Stolen Roman statue found in antique shop
A Roman statue, which is dated back to the first century BC, has been recovered almost a decade after it was stolen from an archaeological site in Italy.
The BBC reports that two Italian officers came across the sculpture of a headless figure wearing a toga at an antique shop in Belgium.
The officers were suspicious of its origins, and proceeded to search a database of stolen artefacts, discovering that the ‘Togatus’ statue had been missing since 2011. The sculpture is believed to be worth around €100,000.
The officers work for the antiquities division of the Carabinieri military police, and were in Brussels for a separate investigation earlier this year.
After work one evening, they made their way to the city’s Sablon district, which is famous for its antique shops, which is where they came across the marble figure.
Their investigation confirmed that the statue had been stolen from the Villa Marini Dettina site near Rome in November 2011.
Japan approves releasing Fukushima wastewater into ocean
Japan has approved a plan to release more than one million tonnes of wastewater, contaminated with nuclear radiation, from the Fukushima nuclear plant into the sea.
The water will be treated and diluted so radiation levels are below those set for drinking water.
Tokyo has said that work will begin in about two years to release water used to cool nuclear fuel.
Reactor buildings at the Fukushima power plant were damaged by hydrogen explosions caused by an earthquake and tsunami in 2011. The tsunami knocked out cooling systems to the reactors, three of which melted down.
More than a million tonnes of water have been used to cool the melted reactors.
The move is strongly opposed by the local fishing industry, as well as by China and South Korea.
53% increase in notified deaths according to Kildare coroner
A new report by the Co. Kildare coroner revealed a 53% increase in total notified deaths reported in the year from March 2020 to February 2021, according to RTÉ.
There were 867 deaths recorded in that time versus an average of 567 for each of the preceding five years.
There was also a 50% increase in the deaths notified from nursing and residential homes.
Senior coroner for the Co. Kildare District Professor Denis Cusack said lessons need to be learned from figures that show that one in 1,000 people in the county died from Covid-19 in that period.
Prof. Cusack told RTÉ’s Morning Ireland that the number of deaths have gone up by one-and-a-half times, particularly in nursing homes, which he said “have borne the brunt of the deaths”.
Close to 170 people died in nursing and residential homes in Co Kildare in the period out of 1,700 residents.