TOKYO, Oct 3 (Reuters) - The operator of Japan's crippled Fukushima nuclear plant on Thursday said another tank holding highly contaminated water is leaking, and that some of the liquid may have reached the Pacific Ocean, the second such breach in less than two months.

Tokyo Electric Power Co, or Tepco, said the water that leaked contained 200,000 becquerels per litre of beta-emitting radioactive isotopes including strontium 90. The legal limit for strontium 90 is 30 becquerels per litre.

Tepco has been relying on hastily built tanks to hold excess cooling water flushed over damaged reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi site, where three units suffered nuclear meltdowns and hydrogen explosions after a March 2011 earthquake and tsunami.

The breach was discovered in a tank holding area away from where 300 tonnes of toxic water escaped in August. In the latest leak, one of the huge tanks was found to be tilted, with water sloshing out of the top, a spokesman said by phone.

Recent mishaps at the site have returned Tepco to the spotlight and called into question its ability to carry out a complex cleanup that is widely expected to take decades. Amid mounting international alarm, Japan's government stepped in and said it will fund efforts to improvement water management at the plant.

Tepco has been pumping hundreds of tonnes of water a day over the Fukushima reactors to keep them cool and storing the radioactive wastewater in tanks above ground.

It has also found high levels of radiation just above the ground near other tanks, suggesting widespread structural problems with the tanks.

New leak at crippled Japan nuke plant

Another breach in a tank holding highly contaminated water has been reported at the Fukushima nuclear facility.
May have flowed into Pacific

Obama, Hill leaders fail to solve shutdown impasse

WASHINGTON (AP) — The government limped into a third day of partial shutdown Thursday after a White House meeting among President Barack Obama and top congressional leaders yielded no signs of progress but plenty of evidence that Democrats and Republicans remained riven over a dispute that has idled hundreds of thousands of federal workers and curtailed services nationwide.

"The House could act today to reopen the government and stop the harm this shutdown is causing to the economy and families across the country," the White House said in a written statement after the session. In a jab at the GOP-led chamber, it added, "The president remains hopeful that common sense will prevail."

House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, complained to reporters that Obama had said anew that "he will not negotiate." Boehner made clear that curbing the health care overhaul that Obama pushed into law three years ago remains part of the price for returning 800,000 furloughed federal workers to their jobs and resuscitating programs ranging from feeding pregnant women to staffing Internal Revenue Service call centers.

"All we're asking for here is a discussion and fairness for the American people under Obamacare," Boehner said, using the name Republicans often use for the 2010 law.

Wednesday's lack of progress did little to dispel the widening impression that the dispute could persist into mid-October and become tangled with an even more consequential battle. The Obama administration has said Congress must renew the government's authority to borrow money by Oct. 17 or risk a first-ever federal default, which many economists say would dangerously jangle the world economy.

The shutdown stalemate is already rattling investors. Stock markets in the U.S. and overseas faded Wednesday, and Europe's top central banker, Mario Draghi, called the shutdown "a risk if protracted." Leading financial executives met with Obama, and one, Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, said politicians should not use a potential default "as a cudgel."

On Thursday, Republicans planned to continue pursuing their latest strategy: muscling bills through the House that would restart some popular programs.

Votes were on tap for restoring funds for veterans and paying members of the National Guard and Reserves. On Wednesday, the chamber voted to finance the national parks and biomedical research and let the District of Columbia's municipal government spend federally controlled dollars.

Democrats demanded that the entire government be reopened, and the White House and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., made clear that the GOP's narrower bills have no chance of survival. They said the strategy showed that Republicans were buckling under public pressure, with Rep. Louise Slaughter, D-N.Y., saying groups like veterans were being "used as a pawn in this cynical political game."

Republicans countered that Democrats were being inflexible and were to blame for the continued closure of programs the GOP was trying to reopen. A favorite target was Reid, who has made clear that the Senate will be a graveyard for the Republican effort.

"The Senate's refusal to work with the House is an all-time low," Rep. Trey Radel, R-Fla., said.

Reid told reporters that Obama and Democrats are "locked in tight" on not diluting the health care law. And the White House said that during his meeting with congressional leaders, Obama repeated his refusal to negotiate over extending the government's debt limit. The White House said Obama believed it was Congress' job "to pay the bills it has racked up and spare the nation from a devastating default."

In an interview afterward, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., scoffed at the president's stance.

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House Minority Leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., left, with Senate Majority Leader Sen. Harry Reid …

"He can't get his way exactly the way he wants it because he doesn't control the entire government," McConnell said on CNBC's "The Kudlow Report."

Democrats continued lambasting Boehner and freshman Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, the tea party hero who has helped sell fellow conservatives in both chambers on keeping the government shuttered until Obama retreats on his coveted health care law.

"Sadly, he's become a puppet," Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said of Boehner, "with Ted Cruz pulling the strings."

Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, and other House conservatives said they met with Cruz and other Senate conservatives Wednesday to update each other on what was happening.

"We think we just have to keep talking about our message, which is real simple: 'Treat people fairly,'" Jordan said.

Republican leaders and many rank-and-file GOP lawmakers, especially in the Senate, had been reluctant to link demands for curbing the health care law to legislation keeping government open, concerned that voters would blame Republicans for any shutdown.

But Wednesday, Republicans solidly opposed an unsuccessful Democratic move to force the House to vote on a Senate-passed bill keeping government open until Nov. 15 without any strings on the health care law.

"Now that we've jumped off the cliff, lit ourselves on fire, we've entered the valley of death," said Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., who has criticized the conservatives' strategy. "So now we've got to keep running and we have to hold together."

The House has approved legislation keeping the entire government funded through Dec. 15. It also would impose a one-year delay in the health care law's requirement that individuals buy health insurance, which would threaten to cripple the program, and block federal subsidies for health coverage bought by lawmakers and their staff.

As the politicians battled, mail continued to be delivered, air traffic controllers remained at work and payments were being made to recipients of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and unemployment benefits.

Halted were most routine food inspections by the Food and Drug Administration and loan approvals for many low- and middle-income borrowers by the Housing and Urban Development Department.

Only 3 percent of NASA employees were on the job, while 86 percent at the Homeland Security Department were working.

The director of national intelligence, James Clapper, said 70 percent of civilian workers at the CIA and other intelligence agencies he controls were furloughed. He warned Congress that the national security risk "will accumulate over time."

No end in sight as shutdown enters day three

The blame game continues after an unproductive meeting between the president and top lawmakers.
Boehner: Obama 'will not negotiate'

Death toll in migrant boat shipwreck rises to 114

ROME (AP) — A ship carrying African migrants to Europe caught fire and capsized Thursday off the southern Italian island of Lampedusa, killing at least 114 people as hundreds were dumped into the sea, officials said. Over 150 people were rescued but about the same number were still unaccounted for.

It was one of the deadliest recent accidents in the perilous Mediterranean Sea crossing that thousands of African migrants make every year, seeking a new life in the European Union. Smugglers charge thousands of dollars a head to slip people into Europe aboard overcrowded, barely seaworthy fishing boats, providing no life vests or other safety features.

"We need only caskets, certainly not ambulances," Pietro Bartolo, chief of health services on Lampedusa, told Radio 24. He gave the death toll at 94 but said it would certainly rise as search operations continued.

"It's an immense tragedy," said Lampedusa Mayor Giusi Nicolini.

Italy's coast guard later said divers saw at least another 20 bodies around the boat, which was now lying on the bottom of the sea.

Lampedusa is closer to Africa than the Italian mainland — a mere 70 miles (113 kilometers) off the coast of Tunisia — and is the frequent destination for smugglers' boats.

The 20-meter (66-foot) boat was believed to be carrying 450 to 500 people, according to the International Organization for Migration. The boat left from Tripoli with migrants from Eritrea, Ghana and Somalia, Italian coast guard spokesman Marco Di Milla told The Associated Press.

Antonio Candela, a government health commissioner, said 159 people had been rescued.

Rescue crews hauled body bags by the dozens off coast guard ships on Thursday and lined them up under multicolored tarps on Lampedusa's docks. At sea, Italian coast guard ships, local fishing boats and helicopters from across the region combed the waters, trying to find survivors.

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Firefighters unload the body of a drowned migrant from a Coast Guard boat in the port of Lampedusa, …

"Most of them can't swim. Only the strongest survived," said Simona Moscarelli, a legal expert for the IOM in Rome.

Only three of the estimated 100 women on board have been rescued so far and none of the 10 children believed on board were saved, she said. Two of the dead were pregnant.

Cmdr. Floriana Segreto of the Italian coast guard told the AP that "divers of the coast guard have found the boat on the sea floor at a depth of 40 meters (130 feet). At least 20 bodies were seen around the boat. The divers have yet to go inside the boat."

She added they were waiting for the weather to improve before they could recover more bodies.

According to Interior Minister Angelino Alfano, the ship began taking on water during the night after the motor was cut as it neared Conigli island off Lampedusa, a tiny speck of an island closer to Africa than the Italian mainland.

Usually smugglers have cellphones or satellite phones to call for help when they near shore or run into trouble, but this time they didn't. Instead, someone on board set fire to a piece of material to attract the attention of passing ships, only to have the fire spread to the ship itself.

The passengers all moved to one side to avoid the fire, flipping the ship and spilling hundreds of men, women and children into the sea, he said.

Alfano was one of several Italian officials who demanded the 28-nation European Union do more to put an end to the smuggling operations and help border countries like Italy cope.

"Let us hope that the European Union realizes this isn't an Italian problem but a European one," he said, heading to the island to oversee the recovery operation.

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Bodies of drowned migrants are lined up in the port of Lampedusa Thursday, Oct. 3, 2013. Tens of peo …

Pope Francis, who visited Lampedusa in July to bemoan the frequent deaths of migrants, quickly sent his condolences.

"It is shameful!" he said during an audience at the Vatican.

In a tweet, EU Home Affairs Minister Cecilia Malstrom called for a redoubling of efforts to "fight smugglers exploiting human despair."

Survivors overloaded Lampedusa's reception center, since two other boatloads of migrants landed overnight before the tragedy, one of Syrians and another of Eritreans. Over 1,000 people were squeezed into a space built for 250, Moscarelli said.

Thursday's disaster was the second shipwreck this week off Italy: On Monday, 13 men drowned while trying to reach southern Sicily when their ship ran aground just a few meters (yards) from shore.

While it was the deadliest such incident off Italy in recent times, Moscarelli said there had been similar or greater losses of life farther out at sea and off the Libyan coast in recent years.

Libya, from where the migrants left about two days ago, is a frequent departure point for migrants.

"There are lots of Eritreans in detention centers in Libya," Moscarelli said. "These people are not economic migrants. They are fleeing persecution," often from their military service.

Hundreds of migrants reach Italy's shores every day, particularly during the summer when seas are usually calmer. They are processed in centers, screened for asylum and often sent back home. Those who aren't usually melt into the general public and make their way to northern Europe, where immigrant communities are bigger and better organized.

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Bodies of drowned migrants are lined up in the port of Lampedusa Thursday, Oct. 3, 2013. Tens of peo …

In Italy, migrants can only work legally if they have a work permit and contract before they arrive — a policy pushed through by Italy's anti-immigrant Northern League party in a bid to stem such illegal crossings.

According to the U.N. refugee agency, 8,400 migrants landed in Italy and Malta in the first six months of the year, almost double the 4,500 who arrived during the first half of 2012.

It's still a far cry from the tens of thousands who flooded to Italy, especially through Lampedusa, during the Arab Spring exodus of 2011.

The numbers, though, have spiked in recent weeks, particularly with Syrian arrivals.

The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees had recorded 40 deaths in the first half of 2013 for migrants arriving in Italy and Malta, and a total of 500 for all of 2012, based on interviews with survivors. Fortress Europe, an Italian observatory that tracks migrant deaths reported by the media, says about 6,450 people died in the Canal of Sicily between 1994 and 2012.

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Frank Jordans contributed from Berlin.

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Follow Nicole Winfield at www.twitter.com/nwinfield

Police probe Capitol Hill car chase; 1 woman dead

WASHINGTON (AP) — Law enforcement authorities were investigating why a Connecticut woman tried to breach a barrier at the White House, setting off a high-speed car chase that put the Capitol on lockdown and ended with her being shot dead by police.

The harrowing chase Thursday unfolded between two national landmarks, briefly shuttered the chambers where federal lawmakers were debating how to end a government shutdown and stirred fresh panic in a city where a gunman two weeks ago killed 12 people.

Police said there appeared to be no direct link to terrorism and there was no indication the woman was even armed. Capitol Police Chief Kim Dine, whose officers have been working without pay as a result of the shutdown, called it an "isolated, singular matter."

Still, tourists, congressional staff and even some senators watched anxiously as a caravan of law enforcement vehicles chased a black Infiniti with Connecticut license plates down Constitution Avenue outside the Capitol and as officers with high-powered firearms canvased the area. The House and Senate both abruptly suspended business, a lawmaker's speech cut off in mid-sentence, as the Capitol Police broadcast a message over its emergency radio system telling people to stay in place and move away from the windows.

The woman's car at one point had been surrounded by police cars and she managed to escape, careening around a traffic circle and past the north side of the Capitol. Video shot by a TV cameraman showed police pointing firearms at her car before she rammed a Secret Service vehicle and continued driving. Metropolitan Police Chief Cathy Lanier said police shot and killed her a block northeast of the historic building.

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A damaged Capitol Hill police care is surrounded by crime scene tape after a car chase and shooting …

Two law enforcement officials identified the female driver as 34-year-old Miriam Carey, of Stamford, Conn. She was traveling with a 1-year-old girl who avoided serious injury and was in protective custody late Thursday. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss an ongoing investigation.

In an interview with ABC News, Carey's mother, Idella Carey, said her daughter had been suffering post-partum depression since having her daughter, Erica, last August.

"She was depressed," Idella Carey said.

The mother said her daughter had "no history of violence" and she did not know why she was in Washington, D.C.

The FBI served a search warrant in connection with the investigation and police cordoned off a condominium building and the surrounding neighborhood in the shoreline city.

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A damaged Capitol Hill police car is surrounded by crime scene tape on Constitution Avenue near the …

Condo resident Eric Bredow, a banker, said police told him the suspect in the car chase was one of his neighbors.

"I see the door to my building open and the FBI bomb squad in front of it," said Bredow, who said helicopters were flying overhead when he first went home.

The chain-of-events began when the woman sped onto a driveway leading to the White House, over a set of barricades. When the driver couldn't get through a second barrier, she spun the car in the opposite direction, flipping a Secret Service officer over the hood of the car as she sped away, said B.J. Campbell, a tourist from Portland, Ore.

"This wasn't no accident. She was not a lost tourist," Campbell said later near the scene that had been blocked off with police tape.

Then the chase began.

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Emergency response vehicles wait outside the apartment complex where Miriam Carey is believed to hav …

"The car was trying to get away. But it was going over the median and over the curb," said Matthew Coursen, who was watching from a cab window when the Infiniti sped by him. "The car got boxed in and that's when I saw an officer of some kind draw his weapon and fire shots into the car."

One Secret Service member and a 23-year veteran of the Capitol Police were injured. Officials said they are in good condition and expected to recover.

Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, who said he was briefed by the Homeland Security Department, said he did not think the woman was armed. "There was no return fire," he said.

A few senators between the Capitol and their office buildings said they heard the shots.

"We heard three, four, five pops," said Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa. Police ordered Casey and nearby tourists to crouch behind a car for protection, then hustled everyone into the Capitol.

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Emergency response vehicles wait outside the apartment complex where Miriam Carey is believed to hav …

Others witnessed the incident, too.

"There were multiple shots fired and the air was filled with gunpowder," said Berin Szoka, whose office at a technology think tank overlooks the shooting scene.

The shooting comes two weeks after a mentally disturbed employee terrorized the Navy Yard with a shotgun, leaving 13 people dead including the gunman.

Before the disruption, lawmakers had been trying to find common ground to end a government shutdown. The House had just finished approving legislation aimed at partly lifting the government shutdown by paying National Guard and Reserve members.

Capitol Police on the plaza around the Capitol said they were working without pay as the result of the shutdown. A spokesman for House Majority Leader Eric Cantor said a bill to pay them was under consideration.

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This image from video provided by Alhurra Television shows police with guns drawn surrounding a blac …

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Associated Press writers Bradley Klapper, Laurie Kellman, Adam Goldman, Mark Sherman, Philip Elliott, Jesse Holland, David Espo, Alan Fram, Brett Zongker, Donna Cassata and Henry C. Jackson in Washington, Michael Melia in Hartford, Conn., and John Christoffersen in Stamford, Conn., contributed to this report.

Mother: Suspect in Capitol chase 'depressed'

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — From a tiny, vulnerable island off the Louisiana coast to the beaches of the Florida Panhandle, Gulf Coast residents prepared Thursday for a possible hit from Tropical Storm Karen, which threatened to become the first named tropical system to menace the United States this year.

Karen was forecast to lash the northern Gulf Coast over the weekend as a weak hurricane or tropical storm. A hurricane watch was in effect from Grand Isle, La., to west of Destin, Fla. A tropical storm warning was issued for the Louisiana coast from Grand Isle to the mouth of the Pearl River, including the New Orleans area.

The National Hurricane Center in Miami said late Thursday that Karen was about 340 miles (547 kilometers) south of the mouth of the Mississippi River and had maximum sustained winds of 65 mph (100 kph) with higher gusts. The storm was moving north-northwest at 10 mph (16 kph). It could be at or near hurricane strength late Friday and early Saturday, forecasters said, with the center near the coast on Saturday.

In Alabama, safety workers on Thursday hoisted double red flags at Gulf Shores because of treacherous rip currents ahead of the storm.

In Mississippi, Gov. Phil Bryant declared a state of emergency, urging residents to prepare. State Emergency Management Agency Director Robert Latham said local schools will decide whether to play football games. He said the southern part of the state could have tropical storm-force winds by late Friday.

"I know that Friday night football in the South is a big thing, but I don't think anybody wants to risk a life because of the potential winds," Latham said.

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal also declared a state of emergency, citing the possibility of high winds, heavy rain and tides. Florida Gov. Rick Scott also declared an emergency for 18 counties.

The Army Corps of Engineers said it was closing a structure intended to keep storm surge out of the Inner Harbor Navigation Canal in Louisiana — known locally as the Industrial Canal — where levee breaches during Hurricane Katrina led to catastrophic flooding in 2005.

Mayor David Camardelle of Grand Isle, La., an inhabited barrier island and tourist town about 60 miles south of New Orleans, called for voluntary evacuations as he declared an emergency Thursday afternoon.

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Workers pump water from the parking lot of the Dadeland Plaza shopping center, Thursday, Oct. 3, 201 …

Louisiana officials were taking precautions while noting that forecasts show the storm veering to the east. The storm track had it likely brushing the southeastern tip of the state before heading toward the Alabama-Florida coast. And it was moving faster than last year's Hurricane Isaac, a weak storm that stalled over the area and caused widespread flooding.

"It should make that fork right and move out very, very quickly," said Jerry Sneed, head of New Orleans' emergency preparedness office.

Offshore, at least two oil companies said they were evacuating non-essential personnel and securing rigs and platforms.

In Washington, the White House said the Federal Emergency Management Agency was recalling some workers furloughed due to the government shutdown to prepare for the storm.

White House spokesman Jay Carney said President Barack Obama was being updated about the storm. He said Obama directed his team to ensure staffing and resources are available to respond to the storm.

Hundreds of thousands of federal workers have been furloughed under the partial government shutdown. It's unclear how many FEMA workers are being brought back.

In Mexico's Caribbean coast state of Quintana, the brief passage of Karen before the storm moved north caused authorities to close seaports and some schools, but little rain was actually reported.

A few fishing camps and small hamlets along the coast were ordered evacuated late Wednesday, and some boat services were suspended for the estimated 35,000 tourists currently in Cancun. But the head of the Cancun Hotel Association, Roberto Cintron, said tourists appeared to be taking it in stride.

While meteorologists said it was too soon to predict the storm's ultimate intensity, they said it could weaken a bit as it approaches the coast over the weekend.

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This NOAA satellite image taken Thursday, October 03, 2013 at 01:45 PM EDT shows a mass of clouds ov …

"Our forecast calls for it to be right around the border of a hurricane and a tropical storm," said David Zelinsky, a hurricane center meteorologist.

Whether it's a weak hurricane or strong tropical storm, Karen's effects are expected to be largely the same: Heavy rain with the potential for similar storm surge.

Forecasters say Karen is expected to bring 4 to 8 inches of rain to portions of the central and eastern Gulf Coast through Sunday night, mainly near and to the right of the path of the center.

Camardelle, whose vulnerable island is often the first to order an evacuation in the face of a tropical weather system, said the town is making sure its 10 pump stations are ready. He encouraged residents to clean out drainage culverts and ditches in anticipation of possible heavy rain and high tides.

"Hopefully, this one is just a little rain event," Camardelle said. "We don't need a big storm coming at us this late in the season."

Forecasters said a cold front approaching from the northwest was expected to turn Karen to the northeast, away from the Louisiana coast and more toward the Florida Panhandle or coastal Alabama. But the timing of the front's arrival over the weekend was uncertain.

Grand Isle suffered damage from Hurricane Isaac in August 2012. Isaac clipped the mouth of the Mississippi River for its official first landfall before meandering northwest over Grand Isle and stalling inland. Though a weak hurricane, Isaac's stall built a surge along the southeast Louisiana coast that flooded communities in neighboring Plaquemines Parish.

Karen was expected to pass over Gulf oil and gas fields from Louisiana to Alabama, but early forecasts suggested the storm would miss the massive oil import facility at Port Fourchon, La., just west of Grand Isle, and the oil refineries that line the Mississippi River south of Baton Rouge.

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Associated Press writers Mark Stevenson in Mexico, Emily Wagster Pettus in Jackson, Miss., and Michael J. Mishak in Miami contributed to this report.