Attackers raided a camp of environmental protesters, killing one person and injuring seven people.

More than 20 demonstrators had been camped out by a reservoir near Angarsk, about 2,600 miles east of Moscow, to protest nuclear waste processing at a state-owned Electrolysis Chemical Plant. Local police detained two suspects and identified 13 others.

Angarsk is about 60 miles from the southern end of Lake Baikal, the world’s largest freshwater lake. Russia is setting up a uranium enrichment center at the plant to enrich uranium from Kazakhstan, a major uranium ore producer.

President Vladimir Putin proposed setting up the site as a way to provide uranium fuel to nations intent on building nuclear power plants, while making sure they don’t develop weapons programs.

The enriched uranium supply would be made available only to countries which have made nonproliferation commitments. These would include a pledge of no use for nuclear explosive purposes and acceptance of International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards.

The demonstrators say Russia plans to become a center for processing and storing spent fuel from abroad, and that this plant could be part of the lucrative business.

For more information, please see:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070721/ap_on_re_eu/russia_demonstrator_killed_2

http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/07/21/europe/EU-GEN-Russia-Demonstrator-Killed.php

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/07/21/world/main3085019.shtml

The Malaysian government detained Nathaniel Tan under the Official Secrets Act for posting information on the Internet (www.jelas.info) the government considered sensitive.

His arrest was part of a government campaign to combat alleged to inaccurate information being spreading by bloggers.

Police arrested Tan and seized his computers. Tan also manages the website of the opposition National People’s Party. Police questioned Tan for four days of police.

Tan potentially faces a large fine and a mandatory one-year jail sentence if charged and found guilty under the OSA. The OSA has “vaguely worded definitions” of what constitutes an official secret.

Tan is well known in blogging community. He is noted for his criticism of government leaders. He had previously criticized minister Baharum and asked readers to “vote this guy out.” Baharum was investigated and cleared last week after allegations that he had received $1.6 million in bribes to release three convicted criminals.

Analysts see the government’s campaign as an attempt to instill fear and suppress attacks on national leaders, especially on Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi before of a general election expected later this year.

The ruling National Front coalition does not want to see a swing in voter support for the opposition party, which is promising more transparent government, affirmative action to help all Malaysians, and to end racially-discriminatory policies.

The Southeast Asian Press Alliance and Reporters without Borders both urged the government to respect human rights and restrain the police. “By arresting [Tan], the authorities are trying to intimidate Malaysian Internet users and get them to censor themselves,” SEAPA said in a statement. “Until now, they had limited themselves to threats and abusive prosecutions. Now they have gone further and adopted a more radical form of repression.”

For more information, please see:

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=38581

http://www.asiamedia.ucla.edu/article.asp?parentid=29966

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia/IG20Ae01.html

Approximately 2200 Japanese orphans who were abandoned in China following Japan’s defeat in World War II have agreed to accept a proposal from the government.  In the agreement, the government would provide more aid to the war orphans after dropping their compensation lawsuits.  The proposal comes in response to suits filed by the 2200 orphans.

The lawsuit accused the Japanese government of failing to adequately support them when they returned to Japan.  Many of the orphans are now sick and elderly, while struggling to survive because they cannot speak fluent Japanese.

Under the proposal on new livelihood support measures, the war orphans will receive a monthly pension payment of $535, an increase from the $178 they now receive.  Additionally, they will receive a special subsidy in place of welfare benefits, and the government will help cover their housing, medical, and nursing care.  In the proposal, the orphans will abandon their lawsuits against the government.

Thousands of Japanese children were abandoned in China by their parents as former Soviet troops closed in at the end of the war in 1945.  Many were adopted by the Chinese and were too young to remember their Japanese names or their biological parents. 

In 1972, approximately 6300 people, including 2500 war orphans, returned to Japan after Tokyo normalized ties with Beijing.

For more information, please see:

–http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20070709a2.html

–http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/paperchase/2007/07/japan-war-orphans-to-accept-aid-deal.php

–http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/20070709TDY01005.htm

–http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2007/07/09/ap3894912.html

Photo of a tanker leaving South Korea on Thursday, carrying 6200 tons of oil to the North.

After four and a half years of operation, North Korea is expected to begin shutting down its main nuclear facilities this week.  The United Nations have verified that North Korea has shut down its nuclear reactor already.  The director general of the United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Mohamed ElBaradei said the shutdown of five facilities in Yongbyon, North Korea should not be difficult, and should be completed within approximately a month.

This shutdown would halt North Korea’s only declared program for producing fuel that can be used in nuclear weapons.  Experts say these five facilities can yield more than thirteen pounds of plutonium a year, enough for one atomic bomb.

North Korea agreed to shutdown its Yongbyon facilities in an agreement with the United States, South Korea, China, Russia, and Japan.  The agreement called for shipping 50,000 tons of fuel oil to North Korea.  The North now says it is ready to permanently disable the reactor if the US lifts economic sanctions and strikes the North from a list of terrorism sponsors.

North Korea’s Foreign Ministry said progress on disarmament would depend on the measures the US and Japan would take to rescind their hostile policies toward North Korea.

After the freeze of the facilities, however, many questions remain.  These include whether North Korea will provide the agency with a complete inventory of its nuclear materials, how much plutonium it has produced thus far, and whether it may return to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.  The North withdrew from the Treaty in 2003 after Washington accused it of running a secret uranium enrichment program in violation of a disarmament deal and stopped oil deliveries.

For more information, please see:

–http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aHC5gM6whvMU&refer=home

–http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSSP1037320070716

–http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/13/world/asia/13korea.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

–http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=3380339

On Nov. 29, 1996, in a North Korean prison camp, Shin Dong Hyok (14) and his father were made to sit in the front row of a crowd assembled to watch executions. They had already spent seven months in a torture compound, and Shin assumed they were also going to be executed. Instead, the guards executed his mother and brother. Shin was born in a prison camp and escaped in 2005.

Shin is the first North Korean who is known to have escaped from a prison camp. He was confined to a “total-control zone.”

According to the Korea Institute for National Unification in Seoul: “Prisoners sent to a total-control zone can never come out. They are put to work in mines or logging camps until they die. Thus the authorities don’t even bother to give them ideological education. They only teach them skills necessary for mining and farming.”

There are at least four other prison camps in North Korea. These others are far less known because so few have emerged to describe them.

According to Shin, the prison authorities matched his father with his mother and made them spend five days together before separating them. This is known as “award marriage,” a privilege given only to outstanding inmates. An exemplary worker might be allowed to visit the woman chosen as his wife a few times a year.

Young children lived with their mothers, who worked from 5 a.m. to midnight. Once they turned 11, guards moved the children to communal barracks but were allowed to visit their mothers if they excelled at their work.

Inmates were fed the same meal three times a day: a bowl of steamed corn and a salty vegetable broth.

Shin’s life changed in 1996, when his mother and brother were accused of trying to escape. Guards interrogated him in an underground cell. They stripped and hung him by his arms and legs from the ceiling, and held him over hot charcoal.

During the interrogations he learned that his father’s family belonged to a “hostile class” because his uncles had collaborated with the South Korean Army during the Korean War.

On Jan. 2, 2005, when Shin and his co-worker were collecting firewood near the camp’s electrified fence and could not see any guards, they ran.

In July 2005, Shin reached China. In February 2006, a South Korean helped him seek asylum at the South Korean Consulate in Shanghai. He arrived in Seoul last August.

For more information, please see:

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/07/09/news/korea.php

http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/born-to-a-life-in-n-korean-gulag-for-sins-of-unknown-ancestor/2007/06/21/1182019286590.html

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/article2679480.ece