Japan Triples Airborne Radiation Checks as ‘Hot Spots’ Spread
August 24th, 2011Ok, so a diabolical regime with no credibility at all is going to step up monitoring efforts. That’s nice.
Via: Bloomberg:
Japan will more than triple the number of regions it checks for airborne radiation as more contaminated “hot spots” are discovered far from Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s crippled Fukushima nuclear power station.
The government said it will increase radiation monitoring by helicopter to 22 prefectures from the six closest to the plant, which began spewing radiation after an earthquake and tsunami struck the station in March. The plan comes after radioactive waste more than double the regulatory limit was found 200 kilometers (125 miles) from the plant this week.
Authorities have refused to give a cumulative figure for radiation released from the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant after estimating in June that fallout in the six days following the quake was equal to 15 percent of total radiation released in the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986. The authorities have been too slow to widen airborne radiation testing, said Tetsuo Ito, the head of Kinki University’s Atomic Energy Research Institute in Osaka.
“The government should have expanded the monitoring area by helicopters much earlier to ease concerns among the public,” Ito said in a telephone interview yesterday.
Officials on Aug. 12 found compost in a kindergarten yard in Tokamachi city, Niigata prefecture containing radioactive cesium measuring 27,000 becquerels per kilogram, Kenichiro Kasuga, an official at the city’s disaster prevention department, said by phone.
Under Japanese law, waste measuring over 8,000 becquerels per kilogram must be treated as radioactive waste and can’t be buried in a landfill.
City officials found sludge measuring 18,900 becquerels per kilogram from radioactive cesium on the same day as part of tests done at 60 educational and childcare facilities, Kasuga said. The city government is storing the waste in drums until the government sets final guidelines for its disposal, he said.
“We still don’t know why this level of cesium was found in the compost,” Kasuga said.
The hotspots in Niigata were likely caused by wind blowing northwest towards the prefecture in the days following the Fukushima accident, Kinki University’s Ito said.
Japan Unveils $100 Billion Effort to Cope With Yen
August 24th, 2011Alternate headline: Japan Willing to Break Its Own Back to Remain Strapped to the Mast of the Sinking USA.
Via: Bloomberg:
Japan unveiled a $100 billion effort to help companies cope with a surging yen, signaling that officials may be resigned to the currency remaining high.
The government will release foreign-exchange reserves to the Japan Bank for International Cooperation for funding to aid exporters and spur purchases overseas, Finance Minister Yoshihiko Noda told reporters in Tokyo today. JBIC, as the lender is known, is a state-run export credit agency.
Related: Japan Rating Downgraded by Moody’s
New York: Judge Says Warrant Required for Cell Phone Location Data
August 24th, 2011Good news? Maybe, a little. It would be better if we had amnesia affecting our knowledge of MAIN CORE, Mark Klein, Russell Tice and official, on-the-record admissions from NSA about position tracking via cell phones.
*sigh*
Via: Ars Technica:
In recent years, the courts have struggled to decide whether the government needs a warrant to access historical records about a cell phone user’s location. Some courts have found that when users turn on their cell phones, they “voluntarily” transmit their location to their cell phone providers and thereby waive any expectation of privacy.
On Monday, Judge Nicholas Garaufis of the Eastern District of New York soundly rejected this line of reasoning. The federal government had asked the courts to order Verizon Wireless to turn over 113 days of location data about a suspect’s cell phone. It did so under a provision of the Stored Communications Act that only requires law enforcement to show that the records are “relevant and material to an ongoing criminal investigation.”
Does the government violate the Constitution when it obtains location data without meeting the Fourth Amendment’s “probable cause” standard? Some courts have found that it does not. But in a 22-page opinion, Judge Garaufis analyzed and rejected these other courts’ arguments, holding that law enforcement needs a warrant to obtain months of location data.
“The fiction that the vast majority of the American population consents to warrantless government access to the records of a significant share of their movements by ‘choosing’ to carry a cell phone must be rejected,” he wrote. “In light of drastic developments in technology, the Fourth Amendment doctrine must evolve to preserve cell-phone user’s reasonable expectation of privacy in cumulative cell-site-location records.”
A Huge Housing Bargain — but Not for You
August 24th, 2011Via: The Street:
The largest transfer of wealth from the public to private sector is about to begin. The federal government will be bulk-selling the massive portfolio of foreclosed homes now owned by HUD, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to private investors — vulture funds.
These homes, which are now the property of the U.S. government, the U.S. taxpayer, U.S. citizens collectively, are going to be sold to private investor conglomerates at extraordinarily large discounts to real value.
You and I will not be allowed to participate. These investors will come from the private-equity and hedge-fund community, Goldman Sachs and its derivatives, as well as foreign sovereign wealth funds that can bring a billion dollars or more to each transaction.
In the process, these investors will instantaneously become the largest improved real estate owners and landlords in the world. The U.S. taxpayer will get pennies on the dollar for these homes and then be allowed to rent them back at market rates.
Research Credit: Pookie
Strauss-Kahn Criminal Sexual Assault Case Dropped
August 24th, 2011Via: Reuters:
A New York judge dropped all criminal sexual assault charges against former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn on Tuesday, leaving him free to return to France and rebuild a shattered career.
The decision ended a case that brought three months of sordid headlines on both sides of the Atlantic about a hotel maid who accused Strauss-Kahn of attempting to rape her in his luxury Manhattan hotel suite and forced her to perform oral sex.
Prosecutors took the rare step of requesting dismissal of the charges after they had discovered contradictions in the maid’s story and said they now questioned her credibility.
Gold Slammed
August 23rd, 2011Warning: This is not a recommendation to buy, sell or hold any financial instrument.
Bid/Ask 1828.70 – 1829.70
Low/High 1822.70 – 1906.80
Change -69.40 -3.66%
It looks like they fed some gold to the rally monkey and let it loose in that pachinko lounge I laid down a bet in yesterday.
The Informants
August 23rd, 2011Via: Mother Jones:
Ever since 9/11, counterterrorism has been the FBI’s No. 1 priority, consuming the lion’s share of its budget—$3.3 billion, compared to $2.6 billion for organized crime—and much of the attention of field agents and a massive, nationwide network of informants. After years of emphasizing informant recruiting as a key task for its agents, the bureau now maintains a roster of 15,000 spies—many of them tasked, as Hussain was, with infiltrating Muslim communities in the United States. In addition, for every informant officially listed in the bureau’s records, there are as many as three unofficial ones, according to one former high-level FBI official, known in bureau parlance as “hip pockets.”
The informants could be doctors, clerks, imams. Some might not even consider themselves informants. But the FBI regularly taps all of them as part of a domestic intelligence apparatus whose only historical peer might be COINTELPRO, the program the bureau ran from the ’50s to the ’70s to discredit and marginalize organizations ranging from the Ku Klux Klan to civil-rights and protest groups.
Research Credit: noncompliant
Earthquake on East Coast of U.S.
August 23rd, 2011Via: Wall Street Journal:
An earthquake just hit Virginia, and the tremors were felt all the way up here in Manhattan, where markets were a little shaken, too.
The quake’s epicenter was in Mineral, Virginia, southwest of DC, in the middle of Virginia. The magnitude was 5.9, according to USGS — they upgraded that from an initial reading of 5.8.
Apparently there were tremors felt as far away as Martha’s Vineyard, Detroit and parts of Ohio. That’s a really wide area of impact for a relatively small quake.
New National Debt Data: It’s Growing About $3 Million a Minute
August 23rd, 2011Via: Los Angeles Times:
Swallow all liquids in your mouth before reading any further.
Updated numbers for the national debt are just out: It’s now $14,639,000,000,000.
When Barack Obama took the oath of office twice on Jan. 20, 2009, CBS’ amazing number cruncher Mark Knoller reports, the national debt was $10,626,000,000,000.
That means the debt that our federal government owes a whole lot of somebodies including China has increased $4,247,000,000,000 in just 945 days. That’s the fastest increase under any president ever.
Remember the day the Democrat promised to close the embarrassing Guantanamo Bay Detention Facility within one year? That day the national debt increased $4,247,000,000. And each day since that the facility hasn’t been closed.
Same for the day in 2009 when Obama flew all the way out to Denver to sign the $787 billion stimulus bill that was going to hold national unemployment beneath 8% instead of the 9.1% we got today anyway? Another $4,247,000,000 that day. And every day since, even Obama golfing and vacation days.
Same sum for the day Obama flew Air Force One nearly four hours roundtrip to Columbus, Ohio for a 10-minute speech about how well the stimulus was working in the politically crucial Buckeye state. Ohio’s unemployment rate just jumped to 9% from 8.8% anyway.Obama stops his tour bus to Eat some Ice Cream in Iowa 8-16-11
Or last week’s three-day Midwestern tour in the president’s new $1.1 million Death Star bus? National debt went up $16,988,000,000 while he rode around speaking and buying ice cream cones.
Blankfein Lawyers Up
August 23rd, 2011Luxury residence overlooking Central Park: $26 Million
U.S. Taxpayer Bailout of Goldman Sachs: $10 Billion
Criminal Defense Team Used by the Worst Corporate Scumbags: Priceless. (Or maybe just expensive, given the track record.)
Via: Daily Beast:
On Monday, Goldman shares took a 6 percent beating during final and extended trading hours on the announcement that Blankfein had hired a lawyer, without waiting for specifics. The last time its shares hit a 106.51 level was in early 2009.
…
You could look at Blankfein hiring external counsel as a normal prudent, legal move. But that’s naive, given the attorney he selected. Hiring a major criminal-defense lawyer is about more than the fear of a $550 million SEC wrist slap for bad documentation in the Abacus CDO. It’s about the real possibility of doing time.
Big-shot Washington defense attorney Reid Weingarten, of the firm Steptoe & Johnson LLC, has represented former Enron chief accounting officer Richard Causey (who pleaded out), former Rite Aid vice chairman and chief counsel Franklin Brown (found guilty by a jury on 10 counts of conspiring to falsely inflate his company’s value), and former WorldCom CEO Bernie Ebbers (convicted on nine felony counts by a jury). All three are in jail. Two of them, Ebbers and Causey, had undergone congressional panel investigations beforehand. Another of Weingarten’s clients, former Tyco counsel Mark Belnick, was acquitted, though Tyco CEO Dennis Kozlowski, who was not represented by Weingarten, was convicted and remains in jail.
This is not a great pack to be associated with. The outcomes for most of these guys weren’t great either.
Research Credit: MS
