MFS - The Other News

                  Morning   Posting.

• Live broadcast info from Japan directly ! Here.

• Libya Live Blog - April 03. Here .(Al-Jazeera)And  here (BBC).

• French forces take over Abidjan airport. Here . (Al -Jazeera).

• Updated !Earthquakes in the last 24 hours in the world seismic activity in Japan between 4.4 and 5.2 today. More info here.

• Latest official Situation Update No. 71. On 03.04.2011 at 03:24 GMT+2.

Highly radioactive water was leaking into the sea Saturday from a crack discovered at a Japanese nuclear power plant destabilized by last month's earthquake and tsunami, Japanese nuclear safety officials say. The contaminated water will quickly dissipate into the sea and is not expected to cause any health hazard, they say. Nevertheless, the disturbing discovery points at the unexpected problems that have cropped up and continue to hamper technicians trying to control the crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant about 220 kilometres north of Tokyo. The government had rushed to provide relief to the more than 165,000 people still living in shelters — and tens of thousands more who lack electricity or running water — after dozens of villages, towns and cities were slammed March 11 by a tsunami that followed a magnitude 9.0 earthquake.

But its attention has been divided by the efforts to stabilize the Fukushima Daiichi plant, which suffered heavy damage and has dragged the country to its worst nuclear crisis since the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during the Second World War. The plant's reactors overheated to dangerous levels after electrical pumps, deprived of electricity, failed to circulate water to keep the reactors cool. A series of almost daily problems have led to substantial amount of radiation leaking in the atmosphere, ground and sea. On Saturday, workers discovered a 20-centimetre long crack in a maintenance pit that was leaking highly radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean, said Japan Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency spokesman Hidehiko Nishiyama. He said the water, contaminated with radioactive iodine far above the legal limit found inside the pit, could be one of the sources of recent spikes in radioactivity in seawater.

"There could be other similar cracks in the area, and we must find them as quickly as possible," he told reporters. Soon after the discovery, the plant's operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co., started filling the pit with cement to seal the crack and prevent more contaminated water from seeping into the ocean. Nuclear safety officials said the crack was likely caused by the quake and may be the source of radioactive iodine that started showing up in the ocean more than a week ago. People living within 20 kilometres of the plant have been evacuated from the area, and the radioactive water will quickly dissipate in the sea, but it was unclear if the leak posed any new danger to workers.The cracked pit houses cables for one of the six nuclear reactors, and the concentration of radioactive iodine was the same as in a puddle of contaminated water found outside the reactor earlier in the week. Because of that, officials believe the contaminated water is coming from the same place, though they are not sure where.Source.

• Japan confirms first two deaths at Fukushima as engineers fail to seal radioactive leak into ocean.Japanese engineers have admitted that they have failed to seal a crack from which highly radioactive water is spilling into the Pacific Ocean from the stricken Fukushima nuclear power plant.Officials said a concrete barrier that had been poured in to a maintenance pit at Unit 2 - to seal a recently discovered eight-inch crack in the wall of the reactor - had not successfully stemmed the flow of water.Officials say a renewed inspection of the plant had not uncovered any other leaks, but this was the only good news from a day where it was also revealed that two workers bodies had been found at the plant.The first deaths at the plant were confirmed today by the operator. A 21-year-old and a 24-year-old were believed to be conducting regular checks at the complex when the 9.0-magnitude earthquake and resulting tsunami hit on March 11.Tokyo Electric Power Company Chairman Tsunehisa Katsumata said in a statement: 'It pains me that these two young workers were trying to protect the power plant while being hit by the earthquake and tsunami.'It was unclear why the men did not evacuate when the quake hit.The bodies were not discovered until Wednesday and had to be decontaminated. The announcement was delayed out of respect for the victims' families, TEPCO spokesman Naoki Tsunoda said.The Fukushima plant has been spewing radioactivity since the quake and tsunami knocked out power, disabling cooling systems and allowing radiation to seep out of the overheating reactors.The water is seeping directly into the Pacific Ocean, although some experts say that it would be sufficiently diluted to not cause a major threat.Workers flooded the pit with concrete in an effort to seal the crack but couldn't get it to dry.Next, they plan to inject polymer into a pipe that connects the pit to the rest of the system. Polymer can absorb enormous amounts of water and expands 50 times its original size.Measurements showed the air immediately above it contained 1,000 millisieverts of radioactivity.Exposure to 500 millisieverts over a short period can increase the long-term risk of cancer.News of the failed bid to seal the leak came as Japan's prime minister Naoto Kan visited tsunami-ravaged coastal areas for the first time.Frustrated evacuees have complained that the government has been too focused on the nuclear crisis that followed the massive wave.Read the full story here.

• HT:DougRoss.Oops! New Black Panther Reveals Barack Obama dined with Louis Farrakhan and received counsel from the Nation of Islam leader.Race-baiter Malik Zulu Shabazz had some harsh words for Barack Obama last week. And while conservatives have focused mainly on the New Black Panther's hateful rhetoric, I focused instead on one particular snippet of his delightful soliloquy.Malik Zulu Shabazz, National Chairman of the New Black Panther, personal friend and admirer of Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, unleashed his vitriol toward Obama, whom he lashes out at for representing “the ideology of the white man... policies of the white man..."..."represents the CIA set-up sabotage lie on an African leader and bomb [sic] that man like he’s George Bush ... And his wife should leave the n***er tonight. She should walk out, and his beautiful daughters should walk out on this bamboozling, buck-dancing Tom......Oh yeah, I said it. We’ve held back on this Negro for a long time... he caved in like a punk... You should have listened to Louis Farrakhan a long time ago when you were at his table....But you wanted to follow the white man and the white man's time is up! ...We pray that our Gaddafi survives... we see the same thing with the white man comin' after us all the time... [Obama] wanted to be the white man's n***er...We didn't know that Obama and Farrakhan were close enough to dine together -- perhaps more than once. And that the Nation of Islam's chief racist counseled Obama.So Farrakhan joins the collection of skeletons in Barack's closet, a veritable Star Wars cantina of freaks, Communists and anti-American kooks. From Bill Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn, Jeremiah Wright, "Father" Pfleger, Van Jones, Imam Hassan Qazwini, Susan Power, Anita Dunn and a host of other crackpots we'll likely never know about.Now we discover that Obama received advice from the hateful nut Louis Farrakhan. Let me guess: legacy media will hush this story up too.Hmmmm....If ever a President needed impeachment it's here and now!Read the full story here.

• Gen. Petraeus Likely to Leave the Top US Command Post in Afghanistan This Summer.David Petraeus, perhaps the most celebrated American general of his generation, is likely to leave his job as the top US commander in Afghanistan this summer, multiple defence officials say.Petraeus, who stepped into the post last summer after President Barack Obama fired Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal for comments his aides made to Rolling Stone magazine, is likely to be succeeded by Deputy CENTCOM commander, Marine Corps Lt. Gen. John Allen, defense sources told The Envoy.Meantime, the deputy US commander in Afghanistan, Lt. Gen. David Rodriguez was nominated this week for a fourth star and to take charge of Army Force Command, moving to Ft. Bragg, North Carolina. He is likely to be succeeded in Afghanistan by Lt. Gen. Curtis “Mike” Scaparrotti, currently commander of the I Corps and Joint Base Lewis-McChord, in Washington State, defense sources said.Both Scaparrotti — a former commander of the 82nd Airborne Division who is planning to bring several three-star advisors with him to Afghanistan — and Allen are extremely respected figures in Washington and in the field.John Allen is “a rock star, one of the brightest lights in the U.S. military,” one Defense official told The Envoy on condition of anonymity to discuss personnel matters. As deputy commanding general for US Central Command (CENTCOM), Allen has been the point man for all things Iran. In Iraq, Allen was one of the authors of the “Anbar Awakening” — the largely successful Sunni reconciliation and reintegration effort, for the Marine Corps from late 2006 to 2007.“Few people in the military understand the on-the-ground inherently political nature of irregular war[counterinsurgency] as well as Allen,” the official said. “He also understands Washington and the interagency. He is exactly the right guy.”Where will Petraeus go? Military analysts who have worked with the commander say he has long been interested in commanding U.S. forces in Europe — the Supreme Allied Commander for Europe, SACEUR — a post currently held by Adm. John Stavridis. Some twenty-five years ago, Petraeus served as a speechwriter to then-SACEUR Gen. John Galvin, a defense analyst said, and Petraeus has been intrigued by the job since.Hmmmm.......Commander in chief of the "Mammoth coalition' to occupy Israel,after the September UN vote?Read the full story here.

• Alleged Saudi maid abuser acquitted!Judge finds no evidence that the defendant tortured the maid.A Saudi appeal court on Saturday acquitted a local woman who was sentenced in January to three years in prison for severely torturing her Indonesian housemaid, a newspaper in the Gulf Kingdom reported.The judge at the appeal court in the western town of Madina said there was no evidence the 53-year-old woman tortured her maid while her lawyer said he would seek damages for his client, Sabq Arabic language daily said.“The lawyer for the maid failed to produce concrete evidence during the trial, prompting the judge to acquit the defendant,” the paper said after the trial that was attended by Indonesian diplomats.In January, a court in Madina sentenced the woman to three years in prison for stabbing, beating and burning her 23-year-old Indonesian maid.The Saudi woman was arrested after allegedly beating Sumiati Binti Salan Mustapa so severely as to break bones and cause internal bleeding, putting a hot iron to her head and stabbing and slashing her with scissors.Sumiati's case shocked and outraged human rights groups and labour activists as another example of the paucity of protection for millions of mostly Asian domestic workers, especially in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states.Hmmmm.....Now why am i not surprised?They seem a lot quicker to jail foreigners?Read the full story here.

• U.S. pastor says he will put Mohammed 'on trial' next as Afghan president calls on U.S. to condemn Koran burnings.Despite clear evidence that his actions have led to multiple murders and widespread violence in the Middle East, controversial Florida pastor Terry Jones has vowed to step up his provocative campaign against Islam.The radical pastor said that he was considering putting Islamic prophet Mohammed 'on trial' for his next 'day of judgement' publicity stunt.His last, in which he oversaw the burning of a copy of the Koran after a six-hour mock trial, has been directly responsible for a wave of violence that began last night and has left 30 people dead and more than 150 injured.The defiance has led Afghan President Hamid Karzai to call on the U.S. Congress to condemn the burning of a Koran by the radical fundamentalist U.S. pastor.Karzai made the request at a meeting with U.S. ambassador Karl Eikenberry and General David Petraeus, the commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, the statement said.Eikenberry read to Karzai from U.S. President Barack Obama's earlier condemnation of the Koran burning, the statement said, but did not include any response from the Afghan leader.He told the New York Times: 'It was intended to stir the pot; if you don’t shake the boat, everyone will stay in their complacency.'Emotionally, it’s not all that easy. People have tried to make us responsible for the people who are killed. It’s unfair and somewhat damaging.Mr Jones told the Times that, in recent weeks, he had received more than 300 death threats via phone and email, and had been told by the FBI that there was a $2.4 million contract on his life. He said: 'I don’t right now feel personally afraid. But we are armed.' Mr Jones admitted that he knew the Koran-burning stunt could lead to violence, adding: 'We were worried. We knew it was possible.'But it clearly did not stop him.Yesterday Mr Jones, who ignored international warnings that his actions would undoubtedly lead to violent reprisals, said the blame laid at the feet of the attackers.He said: 'We must hold these countries and people accountable for what they have done as well as for any excuses they may use to promote their terrorist activities. The time has come to hold Islam accountable.'Our United States government and our President must take a close, realistic look at the radical element Islam. Islam is not a religion of peace.'We demand action from the United Nations. Muslim dominated countries can no longer be allowed to spread their hate against Christians and minorities.'Read the full story here.

• Operation Cast Lead: Binyamin Netanyahu and Israel Vindicated.Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyhau on Saturday called on the UN to “nullify the Goldstone Report.”Netanyahu delivered a short televised address to the media in both Hebrew and English in which he addressed Friday’s op-ed article in the Washington Post in which Goldstone said the findings of his investigation into Operation Cast Lead would have been different had he possessed all of the information.“Goldstone himself confirmed what we have already been saying,” Netanyahu stated.“I think our soldiers and army behaved according to the highest standards” during Operation Cast Lead, Netanyahu said.“We expect this farce to be rectified immediately,” he said of the report which charged Israel with committing war crimes by targeting civilians in the Gaza Strip.The prime minister added that the fact that Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi was part of the UN Human Rights Council, which commissioned the report, proves the absurdity of the findings. “It’s time to throw this report into the dustbin of history,” he concluded.Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman on Saturday praised Goldstone for the op-ed article, in which he stated that Israel did not intentionally target civilians during Operation Cast Lead.Lieberman said in an interview with Channel Two’s Dana Weiss on the program “Meet the Press,” that while he praised Goldstone’s comments he was not surprised that the judge came to the conclusions that he did.“We had no doubt that the truth would come out eventually,” said Lieberman.Lieberman also expressed satisfaction with the fact that Goldstone recognized the anti-Israel bias of the UN Human Rights Council.When asked if he believed, given Goldstone’s comments, that Israel should have been more cooperative with Goldstone’s fact-finding mission, Lieberman said that Israel did not want to set a precedent of international bodies interfering in the governments internal decision-making process.Defense Minister Ehud Barak also addressed Goldstone’s comments, saying that the IDF was “a moral army that operated according to international law.”Barak added that in order to repair the damage done by the Goldstone Report, the judge should present his current conclusions before all of the international bodies who were presented the original report and not merely give his opinion in a newspaper article.Read the full story here, more : Richard Goldstone Confirms He Was A Useful Idiot here from Amnon and Jonathan.

• Barak: Goldstone must face UN.Defense minister says South African judge's regret over Gaza war report is 'very important', but that Israel will 'make him' express regret in international forum as well. PM Netanyahu: We'll work to demand justice Israel deserves.Two days after Judge Richard Goldstone expressed his regret over his accusations against Israel in his Gaza war report, Defense Minister Ehud Barak said Sunday that "Goldstone's article is very important, but it's too little and too late. We'll make him face an international United Nations forum and speak out."Although Goldstone also said Israel should have cooperated with the UN investigation into Operation Cast Lead, Barak does not regret the decision not to cooperate with the South African judge's team. "It's good that we rejected it," he told reporters at the start of the weekly cabinet meeting. Barak reiterated that the Goldstone report was distorted and called the committee's appointment a "blood libel". "Goldstone was asked to look into IDF war crimes, and only a senseless government could have accepted such a thing." The defense minister explained that "it's very important not to cooperate with a committee sent by the Human Rights Council in Geneva, which is a delusional forum of Israel's rivals." He stressed that Israel handed the UN a report of hundreds of pages on the independent investigations it conducted after the Gaza operation. "Goldstone knew everything he needed to know, all the facts on the Israeli side, but he ignored them." Goldstone wrote in a Washington Post article published Friday, "If I had known then what I know now, the Goldstone Report would have been a different document." Culture and Sports Minister Limor Livnat called on Israel's left-wing organizations to apologize, as Goldstone did. "Elements like the New Israel Fund, which provided distorted material, should self-examine themselves. "I would like to see at least one of them say, 'I was wrong, I made a mistake,' at least like Goldstone did. I would like to see them work to distribute the truth worldwide."According to Kirsehnbaum, Goldstone "had the integrity to admit that his findings on the IDF's conduct were wrong, but those organizations are hiding behind his back and failing to admit their mistake and the fact that the information they transferred was distorted and false." Read the full story here.

• Britain to send 600 navy marines to Libya, says report.The United Kingdom will send a Royal Navy taskforce of 600 marines and at least six ships to Libya this week as part of a humanitarian mission to provide medical and food aid to rebel-held towns, the London-based Times reported on Sunday, without disclosing where it got the information.The marines, who are due to fly out to Gibraltar later this week, will be used to protect ports where supplies will be unloaded, the newspaper reported in its paper edition. The ships in the taskforce, which are due to leave in the next two days, will include the landing platform Albion, the type-42 destroyer Liverpool and four support ships, the Times said.Britain is also under pressure to double the number of Royal Air Force planes available to attack the Libyan army after Saturday’s withdrawal of U.S. combat aircraft, the newspaper reported, without citing anyone.The Times’ report came nearly two days after a Texas-based global intelligence company said that British commandos are already operational in the North African country. In an article on Libya war, George Friedman, founder of STRATFOR, said British SAS operators were already in Libya. According to Friedman, suspicion is growing that other countries’ special operations forces and intelligence services were also operating there.A Turkish ship carrying 250 wounded from Misrata is expected to dock in Benghazi on Sunday as well, according to the state-run Anatolia news agency.The boat, which is carrying medical supplies, is expected to pick up around 60 wounded people and 21 accompanying persons that are currently being treated in various hospitals in Benghazi as well as 30 Turks and 40 people from Greece, Ukraine, Britain, Uzbekistan, Germany and Finland.Read the full story here.

• Obama Says Florida Koran Burning “Is an Act of Extreme Intolerance and Bigotry”.President Barack Obama is extending his deepest condolences to the families and loved ones of those killed in the northern Afghan city of Mazar-i-Sharif by protesters enraged by the burning of a Quran in Florida.Obama says desecration of the Quran “is an act of extreme intolerance and bigotry.”But he says that does not justify attacking and killing innocent people, calling it “outrageous and an affront to human decency and dignity.”Eleven were killed Friday, including seven foreign U.N. employees.And Afghans rioted for a second day Saturday, killing nine people in Kandahar and injuring more than 80.Obama said in a statement that no religion tolerates “the slaughter and beheading of innocent people.”Hmmmm...On the other hand B.Hussein Obama the "I pray every day" Christian has no problem with the 2003 Fatwa that ruled the Bible or Torah suitable for use by Muslims when cleaning after defecation Perhaps he doesn't consider the Bible and the Torah a Holy book?Read the full story here.

• HT:Memri. Video : TV Report on Training Camp for Libyan Rebels in Benghazi.Read and see the full story here.

• HT:IslamInEurope.Belgium: Mandate of Muslim Executive not extended.Belgian Justice Minister Stefaan De Clerck says that the mandate of the Muslim Executive will not be extended. The Executive will continue to receive some subsidies in order ensure continuity, but will not start off new initiatives.The body, which is supposed to represent Belgian Muslims, has not managed to get to an agreement on reforms. The discussions have been ongoing since 2008, when the Executive was tasked with developing a new structure. At a last-minute meeting with the minister on Thursday it seemed that there was no willingness to talk further, and it was decided not to extend the mandate.Future recognition of the Muslim Executive currently depends only on the Executive itself.Hmmmm.......Seems like Belgium is following Germany's way of thinking "Integration has failed"?Read the full story here.

• HT:Ross'sRightAngle.Indonesia Inquisition Ministry Turns Guns Against Buddhists – Statue Downed at Islamist Behest.Busily brow-beating one religious minority ( Ahmadiyah ) the Ministry of Religious Affairs has still found time to bully Buddhists too, with a new diktat ordering them to remove their statue in Tanjung Balai, North Sumatra, ‘after it raised the ire of Muslims in the area.’An odd report in the Jakarta Post today on how a Buddhist leader was ‘forced to sign an agreement under pressure’ just a week before he suffered a fatal accident.It seems the Mayor of Tanjung Balai, in North Sumatra, a certain Sutrisno Hadi, has ordered that a Buddhist statue be removed from a Buddhist temple, which is where you’d think it belonged. He claimed this sacrilegious act was motivated by ‘public pressures,’ but others say it was ‘permeated by political motives.’Mr.W. Lie. from the city’s ethnic Chinese community is ‘shocked’ and says that the so-called ‘agreement’ under which his Chinese colleagues agreed to let the statue be taken was ‘not their real wishes,’ and the temple leader, Suwanto Saima ‘was forced to sign.’“Unfortunately we did not have the opportunity to ask who intimidated him,” said Lie, because the man was dead within a week.Lie added that the Buddhist community were NOT willing to see the statue removed. “We won’t remove the statue,” adding that Buddhists were ‘afraid of provoking trouble’ if they opposed the plan. The majority of Buddhists in the city ‘opted to keep silent to avoid controversy.’So who’s behind this authorised sectarian vandalism? Naturally, we suspected the FPI, and sure enough, a report in Kompas 31/5 stated that they were involved. But it’s a complicated saga.Enter Veryanto Sitohang, of the North Sumatra Allliance.“The Mayor’s son, Eka, is currently vying for the city’s top position. Based on information, he is being pressuried by an Islamci organisation to remove the statue as a condition of their support.”Whatever the ins-and-outs of local electioneering up in Sumatra, we think the photograph of the Buddhists’ statue looks grand, and the Islamist demand for its de-thronement is a sleazy sectarian echo of the Taliban scum in Afghanistan who dynamited those magnificent statues in the face of worldwide outcry.Hmmmmm....Obama .."Indonesia is an example of religious tolerance" Yeah whatevah.. it's plain to see.Read the full story here.

• "The War on Christianity".Police Arrests Twelve Indians; Accuses Them of Illegally Converting to Christianity.Orissa Police on Tuesday arrested twelve tribals for allegedly undergoing religious conversion in an 'illegal' manner.According to sources, the tribals were arrested after a case was registered at Rasgobindpur police station in Mayurbhanj district for violating Orissa Freedom of Religion Act (OFRA).The arrested, including nine women, were booked under Section 4 of the Freedom of Religion Act . Police are now on the lookout for two Baptist pastors who also have been named by the complainant.Inspector In-Charge of Rasgobindpur police station, Santosh Das, told Press Trust of India that the twelve tribals arrested from Rasgobindpur area were produced before a court in Bairpada which sent them to jail.The Orissa Freedom of Religion Act prohibits religious conversions without the prior permission of the local police and a district magistrate. The order stipulates that a citizen wishing to convert must undergo a police inquiry to explain his or her reasons. Orissa is one of six states in India that has adopted an anti-conversion legislation which the Church has strongly opposed stating it is against the spirit of the Constitution. Meanwhile, a Bangalore-based advocacy group condemned Tuesday's arrest and demanded a probe against the police officials "involved in the intimidation of Christians from the tribal background”.The Global Council of Indian Christians (GCIC) urged the Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik to drop the cases against the tribals and stop harassment of Christians in Orissa.Hmmmm.....India Another country Obama visited....The 'Obama curse'?Read the full story here.

• Machete thugs hack to death 1,000 in just one town as Ivory Coast battle rages.A thousand civilians have been found massacred in a small town in Ivory Coast amid worsening civil conflict in the West African state.The victims were discovered by aid agency workers in Duekoue. Some had been shot and others hacked to death with machetes.It was not clear last night who carried out the attacks, but the area is thought to be in the control of supporters of Alassane Ouattara, who won Ivory Coast's election late last year. President Laurent Gbagbo has refused to step down.Red Cross spokesman Dorothea Krimitsas warned: 'There is a risk this kind of event can happen again.Last night 10,000 refugees crowded into Duekoue's Catholic church, guarded by 1,000 United Nations peacekeepers.Heavy fighting has continued in the main city, Abidjan, as Ouattara's forces battle for the presidential palace.State TV came back on air after fighting took it down and they were showing pictures of Gbagbo looking relaxed and drinking tea, stating that the pictures were from his city residence.Gunfire and explosions were heard from heavy shelling close to the presidential palace throughout the morning, and clashes raged around the military bases and offices of state broadcaster, RTI, which is still in the Gbagbo's hands.Read the full story here.

• Soldier's harrowing letters home reveal how a secret truce allowed 35 British soldiers to liberate Belsen.The handwriting is still clear, even after all these years, and the words on the yellowing pages tell a terrible story. The writer describes tens of thousands of bodies lying strewn around, and skeletal figures searching desperately for food and water. It is one of the most remarkable documents of the Second World War because this letter, written by Lance Bombardier George Leonard to his wife Gwyn and six-month-old daughter Sandra, is one of the first eyewitness accounts of the horrors of Belsen concentration camp by a British soldier.Even before it had been officially liberated by the 11th Armoured Division on April 15, 1945, George Leonard was there behind enemy lines with a tiny force of just 200 soldiers under a flag of truce.

He reveals how two SS guards were shot dead by British soldiers and that when news of the Army's arrival spread, the camp was on the brink of anarchy as inmates went on the rampage. The British soldiers were forced to shoot above their heads to maintain a semblance of order. The disease had reached epidemic proportions in the concentration camps; it had killed Anne Frank in Belsen a few months before George Leonard arrived.'We got an order to take down all our camouflage and put on our best battle dress.

'We had no idea what was going on. Then we saw Major Ben Barnett, our commanding officer, raising a white sheet. 'We knew then that we must be going through the German lines under a flag of truce.' Mr Leonard drove forward in his Crusader tank, towing a limber full of ammunition and a 17-pounder anti-tank gun. It was one of a cumbersome and unwieldy chain of vehicles and once into no man's land there could be no turning back.'The Germans in front of us just parted,' he says. 'They stood to the side of the roads and just watched us going by. It was absolutely quiet, just the sound of our engines. 'They seemed sullen. No one spoke, but it was frightening: we were terribly vulnerable and outnumbered if they had attacked us.' Mr Leonard's column pushed on and eventually reached the camp of Bergen-Belsen at about nine in the evening.

The men drove on to a large parade ground, surrounded by smart, three-storey buildings. 'I remember thinking, "If this is a concentration camp, then it doesn't look too bad," ' Mr Leonard says. In fact they were in the barracks area, where the SS and regular army troops lived. The real camp was hidden among the trees, and Mr Leonard's A Troop was detailed to be the first British detachment into the camp itself. There were just 35 men and they had no idea of the horrors that awaited them. What they saw would stay with them for the rest of their lives. As they advanced through the trees, they saw hundreds of people lying on the ground.'There were bodies everywhere. At first, you didn't think they could all be dead, but they were.' He described the scene in his letter: 'Dead bodies - some of them burnt and horribly mutilated - just lie about all over the place. I'd say there were approx 50,000 dead.'

The camp was guarded by 700 Hungarian troops, about 300 Wehrmacht (regular army) men and a group of SS men and women, who were in charge. There were about 60,000 inmates and, in fact, 30,000 dead bodies.The truce allowed for the Hungarian and Wehrmacht troops to wait for the British front line to pass over the camp, then they would be allowed safe passage back to the German lines or could surrender. The deal made no mention of the SS and the British soldiers arrested them immediately. Mr Leonard wrote: 'We rounded up all the SS men and the SS girls, then we locked them up in cells. The next day we took them out and made them bury the dead.

'Some of them didn't seem to like the job very much, so we had to persuade them in our way. 'That night we locked them up again - and in the morning one of them had committed suicide, the next day two more thought that life wasn't worth living.' I ask him what that line in his letter meant. Had they killed themselves too? 'They were shot trying to escape,' he says. Were they really trying to escape? 'They were shot trying to escape,' he repeats and we move on. Mr Leonard's letter does not attempt to hide his own feelings. 'I've never felt so cruel or heartless as when we were making those swine clear up the dead,' he wrote 65 years ago.

'We had a huge grave - over 100 yards long and about 20 yards wide by 20 feet deep, the last time I was making them work we nearly filled it. I still feel sick when I think of it...'Dealing with the SS was one thing, dealing with the thousands of camp inmates who 'went mad' quite another. Mr Leonard wrote: 'Just try to imagine 60,000 people, who had been starved, beaten, kicked and tortured, who hadn't seen food or water for nearly a week, just think of all that crowd gone mad just smashing everything. 'Then imagine 35 men trying to push them all back without hurting or shooting anyone - and remember all this was happening in the dark.' A troop kept the crowds of jubilant inmates under control for the night before they were joined by another 35 men in the morning - but still the situation was on a knife-edge.Hmmmmm.......The stories the Palestinians don't want to hear or learn about.NEVER AGAIN!Read the full story here.

• Disease threatens some New England bats with extinction.Some species of bats will be wiped out in New England within 15 years by white nose syndrome, a fast-spreading disease steadily trekking westward, experts said on Thursday.A top predator of mosquitoes, beetles and other pests that hurt agriculture, bats are in steep decline, said Ann Froschauer, an expert with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Hadley, Mass. White nose syndrome has killed more than a million of the bats living in North America.Loss of bats in North America could cost agriculture at least $3.7 billion per year, according to a study slated for publication in the April 1 issue of Science and released to Reuters on Thursday."The disease is sort of outpacing us," Froschauer said.The syndrome gets its name from a white fungus that settles in tufts on infected bats' muzzles and invades their skin. It causes them to have low body-fat, retreat deeper into cold caves, and exhibit odd behavior, such as flying in daytime and in cold weather, when insects they feed on are not present.The cause of the disease is a mystery, though a newly-identified fungal pathogen, Geomyces destructans, is suspected.White nose is mainly spread by bat-to-bat transmission, but humans also can transport fungal spores via shoes, clothes and gear from contaminated sites to new sites.U.S. officials say people can help slow white nose's spread by staying out of caves and mines that are homes to bats.Since its discovery in an upstate New York State cave in early 2006, white nose has been confirmed in 15 states and two eastern Canadian provinces.Fish and Wildlife experts say Oklahoma is the furthest west the fungus itself has been detected, while full-blown white nose syndrome in bats has traveled as far west as Tennessee. This week alone, wildlife officials in Ohio detected that state's first case in an abandoned mine in Wayne National Forest, and it also turned up in New Brunswick, Canada. This year, Indiana and North Carolina also have made their first discoveries of the disease."Little brown bats tend to be the ones that are really getting hammered by the disease," said Froschauer, who said the species could become extinct in New England within 15 years.Other species that could potentially be most acutely affected by white nose are Indiana and Southeast-based Gray bats, which are listed as endangered species in the United States, Froschauer says.Eleven species out of a total 45 U.S. bat species already are affected by white nose, which is nearly half of the 26 bat species that are cave-hibernating bats. In some caves in the Northeast, 90 to 100 percent of populations have died. About 1,100 bat species exist worldwide.Hmmmmm....First the bees...now the bats..who's next?Read the full story here.