UKRAINIAN president Viktor Yushchenko, who visited Auschwitz yesterday, recalled his father’s ordeal in the death camp he described as a “sacred place” for him and his family.

There is a ”realistic possibility” that the shelter built to cover the Chernobyl reactor damaged in the world’s worst nuclear accident could collapse before fortification work is complete, Ukrainian officials acknowledged today.

Policemen and camouflage-clad security agents took up position on the main streets of Kazakhstan’s capital Astana today, awaiting the arrival of Pope John Paul II on his first foreign trip since the devastating terrorist strikes in the United States last week.