(Continued from page 31)

•"It's a pressing issue because our land is limited and we would eventually run out of storage space," the water-treatment manager, Yuichi Okamura, told The Associated Press in an exclusive interview this week.
•TEPCO is close to running a new treatment system that could make the water safe enough to release into the ocean. But in the meantime its tanks are filling up -- mostly because leaks in reactor facilities are allowing ground water pour in.
•Outside experts worry that if contaminated water is released, there will be lasting impact on the environment. And they fear that because of the reactor leaks and water flowing from one part of the plant to another, that may already be happening.
•___

•BAGHDAD (AP) -- Iraqi Shiites increasingly fear the Muslim sect and its holy sites could be targeted in neighboring Syria as the civil war there takes on increasingly sectarian overtones, and Iranian-backed militants are girding for violence in both countries, according to Shiite leaders and government officials.
•The Iraqi concerns center on the role ultraconservative Sunnis might play in Syria should President Bashar Assad be forced from power, and on what they see as growing threats to the revered Sayyida Zainab mosque complex outside Damascus.
•The golden-domed shrine is believed to house the grave of the Prophet Muhammad's granddaughter and is one of Shiite Islam's holiest sites. It was damaged in June when a suicide bomber blew up an explosives-packed van nearby, and Sunni hard-liners have threatened to destroy it since.
•Many Iraqi Shiites are haunted by memories of the 2006 bombing of the al-Askari shrine in the Iraqi city of Samarra. That attack was blamed on al-Qaida in Iraq and set off years of retaliatory bloodshed between Sunni and Shiite extremists that left thousands of Iraqis dead and pushed the country to the brink of civil war.
•"We have real concerns that the Samarra attacks will be repeated" at the Zainab shrine, said Saleh al-Haidari, the head of Iraq's Shiite endowment. "The retaliation could be huge and very violent."
•___

•MANZANILLO, Cuba (AP) -- Hurricane Sandy made landfall Thursday just west

(Continued on page 33)