Japan, Power Outage | featured news

This week's power outage at Japan's tsunami-crippled nuclear plant may have been caused by a rat Masayuki Ono, spokesman for Tokyo Electric Power Co., the utility that runs the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant, says a 15-centimeter (6-inch) rat was found dead Wednesday near a switchboard. He says the rat may be linked to the power failure, but that more investigation is needed to be sure.

Typhoon Melor was gathering strength as it traveled along Japan's southern coast with sustained winds of about 100 miles per hour, causing power outages and disrupting air and train travel.