, - The Washington Post/Associated Press
Stephan: This is what makes nuclear accidents unique, and why nuclear power must be stopped. Everything is just fine... until it's not. And then it is a crisis harming life at a planetary level.
The vice president of the Japanese power company TEPCO admits it: 'We cannot say at this time how many months or years it will take,
TOKYO - Highly radioactive iodine seeping from Japan’s damaged nuclear complex may be making its way into seawater farther north of the plant than previously thought, officials said Monday, adding to radiation concerns as the crisis stretches into a third week.
Mounting problems, including badly miscalculated radiation figures and no place to store dangerously contaminated water, have stymied emergency workers struggling to cool down the overheating plant and avert a disaster with global implications.
The coastal Fukushima Dai-ichi power plant, located 140 miles (220 kilometers) northeast of Tokyo, has been leaking radiation since a magnitude-9.0 quake on March 11 triggered a tsunami that engulfed the complex. The wave knocked out power to the system that cools the dangerously hot nuclear fuel rods.
On Monday, workers resumed the laborious yet urgent task of pumping out the hundreds of tons of radioactive water inside several buildings at the six-unit plant. The water must be removed and safely stored before work can continue to power up the plant’s cooling system, nuclear safety officials said.
The contaminated water, discovered last Thursday, has been emitting radiation that measured more than 1,000 millisieverts per hour in a recent reading at Unit 2 - some 100,000 times normal amounts, plant operator […]
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WILLIAM YARDLEY, - The New York Times
Stephan: The level of sexual distortion in the Roman Catholic clergy is extraordinary. It infected every dimension of the Church. Since most of these settlements are paid out by insurance companies, I am astonished, given the billions of dollars involved, that it is possible for any part of the Church to obtain a policy.
SEATTLE – A Roman Catholic religious order in the Northwest has agreed to pay $166 million to more than 500 victims of sexual abuse, many of whom are American Indians and Alaska Natives who were abused decades ago at Indian boarding schools and in remote villages, lawyers for the plaintiffs said Friday.
The settlement, with the Oregon Province of the Society of Jesus, known as the Northwest Jesuits, is the largest abuse settlement by far from a Catholic religious order, as opposed to a diocese, and it is one of the largest abuse settlements of any kind by the Catholic Church. The Jesuits are the church’s largest religious order, and their focus is education. The Oregon Province includes Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana and Alaska.
‘There is a huge number of victims, in part because these Native American communities were remote and vulnerable, and in part because of a policy by the Jesuits, even though they deny it, of sending problem priests to these far-off regions,
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JOE DWINELL, - Boston Herald
Stephan: I could have picked similar stories from Florida, Washington, or half a dozen other states. The levels are low, which is good in the short term, but we know only a little about what a society's prolonged exposure to low levels of radiation really means. How many extra cancers, for instance? We know Chernobyl caused thousands.
Radiation from the stricken Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant in Japan is now showing up in rain in Massachusetts, health officials announced today.
The state Department of Public Health said low levels of radiation were detected in Bay State rainwater earlier this week. Massachusetts now joins scores of other states from the west to the east reporting higher than normal signs of contamination, all likely from Japan.
The DPH said the radiation — in the form of radioiodine-131– does not pose a health threat to Bay State residents and that the air and public drinking water supplies have tested clean. Radioiodine is a byproduct of nuclear fission and has a half-life of about eight days.
Still, health officials said they will continue to test drinking water supplies. The positive rainwater reading was spotted this week and announced today around noon after confirmation of the findings, officials said.
‘The drinking water supply in Massachusetts is unaffected by this short-term, slight elevation in radiation. However, we will carefully monitor the drinking water as we exercise an abundance of caution,’ said DPH Commissioner John Auerbach.
Other similar radiation hits have been found in California, Washington and Pennsylvania, according to the DPH. All those positive readings are part of […]
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NANCY ATKINSON, - NSIDC and The University of Colorado-Boulder
Stephan: It's pretty clear that nothing meaningful is going to be done to address the onrushing catastrophe of climate change so, particularly if you are under 40, you should begin thinking how you are going to get through it.
Bad news for what is now the beginning of the ‘melt season
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KURT GREGORY, - News 33 (NBC)
Stephan: This story is usually played centered on the rise of the Hispanic segment of the population, which is accurate but incomplete. The facet that does not get coverage is that this is part of the trend that within two decades will mean America is a majority non-white country. And this is part of an even larger trend intersecting with the rise of a a multi-polar geopolitical reality in which, for the first time in 500 years, Caucasians will not run the world.
Washington, DC (NBC) - The Census Bureau released final figures from the 2010 count, and the data indicates that our country’s Hispanic and Asian population is increasingly rapidly.
The new census numbers released on March 24 show that Hispanics account for more than half of the United States’ growth in the last decade.
The Hispanic growth came from states that traditionally have not had large Hispanic communities, more than doubling in southern states including Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, North Carolina and Tennessee.
Also experiencing double-digit growth are Asians, which grew faster than the African-American population in 23 states.
Overall, the African-American population stayed stable, roughly equivalent to the country’s 9.7 percent growth rate.
More than 8 million Americans now describe themselves as multi-racial.
‘Overall, we’ve learned that our nation’s population has become more racially and ethnically diverse over the past ten years,’ states US Census Bureau representative Nicholas Jones.
Geographically, the numbers also show this country’s major cities got bigger.
‘The U.S. population is increasingly metropolitan, with a record 83.7 percent of the population now living inside a metro area,’ states Jones.
Twelve cities gained more than 100,000 people during the past decade with the biggest increases taking place in Louisville, Fort Worth, Charlotte, San Antonio and New York City.
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