Crack in French nuclear reactor pipe highlights maintenance issues for state-run EDF's aging plants
CBSN
Paris — French energy group EDF has reported discovering a significant new crack in a cooling pipe at a nuclear power plant on the Channel coast, in the latest such incident to plague the energy sector. The group has been beset by maintenance problems at its ageing park of reactors over the last year that have forced it to take more than a dozen of them offline for checks and emergency repairs.
EDF last month reported the latest "serious corrosion problem" on an emergency cooling system at its Penly 1 plant in northern France, which was among the 16 taken offline in the last year. The plant started operating in 1990.
The report went largely unnoticed until it was covered in French media on Tuesday.
London — As authorities clamp down on fentanyl distribution and the amount of heroin produced in Afghanistan decreases under the Taliban, criminal enterprises have turned to a deadly alternative. Some health agencies in Europe are reporting a rise in deaths and overdoses from a type of synthetic opioid that can reportedly be hundreds of times stronger than heroin and up to forty times stronger than fentanyl.
Vaughan Gething was elected as the new first minister of Wales on Wednesday, becoming the first Black leader of a government in the U.K. Gething was elected to lead the government by members of the Welsh parliament in Cardiff, four days after winning the contest to be leader of Wales' governing Labour Party. He secured 27 of 51 votes in the legislature, the Senedd, where Labour is the biggest party.
Errekunda, Gambia — Lawmakers in Gambia will vote Monday on legislation that seeks to repeal a ban on female genital mutilation, or FGM, which would make the West African nation the first country anywhere to make that reversal. The procedure, which also has been called female genital cutting, includes the partial or full removal of external genitalia, often by traditional community practitioners with tools such as razor blades or at times by health workers.