East Asia

Fukushima: has reactor Number 2 already melted down?

A US engineer who helped install reactors at Fukushima, speaking anonymously, said he believes the radioactive core in reactor Number 2 may have melted through the bottom of its containment vessel and on to a concrete floor.

North Africa

Moussa Koussa provides moral test for West’s Libya policy

Defected Libyan foreign minister Moussa Koussa may bear responsibility in the Lockerbie bombing—and in countless “disappearances” and rights abuses. Will he now be embraced as the technocratic face of a new regime?

Greater Middle East

Hundreds of thousands march in Yemen; al-Qaeda back in action?

Hundreds of thousands again took to the streets in Yemen to demand the ouster of President Ali Abdullah Saleh, as protesters charged official complicity in a deadly blast at a munitions plant that authorities blamed on al-Qaeda.

East Asia

Plutonium leaking from Fukushima reactor: officials

Plutonium has been found in soil at various points in and around Japan’s stricken Fukushima nuclear complex, officials admitted. The plutonium presumably comes from partially-melted MOX fuel from reactor Number 3.

Palestine

Israel orders evacuation for Tubas-area Bedouin

Israeli military authorities handed down orders for the evacuation and demolition of an “unrecognized” Bedouin community east of Tubas in the northern West Bank—amid escalating house demolitions in the occupied territory.