Turkey Police Detain 30 Suspects In Al-Qaeda Sweep

Turkish anti-terror police Thursday detained 30 people on suspicion of belonging to al-Qaeda, the Anatolia news agency reported.

The suspects, rounded up in simultaneous operations in several districts in the western city of Eskisehir, were being questioned by police, the report said.

Police weren’t immediately available for comment.

Last month, a Turkish newspaper reported that Ankara had received U.S. intelligence that al-Qaeda militants could be plotting attacks on foreign targets in Turkey.

A Turkish cell of al-Qaeda was held responsible for truck bombs against two synagogues, the U.K. consulate, and a U.K. bank in Istanbul in 2003, which killed 63 people and left hundreds injured.

Seven men were jailed for life over the bombings in 2007, among them a Syrian national who masterminded and financed the attacks.

via Source

Radioactive Material Lost In China

Authorities in China have ordered an all-out search for a missing nuclear scale that contained a dangerous radioactive component, state press said Friday.

The scale, used to make precision measurements, was found to be missing on Monday after workers began dismantling a cement factory where it was used in Tongchuan city in northwest China’s Shaanxi province, Xinhua news agency said.

A lead ball containing extremely dangerous Caesium-137 was a major component of the scale, it said.

Local government offices in Shaanxi could not be immediately reached for comment on the issue.

The report did not say how much Caesium-137 was missing but warned that only a tiny amount could damage the human nervous system and even lead to death. The material could also explode if it comes in contact with water, it added.

The provincial environmental protection agency and police have issued urgent orders to find the radioactive material which may have been buried in up to 5,000 tonnes of scrap waste from the factory, the report said.

In a later report, Xinhua said environmental officials had found Caesium-137 radioactivity at a steel refinery in Shaanxi’s Fuping county, but it was not immediately known whether it was from the missing material.

“Although radioactivity was detected at a steel refinery in Fuping county, it is not necessarily linked to the missing radioactive material,” the report quoted an environmental protection official as saying.

via Radioactive material lost in China: state media.