BEIJING: China has sacked the mayor of the eastern city of Nanjing, the official Xinhua news agency said yesterday, the latest move in a nationwide crackdown on graft. The sacking of Ji Jianye came two days after it was announced Ji was being investigated for serious breaches of the law. Ji “has been removed from his post for suspected serious disciplinary violations”, Xinhua said, shorthand the government generally uses to describe graft. The People’s Daily online report, citing other Chinese media reports, said Ji’s case may have involved some 20m yuan ($3.3m).
Abe’s brother visits Yasukuni
TOKYO: Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s younger brother, Senior Vice Foreign Minister Nobuo Kishi visited the controversial Yasukuni shrine yesterday, a report said. Kishi told reporters that his action should not affect Japan’s relations with other countries and that he had not conferred with the prime minister about the visit, Kyodo News said. His visit at the shrine’s annual autumn festival came only a day after scores of Japanese parliamentarians, including a cabinet minister, paid tribute there Friday, drawing a rebuke from Beijing which said the visit was a bid to “whitewash” history.
Lao Air names 14 victims
PAKSE: Lao Airlines yesterday said it had identified almost half of the 30 bodies so far recovered after a plane carrying dozens of people, many of them foreign travellers, plunged into the Mekong River. In the country’s deadliest known air disaster, all those on board died when the Lao Airlines turboprop ATR-72 plunged into the swollen waters in stormy weather on Wednesday near Pakse airport in Champasak province.
Radiation rises
at Fukushima
TOKYO: Groundwater radiation levels at Japan’s crippled Fukushima nuclear plant have soared near a tank that leaked 300 tonnes of toxic water in August, operator Tokyo Electric Power said. It said water samples from a well contained 400,000 becquerels per litre of beta-ray emitting substances, the highest reading since the nuclear accident in March 2011. Samples in previous days had been showing levels of 60-90 becquerels per litre. The reading for radioactive tritium also shot up to a record high of 790,000 becquerels. The leaking tank was discovered in August and Tepco said measures taken since then had included transferring water from the tank and removing the surrounding soil. AGENCIES
