, - Bloomberg/The Associated Press
Stephan: This is just what happened in the Chernobyl disaster, and it went on for many months. When nuclear goes bad it goes bad in horrifying ways. The nuclear aspect, coming on top of the devastation of the earthquake and tsunami, makes everything many times more difficult because all rescue and reconstruction efforts must take radiation into consideration.
TOKYO
Japan’s top government spokesman says radiation levels in spinach and milk exceed safety limits following nuclear accidents at a tsunami-stricken nuclear plant.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said checks of milk from Fukushima prefecture, where the plant is located, and of spinach grown in Ibaraki, a neighboring prefecture, surpassed limits set by the government.
It was the government’s first report of food being contaminated by radiation since the March 11 quake and tsunami unleashed the nuclear crisis.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP’s earlier story is below.
FUKUSHIMA, Japan (AP) — Emergency teams racing to cool dangerously overheated nuclear fuel scrambled Saturday to connect Japan’s crippled reactors to a new power line, as a safety official suggested faulty planning at the complex helped trigger the crisis.
Firefighters also began pumping tons of water directly from the ocean into one of the most troubled areas of the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear complex, the cooling pool for used fuel rods at the plant’s Unit 3, which is at risk of burning up and sending a broad release of radioactive material into the environment.
Just outside the bustling disaster response center in the city of Fukushima, 40 miles (60 kilometers) northwest of the […]
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DWIGHT GARNER, - The New York Times
Stephan: Here is a book review concerning an important trend that is affecting countries around the world. It provides a new perspective on the slum areas that surround many cities, and presents a more optimistic view than one usually sees in commentary on these communities.
ARRIVAL CITY
How the Largest Migration in History Is Reshaping Our World
By Doug Saunders
356 pages. Pantheon $27.95.
Thanks to Rick Ingrasci, MD.
Doug Saunders’s first book, ‘Arrival City,
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E.J. MONTINI, - The Arizona Republic
Stephan: The Arizona Republic is a staunchly conservative newspaper. Yet even it is repelled by the extremism of the far Right. There is something deeply sick in the Right that I have not seen in my lifetime -- a kind of nastiness of spirit. This trend is alarming because it is occurring at a time when the need for the development of a network of societal interlinking has rarely been higher.
The most despised, most disputed, most vehemently denounced liberal cliche about illegal immigrants has been proved true . . . by Arizona’s Republican-controlled Legislature.
Activists who support a more inclusive, less harsh approach to illegal immigrants have argued for years that most border crossers are not hardened criminals but men and women looking to make a better life for their children.
If political actions speak louder than political words then that belief is correct.
Because while Arizona Republicans like de facto Gov. and state Sen. Russell Pearce demonize illegal immigrants in their public speech, their legislative actions say just the opposite.
The Republican-controlled Legislature has been considering a host of anti-immigrant bills, including Pearce’s omnibus legislation (Senate Bill 1611). Together these laws would transform just about every government bureaucrat, educator, medical professional and police officer into an immigration agent. In addition, there is a proposal to challenge the birthright citizenship of babies born in Arizona to illegal immigrant parents.
The target of all these bills? Children.
‘It is tragic to us, and so cruel, that lawmakers in Arizona seem to hate children so much,’ said Cassandra Belson of the Phoenix Repeal Coalition, a group dedicated to removing laws from the books like last year’s SB 1070.
‘What […]
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Stephan: Here is some actual data concerning a trend often spoken of.
Common in popular culture these days is when you ask a grown woman if she ever kissed a girl, you often get the response, ‘Well once…in college.’ Today, a national study has found that women with their college degrees actually were less likely to have kissed a girl than their only-high-school-diploma-having counterparts.
For years, sex researchers, campus women’s centers and the media have viewed college as a place where young women explore their sexuality, test boundaries, and, often, have their first, and only lesbian relationship.
Based on 13,500 responses, almost 10% of women ages 22 to 44 with a bachelor’s degree said they had had a same-sex experience, compared with 15% of those with no high school diploma. Women with a high school diploma or some college, but no degree, fell in between. Six percent of college educated women reported oral sex with a same-sex partner, compared with 13% who did not complete high school.
Rea Carey, executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force told the Los Angeles Times in their coverage:
‘It’s like a Rubik’s cube of sexuality, where you turn it a different way, and the factors don’t fit together. It may be that the […]
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Saturday, March 19th, 2011
, - Environmental Research Web
Stephan: The rise in the level of the sea is going to be the reason we see a migration away from the coast, one of the three big internal migrations that will be occurring in the U.S.
The Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are losing mass at an accelerating pace, according to a new study. The findings of the study – the longest to date of changes in polar ice sheet mass – suggest these ice sheets are overtaking ice loss from Earth’s mountain glaciers and ice caps to become the dominant contributor to global sea level rise, much sooner than model forecasts have predicted. The results of the study will be published this month in Geophysical Research Letters, a journal of the American Geophysical Union.
If current ice sheet melting rates continue for the next four decades, their cumulative loss could raise sea level by 15 centimeters (5.9 inches) by 2050. When this is added to the predicted sea level contribution of 8 centimeters (3.1 inches) from glacial ice caps and 9 centimeters (3.5 inches) from ocean thermal expansion, total sea level rise could reach 32 centimeters (12.6 inches). While this provides one indication of the potential contribution ice sheets could make to sea level in the coming century, the authors caution that considerable uncertainties remain in estimating future ice loss acceleration.
The nearly 20-year study reveals that in 2006, a year in which comparable results for mass […]
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