McDonald’s Wants to Fill 50K Jobs on Hiring Day
April 4th, 2011Recovery.
Via: AP:
McDonald’s Corp. plans to hold its first national hiring day April 19 to fill 50,000 openings at its restaurants nationwide.
The company says it is making a concerted effort to add staff as its business improves and as more of its restaurants stay open 24 hours a day.
TEPCO Disposing of ‘Low-Level’ Radioactive Water in Pacific Ocean
April 4th, 2011Couldn’t they store the radioactive water in massive bladders (like these)?
Via: Kyodo:
Tokyo Electric Power Co. began disposing of a total of 10,000 tons of water containing low-level radioactive substances in the Pacific Ocean on Monday from the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant to make room to store more highly polluted water filling the No. 2 reactor turbine building, as the water is hampering the plant’s restoration work, it said.
Separately from the contaminated water kept in a waste processing building, the company also said it plans to release 1,500 tons of groundwater, also containing radioactive materials, near the No. 5 and No. 6 reactors. The government said the water disposal will pose ”no major health risk” and is inevitable in order to secure safety.
How a Big U.S. Bank Laundered Billions from Mexico’s Murderous Drug Gangs
April 4th, 2011Bloomberg ran a great piece about this back in June 2010.
What has happened since then?
Of course, there was some wrist-slapping, but, “Now that the year’s ‘deferred prosecution’ has expired, the bank is in effect in the clear.”
Via: Guardian:
On 10 April 2006, a DC-9 jet landed in the port city of Ciudad del Carmen, on the Gulf of Mexico, as the sun was setting. Mexican soldiers, waiting to intercept it, found 128 cases packed with 5.7 tons of cocaine, valued at $100m. But something else – more important and far-reaching – was discovered in the paper trail behind the purchase of the plane by the Sinaloa narco-trafficking cartel.
During a 22-month investigation by agents from the US Drug Enforcement Administration, the Internal Revenue Service and others, it emerged that the cocaine smugglers had bought the plane with money they had laundered through one of the biggest banks in the United States: Wachovia, now part of the giant Wells Fargo.
…
Criminal proceedings were brought against Wachovia, though not against any individual, but the case never came to court. In March 2010, Wachovia settled the biggest action brought under the US bank secrecy act, through the US district court in Miami. Now that the year’s “deferred prosecution” has expired, the bank is in effect in the clear.
…
“Wachovia’s blatant disregard for our banking laws gave international cocaine cartels a virtual carte blanche to finance their operations,” said Jeffrey Sloman, the federal prosecutor. Yet the total fine was less than 2% of the bank’s $12.3bn profit for 2009.
“New York and London,” says Woods, “have become the world’s two biggest laundries of criminal and drug money, and offshore tax havens. Not the Cayman Islands, not the Isle of Man or Jersey. The big laundering is right through the City of London and Wall Street.
FUKUSHIMA: 1,000 MILLISIEVERTS PER HOUR IN THE AIR INSIDE THE PIT OF REACTOR TWO
April 3rd, 2011Update: Japanese Turn to Paper and Sawdust to Plug Fukushima Nuclear Leak [???]
Via: Guardian:
Where concrete has failed to prevent highly radioactive water pouring into the sea, workers at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant have shifted hope of plugging the leaks to an absorbent polymer mixed with sawdust and shredded newspaper that expands 50-fold when in contact with water.
Although officials conceded the polymer had made little impact so far, they will wait until Monday before deciding whether to abandon it. “We were hoping the polymers would function like diapers, but we have yet to see a visible effect,” said Hidehiko Nishiyama, spokesman for Japan’s nuclear safety agency.
Officials separately has warned that the nuclear crisis could drag on for months, the first time that they have offered a timescale. Goshi Hosono, an aide to the prime minister, Naoto Kan, said everything possible was being done to contain leaks, which have contaminated the environment and food and water supplies, necessitated mass evacuations, and fomented fear as far away as Tokyo, 150 miles to the south.
—End Update—
I’ve become very hesitant to post any information that originates from the criminals at TEPCO, but this number (1,000 mSv/hour) has remained standing for over a day now.
According to the IAEA, the limit for public radiation exposure is 1 mSv per year:
The dose limits for practices are intended to ensure that no individual is committed to unacceptable risk due to radiation exposure. For the public the limit is 1 mSv in a year, or in special circumstances up to 5 mSv in a single year provided that the average does over five consecutive years does not exceed 1 mSv per year.
At Fukushima, they’re dealing with 1,000 mSv/hour.
Via: Reuters:
Japanese officials grappling on Sunday to end the world’s worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl were focussing on a crack in a concrete pit that was leaking radiation into the ocean from a crippled reactor.
Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) said it had found a crack in the pit at its No.2 reactor in Fukushima, generating readings 1,000 millisieverts of radiation per hour in the air inside the pit.
“With radiation levels rising in the seawater near the plant, we have been trying to confirm the reason why, and in that context, this could be one source,” said Hidehiko Nishiyama, deputy head of the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA), said on Saturday.
He cautioned, however: “We can’t really say for certain until we’ve studied the results.”
Leakage did not stop even after concrete was poured into the pit, and Tokyo Electric is now planning to use water-absorbent polymer to prevent contaminated water from leaking out into the sea.
Genetically Modified Cows Produce ‘Human-Milk-Like Products’
April 3rd, 2011When I saw this story in the Telegraph, I thought that it had to be the tail end of some April Fool’s antics.
Nope. Apparently, this is actually happening. The article below is from March.
Via: Good:
Earlier this month, China held an exhibition to showcase major technical achievements during its 11th Five-Year Plan (2006-2010). Among the wonders on display were photos of a herd of 200 cows that have been genetically modified to produce “human” milk.
Precise details of the bioengineering employed to adjust the composition of the milk these 200 cows produce are not available, nor is it clear exactly how closely the GM cow milk will resemble its human analog. According to the announcement in the state-run news outlet, China Daily, Li Ning, director of the State Key Laboratories for AgroBiotechnology at China Agricultural University, confirmed that the genetically modified herd’s milk “contains the characteristics of human milk.”
Li added that the cow-human milk “tastes stronger than normal milk” and explained that:
In ancient China, only the emperor and the empress could drink human milk throughout their lives, which was believed to be the height of opulence. Why not make that kind of milk more available for ordinary people?
Interestingly, human milk has low protein density compared with cow’s milk, and many of its health benefits are to be found in so-called “non-nutritional factors” such as anti-microbials, anti-inflammatory substances, hormones, and digestive enzymes. Li is vague on the specifics, but promises that China’s genetically modified cows will allow scientists to mass-produce ingredients “that can help improve the immune systems and the central nervous systems of children.” “Within 10 years,” he added, “people will be able to pick up these human-milk-like products at the supermarket.”
Ivory Coast: Aid Workers Find 1,000 Bodies in Duekoue
April 3rd, 2011Is a NATO invasion going to follow?
Via: Telegraph:
The single biggest atrocity in the long battle for control of Ivory Coast has emerged after aid workers discovered the bodies of up to 1,000 people in the town of Duekoue.
Charity workers who reached Duekoue said it appeared the killings had taken place in a single day, shortly after the town fell to troops loyal to Alassane Ouattara, the man internationally-recognised as having won last year’s presidential election.
The apparent massacre came despite the presence of United Nations troops and – if confirmed – will cast a shadow over Mr Outtara’s assumption of the Ivory Coast’s presidency after a four-month battle to oust Lawrence Gbagbo, the former president who lost the November election but refused to step down.
William Hague, the Foreign Secretary, said he was “gravely concerned” by the violence and loss of life in Ivory Coast and added: “I am determined that all alleged human rights abuses… must be investigated and those responsible held to account.
The International Committee for the Red Cross said its staff discovered more than 800 bodies of people who were clearly local civilians. They were mainly men who had been shot and left where they fell, the organisation said, either alone or in small groups dotted around the town, which lies at the heart of Ivory Coast’s economically crucial cocoa producing region.
Greenpeace Video: Measuring Radiation Outside of Fukushima Exclusion Zone
April 2nd, 2011A Murder Foretold
April 1st, 2011Via: The New Yorker:
Rodrigo Rosenberg knew that he was about to die. It wasn’t because he was approaching old age—he was only forty-eight. Nor had he been diagnosed with a fatal illness; an avid bike rider, he was in perfect health. Rather, Rosenberg, a highly respected corporate attorney in Guatemala, was certain that he was going to be assassinated.
Libya-Owned Arab Banking Corp. Drew at Least $5 Billion From Fed in Crisis
April 1st, 2011Via: Bloomberg:
Arab Banking Corp., the lender part- owned by the Central Bank of Libya, used a New York branch to get 73 loans from the U.S. Federal Reserve in the 18 months after Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. collapsed.
The bank, then 29 percent-owned by the Libyan state, had aggregate borrowings in that period of $35 billion — while the largest single loan amount outstanding was $1.2 billion in July 2009, according to Fed data released yesterday. In October 2008, when lending to financial institutions by the central bank’s so- called discount window peaked at $111 billion, Arab Banking took repeated loans totaling more than $2 billion.
Fed officials say all the discount window loans made during the worst financial crisis since the 1930s have been repaid with interest.
The U.S. government has since frozen assets linked to the regime of Libyan ruler Muammar Qaddafi and engaged in air strikes against his military forces, which are battling a rebel uprising in the North African country. Arab Banking got an exemption that allows the firm to continue operating while barring it from engaging in any transactions with the Libyan government, according to the U.S. Treasury Department.
“It is incomprehensible to me that while creditworthy small businesses in Vermont and throughout the country could not receive affordable loans, the Federal Reserve was providing tens of billions of dollars in credit to a bank that is substantially owned by the Central Bank of Libya,” Senator Bernard Sanders of Vermont, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, wrote in a letter to Fed and U.S. officials.
Foreign Banks Tapped Fed’s Lifeline Most as Bernanke Kept Borrowers Secret
April 1st, 2011Via: Bloomberg:
U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke’s two-year fight to shield crisis-squeezed banks from the stigma of revealing their public loans protected a lender to local governments in Belgium, a Japanese fishing-cooperative financier and a company part-owned by the Central Bank of Libya.
Dexia SA (DEXB), based in Brussels and Paris, borrowed as much as $33.5 billion through its New York branch from the Fed’s “discount window” lending program, according to Fed documents released yesterday in response to a Freedom of Information Act request. Dublin-based Depfa Bank Plc, taken over in 2007 by a German real-estate lender later seized by the German government, drew $24.5 billion.
The biggest borrowers from the 97-year-old discount window as the program reached its crisis-era peak were foreign banks, accounting for at least 70 percent of the $110.7 billion borrowed during the week in October 2008 when use of the program surged to a record. The disclosures may stoke a reexamination of the risks posed to U.S. taxpayers by the central bank’s role in global financial markets.
“The caricature of the Fed is that it was shoveling money to big New York banks and a bunch of foreigners, and that is not conducive to its long-run reputation,” said Vincent Reinhart, the Fed’s director of monetary affairs from 2001 to 2007.
