In brief: Former Pakistani president indicted
RAWALPINDI, Pakistan – A Pakistani court has indicted former Pakistani army chief and President Pervez Musharraf in the 2007 assassination of a former prime minister.
Afsha Adil, a member of Musharraf’s legal team, said Musharraf pleaded not guilty.
Former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto was killed in 2007 during a rally in the city of Rawalpindi.
Prosecutor Chaudry Muhammed Azhar said the charges include murder, conspiracy to commit murder and facilitation for murder.
Musharraf has faced a litany of charges relating to his rule since returning to the country in March from self-imposed exile.
Radioactive water seeps into ground
TOKYO – The operator of Japan’s tsunami-crippled nuclear power plant says about 300 tons of highly radioactive water have leaked from a storage tank there.
Tokyo Electric Power Co. said Tuesday that the contaminated water leaked from a steel storage tank at the wrecked Fukushima Dai-ichi plant. TEPCO hasn’t figured out how or where the water leaked from the tank.
TEPCO said the leaked water seeped into the ground after largely escaping a barrier made of sandbags around the tank.
The plant suffered multiple meltdowns following Japan’s massive earthquake and tsunami in March 2011. Contaminated water from elsewhere in the plant also has been leaking into the sea.
Chinese flooding, landslides kill hundreds
BEIJING – Heavy rains brought by a typhoon triggered landslides in southern China that buried homes and vehicles and killed at least 15 people, as the number of dead or missing from recent flooding topped 200.
Nine people were reported killed in Hunan province and six in Guangxi, where vehicles were covered in mud and rocks along a mountain highway, local flood control offices said.
By this morning, a total of 105 people were reported dead and 115 missing in the extreme south and northeast.
Asylum-seekers’ boat sinks off Australian coast
SYDNEY – A boat carrying about 100 suspected asylum-seekers sank today in the Indian Ocean, and Australian officials are hurrying to rescue passengers from the water.
The boat sank about 140 miles north of Christmas Island, where Australia operates a detention camp for asylum-seekers. The Maritime Safety Authority said an estimated 105 people were on board.
Nigerian terrorist ‘might have died,’ leaders say
MAIDUGURI, Nigeria – Nigeria’s military says the leader of an Islamic uprising in the northeast “might have died” of a gunshot wound.
Lt. Col. Sagir Musa said in a statement Monday that intelligence reports available to his task force “revealed that Abubakar Shekau, the most dreaded and wanted Boko Haram Terrorists leader, may have died.” It says he was mortally wounded in an attack on a forest hideout June 30 and died across the border in Cameroon.
The report was met by residents in Maiduguri with skepticism.