Yuichiro Miura, who also conquered the 8,850-metre peak when he was 70 and 75, reached the summit at 9:05 a.m. local time, according to his support team. Miura and his son Gota called them from the summit to report the news.

Public broadcaster NHK showed footage of Miura’s daughter Emili talking with them via speaker phone in Tokyo, clapping when her brother told her they had reached the top.

“This is the world’s best feeling,” Miura said. “I’m also totally exhausted.”

The climbers planned to stick around the summit for about half an hour, take photos and then start to descend, Miura’s Tokyo office said.

Nepalese mountaineering official Gyanendra Shrestha, at Everest base camp, confirmed that Miura had reached the summit, making him the oldest person to do so.

The previous oldest was Nepal’s Min Bahadur Sherchan, who accomplished the feat at age 76 in 2008, just a day before Miura reached the top at age 75.

Sherchan, now 81, was preparing for his own attempt on the summit next week, meaning that Miura’s record may not last long — again.

On his expedition’s website, Miura explained his attempt to scale Everest at such an advanced age: “It is to challenge (my) own ultimate limit. It is to honour the great Mother Nature.”

He said a successful climb would raise the bar for what is possible.

“And if the limit of age 80 is at the summit of Mt. Everest, the highest place on earth, one can never be happier,” he said.

Committee head Khandker Mainuddin Ahmed told The Associated Press on Thursday a series of irregularities occurred in the construction of Rana Plaza.

Its collapse killed more than 1,100 workers and was one of the world’s deadliest industrial disasters.

Ahmed says the building owner used “extremely poor quality of iron rods and cement.”

The report says the owner had permission for a six-storey structure and added two floors illegally. Past information said the owner had permission for a five-storey structure and added three.

The report sent to the government Wednesday also recommends life prison terms for those found guilty of violating building codes in the case.

The 17-year-old tiger named Ty underwent the procedure Wednesday at a veterinary centre in the Tampa Bay area community of Clearwater. Doctors said in a statement that they safely removed the 4-pound (1.8-kilogram) obstruction from Ty’s stomach.

The tiger, which is cared for by Wildlife Rescue and Rehabilitation in Florida, was brought to veterinarians after not eating for nearly two weeks. Doctors said they detected the hairball using a scope with a camera.

Vernon Yates, whose non-profit group regularly assists law enforcement agencies with seized animals, says he’s thankful the hairball was removed and Ty is doing fine.

The emails were shown in court Wednesday by Brian Panish, an attorney for Jackson’s mother. He says the messages indicate how the star was viewed by AEG Live LLC executives.

Jackson was called a freak by Anschutz Entertainment Group General Counsel Ted Fikre in a message to AEG Live corporate lawyer Shawn Trell.

In his reply, Trell described an upcoming meeting with Jackson as “kind of creepy.”

Jackson’s mother is suing AEG claiming it failed to properly investigate the doctor who was convicted in 2011 of administering a fatal dose of the anesthetic propofol to Jackson.

No arrest was made and police said no charges were immediately filed against the 48-year-old former Oakland Athletics rookie of the year, who played for six other teams, including Toronto, from 1985 to 2001. He later wrote a tell-all book admitting that he used performance-enhancing steroids.

Officer Bill Cassell, a police department spokesman, wouldn’t say Wednesday where the alleged attack took place.

Word about the investigation became public after Canseco posted information about it on the social media network Twitter. He said Las Vegas police had just left his house.

The postings — including the name and workplace of a woman — generated an immediate outcry from others who posted comments deriding Canseco. Some of the information was later removed.

The Associated Press does not normally identify possible victims of sexual assault.

Attempts to reach Canseco weren’t immediately successful. Another Twitter post said he was on his way to the airport to fly Texas, to play with the Fort Worth Cats, an unaffiliated team in the independent United League.

Team spokesman Nathan Dwelle confirmed that Canseco was scheduled to play during the team’s season home opener on Thursday.

“Right now, we’re not commenting until we have all the facts,” Dwelle said.

A Canseco spokeswoman, Susan Haber in Los Angeles, said she had no immediate information about the case.

Dwelle said Canseco’s agent, Jose Melendez, was travelling with Canseco. Melendez didn’t immediately respond to a message from AP.

Canseco hit 462 career home runs and was a six-time all-star while playing with the Athletics, Texas Rangers, Boston Red Sox, Blue Jays, Tampa Bay Devil Rays, New York Yankees and Chicago White Sox.

His book, “Juiced: Wild Times, Rampant ‘Roids, Smash Hits & How Baseball Got Big,” was published in 2005.

In recent years, Canseco played for various teams in California, Arizona, Mexico and Canada.

He declared Chapter 7 bankruptcy last year in Las Vegas, reporting less than $21,000 in assets and almost $1.7 million in liabilities, including more than $500,000 owed to the Internal Revenue Service. He listed a post office box as his address.

Attorney Mark Segal, who represented Canseco in the bankruptcy, said the case was discharged and he hasn’t spoken with Canseco in several months. Segal said he doesn’t know where Canseco lives now.

Officer Bill Cassell said Wednesday that the 48-year-old Canseco was named as a suspect in the investigation.

Cassell says the investigation isn’t complete, no charges have been filed and no arrest has been made.

The department spokesman wouldn’t say where the alleged attack took place.

Word about the investigation became public after Canseco posted information about it on the social media network Twitter.

Attempts to reach him weren’t immediately successful.

Canseco’s spokeswoman, Susan Haber in Los Angeles, says she has no immediate information about the case.

The former Oakland Athletics slugger hit 462 career home runs during a career that included stints with six other major league teams from 1985 to 2001.

Henry Holt and Company announced Wednesday that the Massachusetts Democrat has an agreement with the publisher. The book, currently untitled, is scheduled to be released in spring 2014.

Warren will write about her childhood and early professional life, but the book will mostly be a “rousing call” for the middle class. She will describe her work on creating the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and her opposition to “powerful interests” in Washington and on Wall Street.

Warren was well represented for her book. Negotiations were handled by Robert Barnett, the Washington attorney whose clients have ranged from President Barack Obama to former Treasury Secretaries Henry Paulson and Timothy Geithner.

“That’s how he got me to do the film,” Scott Thomas said in a beachside interview Wednesday. “He said, ‘You’re my mother’s favourite actress.’ So I had to. It was a good trick.”

It was an appropriate start for a disturbing portrait of a woman with, to say the least, harsh motherly instincts. In the Bangkok noir, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival on Wednesday, Scott Thomas plays a mother demanding her surviving son (Ryan Gosling) avenge the murder of her other, more favoured son (Tom Burke).

It’s a ferocious, gloriously evil performance as far away from “The English Patient” (and the other elegant British period dramas Scott Thomas is best known for) as cinematically possible. Upon learning her son was punished for killing a teenage prostitute, for example, she retorts: “I’m sure he had his reasons.”

“A lot of the stuff that I had to do as Crystal was exciting and frightening at the same time,” Scott Thomas said. “It made this whole project one of terror and at the same time totally thrilling.”

“Only God Forgives” is Refn’s second collaboration in a row with Gosling, following the more pop “Drive.” It’s a menacing descent into brutal darkness, punctuated by bloody spurts of stylish violence. There’s even less dialogue than “Drive” (the script was a sparse 60 pages, Refn says), and the film unfolds as a perverse Greek tragedy transported to Thailand’s grim underbelly.

Refn conceived of Scott Thomas’ character as a combination of Lady Macbeth and Donatella Versace after the actress sent him photos of her with long blonde extensions.

“I was like, ‘God, that’s so sexy,’” the Danish director said sitting alongside Scott Thomas. “That whole Donatella oddness: frightening but very sexual.”

Scott Thomas calls the thick makeup an “ultra-costume.”

“It’s a sort of armour, that look,” she says. “It’s very, very, very empowering and at the same time very frightening. It changes the way people look at you completely.”

While critics at Cannes had mixed reactions to “Only God Forgives” (it drew boos from some), Scott Thomas’ performance was hailed, along with predictions of an Oscar nomination. In a memorable dinner party scene, she cuttingly and vulgarly dresses down Gosling’s character. She negatively compares the size of his genitalia with his brother’s — an explicitness that not even the Greeks dared.

“They had all these things that were implied,” Scott Thomas says. “I said why don’t we just say it? Just get it out there, so to speak. Say the words that everyone else is alluding to.”

Refn gradually cut the lengthy scene more and more until it was basically a monologue. Gosling also added a suggestion — a slur Crystal lobs at her son’s female guest — after Refn asked for one of the most offensive words to call a woman in America.

“I couldn’t get it out,” Scott Thomas says, laughing. “I couldn’t get it right until about 10 takes.”

It’s the kind of harsh, hilariously cruel dialogue actors dream of. But Scott Thomas says that while it was an interesting acting challenge “to push the dialogue,” ”it was such a nightmare.”

“After a while, once you’ve been doing this for a long time — weeks and nights — you feel, ‘Oh, god, I’d love to say something nice,’” says Scott Thomas. “This hatred and anger and destruction is actually quite difficult after a while. It gets to you once the novelty of the transition is over and you’re just stuck in that darkness.”

Much of the character and her archetypal qualities weren’t refined until they were on set shooting. Refn works collaboratively with actors, guided by the boldness of his oft-repeated mantra: “The enemy of creativity is good taste.” He was enamoured by what “KST,” as he calls her, did with the part.

“Most of the time, we’d just sit and stare and go, ‘Oh my god! What have we unleashed?’” Refn says. “It was what the film needed, the film needed a character like that that would essentially be the antagonist of the protagonist. But she would be so dominating that you could never live up to her, you could never penetrate her.”

The experience, while clearly enthralling for Scott Thomas, was also unnerving. As much as audiences at Cannes responded to her performance, she exhales: “I’m going to do a comedy next.”

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Follow AP Entertainment Writer Jake Coyle on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/jake_coyle

Shelton told reporters about the fundraising effort after Tuesday night’s episode of “The Voice.” Shelton, an Oklahoma native, paid tribute to the thousands affected by Sunday and Monday’s tornadoes by performing an acoustic version of the hit “Over You” with wife Miranda Lambert.

He said the benefit would be held soon in nearby Oklahoma City.

At least 24 people, including nine schoolchildren, were killed Monday afternoon in Moore, Oklahoma, when an F-5 tornado with 200 mph (320 kph) winds touched down for 40 minutes and destroyed entire neighbourhoods.

Toby Keith, a native of Moore, also is planning a benefit. His sister’s house was hit by the tornado.

More details about both fundraising efforts will be released later.