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Nuke

Japan Nuclear Plant: Just 48 Hours to Avoid 'Another Chernobyl'

Gordon Rayner and Martin Evans
The Telegraph, UK
Wed, 16 Mar 2011 04:52 UTC
Image
© The Associated Press
Collecting water: The Self-Defense Forces's helicopter scoops seawater on Japan's northeast coast en route to the Fukushima plant
Japan has 48 hours to bring its rapidly escalating nuclear crisis under control before it faces a catastrophe "worse than Chernobyl", it was claimed last night.

Nuclear safety officials in France said they were "pessimistic" about whether engineers could prevent a meltdown at the Fukushima power plant after a pool containing spent fuel rods overheated and boiled dry.

Last night radiation levels were "extremely high" in the stricken building, which was breached by an earlier explosion, meaning that radiation could now escape into the atmosphere.

Tokyo Electric, the owners of the plant, said five workers had been killed at the site, two were missing and 21 had been injured.

Last night, a US nuclear safety chief said the Japanese government had failed to acknowledge the full seriousness of the situation at the Fukushima plant and that warnings to citizens had been insufficient and understated.

Gregory Jaczko, the chairman of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, warned that if "extremely high" radiation levels increased it would become impossible for workers to continue to take corrective measures at the plant as "the doses they could experience would potentially be lethal doses in a very short period of time".
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Eye 2

US: Killer kept boy's shellacked bones and skull on dresser

Tom Mooney
The Providence Journal
Wed, 09 Mar 2011 01:53 UTC
Image
© The Providence Journal Files / Ray Clayton
Woodmansee at his 1982 arraignment. He told police he had stabbed the 5-year-old to see “what it would be like” to kill someone.
South Kingston - - Michael Woodmansee had been put away for good.

Or that's how revulsion and hope fused over the years in the village of Peace Dale, distorting memories. In people's minds, the monster who killed 5-year-old Jason Foreman in 1975 and kept the boy's shellacked bones and skull on his bedroom dresser would remain behind bars forever.

But Woodmansee, who in 1982 tried to strangle the local paperboy and ended up confessing to killing Jason, wasn't sentenced to forever. He got 40 years to serve.

Now, because of a prison reward system that shaves 10 days or more a month off inmates' sentences for good behavior, the perpetrator of one of Rhode Island's most detestable crimes is scheduled to be released 12 years sooner.
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Bell

U.S. shows growing alarm over Japan nuclear crisis

Jeff Mason & Tom Doggett
Reuters
Wed, 16 Mar 2011 23:45 UTC
Image
© Reuters/Kim Kyung-Hoon
Official in protective gear talks to a woman who is from the evacuation area near the Fukushima Daini nuclear plant in Koriyama March 13, 2011.
The United States showed increasing alarm about Japan's nuclear crisis on Wednesday and urged its citizens to stay clear of an earthquake-crippled power plant, going further in its warnings than Japan itself.

The State Department said the United States has chartered aircraft to help Americans leave Japan and had authorized the voluntary departure of family members of diplomatic staff in Tokyo, Nagoya and Yokohama -- about 600 people.

"The State Department strongly urges U.S. citizens to defer travel to Japan at this time and those in Japan should consider departing," it said.

As operators of the Fukushima plant tried to douse overheating reactors, U.S. officials warned about the risks of getting anywhere near the area and relied on their own officials for details about the danger.

"The situation has deteriorated in the days since the tsunami and ... the situation has grown at times worse with potential greater damage and fallout from the reactor," White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters.

U.S. officials took pains not to criticize the Japanese government, which has shown signs of being overwhelmed by the crisis that began after last Friday's devastating 9.0 magnitude earthquake and resulting tsunami.

But Washington's actions indicated a divide with the Japanese about the perilousness of the situation.
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Newspaper

Guatemalans sue US over experiments


PressTV
Tue, 15 Mar 2011 14:56 UTC
Image
© Unknown
Attorneys for a group of Guatemalans have sued top US officials, accusing them of "intentionally" experimenting on them in the 1940's and infecting them with syphilis.

Hundreds of Guatemalan prisoners, psychiatric patients and orphans were infected in a program to study penicillin.

The lawsuit was filed on Monday by lawyers for seven Guatemalan plaintiffs. But there is a high possibility that the number of the plaintiffs could reach to hundreds.

Last year, the United States apologized for the "reprehensible" experiments, according to state-run BBC.

The Obama administration, however, has not yet responded to a request for an out-of-court compensation settlement.

Image
© Unknown
The experiments took place between 1946 and 1948 and around 700 Guatemalan nationals were used to test the efficiency of penicillin as a treatment and a preventative agent.

Evidence of the program was exposed by Professor Susan Reverby at Wellesley College in the US.

Reverby believes the then Guatemalan government gave permission for the tests but the people infected were unaware they were being experimented on.

In the experiments, researchers bribed care workers to let them inject their charges, while prisoners were encouraged to sleep with infected prostitutes.
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Card - MC

UK: Government charters Bahrain flights


Associated Press
Wed, 16 Mar 2011 18:00 UTC
T
Image
© Unknown
he Government is to charter planes to evacuate British citizens who want to flee the deteriorating situation in Bahrain.

The Foreign Office has urged people to leave the stricken Gulf State on commercial flights on Thursday.

Those who cannot get a ticket will be evacuated on an FCO-chartered flight costing £260.

The advice comes as running battles were once again fought on Bahraini streets. Soldiers and riot police used tear gas and armoured vehicles to clear protesters from Pearl Square, which has been the focus of demonstrations in capital Manama.

Prime Minister David Cameron has called on the King of Bahrain to end the violent suppression of street protests. He spoke by phone to King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa on and called for restraint from all sides in the escalating stand-off.

King Hamad has declared a state of emergency in the island kingdom after a month of demonstrations in which representatives of Bahrain's Shi'ite majority have called for the end of rule by its Sunni monarchy.
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Bizarro Earth

Twin Threats of Japan and Gulf Stalk Global Recovery

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
The Telegraph, UK
Tue, 15 Mar 2011 02:56 UTC
As catastrophe at home prompts Japan to repatriate chunks of its vast wealth, it is pulling the rug from under stock and bond markets thousands of miles away.

Image
© unknown
The twin crises of Japan and the Gulf come as fiscal tightening in the West and credit tightening in China start to bite.
We are discovering once again that the country is the world's top creditor by far with nearly £2 trillion of net assets overseas.

The risk is doubly dangerous when combined with the fast-escalating conflict in the Persian Gulf, where Saudi Arabia's use of troops to suppress Shi'ite dissent in Bahrain risks a showdown with Iran.

"People had thought global recovery was self-sustaining and now equity markets are starting to ask whether it might be snuffed out," said David Bloom, currency chief at HSBC.

The twin crises come as fiscal tightening in the West and credit tightening in China start to bite. US economists such as Larry Summers and Paul Krugman fear recovery has not yet reached "escape velocity", leaving it vulnerable to external shocks.

"I am afraid we are near tipping point on global recovery," said Simon Derrick from BNY Mellon. "The fact has oil has not risen despite the latest events in the Mid-East tells you a lot about growth in the second half of this year. All the inflation talk may fade away as in 2008."
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Nuke

Get out of Tokyo: Foreign Office Tells all Britons to Leave Toxic Radiation Zone as Japanese 'Lose Control' of Stricken Reactor


The Daily Mail, UK
Wed, 16 Mar 2011 08:57 UTC

  • 17,000 British nationals could be evacuated as last ditch efforts are made to stop nuclear catastrophe
  • Rich scramble to book private jets out the country as fleeing passengers pack Tokyo airport
  • French say Japanese have 'visibly lost essential control' as they urge their citizens to get out
    •
Plans are being drawn up to evacuate every British national in Japan amid mounting fears of a nuclear catastrophe. Thousands of Britons were last night warned to leave Tokyo and all other areas under threat of radiation poisoning.

The advice - echoed by other countries around the world - followed a meeting of the Cabinet's emergency Cobra committee to discuss the meltdown-threatened Fukushima nuclear plant.

It heightened suspicions that the crisis at the plant - already ranked the second-worst nuclear disaster after Chernobyl - is worse than the Japanese authorities have publicly let on. Yesterday 'last-ditch' efforts were continuing at Fukushima to prevent a catastrophe with a Japanese army helicopter dumping water onto troubled nuclear reactor.
Image
© Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images
Leaving: Worried residents wait to enter the Immigration Bureau of Japan in Tokyo yesterday as they evacuate the city in the wake of the earth quake and nuclear meltdown that has caused concern around the world

Image
© Masatoshi Okauchi / Rex Features
Chaos: Passengers crowd Mar Haneda International Airport outside Tokyo as foreigners scramble to flee the country amid radiation fears
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Bulb

Canada: Experts Hope Japan Quake is 'Eyeopener' of Risks to British Columbians

Tamsyn Burgmann
The Canadian Press
Mon, 14 Mar 2011 06:35 UTC
Vancouver, British Columbia
© unknown
Vancouver, British Columbia
While nearly half a million British Columbians ducked, covered and held on tight during a province-wide earthquake drill in late January, the other 90 per cent of the population sailed on with their day as usual.

After last week's destructive earthquake and tsunami in Japan, authorities hope the gravity of being prepared for a potential natural disaster on the West Coast hits closer to home.

"We're no different if we were to have an 8.9-magnitude, megathrust subduction-type earthquake here," said Heather Lyle, director of integrated public safety for Emergency Management B.C. "We too would suffer significant impact. I'm quite certain this is an eyeopener."

Were the so-called Big One to land a one-two punch starting about 250 kilometres off Vancouver Island shores, Victoria and about 75 coastal and First Nations communities would be the most vulnerable.

From the moment they felt the earth expel its great rumble, people living in places like Ucluelet, a tourist town along the Island's outer coast, would likely have only about 20 to 30 minutes to escape to higher grounds.

In the popular surfing destination of Tofino, about an hour's drive north, the urgency wouldn't change, but getting to safety would be hampered by long stretches of low-lying beach.
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Alarm Clock

Elderly Woman Threatens Castration

Scott Beaulieu
Nbcconnecticut.com
Wed, 16 Mar 2011 21:27 UTC
Image
© Getty Images
Former Planned Parenthood volunteer takes proposal to cut funds personally.

A threat an elderly Guilford is accused of making over Planned Parenthood funding doesn't quite jibe with recent efforts to be more civil in political discourse.

The woman is accused of threatening to castrate a politician who wants to cut funding for Planned Parenthood, the New Haven Register reports.

The FBI went to the woman's home on Norton Road on Tuesday afternoon, after receiving a report of the phone call threat.

The woman is in her 80s and used to volunteer for Planned Parenthood, police told the newspaper. It's unclear which politician she threatened.
      Read More...
Dollar

Yen Hits Record High After U.S. Warning on Reactor

Bettina Wassener
The New York Times
Wed, 16 Mar 2011 21:04 UTC
Hong King - The Japanese stock market sank again Thursday morning and the yen hit a record high against the U.S. dollar after a U.S. nuclear official warned that the situation at a damaged reactor was more serious than Tokyo has acknowledged.

The benchmark Nikkei 225 index dropped 2.5 percent within an hour of the open, wiping out much of a rebound staged during the previous day and returning toward the lows plumbed during a massive, panicky sell-off on Tuesday.

The broader Topix index sagged 3.2 percent.

The latest declines came as the barrage of ominous news about the reactors at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station continued.

Late on Wednesday in Congressional testimony, Gregory Jaczko, the chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, gave the Obama's administration first assessment of the condition of the plant, apparently mixing information it has received from Japan with data it has collected independently.
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