Society's ChildS


Nuke

Japan Strains to Fix a Reactor Damaged Before Quake

Hieoko Tabuchi
The New York Times
Fri, 17 Jun 2011 21:42 UTC
Local men fished
© Kosuke Okahara / The New York TimesLocal men fished near the Monju reactor in Tsuruga, a long-troubled project that has been shut down since August.

Tsuruga - Three hundred miles southwest of Fukushima, at a nuclear reactor perched on the slopes of this rustic peninsula, engineers are engaged in another precarious struggle.

Miwako Ogiso, part of a Fukui Prefecture group against nuclear power, calls the Monju project "Japan's most dangerous reactor." It has a history of safety problems and lies on an active fault.

The Monju prototype fast-breeder reactor - a long-troubled national project - has been in a precarious state of shutdown since a 3.3-ton device crashed into the reactor's inner vessel, cutting off access to the plutonium and uranium fuel rods at its core.

Engineers have tried repeatedly since the accident last August to recover the device, which appears to have gotten stuck. They will make another attempt as early as next week.
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Heart

Australia: Dolphins kept vigil on Irishman's body

Nick Bramhill
Irish Times
Sat, 18 Jun 2011 04:38 UTC
A grieving mother said yesterday that she drew comfort at her son's funeral yesterday after learning that a pod of dolphins had kept a vigil on his body after his fatal accident in Australia.

Shaun McBride, from Co Donegal, died in a tragic accident less than two weeks ago in Dampier, Western Australia, when scaffolding collapsed into the water beneath him.
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Handcuffs

US: Man Arrested After Al Qaeda Statements, Backpack Found in Car


CBS News
Fri, 17 Jun 2011 06:50 UTC
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© The Associated PressFBI Special Agent Brenda Heck, who heads the counterterrorism division of the FBI's Washington field office, center, speaks at a news conference with U.S. Park Police spokesman Sgt. David Schlosser and Arlington Police spokeswoman Cpl. Crystal Nosal after a man was taken into custody and his car, found near the Pentagon, forced multiple road closures June 17, 2011, in Arlington, Va.
A law enforcement source told CBS News that the man detained in the discovery of a suspicious car found outside the Pentagon Friday morning was carrying a notebook that contained the phrases, "al Qaeda," "Taliban rules" and "Mujahid defeated croatian forces."

Despite the references to the terror organization that organized the 9/11 attacks, the group fighting U.S. forces in Afghanistan and the Arabic word for "holy warrior," the source said the man is not thought to have been involved in a terrorist act or plot, CBS News investigative producer Pat Milton reports.

"It seems to be washing out at this point, but it is still being drilled down on," the source told Milton.

The source said the man's backpack also contained 20 spent 9 mm shell casings and three cans of black spray paint.

FBI Special Agent Brenda Heck, who heads the bureau's counterterrorism division in its Washington field office, told reporters that a non-explosive material was also found in the backpack.

A law enforcement official speaking on the condition of anonymity said officials found what appeared to be an unknown quantity of ammonium nitrate. The official, who was not authorized to release the information, said nothing else was found that would have enabled an explosion. The official said tests were being done to determine the substance and the exact concentration.
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Stormtrooper

US: Bellevue Family Sues FBI Over 'Terrifying' Raid

Brian Bowling
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
Thu, 16 Jun 2011 00:00 UTC
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© Keith Hodan / Tribune-ReviewDenise Adams on Wednesday describes the distress she felt seeing laser-sights from police weapons on her children and grandchildren, saying it caused her to lose faith in law enforcement.
The lasting impact of the raid on Gary Adams' home became clear in a comment from his 3-year-old granddaughter during a recent trip to the pharmacy.

"She said, 'Granddad. Police. Hide,' " Adams, 57, of Bellevue recalled Wednesday while discussing the federal lawsuit he filed against the officers who burst into his home March 3.

Led by FBI Special Agent Karen Springmeyer, about a dozen officers used a battering ram to enter Adams' rented Orchard Street home in a search for Sondra Hunter, then 35. But Hunter hadn't lived at that address for almost two years, while Adams and his family had been living there for more than a year, according to the lawsuit filed by Adams and 10 other family members.

The family crowded into a Downtown conference room with their lawyer, Timothy O'Brien, to discuss the case.

An FBI spokeswoman referred all calls to the U.S. Attorney's Office, where a spokeswoman declined to comment.

The lawsuit says that officers knew, or should have known, that Hunter no longer lived there. By executing an arrest warrant at a residence that wasn't Hunter's, they violated the family's Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable search and seizure, and their Fifth Amendment right to due process, the lawsuit says.
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Handcuffs

US: Bank Robber Caught Sipping a Latte at Starbucks

Sajid Farooq
NBC News
Fri, 17 Jun 2011 04:41 UTC
Image
© Getty ImagesIf you rob a bank, you may want to go somewhere other than the neighboring Starbucks to celebrate.
Heading to Starbucks 25 minutes after robbing a bank to sip a latte and act like nothing happened is probably not the most brilliant of ideas.

But to go to a Starbucks just around the corner from the bank in question and sit there reading a newspaper might be an even worse decision.

A 52-year-old transient from Southern California is expected of doing exactly that when he allegedly walked into a California Bank and Trust, located at 700 E. El Camino Real in Mountain View, at 9:09 a.m. on Friday and walked away with $1,100 in cash, after threatening a teller with a gun.

A little after 9:30, an officer found a man who matched the description of the robber sitting at a Starbucks around the corner, reading a newspaper.
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Heart - Black

US: Aurora Mom Was Allegedly Using Facebook When Child Died


CBS News
Fri, 17 Jun 2011 01:51 UTC
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© Aurora PoliceKaren Pena
The mother of a 22-month-old girl hit and killed by a van last month was allegedly using Facebook when the accident happened.

Police in Aurora arrested Karen Pena on Thursday. She now faces a charge of child abuse resulting in death.

Laneice Fletcher was killed in the parking lot of her apartment complex when she was hit by a commercial van. That driver has not been charged.

Police documents state Pena was using Facebook at the time instead of watching her toddler.

Neighbors also reportedly told police that before the accident Pena generally didn't do a good job of watching over Fletcher and her other children.
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Attention

Canada Post Lockout Puts Bee Colonies at Risk


CBC News
Fri, 17 Jun 2011 12:14 UTC
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© lesmielsraphael.comRaphael Vacher's bees are trapped in a Canada Post sorting warehouse.
The lives of thousands of bees are in jeopardy because the lockout at Canada Post has them trapped in warehouses.

Twenty-thousand queen bees are shipped every year in Canada, with June being the busiest month.

The bees are used to populate honey-producing colonies. But since the lockout began Tuesday, thousands of queen bees have been stranded.

Honey producer Raphael Vacher of Alma, Que. ordered 100 queen bees from a breeder in the Eastern Townships before the lockout began.

Now his bees are stuck in a Canada Post sorting warehouse near Montreal.
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Handcuffs

Canada: Alleged Vancouver Looter Turned in by Parents


CBC News
Fri, 17 Jun 2011 12:21 UTC
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© Getty ImagesRiot police stand in front of two burning police cars as three Canucks fans look on in downtown Vancouver.
Police say 6 people have turned themselves in

The parents of a 17-year-old boy turned him in to Burnaby RCMP alleging he was involved in looting during the Vancouver riot.

The couple decided to contact police about their son after seeing photos of the looting at the Louis Vuitton store on the corner of Howe Street and West Georgia Street that were posted on the internet, RCMP said.

Police allege the teen was also linked to the destruction of a Vancouver police vehicle, which was flipped upside down during the rioting.

The youth, who cannot be named because of his age, is set to appear in court in August to answer to charges of break enter and theft, and mischief to property over $5,000.
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Blackbox

Jewish court sentences dog to death by stoning


Agence France-Presse
Fri, 17 Jun 2011 14:56 UTC
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© AFP/File, Menahem Kahana
A Jerusalem rabbinical court condemned to death by stoning a dog it suspects is the reincarnation of a secular lawyer who insulted the court's judges 20 years ago, Ynet website reported Friday.

According to Ynet, the large dog made its way into the Monetary Affairs Court in the ultra-Orthodox Jewish neighbourhood of Mea Shearim in Jerusalem, frightening judges and plaintiffs.

Despite attempts to drive the dog out of the court, the hound refused to leave the premises.

One of the sitting judges then recalled a curse the court had passed down upon a secular lawyer who had insulted the judges two decades previously.
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Nuke

Fukushima: It's much worse than you think

Dahr Jamail
Aljazeera
Thu, 16 Jun 2011 12:50 UTC
Scientific experts believe Japan's nuclear disaster to be far worse than governments are revealing to the public.
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© Gallo/GettyMany Japanese citizens are now permanently displaced from their homes due to the Fukushima nuclear disaster.

"Fukushima is the biggest industrial catastrophe in the history of mankind," Arnold Gundersen, a former nuclear industry senior vice president, told Al Jazeera.

Japan's 9.0 earthquake on March 11 caused a massive tsunami that crippled the cooling systems at the Tokyo Electric Power Company's (TEPCO) nuclear plant in Fukushima, Japan. It also led to hydrogen explosions and reactor meltdowns that forced evacuations of those living within a 20km radius of the plant.

Gundersen, a licensed reactor operator with 39 years of nuclear power engineering experience, managing and coordinating projects at 70 nuclear power plants around the US, says the Fukushima nuclear plant likely has more exposed reactor cores than commonly believed.

"Fukushima has three nuclear reactors exposed and four fuel cores exposed," he said, "You probably have the equivalent of 20 nuclear reactor cores because of the fuel cores, and they are all in desperate need of being cooled, and there is no means to cool them effectively."

TEPCO has been spraying water on several of the reactors and fuel cores, but this has led to even greater problems, such as radiation being emitted into the air in steam and evaporated sea water - as well as generating hundreds of thousands of tons of highly radioactive sea water that has to be disposed of.

"The problem is how to keep it cool," says Gundersen. "They are pouring in water and the question is what are they going to do with the waste that comes out of that system, because it is going to contain plutonium and uranium. Where do you put the water?"
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