Protesters in Tokyo are staging mass demonstrations against the use of nuclear power, as Japan marks the three-month anniversary of the powerful earthquake and tsunami that killed tens of thousands and triggered one of the world’s worst nuclear disasters.

The magnitude-9 earthquake that hit off Japan’s north-east coast on March 11 caused a massive tsunami that devastated the coastline.

The disasters knocked out power and cooling systems at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant, about 140 miles north-east of Tokyo, setting off explosions, fires and large radiation leaks at the facility.

Official reports released earlier last week said the damage and leakage was worse than previously thought, with nuclear fuel in three reactors likely to be melting through their main cores and larger containment vessels.

The reports also said radiation that leaked into the air amounted to about one sixth of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986.

Storm-hit Haiti sees surge in cholera

The number of cholera cases is rising in parts of Haiti hit by heavy rains earlier last week.

Alain Legarnec, mission chief for the French aid group Doctors of the World, said a clinic in the south-western town of Jeremie treated 77 people for cholera in recent days.

That is a fivefold increase from the previous week and was most likely caused by rising river levels, he said.

Haiti and its Caribbean neighbours were hit by a deadly storm last Monday that flooded towns and destroyed houses. The Haitian capital and southern part of the country were worst hit.

The storm system has dumped up to seven inches of rain in Port-au-Prince since May 30, according to Bob Smerbeck, a senior meteorologist for AccuWeather, a company of forecasters based in State College, Pennsylvania.

Beatified Pope John Paul’s blood relicfor Polish church

A relic containing the blood of the recently beatified Pope John Paul II has been placed in the altar of a new church in Krakow.

John Paul, the Polish-born pope who remains deeply revered in his homeland, was beatified on May 1 at the Vatican by his successor, Benedict XVI.

With his beatification, the faithful are now able to venerate such objects as relics.

Polish news agency PAP reported that a reliquary containing a drop of John Paul’s blood was placed in the new Sanctuary of the Blessed John Paul II in Krakow yesterday.

John Paul rose from parish priest to archbishop in the southern Polish city.

Krakow Archbishop Stanislaw Dziwisz said in a Mass that the blood recalls the sacrifice John Paul made in serving Christ when he was shot by a Turkish gunman in 1981.

Killer convicted

A Tennessee man has been found guilty of murder after his three children gave vivid testimony about how he stabbed and strangled their mother then dismembered and disposed of her body.

It took less than two hours for the jury to convict James Hawkins, 33, in the killing and dismemberment of 28-year-old Charlene Gaither on February 9, 2008. The jury will next decide if he should be sentenced to death.

The chief witness against Hawkins was his 15-year-old daughter.

She said Hawkins threatened her with a knife to force her to help him put the body in a freezer and later cut it up.

His two sons testified that their father took them to a Kmart to buy a circular saw on the day of the murder and they helped him throw away a mattress from the couple’s bedroom.

Hawkins later went back to the Kmart and returned the saw.

Teenage rapists and thieves jailed

A court in Vietnam’s capital has sentenced eight teenagers toup to 30 years in jail for luring women into hotel rooms andthen gang-raping and robbing them.

The state-run Tuoi Tre newspaper said that the ring leader, a 15-year-old girl, was sentenced to 12 years in prison, while her 19-year-old boyfriend was given 30 years behind bars at the end of a two-day trial in Hanoi.

Six other boys were given from four years to 30 years in prison on the same charges.

The gang members were convicted of raping three females in separate incidents over five days last July after using the internet to lure them into hotel rooms.

They were also charged with stealing a motorbike, mobile phones and money from the victims.

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