Indian Military

BENGHAZI: France said Friday military action against Libya would come "within hours", as a UN vote approving air strikes was celebrated by rebels and Muammar Gaddafi's son said his family was "not afraid."
The strikes will come "rapidly... within a few hours," French government spokesman Francois Baroin said after the UN Security Council on Thursday cleared the way for air raids to protect civilians from Gaddafi's advancing forces.
Baroin said the goal of the military action would be to "protect the Libyan people and to allow them to go all the way in their drive for freedom, which means bringing down the Gaddafi regime."
So far Britain, France, the United States, Norway and Qatar are among the countries that have said they will help to enforce the no-fly zone, while China, Germany, Poland, Australia and Russia have indicated they will not.
NATO said it will discuss Friday what role the alliance may take.
The main rebel bastion Benghazi erupted with fireworks and joyful gunfire late on Thursday after news spread of the passing of the UN resolution, which approves "all necessary measures" to impose a no-fly zone, protect civilian areas and pressure the veteran Libyan leader into accepting a ceasefire.

TOKYO: Japanese engineers conceded on Friday that burying a crippled nuclear reactor in sand and concrete may be the only way to prevent a catastrophic radiation leak, the method used to seal huge leakages from Chernobyl in 1986.
Officials said they still hoped to fix a power cable to at least two reactors to restart water pumps needed to cool overheating nuclear fuel rods. Workers also sprayed water on the No.3 reactor, one of the most critical of the plant's six.
It was the first time the facility operator had acknowledged that burying the sprawling complex was an option, a sign that piecemeal actions such as dumping water from military helicopters were having little success.
"It is not impossible to encase the reactors in concrete. But our priority right now is to try and cool them down first," an official from the plant operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co, told a news conference.
As Japan entered its second week after a 9.0-magnitude earthquake and 10 metre (33-foot) tsunami flattened coastal cities and killed thousands of people, the world's worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl looked far from over.

SYDNEY: China has cricitized the United States for setting up a new military base in Australia, and accused both countries of having a " Cold War mentality.
Australian foreign minister Bob Carr was reportedly grilled about the new base during three high-level meetings in Beijing, including one with Chinese counterpart foreign minister Yang Jeichi.
"The most objective way of saying it is my three Chinese partners invited me to talk about enhanced Australian defence cooperation with the United States. I think their view can be expressed that the time for Cold War alliances have long since past," The Telegraph quoted Carr, as saying.
However, a prominent Chinese defence strategist and former People's Liberation Army officer, Song Xiaojun said Australia could not juggle its friendships with China and the United States indefinitely, and needed to pick a side.
"Australia has to find a godfather sooner or later. [It] depends on who is more powerful and based on the strategic environment.

ABOARD THE USS GEORGE WASHINGTON (AP): Cold War enemies the United States and Vietnam demonstrated their blossoming military relations Sunday as a US nuclear supercarrier floated in waters off the Southeast Asian nation's coast - sending a message that China is not the region's only big player.

The visit comes 35 years after the Vietnam War as the US and Vietnam are cozying up in a number of areas, from negotiating a controversial deal to share civilian nuclear fuel and technology to agreeing that China needs to work with its neighbors to resolve territorial claims in the South China Sea.

The USS George Washington's stop is officially billed as a commemoration of last month's 15th anniversary of normalized diplomatic relations between the former foes. But the timing also reflects Washington's heightened interest in maintaining security and stability in the Asia-Pacific amid tensions following the sinking of a South Korean warship in March, which killed 46 sailors.