing plutonium from spent fuel rods, as it can be conducted in a space as small as 600 sq metres (6,500 sq feet).

North Korea's plutonium programme is based on the Yongbyon reactor, which is under US satellite observation.

Observers say the US has long suspected the existence of a secret uranium enrichment programme in the North, though experts say it remains little-developed.

Renewed tensions

But recently, the secretive communist nation has made more conciliatory gestures on the world stage.

Two US reporters and a South Korean worker were released from detention and Pyongyang said it was interested in resuming cross-border tourism and industrial projects with the South.

Less than two weeks ago, the first meeting between officials from the North and South for nearly two years took place unexpectedly in the South's capital, Seoul.

However, the KCNA report indicates the North is unhappy that the UN allowed South Korea to launch a satellite last month, having condemned its own rocket launch in April.

The communique also reiterated Pyongyang's opposition to continuing the long-running six-party talks, involving the two Koreas, China, Russia, the US and Japan, on the nuclear issue.

"We have never objected to the denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula and of the world itself," it said.

"What we objected to is the structure of the six-way talks which had been used to violate outrageously [North Korea's] sovereignty and its right to peaceful development".

Pyongyang has in the past said it is open to direct talks with the US, but US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in June that the six-party talk framework was "the appropriate way to engage with North Korea".

Correspondents said Pyongyang's latest remarks appeared to seek once again to ratchet up tensions on the Korean peninsula.

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[One-Minute World News] from [BBC NEWS]

[Asia-Pacific]
Page last updated at 03:17 GMT, Friday, 4 September 2009 04:17 UK
Police impose calm on China city
Armed police are on the streets of Urumqi, in China's far western province of Xinjiang, in an attempt to prevent a third day of protests in the city.

Police were deployed overnight after large numbers of Han Chinese protested in central areas on Thursday.

A witness told the BBC that as many as 2,000 ethnic Han Chinese had been demonstrating in the capital Urumqi over the previous two days.

Almost 200 people were killed in violence with ethnic Uighurs in July.

A trigger for the protests appears to have been a spate of unexplained stabbings using hypodermic syringes.

Local media said nearly 500 people, almost all Han, had sought treatment for stabbing in the past few weeks.

State-run news agency Xinhua said that 15 people had been arrested over the stabbings, and that four of them had already been prosecuted.

Safety fears

The streets of Urumqi were quiet on Friday, reports said, as large groups of police imposed order on the city.

The BBC's Michael Bristow, in Urumqi, says police were waiting in trucks down side streets and standing guard at roadblocks on Friday.

They stood guard in the central square and in the surrounding streets, our correspondent says.

A businessman in Urumqi told the BBC on Thursday that many members of the Han community had been demonstrating.

"Nearly everyone in Urumqi is on strike or protesting. Right now in front of me there are at least 2,000 people," he said from the centre of Urumqi.

Police moved to contain the protesters in central Urumqi
Local state media said the protest was over a recent spate of stabbings by people armed with hypodermic syringes.

A public service announcement on local Xinjiang TV said that 476 people had sought treatment for stabbing - 433 of whom were Han Chinese, suggesting the attacks were ethnically motivated.

One Han resident told the BBC he was concerned for his safety.

"The local government is not doing enough to protect Han people there... I am really [worried about] my family and relatives there. I urge [the] Chinese government should do more to prevent this," he told the BBC.

Protesters have accused the provincial government of being "useless", and some even asked for the dismissal of regional Communist Party boss Wang Lequan, who is thought to be an ally of President Hu Jintao.

Large numbers of police blocked the protesters from reaching People's Square in the city centre.

Ethnic tension

Thursday's demonstration underscored the lingering tensions that still remain in Urumqi after the July violence, despite the large police presence that remains in the city.

The protests also come at a bad time for the central government in Beijing, as it prepares to celebrate the 60th anniversary of Communist rule on 1 October.

The tension between Xinjiang's Uighur and Han communities has been simmering for many years, but the ethnic unrest in July was the worst in China for decades.

The violence began when an initially peaceful protest by Uighur youths, apparently prompted by an earlier riot in a factory in southern China, spiralled out of control - with shops and vehicles burned and passers-by attacked.

At least 197 people died and about 1,600 were injured, according to official figures.

The government says most of the dead were Han, but the exile activist group the World Uighur Congress claims many Uighurs were also killed.

Members of the city's Han community last held mass protests shortly after July's violence.

About 80 people have been charged over the violence but no date has been set for their trial.

Some Uighurs complain that Han migration into the province has diluted their culture and marginalised them economically.

Han currently account for roughly 40% of Xinjiang's population, while about 45% are Uighurs.

President Hu Jintao visited the region in late August and called for ethnic unity to be strengthened.


[Asia-Pacific > Entertainment]
Page last updated at 08:31 GMT, Friday, 4 September 2009 09:31 UK
'Needles' riots continue in China
There have been further protests in the far western Chinese city of Urumqi, capital of Xinjiang province.

A large crowd of Han Chinese confronted hundreds of riot police for a third day amid growing anger in the city over attacks with hypodermic needles.

Protesters have also been demanding quicker trials for people charged over deadly ethnic riots in July.

Almost 200 people, most of them Han Chinese, were killed in violence with ethnic Uighurs in Urumqi.

Chinese authorities blame Uighur separatists for July's violence, saying it was orchestrated by Uighur separatists in exile. Xinjiang's population is split between mainly-Muslim Uighurs and Han Chinese - the country's majority ethnic group.

Stand-off

The BBC's Michael Bristow, in Urumqi, describes the situation as tense.

Police were guarding the central People's Square - scene of a large demonstration on Thursday - and waiting at roadblocks and in lorries parked on side streets.

Several hundred police in riot gear broke away to confront a crowd of protesters at a central intersection.

There were scuffles as police arrested several protesters, but the stand-off continued.

Large numbers of police were deployed overnight in the city after crowds of Han Chinese protested in central areas on Thursday.

A witness told the BBC that as many as 2,000 ethnic Han Chinese had been demonstrating in the capital Urumqi over the previous two days.

Safety fears

A series of unexplained stabbings using hypodermic syringes appears to be a trigger for the protests.

Chinese media said that nearly 500 people, almost all Han, have sought treatment for stabbings in the past few weeks. Reports said 89 people had "clear syringe marks" but that no-one had been infected or poisoned.

A businessman in Urumqi told the BBC on Thursday that many members of the Han community had joined the demonstrations.

Another Han resident said he was concerned for his safety.

"The local government is not doing enough to protect Han people there... I am really [worried about] my family and relatives there. [The] Chinese government should do more to prevent this," he told the BBC.

There is also anger over what many perceive as official slowness in punishing suspects charged for July's riots.

Protesters have accused the provincial government of being "useless", and some even called for the dismissal of regional Communist Party boss Wang Lequan, who is thought to be an ally of President Hu Jintao.

Ethnic tension

The tension between Xinjiang's Uighur and Han communities has been simmering for many years, but the ethnic unrest in July was the worst in China for decades.

The violence began on 5 July when an initially peaceful protest by Uighur youths, apparently prompted by an earlier riot in a factory in southern China, spiralled out of control - with shops and vehicles burned and passers-by attacked.

About 80 people have been charged over the violence but no date has been set for their trial.