News Headlines - 31 August 2018

▽Facebook removes accounts associated with Myanmar military | The Guardian

Facebook has removed 18 accounts and 52 pages associated with the Myanmar military, including the page of its commander-in-chief, after a UN report accused the armed forces of genocide and war crimes.
In an unusually prompt move, the pages and accounts of the Mynamar military, known as the Tatmadaw, were deleted just minutes after the UN fact-finding mission released its damning report.
Facebook, which is a highly popular source of information in Myanmar, has come under criticism for giving a platform to vitriolic posts aimed at stirring up and spreading hatred against the minority Muslim Rohingya population.

▽Japan Protests China's Ban on Sankei Shimbun Coverage | JAPAN Forward

Chinese government authorities on Wednesday, August 29, refused to let The Sankei Shimbun participate in pool media, leading the the Japan Press Association in Beijing — comprised of reporters from major Japanese newspapers and news agencies based in China’s capital — to boycott the news-gathering activities at the outset of the Wan-Akiba talks.
The association declared it could never accept the Chinese act of depriving a specific news organization of a reporting opportunity. Japanese TV crews in Beijing followed suit.

▽Residents blast water-discharge method at Fukushima plant：The Asahi Shimbun

Fishermen and local residents on Aug. 30 vehemently opposed the government’s plan to discharge radioactive water from the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant into the sea, saying the measure will damage a number of industries.
During a public hearing on the measure, they also blasted the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry and the plant’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co., for “misleading” the public by failing to disclose that radioactive substances, such as strontium, remained in the water to be discharged.

▽Puerto Rico revises Hurricane Maria death toll to 2,975 after study - CNN

Puerto Rico's government raised its official Hurricane Maria death toll to 2,975 on Tuesday in the wake of a new estimate from researchers.
The new figure is 46 times larger than the previous toll the Puerto Rican government released in December 2017, when officials said 64 people had died as a result of the storm.
It comes on the same day researchers from George Washington University revealed findings from a study on storm-related deaths commissioned by the US commonwealth's government.

▽Mystery woman in Texas security video with wrist restraints is safe: police | Reuters

A partially dressed woman who briefly appeared in security camera footage approaching a home in a suburban Houston subdivision with what appear to be broken restraints dangling from her wrists has been found and is safe, police said on Wednesday.
The woman, 32, was the girlfriend of a man who died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound and has been confirmed to be the person in the security video footage, the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office said.