It was expected to be downgraded to a depression late Sunday but could still dump torrential rain on the northeast coast, which was devastated by a massive earthquake and tsunami on March 11.

A total of 57 people suffered storm-related injuries on the southern Okinawan islands, police said. Of those, five were seriously hurt.

The typhoon, packing winds of up to 160 kilometers (100 miles) per hour, was located about 100 kilometers off the southwestern tip of Shikoku island at noon (O300 GMT), the Japan Meteorological Agency said.

Agency official Takeo Tanaka said the storm, losing strength, could reach Tokyo at around 9:00 am (0000 GMT) Monday.

It was not clear whether it would directly hit the disaster-stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, more than 200 kilometres northeast of the capital.

But the typhoon has already brought heavy rain to the Fukushima region, prompting fears that run-off water may wash away radioactive materials from land into the Pacific Ocean.

Plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) has been pouring synthetic resins over the complex to prevent radioactive deposits from being swept away by winds or rain.

The government of Zibo city in Shandong province said in a statement Sunday that police were investigating the cause of the explosion at a chemical plant owned by Shandong Baoyuan Chemical Co. Ltd.

The statement said the Saturday night blast killed two people at the site while a third person died later at a hospital. Eight other people who suffered slight injuries were being treated at a hospital.

Industrial accidents are common in China due to lax regulations and safety controls.

Following public concerns that radioactive waste from the plant could leak out and harm the environment, Malaysia has put the project by Australian miner Lynas on hold, pending the independent panel’s review.

A nine-member team led by a senior official from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) arrived this weekend to review the plant, which is under construction near the town of Kuantan in eastern Pahang state, said an official from the International Trade Ministry.

The team is meeting Malaysian government officials on Sunday before traveling to eastern Malaysia on Monday to meet residents and inspect the construction site for three days, he said.

They are expected to present their final findings by end of June, the official said.

The Lynas Advanced Materials Plant (LAMP) was scheduled to begin processing rare earth – used in high-tech products from iPods to missiles – in the third quarter of 2011.

But activists and residents say they fear radioactive waste produced by the plant would not be disposed of properly and could endanger them and the environment.

Pending the panel’s review, the government has said it will not issue a pre-operating licence to Lynas and has barred imports of raw materials from Australia to be processed at the facility.

A similar facility built by a Japanese firm in another part of Malaysia was forced to shut down in 1992 due to protests.

Lynas has insisted the plant poses no safety threats. It has said any waste would be placed in safe, reliable engineered storage cells to avoid any leakage.

Lynas has described the facility as the largest of its kind in the world set to be one of the few sources of rare earths outside China.

The water pump to cool the reactor and the pool for spent nuclear fuel at the facility’s No. 5 unit was found to be at a standstill late Saturday, the plant’s operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) said.

The work began at 8:00 am Sunday (2300 GMT Saturday) to replace the pump and it was completed in four and a half hours.

“There was a motor problem in the pump and we replaced it with a backup pump which is operating now,” TEPCO official Ryoko Sakai said.

The temperature of water in the reactor, which was 68 degrees Celsius when the trouble was found, reached 93.7 degrees Celsius before the backup pump was activated, the official said.

The 9.0-magnitude quake and monster tsunami ravaged cooling systems at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, causing it to leak radiation from damaged reactors into the environment, including the Pacific Ocean, in the worst nuclear accident since the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.

Of the plant’s six reactors, the No.1, 2 and 3 units are presumed to have suffered a meltdown, TEPCO has said.

The No. 5 and 6 reactors were in a cold shutdown for regular checkups at the time of the disaster. They have remained stable as an emergency power generator continued supplying electricity to them.

Bookstores and pharmacies nationwide will soon be forbidden to give out free plastic bags, joining the ranks of supermarkets that have had to charge for shopping bags since June 1, 2008, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

On that day, China also banned the production, sale and use of ultra-thin plastic bags, becoming one of only a few nations around the world to take such tough measures.

Quoting Zhao Jiarong, deputy secretary general of the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), China’s top economic planner, the report said the government would also step up its crackdown on the illegal use of plastic bags.

But she did not say when bookstores and pharmacies would have to start charging for the bags they give out.

China – the world’s biggest greenhouse gas emitter – has some of the world’s worst water and air pollution after rapid growth over more than 30 years triggered widespread environmental damage.

Around three billion plastic bags were being used daily in China before the 2008 ban. Since then, according to the NDRC, people have used at least 24 billion fewer plastic bags every year, the report said late Saturday.

Dong Jinshi, vice chairman of the International Food Packaging Association in Beijing, told AFP late last year that as many as 100 billion plastic shopping bags may have been kept out of landfills as a result of the law.

She patiently waits for the giggles to subside when she points to a condom, aware that the two dozen women in the village of Chanloung in northwest Siem Reap province have rarely experienced such an open discussion about sex.

Once the 37-year-old has their full attention again, she talks about long-term contraceptive methods and debunks some of the more persistent myths about their side-effects.

For mother-of-two Beun Chem, 27, who wants to hold off having more children so she can focus on running her small shop, the midwife’s explanations are eye-opening.

“I am happy to learn about contraception and reduce some concerns I had. Now I want to try the implant.”

She said she first heard about the device – which is inserted under the skin of a woman’s arm and can prevent pregnancy for up to five years by releasing hormones into the bloodstream – on television.

But “I didn’t know where they would put it”, she said, laughing.

As one of Cambodia’s first and only mobile midwives, Siyan has criss-crossed Siem Reap province on her motorbike to give these sex education talks to women in remote areas.

Her efforts are part of a new project called “midwives-on-motos” which currently operates in five provinces.

Launched by Marie Stopes International, a non-profit reproductive health organization, the program aims to improve family planning in Cambodia by travelling to where the services are most needed.

According to the most recent Cambodian government survey, a quarter of married women in the impoverished nation have unmet family planning needs.

For some women, especially in rural areas, it can be easier to get an abortion than seek out contraception.

Abortion rates are high as a result, with 56 percent of Cambodian women aged 15-49 reporting at least one abortion, official figures show.

“Rural and remote areas of Cambodia remain with limited access to reproductive health services,” said Nesim Tumkaya, officer-in-charge of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) in the country.

“In Cambodia, abortion is legal, though we would like to see it minimized by ensuring that every woman and man has access to contraception,” he said.

But simply improving access to services is not enough, said Siyan.

Another key challenge is to get women in this modest and traditional country to open up about their sexual health concerns.

“Younger girls especially can be very shy,” the experienced midwife said. “They do not talk openly to us but they chat with their friends and that’s how misunderstandings spread. So I try to get them to open up by sharing my own experiences.”

Even in Cambodia’s towns and cities, where health services are easily available, timidness and privacy fears remain a barrier to seeking help with unwanted pregnancies or sexually transmitted diseases (STDs).

“Our traditions and customs make women feel shy talking about sexual health or reproductive health,” Cambodian Women’s Affairs Minister Ing Kantha Phavi told AFP.

“Sometimes, a mother doesn’t dare broach the topic with her daughter. This can be dangerous because the girls lack information on protection and prevention.”

And as Cambodian youngsters are increasingly having sex before marriage, more education was imperative, the minister said.

“Our society is developing and we should focus on educating girls about sexual and reproductive health in the family and in school programmes… so that they can take care of themselves.”

Sex education is not compulsory in Cambodian schools and teachers often give students only the most basic information.

Given the cultural sensitivities, organizations like Marie Stopes also train women from all walks of life, from sex workers to office workers, to act as peer educators and give advice to friends or colleagues about safe sex and treatment options.

The UNFPA said this approach was “very effective”.

“Peers have easy access to their friends or community members and they can relate their experiences in a convincing and friendly way,” Tumkaya said.

One of these peer educators is Sar Ousa, 24, who works as a waitress in a beer garden in Siem Reap, a bustling tourist town in the eponymous province that is home to the famed Angkor Wat temples.

“If the girls have a question, they come to me. They know who I am,” said Ousa.

She has on occasion accompanied colleagues, some of whom supplement their meagre salaries by sleeping with customers for money, to get tested for HIV.

But even popular Ousa can’t convince everyone to come to her for help.

“Many girls want to keep their problems private,” she said, “So they go to hidden places because they don’t want anyone to know they might be pregnant or have an STD, which puts them at risk of unsafe treatment from unqualified carers or unregistered clinics.”

Ing Kantha Phavi said she shared those concerns but was encouraged by the efforts made by trailblazers like mobile midwives and peer educators.

“I believe that little by little Cambodia can change the habits that bring danger to women,” she said.

The report, compiled by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, examined general trends in over 30 countries regarding their attitudes towards homosexuality.

Approval of homosexuality increased in 27 countries and decreased in only four: Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Latvia and Russia, the study noted.

The growth in approval ratings was stronger than the decline.

The study rated the top five most tolerant countries regarding homosexuality as the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Switzerland, and Belgium, according to the survey.

The bottom half of the list consisted of seven ex-socialist states, East Asian nations, Latin American countries and Cyprus, South Africa, and Turkey.

In Russia, 59 percent of the population felt that homosexual behavior was wrong in 1991 compared with 64 percent in 2008, the study showed.

In Russia on Saturday, Moscow police detained three global gay rights leaders and dozens of Russians in a violent end to a rally that activists tried to stage near the Kremlin wall despite a ban.

The small crowd of young marchers was attacked by members of an ultra-Orthodox group who had successfully lobbied Moscow to ban the event.

Organizers said the three Westerners and most of 30 Russians were released after a few hours of detention.

Although Kan’s opponents have only a slim chance of rallying enough support for a successful motion in the Diet legislature, the move would be a fresh headache for Tokyo’s premier, who has been in office for less than a year.

Leaders of the main conservative opposition Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and their smaller ally the New Komeito party threatened the move on Friday against Kan, Japan’s fifth prime minister in as many years.

A rebel powerbroker in Kan’s Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), Ichiro Ozawa, long dubbed the “Shadow Shogun”, did not rule out supporting a move to oust Kan, according to an interview published by The Wall Street Journal.

Kan’s approval ratings slipped below 20 percent shortly before the March 11 calamity which sparked the world’s worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl 25 years ago and threw the country back into recession.

A political truce ended about a month after the disaster, and the LDP has rejected Kan’s offer for it to join a national unity government.

Ichiro Aisawa, the LDP’s Diet affairs chief, told reporters Friday: “The LDP and New Komeito, both parties, shared the understanding that we are in a situation where we should submit a no-confidence motion.”

The motion could come this week, a senior LDP lawmaker said, according to the Kyodo News agency, and the parties were to decide on the timing after a debate on quake reconstruction on Wednesday.

Kan has taken some bold steps since the disaster, including shutting down a second quake-prone nuclear plant southwest of Tokyo, the Hamaoka plant, and announcing a radical energy policy review that stresses clean renewables.

But Kan’s critics have faulted his handling of disaster relief and the slow pace of building temporary new homes for tens of thousands made homeless by the monster tsunami that hit the northern Pacific coast.

The DPJ’s scandal-tainted veteran Ozawa – who last year narrowly failed in an attempt to oust Kan as party president and premier – told the Wall Street Journal that he was considering whether to back a move against the premier.

He told the paper he was “thinking about how to deal” with a no-confidence motion and said: “If the prime minister cannot implement policies, it’s meaningless for him to stay in power”.

“The sooner he is replaced, the better,” Ozawa added.

If the motion were passed – which would require scores of DPJ lower house lawmakers to defect to win a lower house majority – the premier would have to either resign or call a snap election.

Ozawa, who years ago defected from the LDP, was indicted this year over an alleged violation of campaign-funding laws. He has maintained his innocence.

Asked about his political future, he said: “I’m an old soldier. Have you heard of General MacArthur’s words, ‘Old soldiers just fade away’? I was thinking about just fading away, but now I feel I have a bit more work to do.”

Tomoaki Iwai, a Nihon University politics professor, said for now Kan’s opponents would face an uphill battle in pushing through a no-confidence motion. “It will be very difficult,” he told AFP.

“More than 80 DPJ members would be needed in order to pass the no-confidence motion against Kan, but I doubt so many people would have resolve that strong…. When Ozawa held a meeting recently with his DPJ supporters, only 60 people gathered.”

He also said that the DPJ rebels would have to split away from the party and that this was unlikely because “Ozawa wants to take control of the DPJ”.

“For Kan, if the motion is rejected, he would be able to avoid the most immediate crisis and would no longer need to dissolve parliament,” said Iwai.

“He would still have to deal with some members who are unhappy about his administration inside the party, but a failed no-confidence motion may actually solidify his political standing somewhat.”

The 85-year-old long-time leader had undergone treatment including chest physiotherapy at the National Heart Institute since May 18. Bernama said Mahathir was discharged Saturday.

Mahathir stepped down as prime minister in 2003 after 22 years in power. But he remains an influential figure, who often speaks up on current issues.

Last October, Mahathir was admitted to a hospital in Melbourne for a similar chest infection.

He has undergone two coronary bypass surgeries, one in 1989 and the latest in 2007.

In a joint operation, authorities found more than 50 kilograms (110 pounds) of the drug worth tens of millions of dollars concealed in hydraulic oil in the Queensland town of Mackay on Friday.

A 38-year-old Australian man and two Colombian nationals, aged 30 and 42, were arrested and face a total of 26 charges, including importing a commercial quantity of a border controlled drug.

A third Colombian, 24, was also arrested in Mackay, with investigations ongoing.

In simultaneous action, Colombian police arrested seven nationals in Medellin on charges of drug trafficking and conspiracy to commit a crime.

Panama authorities arrested three of their nationals at the same time on trafficking charges in Panama City in an operation that began in September 2009.

The head of the Australian Federal Police’s Brisbane office, Mark Walters, said the cocaine was destined for Australia’s major eastern cities.

“This operation has dismantled a cocaine syndicate at every level, from the organisers, investors and financiers to the dealers peddling these drugs on our streets,” he said.

“We’ve choked the drug supply at the source in South America, apprehended the facilitators in Central America, we’ve taken out the major players of an organised crime syndicate within Australia.

“We’ve put the drug distribution networks on notice in Australia’s major cities.”

Australian police intercepted the cocaine-laced oil when it first arrived in Melbourne by sea on May 10, monitoring the consignment as it was ferried to Brisbane and then transported by rail to Mackay.