Tokyo: Japan’s Tokyo Electric Power Company yesterday said that 1,973 employees at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station have estimated thyroid radiation doses exceeding 100 millisieverts, the widely accepted level for an increase in the risk of cancer. They will undergo annual ultrasonic tests. Health tests were given to 19,592 workers — 3,290 TEPC staff and 16,302 at its affiliated firms — who struggled to bring the plant under control after it suffered meltdowns at three of six reactors after the 2011 earthquake and tsunami.
Australia closed to boatpeople
SYDNEY: Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd yesterday said that boatpeople will no longer be resettled in the country. “From now on, any asylum-seeker who arrives in Australia by boat will have no chance of being settled in Australia as a refugee,” he said, announcing his new border protection policy in an election year, flanked by Papua New Guine counterpart Peter O’Neill.
Six held over vendor’s death
BEIJING: Six government employees involved in a dispute that saw a roadside watermelon seller die have been detained, officials said yesterday as outrage over power abuses mounted. Deng Zhengjia, 56, was beaten to death on Wednesday by regulation enforcers known as ‘chengguan’ for selling watermelons on the street without a licence, in Linwu county.
Third Chevron official jailed
JAKARTA: An Indonesian court yesterday jailed a third employee of the local subsidiary of US energy giant Chevron Corporation. Widodo, a waste management team leader who goes by one name, was jailed for two years over a project to decontaminate 28 plots of land, which prosecutors argued caused losses to the state. Agencies
