The Tsunami watch is in effect for Indonesia, India, Australia, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Thailand, Maldives, Malaysia, Mauritius, Reunion, Seychelles, Oman, Pakistan, Somalia, Madagascar, Iran, UAE, Yemen, Comores, Mozambique, Kenya, Tanzania, Crozet Islands, Bangladesh,Kerguelen Islands, South Africa and Singapore.

As per Pacific Tsunami Watch Center, Sea level readings indicate a tsunami was generated. It may already have been destructive along some coasts. The center also said that f the tidal waves have not been generated after two hours, the areas might be safe.

In India, Union Home Ministry has asked the Chief Secretaries of Andaman & Nicobar Islands and all East Coast States to issue a Coastal Alert, in view of the alert issued by the Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services (INCOIS). The areas have been asked to advise fishermen not to venture out in the sea. The Andaman Administration has moved people from Nicobar side to safer areas, as a precautionary measure. The precautionary drill has been activated. NDRF teams have been deployed and kept on standby as a precautionary measure. Six teams have moved to Chennai. In addition, six more teams have moved to Hindon airport. Airlift will be organized by the Air Force in case these teams need to be flown.

The case was launched after an operational meeting was held in The Hague between the FBI and Europol officers in November 2010. Intelligence gathered by the FBI during a long and complex investigation was distributed by Europol to France, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and the UK in December 2010.

Analysis carried out by Europol revealed further links of several suspects to previous operations against child sex offenders. In this respect Europol produced five reports relating to nine targets. In particular, two targets were already members of the ‘Boylover’ network, tackled by the previous Europol-coordinated Operation Rescue. The remaining seven targets were members of other paedophile networks, still under investigation. The above investigative and reporting activities facilitated the identification process in the EU countries which led to the detection of a network of offenders that were producing and distributing images depicting the severe abuse of children, in some cases toddlers and infants. The investigative activity also led to the identification of child sex molesters and several victims who had been sexually abused by these criminals.

The FBI seconded an investigator to the Europol Child Sexual Exploitation Team for two months in the summer of 2011. Operation Atlantic has been the first joint operation conducted by the FBI and Europol in the crime field of child sexual exploitation.

FBI Director Robert S. Mueller said “Online child predators and child exploitation are not just an American problem. They are global problems. The FBI is committed to working with our law enforcement partners around the world, such as Europol, to combat these horrendous crimes. We share actionable intelligence and resources to keep children safe and bring those who do them harm to justice.”

JAT seeks to establish an Islamic caliphate in Indonesia, and has carried out numerous attacks on Indonesian Government personnel and civilians in order to achieve this goal. Abu Bakar Ba’asyir, the founder and leader of JAT, and a UN 1267 listed individual, was convicted and sentenced to prison in 2011 for his role in organizing a militant training camp in Aceh. Ba’asyir is also the co-founder and former leader of Jemmah Islamiya (JI), a designated Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO), which is responsible for the 2002 Bali nightclub bombings that killed more than 200 people.

JAT has conducted multiple attacks targeting civilians and Indonesian officials, resulting in the deaths of several Indonesian police. JAT has robbed banks and carried out other illicit activities to fund the purchase of assault weapons, pistols, and bomb-making materials. This past year, on September 25, 2011, a JAT suicide bomber detonated explosives inside a church in Central Java, killing the bomber and wounding dozens. Indonesian police arrested other JAT members in connection with this bombing and uncovered a plot for additional suicide attacks. In April 2011, a suicide bomber carried out an attack at a mosque in West Java that injured dozens of police officers and killed the bomber.

Last week Italian Marines guarding the oil tanker, the Enrica Lexie, shot dead two Indian fishermen in the Indian Ocean they mistakenly believed were pirates. The deaths come just days before World leaders are due to discuss the issue of sea piracy at the London Conference on Somalia.

UK-based marine safety experts, BCB International Ltd, are calling on World leaders to rethink the self-protection measures used by commercial ships to ward off attacks from pirates. BCB International’s Marine Projects Manager, Jonathan Delf, said “We have been warning for some time about the dangers linked with the used of armed guards on commercial vessels. The vast majority of armed guards protecting commercial vessels are extremely well trained and highly professional; but there can be no room for human error when lethal force is used. Armed teams onboard civilian commercial vessels need to be provided with the right equipment to enable them to do the very difficult task they face”.

“The London Somalia Conference is an opportunity for the International Community to prevent the further unnecessary loss of life. We call on World Leaders to cast their net wider by bringing forward new non-lethal protective measures like air pressurized launchers as part of the deterrence mix. These devices can help to create a layered and proportional defence around a vulnerable vessel.”

“Throughout the mission, the IRRS team received full cooperation from SSM staff in its review of Sweden’s regulatory, technical and policy issues,” said Georg Schwarz, mission leader and Deputy Director General of the Swiss nuclear regulator (ENSI).

SSM operates as an independent regulator in an open and transparent manner with well-organized regulatory processes. Following the TEPCO Fukushima Daiichi accident, SSM ordered the review. The mission took place from 6 to 17 February 2012 at the SSM’s headquarters in Stockholm. Sweden has signed and ratified the Convention on Nuclear Safety, the Joint Convention on the Safety of Spent Fuel Management and on the Safety of Radioactive Waste Management, the OSPAR, HELCOM and Espoo Conventions and other relevant conventions in the area of nuclear safety and radiation protection. SSM has signed bilateral co-operation and information exchange agreements with several countries and participates actively at various levels in the international arena.

Sweden has 10 nuclear power reactors in three nuclear power plants (Forsmark, Oskarshamn and Ringhals), three units in permanent shutdown and a fuel fabrication facility. As of 2010, nuclear contributed 38.13 per cent to the country’s electricity production.

The country has a central interim storage facility for spent nuclear fuel and a centre for waste treatment, storage and material investigation. Sweden has also identified a location (Forsmark) as final repository for radioactive waste.

Giancarlo Del Bufalo, the President of the FATF, said “Adoption of the revised Recommendations demonstrates countries’ shared commitment to fight money laundering, terrorist financing and the financing of the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.”

The revision will enable national authorities to take more effective action against money laundering and terrorist financing at all levels – from the identification of bank customers opening an account through to investigation, prosecution and forfeiture of assets. At the global level, the FATF will also monitor and take action to promote implementation of the standards.

The revised FATF Recommendations now fully integrate counter-terrorist financing measures with anti-money laundering controls, introduce new measures to counter the financing of the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and they will better address the laundering of the proceeds of corruption and tax crimes. They also strengthen the requirements for higher risk situations and allow countries to take a more targeted risk-based approach.

“The revised Recommendations include requirements for stronger safeguards in the financial sector, strengthened law enforcement tools and improved international cooperation,” he added.

This brings Iran much closer to accumulating a stockpile of uranium useable in nuclear weapons. The 20 percent fuel loaded into the Tehran reactor in the presence of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad today only just falls short of the “highly enriched” designation banned under the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and highlights the progress Iran has made toward production of 90 percent-plus weapons-grade fuel.

Tehran had announced plans to enrich to 20 percent as long ago as 2009, when it failed to secure another supply of fuel rods from overseas.

Experts say that longstanding pattern of rhetoric emanating from Tehran is designed to convince the international community that it is unable to stop Iran’s quest to become a nuclear power. Despite the reality of Iran’s nuclear ambitions and the deliberately orchestrated pomp surrounding today’s announcement, Iran is facing real difficulties thanks to the growing strength of the international sanctions regime.

Given the increasing evidence of the economic impact of sanctions targeting the country’s oil exports, HJS Non-Resident Associate Fellow Sohrab Ahmari said “The Iranian regime is on the retreat on numerous fronts. Tehran’s sense of frustration is apparent in its increasingly shrill rhetoric and desperate assassination attempts in Georgia, India, and Thailand. But this is no time for a respite in the West. The international community must now ensure that the sanctions regime is enforced vigorously and uniformly, that all loopholes are closed, and that major Asian consumers in world oil and gas markets – including the likes of India, Malaysia, Japan, and South Korea – are brought on board.”

In June 2011, ATMEA had announced the review by ASN. The review conducted was concluded on Nov 2011 with the French institute for radiological protection and nuclear safety (IRSN). ASN confirmed that the reactor’s safety objectives and options are consistent with French regulations, as is the consideration given to internal and external hazards. In addition, ATMEA’s assessment of the Fukushima accident, demonstrating that the ATMEA1 reactor’s safety options are such that no design changes are needed at this time, was favorably received by ASN.

“The ATMEA1 reactor meets the international safety criteria for Generation III+ reactors. The ASN finding constitutes an important milestone for the construction of the ATMEA1 reactor in France and in other countries in the world” said Philippe Namy, President of ATMEA.

The French nuclear safety authority (ASN), an independent authority created by the law of June 2006 on transparency and safety in the nuclear field, provides regulatory oversight for all civilian nuclear activities in France.

Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) conducting a Pre-Project Design Review of ATMEA1 reactor technology in Canada.

The reactor conceptual design has been already successfully reviewed by IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) against its safety standards.

The owners of the ships are primarily commercial shipping lines based in Germany, Greece and the USA, according to the report, which looks at all reported incidents involving larger ships during the past 20 years.

‘This doesn’t mean the ship owners, or even the captains, know what they are carrying. But it is relatively easy for traffickers to hide arms and drugs in among legitimate cargoes,’ says report co-author Hugh Griffiths. However, the report also shows that in the cases where the ship owners, operators and captains appear to have been directly involved in the trafficking attempt, the ships tend to be older and to be sailing under ‘flags of convenience’ whose ships regularly perform badly in safety and pollution inspections when they enter ports.

A ship is considered to be under a flag of convenience when it has the nationality of a state other than that where its real owner is based. ??

There are a variety of methods adopted by arms trafficking networks in response to the UN arms embargoes on Iran and North Korea, which were pioneered by drug traffickers in the past few decades to evade detection. It includes hiding the goods in sealed shipping containers that claim to carry legitimate items; sending the goods on foreign-owned ships engaged in legitimate trade; and using circuitous routes to make the shipments harder for surveillance operations to track.??

German ships topped the seizures with 19.5, followed by Greece (10.6%), USA (7.8%). Germany owns 7.1% of world merchant fleet. Surprisingly, there are high decibel seizures involving North Korea, Iran and and Panama. However, they constitute lower number with North Korea at 4.5%, Panama at 4.3% and Iran with just 3% of the seizures. The data includes only ships with over 100 gross tonnes.

An inspection at first light on 26th January morning revealed that the pilot whales refloated yesterday have restranded themselves on Farewell Spit. The Dept said that thhe pod has stranded even further to the east than yesterday, making the chances of a successful refloat even more unlikely.

The whales have been ashore for five high tides and have been twice refloated and were noticeably poor condition. There was a gale warning in force for this afternoon, which meant that an assisted refloat would not be possible. Finally, the Dept took the decision to euthanize the surviving whales.

36 Pilot whales had died naturally and 17 were successfully refloated. Thirteen remain unaccounted for.