Here played out on the streets of a normally peaceful European city was hatred and revenge and the omens are not good for the next 24 hours. There is an awful sense in this city of more to come.Copenhagen will go down in the annals of England’s football shame along with Rome, Dublin, Marseilles and a dozen other places.Bill Neely is ITN’s Europe Correspondent. Emergency helicopters were surveying forest fires in the vicinity of the Chernobyl nuclear plant Thursday to make sure they don’t spread to the high-radiation isolation zone around the site of the world’s worst nuclear accident. Emergency helicopters were surveying forest fires in the vicinity of the Chernobyl nuclear plant Thursday to make sure they don’t spread to the high-radiation isolation zone around the site of the world’s worst nuclear accident.
No fires were registered within the zone, which covers parts of Ukraine and Belarus, and the radiation level around the Chernobyl plant was reported normal, emergency officials said.Radiation levels in the Ukrainian capital Kiev and the Belarusian capital Minsk were also reported within the normal range.Recent rumours of forest fires within the 18-mile closed zone surrounding the plant sparked fears that the blazes were kicking up radiated debris from the 1986 nuclear explosion.Ukraine’s Emergency Situations Ministry said that four grass fires were registered and extinguished on Wednesday in the Polisskyi and Ivankivskyi regions between Kiev and Chernobyl.The fires were outside the isolation zone, but helicopters were monitoring their spread while emergency officials were working to extinguish them, the ministry said.

Kiev is about 60 miles south of the nuclear plant.A spokesman for Belarus’ Emergency Ministry, Kirill Danilov, reported 16 small peat bog fires within(36 miles of the plant. He said the number was lower than in previous years, and was much lower than the number of fires in other Belarusian regions, blamed on a spell of dry weather and strong winds.”The situation is under control. Radiation levels are normal,” Danilov said.Fires are common in the dense forests in the region in the warmer months.Officials at the Chernobyl plant said that its only working reactor No 3 was functioning normally today. A malfunction in a turbo generator forced the plant to halve output Monday, but the problem has been fixed.. The Russian parliament yesterday overwhelmingly approved Mikhail Kasyanov as the new Prime Minister of Russia, despite his close links to two of the most powerful oligarchs in the country. The Russian parliament yesterday overwhelmingly approved Mikhail Kasyanov as the new Prime Minister of Russia, despite his close links to two of the most powerful oligarchs in the country.
The State Duma voted for Mr Kasyanov, a financial technician nominated by President Vladimir Putin, by 325 votes to 55, with 15 abstentions.

The vote shows that Mr Putin has a majority in the parliament.In a speech before his nomination, Mr Kasyanov said he would press ahead with market reforms but promised to avoid causing “hardships for the population for the sake of a bright future”. Ordinary Russians are likely to view both sentiments with suspicion since Mr Kasyanov has been close to Boris Berezovsky and Roman Abramovich, two oligarchs who were essential pillars of the government of Boris Yeltsin. But Mr Kasyanov’s appointment was greeted with enthusiasm by foreign investors on the grounds that he understands their needs.Mr Kasyanov negotiated a reduction in Russia’s foreign debt earlier in the year.He has also been nicknamed “Misha two per cent” in the Russian media which alleges that he received pay-offs for passing on financial information to private investors.Power in Moscow is largely monopolised by the President, who can dismiss the Prime Minister at will, but Mr Putin is likely to depend on Mr Kasyanov for running the economy.At the opening of the new British embassy, attended by the Princess Royal and Robin Cook, the Foreign Secretary, in Moscow yesterday, Igor Ivanov, the Russian Foreign Minister said: “The Russia you see from the window of this building is very different Russia from that which Sir Winston Churchill called a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.” Many Russians, however, feel their country is more mysterious than ever.Russia’s central bank said yesterday it had imposed temporary administration on Most-Bank, a financial institution related to a media group critical of the Kremlin, and which was raided last week by police.. Two former members of the Ku Klux Klan surrendered to police in Alabama yesterday to face charges in connection with one of the most heinous atrocities of the civil rights era: the 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist church in the city of Birmingham, in which four black girls died. The bombing became a cause célÿbre of the civil rights movement and the area around the church has since become a civil rights museum and library. Two former members of the Ku Klux Klan surrendered to police in Alabama yesterday to face charges in connection with one of the most heinous atrocities of the civil rights era: the 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist church in the city of Birmingham, in which four black girls died. The bombing became a cause célÿbre of the civil rights movement and the area around the church has since become a civil rights museum and library.
Thomas Blanton and Bobby Frank Cherry both face eight counts of murder: two for each of the girls who died.