Hundreds Flee to Lebanon amid Violence in Syria
Residents flee border town as army enters following protest

Japan Earthquake: Residents Flee as Quake Fears Spread
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: They'd been evacuated once already, pushed from pillar to post, and told that everything was fine. Now the truth was out, and they were fleeing, in their thousands.

The railway station at Nasushiobara, the last one still operating near Japan's nuclear crisis area, was jammed with frightened people. In this ghost town of closed shops and offices, pedestrian-free pavements, and empty petrol pumps, the station was the only place still alive, and the only escape route that most had left.

The Tokyo highway a mile to the west was busy, too – but you needed a lot of petrol to get to Tokyo. At the only garage which still had it, there was a five-hour queue. With radiation now leaking from the stricken plant just down the road, there might not be five hours to spare.

From the town and the whole surrounding region, on foot, by bicycle and using the last fuel in their tanks, the people came to the railway station, a river turning into a flood as word spread of just how serious the danger now was.

"I couldn't sleep and I was watching TV," said Noriyuki Fukada, an English teacher. "Then it was announced that there would be a government statement at 6.30. I thought, if the government announces something at 6.30am, it cannot be good."

It wasn't. Radioactive fuel rods in one of the stricken Fukushima nuclear reactors, the official spokesman admitted, were now "fully exposed", at risk of meltdown, and radiation had escaped into the atmosphere. Ninety per cent of the plant's own staff were evacuated, leaving only a skeleton team fighting off catastrophe. Most serious of all, an explosion the previous day – the plant's third – might have damaged a reactor containment vessel.

The containment vessels are the last barriers between the reactors' cores and the outside world, the very things the government has spent the last several days promising will protect us. A few hours later, the chief cabinet secretary, Yukio Edano, appeared on television.

"Now we are talking about levels [of leakage] that can impact human health. I would like all of you to embrace this information calmly," he said. But the beads of sweat were clearly visible on his own brow. » | Andrew Gilligan, Nasushiobara | Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Thousands Flee Pakistan's Swat Valley
Residents prepare to flee from Mingora, the main town in Pakistan's Swat Valley. Photo courtesy of The Wall Street Journal
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL: ISLAMABAD -- Thousands of panicked residents on foot and crammed in buses, vans and trucks fled Swat valley north of Pakistan's capital Tuesday following the breakdown of a fragile truce between government forces and the Taliban.

Authorities lifted a curfew for a few hours to allow residents to evacuate as the militants took control of Mingora, the main town of the valley, which lies about 100 miles from Islamabad. Mian Iftikhar Hussain, the information minister for North West Frontier Province, which includes Swat, said he expects as many as 500,000 to flee in the near future.

Khushal Khan, head of the local administration, urged residents to leave their homes before evening as fighting between the army and militants broke out once again. Pakistan's military has been fighting the Taliban in Swat after each side accused the other of failing to honor the terms of a peace accord struck in February to end the conflict in Swat in return for the imposition of Sharia law.

Tuesday's exodus worsened a humanitarian problem stemming from the displacement of more than half a million people from Pakistan's lawless tribal region near the Afghan border and in parts of North West Frontier Province where security forces have been check the militants' efforts to expand their influence. >>> By Zahid Hussain | Tuesday, May 5, 2009