Sellafield cleanup cost rises to £136bn amid tensions with Treasury
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/oct/23/sellafield-cleanup-cost-136bn-national-audit-office
National Audit Office questions value for money as predicted bill for decommissioning increases by £21bn
The cost of cleaning up Sellafield is expected to spiral to £136bn and Europe’s biggest nuclear waste dump cannot show how it offers taxpayers value for money, the public spending watchdog has said.
Projects to fix buildings containing hazardous and radioactive material at the state-owned site on the Cumbrian coast are running years late and over budget. Sellafield’s spending is so vast – with costs of more than £2.7bn a year – that it is causing tension with the Treasury, the report from the National Audit Office (NAO) suggests.
Officials from finance ministry told the NAO it was “not always clear” how Sellafield made decisions, the report reveals. Criticisms of its costs and processes come as the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, prepares to plug a hole of about £40bn in her maiden budget.
Europe’s most hazardous industrial site has previously been described by a former UK secretary of state as a “bottomless pit of hell, money and despair”. The Guardian’s Nuclear Leaks investigation in late 2023 revealed a string of cybersecurity problems at the site, as well as issues with its safety and workplace culture.
The NAO found that Sellafield was making slower-than-hoped progress on making the site safe and that three of its most hazardous storage sites pose an “intolerable risk”.
The site is a sprawling collection of buildings, many never designed to hold nuclear waste long-term, now in various states of disrepair. It stores and treats decades of nuclear waste from atomic power generation and weapons programmes, has taken waste from countries including Italy and Sweden, and is the world’s largest store of plutonium.
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https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/oct/23/sellafield-cleanup-cost-136bn-national-audit-office
The shocking state of the Sellafield nuclear shitehole
Israel Calling Journalists Terrorists Decried as ‘An Attempt to Preemptively Justify Their Murder’
Original article by Brett Wilkins republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
(Photo: Ahmad Hasaballah/Getty Images)
“Israel has repeatedly made similar unproven claims without producing credible evidence,” said the Committee to Protect Journalists.
Seasoned observers of Israeli disinformation campaigns on Wednesday responded with pointed skepticism to a claim by the country’s military that half a dozen Al Jazeera journalists are linked to militant Palestinian resistance groups.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) claimed Wednesday that intelligence recovered during the ongoing invasion of Gaza revealed that Al Jazeera journalists Anas Al-Sharif, Alaa Salama, Hossam Shabat, Ashraf Saraj, Ismail Abu Amr, and Talal Aruki are affiliated with either Hamas—which governs Palestine’s coastal enclave and led the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel—or Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ).
This, the IDF said, “unequivocally proves that they function as military terrorist operatives of the terrorist organizations in the Gaza Strip.”
However, critics accused Israel of targeting the six journalists for exposing Israeli war crimes to the world.
“There’s a very clear reason why Israel has been killing journalists,” asserted U.S. investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill:
As the Washington, D.C.-based Institute for Public Accuracy noted:
Shabat… wrote Tuesday: “I’m a reporter on the ground in North Gaza, and I’m here to tell you that no aid has entered the besieged area for the past 21 days. The Israeli and American governments are spreading inaccurate information.
Al-Sharif yesterday posted a video of children killed, one with their head literally blown off. He just posted a video of civil defense crews working five hours to rescue a child.
University of Edinburgh professor Nicola Perugini noted that some of the six journalists “are covering the new phase of the genocide, the complete depopulation of northern Gaza.”
“The aim is to transform the last witnesses into killable targets,” he said.
Al Jazeera —which is banned from operating in Israel but is the only major international media network on the ground in Gaza, as Israeli authorities prohibit foreign reporters from entering the besieged strip—denies the IDF’s claim.
Others noted that Israeli forces have killed numerous Al Jazeera workers as part of a war on journalists in which at least 128 media professionals have been killed, according to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). The United Nations says more than 170 media workers have been killed by Israeli forces.
“This is an assassination threat and an attempt to preemptively justify their murder,” Scahill said of Israel’s claim against the six Al Jazeera journalists.
“Anyone claiming Israel has offered ‘irrefutable’ proof to back up these allegations is either ignorant of the systematic campaign of lies, propaganda, and fake news unleashed by Israel or is trying to aid and abet the murder of more journalists,” he added. “That is what is irrefutable.”
CPJ said on social media that it “is aware of accusations made by the Israel Defense Forces against several journalists in Gaza accusing them of being members of militant groups.”
“Israel has repeatedly made similar unproven claims without producing credible evidence,” the group noted. “After killing Al Jazeera correspondent Ismail Al Ghoul in July, the IDF previously produced a similar document, which contained contradictory information, showing that Al Ghoul, born in 1997, received a Hamas military ranking in 2007—when he would have been 10 years old.”
The Paris-based international press freedom group Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has filed multiple complaints at the International Criminal Court alleging “war crimes against journalists in Gaza,” including the apparently intentional targeting of media professionals.
In one filing, RSF said it “has reasonable grounds for thinking that some of these journalists were deliberately killed and that the others were the victims of deliberate IDF attacks against civilians” and accused Israel of “an eradication of the Palestinian media.”
“You don’t shut down the media unless you have something to hide.”
In June, the Gaza Project—an investigative journalism initiative led by the Paris-based nonprofit Forbidden Stories—”analyzed nearly 100 cases of journalists and media workers killed in Gaza, as well as other cases in which members of the press have been allegedly targeted, threatened, or injured.”
The project found “a chilling pattern” of journalists who “may have been targeted even though they were identifiable as press.”
In one case that enraged journalists and others around the world, at least one IDF member sent 19-year-old Palestinian reporter Hassan Hamad text messages threatening him and his family if he did not stop documenting Israel’s assault on Gaza, which has left more than 152,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing, millions more starved or sickened, and much of the territory in ruins.
Hamad refused. Earlier this month, Israeli forces assassinated him in a drone strike on his home in the Jabalia refugee camp.
U.S. citizens working in media have also been harmed by Israeli forces while on the job in Gaza and Lebanon, where IDF bombardment and invasion have killed and wounded thousands of people.
On Tuesday, a dozen members of U.S. Congress led by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) urged the Biden administration—which supports Israeli with billions of dollars in military aid and diplomatic cover—to investigate Israeli attacks on journalists including Dylan Collins, who was with a group of six other reporters covering cross-border clashes between Israel and Hezbollah in southern Lebanon when an IDF tank opened fire on their position despite their clear identification as press. Collins and five others were injured, and Lebanese Reuters journalist Issam Abdallah was killed.
Israel’s targeting of American journalists predates the current war and includes the 2022 killing of renowned Palestinian American Al Jazeera reporter Shireen Abu Akleh. Multiple probes have concluded Abu Akleh was deliberately targeted by an IDF sniper as she was covering a raid on the Jenin refugee camp in the illegally occupied West Bank.
Original article by Brett Wilkins republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
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British bases in Cyprus aid the Israeli war effort against the people’s will
CHARIS PASHIAS, general secretary of the Cyprus Peace Council, has called for the dismantling of British bases in Cyprus, which are being used to aid Israeli genocide against the wishes of a majority of Cypriots.
In an exclusive interview, he told the Morning Star: “Cyprus is a living example of how military bases do not solve problems, do not provide stability and security, but instead exacerbate militarisation and permanently increase tension.
“In the most blatant way in the last year, the US and Britain have turned Cyprus into a launch pad for war against the peoples of the region.”
Revealing press reports indicate that US war materials have been transferred from the military base in Akrotiri to support the Israeli army’s operations in the Gaza Strip.
Frequent air missions have been carried out from Cyprus over the Gaza Strip and in Lebanon, informing the Israeli army of the location of possible bombing targets. Air strikes were carried out in Yemen using the military base in Akrotiri.
“We also know that the Israeli army, under the framework of military co-operation with Cyprus, carried out exercises on the territory of Cyprus, testing a similar operation that they executed afterwards in Gaza,” Pashias added.
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Article continues at https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/british-bases-cyprus-aid-israeli-war-effort-against-people’s-will