16/12/2011 GMT with George Alagiah

From meltdown to cold shutdown. Japan says the crippled Fukushima

nuclear plant is now stable. The clean up could take decades and

will cost a fortune. Will Japan ever regain its faith in nuclear

Welcome to GMT. I'm Stephen Sackur. Also in the programme: Bradley

Manning, the US soldier accused of spilling a treasure trove of

secrets to WikiLeaks, gets his first day in court. Christopher

Hitchens, the contrarian whose writing delighted and enfuriated

many millions across the world, has It is 12:30pm here in London,

4:30pm in the afternoon in Moscow and 9:30pm in the evening in Tokyo,

where Japan's Prime Minister has told his nation the Fukushima

nuclear plant is now stable. Nine months after the earthquake and

tsunami which devastated the plant, Yoshihiko Noda says it is now in

cold shutdown. That is a key milestone in efforts to bring the

plant under control, but the nuclear disaster is likely to haunt

Japan for decades. Roland Buerk joins me live now from Tokyo.

caught them be the key issue of 50 ft up the men and women who say

Japan. -- the Fukushima 50. It seemed there was no hope. In recent

months, thousands more have joined the fight. They have achieved their

goal. The reactors are in a more stable phase. Ever since explosions

shook the Booker Shearman plant nine months ago, his struggle has

been under way to bring it under control. -- figure she man. --

Fukishima. It is in a state of colt shut down. Leaks of radiation have

been substantially reduced. TRANSLATION: Since I took office, I

have been saying for Japan to be reborn, the nuclear power plant had

to be saved. It needed to be stabilised. Since 11th March, we

have been working to get the reactors under control.

disaster has shaken the confidence of the Japanese in nuclear power.

It used to provide a third of its electricity. Almost all of the

country's reactors up off-line, because of local safety fears. This

is just one milestone on what will be a very long road to recovery.

The exclusion zone around the power station remains in force. Tens of

thousands of people used to live here - cleaning up the radiation

will mean removing the top soil from the valleys and mountains. A

flat on the 26th floor in Tokyo is where this man had been staying,

since they fled their home near the plant. The view it is good but they

cannot replace the garden they planned to spend their retirement

tending. We do not know where we belong. I cannot discard a way our

own house and garden. They are waiting for us, I believe.

Decommission Inc the power station is the next step. The preferred

option for Japan is to dismantle it piece by piece. There have been

warnings that the process could take up to 40 years. The Japanese

government is promising to reassess the exclusion zone. So much

radiation has been released that some towns could remained

uninhabitable for decades. The couple feel they have been lied to

so often that it is hard to believe their reactors up in cold shut down

now. They want to return home, whatever the risks. Let's take a

look at some of the other stories making headlines around the world

today. Tens of thousands of children have suffered sexual abuse

in Dutch Catholic institutions since 1945. That is according to a

report by an independent commission of inquiry. There are 800 alleged

perpetrators. 100 are still alive. The Church should act immediately

on these findings. What is important today is what the next

steps will be after the bishops. They have postponed their actions

for one and a half years. From now there is no excuse. What we expect

is a recognition of all those crimes. We're talking about crimes

against children. We will reconciliation and compensation for

the suffering that was done to all the victims. The US Army Private,

accused of supplying hundreds of thousands of secret documents to

whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks, is appearing for the first time

before a military court. Bradley Manning was serving as an

intelligence analyst in Iraq when he allegedly accessed military

files. Our correspondent joins me live from Washington. It seems a

long time ago that Bradley Manning was taken into detention. How close

are we to a full military court martial? This is what the hearing

today will determine. Not in just one day but over the next few days.

This is what is called an Article 32 hearing. It could take a few

days until the judges decide whether he should be court-

martialled. It appears as though he -- it is the likely outcome but we

will have to see what happens when the hearing starts. It is taking

place in Fort Meade in Merrie Ireland, which is a very secretive

military base. -- Maryland. It is interesting that private manning

should be appearing there. He has been held for a long time - 19 man

since he was arrested in Iraq. He has pleaded not guilty to charges

of aiding the enemy at transmitting national defence information.

includes a very serious charge of aiding the enemy. What punishment

does he face if, ultimately, the miniature court finds him guilty?

He could face life in prison, which is quite a serious verdict. At this

stage, there are still several other options that the judges could

take. They could dismiss the charges. They could charge him for

some of the lesser charges he is facing. There are about 20 of them.

It is not just about what happens to private Bradley Manning. The US

government is also trying to send a message to anyone else who may

consider leaking any information. This is about the sentence that he

could face but it is an attempt by the US government to send this

message. There are a lot of those who said that what he did in the

end did not cause that much damage. American diplomacy has more or less

recovered. There was not that much information that was unknown in the

other documents he leaked from Army records. What the Government is

trying to do is send a message that this should not happen again.

you very much for joining us. Russia has surprised the UN

Security Council members by circulating a new resolution on the

Syrian crisis. It urges all sides to abandon violence and use

dialogue. It refers to the Syrian Government's disproportionate use

of force. Western nations have expressed doubts about the draft

but say they are willing to The crew of a Russian fishing

vessel have been evacuated from their boat in Antarctica, after it

struck ice in the Ross Sea. The Sparta issued a May Day call early

on Friday morning, triggering an international alert. Rescuers from

new Zealand are expected to take several days to reach the stricken

boat. The self-styled international revolutionary known as Carlos the

Jackal has been convicted and sentenced to life in prison, by a

French court. The Venezuelan national was found guilty of

mounting four bomb attacks in France in the 1980s which killed 11

people. He is already serving a 2011 welfare ever be remembered as

the Year of popular revolution in the Middle East. It started when

Muhammad was easy set himself on fire. He had been banned from

selling fruit to earn a living. That triggered a remarkable series

of events that had begun -- become known as the Arab Spring. We have

been looking back at a tumultuous year in the Arab world. It has been

a year like no other in the Middle East. Some rulers have gone, others

survived, others are still in turmoil. It started in Tunisia. A

year ago, police stopped a young vendor from selling his fruit on

the street. In protest, he set himself on fire - frustrated and

furious at a corrupt and all- powerful regime. He died a week

later and it touched a nerve. People came out and dared to

denounce the Government. Abruptly, the President lost control and fled.

His regime was suddenly over. The touch paper of revolution had been

lit. When it spread to Cairo, people asked, could Egypt be next?

They shared the frustrations of Tunisia. Power concentrated in the

hands of an unelected -- unelected elite and rampant corruption.

are tired. President Mubarak had a huge, all-pervasive security

network. Word of the protests spread on Facebook and Twitter.

Mubarak fled with his family. In Libya, revolt began in the east,

the region long rebellious against the role of Colonel Gaddafi. He

called the rebels rats and cockroaches and about to crush them.

He and his family lived in a world divorced from reality. It looks

like the stalemate and the Western pack and help from Arab states

drove the troops of Gaddafi back. He was dragged out of a drainage

pipe and shot by his own people. In Yemen, popular protest against the

33-year-old ruler has been complicated by tribal rivalries.

The President has agreed to step down. For now, his relatives are in

powerful positions. Bahrain has seen the most serious violence in

the Gulf. There is so much tension in these Shi'ite villages. When

there are security forces, often it ends in tear gas, have more wins

and more animosity. Syria has suffered terribly. Countless people

have been tortured. The president appears to be in denial. Note

government in the world kills its people. It is led by a crazy person.

I became president because of public support. The movement many

called the Arab Awakening has yet to run its course. What started

with the Tunisian throat seller is now unstoppable. The Arab world has

had enough of dictatorship. Still to come: Surviving on odd jobs. We

investigate the workforce in Indonesia where over half the

population is employed in the informal economy. Let's stick with

business - formal and informal. Let's start with more bad news for

some of the world's biggest banks. You are not going to use the line,

Fitch has an itch! It has downgraded six of our major global

banks. But Keyes in the UK, Deutsch Bank in Germany, -- Barclays. They

are saying there has not been a sudden deterioration of the books

but more about the sensitive exposure to the market - basically

to the eurozone and its huge debt. We know that banks are starting to

dry up the lending they usually do between each other. They have been

relying on central banks around the world. If banks stop having access

to many, could we see another Banks have to bring up their

capital levels, and there is no way of lending more and doing that. The

key thing is, where is that lending going to continue? If it continues

in the small to medium-sized businesses, then maybe we will see

the economy move forward. If it stops in that particular segment it

is going to get a lot worse before it gets better. Last week, the

European Central Bank lent out for 2 billion euros to European banks

in one week, that is not sustainable! I happen to know you

are not the biggest computer gaming fan, but even you must be excited

about what has happened to this company. They make online games,

games you can only play on Facebook, and they are going public today on

Wall Street, expecting age huge debut. They sold 100 million shares

at 10 bucks each. He is the interesting thing, they have 2

million users a month, but they only make revenue from a 3% of

those. The question I put to an expert is how do they make their

money? It is the new metric, you get not for three, access to most

of it, with a bit of adverts, or you can upgrade people and convince

them to buy extra items for the Games, to be able to play quicker.

That appeals to quite a lot of people that don't necessarily want

to sit there the entire time, they want to go in, play, get excited,

and they are happy to pay for that. It also gives investors a chance to

pay -- jump on the back of the growth of Facebook. Let's have a

Thank you. We do want to hear what you think, so do get in touch with

us here at G and T. Go to the website, or you can watch

This is GMT, from BBC World news. The headlines: Japan says the

crippled Fukushima nuclear plant is under control, but it could take

decades to clean up. Bradley Manning, the US soldier

accused of spilling secrets to WikiLeaks, gets his first day in

court. Indonesia is home to the world's

biggest -- a 4th biggest population of young people, but many of them

end up surviving on or jobs to make a living. It is estimated that more

than half the working operation in the country is employed in the

informal sector, which is how focus in the latest of our series on the

young and jobless. Our Indonesia correspondent reports from the city

of Makassar in South Sulawesi. This port is bustling with

fishermen selling their goods at dawn. This city has historically

been one of the centres of Trade and Commerce in Indonesia, but for

the use here, it is getting harder and harder to find work. -- for the

youth. This part has one of the highest used unemployment rate in

the country. Many of the young people who end up doing odd jobs or

fishing to make ends meet. Experts say the fact that so many of

Indonesia's youth population end up in the informal sector is one of

the main reasons this country's economy could fail to reach its

full potential. This 22-year-old is one of the lucky ones. She is now

the proud owner of this mobile- phone repair shop. She got help - a

freedom of the technical training course paid for by the

International Labour Organisation. But there is no security net

working in the informal sector. She wants to turn her business into

illegitimate one. TRANSLATION: If I can, I want to register my business

so it becomes a legal entity. That way, I can get a bank loan easily,

but I don't know how to do that. Most in donations never even have

the chance to think that big. -- most Indonesians. This 21-year-old

had big dreams, like so many of his peers, when he first got to Jakarta

five years ago. But he didn't have the right qualifications, so

couldn't get a job. Now he sells magazines at traffic junctions to

make ends meet. TRANSLATION: I wanted to do work that fits my

skills, not like this. I want to get a real job, but I only have an

elementary school education, so it is impossible to stop this is an

exceptionally young country. the full potential of Indonesia's

youth isn't being recognised. The challenge for Indonesia is to tap

this bought -- a huge source of talent to ensure that young people

here get a -- shot at making it in life.

For more insight into the global informal economy, we can speak to

Robert Neuwirth, altar of Stealth of Nations - the Global Rise of the

Informal Economy, first of all, could you give us the epic scale of

the informal economy across the world? Well, it is huge. The

statistics are that more than one half of the working people in the

world work of the box and in the informal economy. -- Off the Box.

This is legal product been dealt with in an unregistered way. In

total, that amounts to 10 trillion dollars of economic activity, so if

the informal economy was organised as a nation state, it would be his

second largest in the world. But of course it is not. Should we regard

the size of the informal economy as a fundamental negative for the

world? The people in it are not paying tax, their work is not being

regulated, conditions can be appalling, is this a negative?

would flip it around and say that it is a negative on the way that

the formal economy works, that half the workers of the world are shut

out from it. We need to look at this sector of the economic

activity of the world as tarnishing its growth potential, and looking

at how we can make it a positive for the world. You have spent a

couple of years living in different parts of the world, a study in the

informal economy up close. Is it your conclusion that people within

the shadow economy would like to move into the official economy?

Only if it makes sense. It is a question of profit margins. If it

makes sense to become a registered Corporation, Shaw, but if not, and

they can expand their business without getting registered, then

people are content to what we call the shadows. But it is not a

shadowy realm, they are doing business openly on the streets, so

we're not talking about some clandestine opening -- underground.

We are talking about honest entrepreneurship. The question is,

how can we encourage them to grow their businesses in ways that help

the nation's? There is no doubt that criminal enterprises also does

eat away inside this informal sector. You talk about a 10

trillion dollar industry, what proportion of that is involved with

criminal or underground activity? In reality, none of it. The

statistics I am using scream out actual criminality, drug dealing,

arms dealing, so those criminal networks are not included -- screen

out. They would be another former quadrillion, perhaps. But there are

legal people are the mass of this, so to talk about criminality is a

canard. A what proportion of the people in this industry, roughly,

are working in conditions that we, in the official economy, would

regard as completely unacceptable? That is a very difficult

calculation to make. I don't really know, but I can tell you that in

the developing world, many of the formal but it is also don't have

the social security predictions, unemployment protection, but we

take for granted here. So it is hard to argue that people are being

exploited in the informal economy, when the formal economy exploits

people as well. Thank you are joining us.

The controversial British-born author and journalist Christopher

Hitchens has died at the age of 62 after a long and public battle with

cancer. He began his career in Britain as a left-wing journalist,

but later moved to New York and angered many of his former allies

by supporting the US invasion of Iraq.

Christopher Hitchens was a provocative bigger, describing

himself as an essayist and contrarian. An author of 17 box, he

was an atheist and alcoholic. -- 17 blogs. Diagnosed with cancer last

year, he spoke to Newsnight about his declining health. I am afraid

of a sordid death, afraid that I would die in an ugly or squalid way.

Cancer can be very pitiless in that. I feel a sense of waste about it,

because I am not ready. I feel a sense of betrayal to my family.

began his career in Britain, moving to New York in the 1980s. His death

was announced by Vanity Fair, where he worked as a contributing editor.

One of those who did know him was the deputy prime minister, Nick

Clegg, who worked for him as an intern. He said Christopher

Hitchens was infuriating and brilliant, and that he will be

massively missed by everyone who values strong opinions and great

writing. We can speak now to the director of

a documentary about Christopher Hitchens. He is joining us from

Calcutta. You were a friend, collaborator, just tell me, what is

your overriding memory of Christopher Hitchens? Generosity.

Generosity and largeness, unfortunately, in many ways! A lust

for life. His was a life well and truly lived. Well lived, in the

sense that his experience was extremely wide and deep. Truly

lived in the sense that he didn't suffer fools gladly, he didn't po

party lines, he thought for himself. Fiercely independent thinking was

all important to him. I called him a contrarian earlier in the

programme, did he actively relish generating a huge amount of

argument and heat? Yes, I think he did. And there was a very poor

formative aspect to him. -- perform. I considered setting up a debate

between him and George Galloway in the Albert Hall, which would have

been done. He did court that to an extent, but he was always sincere

in his positions. I think very rare are the occasions when he inflated