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Naoto Kan urged people within 30 km (18 miles) of the facility north of Tokyo to remain indoors.

The French embassy in the capital warned in an advisory that a low level of radioactive wind could reach Tokyo — 240 km (150 miles) south of the plant — in about 10 hours.

The reactor operator asked the U.S. military for help, while Kyodo news agency said radiation levels nine times normal levels had been briefly detected in Kanagawa near Tokyo.

“We are making every effort to prevent the leak from spreading. I know that people are very worried but I would like to ask you to act calmly,” Kan said in an address to the nation.

…

The fear at the Fukushima plant is of a major radiation leak after the quake and tsunami knocked out cooling systems.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said he was not ruling out the possibility of a meltdown at all three troubled reactors at the plant.

The blast — caused by a buildup of hydrogen — also damaged the cooling system at reactor No. 2, starting a new round of problems for officials trying to contain the damage from Friday’s earthquake and tsunami.

At a press conference in Tokyo, Masashi Goto, who worked for Toshiba as a reactor researcher and designer, said the mixed oxide (MOX) fuel used in unit 3 of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant contains plutonium, which is much more toxic than the fuel used in the other reactors.

MOX fuel is a mixture of uranium and plutonium reprocessed from spent uranium, and is sometimes involved in the disposal of weapons-grade plutonium.

It’s the latest in a decades-long string of military deals for FPI, also known as Unicor. Over the years, the company has supplied parts for F-15 and F-16 fighter jets, the Cobra attack helicopter, and the iconic Patriot interceptor system. (More about that in a second.)

But this deal is particularly odd, because FPI’s track record with protective equipment is, to put it generously, uneven. In May of last year, the Army recalled 44,000 FPI-made protective helmets after they failed ballistic testing. FPI then promptly got out of the helmet business.

That rather serious blemish on FPI’s record hasn’t stopped the Army from going back to the firm for $19,767,468’s worth of bulletproof “Outer Tactical Vests.” According to the Army’s contract announcement, the gear is supposed to be “for Pakistan” — presumably, for the Pakistani military. (Although a State Department told suppliers Wednesday that it wants 1,000 vests in Pakistan, too.)

Saudi forces have reportedly arrived in Bahrain to reinforce its police, who clashed with protesters yesterday in an escalation of the month-long Shiite-led protests calling for democratic reform.

The Saudi forces are there on behalf of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), the regional organization of which Bahrain and Saudi Arabia are both members. Their intervention underlines Saudi Arabia’s deep worry over the unrest on its border, but it’s likely only to harden the stance of the protesters, who have been unsatisfied by the government’s response to their demands.

The unit makes most of its money from placing mandatory insurance policies on liens, such as home mortgages, farm loans, etc. The insurance policy increases the amount the mortgage holder has to pay in escrow.

It appears that Balboa was eager to disguise something that was going on. In emails a supervisor, Jason Vaughn, informs his subordinates to remove a long list of images from Rembrandt/Track Source — two databases that the company used. Mr. Vaughn appeared to be fulfilling a directive from his management.

The emails were sent in November 2010.

So why did the bank need to delete all these images? Well it’s possible it was for some sort of routine maintenance, but the leaker claims that it was to prevent the federal government from getting potential proof of wrongdoing on foreclosed properties.

Some store shelves were emptied and many train lines were shut down as Tokyo commuters returned to work after a weekend glued to horrific images of the extensive damage about 150 miles to the north.

In the largely residential Nerima district of Yokyo, staples like rice, bread and instant noodles were sold out. Lights were kept off on the produce shelves and meat refrigeration units to conserve electricity.

“About 40 to 50 people were lined up outside when we opened at 10. A day’s worth of food sold out in an hour. We had a second shipment delivered at midday and that sold out in an hour too,” said Toshiro Imai, a store manager in Tokyo.

PACIFIC OCEAN (March 14, 2011) – The U.S. 7th Fleet has temporarily repositioned its ships and aircraft away from the Fukushima Dai-Ichi Nuclear Power Plant after detecting low level contamination in the air and on its aircraft operating in the area.

The source of this airborne radioactivity is a radioactive plume released from the Fukushima Dai-Ichi Nuclear Power Plant. For perspective, the maximum potential radiation dose received by any ship’s force personnel aboard the ship when it passed through the area was less than the radiation exposure received from about one month of exposure to natural background radiation from sources such as rocks, soil, and the sun.

The ship was operating at sea about 100 miles northeast of the power plant at the time.

Using sensitive instruments, precautionary measurements of three helicopter aircrews returning to USS Ronald Reagan after conducting disaster relief missions near Sendai identified low levels of radioactivity on 17 air crew members. The low level radioactivity was easily removed from affected personnel by washing with soap and water. They were subsequently surveyed, and no further contamination was detected.

As a precautionary measure, USS Ronald Reagan and other U.S. 7th Fleet ships conducting disaster response operations in the area have moved out of the downwind direction from the site to assess the situation and determine what appropriate mitigating actions are necessary.