News

At about 11:36 AEST today (9.Oct.2006) the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea's official name) detonated a Nuclear weapon in an underground test. There should be minimal or no short term radioactive leakage.

It was detected by South Korea's Institute of Geoscience and Mineral Resources as a tremor of a magnitude 3.58 to 3.7, and the US Geological Survey detected it as a tremor of a magnitude 4.2

The location of the blast was North-East of the country, 70 km North of Kimchaek, North Korea. 90 km South West of Chongjin, North Korea, and 180 km south of Yanji, Jilin, China.

A Seismic event of 4.5 on the Richter scale according to this University of Nevada guide would equate to a blast yield of about 5.1 Kiloton, which makes it about a quarter the size of the Atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki in WWII. Of course this is a rough estimation of the blast yield of the North Korean Nuclear device, and not a definitive indication of typical nuclear warheads in the North Korean arsenal.

South Korea, Japan, Cambodia, China and other nations have condemned the test, as did Prime Minister John Howard in Australian parliament.

Interestingly, China who have long been seen as Pyongyang's most important ally and the only country with enough leverage to influence Kim Jong Il's behavior have denounced the test as "brazen" in unusually strong language, and demanded Pyongyang stop any action that could worsen the situation.

Missiles which North Korea were testing earlier this year include the Taepodong-2 which is estimated to have a range of 6000 km. Enough to reach Brisbane.

Hope you find this reference material useful as something to ponder on, and please remember that Brisbane has been in range of a lots of nuclear weapons for a long time, so the are no new concerns in this regard.

An Italian parliamentary commission has reported that Mehmet Ali Agca, the Turkish man who shot and seriously wounded Pope John Paul II in 1981, acted at the behest of former Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev.

"This commission believes, beyond any reasonable doubt, that the leaders of the Soviet Union took the initiative to eliminate the Pope Karol Wojtyla"

the commission's leader, Paolo Guzzanti, stated in the report, which got leaked to the media last Thursday.

Agca, who shot John Paul in Rome's St. Peter's Square May 13, 1981, was found guilty of the attempted murder and has recently been released from a Turkish prison.

The commission confirmed the existence of the so-called "Bulgarian connection" by establishing the presence in St. Peter's Square of Sergei Antonov, a Bulgarian working in Rome for Balkan Air who was arrested in connection with the attempted murder and eventually found not guilty for want of evidence, in 1986.

In Las Vegas, (where else would this happen) Pope JPII's one time car, a light blue 1975 Ford Escort GL, sold at auction for $690,000.

The fellow who bought it, a Houston multimillionaire, said he intended to put it in a museum in his hometown.

"To me, it's a piece of history," said John O'Quinn, 62, a Baptist who said he has a collection of about 600 vehicles. "What a great human being Pope John Paul was."

"The car will never be driven," said O'Quinn, who said that at least temporarily it will be warehoused with his other cars. "But hopefully, in my life, I'll be able to go back and touch this car and feel the pope's spirit."

May I humbly suggest a better way to "feel the Pope's spirit" is to have a read of some of his published material. It's more likely to lead to a profound experience, and won't rust.

On the 26th of April 1986 the nuclear power plant in Chernobyl, situated in the Ukraine, had a catastrophic failure. This accident is widely regarded as the worst in the history of nuclear power generation.

Alexander Yuvchenko was on duty at Chernobyl's reactor number 4 the night it exploded, one of the few working there that night to have survived.

For the first time since the accident he has agreed to be interviewed, and gives a chilling description of what he witnessed when everything went pear-shaped:

Last night on the telly, while the commercial channels were beating up a live feed of Saddam Hussein's appearance in court with feeble ad-libbing, the ABC was doing current affairs properly, as usual.

Lateline handled the important bits of the day's news and then provided it's main story; a live interview via satellite with Michael Ware from TIME magazine, in Fallujah (Iraq).

Michael appeared agitated and was stunningly frank. He obviously knows all to well, what many of us at home want to ignore; that Al Qaeda is like a franchise, one that's fueled as much by resentment towards western actions as by extremist Islamic teachings, and the war to prevent the supposed link between Iraq Al Qaeda has now created it.

As Michael put it; "... Now we have the jihad that we say we came here to prevent..."

"They call this a world war until judgment day, maintaining a state of perpetual jihad."

Torture, burning at the stake and other punishment for the faithful condemned as witches or heretics by church tribunals during the centuries-long Inquisition was not as widespread as commonly believed, the Vatican said yesterday.

John Paul II had asked the Historical-Theological Commission of the Committee of the Great Jubilee of the Year 2000 to hold a congress on the Inquisition to prepare for the Day of Forgiveness of the Holy Year, on March 12, 2000. On that day, the Pontiff asked for forgiveness for the errors committed in the service of truth.

"The truth cannot impose itself except by virtue of its own truth, as it wins over the mind with both gentleness and power," the Holy Father said in his new letter, quoting from the Second Vatican Council declaration on religious freedom, "Dignitatis Humanae."