World News

TOKYO/FUKUSHIMA: Workers racing against time are building a wall of steel and enclosing materials in the sea Saturday, just outside the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant to prevent radioactive water seeping into the Pacific Ocean.

ABUJA: At least nine people were killed in a bomb blast at Nigeria’s electoral commission office and an attack on post storing polling materials on the eve of parliamentary polls, officials said here.

JERUSALEM/GAZA: At least 17 Palestinians, six of them civilians, have been killed in the Israeli pounding of the Hamas controlled Gaza Strip since Thursday in the bloodiest escalation since the two sides agreed to an informal ceasefire more than two years ago.

LONDON: Yale University, which has taught five US presidents and 18 Nobel Laureates, is now facing a sexual harassment scandal, it was reported here.

TOKYO/FUKUSHIMA: At least four people were killed and 140 injured in the most powerful aftershock that jolted Japan since the devastating March 11 quake and tsunami, heightening concerns over the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant where engineers battled hard to tackle an atomic crisis.

ISLAMABAD: Backed by fighter jets and artillery, Pakistan security forces attacked Taliban hideouts in the country’s restive tribal belt, killing at least 50 militants while losing four of their own men, officials said today.

ABIDJAN(IVORY COAST): The Ivory Coast’s internationally recognised President, Mr Alassane Ouattara enforced a blockade today around his rival Mr Laurent Gbagbo’s Abidjan residence, as the UN said it had found more than 100 bodies in the west of the country.

TOKYO/FUKUSHIMA: Japan’s quake-devastated northeast was shaken again by a massive 7.4 magnitude temblor, triggering a tsunami alert, as engineers at the troubled Fukushima nuclear facility pumped in nitrogen into a reactor in their desperate bid to prevent another hydrogen blast.

BOSTON: The Libya’s strongman, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi was spending over USD 3 million annually to mount a secret media campaign and PR effort to spruce up his global image as a statesman and a reformer, confidential documents show.

ITALY: The search goes on for some 150 African refugees fleeing Libya, whose boat capsized in the middle of the Mediterranean in stormy weather, a day after 53 survivors were plucked from the sea.