JAPAN
Radiation detected in nose
A worker at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant has had a high radiation level detected in his nose, authorities said. Radioactive materials might have touched the worker’s face on Monday as he took off a mask after finishing his work, Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) said on Thursday. The employee was not experiencing any adverse health effects and a full body scan showed no internal contamination, but a full analysis will be available next month, TEPCO said.
MEXICO
Animal kills tourist
A Belgian tourist was killed in an attack on Thursday by either a shark or a crocodile in Zihuatanejo, officials said. The civil defense office in Guerrero State said that a man and a woman were bitten in the legs by an unidentified animal. The man was reported dead at the scene, while the woman was taken to a hospital. State officials said the man was from Belgium and the woman’s nationality was not immediately clear. The office said it was studying the wounds to determine whether they were bitten by a shark or a crocodile, both of which inhabit the area.
HAITI
MSF reacts after attack
Doctors Without Borders (MSF) on Thursday said that it was suspending work at a medical center in the capital after an armed group pulled a critically ill patient from an ambulance and shot him dead in the street. The attack took place on Tuesday near Turgeau Emergency Center in Port-au-Prince, the group said in a news release. As two ambulances left the center with patients on board, including a man recently admitted in critical condition, about 10 armed individuals blocked the vehicles. After firing shots into the air and inspecting the interior of the ambulances, they ordered “the second ambulance to reverse while they pulled the patient from the first,” MSF said. The armed group then beat the man before shooting him several times at close range, then fleeing the scene. “MSF remains one of the last international organizations to provide healthcare in the Haitian capital and cannot accept that its ambulances are violently attacked and patients shot dead in the street,” MSF head of mission Benoit Vasseur said in the news release. The center would be closed “indefinitely” while MSF conducts a security analysis, the group said, adding that it would continue providing medical care at other sites in Port-au-Prince.
UNITED STATES
Baby survives tornado
A four-month-old boy has survived after a tornado in Tennessee sucked him up from his family’s mobile home, which was demolished in the storm. Sydney Moore told WSMV-TV that when the tornado hit their home in Clarksville on Saturday, it ripped off the roof and lifted the bassinet with her son inside. Her boyfriend, the child’s father, grabbed the bassinet, but was spun up into the twister as well, Moore said. “He was just holding on to the bassinet the whole time, and they went into circles, he said, and then they got thrown,” Moore said. At about the same time in another room, Moore jumped on top of their other son, who is one. She grabbed the child as the walls collapsed, she said. Moore and the one-year-old were left under the trailer, but she pushed them out, she said. They searched for the younger son for 10 minutes and found him lying in a fallen tree in the rain. “I was pretty sure he was dead and we weren’t going to find him, but he’s here and that’s by the grace of God,” Moore said. All the family members survived, but their home and belongings were a total loss.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
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