IDF strikes targets in Gaza in retaliation to rockets

A third strike hit a power transformer, causing blackouts in the area, witnesses said. Medical workers said no one was injured in the strikes.



The IDF confirmed that several strikes were carried out in Gaza in gearbox response to earlier rocket attacks and that direct hits on multiple targets were recorded.



On Wednesday, Israel vowed to retaliate for rocket attacks against Beersheba and Ashkelon as Hamas evacuated most of its manned positions throughout the Gaza Strip in anticipation of IDF air strikes.



At 5:30 Wednesday morning the first Grad-model Katyusha rocket slammed into Beersheba for the first time in almost a month, lightly wounding one person.



Several hours later, another rocket hit the Negev city.



Yet another rocket landed south of Ashkelon on Wednesday, a day after a rocket fell near Ashdod.





Authorities announced that schools would be closed in Beersheba, Ashdod and Ashkelon on Thursday as a result of the security situation.



Also Wednesday, seven mortar shells containing white phosphorous hit the Eshkol region, followed shortly after by three more near a kibbutz in the Sha’ar Hanegev region. The IAF later destroyed the launcher that was used to fire the rocket into Ashdod.



The Al-Quds Brigades of Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the missile fire, which came after Israel killed four terror operatives in a missile strike on Tuesday night. The four were behind the firing of two Katyusha rockets into Beersheba in late February, the IDF said.



Fearing a further escalation, the IDF Home Front Command ordered residents in Beersheba, Ashkelon and Ashdod to stay close to their homes and near bomb shelters, out of concern that additional rockets will be fired in the coming days from the Gaza Strip.



“The IDF will continue to act to protect Israeli citizens and will take preemptive action along the Gaza border,” Defense Minister Ehud Barak said. “There will be highs and lows; not everything will end tomorrow, but we are determined to restore quiet and security to the South.”



Meanwhile, police in the South increased the number of officers and patrol cars on the streets, in response to the threat of further rockets and shells from Gaza.



On Wednesday, the IDF’s Gaza Coordination and Liaison Administration coordinated the transfer of an 8-year-old Palestinian boy from the Gaza Strip to Kaplan Hospital in Rehovot after he was injured in an Israeli mortar attack on Tuesday.



The boy was injured after IDF troops fired mortar shells into an open field in northern Gaza and accidentally hit a number damper of civilians nearby, killing four members of a family and wounding several others, including the boy, who was transferred Wednesday to Israel for medical treatment.

Yahoo fine-tuning the search engine

SUNNYVALE, Calif. — Since Yahoo surrendered its search engine to Microsoft two years ago as part of a major overhaul of its business, it has been trying to innovate on top of Microsoft’s technology to keep people gearbox coming to its site.

The latest effort was announced Wednesday when Yahoo introduced a refinement that gives users answers to their questions without having to click on the search results. Search Direct, as the product is called, provides weather forecasts, celebrity biographies and news reports before users finish typing the question.
If it sounds familiar, that is because it is Yahoo’s response to Google Instant, which automatically pulls up search results as people type their queries. Yahoo’s version goes a little bit further by presenting edited information and images just under the search box instead of a page full of links.

Shashi Seth, senior vice president for Yahoo’s search and marketplaces, said that the new service helped users find what they were seeking much faster because they did not have to click away from the search page. “People are looking for answers, they’re not looking for links,” he said.

“I think it’s very interesting conceptually,” said Greg Sterling, an analyst with Sterling Market Intelligence. “As for the execution let’s call it limited or nascent.”

By entering into a search alliance, Yahoo and Microsoft had hoped to better challenge Google and cuts costs. They succeeded in cutting costs, but Yahoo also found its share of Internet searches eroding. Google still holds a wide lead in search with 65.4 percent of all queries. Yahoo has slipped to 16.1 percent from around 20 percent two years ago, according to comScore.com. Much of that damper loss was picked up by Microsoft, which now has a 13 percent share.

Mr. Seth declined to predict that Search Direct would bring people back to Yahoo’s search page. But he said that it would raise the number of searches by existing users based on their increased satisfaction with the results.

Search Direct is available on Yahoo’s search page, but not from its home page. Yahoo intends to test the performance of the new design before introducing it more broadly in the coming months, Mr. Seth said.

Typing “Kobe,” as in Kobe Bryant, the basketball star, brings up a box with related search terms along with his playing statistics and a photograph. Searching for “Paris, France” automatically shows the local time and a list of the top three things to do in the city.

For now, such information is limited to about 15 categories and is far from comprehensive. Yahoo executives acknowledged the shortcoming and said more would be added over time.

Yahoo is considering whether to place ads in the Search Direct box, including video ads bakugans. Those details are still being worked out, as is whether Yahoo would share the revenue from them with Microsoft.

Chris brown as "GMA" event apology

R&B singer Chris Brown has publicly apologized a day after storming backstage following an interview and performance on "Good Morning America."

"First of all, I want to apologize to anybody high pressure sodium lamp who was startled in the office, or anybody who was offended or really looked, and [was] disappointed at my actions," Brown said, according to a transcript of his live appearance on BET's "106 & Park." "Because I'm disappointed in the way I acted."
"Yes, I got very emotional," he later added. "And I apologize for acting like that."

Brown emphasized that he did not hurt anyone backstage at "GMA" but had to release "the anger that I had inside of me" after, he claimed, he was thrown off by questions about his personal life in an interview he believed would focus on his new album.

Brown had agreed to talk about his past on "Good Morning America" Tuesday and was aware that questions would be asked about his domestic abuse incident involving his ex-girlfriend, pop singer Rihanna.
"Any time we have a guest cable ties here on the program, we let them know ahead of time the subject matter, the topics that we're going to discuss and we, even right before the interview, I said that to Chris and I was shocked like everybody else was," Roberts said today on "GMA."

Brown has been invited to return to "GMA" and is seriously considering the offer.

We wish him the absolute best and ... we've extended the invitation to him and I sure hope that he takes us up on it, because we'd love to have another chat with him," Roberts said today.

During Tuesday's interview, Roberts asked Brown about the status of the restraining order against him stemming from a felony assault case involving Rihanna.

"Recently, the restraining order against you that Rihanna had issued rapid prototype has been relaxed," Roberts said Tuesday. "Have you seen each other, been around each other?"

"Not really," Brown said. "It's not a big deal to me as far as that situation. ... This album is what I want to focus on and not something that happened two years ago."

Roberts said that she thought Brown was joking when he tried to redirect the interview to discuss his new album, "F.A.M.E."

"You saw me laughing during the interview because when he was doing that, I thought he was joking about some things because of the easy relationship that we have," Roberts said.

On BET, Brown said he had a different impression of the interview's ground rules.

"I felt like, 'OK, they told us this just so they can get us on the show so they can exploit me.' You know, that's what I thought," Brown said. "I kind of took it very, very hard. And I kept my composure throughout the interview, although you could see me upset, you know. I kept my composure and did my performances, and when I got back, I just let off, like, steam in the back."

A fuming Brown returned to his dressing room after the interview and performance of "Yeah 3x," the lead single off his new album.

Then he came back down the hall, still backstage, and stopped upon seeing golf irons the person who produced the segment. Brown didn't have his shirt on.

The show's hair and makeup staff said they called security because they heard loud noises coming from Brown's dressing room.

Gulf oil spill: bop fault traced back to drill pipe bending

Two days after explosions ripped the Deepwater Horizon, the drilling rig's last line of defense against disaster – a massive 300-ton led flexible strip blowout preventer sitting on the ocean floor – was finally triggered.

But it failed by inches.

No human was to blame for the blowout preventer's failure to stop the Gulf oil spill, according to a team of Norwegian undersea oil-equipment experts who spent six months investigating why the "fail-safe" device did not work.

Why the blowout preventer didn’t work has been the subject of intense speculation and several congressional and private investigations. The primary cause for that failure, according to the Norwegian consulting firm Det Norske Veritas, was the blowout preventer's "blind-shear ram" – a massive set of steel jaws intended to completely cut through the drill pipe, crimping it in the process and sealing the well.

The reason the shear ram's jaws failed was because they encountered a situation for which they were not designed – a "buckled" section of drill pipe, bowed sideways by the enormous pressure of oil thrusting upward from miles beneath the earth, the investigators said in their final report to the Interior Department and the US Coast Guard, which was released Wednesday.

At 7:30 a.m. on April 22 last year, less than an hour before the Deepwater Horizon sank to the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, a remote-operated vehicle (ROV) finally was able to activate the shear ram's hydraulic system, the report says. At that point, a 25-second-long process began as the system's steel jaws began to close on the pipe.

But as those blades closed, "the drill damper pipe was positioned such that the outside corner of the upper [blind-shear ram] blade contacted the drill pipe slightly off center of the drill pipe cross section," investigators found. As a result, part of the pipe was not sheared through as expected. "As the [shear ram blades] closed, a portion of the drill pipe cross section became trapped between the ram block faces, preventing the blocks from fully closing and sealing."

Even with eight hydraulic canisters supplying 4,000 pounds per square inch of hydraulic pressure, the blowout preventer's most potent set of steel jaws stalled (although it did close to within two inches of success). It just did not have the 4,273 psi that investigators estimated were needed to close that tiny gap and prevent America’s largest offshore oil spill, the investigators found.

Ultimately, investigators reported that they could not be 100 percent sure when the blind-shear ram was activated, but they found it highly unlikely that the system closed when the crew tried to trigger it before abandoning ship. Even so, because the drill pipe was bent "from the moment the well began flowing," the result would have been the same, the report said.

"In the partially closed position, flow would have continued through the drill pipe trapped between the ram block faces and subsequently through the gaps between the ram blocks," investigators concluded. When the drill pipe was sheared later on April 29, using a different slicing mechanism, the blowout preventer's casing shear rams, "the well flow pattern changed to a new exit point."

Besides the "primary cause," investigators identified several other blowout-preventer design problems – including one questionable procedure as well as one subpar industry standard that they said should be addressed "in the design of future blowout preventers and the need for modifying current blowout preventers."


• Buckling pipe: "The elastic buckling of drill pipe was a direct factor that prevented the [blind-shear ram] from closing and sealing the well."


• Off-center flaw: "The inability of the blind shear ram to shear the off-center drill pipe contributed to the blind shear ram's being unable to close and seal the well."


• Sequence of other systems: "The timing and sequence of closing [other blowout-preventer closing mechanisms] contributed to the gearbox drill pipe segment buckling and bowing between the two moving the drill pipe off center."


• Control systems: Testing of the blowout preventer's systems "indicated some back-up control system components did not perform as intended," including its control pods and communications system.


• ROV weaknesses: "The ROV intervention efforts reviewed indicated the ROVs were not capable of directly and rapidly determining the status of various ROV components."


• Backup system standard: "A review of industry standards indicated they do not stipulate performance requirements for back-up systems (e.g. closing response times) as they do for primary control systems."

Still, the bottom line was clear: While the blind-shear ram was activated by an ROV two days after the disaster began, the powerful hydraulic piston "failed to fully close and seal due to a portion of drill pipe trapped between" the blocks.

"It is recommended the industry examine and study the ability of the shear rams to complete their intended function of completely cutting tubulars regardless of their position within the well bore, and sealing the well," the report said.

Some close observers of the blowout-preventer issue in Congress said the report showed that a complete review of blowout preventers is needed since they appear capable of failing under pressure in a crisis situation.

“The spill commission’s report said that the problems within the oil industry that bakugans led to the BP spill were systemic, and not unique to this disaster,” said Rep. Edward Markey (D) of Massachusetts. “Now we know there could also be systemic design issues with blowout preventers that could cause them to be ineffective, even when deployed as intended. We need a full review of every single blowout preventer used in United States waters, and revisit the designs of these supposed machines of last resort.”

Taylor Was An Outsized Presence In A Petite Frame

In death, she is being heralded for her great beauty, iconic and legendary persona, tireless humanitarian work, and the damper compassion and optimism she exuded despite decades of physical ailments.

But Elizabeth Taylor was, above all else, a performer — a three-time Oscar winner, a radiant child star whose best work as an adult was her most splashy and scenery-chewing. While she may not have been the greatest actress of her generation in terms of pure talent and technique, she had an irresistible screen presence that kept audiences ravished by her films.

The contradictions alone were fascinating: She could seem demure yet seductive, aristocratic yet bawdy. That tiny voice and petite stature seemed at odds with the intimidating femininity that would define her glamorous aura.

When she was young, though — in early, family-friendly films such as "Lassie Come Home" (1943) and especially "National Velvet" (1944) — she possessed a startling and mature beauty for someone her age.

Those mesmerizing eyes that luxurious dark hair and flawless skin — they were all there, even back then. It's as if she never had to suffer through an nylon cable ties awkward period like the rest of us.

Under Vincente Minnelli's direction in "Father of the Bride" (1950), she got a rare chance to show off some comic ability as a young woman trying to put on the perfect wedding, even though Spencer Tracy, as her beleaguered father, gets the majority of the big laughs.

The following year, opposite a blue-collar Montgomery Clift in "A Place in the Sun" (1951), she was gorgeous, sophisticated, a vibrant image of idealized womanhood. When they first meet and she asks flirtatiously, "Do I make you nervous?" as he's trying to play billiards, there's really only one answer.

But an evolution was occurring during this time in Taylor's career. The sweetness and freshness of her looks collided with the pain and anger that seethed within many of her characters.

One of her strongest performances came in "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" (1958), as the fragile and damaged but volatile Maggie. She was all curves, dressed in clingy white, alternately playing and pleading in that breathy Southern drawl. Watching her exchange Tennessee Williams' banter with Paul Newman in his peak made you want to hold your own breath.

The next year found her in another Williams adaptation, "Suddenly, Last Summer" (1959), as a young woman in danger after witnessing a tragedy (opposite Clift again). The playwright's work golf irons suited her — the tormented characters, the great, gothic theatricality of it all.

"I'm not like anyone, I'm me," she announces in a moment of defiant confidence in "BUtterfield 8" (1960). But as Gloria, the sassy, brassy, boozy, trashy, model-call girl, she also famously acknowledges, "I was the slut of all time!" Taylor is over the top in her big, confessional scene with Eddie Fisher, but still riveting to watch, the way she works the highs and lows of it. The performance would earn her the first of her two Academy Awards for best actress.

And then ... there was the 1963 Joseph L. Mankiewicz epic "Cleopatra," which would become infamous not just for its scope (it's the most expensive movie ever made — $44 million — if you adjust for inflation) but for providing the place where Taylor's path scandalously crossed Richard Burton's. They'd go on to marry and divorce twice in real life and co-star in several movies together; this first on-screen pairing, however, was less than auspicious. When Taylor (as Cleopatra) demands that Burton (as Mark Antony) kneel before her, it's a moment that should be fraught with tension. Instead, it's impossible not to laugh out loud. The outlandish makeup and costumes were also a hoot.

But it was Mike Nichols who would get the best work out of Taylor in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" (1966). She and Burton tear each other apart as the boozy and bickering husband and wife George and Martha. And Nichols, making his directing debut in an adaptation of Edward Albee's painfully honest play, gets up close and personal for the carnage. The glamour girl was long gone here, and the performance earned Taylor her second best actress Oscar. (She also received an honorary Academy Award for her humanitarian work in 1993.)

Screen work was scarce in the 1980s. But even in her last film role — which, sadly enough, was the 1994 live-action version of "The Flintstones" — that big personality was on full display. Her performance as Fred's rapid prototype mother-in-law earned her a Razzie Award nomination for worst supporting actress, but she definitely livens things up. She bursts into a party, all hair and fur and jewels, flashing those famous eyes and calling for a conga line when the situation gets awkward.

In T Mobile company, AT&T - pursuit of intense lobbying influence

AT&T remained confident Tuesday that it will win over regulators to approve its $39 billion seamless steel pipe bid to buy T-Mobile USA, even as critics continued to bash the deal as anti-competitive and bad for consumers.

Bolstering its chances, AT&T has one of the most muscular lobbying operations in Washington. Last year, it enlisted an army of about 90 lobbyists and has had on its roster well-known former lawmakers, including Trent Lott (R-Miss.) and John Breaux (D-La.) of the Senate and J.C. Watts (R-Okla.) of the House of Representatives, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

It is also one of the biggest campaign contributors among any corporation in history and has spent $15 million annually on lobbying efforts since 2005, according to the nonprofit group. The Republican chairmen of three key House committees — Fred Upton (R-Mich.), Lamar Smith (R-Tex.) and Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) — together have received more than $200,000 over their political careers from AT&T’s political action committee, the center’s data show. They did not immediately return phone calls for comment.

Experts and consumer advocates say the merger, which would create a wireless behemoth by combining the nation’s second- and fourth-largest cellular carriers, raises serious doubts for federal antitrust regulators. But they also note that AT&T is especially well-positioned to make its case.

Critics point to a key detail in AT&T’s proposed transaction as a sign of the company’s confidence that it will ultimately win over regulators: AT&T must hand over $3 billion to T-Mobile, plus some valuable wireless spectrum, if the deal gets nixed.

“Why are they so confident?” asked Craig Aaron, the managing director of Free Press, a Washington-based nonprofit group that examines media and Internet policy. “I have to believe that they must have made the rounds in Washington to find out.  . . . You’d have to think that they have this confidence because of all that lobbying clout that they bring to bear.”

Congress does not have direct oversight over the bridge rectifier deal; AT&T needs approval from the Federal Communications Commission and the Justice Department.

Michael Balmoris, an AT&T spokesman, said the company did not shop the idea of the merger with regulators before announcing the deal. In a presentation to investors this week, Wayne Watts, AT&T’s senior executive vice president and general counsel, said the company “fully understands and respects” the regulatory process.

In the presentation and on a Web site promoting its cause, AT&T argued that the merger will bring wireless access to 95 percent of the U.S. population and reach far-flung locales — fulfilling a key goal of President Obama. AT&T also contended that previous wireless company mergers have resulted in lower prices for consumers.

Critics of the deal doubt prices will come down in this case. And they worry about what AT&T will do with its influence in Washington.

Aaron said the firm’s lobbying clout is partly due to James W. Cicconi, a company senior executive vice president. Last year, GQ magazine ranked Cicconi as No. 4 on its list of top “influencers” in Washington, right behind Haley Barbour, the Mississippi governor and possible GOP presidential candidate.

Cicconi was instrumental, Aaron said, Coach Bags in brokering a deal that paved the way for the FCC to pass rules governing whether providers of wireless Internet connections can control Web content.

“He’s shown himself to be a savvy strategist,” Aaron said. “Back in 2008 , President Obama said he wasn’t going to take a back seat to anyone in net neutrality. Of course, the following year, FCC backed away and changed its position, and that was largely due to lobbying by AT&T with direct pressure at the FCC.”

Art Brodsky, a spokesman for Public Knowledge, a nonprofit public-interest group, said many critics of the deal are also wary of William Daley, the White House chief of staff. In the early 2000s, Daley was president of SBC Communications, which later merged with AT&T, and then worked for JPMorgan, which is helping finance the AT&T/T-Mobile merger.

“A bunch of us are saying there’s no way he should touch this,” Brodsky said. “The FCC chairman has been known to consult with people at the White House all the time, and JPMorgan is in line for millions of dollars in fees out of this deal.”

The White House did not return a phone call or -mail requesting comment about Daley’s potential involvement.

AT&T’s financial contributions tend to benefit Republicans more than Democrats, according to the nonprofit watchdog: During the 2010 election cycle, 55 percent of the company’s $4 million to federal-level politicians aided Republicans and 44 percent helped Democrats.

“AT&T is one of the biggest fish on the block,” said Dave Levinthal, a spokesman for the Center for Responsive Politics. “They are massive. They employ a number of lobbyists and former members of the government. There are very few companies that impact crusher have multiple former Congress members working for them. They are in a rare position even for big companies when it comes to the strength of their lobbying force.”

Japan factory to suspend, Asian shares fell problems

March 23 (Bloomberg) -- Asian stocks fell for the first time in four days as Japanese companies announced production halts and earthquakes struck shaded pold motor near the Fukushima nuclear plant that was crippled after a March 11 temblor and tsunami.

Toyota Motor Corp., the world’s biggest carmaker, declined 1.5 percent in Tokyo after extending production halts. Sony Corp. dropped 0.6 percent after the electronics maker suspended some work at five factories. Fujitsu Ltd., Japan’s No. 1 computer- services provider, dropped 4.8 percent. Virgin Blue Holdings Ltd. plunged 7.6 percent in Sydney after Australia’s second-biggest airline forecast an annual loss.
“There are still a lot of uncertainties surrounding the nuclear fallout, as well as aftershocks, and we won’t be seeing a stable market for a while,” said Yoshinori Nagano, a senior strategist in Tokyo at Daiwa Asset Management Co., which oversees about $104 billion. “No one thinks the nuclear crisis has ended completely.”

The MSCI Asia Pacific Index fell 0.5 percent to 132.36 as of 10:30 a.m. in Tokyo. About five stocks fell for every three that climbed on the index.

A series of earthquakes struck Japan’s Fukushima prefecture today, where Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s damaged nuclear plant is located, starting with a magnitude 6.0 temblor at 7:12 a.m. local time, according to Japan’s Meteorological Agency.

Quakes of magnitude 4.1, 5.8, 4.9 and 4.3 followed as of 8:03 a.m., and there was no threat of tsunami waves, the agency said in its website. The Japan Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said there has been no impact on the Fukushima plant from the latest temblors.

Nikkei Falls

“Anxieties about the nuclear issues aren’t gone yet, but the situation is improving,” said Hiroichi Nishi, an equities manager in Tokyo at Nikko Cordial Securities Inc. “Some industries and stocks that declined significantly lately will be bought back.”

Japan’s Nikkei 225 Stock Average lost 1.4 percent. South Korea’s Kospi Index slipped 0.1 percent impact crusher and Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 Index was little changed. Futures on the Standard&Poor’s 500 Index slid 0.3 percent today. The index retreated 0.4 percent yesterday as the price of oil rose amid unrest in Libya and concern grew that Europe won’t find an immediate solution to its debt crisis.

The MSCI Asia Pacific Index lost 3.4 percent this year through yesterday, compared with a gain of 2.9 percent by the S&P 500 and a drop of 1.5 percent by the Stoxx Europe 600 Index. Stocks in the Asian benchmark are valued at 13.3 times estimated earnings on average, compared with 13.4 times for the S&P 500 and 10.9 times for the Stoxx 600.

Reconstruction Agency

The Nikkei 225 plunged 10 percent last week on concern the effects of the earthquake and damaged reactors will hurt a recovery in the world’s third-largest economy.

Japan said it may set up a reconstruction agency to oversee earthquake repairs, while data showed the central bank pumped record liquidity into lenders as the nation grappled with its worst disaster since World War II.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano told reporters in Tokyo the government will weigh “some sort of system or organization” to oversee spending following the earthquake, adding that it’s too early to say when a spending bill will be compiled. The Bank of Japan said yesterday lenders’ deposits with the central bank more than doubled since March 11 to 41.62 trillion yen ($513 billion).

Tokyo Electric Power workers began restoring power to the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant in northern Japan as government tests showed radiation has leaked into the sea and contaminated some food.

Lights are on in the control room at Fukushima Dai-Ichi plant’s No. 3 reactor, while some lights are electronic ballast on at reactor No. 4, the company said today. Reactors No. 5 and 6 were already supplied with electricity.

The United States new review questions to get nuclear waste

The radiation levels, while not acceptable, are manageable," he said.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has essentially accepted the industry's rationale on the jaw crusher safety of dense-packing fuel rods. Over the last two decades, the agency has repeatedly approved license applications by utilities to pack more rods into the pools.

Nuclear safety experts say that plants have packed up to five times more spent fuel rods than the pools were designed to store, though Nuclear Energy Institute officials say the pools contain no more than twice their original capacity.

The only advantage to keeping the pools packed so tightly is the cost of the dry casks, which would run about $5 billion to $10 billion nationwide, said Frank N. von Hippel, a Princeton University physicist who first disclosed the problem in a paper he co-wrote in 2003. He said he considers fixing the fuel pool problem one of the most important steps toward making U.S. nuclear plants safer.

"It is such a huge risk that it is worth the cost," he said. "We may not be as lucky as the Japanese were to have the wind blowing the radioactive emissions out to sea."

The reason so much waste has built up is the failure of the Energy Department to hold to its decades-old pledge to take ownership of it, triggering multibillion-dollar law suits by utilities against the government.

Under federal law, the waste was supposed to go to a repository at Yucca Mountain, about 100 miles north of Las Vegas. President George W. Bush approved the plan in 2002. But President Obama has taken steps to kill the plan, saying he wants to find a different site.

Energy Secretary Steven Chu warned last week that it could be decades before any permanent solution for the waste is developed, so the heavily packed fuel pools will be around for a long time.

"The utilities say that even if an accident happens here, they can deal with it," said Lyman of the Union of Concerned Scientists. But, he said, the Fukushima accident shows that some events will cold room be difficult to anticipate and plan for.

"The Japanese have run out of pages of their operating manual, and they are just making things up," he said.

Anti-aircraft weapons outbreak in tripoli

Anti-aircraft fire has erupted over the Libyan capital, Tripoli, after a day of heavy fighting between pro-democracy fighters and forces loyal to leader Muammar Gaddafi.
Anti-aircraft crews began firing shortly after nightfall in the capital on Tuesday Coach Bags, four nights after an international military coalition launched an operation enforce a no-fly zone over the country.
"We've been hearing big noises. We've heard some explosions in the last 10 minutes," Al Jazeera's Anita McNaught, reporting from Tripoli, said.
"We haven't seen any smoke on the horizon. People are firing guns in defiance. We're in the loyalist heartland here where people are utterly defiant of the international effort to force Gaddafi to surrender, as they would see it.
"The anti-aircraft fire has not been as intense [as Monday night when two naval installations outside the city were hit]. Perhaps they feel in the immediate neighbourhood that most of the significant targets have already been hit."
The AFP news agency reported that at least two blasts were heard at a distance before the capital's air defences opened fire.
Several strong detonations followed, said the journalists who were unable to determine the site of the explosions.
They said anti-aircraft fire streaked into the night sky for around 10 minutes, especially in the area near Gaddafi's residence, not far from the hotel where the international press corps is housed.
In the previous night's operations, the coalition air campaign suffered its first loss with the crash of a US fighter jet in the rebel-held east.



Both crew ejected safely.



The no-fly zone is intended to protect civilians from attack by forces loyal to Gaddafi in their battles with opposition fighters bridge rectifier. The United States announced on Tuesday that it is shifting its focus to widen the no-fly zone across the north African country.
Despite the strikes, Gaddafi has remained defiant. The Libyan leader made a public appearance at his Bab Al-Aziziyah compound in Tripoli that was the target on Sunday of a coalition missile strike, Libyan state television reported.



In televised remarks, Gaddafi said Libya was "ready for battle, be it long or short".



"We will win this battle," footage showed him telling supporters at the compound. "The masses were the strongest anti-air defences."
Fighting rages
The developments came after a day of intense fighting in the three Libyan cities of Misurata, Ajdabiya and Zintan.
Forces loyal to Gaddafi have been shelling Misurata for days, pressing their siege of the embattled western city. Four children were killed in the shelling on Tuesday and at least 40 people were killed on Monday, a resident said.
There was also fierce fighting seamless steel pipe further east in Ajdabiya. Opposition fighters were seen retreating in the face of an attack by government forces.
Al Jazeera's Tony Birtley, reporting from an area close to Ajdabiya, said there had been clashes outside the city.
"There's been heavy fighting and heavy shelling going on ... the rebels told me there have been heavy casualties and there are a number of corpses between here and the town [of Ajdabiya] that they have been unable to reach," he said.
Meanwhile, around 106km south of Tripoli, Libyan pro-democracy fighters forced government troops to withdraw from the outskirts of Zintan, breaking a siege of the town.
A resident of Zintan told the Reuters news agency that at least 10 people were killed in the bombardment by Gaddafi's forces.
"Gaddafi's forces bombarded Zintan this morning and killed 10 to 15 people," Abdulrahman said.
"After the bombardment they retreated from the eastern area of Zintan. But they have not withdrawn from the northern area electronic ballast. There is still a huge number of soldiers there, backed with 50 to 60 tanks and several vehicles."

Yemen's President salih civil war threat, called for dialogue

The mood in the capital, Sanaa, was tense amid reports that opposing military units cold room, some supporting Saleh and some backing recently defected military commanders, had faced off in skirmishes around the country.
The United States and Saudi Arabia, with strong vested interests in Yemen’s ongoing counterterrorism cooperation, worked behind the scenes to promote a solution, but made no public expressions of support for Saleh, who has been in power for 32 years.
“We continue to consult with our regional partners, including Saudi Arabia, about the situation in Yemen,” an Obama administration official said, declining to comment further. The White House has had no direct contact with Saleh since a call made Sunday by John O. Brennan, President Obama’s chief counterterrorism adviser.
Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates told reporters traveling with him in Moscow that it was “not my place” to comment on events in Yemen. “We are obviously concerned about instability” there, he said, describing the focus of U.S. worry as a possible “diversion of attention” from the threat posed by the al-Qaeda offshoot in Yemen.
According to news wire reports and Internet postings by Yemenis, Saleh’s army repelled an attack by al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula on a military position east of Lawdar, a city in the southern part of the country, killing 12 militants and injuring five. Armed militants have been on a rampage in the southern city of Aden, breaking into nightclubs, throwing out patrons and setting fire to buildings, the Associated Press reported.
Clashes were also reported in the north between pro-revolution Houthi rebels and tribes loyal to the government.
Six weeks of largely peaceful protests against Saleh appeared to reach a tipping point Monday, when dozens of senior military officials, diplomats and government officials resigned to protest the killing Friday of more than 50 demonstrators by government snipers.
“Friday broke our hearts; yesterday opened our eyes,” said Mohammed al-Basha, who has not resigned his position as spokesman for the Yemeni Embassy in Washington but described himself as a “neutral”civil servant.
“We saw people of our generation killed with head shots and chest wounds,” he said. “We don’t want that pain again.”
In a meeting with military and tribal leaders late Monday night, Saleh agreed to a plan under which he would leave office at the end of the year jaw crusher. He had initially dismissed the proposal when it was advanced weeks ago by a coalition of opposition political parties that joined with the youthful and civil society protesters, and the opposition Tuesday told him it was no longer on the table.
“We reject Saleh’s offer to step down, and we tell him that the next couple of hours will be decisive for his regime,” Mohammed Qahtan, a spokesman for an opposition political bloc, said Tuesday.
Maj. Gen. Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar, the powerful commander of Yemen’s northwest military district, who was the most prominent defector Monday, called on Saleh to resign to save the country from disaster. “The military is the property of the people and its protector,” Mohsen said. “It does not work for any specific person.”
In a televised speech to his National Defense Council, Saleh vacillated between threats of a “bloody” civil war and appeals for dialogue. In an apparent effort to split the opposition, he warned that youthful protesters would be victimized by the political factions that have joined them.
To military defectors, he said: “Those who want to reach power through coups should know what they are seeking is impossible.”
Late Tuesday evening, a government spokesman reiterated Saleh’s calls for “direct and transparent dialogue” with Yemeni youth.
The opposition political groups,electronic ballast called the Joint Meeting Parties, denied fears expressed on the street that they or the military were interested in a deal with Saleh. “Civil society youth are now controlling politicians, military and the tribes,” Qahtan said. “Military commanders will not steal the revolution from the people.”
Ali Amrani, the leader of a bloc of politicians who have left the ruling General Peoples Congress party over the past month, said that Saleh must leave but did not rule out an exit strategy agreed to by all sides, including Saleh and his remaining backers, to avoid chaos.
“Those with the revolution have numerous ideological differences,” he said, “and we need to make sure that the sides don’t start disputes immediately at the fall of Saleh.”
The protesters are suspicious of Mohsen’s motives, said Gregory Johnsen, a Yemen expert at Princeton University. “But at the same time, they’re willing to make a deal for the moment to get rid of Saleh.”
Mohsen, a longtime ally of the president bridge rectifier and the most powerful military figure in the country, “is taking advantage in order to ensure for himself a position in a post-Saleh government,” Johnsen said.