The quake struck at 2:48 pm (05:48 GMT) in the Pacific Ocean, approximately 50km (31 miles) from land. The United States Geological Survey recorded the earthquake as being of magnitude 6.1, with a depth of 33km (20.5 miles). No tsunami warning has been issued, despite the offshore quake’s close proximity to Fukushima prefecture, where the magnitude 9.0 quake in March 2011 instigated the Tsunami, which led to the deaths of at least 16,000 people and nuclear meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi plant. Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s two nuclear plants in the prefecture reported no immediate irregularities as a result of the quake, according to the local Kyodo news agency. Miyagi prefecture, further north, suffered the strongest impact from the quake. No information has been released on potential injuries. However, its Onagawa nuclear plant also recorded no irregularities, according to its operator Tohoku Electric Power Co.“We have received no reports of damage so far,” an official from Fukushima prefecture told AFP. … Read More
Hunger strikers won’t stop until they get a fair trial – former Gitmo inmate
Kunaz, who languished in Guantanamo for five years even though the American authorities knew he was innocent after 4 months, told RT that he was tortured to sign papers saying he was a member of Al-Qaeda or the Taliban. RT: How did you end up in Guantanamo?Murat Kunaz: I was sold for bounty, $3,000 dollars to the American government, but as soon as the American government found out that I was innocent and not a terrorist, they let me go back home. They knew I was innocent 4 months after I got arrested, but I stayed 5 years in Guantanamo altogether. They always forced me to sign papers saying that I should agree that I am a member of Al-Qaeda and the Taliban and every time I refused to sign those kinds of papers they tortured me in different kind of ways like water-boarding and electric shocks. They thought that I would agree to sign those papers. RT: Why, if they knew you were innocent after four months, were you only released after 5 years? MK: I was from the beginning innocent, so they could have let me go home any time if they wanted. The German government had to agree that they wanted to take me back, so as soon as they did this I was allowed to come back home. RT: But why did it take so long if they knew you were innocent? MK: Because once you are in the system it’s very difficult to get out even if the government knows you are innocent. 95% of those prisoners have never had a trail and they still won’t get one in the future. That means they’ll be staying there all their life, even though they are innocent. RT: Did you ever go on hunger strike when you were in Guantanamo? MK: Yes, I went on hunger strike a couple of times during my time in Guantanamo. If you have been on hunger strike more than 3-4 weeks, they start force feeding you and that means you get handcuffed and shackled to a chair so you can’t move and you get fed food through a pipe up your nose and into your stomach, so they can keep you alive for many months or years of course.RT: What is driving prisoners to take these desperate measures? MK: I can understand those detainees, they have been there more than 11 years, and they still haven’t had a trial. I think it will be their last hunger strike for most of the detainees. I believe they will never eat regular meals there again. They’ll have to be force fed or else they will die. RT: Did anything change in Guantanamo when the Obama administration came into power? MK: Yes, a little bit. There were small changes, a couple of things. It was very important for us to get medication for sick prisoners. We had some prisoners who were very sick, they needed medication that they weren’t getting. So, when we started hunger striking they started giving out medication for those sick people. RT: What needs to be done to close Guantanamo? MK: Of course more pressure needs to be put on the president of the USA, Barack Obama, including the hunger strike. So if this continues things might change. RT: What do the inmates of Guantanamo want? MK: They want to be tried. This is all they need. As soon as this happens they will be happy. RT: How long do you think this hunger strike will go on for? MK: We can’t compare this hunger strike now with other ones, which went on for one or two months – this hunger strike is already over three months. Even the American government has to take it very seriously now because more than 80% of the prisoners are on hunger strike.RT: Have you spoken to anyone else who has been in Guantanamo? MK: I have talked to a couple of prisoners who were released after I got released, so they told me a couple of things were much the same, after Barack Obama, a couple of things got changed but nothing much. … Read More
HRW urges Bahrain to probe torture claims as 6 more tweeters jailed
HRW cites multiple reports of torture that emerged during the Formula 1 grand prix held in Bahrain in April. They include accounts of activists and women subjected to electric shocks and forced into signing confessions.In addition, the organization harks back to the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry report, issued in November 2011 that stated five activists had died in custody of torture since uprisings began against the Sunni ruling class.“If the latest allegations are brushed aside it will be yet more evidence suggesting that Bahrain’s justice system is a haven for torturers,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “Bahrain’s allies should apply serious pressure on Bahrain to investigate and hold accountable anyone responsible for brutally torturing activists.”Bahrain has blocked the entry of the UN’s special rapporteur on torture, Juan Mendez, from coming to probe police abuses of power. His visit, which was scheduled to begin on May 8, was indefinitely postponed by the Bahraini authorities.“This is the second time that my visit has been postponed, at very short notice. It is, effectively, a cancellation as no alternative dates were proposed, nor is there a future road map to discuss,” said Mendez, expressing his “disappointment” over the announcement.Protests against the Bahrain’s oppressive Sunni royal family have become commonplace. The country’s 70 per cent Shia claim they are discriminated against and call for a transfer to a democratic system of government.This comes as six tweeters were jailed on Wednesday for insulting King Hamad and ‘misusing the right to free expression.’ According to prosecutors, they posted comments on their Twitter feeds that undermined “the values and traditions of Bahrain’s society towards the king.”The Bahraini capital, Manama, was hit by mass protests during the grand prix. Activists branded the event “a race for blood” and claimed it was a ploy by the Bahraini authorities to “whitewash” the country’s poor human rights reputation.One of the highest-profile cases of human rights abuses to come out of Bahrain is that of activist Nabeel Rajab, who openly attacked the country’s government following an interview on RT for Julian Assange’s show The World Tomorrow. Nabeel was sentenced to three years in jail for ‘participation in an illegal assembly’ and ‘calling for a march without prior notification.’Since the beginning of the uprisings against the Bahraini monarchy in 2011, Human Rights Watch has calculated that at least 80 people have been killed and thousands arrested. … Read More
Zuckerberg’s lobby group losing top donors over Keystone XL support
FWD.us, the new group comprised of Silicon Valley heavyweights such as LinkedIn CEO and founder Reid Hoffman, super-angel investor Ron Conway and counting on the support of the likes of Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer, began to make headlines after Zuckerberg made the group’s official debut in a Washington Post op-ed describing the group’s purported focus on immigration reform.However, the group became the target of vocal criticism after two of its subsidiaries, Americans for Conservative Action and the Council for American Job Growth, sponsored TV ads that criticized President Obama’s health care policy, and another supporting the construction of the Keystone XL oil pipeline. Advocacy groups including the Sierra Club, the League of Conservation Voters and MoveOn.org all announced last week that they would suspend advertisement buys on Facebook in response to the Keystone XL ads.In response to the controversy FWD.us expressed its intent to pursue a broad agenda, which seemed confusing considering the freshly-launched group seemed primarily focused on immigration:“We recognize that not everyone will always agree with or be pleased by our strategy,” said Kate Hansen, a spokeswoman for FWD.us to The New York Times.“FWD.us remains totally committed to support a bipartisan policy agenda that will boot the knowledge economy, including comprehensive immigration reform,” she added. Branding issues aside, the group’s bipartisan agenda did not seem to sit well with Elon Musk, the South African entrepreneur and founder of SpaceX and co-founder of the Tesla electric car company, who withdrew his support from Fwd.Us last week. As one of the country’s most visible proponents of clean energy development, the lobby group’s connections to the antithesis of those efforts, the Keystone XL pipeline, likely made his departure all but inevitable.Along with Musk, the CEO of social networking company Yammer also withdrew his support last week, per a Reuters report on the fallout from the Fwd.Us conservative arm.According to an investigation conducted by The New York Times into the recent television advertisements, FWD.us would only say that it had spent “seven figures.”Jim Manley, the former chief spokesman for Senate majority leader Harry Reid, told the Times that Zuckerberg had the opportunity to make a correction from the teachable moment.“He is finding out it can be very, very problematic to get your company involved in hot-button social issues,” said Manley, now a director at the Washington lobbying and public relations firm Quinn Gillespie.“There is going to be blowback. You are going to pay a price for it,” added Manley.If Monday’s news are any indication, blowback for FWD.us may indeed not be over. CREDO, the mobile phone carrier with a progressive advocacy arm, has begun an online petition calling for Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, eBay CEO John Donahoe and even Zuckerberg himself to abandon the group.According to the new petition, tech executives that promote clean energy policies have no business supporting (even if indirectly) political ads that undermine those efforts. Interestingly, a spokesman for eBay CEO Donahoe, a founding member of FWD.us, responded on Monday that he was not affiliated with the group.Whether FWD.us can move forward while pursuing a “bipartisan” agenda while still counting on the support of Silicon Valley all-stars, many of whom are devoted to popular progressive causes, is very much unclear.News of the group’s untimely demise would seem equally premature, however, considering the lengths to which FWD.us has gone to secure powerful representation within Washington, DC. In addition to donor lists stacked with top-tier tech executives, it has also contracted the services of influential political consultants, including Joe Lockhart with the Glover Park Group, Republican consultant Jon Lerner, and Rob Jesmer, former executive director of the National Republican Senatorial Committee. … Read More
US Navy’s liquid hydrogen drone flies for record 48 hours
Keeping a drone in the air as long as possible is a chief task for a UAV operator, especially in surveillance. One approach is to use fuel that packs a lot of energy for its volume, like hydrocarbons; drones like the MQ-9 Reaper can fly for 30 hours without landing for refueling.But combustion engines that use hydrocarbons to keep an aircraft flying are noisy, hardly ideal for a spy drone. Ion Tiger, a surveillance drone developed by the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL), the Navy’s research branch, uses an electric engine, which is quieter and has a smaller heat signature compared to traditional drones.A shortcoming with electric motors, however, is that onboard batteries are much less efficient than chemicals in packing energy, so drones using them can usually only operate for a handful of hours. But NRL’s aircraft uses hydrogen fuel cells to produce electricity, which improves the endurance trade-off.”Liquid hydrogen coupled with fuel-cell technology has the potential to expand the utility of small unmanned systems by greatly increasing endurance while still affording all the benefits of electric propulsion,” NRL principal investigator Dr. Karen Swider-Lyons said in a press release this week.Ion Tiger set the record for fuel cell UAVs in 2009, when it flew for just over 26 hours using gaseous hydrogen stored in a tank at 5,000 psi. This was replaced in a mid-April test with a tank that stores cryogenic liquid fuel, which is about three times denser than the pressured gas used in the 2009 run.NRL says their approach has additional logistic benefits, since liquid hydrogen can be produced from water on site rather than having to transport solid fuels in bulk.Other methods of boosting drone endurance include recharging them in flight with land-based lasers and installing solar panels. A drone using the latter, the British QinetiQ Zephyr, currently holds the endurance record for drones. In 2010, it flew continuously for 14 days over the US Army’s Yuma Proving Ground in Arizona. … Read More
Tesla revises in-house financing plan for Model S buyers
Last month Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced a partnership with two major banks that would make it easier than ever for potential customers to secure financing when purchasing the company’s Model S electric car. The executive used some creative accounting principles to arrive at the conclusion that it would cost… … Read More
Fukushima decommissioning to last for up to 40 years – IAEA
An International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspection last week of the ruined Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Okuma has exposed certain bottlenecks in the plan to clean up the nuclear disaster. A statement by the IAEA released Monday criticized TEPCO’s progress on the cleanup.Experts of the IAEA Division of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology believe that a chain of equipment failures of the plant’s essential systems that took place over the last few weeks could become a serious problem in the future. The IAEA called on to TEPCO to maintain plant’s equipment properly to avoid potentially hazardous situations, especially disconnections of the cooling systems of the shutoff reactors and fuel storage pools.”As for the duration of the decommissioning project, it will be nearly impossible to ensure the time for decommissioning such a complex facility in less than 30 to 40 years as it is currently established in the roadmap,” said Juan Carlos Lentijo, the IAEA’s Director of the Division of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology (NEFW).The IAEA statement stressed that Japan must still develop technology and equipment to locate and remove melted uranium fuel, given the harsh conditions and strong radiation levels at the Fukushima facility.Fukushima saw a chain of incidents over the last five weeks, at least three of which were caused by rats that damaged wires in critically important electrical equipment. And on Monday, TEPCO personnel conducted an emergency shutdown of the cooling system of one of the fuel storage pools after two dead rats were found inside a transformer box.Lentijo, who headed the IAEA delegation to Fukushima, explained that water management is “probably the most challenging” task for the plant at the moment.Another issue was the multiple leakages of radioactive water from storage tanks and cooling systems, which are not only further contaminating the area around the plant, but may also be expelling radioactive pollution deep underground, where it could pollute underground water tables.Earlier, TEPCO reported that a steady inflow of groundwater in the basements of the damaged reactor buildings resulted in about 400 tons of contaminated water daily. With the Fukushima nuclear plant’s storage tanks already housing 280,000 tons of liquid radioactive waste, this means the amount of contaminated water would double within just a few years.Lentijo urged TEPCO to “implement additional countermeasures to regain confidence.” IAEA experts also noted that TEPCO needs to step up protections against “external hazards” similar to the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami that followed it, which devastated the plant on March11, 2011. “It is important to have a very good capability to identify as promptly as possible failures and to establish compensatory measures,” he said.“You have to adopt a very cautious position to ensure that you always are working on the safe side,” Lentijo added.A final report by the 12-member IAEA delegation to Fukushima is expected to be published in May. … Read More
