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Texas: The Beefy Crunch Burrito incident

Michelle Mondo
San Antonio Express-News
Mon, 21 Mar 2011 15:46 UTC
Texas fast-food shooting
© EDWARD A. ORNELAS / SAN ANTONIO EXPRESS-NEWS NFS
Members of the SAPD SWAT team work the scene of a standoff at the Rodeway Inn.

The price of the Beefy Crunch Burrito had gone up from 99 cents to $1.49 and the man at the Rigsby Road Taco Bell drive-thru had just ordered seven.

The fast food customer was so disgruntled by the price hike he shot an air gun at the manager, displayed an assault rifle and pistol while in the restaurant's parking lot, fled as police were called, and pointed one of his weapons at three officers who pulled him over. Fleeing when they opened fire, he barricaded himself in his hotel room - all over $3.50 plus additional tax.

All three of his weapons were found to be air-powered and not firearms.

The final incident in the burrito-triggered spree happened Sunday afternoon at the Rodeway Inn on North W.W. White Road, engaging SWAT negotiators in a more than three-hour standoff, according to officials and witnesses.
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Che Guevara

Tawakul Karman, a Yemeni Activist, Provides Thorn in Side for Saleh

Tom Finn
The Guardian, UK
Fri, 25 Mar 2011 13:24 UTC
32-year-old mother of three has faced death threats and prison, but devotion to cause has earned international acclaim

Tawakul Karman
© Yahya Arhab/EPA
Tawakul Karman, the Yemeni human rights activist , has received death threats after refusing a government position.
Tawakul Karman, a 32-year-old mother of three, may seem an unlikely leader of the fight to overthrow the president of Yemen.

But the outspoken journalist and human rights activist has long been a thorn in Ali Abdullah Saleh's side, agitating for press freedoms and staging weekly sit-ins to demand the release of political prisoners from jail - a place she has been several times herself.

Now inspired by the uprising in Tunisia and the resignation of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, she finds herself at the head of a popular protest movement which is shaking the Yemeni regime to its core.

"With two civil wars, an al-Qaida presence and 40% unemployment, what else is President Saleh waiting for? He should leave office now," she says, claiming that Yemen, like Tunisia and Egypt, needs an end to a dictatorship in the guise of a presidency.

"This revolution is inevitable, the people have endured dictatorship, corruption, poverty and unemployment for years and now the whole thing is exploding," she says.
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Nuke

Nuclear Crisis in Japan Level 6


Arirang.co.kr
Fri, 25 Mar 2011 16:31 UTC
A Japanese news report claims the nuclear power plant crisis in Fukushima prefecture is level 6 indicating a serious accident on the seven-point International Nuclear Event Scale.

Japanese news daily, Asahi Shinbun, reported Friday that the amount of iodine leaked from the power plant has reached almost thirty to 1-hundred-10 thousand tera Becquerel per hour.

The Chernobyl nuclear accident in 1986 was categorized as level 7, the worst nuclear accident ever in history, while the one occurred on Three Mile Island in the United States in 1979 was recorded as a level 5 incident.
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Nuke

Radiation 10,000 Times Normal in Japan Nuclear Pool


CNN
Fri, 25 Mar 2011 12:35 UTC
Image

Military officers on Friday hold a blue sheet over people exposed to high levels of radiation at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi plant.
Tokyo -- Authorities in Japan raised the prospect Friday of a likely breach in the all-important containment vessel of the No. 3 reactor at the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, a potentially ominous development in the race to prevent a large-scale release of radiation.

Contaminated water likely seeped through the containment vessel protecting the reactor's core, said Hidehiko Nishiyama of the Japan Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency.

Three men working near the No. 3 reactor Thursday stepped into water that had 10,000 times the amount of radiation typical for a nuclear plant, Nishiyama said. An analysis of the contamination suggests "some sort of leakage" from the reactor core, signaling a possible break of the containment vessel that houses the core, he said.

The workers have been hospitalized, according to the agency.

Comment: While Ian Hutchinson is 'not particularly alarmed', being safely ensconced at MIT, the Japanese Prime Minister called the country's ongoing fight to stabilize the plant "very grave and serious."

A somber Prime Minister Naoto Kan sounded a pessimistic note at a briefing hours after nuclear safety officials announced what could be a major setback in the urgent mission to stop the plant from leaking radiation, two weeks after a devastating earthquake and tsunami disabled it.

"The situation today at the Fukushima Dai-ichi power plant is still very grave and serious. We must remain vigilant," Kan said. "We are not in a position where we can be optimistic. We must treat every development with the utmost care."

So, perhaps it's time for those like Mr. Hutchinson to stop clouding the issue with denials and start to warn people of the reality of the situation so that they can take action to realistically protect themselves.

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Bizarro Earth

Oldest US Nuclear Reactor: a 'Disaster' in Waiting?


Raw Story
Fri, 25 Mar 2011 10:27 UTC
oyster creek nuke plant
© n/a
Nuclear power plant at Oyster Creek, New Jersey.
Lacey, New Jersey - A sleepy New Jersey town has popped onto people's radar screens because it has the oldest running nuclear power plant in the United States -- and, some say, the most dangerous.

Named for a Revolutionary War general, Lacey is the kind of American town that few from outside the seaside settlement knew much about before the earthquake and tsunami in Japan triggered a nuclear crisis.

Down the road from the 1950s-style diner and across from the bridge that locals use as a fishing pier stands the Oyster Creek nuclear plant.

It uses a GE Mark I Boiling Water reactor identical to those that lost power at Japan's Fukushima plant in the March 11 earthquake and then was struck by a tsunami that knocked out its backup generators, causing reactor cooling functions to fail.
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Evil Rays

Global Food Scare Widens from Japan Nuclear Plant


Breitbart
Fri, 25 Mar 2011 10:15 UTC
radiation check / Japan
© n/a
Countries across the world shunned Japanese food imports Thursday as radioactive steam leaked from a disaster-struck nuclear plant, straining nerves in Tokyo.

The grim toll of dead and missing from Japan's monster quake and tsunami on March 11 topped 26,000, as hundreds of thousands remained huddled in evacuation shelters and fears grew in the megacity of Tokyo over water safety.

The damage to the Fukushima nuclear plant from the tectonic calamity and a series of explosions has stoked global anxiety. The United States and Hong Kong have already restricted Japanese food, and France wants the EU to do the same.

Russia ordered a halt to food imports from four prefectures -- Fukushima, Gunma, Ibaraki and Tochigi -- near the stricken plant 250 kilometres (155 miles) northeast of Tokyo.
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Heart - Black

Iraq - A Nation of Tears

Journeyman Pictures
Youtube
Mon, 14 Mar 2011 23:19 UTC
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Phoenix

Fire at US underground lab appears under control

James Dacey
Physics World
Thu, 24 Mar 2011 07:01 UTC
Within the next 48 hours a crew is expected to enter the Soudan Underground Laboratory for the first time since a fire broke out last Thursday at the mine that houses it. The facility, which is managed by the University of Minnesota, is home to a number of high-profile physics experiments, including the MINOS neutrino detector and the detector of the Cryogenic Dark Matter Search (CDMS) experiment. The lab lies more than 700 m below ground where the rocks above shield the experiments from unwanted cosmic rays and other disturbances.

Image
© Unknown
Firefighters tackling the blaze at the Soudan Mine, Friday
According to the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR), the fire was detected in the mine's main lift shaft around 9 p.m. local time on Thursday (17 March) when nobody was in the mine. By Friday the DNR had established that the fire was blazing inside the shaft between levels 23 and 25 - just two levels above the physics laboratory, which is located 60 m below on the mine's lowest level.

There were also fears that the lab could suffer flood damage after electrical systems automatically shut down, deactivating pumps that were designed to keep groundwater from entering the mine.

After fire-fighting efforts over the weekend, in which thousands of gallons of foam and water were sprayed into the mine, the Minnesota Interagency Fire Center reported on Sunday that the fire was 99% extinguished. Fire officials will only declare the blaze officially "out" once its source has been located and any smouldering ashes or embers have been extinguished.
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Evil Rays

Lack of Data from Japan Distresses Nuclear Experts

Ralph Vartabedian
Los Angeles Times
Thu, 24 Mar 2011 00:16 UTC
exposed Fukushima plant workers
© Kyodo, Reuters
Japanese military members prepare to transfer exposed Fukushima plant workers to a hospital, March 25, 2011.
Nuclear scientists and policy experts say the quality and quantity of information coming out of Fukushima has left gaping holes in their understanding of the nuclear disaster nearly two weeks after it began.

How did Japanese workers at the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant jury-rig fire hoses to cool damaged reactors? Is contaminated water from waste pools overflowing into the Pacific Ocean? Exactly who is the national incident commander?

The answers to these and many other questions are unclear to U.S. nuclear scientists and policy experts, who say the quality and quantity of information coming out of Japan has left gaping holes in their understanding of the disaster nearly two weeks after it began.

At the same time, they say, the depth of the crisis has clearly been growing, judging by releases of radioactivity that by some measures have reached half the level of those released in the Chernobyl accident of 1986, according to new analysis by European and American scientists.
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Better Earth

Kucinich: Libya isn't in America's vital interests


MSNBC.com
Thu, 24 Mar 2011 12:15 UTC
Democratic Rep. Dennis Kucinich - who says he'll try to defund military action in Libya - tells "Meet the Press" moderator David Gregory that lawmakers must "engage in a discussion about what the consequences are of this kind of intervention."

"We're at a point in human history where it is absolutely essential that we challenge the notion of war." - Dennis Kucinich

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