Japan quake: live report

0145 GMT: Britain's Daily Telegraph has reported that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) had warned Japan two years ago that a strong earthquake could pose a "serious problem" for its nuclear power stations.

- An IAEA expert expressed concern that the Japanese reactors were only designed to withstand magnitude 7.0 tremors, according to a December 2008 US diplomatic cable obtained by the WikiLeaks website, the Telegraph reported.

0130 GMT: Britain has advised its citizens to consider leaving Tokyo and northeastern Japan following the earthquake and the subsequent explosions at the Fukushima nuclear facility. The Foreign Office said British officials report there is still "no real human health issue that people should be concerned about".
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0050 GMT: Television images have shown a Japanese military helicopter sumping water Thursday from a huge bucket onto the stricken Fukushima nuclear power plant. NHK also reports that more helicopters will be sent to douse the plant.

0030 GMT: Japanese shares slumped more than four percent in early trade Thursday as the yen hit its highest level against the dollar since World War II.

0020 GMT: Our Tokyo bureau reports that the Bank of Japan today has pumped five trillion yen into the financial system to soothe money markets.

0000 GMT: A new day dawns in Japan, and the AFP live report is resuming. Here is a brief summary of Wednesday's events as Japan grapples with its worst crisis in generations.

-- Japan's Emperor Akihito gives a historic, rare address to a jittery nation, saying he is "deeply concerned" about the "unpredictable" situation at the stricken Fukushima No. 1 power plant which has been hit by a series of explosions after Friday's quake knocked out reactor cooling systems.

-- Japanese crews grappling with the world's worst nuclear incident since Chernobyl in 1986 are briefly evacuated after a spike in radiation levels at the plant, some 250 kilometers (155 miles) northeast of Tokyo.

-- New fires and feared damage to the vessel containing one of the plant's six reactor cores compounds the crisis.

-- Concern swells about the pools holding spent fuel rods at the plant -- which need water to keep them cool -- and US Nuclear Regulatory Commission head Gregory Jaczko warns there is no water left in the spent fuel pool of reactor 4, resulting in "extremely high" radiation levels.

-- The 50 or so workers at the plant, which has been hit by four explosions and two fires, are risking their lives forming the last line of defense against the nuclear disaster, and are being hailed as heroes.

-- The government warns people living up to 10 kilometers (six miles) beyond the 20-kilometer exclusion zone around the plant to stay indoors. More than 200,000 people have already been evacuated from the zone. The US embassy in Tokyo warns American citizens living within 50 miles (80 kilometers) of the plant to evacuate or seek shelter.

-- Japan's chief government spokesman Yukio Edano says radiation levels from the plant posed no immediate health threat outside the 20-kilometer exclusion zone, but the European Union's energy chief Guenther Oettinger says the situation has spun out of control.

-- The official toll of the dead and missing rises to nearly 13,000, police said, with the number of confirmed dead at 4,314, while millions have been left without water, electricity, fuel or enough food, and hundreds of thousands more are homeless, stoically coping with freezing cold and wet conditions in the northeast.

© 2011 AFP
This story is sourced direct from an overseas news agency as an additional service to readers. Spelling follows North American usage, along with foreign currency and measurement units.