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Russia says a nuclear accident has not occurred on its territory despite « extremely high » traces of a radioactive isotope being found.

Russia’s weather service acknowledged it had measured pollution of ruthenium-106 at 1,000 times normal levels in the Ural mountains. It said there was no health risk.

The announcement appeared to confirm a report by France’s nuclear safety institute which detected a cloud of radioactive pollution over Europe.

The Institute for Radioprotection and Nuclear Safety (IRSN) said on 9 November it had detected ruthenium-106 in France. It added that the source of contamination could have been an accident at a nuclear facility in either Russia or Kazakhstan. Both countries said nothing untoward had happened at their plants.

The report by the Russian meteorological service, Roshydrome, is the first official data from the country supporting the French report.

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Charles Manson, the notorious cult leader who directed his followers to commit a string of brutal murders, and who became a symbol of the dark side of 1960s counterculture, has died aged 83.

Manson was admitted to Bakersfield hospital, California earlier this month and died of natural causes on Sunday.

In 1969, his followers, known as the Manson Family, killed nine people. Among the victims of the killing spree was heavily pregnant Hollywood actress Sharon Tate, wife of Roman Polanski.

One of Manson’s young followers, Susan Atkins, stabbed Tate to death and scrawled « PIG » on the home’s front door with the actress’s blood.

Four other people at Tate’s home were brutally stabbed to death. The next day, a wealthy couple in Los Angeles, Leno and Rosemary LaBianca, were also killed by the clan. The killings became known collectively as the Tate-LaBianca murders.
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Argentina’s navy says its ARA San Juan submarine, which has been missing since Wednesday, reported a mechanical breakdown in its last communication.

The submarine, with 44 crew on board, disappeared 430km (267 miles) off the Argentine coast and no trace of it has been found.

« The vessel surfaced and it reported a breakdown, » naval commander Gabriel Galeazzi said. He did not give further details of the nature of the breakdown.

This is the first time that an official has mentioned the sub encountering mechanical problems. However, the brother of a crew member had earlier told local media that in a message before communications were lost his sibling had mentioned that the vessel was having problems with its batteries.

Capt Galeazzi, who heads the naval base in Mar del Plata, south of Buenos Aires, said that mechanical problems were not uncommon and rarely posed a risk.

The naval commander said that the submarine had been asked to cut short its patrol and go directly to Mar del Plata.

According to local media, the captain of the ARA San Juan contacted the naval base again after reporting the mechanical problem. In the message, the sub’s captain reportedly said he was heading towards Mar del Plata with all 44 crew members in perfect health.

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Notorious Sicilian Mafia « boss of all bosses » Salvatore « Toto » Riina has died from cancer in jail, aged 87.

Riina was serving 26 life sentences and is believed to have ordered more than 150 murders.

The head of the feared Cosa Nostra spent nearly a quarter of a century on the run before being jailed in 1993. He ordered more murders from jail.

As well as kidney cancer, he was said to have been suffering from a heart condition and Parkinson’s disease.
Riina had been in a medically induced coma and his family had been given special permission to visit him in the prisoners’ wing of the hospital in Parma, northern Italy.

Riina was born in 1930 to poor farmers in Corleone, Sicily – the birthplace of Don Corleone, the fictional Godfather in Francis Ford Coppola’s film trilogy.

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Wide variations in the way police chiefs are paid have been revealed, as the pay, allowances and expenses of senior police officers in England and Wales are published for the first time.

The statistics, for 2015-16, show salary payments ranging from £7,622 to £278,563.

Meanwhile, benefits range from none at all to £32,521 in one case. The Home Office, which compiled the data, also set a limit on the amount of annual leave chief constables can take.

Salaries for chief constables and deputy chief constables are determined by rank, the size of their force and the area’s population. The publication is part of an attempt to increase transparency across forces.

The figures show that some earned thousands of pounds in « benefits in kind », while a small number claimed large sums in expenses, and others received nothing but their salary.

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