Top Stories
Swedish nuclear reactors shut down over safety concerns Five of Sweden's ten nuclear reactors are offline, after three were shut down due to safety concerns following a cooling system failure in a nuclear power plant last week. Flooding kills dozens in North Korea, leaves thousands more homeless Flooding due to heavy rains has left over a hundred dead and has caused severe damage to North Korea's rice crop, prompting concerns over food scarcity.

Featured story
Apollo Moon landings tapes reported missing The magnetic tapes containing the original video recordings of the five Apollo Moon landings have been reported missing.

Wikipedia Current Events
Hezbollah rockets kill at least nine people in Israel. Tomo Križnar, the Slovenian diplomatic envoy and human rights activist to Sudan, is formally charged with espionage and illegaly entering Darfur. Kriznar, who admits entering Darfur without the required visa, was arrested in July. Israel arrests the Speaker of the Palestinian Parliament, Abdel Aziz Duwaik. Duwaik is a member of Hamas.

Israel detains Speaker of Palestinian parliament
Israel's military has put the Speaker of the Palestinian Legislature under house arrest. Aziz Dweik, a leading member of Hamas has been confined to his residence since the army surrounded his Ramallah home. An Israeli army spokesperson told the Reuters news agency that "Since Hamas is a terrorist organisation, [Dweik] is a target for arrest."

Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniya has responded to the action by accusing Israel of "piracy" and has urged "all Arab and international parliamentarians to condemn and denounce this crime and to secure the release of Aziz Dweik and all jailed ministers and lawmakers."

Mr Dweik's detention brings the number of Hamas government officials and MPs being detained since the end of June to 30 or 64 persons, according to varying sources. The detentions began as a result of an Israeli soldier being captured by Palestinian militants.

Apollo Moon landings tapes reported missing
The magnetic tapes of the first moon landing that was beamed to the world via three tracking stations and those of other 5 Apollo missions have gone missing. There will be a search for these tapes in the hope that they may be found before they deteriorate.

The missing tapes contain original recordings of five Apollo Moon Landings. Due to the format incompatibility between the Apollo recordings and the commercial TV, the public transmissions were projected onto a screen from which they were filmed using conventional TV cameras which substantially degraded the quality of the picture.

The tapes were originally stored at Goddard Space Flight Center, but, without any explanation, were taken to the US National Archives in 1970. Few years after, in 1984, about 700 hundred boxes of tapes were returned to Goddard along with documents stating that the tapes were withdrawn.

"We have the documents to say they were withdrawn, but no one knows exactly where they went," said John Sarkissian, a CSIRO scientist.

Mr. Sarkissian who has been working at the Parkes Observatory for more than decade, initiated a study about the participation of Australia in the Apollo Mission. He requested the tapes from NASA and they told him the tapes were missing.

"We are working on the assumption they still exist," Mr Sarkissian said, "Your guess is a good as mine as to where they are."

"People may have thought 'we have tapes of the moon walk, we don't need these',"

"We want the public to see the way the moon walk was meant to be seen,"

Mr Sarkissian proposes that if the tapes are found that they be digitised and stored.

The Goddard centre, home to the only known piece of equipment that decodes the analogue tapes, is set to be closed in October raising fears that, even if they are found, it might not be possible to decode and copy them.

Only a few people saw the original high-quality broadcast. One of these people is David Cooke, a Parkes control room engineer in 1969.

"I can still see the screen," Mr Cook, 74, said. "I was amazed, the quality was fairly good."

Mideast stance hurts Harper
Prime Minister Stephen Harper's strong support for Israel in its current crisis with Lebanon is unpopular with many Canadians. A recent Strategic Counsel poll for BellGlobeMedia found that 45% of Canadians disagree with the Conservative government's support for Israel, a number that climbs to 61 per cent in Quebec. Harper leads a minority government and needs to win more seats in Quebec in order to secure a majority in the next election, widely expected to be held next year.

Nevertheless, Harper told reporters at a caucus retreat yesterday that he believes his position is in tune with Canadians and will be maintaining it.

"I think the position we have, properly understood, is exactly the position of Canadians," Harper told reporters.

Swedish nuclear reactors shut down over safety concerns
Three of Sweden's ten nuclear reactors have been shut down due to safety concerns following an incident last week at the Forsmark Nuclear Power Plant, in which the reactor cooling systems failed. The reactor has since been shut down there. After the incident, the Swedish Nuclear Power Inspectorate, SKI asked all the nuclear power plants to demonstrate that the same failure could not happen in them. On Wednesday, two more reactors at Oskarshamn were shut down after the operator said their safety could not be guaranteed.

Last week's incident at the Forsmark plant was triggered by a short circuit that cut power to the reactor cooling system. Two of the four backup generators also failed to start, but the remaining two worked and were sufficient to meet the plant's needs. Greenpeace reports that the fault in the backup power systems were traced to new equipment installed in 1993.

The spokesman of the Swedish Nuclear Power Inspectorate Anders Bredfell denied that there was any danger of a meltdown, adding that there was also a backup gas turbine to power the cooling system in an emergency.

However, Lars-Olov Höglund, who was responsible for the nuclear plant Forsmark for many years, said the incident was the most dangerous one since Chernobyl and Three Mile island, and that a meltdown was avoided only by pure luck.

Speaking to BBC News, SKI spokesman Anders Bredfell said that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was informed of the incident as required and that the incident classes as a '2' in the 0-7 scale used by the IAEA to assess the severity of the incident.

Another reactor in Forsmark and a fifth at Ringhals nuclear power plant have been offline due to planned maintainance work. With five of its ten reactors down, Sweden's power generation capacity is down by almost a fifth.

News of the incident was withheld from the public for two days.

The environmental group Greenpeace called on the government to shut down all reactors and probe whether the fault was a generic one. The Green Party has called for an independent investigation of the incident. Sweden is scheduled to retire all its nuclear power plants by 2010, as decided by a referendum in 1980.

Australia cause South Africa heartbreak in Tri Nations rugby
A late try by the Australian Wallabies substitute, Mat Rogers caused the South African Springboks heartbreak in tonight's match at Sydney's Telstra Stadium. Australia won the match 20–18, their second in this year's Tri Nations.

Australia led the Springboks 10 points to nil at half-time, which stretched Australia's hold over the Springboks to zero three halves of football, as the Wallabies had previously beaten South Africa 49 to nil in Brisbane. It was Mark Gerrard who scored Australia's first half try, along with a conversion and penalty goal to Stirling Mortlock.

The Springboks hit back in the second half, with tries to Jaque Fourie and Percy Montgomery. The Springboks now led Australia, looking to wrap up their first win of this year's series. However, replacement Phil Waugh, playing his 50th match, came on and made a break down field, off-loading to replacement back Rogers, who scored in the left corner to tie the scores up. Mortlock kicked the conversion, which hit the post, but bounced through to win the match.

Ugandan rebels agree to a ceasefire
The leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army, the rebel group in Uganda, has agreed to a unilateral ceasefire to end 18 years of fighting.

Lieutenant General Otti spoke on behalf of the LRA leader Joseph Kony on Friday, declaring an end to hostilities, ahead of peace talks due to begin next week.

Speaking to the BBC, Otti said: "I, Lt Gen Vincent Otti, second in command of the LRA, by the order of Gen Joseph Kony, chairman of the LRA High Command, do hereby declare a unilateral cessation of hostilities.”

The Ugandan government has said it will wait to see if violence does actually stop before accepting the ceasefire.

It is a significant step in relations between the government and the rebels who have been fighting a twenty year campaign. However it is unlikely Kony or Otti will attend the talks with the Ugandan government in Sudan, as they are both wanted for war crimes.

During its campaign the LRA has been accused of multiple atrocities, including the deaths of thousands of people in the north of the country and the kidnap of up to 20,000 children for use as soldiers.

The group, with a cult-like status, was formed by Joseph Kony in 1987 against the forces of the current leader Yoweri Museveni, who had taken power the previous year.

Flooding kills dozens in North Korea, leaves thousands more homeless
Flooding due to heavy rains has devastated North Korea (DPRK), leaving over 100 dead and thousands homeless. The United Nations' official figures give the death toll at 154, with 127 more missing. North Korean officials have said that hundreds have been killed.

However, The South Korean aid organisation Good Friends estimates that around 10,000 are dead or missing, with 1.5 million people homeless. While these figures have not been confirmed, the group's information has been found accurate in the past.

In response, the Red Cross of South Korea has offered aid which was turned down by Pyongyang, whose North Korean counterpart responded with "thanks for Seoul's offer" but said "it will handle the recovery efforts from recent floods by itself." North Korea has also refused other international offers of help, including from the World Food Programme.

The Red Cross has reported that over 7,000 homes were completely destroyed, with almost 13,000 families left homeless. Flooding has also affected almost a quarter of a million acres of farmland, further exacerbating food shortages. North Korea earlier refused a South Korean food aid package conditioned on a return to talks over North Korea's nuclear programme. Later, following DPRK's missile tests, South Korea had announced a suspension of the aid programme.

Private groups in South Korea have announced plans to send aid shipments, which are expected to be accepted by DPRK.

Today in History
1806 - The Holy Roman Empire was dissolved when Francis II, the last Holy Roman Emperor, was forced to abdicate.

1890 - William Kemmler became the first person to be executed in an electric chair.

1945 - World War II: Enola Gay, a B-29 Superfortress of the U.S. Army Air Force, dropped an atomic bomb named Little Boy on Hiroshima, Japan, killing an estimated 80,000 people instantly.

1966 - Shaikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahayan became emir and ruler of Abu Dhabi.

1991 - Tim Berners-Lee released files describing his idea for a "World Wide Web."

August 07 is Independence Day in Bolivia (1825) and Jamaica (1962)

Quote of the Day

"One of the primary tests of the mood of a society at any given time is whether its comfortable people tend to identify, psychologically, with the power and achievements of the very successful or with the needs and sufferings of the underpriviliged." ~ Richard Hofstadter

Word of the Day

discrepancy; n

A conflicting difference or inconsistency between facts or sentiments.

About Wikinews
We are a group of volunteer journalists whose mission is to create a diverse community where citizens from around the globe (including you) can collaborate to report the news on a wide variety of current events. By making our content perpetually available for free redistribution and use, we hope to contribute to a global digital commons. Got news and no computer? Call the Wikinews Hotline +1-866-653-4265 (toll-free in the U.S.) +1-202-742-5918 (outside the U.S.) +44-871-218-6397 (U.K. / Europe)
License
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution License. Articles published in this Print edition were created by Wikinewsies. Other content released under the GNU Free Documentation License. To view a copy of the CC-BY license, visit: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/ or send a letter to Creative Commons 543 Howard Street, 5th Floor San Francisco, California, 94105, USA To view a copy of the GFDL, visit: http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html Wikipedia Current Events http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events Today in History http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page Quote of the Day http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Main_Page Word of the Day http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Main_Page
About Wikinews Print Edition
For more information about Wikinews Print Edition visit: http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinews:Print

Monday, August 7, 2006	Wikinews	Page 4

If you would like to write, publish or edit articles, visit www.wikinews.org

August 7, 2006	The free-content news source that you can write!	Page 4

If you would like to write, publish or edit articles, visit en.wikinews.org

Wikinews Back Page

2006-08-06T08:32:52