Snapshot - Japan's nuclear crisis

- Japan will take control of Tokyo Electric Power Co, the operator of the plant, in the face of mounting public concerns over the crisis and a huge potential compensation bill, the Manichi newspaper reported on Friday. The government has said it has not decided how to support

TEPCO.

- Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said the evacuation of residents near the country's stricken nuclear plant will be a "long-term" operation.

- Cabinet Secretary Edano has stopped wearing an emergency jacket, which he said shows the government "is stepping into the next stage towards restoration and reconstruction."

- The United States and Germany are sending robots to help repair and explore the damaged plant. Kyodo said some 140 U.S. military radiation safety experts would soon visit to offer technical help.

- Prime Minister Naoto Kan said the country needed to debate its energy policy based on studies of the Fukushima plant disaster, as anger grows at the ongoing crisis.

- French President Nicolas Sarkozy, the first foreign leader in Japan since the tsunami, said on Thursday that the world should aim to set out new nuclear industry standards by the end of the year disaster.

- Radiation in water at underground tunnel near reactor 10,000 times above normal. Abnormal level of radioactive caesium found in beef from the area, Kyodo reported.

- UN watchdog on Thursday suggested widening of the exclusion zone around Fukushima nuclear power station after radiation measured at a village 40 km from the facility exceeded a criterion for evacuation.

- Japan's government may need to spend over 10 trillion yen (75 billion pounds) in emergency budgets for disaster relief and reconstruction, the country's deputy finance minister, Mitsuru Sakurai, said Thursday.

- Japanese manufacturing activity slumped to a two-year low in March and posted the sharpest monthly fall on record as the quake and tsunami hit supply chains and output.

- Japan says comprehensive rules will be drawn up for power plant operators in light of the accident that ripped apart the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station. It was the first acknowledgment that norms were insufficient when the March 11 earthquake and tsunami wrecked the facility.

- About 28,000 people dead or missing from the earthquake and tsunami. More than 172,400 living in shelters on high ground above the vast plains of mud-covered debris.

- Estimated cost of damage to top $300 billion (187 billion pounds), making it the world's costliest natural disaster. The 1995 Kobe quake cost $100 billion while Hurricane Katrina in 2005 caused $81 billion in damage.

(Tokyo bureau; Compiled by World Desk Asia)