Physical exams of people working at the site of a nuclear laboratory accident confirmed an additional 24 people were exposed to leaked radioactive substances, raising the total number of exposed staff to 30, the state-run Japan Atomic Energy Agency said Sunday. Of 55 people engaged in the troubled experiment at the JAEA's nuclear physics laboratories in Ibaraki Prefecture, 19 did not suffer any exposure, and six others have yet to be examined, the agency said.

Radioactive substances were released into the atmosphere Thursday outside the controlled area at one of the Japan Atomic Energy Agency's nuclear physics laboratories in Ibaraki Prefecture and at least six people at the facility have been exposed to leaked radiation, officials said Saturday. The JAEA said six people were confirmed to have been exposed by Saturday night and a quick checkup suggested possible exposure of 24 others.

A new film by a Hollywood director has revived a mystery of how a group of Soviet hikers met their grisly deaths on a Russian mountainside in unexplained circumstances more than 50 years ago. The film, "The Dyatlov Pass Incident", loosely retells the true story from 1959 when nine students went on an expedition to a peak in the northern Urals known as the Mountain of the Dead - never to return. Soviet investigators found the students' bodies scattered over a large area, while their tent had been cut open from the inside.

Activist physicians on Monday accused the World Health Organization of downplaying the health impact of nuclear fallout from the Fukushima nuclear disaster. In a New York symposium marking the two-year anniversary of the Fukushima nuclear plant meltdown in Japan, the physicians took issue with WHO's conclusion in a recent report that it did not expect a significant surge in cancer in Japan or elsewhere due to radiation leaks.