Day: August 8, 2019

A team of British scientists has helped produce a radioactivity-free vodka called “ATOMIK” from crops near the site of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster, the University of Portsmouth said on Thursday.

The team did find some radioactivity in the grain but said the normal distillation process meant the only radioactivity in the alcohol was natural Carbon-14 “at the same level you would expect in any spirit drink”.

“I think this is the most important bottle of spirits in the world because it could help the economic recovery of communities living in and around the abandoned areas,” university professor Jim Smith said in a statement.

Smith, who has been researching the contamination from Chernobyl for nearly 30 years, worked alongside colleagues in Ukraine to produce the spirit.

After the accident, a 30-kilometre (19-mile) exclusion zone was established around the plant. Commercial farming is still banned both there and in a wider surrounding area.

“Many thousands of people are still living in the Zone of Obligatory Resettlement where new investment and use of agricultural land is still forbidden,” Smith said.

The scientists said they were setting up a company called The Chernobyl Spirit Company to sell the vodka and hope to begin small-scale production later this year.

Seventy-five percent of profits from the production are planned to go to the local community.

Thirty people were killed in the Chernobyl explosion on April 26, 1986 and hundreds more died of related illnesses, though the exact figure remains disputed.

Soviet authorities initially tried to cover up and then play down the disaster.

Eventually 350,000 people were evacuated from the exclusion zone. Scientists say it will only cease to be radioactive in 24,000 years.

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Workers in full protective gear began Thursday to decontaminate some Paris schools tested with unsafe levels of lead following the blaze at the Notre Dame Cathedral, as part of efforts to protect children from risks of lead poisoning.

Paris authorities ordered last month a deep clean and removal of hazardous substances at schools near the cathedral, which was seriously damaged in the April 15 blaze that sent tons of toxic lead from the metal roof into the air. The decontamination work is expected to be completed before children return to school in September.

At Saint Benoit nursery and primary school, a few hundred meters away from Notre Dame, workers donning masks and white protective suits sprayed an adhesive product on the playground floor to keep the lead particles fixed on the surfacing before removing the first layer of the playground. They were planning to fully renovate it by the end of the month.

Mickael Prestavoine, director of industrial operations at Seche Urgences Interventions, said a decision was made last week to “excavate the schoolyard” after local authorities conducted multiple tests that found lead on the surface material.

Paris’ regional health agency recommended in June blood tests for children under 7 and pregnant women who live near Notre Dame as they are especially vulnerable to health problems from lead poisoning and exposure.

Earlier this week, the agency said a young boy needs medical monitoring because tests showed that he was at risk of lead poisoning. Sixteen others were deemed to be just short of being “at risk” and will also be monitored as a precaution, out of a total of 162 children who have been tested for lead in Paris.

Lead removal work at the cathedral itself is set to resume next week with stricter safety procedures after authorities suspended it last month under pressure from labor inspectors concerned about health risks for workers.

Levels of lead remain exceptionally high at some spots inside the cathedral, in the plaza outside and on adjacent roads. Those areas have been closed to the public since April 15.

However, no dangerous levels have been registered in other nearby streets, where tourists and residents continue to gather and souvenir shops and restaurants have reopened.

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President Donald Trump says he’s “very strongly” considering commuting the sentence of former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, who is serving a 14-year prison term on multiple federal corruption convictions.

Trump suggested more than a year ago that he was considering a commutation for Blagojevich, who then filed paperwork requesting a commutation.

The Republican president told reporters Wednesday night while returning to Washington aboard Air Force One that he thought Blagojevich, a Democrat, had been treated “unbelievably unfairly.”

Trump says he’s taking into consideration Blagojevich’s wife and children and what was, in his view, mere braggadocio.

Blagojevich entered federal prison in 2012.

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Raging floods across Myanmar have forced tens of thousands of people from their homes in recent weeks, officials said Thursday, as monsoon rains pummel the nation.

Aerial images from Shwegyin township in Bago region showed how the area had become a vast lake of water.

Only the rooftops could be seen of many homes lining the Sittaung river.

Emergency services have been helping bring people to dry ground, many seeking shelter in local monasteries.

Others waded through waist-deep floodwaters or rowed on wooden boats with pets and any belongings they could take with them.

Than Aye, 42, who has diabetes and is partially-sighted, struggled to escape the deluge.

“I could not do anything when the flooding started but then the fire service came to rescue me by boat,” he told AFP from the safety of the monastery that has been his home for the last five days.

The most severe flooding is currently in eastern Bago region and Mon and Karen states, according to the social welfare ministry.

“There are currently over 30,000 people (across the country) displaced by floods,” said director general of disaster management Ko Ko Naing.

UN’s Office for Coordinated Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) estimates around 89,000 people have been displaced in recent weeks, although many have since been able to return home.

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Damascus on Thursday accused Turkey of “expansionist ambitions,” saying Ankara’s agreement with Washington to set up a so-called safe zone in northeastern Syria only helps such plans and is a violation of Syria’s sovereignty.

The statement by Syria’s Foreign Ministry comes a day after the U.S. and Turkey announced they’d agreed to form a coordination center to set up the safe zone. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the move, which is designed to address Ankara’s security concerns, was important.

The announcement of the deal may have averted for now a Turkish incursion into that part of Syria. Ankara seeks to push out U.S.-allied Syrian Kurdish fighters from the region as it considers them terrorists, allied with a Kurdish insurgency inside Turkey.
 
The Syrian Kurdish fighters were the main fighting force on the ground against Islamic State militants in the area, and Washington has been hard pressed to protect its partners.

Damascus said the Syrian Kurdish groups “bear historic responsibility” for the U.S-Turkey deal and urged them to drop “this aggressive U.S.-Turkish project” and align with the Syrian government instead.

Damascus has had no presence along the Turkish border since 2012, when Syrian rebels and Syrian Kurdish groups took control of different parts of the region.
 
After three days of talks in Ankara and repeated Turkish threats of a military incursion in northeast Syria, Turkish and U.S. officials agreed that the coordination center would be based in Turkey and would be set up “as soon as possible,” according to the Turkish defense ministry.
 
The ministry did not provide further details but said the sides had agreed that the safe zone would become a “corridor of peace” and that all additional measures would be taken to ensure the return of refugees to Syria.

Turkey has been pressing to control _ in coordination with the U.S. a 19-25 mile-deep zone within Syria, east of the Euphrates River, and wants no Syrian Kurdish forces there.

In its previous military incursions, Turkey entered northwestern Syria, expelling Islamic State militants and Syrian Kurdish fighters from the area and setting up Turkish military posts there, with allied Syrian opposition fighters in control. Turkish troops also man observation points that ring the last opposition stronghold in the northwest _ posts that are meant to uphold a now fraying cease-fire.

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