Ricky Ponting steps down as Australian captain

The 36-year-old, who is expected to be replaced by Michael Clarke, resigned as the Australian skipper but will continue as a batsman with the team.

SYDNEY: Ricky Ponting, the most successful captain in 134 years of test cricket, resigned as the Australian test and one-day skipper on Tuesday but will continue as a batsman with the team.

The 36-year-old, who has led Australia in one day internationals since 2002 and tests since 2004, has been under increasing pressure after an Ashes defeat to England and a quarter-final exit as defending champions at the World Cup.

“Today I’ve decided to stand down as captain of the test team and the one-day team as of now,” he told a news conference at the Sydney Cricket Ground (SCG).

“The main reason for me is I think it’s the right time, I wanted to make sure that I gave the next captain every opportunity I possibly could to make sure he has as much experience going forward in the next couple of big events that we will play.”

“I will continue to play and am available for both the one day and test teams,” he said earlier in a statement.

While Ponting’s batting record brooks no argument, his captaincy has often been criticised as Australia has declined as a force in world cricket, with three Ashes series defeats to England in particular damaging his reputation.

Australia went to the World Cup as double defending champions but returned home after defeat to India in the last eight, their unbeaten run of matches in the tournament having been ended at 34 by Pakistan in the group stage.

On his return to Australia at the weekend, Ponting acknowledged the pressure on him and said he would consider his position before the squad to tour Bangladesh was announced on Wednesday.

Ponting bucked a poor run of form to hit a defiant century in the quarter-final defeat to India in Ahmedabad, which will only have increased his determination to continue playing international cricket.

Michael Clarke, who stood in for the injured Ponting in the final Ashes test and for the one-day series against England that followed it, is expected to replace his mentor as skipper.

Australia will play three one-dayers in Bangladesh next month with trips to Sri Lanka and South Africa scheduled for later in the southern hemisphere winter.

Radiation spikes in seawater by stricken Japan plant

A baby undergoes a screening test for signs of nuclear radiation as he sleeps on his mother's back at a health center in Yonezawa. Tokyo residents were warned not to give babies tap water because of radiation leaking from a nuclear plant crippled in the disaster that devastated northeast Japan

TOKYO: Radioactivity levels are soaring in seawater near the crippled Fukushima Daiichi plant, Japan’s nuclear safety agency said on Saturday, two weeks after the nuclear power plant was hit by a massive earthquake and tsunami.

Even as engineers tried to pump puddles of radioactive water from the power plant 240 km (150 miles) north of Tokyo, the nuclear safety agency said tests on Friday showed radioactive iodine had spiked 1,250 times higher than normal in the seawater just offshore the plant. A senior official from Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, Hidehiko Nishiyama, said the contamination posed little risk to aquatic life. “Ocean currents will disperse radiation particles and so it will be very diluted by the time it gets consumed by fish and seaweed,” he said. Despite that reassurance, the disclosure may well heighten international concern over Japanese seafood exports. Several countries have already banned milk and produce from areas around the Fukushima Daiichi plant, while others have been monitoring Japanese seafood. The prolonged efforts to prevent a catastrophic meltdown at the plant have also intensified concerns around the world about nuclear power. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said it was time to reassess the international atomic safety regime. Radioactive water was found in buildings housing three of the six reactors at the crippled plant. On Thursday, three workers sustained burns at reactor No. 3 after being exposed to radiation levels 10,000 times higher than usually found in a reactor. The crisis at the nuclear plant has overshadowed the massive relief and recovery effort from the magnitude 9.0 quake and the huge tsunami it triggered on March 11 that left more than 27,500 people dead or missing in northeast Japan. The U.S. Department of Energy said on its website that no significant quantities of radiological material had been deposited in the area around the plant since March 19, according to tests on Friday. Nishiyama said Japanese agencies were trying to work out ways of “safely bailing out the water so that it does not get out into the environment, and we are making preparations.” He initially said the high radiation reading inside reactor 3, where the workers were injured, could indicate damage to the reactor. He later said it could be from venting operations to release pressure or water leakage from pipes or valves. “There is no data suggesting a crack,” Nishiyama said. Reactor number 3 is the only one of the six that uses a fuel mixture of plutonium and uranium. Plutonium is the most deadly radioactive isotope. On Friday, Nishiyama chided plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) for not following safety procedures inside the turbine building.

FOUR VOLATILE REACTORS

More than 700 engineers have been working in shifts to stabilise the plant and work has been advancing to restart water pumps to cool their fuel rods. Two of the plant’s reactors are now seen as safe but the other four are volatile, occasionally emitting steam and smoke. However, the nuclear safety agency said on Saturday that temperature and pressure in all reactors had stabilised. When TEPCO restored power to the plant late last week, some thought the crisis would soon be over. But Lingering high levels of radiation from the damaged reactors has hampered progress. At Three Mile Island, the worst nuclear power accident in the United States, workers took just four days to stabilise the reactor, which suffered a partial meltdown. No one was injured and there was no radiation release above the legal limit. At Chernobyl in Ukraine, the worst nuclear accident in the world, it took weeks to “stabilise” what remained of the plant and months to clean up radioactive materials and cover the site with a concrete and steel sarcophagus. Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan said on Friday the situation at Fukushima was “nowhere near” being resolved. “We are making efforts to prevent it from getting worse, but I feel we cannot become complacent,” Kan told reporters. “We must continue to be on our guard.”

NORMAL RADIATION RANGE

In Tokyo, a metropolis of 13 million people, a Reuters reading on Saturday morning showed ambient radiation of 0.22 microsieverts per hour, about six times normal for the city. That was well within the global average of naturally occurring background radiation of 0.17-0.39 microsieverts per hour, a range given by the World Nuclear Association. An official at the Science Ministry, however, confirmed that daily radiation levels in an area 30 km (18 miles) northwest of the stricken plant had exceeded the annual limit. But experts say it is still below levels of exposure from medical X-rays. The Japanese government has prodded tens of thousands of people living in a 20 km-30 km (12-18 mile) zone beyond the stricken complex to leave. Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said the residents should move because it was difficult to get supplies to the area, and not because of elevated radiation. Kazuo Suzuki, 56, who has moved from his house near the plant to an evacuation centre, said neighbours he has talked with by telephone say delivery trucks won’t go to the exclusion zone because of radiation worries. “So goods are running out, meaning people have to drive to the next town to buy things. But there is a fuel shortage there too, so they have to wait in long queues for gasoline to use the car.” In Japan’s northeast, more than a quarter of a million people are in shelters. Exhausted rescuers are still sifting through the wreckage of towns and villages, retrieving bodies. Amid the suffering, though, there was a sense the corner was being turned. Aid is flowing and phone, electricity, postal and bank services have resumed, though they can still be patchy.

Elizabeth Taylor

the violet, almond-shaped eyes, the creamy skin, the pouty lips and raven hair. Of course, there were her Oscars, iconic roles and many husbands, too, but Taylor is indeed most renowned for her beauty.

Flowers placed by fans on Elizabeth Taylor's star at the Hollywood Walk of Fame in Hollywood, California.

Elizabeth Taylor: classic beauty in every sense

‘‘As a child, she was eerily beautiful — she never had a child’s face, and as a woman, she was unmatchably beautiful,’’ InStyle fashion director Hal Rubenstein said.

LOS ANGELES: Elizabeth Taylor was the antithesis of today’s Hollywood fashion icon, who is eager to be seen as an everywoman. She was always dressed like a movie star: hair done, makeup on and lots of jewelry. Never would you see Taylor in jeans and a T-shirt.

And while she was famous for her Oscars, iconic roles and many husbands, she was most renowned for her beauty — the violet, almond-shaped eyes, creamy skin, pouty lips and raven hair. She died Wednesday at 79 from congestive heart failure.

‘‘She was incredibly beautiful, funny, smart, charming and super-glamorous,’’ said designer Michael Kors. ‘‘In today’s world, people who combine all of those attributes with a big life in the public eye and a big talent are few and far between. One of a kind means just that — there is just one.’’

The public saw her mature from a young curly haired tomboy in ‘‘National Velvet’’ to the sultry ‘‘Cleopatra.’’ Yet no matter the time, place or role, her glamour was consistent, and that was inspiring to women, even if they could never quite replicate it.

‘‘Every quality that we consider classically beautiful, she had,’’ said Amy Keller Laird, beauty director of Allure. ‘‘She was sexy and girlish at once, she had both those qualities all through her life.’’

In 1951, Taylor showed off her legendary 19-inch waist in a strapless dress with a bodice top, full tulle skirt and delicate flowers at the neckline designed by Edith Head. InStyle fashion director Hal Rubenstein said the outfit was the ‘‘blueprint for prom dresses of the ‘50s.’’

She had the same influence on lingerie styles after she wore a lace-trimmed slip in ‘‘Butterfield 8.’’ And black kohl eyeliner was all the rage after ‘‘Cleopatra.’’

Somehow, she even made caftans stylish in the ‘70s, Rubenstein said with a laugh.

Rubenstein said he had the pleasure of meeting her a few times. ‘‘As a child, she was eerily beautiful — she never had a child’s face, and as a woman, she was unmatchably beautiful,’’ he said.

In person, the most striking thing about her was her impeccable features, but her broader appeal, the one the world saw in photographs, was her overall glamour, he said.

‘‘When she walked into a room, she just had the most amazing presence about her,’’ added designer Elizabeth Emanuel, who is best-known as Princess Diana’s wedding dress designer but who also made several looks for Taylor, including caftans. ‘‘She was just incredible.’’

The big studios trained her to always step out the door as glamourpuss Elizabeth Taylor: She wore the role of movie star all the time, and she didn’t apologize for it.

‘‘She was an incredible beauty and she had an awareness of her own beauty. Even those we think are great beauties today play it down and speak modestly — there’s always something they don’t like and they apologize for it, but she never did,’’ Rubenstein said. ‘‘She was aware of her gifts and truly appreciated them.’’

He also noted that Taylor made sure any and all of her suitors, from boyfriends and husbands to reporters, knew that she liked gifts and that she expected them. After all, one of the most important diamonds of all time, a 69-carat stone, was a gift from husband No. 5 and 6, Richard Burton. It is now known as the Taylor-Burton Diamond.

Taylor not only owned many pieces of statement jewelry — unlike today’s starlets, who borrow them — but she’d wear them often instead of storing them. That goes back to the movie-star thing.

At the Oscars in 1970, she asked costumer Head to create a gown that would show off her necklace, ending up in a blue gown with a very low V bustline.

‘‘Elizabeth Taylor was a style icon who always followed her own unique and daring fashion vision,’’ said Jamie Cadwell, director of the Diamond Information Center, a trade organization. ‘‘Her love of jewelry was unsurpassed, and women everywhere continue to be inspired by her incredible collection.’’

In her clothes, Taylor had a preference for draping, said Emanuel.

Her longevity as a style influencer is proven by the longtime success of her fragrance collections launched with Elizabeth Arden. White Diamonds, which followed 1980s-era Passion and was one of the original celebrity perfumes, has been a beauty-counter best-seller for 20 years.

The fragrances will continue, according to a company statement. ‘‘Our best tribute to Elizabeth Taylor will be to continue the legacy of the brands she created and loved so much,’’ said chairman and CEO E. Scott Beattie.

‘‘White Diamonds is still one of our readers’ favorite fragrances. The fact that hers has stood the test of time, even though every hot celebrity has a fragrance, says a lot about her as a beauty icon,’’ said Allure’s Laird.

Liz Taylor: the most blessed and cursed of actresses

LOS ANGELES: Elizabeth Taylor, who died on Wednesday, was one of the last of the classic movie stars and a template for the modern celebrity.

A violet-eyed film goddess, her sultry screen persona and stormy personal life brought her enduring fame and glamour.

“My Mother was an extraordinary woman who lived life to the fullest, with great passion, humour, and love,” her son, Michael Wilding, said in a statement.

“We know, quite simply, that the world is a better place for mom having lived in it. Her legacy will never fade, her spirit will always be with us, and her love will live forever in our hearts.”

“We have just lost a Hollywood giant,” said Elton John, a long-time friend of Taylor. “More importantly, we have lost an incredible human being.”

Elizabeth Taylor was the most blessed and cursed of actresses, the toughest and the most vulnerable. She had extraordinary grace, wealth and voluptuous beauty, and won three Academy Awards, including a special one for her humanitarian work.

She was the most loyal of friends and a defender of gays in Hollywood when AIDS was new to the industry and beyond. But she was afflicted by ill health, failed romances (eight marriages, seven husbands) and personal tragedy.

“I think I`m becoming fatalistic,” she said in 1989. “Too much has happened in my life for me not to be fatalistic.”

Her more than 50 movies included unforgettable portraits of innocence and of decadence, from the children`s classic, “National Velvet”, and the sentimental family comedy, “Father of the Bride”, to Oscar-winning transgressions in “Who`s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” and “Butterfield 8”. The historical epic “Cleopatra” is among Hollywood`s greatest on-screen fiascos and a landmark of off-screen monkey business, the meeting ground of Taylor and Richard Burton, the “Brangelina” of their day.

She played enough bawdy women on film for critic Pauline Kael to deem her “Chaucerian Beverly Hills”.

But her defining role, one that lasted past her moviemaking days, was “Elizabeth Taylor” ever marrying and divorcing, in and out of hospitals, gaining and losing weight, standing by Michael Jackson, Rock Hudson and other troubled friends, acquiring a jewellery collection that seemed to rival Tiffany`s.

She was a child star who grew up and aged before an adoring, appalled and fascinated public. She arrived in Hollywood when the studio system tightly controlled an actor`s life and image, had more marriages than any publicist could explain away and carried on until she no longer required explanation. She was the industry`s great survivor, and among the first to reach that special category of celebrity _ famous for being famous, for whom her work was inseparable from the gossip around it.

The London-born actress was a star at age 12, a bride and a divorcee at 18, a superstar at 19 and a widow at 26. She was a screen sweetheart and martyr later reviled for stealing Eddie Fisher from Debbie Reynolds, then for dumping Fisher to bed Burton, a relationship of epic passion and turbulence, lasting through two marriages and countless attempted reconciliations.

She was also forgiven. Reynolds would acknowledge voting for Taylor when she was nominated for “Butterfield 8” and decades later co-starred with her old rival in “These Old Broads”, co-written by Carrie Fisher, the daughter of Reynolds and Eddie Fisher.

Taylor`s ailments wore down the grudges. She underwent at least 20 major operations and she nearly died from a bout with pneumonia in 1990. In 1994 and 1995, she had both hip joints replaced, and in Feb 1997, she underwent surgery to remove a benign brain tumour.

In 1983, she acknowledged a 35-year addiction to sleeping pills and pain killers. Taylor was treated for alcohol and drug abuse problems at the Betty Ford Clinic in Rancho Mirage, California.

Her troubles bonded her to her peers and the public, and deepened her compassion. Her advocacy for AIDS research and for other causes earned her a special Oscar, the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, in 1993.

As she accepted it, to a long ovation, she declared: “I call upon you to draw from the depths of your being _ to prove that we are a human race, to prove that our love outweighs our need to hate, that our compassion is more compelling than our need to blame.”

The dark-haired Taylor made an unforgettable impression in Hollywood with “National Velvet”, the 1945 film in which the 12-year-old belle rode a steeplechase horse to victory in the Grand National.

Critic James Agee wrote of her: “Ever since I first saw the child … I have been choked with the peculiar sort of adoration I might have felt if we were in the same grade of primary school.”

“National Velvet”, her fifth film, also marked the beginning of Taylor`s long string of health issues. During production, she fell off a horse. The resulting back injury continued to haunt her.

Taylor matured into a ravishing beauty in “Father of the Bride” in 1950, and into a respected performer and femme fatale the following year in “A Place in the Sun”, based on the Theodore Dreiser novel, “An American Tragedy”.

The movie co-starred her close friend Montgomery Clift as the ambitious young man who drowns his working-class girlfriend to be with the socialite Taylor. In real life, too, men all but committed murder in pursuit of her.

Through the rest of the 1950s and into the 1960s, she and Marilyn Monroe were Hollywood`s great sex symbols, both striving for appreciation beyond their physical beauty, both caught up in personal dramas filmmakers could only wish they had imagined.

That Taylor lasted, and Monroe died young, was a matter of luck and strength; Taylor lived as she pleased and allowed no one to define her but herself.

“I don`t entirely approve of some of the things I have done, or am, or have been. But I`m me. God knows, I`m me,” Taylor said around the time she turned 50.

She had a remarkable and exhausting personal and professional life. Her marriage to Michael Todd ended tragically when the producer died in a plane crash in 1958. She took up with Fisher, married him, then left him for Burton. Meanwhile, she received several Academy Award nominations and two Oscars.

She was a box-office star cast in numerous “prestige” films, from “Raintree County” with Clift to “Giant”, an epic co-starring her friends Hudson and James Dean. Nominations came from a pair of movies adapted from work by Tennessee Williams: “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” and “Suddenly, Last Summer.”

In “Butterfield 8”, released in 1960, she starred with Fisher as a doomed girl-about-town. Taylor never cared much for the film, but her performance at the Oscars wowed the world.

Sympathy for Taylor`s widowhood had turned to scorn when she took up with Fisher, who had supposedly been consoling her over the death of Todd. But before the 1961 ceremony, she was hospitalised from a nearly fatal bout with pneumonia and Taylor underwent a tracheotomy.

The scar was bandaged when she appeared at the Oscars to accept her best actress trophy for “Butterfield 8”.

To a standing ovation, she hobbled to the stage. “I don`t really know how to express my great gratitude,” she said in an emotional speech. “I guess I will just have to thank you with all my heart.” It was one of the most dramatic moments in Academy Awards history.

“Hell, I even voted for her,” Reynolds later said. Meets Burton:

Greater drama awaited: “Cleopatra”. Taylor met Burton while playing the title role in the 1963 epic, in which the brooding, womanising Welsh actor co-starred as Mark Antony. Their chemistry was not immediate.

Taylor found him boorish; Burton mocked her physique. But the love scenes on film continued away from the set and a scandal for the ages was born. Headlines shouted and screamed. Paparazzi, then an emerging breed, snapped and swooned. Their romance created such a sensation that the Vatican denounced the happenings as the “caprices of adult children”.

The film so exceeded its budget that the producers lost money even though “Cleopatra” was a box-office hit and won four Academy awards. (With its $44 million budget adjusted for inflation, “Cleopatra” remains the most expensive movie ever made.)

Taylor`s salary per film topped $1 million. “Liz and Dick” became the ultimate jet set couple, on a first name basis with millions who had never met them

Notable films of Liz Taylor

The following are the notable films in which actress Elizabeth Taylor played leading roles.

• 1942: “There’s One Born Every Minute” – her first movie, aged nine.

• 1943: “Lassie Come Home” – she played Priscilla.

• 1943: “Jane Eyre” – minor role, film starring Orson Welles.

• 1944: “The White Cliffs of Dover” – with young Roddy McDowall

• 1944: “National Velvet” – horseriding movie, starring Mickey Rooney.

• 1946: “Courage of Lassie” – second dog film, aged 14.

• 1951: “A Place in the Sun” – with Montgomery Clift.

• 1951: “Quo Vadis” – with Peter Ustinov.

• 1954: “Beau Brummell” – with Ustinov again.

• 1958: “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” – with Paul Newman.

• 1959: “Suddenly, Last Summer” – with Katherine Hepburn.

• 1960: “Butterfield 8” – best actress Oscar.

• 1963: “Cleopatra” – first movie with Richard Burton.

• 1963: “The VIPs” – again with Burton.

• 1966: “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” – with Burton. best actress Oscar.

• 1967: “The Taming of the Shrew” – with Burton.

• 1967: “Doctor Faustus” – with Burton, played Helen of Troy.

• 1967: “Reflections in a Golden Eye” – with Marlon Brando.

• 1967: “The Comedians” – with Burton.

• 1968: “Boom!” – with Burton.

• 1969: “Anne of the Thousand Days” – with Burton.

• 1972: “X, Y and Zee” – with Michael Caine.

• 1972: “Under Milk Wood” – with Burton.

• 1980: “The Mirror Crack’d”1981: “General Hospital” – soap opera character.

• 1992: “The Simpsons” – as herself, and voice of Maggie.

• 1994: “The Flintstones” – as Pearl Slaghoople in animated movie.

Film icon Elizabeth Taylor dies

LOS ANGELES, March 23: Hollywood legend and violet-eyed beauty Elizabeth Taylor, famed as much for her glamorous but stormy love life as for her five-decade Oscar-winning film career, died on Wednesday aged 79.

Taylor, arguably the last great star of Hollywood’s golden era, died six weeks after being admitted to Los Angeles’s Cedars-Sinai hospital with congestive heart failure, a condition she had struggled with for years.

“My mother was an extraordinary woman who lived life to the fullest, with great passion, humour, and love,” said her son Michael Wilding, adding she was surrounded by her children when she died.

Taylor won two Academy Awards for best actress, including in the 1966 classic “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” one of many films she played opposite Richard Burton. The Welsh-born actor was one of the great loves of Taylor’s life.

BHAGAT SINGH: Street play, demonstration remember Bhagat Singh

LAHORE: Scores of passers-by joined civil society activists in watching ‘Chipen Ton Pehlan’ staged near Shadman Chowk on Wednesday in connection with the 79th anniversary of Bhagat Singh’s martyrdom.

Written by Davinder Daman and directed by Huma Safdar, the one-hour street play was arranged by Punjab Lok Rahs.

Reviving the old tradition of Nukar Theatre, the play portrayed Bhagat Singh’s struggle against British imperialism.

The cast included Punjab University Mass Communication Department students Hammad Afzal (Bhagat Singh), Adil Aziz (Boga sweeper), Adnan (advocate Pran Nath Metha) Mohsin Ali Danish (jailer Akbar Khan), Tayyab and Akmal (jail officials) while Sobia Zaidi and Huma Safdar performed choreography.

At nearby Shadman Chowk roundabout, civil society activists held a demonstration under the umbrella of Institute for Peace and Secular Studies.

Carrying placards, the demonstrators joined by Labour Party Pakistan activists demanded that the Shadman Chowk be renamed after Bhagat Singh who was hanged there on March 23, 1931. They also raised slogans like `Inqilab Zindabad,’ Bhagat Teray Khoon Se Inqilab Aaey Ga,’ and ‘Amriki, Arab Samraj Murdabad’.

They also informed Evacuee Trust Property Board Chairman Syed Asif Hashmi that the Punjab government had been approached in 2001 that Bhagat Singh should be recognised as one of the heroes of independence movement and Shadman Chowk be renamed after him, but no action was taken.

Mr Hashmi assured the demonstrators that he would take up the matter with federal and Punjab governments. He said that a block in the ETPB offices would be named after Bhagat Singh on Thursday.

The ETPB would also give award to a Sikh on the occasion of Baisakhi every year who would have contributed to the cause of independence.

Also, the Punjabi Language Movement observed the death anniversary of Bhagat Singh at its Shama Chowk office on Wednesday.

Movement convener Chaudhry Nazeer Kahut said the Quaid-i-Azam made no secret of his sympathies for Bhagat Singh and other freedom fighters in the Lahore prison.

“Jinnah sahib in his speech in the Central Assembly on Sept 12, 1929, said `the man who goes on hunger strike has a soul. He is no ordinary criminal, who is guilty of cold blooded, sordid wicked crime’.

“It is clear that Jinnah Sahib considered Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev freedom fighters. If the father of the nation admires a freedom fighter, how can we ignore him? Why not Serdar Bhagat Singh be declared the hero of independence movement in our history and text books?

“After partition of Punjab, creation of Pakistan and freedom of India, where do Punjab’s heroes of independence movement like Rai Ahmed Khan Kharral and Bhagat Singh stand? Why discriminate Bhagat Singh and other Punjab’s heroes of independence?” asked Kahut.

Allama Iqbal was Bhagat Singh’s favourite revolutionary poet. It was Maulana Zaffar Ali Khan who for the first time floated the title of Shaheed for Bhagat Singh.

Bhagat Singh was hanged in Lahore. He demanded that a statute of Bhagat be installed there and the Qadahfi Stadium also be renamed after him.

Japan disaster dead, missing toll tops 18,000

Trucks carrying relief supplies drive a road amid the rubble at Onagawa town, Miyagi Prefecture, northeastern Japan, just one week after the earthquake and resulting tsunami.

TOKYO: The number of people confirmed as dead or listed as missing by Japan’s national police agency topped 18,000 on Saturday, eight days after the massive earthquake and tsunami struck.

There were fears of a far higher death toll from the disaster that wiped out vast residential areas along the Pacific coast of northern Honshu island.

The national police agency said 7,197 people had been confirmed dead and 10,905 officially listed as missing — a total of 18,102 — as of 9:00 am Saturday (0000 GMT) as a result of the March 11 catastrophe.

Hopes of finding many more survivors amid the rubble have diminished amid a cold snap that has hit Japan’s northeast, covering much of the disaster area in snow earlier this week.

The death toll has surpassed that of the 7.2-magnitude quake that struck the western Japanese port city of Kobe in 1995, killing 6,434 people.

The March 11 quake is now Japan’s deadliest natural disaster since the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake, which killed more than 142,000 people.

The latest police figures for people missing do not include local reports from along the tsunami-hit coast of vast numbers of people unaccounted for.

The mayor of the coastal town of Ishinomaki in Miyagi prefecture said Wednesday that the number of missing there was likely to hit 10,000, Kyodo News reported.

On Saturday, public broadcaster NHK said that around 10,000 people were unaccounted for in the port town of Minamisanriku in the same prefecture.

Quake shifted Japan away from Korea: scientists

The Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (KASSI) said the Korean peninsula moved east up to five centimetres (two inches) while Japan shifted some 2.4 metres (7.92 feet) east.

SEOUL: The massive earthquake that devastated northeastern Japan has shifted the country more than two metres away from the neighbouring Korean peninsula, scientists said on Thursday.

The Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (KASSI) said the Korean peninsula moved east up to five centimetres (two inches) while Japan shifted some 2.4 metres (7.92 feet) east.

Consequently, the distance between the countries increased by more than two metres, the institute said.

The disputed Dokdo islands, also claimed by Japan where they are known as Takeshima, relocated furthest, moving five centimetres east, as the islands in the Sea of Japan (East Sea) are relatively closer to the epicentre.

The southwestern port of Mokpo drifted 1.21 centimetres.

“We are closely monitoring to see whether the shift was temporary or perpetual,” a KASSI spokeswoman told AFP.

“But don’t worry. You will never feel the change anyway,” she said.

According to NASA, the 9.0 magnitude earthquake also shortened Earth’s day by just over one-millionth of a second and shifted the Earth’s axis by about 6.5 inches

Global fears mount as Japan takes desperate steps to cool reactors

Braving snow, rescue workers search for survivors in the rubble of tsunami-stricken town of Minamisanriku in Miyagi Prefecture, five days after a devastating earthquake and tsunami slammed northeastern Japan.

TOKYO: Operators of a quake-crippled nuclear plant in Japan again deployed military helicopters on Thursday in a bid to douse overheating reactors, as US officials warned of the rising risk of a catastrophic radiation leak from spent fuel rods.

While officials were scrambling to contain the nuclear crisis with a patchwork of fixes, the top US nuclear regulator warned that one reactor cooling pool for spent fuel rods may have run dry and another was leaking.

“We believe that around the reactor site there are high levels of radiation,” Gregory Jaczko, head of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, told a US House Energy and Commerce subcommittee hearing.

“It would be very difficult for emergency workers to get near the reactors. The doses they could experience would potentially be lethal doses in a very short period of time.”

Health experts said panic over radiation leaks from the Daiichi plant was also diverting attention from other threats to survivors of last Friday’s 9.0 magnitude earthquake and tsunami, such as the cold weather and access to fresh water.

The head of the world’s nuclear watchdog, meanwhile, said it was not accurate to say things were “out of control” in Japan, but the situation was “very serious”, with core damage to three units at the plant, around 240 kms north of Tokyo.

The latest images from the plant showed severe damage to some of the buildings after several blasts.

A stream of gloomy warnings and reports on the Japan crisis from experts and officials around the world triggered a swoon in global financial markets, with the Japanese yen surging to all-time highs against the dollar and all three major stock indexes slumping on fears of slower worldwide growth.

Japanese Finance Minister Yoshihiko Noda on Thursday blamed speculation for the yen’s surge and repeated his warning that he would closely watch market action.

Japan’s Nikkei average slumped on opening on Thursday, and was down nearly 3 percent at 0125 GMT.

G7 finance ministers will hold a conference call later on Thursday to discuss steps to help Japan cope with the financial and economic impact of the disaster, a source said.

Japan’s nuclear agency said radiation levels at the plant “continued to fall”, but the government, in a sign that it was overwhelmed, appealed to private companies to help deliver supplies to tens of thousands of people evacuated from around the complex.

“People would not be in immediate danger if they went outside with these levels. I want people to understand this,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano told a news conference, referring to people living outside a 30-km exclusion zone.

Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) officials said bulldozers attempted to clear a route to the reactor so fire trucks could gain access and try to cool the facility using hoses.

Company officials also said they had high hopes of getting limited power to the facility to help pump water needed to cool reactors and the spent fuel rods that have been overheating.

High radiation levels on Wednesday prevented a helicopter from dropping water into the No. 3 reactor to try to cool its fuel rods after an earlier explosion damaged the unit’s roof and cooling system.

Another attempt on Thursday appeared to be partially successful, with two of four water drops over the site hitting their mark.

The plant operator described No. 3 — the only reactor at that uses plutonium in its fuel mix — as the “priority”. Plutonium, once absorbed in the bloodstream, can linger for years in bone marrow or liver and lead to cancer.

If cooling operations do not proceed well, the situation will “reach a critical stage in a couple of days”, said an official with the government’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency.

The situation at No. 4 reactor, where the fire broke out, was “not so good”, TEPCO added, while water was being poured into reactors No.5 and 6, indicating the entire six-reactor facility was now at risk of overheating.

“Getting water into the pools of the No.3 and No.4 reactors is a high priority,” Said Hidehiko Nishiyama, a senior official at Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Administration.

“It could become a serious problem in a few days,” he said.

Stock Exchange Resists Calls To Halt Trading

Panic over the economic impact of last Friday’s massive earthquake and tsunami knocked $620 billion off Japan’s stock market over the first two days of this week, but the Nikkei index rebounded on Wednesday to end up 5.68 per cent.

The Tokyo Stock Exchange and the Financial Services Agency plan to keep the stock market open despite calls for a halt to trading, mainly from foreign financial institutions, the Nikkei business daily said.

TSE President Atsushi Saito said the exchange “will continue to provide investors with an opportunity to trade”, calling it “an important piece of social infrastructure”.

International Frustration

In another sign of international frustration at the pace of updates from Japan, Yukiya Amano, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said he would fly to Japan on Thursday to get first-hand information.

Several experts said the Japanese authorities were underplaying the severity of the incident, particularly on a scale called INES used to rank nuclear incidents. The Japanese have so far rated the accident a four on a one-to-seven scale, but that rating was issued on Saturday and since then the situation has worsened dramatically.

France’s nuclear safety authority ASN said on Tuesday it should be classed as a level-six incident.

At its worst, radiation in Tokyo reached 0.809 microsieverts per hour on Tuesday — 10 times below what a person would receive if exposed to a dental x-ray. Early on Thursday, radiation levels were barely above average.

But many Tokyo residents stayed indoors. Usually busy streets were nearly deserted. Many shops and offices were closed. One bank, Mizuho , said all its automatic teller machines in the country had crashed but it doubted that it was connected to the quake or power cuts.

TOBACCO: 1 Billion Users

LAHORE, March 4: At least one billion people around the world use tobacco in various forms and of them some five million die annually. About 7.5 million people die due to high blood pressure while 2.6 million owing to obesity.

This was stated by Dr Sania Nishtar, who was delivering a guest lecture on the fourth day of the Pakistan Urban Forum 2011 at Alhamra Hall here on Friday.

She said health problems had increased due to expansion of cities and there was a dire need of reforms in the health sector.

Of tobacco users, some 2.8 million save their lives because they also take fruits and vegetables. She said some 2.6 million tobacco users die due to increasing cholesterol level, while 5.8 million lose their lives due to diabetes.

Dr Nishtar stressed that people should change their lifestyle and improve healthcare facilities.

She stressed overhauling of reforms in the healthcare sector at the level of governance, micro economic, tax, financial, civil services and public management and anti-corruption.

She said five different healthcare systems were running in Pakistan that benefited only 26 per cent of population whereas rest of them consulted the private sector.

She said only 2.9 per cent share of the GDP was allocated for the health sector that was obviously very low.

Maximum funds should be allocated for the healthcare sector besides ensuring their transparent utilisation, she said.