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8:59am
With a state of emergency declared at another nuclear reactor, there are now five reactors under a state of emergency - two at Fukushima No.1 plant, and three at the nearby Fukushima No.2 plant.
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Timestamp:
8:52am
US citizens in Japan are being urged to let officials know their whereabouts, by emailing
[email protected]
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Timestamp:
8:39am
Not all US military personnel in Japan have been accounted for, the Pentagon has just confirmed.
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Timestamp:
8:30am
Japanese politicians are pushing for an emergency budget to counter the economic damage resulting from the twin disasters. The Bank of Japan, which has struggled to return the country to growth, said it will cut short a two-day policy review and promised to do its utmost to ensure financial market stability.
Leaders of the ruling and opposition parties agreed on the need for an extra budget after prime minister Naoto Kan asked them to "save the country", Kyodo news agency reported. Yasuo Yamamoto, senior
economist at Mizuho Research Institute in Tokyo, said:
The government would have to sell more bonds, but this is an emergency, so this can't be avoided ... given where the Bank of Japan's benchmark interest rate is now, they can't really lower rates. The BOJ will focus on
providing liquidity, possibly by expanding market operations.
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Timestamp:
8:27am
Japanese prime minister Naoto Kan says:
We've been working overnight to try to recover from the situation. I'm about to board a helicopter to go to the affected areas, in particular the area around affected nuclear facilities. At the moment we have ordered a 10km exclusion zone around the facility. I'm going there with experts from the industry to talk with the people responsible on the ground, and to grasp how the situation is. On this basis we will make the necessary decisions.
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Timestamp:
8:17am
A total of 45,000 people living within a 10km radius of the Fukushima nuclear power plant have now been told to evacuate their homes - a steep rise on the 3,000 who were told to leave yesterday evening.
http://blogs.aljazeera.net/live/asia/live-blog-japan-earthquake