Tons of water from the Fukushima nuclear disaster site are dumped – Russia recovers the biggest chunk from last February’s meteor blast – Malala’s latest honor puts alongside Nelson Mandela and Aung San Suu Kyii.

39 people are still missing after a mudslide, caused by a powerful typhoon, partially buried an island town in Japan.  17 deaths are attributed to Typhoon Wipha, including 16 people pulled out from under the mud in Oshima Town on Izu Oshima Island south of Tokyo.  Two people were rescued earlier this morning from a buried house, and the search and rescue goes on.  On Japan’s Main Island of Honshu, a woman was swept into a river in Western Tokyo; her body was found several kilometers away in Yokohama. 

Further north in Fukushima, operators of the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant says it was forced to discharge 40 tons of water from Typhoon Wipha that was threatening to swamp the barriers that surround the radioactive water storage tanks.  TEPCO claims all of the water released was tested and was within safety standards for the isotopes cesium-134, cesium-137, and strontium-90.  Water exceeding the limits must be stored on-site in huge tanks that even before the storm were plagued by leaks.

Russia raised a big chunk of the Chelyabinsk Meteor from the muddy bottom of Lake Chebarkul.  It’s the largest-known piece of the space rock that exploded over Chelyabinsk city in central Russia in February, causing shattered windows, a few collapsed walls, and more than 1,600 injuries.  Shards were scattered all over the southern Ural region, with the big piece smashing through the ice of lake Chebarkul.  It was taken to a regional natural history museum, where its composition will be re-confirmed.

A Russian judge suspended the five year prison sentence handed to anticorruption blogger Aleksei Navalny, a thorn in the side of President Vladimir Putin.  Navalny and his supporters say his graft conviction was the result of trumped up charges, retaliation for his crusade against official wrongdoing in Putin’s government.  His conviction stands, however, meaning he is precluded from running for office against any of the Kremlin’s favorite candidates.

US Billionaire Mark Cuban was cleared of insider trading charges.  Prosecutors said the owner of the Dallas Mavericks basketball team used a tip from a tech company’s CEO to decide to dump that company’s stock in 2004, which the Feds claimed was insider trading.  Cuban said it wasn’t, and fought the charges – and the jury agreed with the defendant.  Cuban says he spent more on attorney’s fees fighting the charges than he would have if he’d just paid a fine in 2004 to make it all go away.

An explosion that struck a minibus in southern Syria killed at least 21 people.  Six women and four children were among those who died when the vehicle hit a landmine in the town of Nawa, in a rebel-controlled area.  The rebels are blaming forces loyal to President Bashar al Assad.  More than 100,000 people have been killed in Syria’s 2-1/2 year civil war.

A United Nations mission in Africa is asking the Security Council for more troops and helicopters to bolster peacekeeping efforts in Mali and protect civilians from attacks by Islamist extremist and armed groups.  It’s not clear which nations want to step up.  The Mali mission was dealt a blow by the withdrawal in August of some 1,200 Nigerian troops, who returned home to fight their own homegrown Islamist insurgency.  Then last month about 150 troops from Chad abandoned their posts in protest at the length of time they had served and demanded their rotation be speeded up. 

Canada will grant honorary citizenship to Pakistani teenage activist Malala Yousafzai, who survived being shot in the head by the Taliban for campaigning for girls' education.  She’s the sixth person to get the honor, joining the likes of South Africa's Nelson Mandela and Myanmar's Aung San Suu Kyi.  The PM is also inviting Malala to visit his nation.