MOSCOW, April 12--Russian prosecutors accused officials at the country’s oldest nuclear processing plant of dumping radioactive waste in a criminal case ecologists hope leads to its eventual closure, media reported on Tuesday.
The Mayak plant in the Urals has been the site of various accidents since it was opened in 1949, including a radioactive waste tank explosion in the 1950s.
Tens of thousands of Russians living near the facility have been treated for the effects of radiation exposure for years, Reuters reported.
Yuri Zolotov, deputy prosecutor general in the Urals region, told NTV television that an investigation showed that liquid radioactive waste had continuously been dumped from Mayak into the Techa river, which eventually flows into Siberia’s major Ob river and on to the Arctic Ocean.
Vremya Novostei daily newspaper quoted Zolotov as saying radiation in the area exceeded safe levels by more than 200 percent. A formal criminal investigation was launched on Monday.
A similar investigation in 2003 led to Mayak’s shut-down, but the plant was later reopened.
Ecology groups have long urged the government to shut the plant and welcomed the latest criminal investigation.
“But the main question now is whether this case would be seen through to a conclusion, whether the guilty would be punished and the plant’s license withdrawn,“ Vladimir Slivyak of EcoDefense ecology group said in a statement.
“Otherwise it would be a waste of time.“
Mayak is one of Russia’s biggest plants where nuclear waste generated by atomic power plants is processed to extract plutonium and prepare it for storage.
Spent atomic fuel from a Russian-built nuclear plant in Iran--a source of diplomatic friction between Moscow and Washington--was also expected to be processed there.

Women in the Moroccan village of Ait Daoud cry in front of the rubble of their home that was destroyed by an earthquake, February 25. (Reuters File Photo)

CAIRO, Egypt, April 12--Half of the women in the Arab world are illiterate and more than 10 million children in region don’t go to school, according to a report released Monday.
The report on the status of children and women, produced by the Arab League and the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), said many Arab countries have made progress on child rights and protection, but that more still needs to be done, Reuters reported.
“More than 10 million children in the Arab world are out of school, most of them in Egypt, Iraq, Morocco and Sudan,“ said the report, although it gave no figures for the total number of school-age children in the region.
It said although many countries have established a basis for a child’s right to education, they still fall short of the UN’s millennium development goals for primary education, especially for girls.
“More than half of the women in the Arab world cannot read or write,“ said the report, arguing that this was preventing them from obtaining vital information on such issues as pre- and post-natal health, leading to high infant and child mortality rates.
Mortality rates among under-fives in the region stand at around 60 for every 1,000 births compared to just six in industrialized countries. Many of those deaths occurred in the first year primarily due to “pre-natal complications,“ exacerbated by ignorance.
“There is a dire need to invest in hospitals and clinics in order to provide care in cases of emergency delivery and to address the causes of pre- and post-natal complications,“ the report said.
On education, the report said many of the Arab League’s 22 member states enrolled only a small percentage of school age children between 1997 and 2000 at primary level, with Tunisia being an exception with a record 99 percent intake.
The figures were even poorer for secondary school enrolment, with barely 50 percent of eligible children signed up in the 2000-2001 academic year in certain countries, the report said.
Only the Persian Gulf island state of Bahrain managed to get 92 percent of eligible students enrolled in secondary school for that year.
The report noted that not enough emphasis was being placed on pre-school education, which it said was vital for academic formation.

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia, April 12--Saudi Arabia’s King Fahd appointed an expanded 150-member consultative Shura council on Monday, the third expansion since the body was set up in 1993, Reuters said.
State media said the new all-male council, which has played a largely advisory role since its inception, would start a four-year term on Tuesday. It replaces a 120-member body.
The council has steadily gained influence in the absolute monarchy, including the right to propose or challenge legislation. But reformers say its members must be elected if it is to have real muscle.
Defense Minister Prince Sultan, the third most senior royal after King Fahd and Crown Prince Abdullah, said in January the Persian Gulf state would grant the council wider powers but that he saw little benefit in holding elections to choose its members.
De facto ruler Crown Prince Abdullah has faced pressure for reform since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks in the United States, carried out by mainly Saudi hijackers, and a wave of Al-Qaeda violence in the kingdom which began in May 2003.
He has introduced cautious changes including elections for municipal councils this year held from February to April.
But the limited scope of the moves was underlined by the arrest last year of several prominent reformists and a warning from ministers that government employees who criticize the state would face strict punishment.

MIAMI, USA, April 12--A militant, anti-Communist Cuban exile who was jailed in Panama and then pardoned in connection with a plot to kill President Fidel Castro is in the United States and will apply for asylum on Wednesday, Reuters quoted his lawyer as saying on Monday.
Luis Posada Carriles is an archfoe of Cuba’s Communist government, which views him as a terrorist and has linked him to a series of attacks on Cuba, but is seen as a hero by some hard-line exiles in Florida.
Lawyer Eduardo Soto confirmed media reports in Miami that Posada Carriles was in the country, saying he entered illegally across the US-Mexican border. Soto said Posada Carriles, 77, would file papers with US authorities on Wednesday, but would not have to appear in person.
The request could present US authorities with the knotty issue of how to square traditional sympathy with Cuban exiles--the law allows most Cubans who arrive on US shores to stay--with a firm stand against people suspected of terrorism in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States. In a three-hour televised address on Monday evening, Castro referred to Posada Carriles as “the monster“ and compared him to Sept. 11 mastermind Osama bin Laden.
Castro also demanded US President George W. Bush explain how Posada Carriles managed to enter and remain at-large for more than two weeks, despite massive anti-terrorist defenses in the United States.
“It is as if bin Laden were in the United States and the US president did not know,“ Castro said.
The Miami Herald has reported that US immigration authorities had Posada Carriles, a naturalized Venezuelan citizen, on a watch list in case he tried to enter the country.