Society's ChildS


Nuke

Tepco Says Highest Radiation Detected at Fukushima Dai-Ichi, 10+ Sieverts An Hour

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Dead zone: Earth 2011
(Updates with company comment from second paragraph.)

Tokyo Electric Power Co., operator of Japan's crippled Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant, said it detected the highest radiation to date at the site.

Geiger counters, used to detect radioactivity, registered more than 10 sieverts an hour, the highest reading the devices are able to record, Junichi Matsumoto, a general manager at the utility, said today. The measurements were taken at the base of the main ventilation stack for reactors No. 1 and No. 2.

The Fukushima plant, about 220 kilometers (137 miles) north of Tokyo, had three reactor meltdowns after the March 11 magnitude-9 earthquake and tsunami knocked out power and backup generators. Radiation leaks displaced 160,000 people and contaminated marine life and agricultural products.

The utility, known as Tepco, tried to vent steam and gas the day after the earthquake as pressure in reactor No. 1 exceeded designed limits. A buildup of hydrogen gas subsequently caused an explosion that blew out part of the reactor building.

Dollar

Bitcoin: A New Kind of Money That's Beyond the Reach of Bankers, Wall St. and Regulators?

bitcoin

The Internet's creative hive mind is charting the future of commerce -- the bitcoin phenomenon shows what online currencies are capable of.

This July a computer developer who goes by the handle Doctor Nefario landed at the Seattle-Tacoma airport from China for a two-month mind-meld with various U.S. developers, which he planned to mostly fund using the increasingly popular decentralized digital currency bitcoin. After explaining to suspicious Customs and Border Protection agents that he had $600 in cash in his possession and another $1,500 to exchange in bitcoin -- plenty for a two-month visit, he insisted -- Nefario, founder of the Global Bitcoin Stock Exchange, was promptly sent back to China after agents spent hours trying to wrap their heads around the concept of real money that exists only in virtual reality.

"Avoid any mention of bitcoin," Nefario advised in a blog post recounting the tragicomic affair. "They don't like it at all."

Good luck with that. Founded in 2009 from a self-published 2008 white paper by developer Satoshi Nakamoto, whose actual identity still remains a mystery, bitcoin's peer-to-peer virtual currency has gone viral, from WikiLeaks to Google and beyond. It's a fascinating experiment in economic evolution, where goods and services can be exchanged using an opensourced mobile currency mostly outside the reach of regulators, speculators and central bankers. There are over six million in existence, pegged between $14-$17 per unit -- although their actual price can fluctuate wildly in a given day -- with a tentative cap of 21 million. Bitcoins are stored in a digital wallet, and can be used in any country to barter with a massive and growing list of sites that accept them.

Megaphone

US: Dem Congressman-Debt Deal A "Satan Sandwich"

"I am concerned about this because we don't know the details. And until we see the details, we're going to be extremely non-committed but on the surface it looks like a Satan sandwich," Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Missouri) said on MSNBC.


Wall Street

HSBC To Axe 30,000 Jobs All Over The World Despite a Multi-Billion Pound Profit

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Chief executive Stuart Gulliver said HSBC will stop retail banking in 20 countries


High street bank HSBC is to axe tens of thousands of jobs worldwide despite unveiling a multi-billion pound profit for the six months to June 30.

As exclusively revealed by Sky City editor Mark Kleinman, the bank will axe a total of 30,000 jobs over the next two years to save $3.5bn.

It has already shed 5,000 jobs and will axe another 25,000 by the end of 2013. It is understood most will be overseas.

Life Preserver

Libyan migrant boat arrives in Italy with 25 dead

Lampedusa island
© STR, AFP/Getty ImagesPicture taken 10 March 2004 shows an aerial view of Italy's Lampedusa island. Italian coast guards found 25 dead bodies in the hold of a refugee boat with 271 people crammed on board that arrived on the southern island of Lampedusa on Monday, local port authorities said. Thousands of migrants try to enter Italy and other EU nations each year via the Italian island.

Twenty-five men were apparently asphyxiated by motor fumes and died in a small boat crammed full of African migrants which arrived on the Italian island of Lampedusa on Monday, port authorities said.

The boat arrived after a three-day voyage from Libya carrying 296 people from sub-Saharan Africa, including 36 women and 21 children, the latest in a wave of arrivals since a western alliance began a military campaign to oust Libyan ruler Muammar Gaddafi earlier this year.

"Twenty-five bodies were found on board a boat from Libya; the others appear to be fine, they are now undergoing checks," said Antonio Morana, the commanding officer at Lampedusa port.

X

Mexico drug boss admits ordering 1,500 murders

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© RIA NovostiMexico
A key drug cartel figure arrested last week in Mexico acknowledged ordering about 1,500 killings, U.S. media reported on Monday.

Mexican President Felipe Calderon said in his Twitter microblog the detention of 33-year-old former police Jose Antonio Acosta Hernandez was "the biggest blow" to organized crime in Ciudad Juarez, one of the world's most dangerous cities. The city, on the border with the U.S, has witnessed more than 3,000 murders last year, most of them linked to drug cartels.

The Mexican government, which declared fighting drug crimes in the country its top priority, placed a bounty of some $1.2 million on Hernandez's head.

Stormtrooper

US, New York: New TSA 'Theft' Leaves Teen's Bag $100 Lighter

TSA
© unknown
An allegedly sticky-fingered screener for the Transportation Security Administration is being investigated after $100 went missing from a 16-year-old honor student's gym bag before he boarded a July 21 flight at JFK Airport, The Post has learned.

Rodeen Dunn, the mother of the Brooklyn student, Chris Dunn, called the alleged theft of his cash -- a gift from his grandma -- "disgusting and a violation of my son's trust."

The incident occurred shortly after 5:15 a.m., after Chris went through screening to board a JetBlue flight to Los Angeles.

A Port Authority police source said surveillance video shows a female TSA screener spending six minutes with Chris' bag. At one point, the worker can be seen tossing away a piece of paper, the source said.

Crusader

'Christian Terrorist'? Norway Case Strikes Debate

Anders Behring Brevik
© unknownAnders Behring Brevik
When the "enemy" is different, an outsider, it's easier to draw quick conclusions, to develop stereotypes. It's simply human nature: There is "us," and there is "them." But what happens when the enemy looks like us - from the same tradition and belief system?

That is the conundrum in the case of Norway and Anders Behring Brevik, who is being called a "Christian extremist" or "Christian terrorist."

As westerners wrestle with such characterizations of the Oslo mass murder suspect, the question arises: Nearly a decade after 9/11 created a widespread suspicion of Muslims based on the actions of a fanatical few, is this what it's like to walk a mile in the shoes of stereotype?

"Absolutely," said Mark Kelly Tyler, pastor of Mother Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia. "It clearly puts us in a position where we can't simply say that extreme and violent behavior associated with a religious belief is somehow restricted to Muslim extremists."

"It speaks to cultural assumptions, how we are able to understand something when it (comes from) us," Tyler said. "When one of us does something terrible, we know that's not how we all think, yet we can't see that with other people."

Sherlock

The 40-year mystery of America's greatest skyjacking: America's most elusive fugitive finally in sight?

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© Seattle FBIArtists sketch of D. B. Cooper
After hijacking an aeroplane and extorting $200,000 from the FBI, DB Cooper coolly made his escape via parachute. Forty years on, is America's most elusive fugitive finally in sight?

The night before Thanksgiving, 1971, a man calling himself Dan Cooper, wearing a suit and raincoat, walked up to the Northwest Orient desk at Portland airport in the United State's Pacific Northwest and spent $20 on a one-way ticket to Seattle.

On the plane, he donned a pair of dark sunglasses, ordered a whiskey, lit up a cigarette and coolly handed the stewardess a note. In capital letters, it read: I HAVE A BOMB IN MY BRIEFCASE. I WILL USE IT IF NECESSARY. I WANT YOU TO SIT NEXT TO ME. YOU ARE BEING HIJACKED.

What happened next would ensure Cooper a place in the pantheon of American folk heroes. He asked the stewardess to relay the following request to the captain: he wanted $200,000 and four parachutes, and in return, he'd allow 36 people to leave the aircraft when the plane landed in Seattle. The FBI organised the swap, and when the plane was sky-bound again, with just the pilot, co-pilot, one stewardess and Cooper on board, his instructions were to head for Mexico, maintaining an altitude under 10,000 feet. Then, somewhere over the lower Cascade mountains, 25 miles north west of Portland, Cooper released the plane's aft stairs, stepped out, and, with one of the parachutes strapped to his back, jumped into the stormy night and was never seen or heard from again.

Pistol

Two Frenchwomen Murdered in Argentina

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© Agence France-PresseThis file photo shows a cable car high above the city of Salta, at the foothills of the Andes mountain range, in northern Argentina. Two French female tourists have been shot to death outside Salta, where they were found by local hikers, according to authorities
Two French female tourists were shot to death in northern Argentina, where they were found by local hikers, according to authorities.

"They are two Frenchwomen, found shot to death in a touristy area of Salta province," Judge Martin Perez told TN television on Saturday.

The bodies of the women, both 30, were spotted Friday by hikers near San Lorenzo hill, west of the provincial capital, the judge said. The hiking area popular with tourists leads to an observation point offering a panoramic view of the city and surrounding area.

"Salta needs to clear up this appalling crime immediately," Governor Juan Manuel Uturbey said at a press conference at his office.

Uturbey said the victims' identities were known but he did not immediately announce them, though police sources told El Tribuno de Salta newspaper the women were Houria Moumni and Cassandre Bouvier.