French nuclear waste train enters Germany

German police observe the train transporting Castor containers with radioactive waste, during a stop in Neunkirchen near Saarbruecken November 25, 2011.

Credit: Reuters/Alex Domanski

STRASBOURG, France | Fri Nov 25, 2011 10:07am EST

STRASBOURG, France (Reuters) - A French train carrying 150 tons of reprocessed nuclear waste entered Germany Friday en route to a storage site after a 24-hour stop at the border following clashes between riot police and anti-nuclear activists who tried to block the transport.

"The train is crossing the border at this very minute with German police forces on board. Everything has gone well," a French interior ministry spokesman said by telephone from the area.

French officials said Thursday the temporary halt was meant to help ensure public order on the train's route to the storage site at Gorleben in Germany's Lower Saxony state.

The "Sortir du Nucleaire" (Exit from Nuclear) activist group said on its website that French authorities had been forced to wait until Germany authorized the convoy to enter its territory Friday, as originally planned.

Loaded with 11 tubular containers of highly radioactive nuclear waste, the train left Areva's nuclear fuel reprocessing facility in Normandy Wednesday after scuffles between police and hundreds of protesters who tried to foil the transport by occupying train tracks near the town of Valognes.

The train was the last of 12 shipments of treated German nuclear waste sent in recent years from France to Gorleben. German and French protesters have frequently tried to block the rail shipments and clashed with police sent in to remove them.

The protesters have maintained that the waste transports could endanger the environment and population if there were to be an accident en route.

An expired contract between Areva and German nuclear power producers is not expected to be renewed as Germany has voted against the transport of radioactive nuclear fuel.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel decided to shut down eight of Germany's nuclear power plants in the wake of March's disaster at the Fukushima plant in Japan, and later said all its remaining nuclear capacity would be taken off the grid by 2022.

(Reporting By Marie Maitre; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

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"Mousetrap" play enters 60th yr with plan to expand

By Mike Collett-White

LONDON | Fri Nov 25, 2011 6:33am EST

LONDON (Reuters) - The big mystery may be why it hasn't happened before, but Agatha Christie's "The Mousetrap" -- the longest-running show in the world -- will finally tour Britain in 2012 to mark its 60th birthday.

The play's diamond jubilee falls on November 25, 2012, and on Friday as it enters its 60th year, organisers announced a series of events to celebrate the landmark.

Friday's performance will be the 24,587th, yet for all its popularity, the show's producer said he wanted more.

"I'm very conscious that although we've had good houses for 60 years, the amount of people who've seen the show in London is about the same as a single show of 'Downton Abbey'," said Stephen Waley-Cohen, referring to the hit British drama on ITV which attracts up to 10 million viewers per episode.

He added that other plays had enjoyed a new lease of life when they toured outside London.

"I've been aware that tours of many shows have enhanced their performance in London if they have been done to very high standards, most recently 'Yes, Prime Minister' and 'Mamma Mia!'," Waley-Cohen told Reuters.

"I believe a high quality tour done as a major event will be good for London as well as for the 60 cities it visits."

The murder mystery began life as a radio play broadcast in 1947 which was then turned by its author into a short story and later into a full play.

"KEEP THE SECRET"

Richard Attenborough and his wife Sheila Sim starred in the original 1952 production at The Ambassadors Theatre, and actors ever since have repeated his curtain speech urging audiences to keep the identity of the murderer to themselves.

Asked to explain the secret of The Mousetrap's success, Waley-Cohen replied:

"No one really knows, but I think it's two main things. One is the play is really good storytelling -- it grabs your attention and holds your attention.

"It's (also) got contemporary resonances in child abuse and a young woman who may or may not be what she seems to be, a young man who may or may not be what he seems to be, the sinister foreigner.

"They may sound like caricatures, but Agatha Christie was much cleverer as a writer than that."

As part of the 60th celebrations, The Mousetrap will tour Britain for the first time starting in September, 2012 at the Marlowe Theatre in Canterbury.

It is expected to visit most of the country's main regional theatres during its run of up to 60 weeks and each star actor will perform for 12 weeks.

Mousetrap Productions has licensed 60 productions of the play worldwide, and several countries will be seeing it for the first time.

Mousetrap Theatre Projects, a leading theatre education charity, will also run a new writing project at 60 primary schools across London at which pupils will write their own short mysteries.

A charity fee of 60 pence per ticket will also be introduced to benefit charities working with young people and the arts.

Waley-Cohen said The Mousetrap, like many other top West End productions, has survived the financial crisis relatively well.

West End box office receipts hit a record high of 512 million pounds in 2010, and he expected "somewhere close" to that figure in 2011.

(Reporting by Mike Collett-White)

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