WHO: Slight cancer risk after Japan nuke accident

LONDON (AP) — Two years after Japan's nuclear plant disaster, an international team of experts said Thursday that residents of areas hit by the highest doses of radiation face an increased cancer risk so small it probably won't be detectable.

In fact, experts calculated that increase at about 1 extra percentage point added to a Japanese infant's lifetime cancer risk.

"The additional risk is quite small and will probably be hidden by the noise of other (cancer) risks like people's lifestyle choices and statistical fluctuations," said Richard Wakeford of the University of Manchester, one of the authors of the report. "It's more important not to start smoking than having been in Fukushima."

The report was issued by the World Health Organization, which asked scientists to study the health effects of the disaster in Fukushima, a rural farming region.

On March 11, 2011, an earthquake and tsunami knocked out the Fukushima plant's power and cooling systems, causing meltdowns in three reactors and spewing radiation into the surrounding air, soil and water. The most exposed populations were directly under the plumes of radiation in the most affected communities in Fukushima, which is about 150 miles (240 kilometers) north of Tokyo.

In the report, the highest increases in risk are for people exposed as babies to radiation in the most heavily affected areas. Normally in Japan, the lifetime risk of developing cancer of an organ is about 41 percent for men and 29 percent for women. The new report said that for infants in the most heavily exposed areas, the radiation from Fukushima would add about 1 percentage point to those numbers.

Experts had been particularly worried about a spike in thyroid cancer, since radioactive iodine released in nuclear accidents is absorbed by the thyroid, especially in children. After the Chernobyl disaster, about 6,000 children exposed to radiation later developed thyroid cancer because many drank contaminated milk after the accident.

In Japan, dairy radiation levels were closely monitored, but children are not big milk drinkers there.

The WHO report estimated that women exposed as infants to the most radiation after the Fukushima accident would have a 70 percent higher chance of getting thyroid cancer in their lifetimes. But thyroid cancer is extremely rare and one of the most treatable cancers when caught early. A woman's normal lifetime risk of developing it is about 0.75 percent. That number would rise by 0.5 under the calculated increase for women who got the highest radiation doses as infants.

Wakeford said the increase may be so small it will probably not be observable.

For people beyond the most directly affected areas of Fukushima, Wakeford said the projected cancer risk from the radiation dropped dramatically. "The risks to everyone else were just infinitesimal."

David Brenner of Columbia University in New York, an expert on radiation-induced cancers, said that although the risk to individuals is tiny outside the most contaminated areas, some cancers might still result, at least in theory. But they'd be too rare to be detectable in overall cancer rates, he said.

Brenner said the numerical risk estimates in the WHO report were not surprising. He also said they should be considered imprecise because of the difficulty in determining risk from low doses of radiation. He was not connected with the WHO report.

Some experts said it was surprising that any increase in cancer was even predicted.

"On the basis of the radiation doses people have received, there is no reason to think there would be an increase in cancer in the next 50 years," said Wade Allison, an emeritus professor of physics at Oxford University, who also had no role in developing the new report. "The very small increase in cancers means that it's even less than the risk of crossing the road," he said.

WHO acknowledged in its report that it relied on some assumptions that may have resulted in an overestimate of the radiation dose in the general population.

Gerry Thomas, a professor of molecular pathology at Imperial College London, accused the United Nations health agency of hyping the cancer risk.

"It's understandable that WHO wants to err on the side of caution, but telling the Japanese about a barely significant personal risk may not be helpful," she said.

Thomas said the WHO report used inflated estimates of radiation doses and didn't properly take into account Japan's quick evacuation of people from Fukushima.

"This will fuel fears in Japan that could be more dangerous than the physical effects of radiation," she said, noting that people living under stress have higher rates of heart problems, suicide and mental illness.

In Japan, Norio Kanno, the chief of Iitate village, in one of the regions hardest hit by the disaster, harshly criticized the WHO report on Japanese public television channel NHK, describing it as "totally hypothetical."

Many people who remain in Fukushima still fear long-term health risks from the radiation, and some refuse to let their children play outside or eat locally grown food.

Some restrictions have been lifted on a 12-mile (20-kilometer) zone around the nuclear plant. But large sections of land in the area remain off-limits. Many residents aren't expected to be able to return to their homes for years.

Kanno accused the report's authors of exaggerating the cancer risk and stoking fear among residents.

"I'm enraged," he said.

___

Mari Yamaguchi in Tokyo and AP Science Writer Malcolm Ritter in New York contributed to this report.

__

Online:

WHO report: http://bit.ly/YDCXcb

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Man's Body Recovery Effort Ends; Sinkhole 'Unstable'

Authorities have discontinued the rescue effort for a Florida man who was swallowed by a sinkhole when his home's foundation collapsed and said it is unlikely his body will ever be recovered.

"We feel we have done everything we can," Hillsborough County administrator Mike Merrell said at a news conference this afternoon. "At this point, it's not possible to recover the body."

Merell said officials would bring in heavy equipment to begin demolishing the home on Sunday.

"We're dealing with a very unusual sinkhole," he said. "It's very deep. It's very wide. It's very unstable."

Jeff Bush was in his bedroom when a sinkhole opened up and trapped him underneath his home at 11 p.m. Thursday.

Two homes next door to Bush's residence were evacuated today after authorities said they had been compromised by the growing sinkhole.

With the assistance of rescuers, the homeowners will be allowed to enter their home for only 30 minutes to gather valuables, authorities said.

Rescuers returned to the site in Seffner, Fla., early this morning to conduct further testing, but decided it was too dangerous for the family initially affected by the sinkhole to enter their home, which was declared condemned.

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While the sinkhole was initially estimated to be 15 feet deep on Thursday night, the chasm has continued to grow. Officials now estimate it measures 30 feet across and is up to 100 feet deep.

The Hillsborough County Fire Rescue has set up a relief fund for all families affected by the growing sink hole.

MORE: How Sinkholes Can Develop

Rescue operations were halted Friday night after it became too dangerous to approach the home.

Bill Bracken, an engineer with Hillsborough County Urban Search and Rescue team said the house "should have collapsed by now, so it's amazing that it hasn't."

RELATED: Florida Man Swallowed by Sinkhole: Conditions Too Unstable to Approach

Using ground penetrating radar, rescuers have found a large amount of water beneath the house, making conditions even more dangerous for them to continue the search for Bush.

Hillsborough County lies in what is known as Florida's "Sinkhole Alley." More than 500 sinkholes have been reported in the area since 1954, according to the state's environmental agency.

Meanwhile, Bush's brother, Jeremy Bush, is still reeling from Thursday night.

Jeremy Bush had to be rescued by a first responder after jumping into the hole in an attempt to rescue his brother when the home's concrete floor collapsed, but said he couldn't find him.

"I just started digging and started digging and started digging, and the cops showed up and pulled me out of the hole and told me the floor's still falling in," he said.

"These are everyday working people, they're good people," said Deputy Douglas Duvall of the Hillsborough County sheriff's office. "And this was so unexpected, and they're still, you know, probably facing the reality that this is happening."

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Bangladesh deploys troops as protest toll mounts

DHAKA: Bangladesh deployed troops in the north of the country on Sunday as six more people were killed in fresh clashes over the conviction of Islamist leaders for war crimes in the Muslim-majority nation.

The army was deployed in violence-wracked Shahjahanpur town after more than 5,000 stick-wielding protesters attacked two police stations, forcing police to open fire, they said.

"At least four people were killed in clashes after Jamaat-e-Islami supporters attacked us. The toll could rise," Shahjahanpur district's deputy police chief Moqbul Ahmed told AFP, adding that troops had been deployed to boost security.

Two other people were also killed on Saturday night, including a ruling party student activist who was allegedly hacked to death by suspected Jamaat supporters, police said.

An inter-city train was torched late Saturday in the northwest but there were no casualties, police said.

The death toll in the clashes over the war crimes verdicts has risen to 62 since January 21, including 46 killed in the past four days after Jamaat's vice president was sentenced to death, police said.

Delwar Hossain Sayedee was on Thursday found guilty of murder, religious persecution and rape during the 1971 independence war, triggering violent clashes between rampaging Jamaat supporters and police across the country.

The 73-year-old firebrand preacher was the third person to be convicted by the war crimes tribunal, whose verdicts have been met with outrage from Islamists.

Jamaat says the process is more about settling scores than delivering justice. The party has enforced a nationwide strike on Sunday to protest the verdict and killing of its activists in police "brutalities".

The war crimes trials of a dozen Jamaat and main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) leaders have opened old wounds and divided the nation, with the opposition parties accusing the government of staging a witch-hunt.

The government, which says the war claimed three million lives, rejects the claims and accuses Jamaat leaders of being part of pro-Pakistani militias blamed for much of the carnage during the 1971 independence war.

Independent estimates put the death toll from the war in which Bangladesh won its independence from Pakistan at a much lower figure of 300,000 to 500,000.

- AFP/ir

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Dantewada Maoist attack case: CRPF to appeal against acquittal

NEW DELHI: The CRPF has decided to contest the acquittal of 10 arrested accused in the 2010 Tadmetla Maoist attack case in which 76 security personnel were killed in Chhattisgarh'sDantewada district.

Three years after the central paramilitary lost 75 of its men, the force has written to the Chhattisgarh government with a request to appeal against the January 7 verdict of a local court. A Chhattisgarh policeman was also killed in the attack.

"We have written to the state government. We certainly want the verdict to be challenged and see that the perpetrators are brought to justice," CRPF chief Pranay Sahay told PTI here.

Senior officials in Raipur said the CRPF has also approached local police, probing the case, and offered them help in gathering evidence and bringing on record witnesses for the incident that occurred in the wee hours of April 6.

Ten accused were recently acquitted by the court of additional district judge Anita Dahariya at Dantewada citing lack of evidence against these people.

The CRPF, the mainstay for anti-Naxal operations in the country with more than 80,000 personnel deployed for the task, suffered a huge setback in the deadly Maoist ambush.

The court acquitted the suspects, arrested from nearby areas of Chintalnar in Dantewada within a month of the Naxal attack, as there was no evidence against them.

The force has decided to fight the case and help police in preparing a better and water-tight case, a senior official in Raipur said.

During the case hearing, 43 witnesses of the Chhattisgarh government turned hostile and no witness was presented by the defence side.

Some CRPF jawans, who had sustained bullet injuries in the ambush, were not of much help to the prosecution as they could not re-count much about the incident.

Read More..

WHO: Slight cancer risk after Japan nuke accident

LONDON (AP) — Two years after Japan's nuclear plant disaster, an international team of experts said Thursday that residents of areas hit by the highest doses of radiation face an increased cancer risk so small it probably won't be detectable.

In fact, experts calculated that increase at about 1 extra percentage point added to a Japanese infant's lifetime cancer risk.

"The additional risk is quite small and will probably be hidden by the noise of other (cancer) risks like people's lifestyle choices and statistical fluctuations," said Richard Wakeford of the University of Manchester, one of the authors of the report. "It's more important not to start smoking than having been in Fukushima."

The report was issued by the World Health Organization, which asked scientists to study the health effects of the disaster in Fukushima, a rural farming region.

On March 11, 2011, an earthquake and tsunami knocked out the Fukushima plant's power and cooling systems, causing meltdowns in three reactors and spewing radiation into the surrounding air, soil and water. The most exposed populations were directly under the plumes of radiation in the most affected communities in Fukushima, which is about 150 miles (240 kilometers) north of Tokyo.

In the report, the highest increases in risk are for people exposed as babies to radiation in the most heavily affected areas. Normally in Japan, the lifetime risk of developing cancer of an organ is about 41 percent for men and 29 percent for women. The new report said that for infants in the most heavily exposed areas, the radiation from Fukushima would add about 1 percentage point to those numbers.

Experts had been particularly worried about a spike in thyroid cancer, since radioactive iodine released in nuclear accidents is absorbed by the thyroid, especially in children. After the Chernobyl disaster, about 6,000 children exposed to radiation later developed thyroid cancer because many drank contaminated milk after the accident.

In Japan, dairy radiation levels were closely monitored, but children are not big milk drinkers there.

The WHO report estimated that women exposed as infants to the most radiation after the Fukushima accident would have a 70 percent higher chance of getting thyroid cancer in their lifetimes. But thyroid cancer is extremely rare and one of the most treatable cancers when caught early. A woman's normal lifetime risk of developing it is about 0.75 percent. That number would rise by 0.5 under the calculated increase for women who got the highest radiation doses as infants.

Wakeford said the increase may be so small it will probably not be observable.

For people beyond the most directly affected areas of Fukushima, Wakeford said the projected cancer risk from the radiation dropped dramatically. "The risks to everyone else were just infinitesimal."

David Brenner of Columbia University in New York, an expert on radiation-induced cancers, said that although the risk to individuals is tiny outside the most contaminated areas, some cancers might still result, at least in theory. But they'd be too rare to be detectable in overall cancer rates, he said.

Brenner said the numerical risk estimates in the WHO report were not surprising. He also said they should be considered imprecise because of the difficulty in determining risk from low doses of radiation. He was not connected with the WHO report.

Some experts said it was surprising that any increase in cancer was even predicted.

"On the basis of the radiation doses people have received, there is no reason to think there would be an increase in cancer in the next 50 years," said Wade Allison, an emeritus professor of physics at Oxford University, who also had no role in developing the new report. "The very small increase in cancers means that it's even less than the risk of crossing the road," he said.

WHO acknowledged in its report that it relied on some assumptions that may have resulted in an overestimate of the radiation dose in the general population.

Gerry Thomas, a professor of molecular pathology at Imperial College London, accused the United Nations health agency of hyping the cancer risk.

"It's understandable that WHO wants to err on the side of caution, but telling the Japanese about a barely significant personal risk may not be helpful," she said.

Thomas said the WHO report used inflated estimates of radiation doses and didn't properly take into account Japan's quick evacuation of people from Fukushima.

"This will fuel fears in Japan that could be more dangerous than the physical effects of radiation," she said, noting that people living under stress have higher rates of heart problems, suicide and mental illness.

In Japan, Norio Kanno, the chief of Iitate village, in one of the regions hardest hit by the disaster, harshly criticized the WHO report on Japanese public television channel NHK, describing it as "totally hypothetical."

Many people who remain in Fukushima still fear long-term health risks from the radiation, and some refuse to let their children play outside or eat locally grown food.

Some restrictions have been lifted on a 12-mile (20-kilometer) zone around the nuclear plant. But large sections of land in the area remain off-limits. Many residents aren't expected to be able to return to their homes for years.

Kanno accused the report's authors of exaggerating the cancer risk and stoking fear among residents.

"I'm enraged," he said.

___

Mari Yamaguchi in Tokyo and AP Science Writer Malcolm Ritter in New York contributed to this report.

__

Online:

WHO report: http://bit.ly/YDCXcb

Read More..

Obama Signs Order to Begin Sequester Cuts

President Obama and congressional leaders today failed to reach a breakthrough to avert a sweeping package of automatic spending cuts, setting into motion $85 billion of across-the-board belt-tightening that neither had wanted to see.

President Obama officially initiated the cuts with an order to agencies Friday evening.

He had met for just over an hour at the White House Friday morning with Republican leaders House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and his Democratic allies, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Vice President Joe Biden.

But the parties emerged from their first face-to-face meeting of the year resigned to see the cuts take hold at midnight.

"This is not a win for anybody," Obama lamented in a statement to reporters after the meeting. "This is a loss for the American people."

READ MORE: 6 Questions (and Answers) About the Sequester

Officials have said the spending reductions immediately take effect Saturday but that the pain from reduced government services and furloughs of tens of thousands of federal employees would be felt gradually in the weeks ahead.

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Federal agencies, including Homeland Security, the Pentagon, Internal Revenue Service and the Department of Education, have all prepared to notify employees that they will have to take one unpaid day off per week through the end of the year.

The staffing trims could slow many government services, including airport screenings, air traffic control, and law enforcement investigations and prosecutions. Spending on education programs and health services for low-income families will also get clipped.

"It is absolutely true that this is not going to precipitate the crisis" that would have been caused by the so-called fiscal cliff, Obama said. "But people are going to be hurt. The economy will not grow as quickly as it would have. Unemployment will not go down as quickly as it would have. And there are lives behind that. And it's real."

The sticking point in the debate over the automatic cuts -- known as sequester -- has remained the same between the parties for more than a year since the cuts were first proposed: whether to include more new tax revenue in a broad deficit reduction plan.

The White House insists there must be higher tax revenue, through elimination of tax loopholes and deductions that benefit wealthier Americans and corporations. Republicans seek an approach of spending cuts only, with an emphasis on entitlement programs. It's a deep divide that both sides have proven unable to bridge.

"This discussion about revenue, in my view, is over," Boehner told reporters after the meeting. "It's about taking on the spending problem here in Washington."

Boehner: No New Taxes to Avert Sequester

Boehner says any elimination of tax loopholes or deductions should be part of a broader tax code overhaul aimed at lowering rates overall, not to offset spending cuts in the sequester.

Obama countered today that he's willing to "take on the problem where it exists, on entitlements, and do some things that my own party doesn't like."

But he says Republicans must be willing to eliminate some tax loopholes as part of a deal.

"They refuse to budge on closing a single wasteful loophole to help reduce the deficit," Obama said. "We can and must replace these cuts with a more balanced approach that asks something from everybody."

Can anything more be done by either side to reach a middle ground?

The president today claimed he's done all he can. "I am not a dictator, I'm the president," Obama said.

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Assad forces take Aleppo village, reopening supply line

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's forces seized a village southeast of the city of Aleppo on Friday, reopening a supply line to the country's biggest city where they have been battling rebels for eight months, a monitoring group said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the capture of Tel Shghaib marked the last step to creating a land supply route north into Aleppo from Hama province, crucial for Assad's forces who have lost control of part of the main north-south highway.

Rebels say they hold most of the city itself and nearly all the rural hinterland. But they have been unable to achieve a decisive victory and complain that they are outgunned and vulnerable to Assad's air force, artillery and ballistic missiles, which killed dozens of people in Aleppo last week.

The United States pledged direct but non-lethal aid to the rebels at a meeting in Rome on Thursday, disappointing Assad's opponents who had hoped for more tangible military support to tip the balance of forces on the ground.

Activists reported another day of fierce fighting around Aleppo, including the military airport at Nairab, three miles north of Tel Shghaib which Assad's forces retook.

"It's a significant gain for the regime," the British-based Observatory's director Rami Abdelrahman said of the army's push north, which reversed many rebel advances when they moved south into Hama from Aleppo province at the end of last year.

Further east, on the Iraqi frontier, government troops also managed to wrest back control of the Yarubiyah border crossing after insurgents seized it 24 hours earlier, he said.

SYRIA COULD FALL APART

The revolt against Assad, which erupted in March 2011 with mainly peaceful protests, has escalated into civil war between mainly Sunni Muslim forces and troops and militias loyal to Assad, from the minority Alawite community whose faith derives from Shi'ite Islam.

The United Nations says 70,000 people have been killed, nearly a million have fled the country and millions more have been displaced or need aid.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said on Friday that Syria, a major Arab state on the fault lines of broader Middle East conflict, would fall apart if the government and rebels keep fighting instead of seeking a negotiated peace.

"This is a very small window of opportunity which we strongly support and encourage them to use that. The opportunity may close soon," Ban said in Geneva.

The government and opposition have both edged away in recent weeks from their previous rejection of dialogue. Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem said on Monday the government would even talk to armed rebels and opposition coalition leader Moaz Alkhatib has said he is ready to meet Assad's representatives.

But Syrian officials say any serious talks must be on Syrian soil under state control, and have shown no readiness to discuss Assad's departure - the central demand of the opposition. For rebel fighters, who do not answer to exiled civilian opposition leaders, Assad's exit is a precondition for any negotiations.

"I continue to urge the Syrian parties to find their way to the negotiating table. The horrors of the last months and years prove beyond doubt: the military solution in Syria is leading to the dissolution of Syria," Ban said.

He also called on the U.N. Security Council, paralyzed by a standoff between the United States and European allies on one side, pushing for U.N. action against Assad, and Russia and China, who have backed Assad, to unite and address the crisis.

Moscow criticized Thursday's meeting in Rome of largely anti-Assad Western and Arab states for taking positions and steps which "directly encourage extremists" to topple the government by force.

But the Kremlin also said presidents Vladimir Putin and Barack Obama had told their foreign ministers to keep in close touch and seek new initiatives to end Syria's civil war.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said on Thursday Washington would provide non-lethal aid including medical supplies and food to rebel fighters, as well as $60 million to help the civilian opposition provide services including security, education and sanitation.

The European Union said it had amended sanctions on Syria to allow the supply of armored vehicles, non-lethal military equipment and technical aid.

The steps still fell well short of what rebels are looking for - more arms, and prompted the opposition to postpone a Saturday meeting where they had been due to choose a prime minister to head the administration of rebel-held territory.

Alkhatib said he was tired of hearing Western concerns over the growing role of Islamists in the Syrian rebel ranks - one of the main obstacles to greater military support, saying it paled into insignificance alongside the prolonged civilian suffering.

"Many sides...focus (more) on the length of the rebel fighter's beard than they do on the blood of the children being killed," he said, standing next to Kerry after their meeting.

(Additional reporting by Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva and Alissa de Carbonnel in Moscow; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

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Thai tourist industry 'driving' elephant smuggling

BANGKOK: Smuggling the world's largest land animal across an international border sounds like a mammoth undertaking, but activists say that does not stop traffickers supplying Asian elephants to Thai tourist attractions.

Unlike their heavily-poached African cousins -- whose plight is set to dominate Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) talks in Bangkok next week -- Asian elephants do not often make the headlines.

But the species is also under threat, as networks operate a rapacious trade in wild elephants to meet the demands of Thailand's tourist industry.

Camps and zoos featuring elephants tightrope walking, playing football or performing in painting contests employ almost 4,000 domesticated elephants for the amusement of tourists.

Conservation activists accuse the industry of using illicitly-acquired animals to supplement its legal supply, with wild elephants caught in Myanmar and sold across the border into one of around 150 camps.

"Even the so-called rescue charities are trying to buy elephants," said John Roberts of the Golden Triangle Asian Elephant Foundation.

Domestic elephants in Thailand -- where the pachyderm is a national symbol -- have been employed en masse in the tourist trade since they found themselves unemployed in 1989 when logging was banned.

Just 2,000 of the animals remain in the wild.

Prices have exploded with elephants now commanding between 500,000 and two million baht ($17,000 to $67,000) per baby, estimates suggest.

The number of baby elephants "coming into the system" is far higher than would be possible "from actual breeding", said Roberts, whose group decided to stop buying elephants seven years ago and now has 26 residents.

"I cannot see a way to buy an elephant which doesn't cause another elephant to be smuggled," he added.

Between 50 and 100 wild baby or young female elephants are sold from Myanmar each year, according to estimates by British charity Elephant Family.

The group's head of conservation, Dan Bucknell, told AFP that while some trafficked elephants may be taken elsewhere, the majority enter the Thai market.

"Thailand is certainly a hub," he said.

Smuggling such a large mammal should in theory require elaborate planning to avoid the police but in reality traffickers just "do it over a normal road", said wildlife trade researcher Vincent Nijman of Oxford Brookes university.

"Elephants can be in a truck or even walk" across the Thai border in front of complicit customs officers and border guards, he said.

Demand is not only threatening the 4,000 to 5,000 wild elephants in Myanmar, but is also hitting populations in Thailand's other neighbour Laos.

Young domestic elephants are exported across the border, furthering the decline of a population of around 480 animals, said Gilles Maurer of the group ElephantAsia.

Laos, known as the "land of a million elephants", only has between 300 and 500 wild pachyderms left and Maurer said that as the domestic population shrinks, "there is a strong risk" that poachers will turn to them.

Last year Thai authorities conducted several raids on elephant camps and seized some 25 animals -- 19 remain under their protection.

"It is likely the 19 seized elephants were smuggled wild animals as their paperwork did not match up," said forest ranger Pradung Jitraon, of Thailand's National Parks department, who participated in the operation.

Activists have welcomed the initiative but are also calling for broader reforms. "The system now is so weak," said Petch Manopawitr of the World Wildlife Fund in Thailand.

Thailand needs "more control, more transparent monitoring of the population, of what they do in terms of new born elephants", he said, calling for a proper database of elephants, using DNA testing or microchips.

Such a system, he added, would allow foreigners to visit elephant camps safe in the knowledge they are not "harming or threatening the wild population".

- AFP/ck

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Lawyer accuses Pak of 'blocking' book on Sarabjit

MUMBAI: Pakistani lawyer-activist Awais Sheikh has accused the authorities of stalling the release of his book on Indian prisoner Sarabjit Singh.

Sheikh wrote an email to say, "At 3pm on Friday my guests and I arrived at Lahore Press Club for the launch ceremony and were shocked to see the doors locked. The administration informed us that they were unable to allow the function owing to a security threat."

Invitees including Hamid Khan, former president of Pakistan's Supreme Court Bar Association and I A Rehman, director of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, and other guests were reportedly displeased with the authorities for "blocking" the function.

Sheikh alleged that those who "feared that the facts of Sarabjit Singh's matter would be revealed through the book were responsible for this unlawful and unfair act".

He claimed his writings would make the people of Pakistan "aware of the gross injustice done to Sarabjit".

He also claimed that an anonymous letter addressed to his wife was delivered at his residence Friday morning by an "unknown person". The writer allegedly threatened to harm his family if he went ahead with the press conference on Sarabjit. Sheikh is yet to approach the police in this matter.

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Arias Recounts Each Moment of Stabbing, Slashing

Accused murderer Jodi Arias was forced to recount today each detail of how she killed her ex-boyfriend, Travis Alexander, including re-enacting how he allegedly tackled her when she shot him, leaving her crying in her hands on the witness stand.

During hours of dramatic cross-examination by prosecutor Juan Martinez, Arias bawled as he asked her about stabbing, slashing and shooting Alexander on June 4, 2008.

"You would acknowledge that Mr. Alexander was stabbed, and that the stabbing was with the knife, and it was after the shooting according to you, right?" Martinez said in rapid succession.

"Yes, I don't remember," Arias said, covering her face with her hands.

"Do you acknowledge the stab wounds, and we can count them together, were to the back of the head and the torso?" Martinez said, flashing a photo of Alexander's bloodied body onto the courtroom projector. " Do you want to take a look at the photo?"

Arias, burying her face in her hands and shutting her eyes on the stand, mumbled, "No."

Alexander's sisters, seated in the front row of the gallery, also looked away, crying.

Arias, 32, is accused of killing Alexander on June 4, 2008 out of jealousy. He was stabbed 27 times, his throat was slashed and he was shot in the head twice.

Arias claims she killed in self-defense after Alexander had become increasingly violent with her. She could face the death penalty if convicted.

Martinez also forced Arias to demonstrate in court today how she claims Alexander lunged at her "like a linebacker," causing her to fire the gun at him. The pair argued over how exactly Alexander was positioned, and Martinez pushed her to explain what she meant.

"He lunges at me like a linebacker," Arias said.

"Like a linebacker, what does that mean?" Martinez asked.

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"He was low. It was almost like he dove," she said, and trying to explain it further, added, "He was like a linebacker is the only way I can describe it unless I get up to act it out which I'd rather not do."

Catching Up on the Trial? Check Out ABC News' Jodi Arias Trial Coverage

Timeline of the Jodi Arias Trial

"Go ahead and do it," Martinez said. "Just stand. Go ahead."

Judge Sherry Stephens initially cleared the court as Arias demonstrated and then Martinez had her do it again after the jury and spectators were allowed back into the courtroom.

Standing and moving away from the witness box, Arias bent at the waist and spread out her arms and meekly made a slight lunging motion.

According to her testimony, Arias fired the gun as Alexander rushed at her, tackling her to the ground. She said she does not remember how she stabbed or slashed him.

It was a day of dramatics and anger as the prosecution pressed Arias on the details of the killing, with Martinez ending the afternoon of questioning by accusing Arias of lying throughout her direct testimony.

At one point Arias dissolved into tears, unable to answer pointed questions when shown a photo of Alexander's body lying crumpled in the bottom of the stall shower.

After a short pause, Martinez asked dryly, "Were you crying when you were shooting him?"

"I don't remember," Arias moaned.

"Were you crying when you stabbed him?" he said. "How about when you slashed his throat?"

"I don't remember, I don't know."

Martinez pressed on, "You're the one that did this right? And lied about all this right?"

"Yes."

"So then take a look at it," he barked.

Arias did not answer Martinez's question, crying into her hands instead. The judge, after a moment, called for the lunch recess to take a break from the testimony. Arias' attorney walked over and consoled her, telling her to "take a moment."

Until that moment, Arias had given vague answers to Martinez as he asked about the hours leading up to the murder. Arias, 32, has testified that she drove to Alexander's house on June 4, 2008, for a sexual liaison, that she had sex with Alexander and the pair took nude photos before an explosive confrontation ended with her killing him. She claims she doesn't remember stabbing Alexander, but insists it was in self-defense.

Martinez questioned her claims, asking exactly what they argued about and who encouraged whom to take the nude photos. He pointed out that Arias told Detective Esteban Flores of the Mesa police department that she had to convince Alexander to take the nude photos in the shower, but that she testified on the stand that Alexander had wanted them.

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