JAPAN
‘No risk’ from tilting plant
A heavily damaged reactor building at the tsunami-stricken Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant has a slight tilt, but the tilt does not pose a risk to the integrity of the building, plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) said. In a report on Monday to Japanese nuclear regulators, TEPCO said that at least two of the walls of the No. 4 reactor building were bulging outward at various points and that the building was tilting. The biggest bulge measured about 4.6cm about a third of the way up the building, the report said. The latest findings could add to concerns over the state of the No. 4 reactor building, which houses on its upper floors a cooling pool filled with 1,331 spent and 204 unused nuclear fuel assemblies. Each assembly contains approximately 50 to 70 rods.
NORTH KOREA
Girl saved Kim portraits
A posthumous award was given to a 14-year-old schoolgirl who drowned in a flash flood while trying to save portraits of former leaders Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il, the Rodong Sinmun said on Tuesday. Han Hyon-gyong’s heroism earned her the Kim Jong-il Youth Honor Award, and her school will be renamed after her, the paper said. Her parents, teacher and four others, including Han’s youth league leaders, also received awards, the report on the paper’s Web site said yesterday. Han died on June 11 as she tried to save the portraits from her flooded home at Sinhung County in South Hamkyong Province, it said. As she was swallowed up by gushing floodwaters, the girl held the pictures wrapped in plastic sheets above the surface, it said.
PAKISTAN
Anti-Taliban leader killed
The bullet-riddled bodies of an anti-Taliban militia commander and three of his associates were yesterday dumped in the northwestern city of Peshawar, police said. The bodies of Fahimud Din, 50, chief of a 1,500-strong vigilante force in Bazidkhel, and three of his associates were found in a Toyota Land Cruiser on the city’s ring road. “We killed Fahimud Din and his colleagues. They raised a militia against us and wanted to defeat us,” Ehsanullah Ehsan, spokesman for the Tehreek-e-Taliban faction, said by telephone from an undisclosed location.
IRAQ
Seven killed in bombings
Two roadside bombs yesterday killed at least seven people south of Baghdad, security and medical officials said. A bomb exploded near the garden of a house in Madain, while a second bomb detonated after people gathered at the site of the first blast, an interior minister official said. A medical source said that two hospitals had received seven bodies and more than 20 people who were wounded in the blasts, while the ministry official said eight people were killed and 10 wounded. At least 183 people have died since June 13, more than the number of people killed in all of last month, official figures show.
SINGAPORE
Shaw admits underage sex
A prominent businessman yesterday pleaded guilty to having sex with an underage prostitute in a scandal that has shaken the city-state’s elite. Howard Shaw (邵在禮), 41, a grandson of Asian movie mogul Runme Shaw (邵仁枚), was charged in April for having paid sex with a 17-year-old call girl in October 2010. While prostitution is legal, 48 men have so far been charged under a 2008 law making it a crime to pay for sex with a woman under 18. The maximum sentence is seven years in prison and a fine. Howard Shaw’s case will be heard again late next month.
MEXICO
Massive tumor removed
Doctors said they successfully removed a 15kg benign tumor from the body of a two-year-old child in Mexico City. Gustavo Hernandez, director of pediatrics at La Raza Medical Center, where the procedure was performed, said the tumor was heavier than the child, who at the time of the June 14 surgery weighed 12kg. Hernandez said on Tuesday the child was born with a lump that eventually covered the right side of his body from his armpit to his hip. Hernandez said it took doctors 10 hours to remove the tumor, adding that the boy is recovering and doing well.
JERSEY
Iron Age coins found
The largest hoard of Iron Age Celtic coins found anywhere in northern Europe was discovered by two amateur metal detectorists who have been searching in the same field for 30 years. Reg Mead and Richard Miles found up to 50,000 silver and bronze coins, which remain clumped inside a massive block of soil. Earlier this year, they finally found 60 silver coins and one gold, dating from the first century BC. Every coin, Mead said, gave them the same thrill. “We are talking about searching for 40 to 50 hours to get these coins out, and every one gives you the same buzz,” he said. It has been suggested that the hoard could be worth £10 million (US$15.6 million).
ECUADOR
Suspected drug sub seized
The coast guard said the country’s marines seized a semisubmersible capable of transporting 9 to 14 tonnes of cocaine. The vessel was under construction on a small island in the Gulf of Guayaquil. The coast guard said in a statement that the vessel was 15m long and 4m wide and about 70 percent finished. Semisubmersibles move just below the water’s surface, requiring air intake and exhaust pipes as they are powered by internal combustion engines. They are widely used to smuggle cocaine to Mexico for transit to the US.
CANADA
‘Better view’ killer gets life
A convicted serial killer was sentenced to life in prison on Tuesday for bludgeoning his two former wives to death with a rock and killing his neighbor for her apartment with “a better view.” Former diner dishwasher Camille Cleroux, 58, admitted to killing his ex-wives Lise Roy and Jean Rock and neighbor Paula Leclair over a two-decade period beginning in 1990, and burying all three women in shallow graves. Leclair’s body was found in a wooded area near old train yards in Ottawa in June 2010. Cleroux had told her son, who was checking on the 64-year-old, that she had gone on a trip and had left the apartment to him.
GREECE
Microsoft HQ attacked
Assailants attacked the offices of Microsoft in Athens early yesterday, driving a van through the front doors and setting off an incendiary device that burned the building entrance, police said. There were no reports of injuries in the predawn attack on the company’s headquarters in the capital. Police said initial information indicated three people had been inside the van. They forced the two security guards at the building to leave before they reversed the van into the front entrance, smashing the door. The assailants then triggered an incendiary device inside the van that police said appeared to have consisted of camping gas canisters and several containers of gasoline. There was no immediate claim of responsibility.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese