Officials in protective gear near the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, in Koriyama, March 13, 2011. An American nuclear expert says radiation from Japan could spread across the Pacific and reach the United States if a complete meltdown occurs at a Japanese nuclear facility damaged as a result of last week’s earthquake and subsequent tsunami. Nuclear expert Joseph Cirincione of the Ploughshares Fund... 

An official scans a woman for signs of radiation in Nihonmatsu City. Nuclear experts have warned the next few days will be crucial in determining exactly how bad the fallout from the Fukushima power plant disaster could be. They say advanced Japanese engineering at the 40-year-old facility will avoid a Chernobyl-style disaster, but any radiation leak could still have disastrous consequences. During... 

A file photo of the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant. An explosion and feared meltdown at a Japanese nuclear plant Saturday exposed the scale of the disaster facing the country after a massive quake and tsunami left more than 1,000 dead. Japan’s Prime Minister Naoto Kan said the 8.9-magnitude quake and the terrifying tsunami which followed were an “unprecedented national disaster” and... 

Second sun may appear at any moment. Scientists claim that Betelgeuse, a star 640 light years away from Earth, is going to explode soon. Nikolai Chugai, head of the department of Variable Stars and Astronomical Spectroscopy of the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Astronomy shares his views with RIA Novosti’s Samir Shakhbaz, on possible threats and impact this star may cause to our planet. Samir... 

Four people have been killed and three more wounded and hospitalised in the Dagestani city of Khasavyurt as a result of a car bomb explosion. An official of the Dagestani Interior Ministry told Itar-Tass on Thursday that the “incident took place on Wednesday at 22:10 MSK on the 739th kilometre of the Kavkaz federal highway at the exit from Khasavyurt.” According to the source, an unknown man parked... 

Moscow’s Domodedovo airport – the busiest in the Russian capital – has been rocked by an explosion that has reportedly killed 31 people. Suspicion has fallen on the “Caucasus Emirate”, an Islamist separatist movement in Chechnya. More than 100 more are thought to have been injured in the blast, which reports suggest may have been the work of a suicide bomber. Russia’s chief... 

High fertility rates risk turning India’s demographic dividend into a demographic disaster, reports Shreyasi Singh from New Delhi. Asha says she didn’t even tell her husband that she was going to get sterilised. The 29-year-old domestic worker from the busy New Delhi suburb of Noida says she knew her husband and family would disapprove of her having the procedure. But she says that with the couple... 

Map locates Sange, Dem. Rep. Congo where a tanker carrying oil exploded. A tanker truck hauling fuel on a rural eastern Congo highway overturned, gushing oil and exploding in a massive fireball that killed about 220 bystanders, including many who had been watching the World Cup in flimsy roadside shacks, officials and witnesses said Saturday. The Red Cross said at least 61 children and 36 women were... 

Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed Somalia’s national security minister and at least 24 other people were killed in a suicide attack Thursday in western Somalia, and an extremist Islamic group with alleged links to al-Qaida claimed responsibility. President Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed accused al-Qaida of being behind the bombing, which also killed a senior Somali diplomat. He did not offer any evidence, but...