By Robert Scribbler24 June 2016 (robertscribbler.com) – In Kyushu, Japan on Friday, government officials urged 700,000 residents to evacuate as record heavy rains and severe flooding inundated the city for the fifth day in a row. Half a world away in West Virginia, another unpredicted record deluge dumped 8.2 inches of rain, washed out roads, […]
By Richard Eisenberg16 June 2016 (MarketWatch) – Uh-oh. American workers aged 50 or older think there’s nearly a 1 in 2 chance they’ll still be working at 70 but many employees who expect to work longer are exactly the ones who’ll likely be least able to do so. That’s the upshot of the new, frightening […]
By Elaine Kurtenbach20 April 2016 TOKYO (Associated Press) – The latest scientific assessment paints a likely bleak future for the Pacific bluefin tuna, a sushi lovers’ favorite whose population has dropped by more than 97 percent from its historic levels. A draft summary of a report by the International Scientific Committee for Tuna and Tuna-like […]
By Yuri Kageyama12 April 2016 TOKYO (AP) – To dump or not to dump a little-discussed substance is the question brewing in Japan as it grapples with the aftermath of the nuclear catastrophe in Fukushima five years ago. The substance is tritium. The radioactive material is nearly impossible to remove from the huge quantities of […]
FLORENCE/NEW YORK, 14 April 2016 (UNICEF) – A new UNICEF report presents evidence on how inequality affects children in high-income countries. Innocenti Report Card 13, Fairness for Children: A league table of inequality in child well-being in rich countries, ranks 41 EU and OECD countries according to how far children at the bottom of the […]
By Will Worley7 April 2016 (The Independent) – Radioactive boars are running wild and breeding uncontrollably in the northern region of Japan contaminated by the Fukushima nuclear disaster. The animals have been devastating local agriculture and eating toxic, nuclear-contaminated food from around the accident site. Mass graves and incinerators have been unable to cope with […]
By Joshua Berlinger1 April 2016 (CNN) – The obesity epidemic has gone global, and it may be worse than most thought. A new study in The Lancet says that if current trends continue, 18% of men and 21% of women will be obese by 2025. In four decades, global obesity has more than tripled among […]
By Aaron Sheldrick and Minami Funakoshi; Editing by Bill Tarrant10 March 2016 (Reuters) – The robots sent in to find highly radioactive fuel at Fukushima’s nuclear reactors have “died”; a subterranean “ice wall” around the crippled plant meant to stop groundwater from becoming contaminated has yet to be finished. And authorities still don’t how to […]
By Jonathan Soble, with additional reporting by Makiko Inoue29 February 2016 TOKYO (The New York Times) – Japanese prosecutors indicted three former executives of the Tokyo Electric Power Company, the owner of the ruined Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, on Monday, charging them with criminal negligence for their role in reactor meltdowns after an earthquake […]
By Steve Featherstone22 February 2016 (Popular Science) – A 50-foot wall of water spawned by the quake exploded over Daiichi’s seawall, swamping backup diesel generators. Four of six nuclear reactors on-site experienced a total blackout. In the days that followed, three of them melted down, spewing enormous amounts of radiation into the air and sea […]
