Japan: Kan Considered Evacuation of Tokyo in Wake Nuclear Disaster, but Feared Chaos and Collapse of the State
September 30th, 2011Via: ABC:
Japan’s former prime minister Naoto Kan has revealed he contemplated evacuating as many as 30 million people from Tokyo and surrounding areas during the Fukushima nuclear disaster.
Speaking to Japan’s Kyodo News, Mr Kan, who was prime minister during the nuclear crisis, said evacuations on such a scale may have led to Japan being unable to function.
Mr Kan has since resigned from the prime ministership and can now speak more openly about the crisis.
He said he asked experts for “simulations of the worst case scenario” at the Fukushima nuclear plant.
He said the experts explained that people living 200 to 250 kilometres from the plant would have to be evacuated.
He said he contemplated the chaos that would have ensued if such a measure had been taken.
”It was a crucial moment when I wasn’t sure whether Japan could continue to function as a state,” he said.
”I felt that the risk was at its highest during the first 10 days [after the disaster struck].”
Mr Kan also said there were no effective safeguards in place because ”we had never foreseen a situation in which a quake, tsunami and a nuclear plant accident would occur at the same time.”
Police Device Used To Steal Your Cell Phone Data During Traffic Stop
September 30th, 2011Via: AOL Autos:
You may have heard about the Cellebrite cell phone extraction device (UFED) in the news lately. It gives law enforcement officials the ability to access all the information on your cell phone within a few short minutes. When it became known that Michigan State Police had been using the tool to access cell phones during traffic stops, it raised concern with the ACLU. Now, everyone is wondering if cops will be using devices like this elsewhere. Will this new law enforcement tool be abused, or will it be used responsibly in the pursuit of justice?
Call us paranoid, but we obtained a law-enforcement-grade software extraction tool for the iPhone to see exactly what data is up for grabs. You’d be surprised to see just how much data today’s smartphones can store — and police can access.
A Form of ‘Neo-Stagflation’ Has Emerged
September 30th, 2011Via: Globe and Mail:
This neo-stagflation is characterized by rising prices for food, fuel and metals – which were also key drivers in the 1970s stagflationary spiral.
“An OECD economic cycle in which prices of foods, fuels and precious metals rise far more strongly than prices of manufactured goods – or workers’ wages – is inherently stagflationary,” he wrote in a recent report. “A greater and greater share of total consumer spending goes to the commodity producers who own the farmland, the mines or the oil wells. The industrial and service-based economies find they cannot deliver the kind of strong, sustained, low-inflation economic growth that was the pattern for most of the postwar era.”
Cryptogon Readers Send Contributions
September 30th, 2011Thank you.
CB2 $75
DL £30
PM $50
Morgan Stanley Seen as Risky as Italian Banks
September 30th, 2011Via: Bloomberg:
Morgan Stanley (MS), which owns the world’s largest retail brokerage, is being priced in the credit- default swaps market as less creditworthy than most U.S., U.K. and French banks and as risky as Italy’s biggest lenders.
The cost of buying the swaps, or CDS, which offer protection against a default of New York-based Morgan Stanley’s debt for five years, has surged to 456 basis points, or $456,000, for every $10 million of debt insured, from 305 basis points on Sept. 15, according to prices provided by London-based CMA. Italy’s Intesa Sanpaolo SpA (ISP) has CDS trading at 405 basis points, and UniCredit SpA (UCG) at 424, the data show. A basis point is one-hundredth of a percent.
Rare Earth Elements: ‘Demand Destruction’
September 30th, 2011This is a pretty good article that goes into several reasons for the price declines; speculators selling, companies finding alternative materials, companies re-designing products, recycling and others.
Via: Bloomberg:
Rare-earth prices are set to extend their decline from records this year as buyers including Toyota Motor Corp. and General Electric Co. scale back using the materials in their cars and windmills.
Prices for cerium and lanthanum, the most abundant rare- earth elements, will drop by 50 percent in 12 months, Christopher Ecclestone, an analyst at Hallgarten & Co. in New York, has forecast. Neodymium and praseodymium, metals used in permanent rare-earth magnets, may fall as much as 15 percent, he said.
Makers of electric cars, wind turbines and oil-refining catalysts have sought to reduce use of the metals after China, which supplies more than 90 percent of the market, said in July 2010 that it would cut exports and clamp down on the industry. That boosted prices, encouraging mining companies to develop new prospects and buyers to find alternatives.
“If you think you can keep raising the prices for those materials and still keep your customers, you’re crazy,” Jack Lifton, co-founder of Technology Metals Research, said in a telephone interview. “The principal customer for rare-earth metals is a global automotive industry using rare-earth permanent magnets. That industry will engineer this stuff out.”
A Japanese Response to Nuclear Disaster: The Smartphone that Measures Radiation
September 30th, 2011Via: Telegraph:
A mobile phone that doubles as a radiation detector? If there is one country that can pull off (and sell) such a device, it’s Japan. A leading Japanese telecommunications company will unveil a smartphone next week that also acts as a radiation dosimeter to help users detect potential contamination.
In Japan, it’s a timely invention – and a reflection of just how seriously businesses are taking the anti-nuclear mood sweeping the country as the worst atomic crisis since Chernobyl rumbles on. More than six months may have passed since the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, but the nation’s concerns surrounding potential radiation contamination are now reaching fever pitch.
Navigating NPR’s Top 100 Science Fiction and Fantasy Books
September 29th, 2011Very, very cool.
Via: SF Signal:
Over the summer, NPR solicited the input of its listeners to rank the top science fiction and fantasy books of all time. Over 60,000 people voted for the top picks which were then compiled into a list by their panel of experts. The result? This list of 100 books with a wide range of styles, little context, and absolutely no pithy commentary to help readers actually choose something to read from it.
We at SF Signal have, once again, come to the rescue. This flowchart is designed to help you follow your tastes, provide context, and fulfill (indeed exceed!) any need for pithy commentary you might harbor.
U.S. Considers Fencing Along Canadian Border
September 29th, 2011Yeah, keep criminals out. That’s the ticket. *wink*
Via: CTV:
Building fences along the Canadian border is one of the options the U.S. government is considering as it mulls how to handle “trouble spots” and keep out criminals and other threats.
In a new draft report, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Agency includes among its proposals “fencing and other barriers” at the Canadian border to get a handle on “trouble spots where passage of cross-border violators is difficult to control.”
Research Credit: ms
New Zealand Credit Rating Downgraded
September 29th, 2011Via: New Zealand Herald:
Fitch ratings agency has lowered New Zealand’s credit rating by one notch to “AA” and expressed concern over its high external debt.
“New Zealand’s high level of net external debt is an outlier among rated peers – a key vulnerability that is likely to persist as the current account deficit is projected to widen again,” Andrew Colquhoun, Fitch’s head of Asia-Pacific sovereigns said overnight.
The country’s net external debt hit 70 per cent of annual gross domestic product (GDP) in June.
Fitch said New Zealand’s current account deficit, which reflects a structural imbalance between savings and investment, is set to climb to 4.9 per cent of GDP next year and 5.5 per cent in 2013.
Fitch also downgraded by one notch New Zealand’s local currency rating from the top “AAA” rating to “AA+”.
It noted that New Zealand had one of the highest levels of household indebtedness among developed countries at 150 per cent of disposable revenue, which hasn’t declined significantly since 2008.
“Nonetheless, New Zealand remains well placed among the world’s highly rated sovereign credits, with its creditworthiness supported by moderate public indebtedness, fiscal prudence, and strong public institutions,” said Fitch.
