The day after one of the biggest earthquakes ever experienced, hit Japan with a likely death toll in excess of a thousand, a new disaster looms for the country, already reeling from the disastrous quake. The quake caused an explosion and fire at one of the Fukushima nuclear plants and whilst initially the damage hadn’t affected the reactor, the government now say that radiation has been detected outside the reactor leading to fears that it has gone into meltdown.

Local Police in Japan report up to 300 bodies found in the coastal town of Sendai as fires rage out of control. The country has issued a state of emergency The massive earthquake and tsunami in Japan the biggest in its recorded history put nations across the globe on alert and the official Kyodo news agency is reporting that about 88,000 people are missing.

The United Nations in Afghanistan is pulling out hundreds of its staff from the country because of deteriorating security. The UN says about 600 foreign staff will be evacuated or relocated to safer parts of the country until additional security is put in place.

The United Nations has announced it will evacuate more than half its international staff based in Afghanistan after a deadly Taliban attack on a guesthouse for UN workers. But the UN said it had no intention of abandoning Afghanistan, where 100,000 US-led foreign troops are battling a bloody insurgency eight years after the extremist Taliban regime was driven from power. The evacuation of the UN staff is an indication that a lot of the security advisers in the country are still very concerned but others are unsure.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has announced his plans to quit in frustration at the stalled peace process with Israel. He has told his Fatah party he will not stand again in elections in January. "I have told the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organisation and the Central Committee of the Fatah party that I do not wish to run in the next elections," Mr Abbas said in a televised speech in Ramallah.

The main election challenger to Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, has alleged Karzai engineered the resignation of a chief fraud investigator to cast doubt over the process, which could end in a runoff vote.