Crisis in Japan
Officials cautioned that the levels of radioactive iodine found in Tokyo's tap water is still safe for adults, while contamination found in food and water elsewhere in the country remains below levels that could cause immediate health damage.
The findings suggest a new front is unfolding in Japan's fight to contain radioactive material at the heavily damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power complex.
Radiation levels in the air in Tokyo were at four times normal levels Wednesday, though still within government limits. Officials said the heightened levels could have been due to recent rainstorms that brought radioactive material down from the air.
Japan's Food Safety Commission restricted shipments of various types of vegetables from Fukushima prefecture, after heath officials found higher-than-permissible levels of radioactive material in food goods from the area over the weekend.
The commission also restricted shipments of milk and parsley from neighboring Ibaraki prefecture.
The official death toll rose to 9,523 people Wednesday evening local time, with more than 16,094 missing.
Workers hope to bring vital control and cooling systems online at the power plant at the center of Japan's nuclear crisis in the next few days, even as black smoke at one of its most damaged reactors caused jitters and led to an evacuation there.
Japan's government said damage from the March 11 earthquake and tsunami could add up to $198 billion, more than double the cost of the 1995 Kobe earthquake, putting new fiscal pressure on an already debt-strapped government that will likely force the cabinet to abandon self-imposed borrowing limits.
Japanese regulators discussed in recent months the use of new cooling technologies at nuclear plants that could have lessened or prevented the disaster that struck this month when a tsunami wiped out the electricity at the stricken Fukushima Daiichi power facility.
However, they chose to ignore the vulnerability at existing reactors and instead focused on fixing the issue in future ones, government and corporate documents show.
A top official at Japan's nuclear-safety regulatory agency sees no slowing in the country's campaign to expand atomic power, despite the battle to contain the world's worst nuclear crisis in 25 years, saying in an interview that the alternative is "blackouts."
As the coalition campaign moved into its fifth day, several residents of Misrata, Libya's third-largest city and an important commercial hub, recounted a grim humanitarian situation and atrocities still being committed by Col. Moammar Gadhafi's troops.
Rear Adm. Gerard Hueber, chief of staff for the U.S. task force in the Mediterranean, said coalition forces were attacking Gadhafi's tank and artillery columns around Misrata and Ajdabiya in the east. He said the regime's forces in recent days have "intensified" their assault on both cities, targeting civilian areas.
NATO ambassadors were set to resume discussions Thursday, in another effort to resolve remaining differences over how to organize control of the operations and to settle the alliance's role in policing a no-fly zone.
Violent clashes in the restive southern Syrian city of Daraa killed as many as six people, the deadliest single day since antigovernment protests inspired by uprisings across the Arab world reached this country last week, an activist said.
Yemen's Parliament, at the behest of embattled President Ali Abdullah Saleh, passed sweeping new emergency laws that suspend the constitution and enable his remaining loyal security forces to arrest and detain his opponents, a move that political-opposition forces say heightens the threat of civil war.
A bomb in Jerusalem killed one Israeli, and at least two Katyusha rockets from Gaza hit southern Israel, marking the most serious flare up of violence between Israel and Palestinian militants in years.
Portugal's Prime Minister José Sócrates tendered his resignation after Parliament rejected a new government austerity plan, moves expected to greatly increase pressure on the country to accept an international bailout.
The increased political uncertainty will likely push up Portugal's already high borrowing costs, making it more likely it will become the third euro-zone country to apply for external financial assistance.
Spain's third-largest savings bank by assets, Banco Base, is likely to scrap plans to go public and seek state funds instead in the face of lukewarm investor response and a tight timetable to raise capital, say people close to the matter.
European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet said "much remains to be done" to improve the functioning of the financial sector, calling for more stringent oversight of "shadow" banks and a solution on how to define and treat financial institutions whose failures are seen as threats to the entire financial system.
Factory orders across the euro zone rose much less than expected in January, with declines in France and Italy offsetting a rebound in Germany, data from the European Union's statistics agency showed.
Britain's Treasury chief George Osborne delivered a largely business-friendly budget that aimed to dull the pain of belt-tightening and high inflation rates for British people and business, after already having set the U.K. on a course of aggressive deficit cutting.
He also announced a series of measures to boost economic growth, which he said will be slower than expected when he embarked on the deficit-reduction course—among the most aggressive of the major economies.
The U.K. government promised to help people facing rising motoring costs by abolishing a plan of regular increases to fuel taxes and instead imposing a hefty tax increase on the profits of oil and gas producers.
There is a significant risk that U.K. inflation could soon exceed 5%, but is likely to fall back to target over the next couple of years, according to the minutes of the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee's March meeting.
New HIV infections acquired within the U.K. have almost doubled over the past decade, prompting health officials here to recommend an ambitious widening of testing in order to catch and treat cases early.
The Italian cabinet approved a one-year moratorium for the country's nuclear comeback, and the government may decide to end the atomic program if it isn't satisfied with the European Union's stress tests on safety.
Turkey's central bank held its key interest rate at a record low and simultaneously raised bank reserve requirements, continuing a policy of tightening a gathering credit boom but holding benchmark rates steady.
Belarus's central bank will resume normal procedures for providing foreign currency to lenders, a day after the country held talks with Russia on a $3 billion loan to help stave off a devaluation of the Belarussian ruble.
Ukraine's former President Leonid Kuchma vowed to disprove accusations of involvement in the murder of an investigative journalist more than 10 years ago.
Sales of new homes plunged last month to a new record low and prices fell to the lowest in more than seven years as the U.S. housing market sputters even as other parts of the economy turn around.
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke had a message for community bankers who have been complaining about the Dodd-Frank law: The regulatory overhaul will actually hit big financial firms harder.
An Indian court agreed to a new request for the extradition of the former chief of a U.S. chemical company in connection with the 1984 Bhopal gas-leak tragedy.