11/03 nhat ky: Động đất vùng Đông bắc NB và Thái Bình Dương (2/2)

11/03 nhat ky: Động đất vùng Đông bắc NB và Thái Bình Dương (1/2)

Đoàn tụ

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Sau khi chúng tôi được biết lãnh đạo NTT data quyết định để toà nhà công ty hoạt động suốt đêm, Trung Tâm Khẩn Cứu của NTT data lại đưa ra khuyến cáo là các nhân viên nên ở lại công ty là biện pháp an toàn nhất với các phương tiện điện, nước còn đầy đủ, và tòa nhà được xây dựng theo chuẩn mới đối phó an toàn với động đất lớn. Mặt khác qua báo chí, chúng tôi biết được là các cơ sở công cộng như trường Đại Học, Tiểu học, Cơ Sở Hành Chính mở cửa cho khách đến Tokyo mà không thể về nhà ở các tỉnh lân cận vì các phương tiện giao thông đã bị tê liệt.

Tôi đã giác ngộ là hôm nay chắc phải qua đêm tại văn phòng công ty. Tôi đã mail về cho nhà tôi báo là tôi sẻ ngũ lại công ty đêm nay.

Có nhiều lý do để tôi quyết định như vậy. Qua báo chí mạng, twiter v.v... tôi được biết là người ta tụ tập ở các giao điểm quan trọng như ga Tokyo, Shibuya (khu của giới trẻ như Time Square của Newyork), Shinujuku, Nagata-cho (khu trung tâm chính trị, kinh tế), Ueno v.v.. rất đông. Sau đấy thì được biết một số đường không phải JR (đường sắt của nhà nước ngày xưa; JR: Japan Railway) đã tìm cách phục hồi và đưa vào hoạt động như đường xe điện ngầm Toei, rồi các đường xe điện ngầm khác như Ginza line, Yurakucho line, Hibiya line, Hanzomon line, rồi hệ thống đường sắt của tập đoàn Tokyu, Seibu. Khoảng 9 giờ tối hơn, tôi rất phân vân vì tôi tìm được đường tôi có thể về, nhưng mà không biết sẻ phải chen lấn như thế nào tại các ga chính, giao điểm của các ngã đường. Cả chục triệu người đang dồn lại từ 3 giờ chiều, người ta đã tụ tập tại các điểm đó từ lâu, minh đến rồi phải đợi đến bao giờ mới đên phiên mình mua được vé, lên được tàu, nhà tôi thì xa công ty quá, khoảng cách giưac Tokyo và Yokohama hơn 50 cây số. Tôi nghĩ là ngủ tạm lại đêm nay sáng mai về có lẽ là khoẻ hơn, an toàn hơn v.v...

12/03 The Happynomics of Life

March 12, 2011
By ROGER COHEN
London

The Brits don’t go in much for happiness. Stiff upper lip is more the thing, and a good laugh if warranted. Trying to be happy just seems like piffle to a practical people. Undeterred, Prime Minister David Cameron has decided to create a national happiness index providing quarterly measures of how folks feel.

His foray into “happynomics” has prompted a deluge of criticism — “woolly-headed distraction” was a mild commentary — at a time when Brits face a year of cuts in everything from public-sector jobs to child benefits. The consensus seems to be that Cameron is going touchy-feely because in reality he’s wielding an ax.

That may be so. But the case for trying to measure the happiness of a society, rather than its growth and productivity alone, has become compelling. When Western industrialized societies started measuring gross domestic product, the issue for many was survival. Now most people have enough — or far more than enough by the standards of human history — but the question remains: “What’s going on inside their heads?”

Little that’s good, it seems. Stress has become the byword for a spreading anxiety. This anxiety’s personal, about jobs and money and health, but also general: that we can’t go on like this, running only to stand still, making things faster and faster, consuming more and more food (with consequent pressures on prices); that somehow a world of more than seven billion people is going to have to “downshift” to make it, revise its criteria of what constitutes well-being.

Just what goes into well-being is confounding. Many of the variables — like love and friendship and family relations — are hard to pin down. But British research has suggested that money itself does not confer happiness, although wealthier people tend to be happier; that employment is critical to self-esteem; that women tend to be happier than men; and that people need something beyond the material for fulfillment.

Starting next month, the government will pose the following questions and ask people to respond on a scale of zero to 10: How happy did you feel yesterday? How anxious did you feel yesterday? How satisfied are you with your life nowadays? To what extent do you feel the things you do in your life are worthwhile?

Scarcely extraordinary, but Andrew Oswald, a happiness economics expert at the University of Warwick, suggested the questions were a good start, although he would have added, “How well have you been sleeping?” — an important mental health indicator — and “How pressurized do you feel your time is?”

The important thing, he argues, it to shift “from the concept of financial prosperity to the idea of emotional prosperity.” Perhaps that’s the 21st-century indicator we need: gross emotional prosperity, or G.E.P.

The Office for National Statistics, which will do the survey, has been conducting an online debate. Answers suggest Brits link happiness to bird song, knowing themselves, the environment, responsible pet ownership, contributing to society, going out into the wild and reading Socrates.

Clearly, happynomics is no precise science, and how the happiness index will link to policy remains to be seen. But the idea is to put value on things that don’t have price tags. Open spaces, clear air, security, release from pressure — these are things of growing importance and scarcity. Then the question becomes: How do you promote them while at the same time creating the jobs needed in all Western societies? Growth is of course a large part of the answer, but it can’t be all the answer any longer.

I was thinking about some recent moments of happiness in my own life. One came walking across Regent’s Park, my skin tingling at the first brush of spring. Another came kissing my daughter goodnight as she slept and seeing how peaceful she was. A third came in Cairo seeing the powerful dignity of the Egyptian people coalescing to bring peaceful change.

These moments were linked to nature, to finding time, to feeling the transcendent power of the human spirit. Emotional prosperity is not the next e-mail in a relentless life.

So I’m ready to give Cameron the benefit of the doubt and even give a wary nod to his related “Big Society” project, also the source of much guffawing. The essence of this idea is that people can give more to one another — British A.T.M.s, for example, would automatically give customers an option of donating to charity. It’s a tough sell in a grim economy, but it captures a need among dislocated people to connect more.

That’s also true in the United States. Liberty is an inalienable right of Americans, along with the “pursuit of happiness.” Note the distinction here, evidence of the wisdom of the founding fathers. The Declaration of Independence guarantees freedom but, when it comes to happiness, only the quest for it is underwritten. Still, perhaps it’s time to measure just how that quest is going.

11/03 Japan’s Strict Building Codes Saved Lives

Kyodo News, via Associated Press
A bus stop was crushed by part of a wall that had fallen from a nearby building in the city of Sendai, where a tsunami roared over embankments.

March 11, 2011
By JAMES GLANZ and NORIMITSU ONISHI

Hidden inside the skeletons of high-rise towers, extra steel bracing, giant rubber pads and embedded hydraulic shock absorbers make modern Japanese buildings among the sturdiest in the world during a major earthquake. And all along the Japanese coast, tsunami warning signs, towering seawalls and well-marked escape routes offer some protection from walls of water.

These precautions, along with earthquake and tsunami drills that are routine for every Japanese citizen, show why Japan is the best-prepared country in the world for the twin disasters of earthquake and tsunami — practices that undoubtedly saved lives, though the final death toll is unknown.

In Japan, where earthquakes are far more common than they are in the United States, the building codes have long been much more stringent on specific matters like how much a building may sway during a quake.

After the Kobe earthquake in 1995, which killed about 6,000 people and injured 26,000, Japan also put enormous resources into new research on protecting structures, as well as retrofitting the country’s older and more vulnerable structures. Japan has spent billions of dollars developing the most advanced technology against earthquakes and tsunamis.

Japan has gone much further than the United States in outfitting new buildings with advanced devices called base isolation pads and energy dissipation units to dampen the ground’s shaking during an earthquake.

The isolation devices are essentially giant rubber-and-steel pads that are installed at the very bottom of the excavation for a building, which then simply sits on top of the pads. The dissipation units are built into a building’s structural skeleton. They are hydraulic cylinders that elongate and contract as the building sways, sapping the motion of energy.

Of course, nothing is entirely foolproof. Structural engineers monitoring the events from a distance cautioned that the death toll was likely to rise as more information became available. Dr. Jack Moehle, a structural engineer at the University of California, Berkeley, said that video of the disaster seemed to show that some older buildings had indeed collapsed.

The country that gave the world the word tsunami, especially in the 1980s and 1990s, built concrete seawalls in many communities, some as high as 40 feet, which amounted to its first line of defense against the water. In some coastal towns, in the event of an earthquake, networks of sensors are set up to set off alarms in individual residences and automatically shut down floodgates to prevent waves from surging upriver.

Critics of the seawalls say they are eyesores and bad for the environment. The seawalls, they say, can instill a false sense of security among coastal residents and discourage them from participating in regular evacuation drills. Moreover, by literally cutting residents’ visibility of the ocean, the seawalls reduce their ability to understand the sea by observing wave patterns, critics say.

Waves from Friday’s tsunami spilled over some seawalls in the affected areas. “The tsunami roared over embankments in Sendai city, washing cars, houses and farm equipment inland before reversing directions and carrying them out to sea,” according to a statement by a Japanese engineer, Kit Miyamoto, circulated by the American Society of Civil Engineers. “Flames shot from some of the houses, probably because of burst gas pipes.”

But Japan’s “massive public education program” could in the end have saved the most lives, said Rich Eisner, a retired tsunami preparedness expert who was attending a conference on the topic at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg, Md., on Friday.

In one town, Ofunato, which was struck by a major tsunami in 1960, dozens of signs in Japanese and English mark escape routes, and emergency sirens are tested three times a day, Mr. Eisner said.

Initial reports from Ofunato on Friday suggested that hundreds of homes had been swept away; the death toll was not yet known. But Matthew Francis of URS Corporation and a member of the civil engineering society’s tsunami subcommittee, said that education may have been the critical factor.

“For a trained population, a matter of 5 or 10 minutes is all you may need to get to high ground,” Mr. Francis said.

That would be in contrast to the much less experienced Southeast Asians, many of whom died in the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami because they lingered near the coast. Reports in the Japanese news media indicate that people originally listed as missing in remote areas have been turning up in schools and community centers, suggesting that tsunami education and evacuation drills were indeed effective.

Unlike Haiti, where shoddy construction vastly increased the death toll last year, or China, where failure to follow construction codes worsened the death toll in the devastating 2008 Sichuan earthquake, Japan enforces some of the world’s most stringent building codes. Japanese buildings tend to be much stiffer and stouter than similar structures in earthquake-prone areas in California as well, said Mr. Moehle, the Berkeley engineer: Japan’s building code allows for roughly half as much sway back and forth at the top of a high rise during a major quake.

The difference, Mr. Moehle said, comes about because the United States standard is focused on preventing collapse, while in Japan — with many more earthquakes — the goal is to prevent any major damage to the buildings because of the swaying.

New apartment and office developments in Japan flaunt their seismic resistance as a marketing technique, a fact that has accelerated the use of the latest technologies, said Ronald O. Hamburger, a structural engineer in the civil engineering society and Simpson Gumpertz & Heger, a San Francisco engineering firm.

“You can increase the rents by providing a sort of warranty — ‘If you locate here you’ll be safe,’ ” Mr. Hamburger said.

Although many older buildings in Japan have been retrofitted with new bracing since the Kobe quake, there are many rural residences of older construction that are made of very light wood that would be highly vulnerable to damage. The fate of many of those residences is still unknown.

Mr. Miyamoto, the Japanese engineer, described a nation in chaos as the quake also damaged or disabled many elements of the transportation system. He said that he and his family were on a train near the Ikebukuro station when the earthquake struck. Writing at 1:30 a.m., he said that “we are still not far from where the train stopped.”

“Japan Railway actually closed down the stations and sent out all commuters into the cold night,” he said. “They announced that they are concerned about structural safety. Continuous aftershocks make me feel like car sickness as my family and I walk on the train tracks.”


James Glanz reported from New York, and Norimitsu Onishi from Jakarta, Indonesia.

11/03 Major strong quakes worldwide since 1900

Xinhua, March 11, 2011

An earthquake measuring 8.6 on the Richter scale jolted off the east coast of Japan's main Honshu island Friday, according to the China Earthquake Network Center.

The following is a chronology of major strong quakes around the world since 1900:

On Jan. 31, 1906, an 8.8-magnitude quake struck the coasts of Ecuador and Colombia, killing nearly 1,000 people.

On May 21, 1960, a 9.5-magnitude earthquake, which was the strongest after quakes were first recorded in 1900, rocked Chile and killed 1,655 people.

On March 27, 1964, Alaska of the United States was hit by an 8.4-magnitude quake, which triggered a tsunami and caused casualties and damage.

On Dec. 26, 2004, an 8.9-magnitude earthquake occurred in the sea off Sumatera Island of Indonesia and led to a severe tsunami, killing over 220,000 in Indonesia and nearby countries.

On March 28, 2005, an 8.5-magnitude quake took place in the sea off Indonesia's Sumatera Island, causing heavy casualties and damage.

On May 12, 2008, an 8.0-magnitude earthquake hit southwestern China's Wenchuan county, killing nearly 70,000 and leaving some 18,000 missing.

On Feb. 27, 2010, an 8.8-magnitude earthquake struck southern Chile, killing at least 300 and triggering tsunamis as well as communications and power breakup in the region.

05/03 How Professional Women Succeed in Meeting Great Guys

Last Updated: 3/05/2011 22:22 PST

We often hear complaints from professional single women that their online dating efforts have just not been successful. Let’s take a look at that …

Meeting great guys is a challenge for most single women, and when you’re putting in long hours to get ahead in your profession or running a business, the challenge grows even greater. So, it’s little wonder that professional women like the concept of online dating --they completely “get” time management, and because online dating provides a great way to separate the wheat from the chaff, it theoretically offers the best return on time invested.

But, this is not the experience of many professional women. Why is that? Many experts believe the fault lies in both the professional woman’s approach to online dating and the dating sites she selects.

Do you know what you want? Some professional women are looking for a guy who’s also financially successful; they feel it’s too difficult to establish a great long-term relationship with someone who can’t afford to do the things they like or is uncomfortable moving in the same upscale circles. Other professional women are totally fine with a down-to-earth guy, and despite being used to fine dining and luxury vacations, they’re perfectly happy to kick back with pizza and a movie, and feel they can handle any income disparity.

Either approach can work, just as long as you’re clear as to what you want and follow through accordingly. Things are bound to turn out badly if you enter into a relationship with someone not as driven and successful as you are, if that’s really important to you.

Do you approach potential dates as though they were business contracts? Some women focused on a career approach dating as if it were a business problem. It’s not. Dating is about finding someone you can build an emotional relationship with, and ultimately, it’s about love. You may be in the habit of calling the shots during the day, but when it comes to dating, give the guy a chance to court or even romance you. Unplug. Being strong doesn’t mean you have to be in charge all the time.

Are you using the wrong dating service? Dozens of dating sites out there cater to different types of people with different goals. Many are overrun by young singles looking for casual relationships. People on these sites have a tendency to play games and misrepresent themselves.

If your goal is to meet someone you can form a long-term relationship with, then compatibility is key. Why waste time going through the motions with people who ultimately have different goals, psychological make-up, and likes and dislikes?

So, you might as well cut to the chase and select an online dating service that’s efficient and effective in matching you with people you have the greatest chance of succeeding with.

And, the proven leader in this approach? eHarmony, whose scientific Compatibility Matching System is calibrated to connect you with your most compatible partners. Researchers at eHarmony studied successful married couples and discovered the characteristics that led to the couples' overall happiness. Using this data, they created their relationship questionnaire, an in-depth survey that analyzes a person's most important characteristics based on 29 Dimensions of Compatibility covering essentials like beliefs, values, temperament, curiosity, and intellect.

Once you’ve completed this survey, eHarmony's Compatibility Matching System then performs a comprehensive search and matches you with like-minded people who share your most important criteria and characteristics. It's far easier to relate to someone if you don't have to negotiate essential differences to begin with. And, the system clearly works, because according to Harris Interactive Research, on average, 236 eHarmony members marry every day!

Take the relationship questionnaire for yourself, and see what a difference eHarmony can make in your life. With millions of members in the mix, love may literally be around the corner.


This article sponsored by eHarmony Copyright Howlifeworks.com 2011

05/03 To Save Big, Nix the Lunch Breaks with Co-Workers

Last Updated: 3/05/2011 22:19 PST

You probably know the scenario. The office clock says noon and the guys and gals decide where to go for lunch. In many towns, the drive time to a restaurant eats up most of the lunch hour, not to mention the gas.

It's hard to find lunch for less than ten bucks plus tip. You gobble down your food, share a few laughs with your co-workers and rush back to the office wishing you had time for a nap.

As you walk to your desk, you notice this guy putting away his brown bag. He appears calm, happy and ready to get back to work, some of which he did while eating his lunch. He's thinking how delicious it was, how much money he saved and the hassle avoided.

Is it worth it to prepare and bring your lunch to work each day? Well, looking at some basic examples let's say the cost to fix your own lunch costs about $3 a day. It's probably much cheaper.

That's $15 for a five day week. Eating out at approximately $10 a day comes to $50 for the week. You saved at least $35 not including drive time and gas. That's more than $1,800 a year saved. Interested?

Here are some brown bag tips. Prepare it the night before so you're not rushed in the morning. Keep it simple but be creative and think healthy. Sandwiches on wholesome bread are fine but include nuts, fruit or yogurt. Also, put in a little treat for yourself that you can look forward to, perhaps a health bar or your favorite cookie.

Plan ahead and buy in bulk with lunches in mind. Buy large chips and put them in smaller plastic bags instead of buying small individual bags. Don't pay more for convenience.

Cook a big dinner and save some for lunch the next day or the entire week. If it's home cooked you know it's good, healthy and cleaner. Put it in individual containers that night so you can grab and go in the morning.

If you're running late there's nothing wrong with occasionally taking a can of soup or vegetable chili. Most offices have ovens or microwaves you can use for heating.

Bring your drink too. You can probably get a 12-pack of soda for $2.99 and that comes to about 25 cents a can. Compare that with expensive vending machine drinks or coffee and you've saved even more.

It's up to you of course, but you can continue to work while you eat, catch up on your emails or other relaxing reading. It just might impress the boss and if you have to take off early, you don't feel as guilty. Don't be surprised if others ask you for tips on brown bagging.

There's a lot to be said for brown bagging your lunch. You eat better, save time, money and you're more productive. Now all you have to do is figure out where to invest all that money you saved.

05/03 Pregnant or a New Mom? New Site Helps With Tips, Tools & Tons of Freebies

Last Updated: 3/05/2011 22:17 PST

If you’re currently expecting, working on it, or already have a bundle of joy on your hands, life can be a bit overwhelming. The experience can be both exhilarating and frightening at the same time, and the emotional, financial, and physical strains it can have on you and your family can be tremendous.

You want everything to be perfect and fortunately there is no shortage of help available. For instance, if you Google the word “pregnancy” you’ll get an astounding 431 million hits. So, for many women, the problem is actually not a shortage of information, but rather information overload.

Dozens of companies have developed comprehensive websites that seek to provide information on every conceivable topic related to pregnancy, childbirth, and the raising of your baby. So, even when it comes to finding that ideal single source, your choices can be confusing.

If you’re looking for one website that can meet all of your needs, hands-down, our recommendation is a site called PlanningFamily.com. This free website has done a remarkable job of organizing and presenting everything you could conceivably need as you go through this exhilarating time in your life.

When you join the site--membership is free--you’ll get a wealth of free baby stuff, interactive tools, expert articles and videos, printable product coupons, and week-by-week development updates.

The interactive tools are fun, easy, and remarkably helpful. For information specific to your week of pregnancy, check their Pregnancy Week-by-Week guide. Are you still looking for the perfect baby name? Use their Baby Name Finder to help you with your search.

The first couple months with your new arrival are a time of transition for you, your partner, and of course, your baby. To get straightforward answers to any conceivable question, check out their articles and videos for help. Do you need assistance getting organized? Use their printable checklists to help you get there. Are you curious how other new mothers are faring? Take a poll or two to find out.

But, answers to your questions and support are only part of what you get at PlanningFamily.com. A large part of their mission is to save you and your family a ton of money. They do this by working with some of the best brands in the industry to bring their members huge discounts, coupons for free products, and free samples. From diapers, to formula, to magazines, women (and their husbands) are amazed by just how much merchandise they get for free or at huge discounts.

Little wonder then that PlanningFamily.com has become the online friend and partner for so many women who want to be able to focus on the joy of the experience with as little stress or confusion as possible.

To sign up for your your free membership, click here.


This article sponsored by Planning Family Copyright Howlifeworks.com 2011

05/03 The Health Benefits of Red Wine

Last Updated: 3/05/2011 22:14 PST

Can wine really improve our health and increase longevity? Scientists are beginning to say "Yes!" Supposing that the theory is true -- which wines give us the most bang for the buck?

Researchers have found that red wines rich in flavonoids are best for our health. Flavonoids are best known for their antioxidant qualities and help the body resist such maladies as allergens, viruses and carcinogens.

Red wines also contain anxioxidants, which help the body resist cancer and cardiovascular disease. Cabernet Sauvignon, Petit Syrah and Pinot Noir contain the highest concentrations of antioxidants and flavonoids.

Other red wines such as Merlots and red zinfandels contain fewer flavonoids, but more than most white wines. So, the best bet for drinking wine for our health is to stick to the dryer red wines. Just because wine contains components that are central to good health doesn't give us a free rein to get plastered every night. Don't overdo it -- but adding a glass of wine to your daily diet can definitely make a difference to our health.

Paracelsus, the noted 16th-century Swiss physician wrote, "Wine is a food, a medicine and a poison - it's just a question of dose." As with almost any food or drink, wine consumed in large doses can be a detriment to our health.

Most health officials agree that one or two four-ounce glasses of wine per day can be beneficial to men, while women should limit their consumption to one four ounce serving per day.

Cardiovascular expert, Professor Roger Corder, has spent years studying the evidence of health benefits from red wine. In his new book, "The Wine Diet," he says he is convinced that most of us should include red wine in our every day lifestyle.

Corder discovered what he eventually labeled the "French Paradox." Specifically, he wondered why the French have a lower rate of heart disease despite the fact that their diet was extremely rich in fats. He concentrated his research on the southwest portion of France, where life expectancy seemed to be highest.

Professor Corder discovered that the region produces very tannic local wines, which contain the highest procyanidin (antioxidant) content of any wines, worldwide. This led him to further research on the amazing medical benefits of red wine.

While wine may not be man's ultimate elixir or fountain of youth, it certainly behooves us to consider adding a glass of wine or two to our daily diet - and raise a "toast" to our continued good health.

03/01 How to Increase Collagen by up to 230% in Just 9 Days

Last Updated: 3/01/2011 10:25 PST

While scientists have made revolutionary advances in anti-aging skincare technologies, from Botox® and filler injections to chemical peels and laser treatments, in a remote region of the world, a local community handpicks a rare and precious flower discovered by their people centuries ago, as the key to preserving one’s youthful beauty.

Ambiaty, or “flower of youth” as they reverently call it, is found only in the rainforests of Madagascar, a small island off the African coast. Recent clinical studies have shown that this long-cherished flower can increase natural collagen production by up to 230 percent in just nine days. It’s what scientists suggest may be nature’s secret to younger-looking skin, and it’s found exclusively in one skincare line.

The First Organic Skincare Line to Target Deep Wrinkles

RAWSkincare is a 100 percent natural skincare line formulated with certified organic ingredients and pure active botanicals with clinically proven anti-aging results.

It contains the highest, purest concentration of Ambiaty extract, which has been confirmed through clinical research to have amazing effects on skin firmness and elasticity, due to its ability to work on multiple levels of the skin. Ambiaty reinforces the connection between the epidermis and the dermis, strengthening the skin’s collagen network and binding the layers together for firmer, younger-looking skin.

Aside from its proven ability to boost natural collagen production, Ambiaty extract has also been shown to:

•Visibly improve skin elasticity within just days;
•Strengthen and protect skin’s extra-cellular matrix and collagen network; and
•Provide powerful antioxidant properties to help prevent lines and wrinkles.
RAWSkincare’s Clinically Proven Results

Because of Ambiaty’s astonishing ability to mimic the effects of filler injections offered in today’s cosmetic clinics, RAW Natural Beauty, the company behind RAWSkincare, developed products that combined Ambiaty extract with other age-fighting botanicals for optimal anti-aging results.

Raw Ambiaty Concentrated Serum is clinically proven (in a 6-week study) to boost skin’s radiance and smooth the appearance of lines and wrinkles for a healthier, more youthful complexion. Check out the results from the study:

Ambiaty Concentrated Serum

•94 percent of users saw improved skin texture and smoothness
•91 percent saw a reduction in the appearance of lines and wrinkles, and improved firmness and hydration.
So, if you’ve ever thought of natural and organic products as safer, yet less effective alternatives to products that use synthetic chemicals, RAWSkincare may make you rethink that. And right now, RAWSkincare is being offered at a highly discounted rate only on DermStore.com, the #1 online destination for skin care and beauty.

Click here to try it for yourself.


This article sponsored by Derm Store Copyright Howlifeworks.com 2011

12/03 Iraqi Women Feel Shunted Despite Election Quota

March 12, 2011
By MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT and YASIR GHAZI

BAGHDAD — Iraqi women hoped that last year’s election would cement a larger role for them in the government. But they have less political influence today than at any time since the American invasion.

No women took part in the protracted negotiations to reach a compromise government. And despite holding a quarter of the seats in Parliament, only one woman runs a ministry: women’s affairs, a largely ceremonial department with a tiny budget and few employees.

In the previous government from 2006 to 2010, four women led ministries, and in the government from 2005 to 2006, six did, including the influential ones governing public works, refugees and communications.

“I consider it a disaster,” said Ashwaq Abbas, a female member of Parliament from the Kurdish Alliance bloc. “Democracy should also include women, and the rights of women should be developed as the democracy here develops. But what’s actually happened is that the rights of women have gotten worse over time.”

Shortly after Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki managed to retain his post in December, he pledged to appoint women as ministers.

On the day he announced several members of his cabinet, one lawmaker declined to accept an appointment to be the minister of women’s affairs because she was outraged that so few women held such positions. In her place, Mr. Maliki appointed a man on an interim basis and eventually appointed a woman.

Women have long struggled for rights in the Arab world, but Iraq’s Constitution requires that a quarter of the members of Parliament be women. (Roughly 17 percent of the members of the United States Congress are women.)

Whether the quota has actually advanced the causes of women or served as window dressing remains unclear six years after Iraq ratified its Constitution. But the inability of Iraqi women to increase their influence in Parliament has underscored wider fears that women could lose standing in other facets of life, too, amid an overall drift toward more religious conservatism.

The biggest barriers for women in Parliament here are the leaders of the four blocs that eventually backed Mr. Maliki as prime minister. Each is made up of several political parties that have leaders who negotiated ministry positions as part of their agreements to join the governing coalition.

“We ended up with a power-sharing government that has all these party leaders rushing in to get their share of the pie, and the leaders are nearly all men,” said Reidar Visser, a senior research fellow at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs and the author of “A Responsible End? The United States and the Iraqi Transition, 2005-2010.”

“As part of the agreements to form the government, party leaders tend to want ministries in exchange for joining the coalition, and there are so many parties in the coalition and only so many posts,” he said.

Women have also struggled in Parliament because few have their own power bases. Only 5 of the 86 female lawmakers actually got enough votes to win seats without the quota. The remaining 81 were put there by party leaders because of the Constitution’s mandate.

“Many of those women who were chosen as part of the political parties were chosen because they were relatives of members of the party,” said Safia Taleb al-Souhail, a member of Parliament who is part of the State of Law bloc, which Mr. Maliki leads.

“The parties didn’t really think to have women inside the party itself, and just chose many of the women, like, two weeks before the election,” Ms. Souhail said. “This is what I meant exactly: there are not a lot of serious politicians.”

She said that men from her own bloc often excluded her and other women from closed meetings to discuss strategy.

Iraq was once at the forefront of women’s rights. In the 1950s, it became the first Arab country to have a female minister and to have a law that gave women the ability to ask for divorces.

But under Saddam Hussein, women had no role in the government, and the resistance movements were dominated by men. After he was ousted in 2003, women successfully lobbied the American administrator in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer III, to set up the constitutional requirement that a quarter of Parliament’s members be women.

There are demographic pressures in play, too. Today, women are believed to make up a disproportionate percentage of the Iraqi population, at least in part because so many men have died in wars in the past three decades. Iraq has not conducted a census since 1997, but the country’s electoral commission estimates that women cast 55 percent to 62 percent of the votes in the election last March.

“There are widows and women from divorce who are unable to support themselves, and there is a need for new laws to protect them, and they have not been addressed,” said Nahida al-Daeni, a woman in the Iraqiya bloc. “It will be difficult for men to deal with this because women know best what women suffer from.”

Several women, including Ms. Souhail, would like to extend the 25 percent quota to the ministries’ leadership, but analysts agree the chances of that are almost nil.

Female politicians are divided, as well, with some who are more Westernized and others who are more rooted in Islamic traditions. In fact, several women in Parliament said that they were content just being part of the government, and that the women wanting ministerial positions were just complaining to gain attention.

“The Iraqi women need to be more qualified so they can’t just impose themselves on a position,” said Emman Galal, a member of Parliament who wears the black abaya and represents the Sadrist faction, a Shiite political group loyal to the anti-American cleric Moktada al-Sadr.

Adelah Homod, a lawmaker from the State of Law bloc who wears a head covering, said that women in Parliament should not complain about their lack of power because few of them had the necessary experience to be part of the government.

Ms. Souhail rejected that notion, saying she and many other women had played significant roles in lobbying the American government during its occupation of Iraq.

“We have to start somewhere as a society, and it’s unfortunate that we are starting here,” Ms. Souhail said. “We have much more to go.”



Omar al-Jawoshy and Duraid Adnan contributed reporting.

13/03 WP Photo, Massive rescue, cleanup efforts underway in Japan

(pls click the title of this note. thanks)

One day after the earthquake and tsunami, entire towns in Japan are impossible to reach. But search-and-rescue teams are fanning out in what will be a lengthy and complex endeavor.

March 13, 2011

Rescue workers carefully search for victims in the rubble in Rikuzentakata, which according to one TV reporter was almost completely wiped out by the tsunami.

Toru Hanai / Reuters

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05/03 A New Solution That Stops Snoring and Lets You Sleep

Last Updated: 3/05/2011 21:55 PST
If you’re like most Americans you probably don’t get eight hours sleep each night.

But, if you also constantly feel exhausted, experience headaches for no obvious reason or have high blood pressure, you could have a more serious problem.

That’s because these can all be the result of snoring—which is, in turn, the most common symptom of a potentially serious health problem—obstructive sleep apnea (OSA).

While most people think of snoring as a minor annoyance, research shows it can be hazardous to your health. That’s because for over 18 million Americans it’s related to obstructive sleep apnea (OSA). People who suffer from OSA repeatedly and unknowingly stop breathing during the night due to a complete or partial obstruction of their airway. It occurs when the jaw, throat, and tongue muscles relax, blocking the airway used to breathe. The resulting lack of oxygen can last for a minute or longer, and occur hundreds of times each night.

Thankfully, most people wake when a complete or partial obstruction occurs, but it can leave you feeling completely exhausted. OSA has also been linked to a host of health problems including:

•Acid reflux
•Frequent nighttime urination
•Memory loss
•Stroke
•Depression
•Diabetes
•Heart attack
People over 35 are at higher risk.

OSA can be expensive to diagnosis and treat, and is not always covered by insurance. A sleep clinic will require an overnight visit (up to $5,000). Doctors then analyze the data and prescribe one of several treatments. These may require you to wear uncomfortable CPAP devices that force air through your nose and mouth while you sleep to keep your airways open, and may even include painful surgery.

Fortunately, there is now a far less costly, uncomfortable, and invasive treatment option available. A recent case study published by Eastern Virginia Medical School's Division of Sleep Medicine in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine concludes that wearing a simple chinstrap while you sleep can be an effective treatment for OSA.

The chin strap, which is now available from a company called MySnoringSolution, works by supporting the lower jaw and tongue, preventing obstruction of the airway. It’s a made from a high-tech, lightweight, and super-comfortable material. Thousands of people have used the MySnoringSolution chinstrap to help relieve their snoring symptoms, and they report better sleeping, and better health overall because of it.

An effective snoring solution for just $119

The “My Snoring Solution” Chinstrap is available exclusively from the company’s website which is currently offering a limited time “2 for 1” offer. The product also comes with a 100 percent satisfaction guarantee.

If you want to stop snoring once and for all, without expensive CPAP devices or other intrusive devices, this may be the solution you’ve been waiting for. The free additional strap is great for travel or as a gift for a fellow sufferer.

Click here to learn more about this special $119 offer from MySnoringSolutions.


The statements and claims made about this product have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration (U.S.). This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent disease.

11/03 Cocktails at M. Wells

March 11, 2011, 10:41 am
By ROBERT SIMONSON
Jackson Couse

M. Wells, the diner in Long Island City, Queens, serving Québécois culinary inventions, will begin pouring cocktails with dinner on March 15, with a separate brunch cocktail menu to follow.

The drinks will be created by Zachary Gelnaw-Rubin, a young bartender at the nearby Dutch Kills.

Mr. Gelnaw-Rubin worked closely with the chef Hugue Dufour in devising the program.

“We will be striving to develop drinks that follow suit with the style of the restaurant’s food menu,” he said, “new twists on old favorites, big, bold flavors, but subtle in its own way, seriously artful, but with a touch of camp and humor. The space is an old diner, and chef wants the diner spirit to run through all his offerings, so don’t be surprised to find bright red maraschino cherries in your cocktails.”

Among the brunch drinks, which will start at $10, are the Take 3, a Cynar-based highball with lemon juice, St. Germain and soda which Mr. Gelnaw-Rubin said was designed to settle the stomach and kill hangovers. The Red Rooster spices up tequila blanco, lime juice, and raspberry syrup with sriracha hot sauce. The More Better Mimosa includes a choice of spirit, grapefuit juice, Campari, crème de cassis and Cava. And the Slapshot — which was named by Mr. Dufour, who is a big hockey fan — is a highball made with Canadian Club, grapefruit juice, lemon juice, maraschino liqueur, Angostura bitters and soda, garnished with the aforementioned neon-red cherry.

Among the dinner cocktails will be the J.F.K. Harris (white rum, lemon juice, sugar, mint, served on the rocks with a float of red wine), Sans Frontieres (tequila reposado, Sortilège — a Canadian maple liqueur — and orange bitters), and M. Gibson, a variation on a Gibson, the details of which are still being worked out.

Perhaps most interesting creation is the R.I.P. Topsy, which Mr. Gelnaw-Rubin says is a spin on the Electric Current Fizz, a Depression-era concoction consisting of a silver gin fizz (basically a gin fizz made with egg white) in which the raw yolk is served on the side seasoned with salt, pepper and vinegar.

“Modern Electric Current Fizzes often utilize hot sauce and Worcestershire,” Mr. Gelnaw-Rubin said. “For the R.I.P. Topsy, chef DuFour will be whipping up a special sauce for the raw yolk, and there will be a twist on the fizz as well.”

The drink is named after a Coney Island elephant that, deemed dangerous to the public, was infamously electrocuted in 1903.

11/03 NYT, What We’re Reading

March 11, 2011, 11:13 am What We’re Reading
By THE NEW YORK TIMES

A collection of links by the reporters and editors of The Times’s Dining section.

YouTube: Jacques Pepin on how to make omelets. Even if you know how to make an omelet, it’s worth a gander. — Sam Sifton

Deutsche Welle: What appears to be Europe’s first all-vegan supermarket has opened in Dortmund, Germany. — Jeff Gordinier

Los Angeles Times: The Altadena urban-homesteading movement keeps extending roots in its rich alluvial soil. Milking goats. Fruit-swapping. Olive pickling. A farmers’ market stocked with urban-raised provender. Rampant hyper-localism, dude. — Glenn Collins

Vanity Fair: The delicate British art of restaurant evisceration, in Vanity Fair this month. (Never mind that the critic had all the wrong dishes.) — Julia Moskin

The Maremma Guide: Handy glossary of choice Italian wine terms. — Eric Asimov

The Guardian: Will the increase in foraging end up damaging the environment and the sustainability of wild foods? — Nick Fox

Winfield Daily Courier: Creekstone Farms confirms a seven-ton recall of its ground beef. They say they are “working closely” with customers to retrieve the tainted meat. — Sam Sifton

Farmington Daily Times: A woman in New Mexico sues a Chili’s restaurant after taking a bite of mashed potatoes and reportedly having her tongue stabbed by a needle. — Jeff Gordinier

Chicago Tribune: A food lover’s guide to St. Patrick’s Day.
— Samantha Storey
Boston Phoenix: “Lamb with mascarpone. Lamb with blood oranges and dates. Lamb hot dogs. Lamb potato chips. Lamb-neck ravioli. Lamb with hominy. Lamb with pistachio vinaigrette. Lamb with kimchi,” the writer Eugenia Williamson wrote, as she slipped into mondo-carnivore mode at an event called Lamb Jam. — Jeff Gordinier

Time Out New York: Restaurants where you can recreate the album cover of “Beggars Banquet” by tearing into an epic, family-style feast. — Jeff Gordinier

Los Angeles Times: The Los Angeles chefs Ludo Lefebvre and Michael Voltaggio react to a New York Times profile of Sam Talbot, with whom they were linked in a paragraph about “a new breed of celebrity chefs who have coasted into culinary fame.” — Sam Sifton

Baltimore Sun: Agents move against charter boats taking bass from federal waters off Virginia Beach, seizing phones and navigation equipment. (If they do that in the New York Bight, they’ll have a big, big pile of phones and navigation equipment.) — Sam Sifton

Wine Virtuosity: Niklas Jorgensen leads a tour through the indigenous grapes of Sicily. — Eric Asimov

James Beard Foundation (pdf): The annual America’s Classics, including Le Veau d’Or, are announced. –Nick Fox

The Wall Street Journal: The library of the late Alan Davidson, the creator of the Oxford Symposium on Food & Cookery and the “Oxford Companion to Food,” is being auctioned. He had about 4,000 food-related
books. –Nick Fox

Village Voice: They pick the 10 best in-store dining rooms. — Nick Fox

Wired: More on the miracle berry from the chef Homaro Cantu at the 2011 TED conference. He claims he’ll have a full “miracle berry” menu at his upcoming Chicago restaurant. — Julia Moskin

NYT Wine Club

Our Wine Club provides wines from the best regions of the world - direct from family run, boutique wineries with limited presence in the U.S. - selected for your enjoyment by experts from Global Wine Company to create a truly unique tasting experience.

Just as readers expect The New York Times to bring them the world’s best journalism, wine enthusiasts can be excited to know that The Times has chosen an organization that will make The New York Times Wine Club the best wine experience.

Unique wine tasting notes are included with each shipment, along with related articles from the archives of The New York Times, such as gourmet recipes, wine commentary and wine region travel articles.

You can choose your wine club shipments to arrive every one, two or three months, and you can cancel any time. Your satisfaction is guaranteed. We will replace any wine you don’t enjoy.

12/03 Google Android và Apple iOS: Ai hơn ai?

TTO - Cuộc chiến hệ điều hành di động giữa các hãng sản xuất thiết bị cầm tay đang trở nên rất nóng bỏng, nổi bật là trận chiến song hành Apple và Google.

Ảnh minh họa: Internet

Google sẽ cho ra mắt dịch vụ âm nhạc của riêng mình, vốn được mong chờ lâu nay để cạnh tranh với kho nhạc iTunes của Apple. Dịch vụ âm nhạc này sẽ gắn kết vào trong phiên bản Android 3.0 (Honeycomb) khi nó ra mắt chính thức. Apple cũng không ngồi yên khi đang chuẩn bị cho một cuộc cách mạng mới ở trận chiến mạng xã hội với phiên bản MobileMe cải tiến, đối đầu với Google Buzz. Tuy nhiên, có thể nói “mặt trận” nền tảng và hệ điều hành di động mới là nơi diễn ra cuộc đua nóng bỏng nhất.

Ứng dụng thứ ba

Xét về mặt số lượng ứng dụng, hiện nay Android chưa thể bằng được iOS. Tuy nhiên, trên thực tế, cả hai nền tảng này đều đã có sự góp mặt của hàng loạt phần mềm thứ ba thiết yếu nhất, như Dropbox, Evernote, Angry Birds hay Amazon Kindle.


Lợi thế ứng dụng thứ 3 của iOS đang dần được cân bằng


Mặc dù Android thiếu một số ứng dụng vốn mới chỉ có ở iOS, nhưng xét đến cùng, mỗi nền tảng có những điểm mạnh và yếu riêng. Hiện iTunes có 350.000 ứng dụng dành riêng cho iPhone và một vài ngàn ứng dụng chuyên biệt khác dành cho iPad. Về phần mình, đến cuối 2010, Android cũng đã có khoảng 100.000 phần mềm và đang tăng lên không ngừng. Theo một nghiên cứu gần đây do công ty an ninh Lookout thực hiện, thị trường Android đang tăng trưởng gấp 3 lần kho ứng dụng iTunes App Store.

Âm nhạc và video

Kho nhạc iTunes ở riêng Mỹ chứa 13 triệu ca khúc và hiện vẫn đang giữ thế thượng phong ở thị trường nhạc số trực tuyến với 70 % thị phần. Hiện Google vẫn chưa tham gia vào thị trường béo bở mà Apple đang nắm vị trí số một này. Nhưng đây sẽ là chuyện của quá khứ khi gã khổng lồ trong lĩnh vực tìm kiếm thông báo đang chuẩn bị ra mắt dịch vụ âm nhạc dựa trên nền tảng điện toán đám mây dành cho Android vào thời gian tới.

Ở thị trường video, Apple hiện cũng đang vượt trội các đối thủ khác, trong khi Android buộc phải dựa vào các nhà cung cấp dịch vụ thứ 3 như Blockbuster.

Phần cứng hỗ trợ

Đây cũng là điểm khác nhau lớn nhất giữa Apple và Google trong cuộc chiến hệ điều hành. Apple hiện chỉ bán 2 mẫu smartphone duy nhất là iPhone 4 và iPhone 3GS, ngoài ra còn có iPod Touch và iPad cũng sử dụng iOS.

Trong khi đó Android hiện có tới 40 mẫu điện thoại chạy hệ điều hành này và sẵn sàng hỗ trợ tất cả các nhà mạng. Ngoài ra, có trên 10 mẫu máy tính bảng các loại chạy Android, trong đó nổi đình nổi đám nhất là Samsung Galaxy Tab, Dell Streak 7 và sắp tới là Motorola Xoom và HTC Flyer…

Set-top Box

Cả 2 công ty đều sử dụng nền tảng của mình để phát triển sản phẩm, dịch vụ ở thị trường giải trí, trong đó có set-top box để cạnh tranh với Microsoft, TiVo và Roku. Dự án Google TV có tham vọng sẽ kết hợp tivi, dịch vụ video trực tuyến, web làm một nhờ vào set-top box và HDTV. Tuy nhiên, hiện dự án này vẫn chưa có được tiếng vang khi khá nhiều đối tác phân phối nội dung tỏ ra lưỡng lự hợp tác.



Thị trường set top box vẫn đang chờ sự lớn mạnh hơn của iOS và Android


Apple TV ít tham vọng hơn so với Google TV với kế hoạch kết hợp Netflix, iTunes và dịch vụ chuyển phát nội dung PC to Apple TV thông qua AirPlay. Google lên kế hoạch sẽ mở cửa Google để chào đón các nhà phát triển ứng dụng thứ ba và về phần mình, Apple cũng sẽ làm điều tương tự.

Trải nghiệm Web

Cả Android và iOS đều đang tích cực phát triển để hướng tới chuẩn HTML 5 với nhiều ứng dụng, trải nghiệm web thú vị hơn. Tuy nhiên, hiện iOS và Android có những cách xử lý Adobe Flash tương đối khác biệt. Trong khi Apple từ chối tích hợp tính năng xử lý Flash vào iOS và theo đuổi chuẩn video H.264 cùng định dạng mp4 vốn thân thiện với iOS thì Android đã sẵn sàng hỗ trợ Adobe Flash từ khá lâu.

Dẫu vậy, hỗ trợ Adobe Flash không hẳn đã là một lợi thế lớn của Android khi người dùng iOS đã quen với việc chuyển đổi định dạng để sử dụng trên các thiết bị của Apple.

Lợi thế khác

Mỗi nền tảng lại có thêm những sức mạnh riêng để giành phần thắng, bên cạnh đó cả hai đều có những điểm mạnh chung. Chẳng hạn Google Android đã hỗ trợ dịch vụ ra lệnh bằng giọng nói để gửi tin nhắn, email hay thực hiện cuộc gọi, duyệt web, mở ứng dụng, tìm kiếm. Người dùng iPhone cũng có thể ra lệnh bằng giọng nói để chơi nhạc, gọi điện thoại hoặc sử dụng ứng dụng của Google dành cho iOS để tìm kiếm bằng giọng nói.



Mẫu mã của Android đa dạng hơn hẳn các thiết bị iOS vốn do Apple độc quyền thiết kế


Cả Android và iOS gần đây đều tung ra mô hình mới trong việc sử dụng dịch vụ nội dung, cho phép người dùng đăng kí thuê bao để nhận nội dung như tin tức, video. Android cung cấp dịch vụ bản đồ miễn phí Google Maps thì Apple cũng nhờ vào đối tác Waze và MapQuest.

Hiện Google Buzz và Orkut là vũ khí của Google còn Apple có Ping và MobileMe. Tất cả đều hi vọng giành được tiếng nói trên thị trường mạng xã hội và cũng để tô điểm cho nền tảng mình đang phát triển.

Cuộc đua giữa Android và iOS sẽ còn thêm gay cấn trong năm nay khi Android 3.0 chính thức hoàn thiện và iOS được Apple nâng cấp cho thế hệ kế tiếp của iPhone và iPad.

Windows Phone 7 và Android 2.2 "so găng"

>> Cận cảnh Windows phone 7
>> Cận cảnh "tổ ong" Android 3.0

Windows Phone 7 là hệ điều hành thế hệ mới của Microsoft với nhiều cải tiến. Windows Phone 7 có tốc độ xử lý nhanh, thiết kế bắt mắt nhưng vẫn còn nhiều hạn chế:

•Không hỗ trợ xử lý đa nhiệm (multi-tasking)
•Không hỗ trợ cắt, copy, dán
•Không hỗ trợ tuỳ chọn nhạc chuông
•Ít tuỳ chọn ở màn hình chính
•Thiếu nhiều ứng dụng quan trọng như Evernote, Kindle hay Nook
•Ứng dụng xử lý văn bản kém
•Thiếu tuỳ chọn thưởng thức đa phương tiện
•Không hỗ trợ Tethering
•Không thể chụp màn hình
Các điểm hạn chế trên có thể được bổ sung, cải tiến theo thời gian, tuy nhiên Windows Phone 7 sẽ không có được tính năng đa nhiệm thực sự như của Android.

Một số điểm mạnh của Windows Phone 7 so với Android 2.2

•Giao diện thanh mảnh và ổn định
•Nhiều ứng dụng có sẵn khi gọi
•Tích hợp Zune để tải và nghe nhạc
•Trải nghiệm Facebook thú vị hơn
•Ổn định
•Hỗ trợ Exchange rất tốt
Một số lợi thế của Android OS

•Hỗ trợ đa nhiệm chuẩn, có thể chạy nhiều ứng dụng cùng lúc
•Dễ tuỳ biến màn hình và thanh điều khiển
•Ứng dụng đa dạng trên Android Market
•Thích hợp tốt các dịch vụ của Google
•Trải nghiệm web tốt hơn so với bất kì nền tảng nào
•Hỗ trợ Tethering

NHẬT VƯƠNG (Tổng hợp)


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12/03 Gmail đã có thể lọc thông minh hơn

TTO - Chức năng gán nhãn (label) trong Gmail đã có từ khá lâu nhưng nó không thể gán tự động mà phải thông qua bộ lọc đi kèm (filter). Tuy nhiên, với chức năng SmartLabels mới bổ sung thì Gmail đã có thể gán nhãn hoàn toàn tự động.

>> Sao lưu email cho Gmail
>> Bổ sung gadget trợ lực cho Gmail


Gmail hiện đang là dịch vụ webmail hỗ trợ nhiều chức năng nhất, rất tiện lợi cho người sử dụng - Ảnh minh họa: Internet


Hộp thư Gmail của những người dùng thường xuyên trao đổi qua email sẽ nhận rất nhiều loại email từ các website, diễn đàn, trao đổi công việc hay từ mạng xã hội. Do đó, gán nhãn cho các nhóm email là điều cần thiết để dễ dàng lọc và quản lý khi cần.

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Gmail là nhất
11/03/2011 5:56:01 CH Xài nó lâu rồi, lúc nào cũng thấy hay. Bỏ Yahoo Mail luôn vì quá bất tiện, load chậm nữa. Gmail ngày càng hay mà còn hỗ trợ POP miễn phí. Bình chọn cho Gmail.
Hung

12/03 In Search of Monsters

March 12, 2011
By MAUREEN DOWD
WASHINGTON

The Iraq war hawks urging intervention in Libya are confident that there’s no way Libya could ever be another Iraq.

Of course, they never thought Iraq would be Iraq, either.

All President Obama needs to do, Paul Wolfowitz asserts, is man up, arm the Libyan rebels, support setting up a no-fly zone and wait for instant democracy.

It’s a cakewalk.

Didn’t we arm the rebels in Afghanistan in the ’80s? And didn’t many become Taliban and end up turning our own weapons on us? And didn’t one mujahadeen from Saudi Arabia, Osama bin Laden, go on to lead Al Qaeda?

So that worked out well.

Even now, with our deficit and military groaning from two wars in Muslim countries, interventionists on the left and the right insist it’s our duty to join the battle in a third Muslim country.

“It is both morally right and in America’s strategic interest to enable the Libyans to fight for themselves,” Wolfowitz wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed piece.

You would think that a major architect of the disastrous wars and interminable occupations in Afghanistan and Iraq would have the good manners to shut up and take up horticulture. But the neo-con naif has no shame.

After all, as Defense Secretary Robert Gates told West Point cadets last month, “In my opinion, any future defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should ‘have his head examined,’ as General MacArthur so delicately put it.”

Gates boldly batted back the Cakewalk Brigade — which includes John McCain, Joe Lieberman and John Kerry — bluntly telling Congress last week: “Let’s just call a spade a spade. A no-fly zone begins with an attack on Libya to destroy the air defenses. That’s the way you do a no-fly zone. And then you can fly planes around the country and not worry about our guys being shot down. But that’s the way it starts.”

Wolfowitz, Rummy’s No. 2 in W.’s War Department, pushed to divert attention from Afghanistan and move on to Iraq; he pressed the canards that Saddam and Osama were linked and that we were in danger from Saddam’s phantom W.M.D.s; he promised that the Iraq invasion would end quickly and gleefully; he slapped back Gen. Eric Shinseki when he said securing Iraq would require several hundred thousand troops; and he claimed that rebuilding Iraq would be paid for with Iraqi oil revenues.

How wrong, deceptive and deadly can you be and still get to lecture President Obama on his moral obligations?

Wolfowitz was driven to invade Iraq and proselytize for the Libyan rebels partly because of his guilt over how the Bush I administration coldly deserted the Shiites and Kurds who were urged to rise up against Saddam at the end of the 1991 gulf war. Saddam sent out helicopters to slaughter thousands. (A NATO no-fly zone did not stop that.)

Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi is also monstrous, slaughtering civilians and hiring mercenaries to kill rebels.

It’s hard to know how to proceed, but in his rush, Wolfowitz never even seems to have a good understanding of the tribal thickets he wants America to wade into. In Foreign Affairs, Frederic Wehrey notes that “for four decades Libya has been largely terra incognita ... ‘like throwing darts at balloons in a dark room,’ as one senior Western diplomat put it to me.”

Leslie Gelb warns in The Daily Beast that no doubt some rebels are noble fighters, but some “could turn out to be thugs, thieves, and would-be new dictators. Surely, some will be Islamic extremists. One or more might turn into another Col. Qaddafi after gaining power. Indeed, when the good colonel led the Libyan coup in 1969, many right-thinking Westerners thought him to be a modernizing democrat.”

Reformed interventionist David Rieff, who wrote the book “At the Point of a Gun,” which criticizes “the messianic dream of remaking the world in either the image of American democracy or of the legal utopias of international human rights law,” told me that after Iraq: “America doesn’t have the credibility to make war in the Arab world. Our touch in this is actually counterproductive.”

He continued: “Qaddafi is a terrible man, but I don’t think it’s the business of the United States to overthrow him. Those who want America to support democratic movements and insurrections by force if necessary wherever there’s a chance of them succeeding are committing the United States to endless wars of altruism. And that’s folly.”

He quotes John Quincy Adams about America: “Wherever the standard of freedom and independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy ... she is the champion and vindicator only of her own.”

As for Wolfowitz, Rieff notes drily, “He should have stayed a mathematician.”


Thomas L. Friedman is off today.

10/03 Finding a Soul Mate for North Korea’s Kim Jong-Un

March 10, 2011
By MARK McDONALD

SEOUL — At first she did not know what to make of being romantically matched with Kim Jong-un, that roly-poly bachelor, the presumptive future lord and master of North Korea. Should she be offended, amused, angry, what?

After some thought, she said: “I felt proud to be selected. I thought, ‘Cool. It means you’re in the elite.’ If he was South Korean, he’d be in the top 1 percent of the men.”

Miss Kim, 28, a Korean-American who declined to be identified by her full name, was among four possible marriage partners selected for Mr. Kim by Couple.net, one of the leading matchmaking agencies in South Korea.

The online dating industry here is large, lucrative and fiercely competitive, with more than 1,000 companies vying for customers and nuptials. Couple.net ran Mr. Kim’s profile through its computer-selection algorithm as a promotional idea before White Day on March 14. (The faux holiday, highly promoted by the candy industry, has South Korean men giving sweets to the women who gave them chocolates on Valentine’s Day.)

“We try lots of interesting matches, and this time we went a little wild, just in time for White Day,” said Erica Oh, a marketing executive with Couple.net.

The computer kicked out 36 highly compatible matches for Mr. Kim, before veteran matchmakers from the company winnowed those down to a final four.

The woman chosen as the very best match declined to be interviewed, citing Mr. Kim’s notoriety, and none of the selectees wanted their full names to be used.

One of the likely matches, a 25-year-old high school art teacher, said she had heard some nice things about Mr. Kim’s father, the dictator Kim Jong-il.

“I heard that Kim Jong-il is really into the arts and theater, and assuming Kim Jong-un inherited the same interest, as an art teacher I would share a common interest with him,” said the woman. “However, I’ve also seen him portrayed in the media as a hostile and radical person, and that aspect of him doesn’t appeal to me.”

Another woman, a pharmacist, 27, said: “My general perception of him is not positive because he’s not my type. However, if I were to meet him I would gladly take the chance to ask him many questions.”

Couple.net said its formula for matching people — company executives refer to it almost reverentially as The Logic — came from a decade of empirical data on proven, successful couplings. The agency claims to have matched 23,000 people over the past 20 years using Korea-specific criteria that emphasize their clients’ jobs and educations, their families’ assets and their parents’ levels of education, especially which universities their fathers attended.

The result is a score that the agency calls its Soulmate Index, essentially a number that rates a person’s attractiveness as a potential marriage partner. The top woman scored 90 out of 100, two of the women scored 89s, and Miss Kim had a 76. Good matches all.

“Of course these women have virtually no possibility of meeting Kim Jong-un,” said James Lee, the founder and chairman of Sunoo, his original matchmaking business that is being rebranded as Couple.net as it goes global. “We have analyzed Kim’s potential as a marriage partner, not as a political leader but rather as a man.”

Mr. Lee, who got his start as an entrepreneur peddling toilet paper from a Seoul pushcart, added that “one of our greatest hopes as a company is establishing a branch in Pyongyang,” the North Korean capital.

Despite Kim Jong-un’s position as a four-star general and the heir apparent to his father, he remains something of an enigma. Few verifiable details are known about him, including his exact age, which is believed to be 28 or 29. He is thought to have been schooled in Switzerland for a time, or maybe not. His height and weight are uncertain. He is not known to be married.

But The Logic was able to crunch other available data about Mr. Kim — primarily his university education in North Korea, his lofty job titles, the family’s assets and his father’s schooling and socioeconomic status.

“His assets are off the charts,” said Ms. Oh, adding that the company had rated his physical appearance as “average.”

“Looks are not so important for Korean females as long as the guy is highly educated, successful and financially stable,” said Ms. Oh. “For Korean men, looks are the most important thing.”

In the end, The Logic awarded Mr. Kim a score of 89 points on the Soulmate Index. That would put him among the top 2 percent of eligible single men in South Korea, according to company indices. In other words, the young general is a real catch.

“Look, he’s a Pig!” Ms. Oh exclaimed as she reviewed a listing of Mr. Kim’s personal details. She was not unkindly referring to his girth or grooming habits. Rather, she had noticed that Mr. Kim, according to company research, was born Jan. 8, 1983, in the Year of the Pig under the Chinese zodiac.

Pigs, coincidentally, are considered good matches for each other, which would enhance Miss Kim’s compatibility with Mr. Kim. She, too, is a Pig.

Miss Kim worked her way through the University of Illinois, taking jobs in the cafeteria and the library. Her Korean parents, who own and operate a motel in New Mexico, do have a connection to North Korea: Miss Kim’s paternal grandmother was born in the North but was separated from the rest of her family in 1950, during the Korean War.

Political differences with North Korea aside, Miss Kim said: “I don’t have any particular feelings about Kim Jong-un. Maybe he’s a funny guy, but maybe a bad guy, too. He doesn’t seem happy or affectionate.”

The pressure on women to get married by age 30 can be strong in traditional Korean families, and Miss Kim said she had been feeling it. A married cousin in Seoul paid the $1,000 fee for her to have a year’s worth of matches, dates and personal consultations with a matchmaker.

Miss Kim has had several meet-ups in the past nine months, but no romances yet. She remains optimistic but said most Korean men seemed intimidated when they found out she spent her teenage years in the United States.

“The first thing they ask is if I’m rich,” she said, sounding a bit dismayed. “They assume because I was in America I’m rich. ‘Teach me English’ is the second thing they say.

“I have different standards than most Korean girls. I don’t want to be rich or poor, just happy. If a man thinks what I have is nice, that’s great. But I can make my own future — in America, in Korea, in Europe. Carpe diem.”

Meanwhile, Miss Kim is pursuing her doctorate in crop sciences at the prestigious Seoul National University, a specialty that could prove highly useful in impoverished North Korea — a first lady who could whip the North’s sorry agricultural sector into shape with some modern techniques.

“I would welcome the chance to be able to help North Korean people,” she said. “But realistically, it’s not that simple. It probably couldn’t happen, not in reality.”

11/03 Celestial Sales for Boy’s Tale of Heaven

March 11, 2011
By JULIE BOSMAN

Just two months shy of his fourth birthday, Colton Burpo, the son of an evangelical pastor in Imperial, Neb., was rushed into emergency surgery with a burst appendix.
He woke up with an astonishing story: He had died and gone to heaven, where he met his great-grandfather; the biblical figure Samson; John the Baptist; and Jesus, who had eyes that “were just sort of a sea-blue and they seemed to sparkle,” Colton, now 11 years old, recalled.

Colton’s father, Todd, has turned the boy’s experience into a 163-page book, “Heaven Is for Real,” which has become a sleeper paperback hit of the winter, dominating best-seller lists and selling hundreds of thousands of copies.

Thomas Nelson, the book’s publisher, said it had broken company sales records. The publisher, based in Nashville, began with an initial print run of 40,000 copies. Since the book came out in November, it has gone back to press 22 times, with more than 1.5 million copies in print. On the New York Times best-seller list for paperback nonfiction last Sunday, “Heaven Is for Real” was No. 1. The book remains in the top spot this coming Sunday.

Much of the book’s success has been fueled by word of mouth, since it did not begin with the usual best-seller channels: there has been no elaborate book tour, big-name publisher or brand-name author. But it has gained traction with a few well-placed appearances on the morning show “Fox & Friends,” “The 700 Club” and CNN.

The book has sold just as strongly in national chain bookstores like Barnes & Noble as it has in Christian specialty shops, said Matt Baugher, the vice president and publisher of Thomas Nelson. Mass merchants like Wal-Mart have pushed the book heavily in their stores, and large orders from churches and ministry groups are growing steadily.

“We all are perhaps desperate to know what is on the other side of the veil after we die,” Mr. Baugher said, adding that his initial skepticism about the Burpo family’s story was short-lived. “This was a very down-to-earth, conservative, quote-unquote normal Midwestern family. We became fully convinced that this story was valid. And also that it was a great story that would just take off.”

The book was an instant hit in Barnes & Noble outlets and was near the top of the best-seller list on its bn.com. The chain’s religion buyer was an early advocate for the book, ordering copies for every store, said Patricia Bostelman, the vice president for marketing at Barnes & Noble.

“When you buy the religion subject, you are presented with many stories about heaven, personal experiences about near-death and the afterlife,” Ms. Bostelman said, noting that several other books with “heaven” in the title have sold well recently. “But what was unusual about this book was that it was the story of a little boy. It deactivated some of the cynicism that can go along with adults capitalizing on their experiences.”

Todd Burpo wrote the book with Lynn Vincent, who collaborated with Sarah Palin on “Going Rogue.” Mr. Burpo, the pastor of Crossroads Wesleyan Church in Imperial, a farming community in southwest Nebraska, said in an interview that he had shouldered some criticism over it.

“People say we just did this to make money, and it’s not the truth,” Mr. Burpo said, referring to anonymous online comments about the book. “We were expecting nothing. We were just hoping the publisher would break even.” (He said he planned to give away much of the royalty income and spend some of it on home improvements.)

At first, he and his wife, Sonja, were not sure if they could believe their son’s story, which came out slowly, months and years after his sudden illness and operation in 2003. The details persuaded them, Mr. Burpo said. Colton told his parents that he had met his younger sister in heaven, describing her as a dark-haired girl who resembled his older sister, Cassie. When the Burpos questioned him, he asked his mother, “You had a baby die in your tummy, didn’t you?” While his wife had suffered a miscarriage years before, Mr. Burpo said, they had not told Colton about it. “There’s just no way he could have known,” Mr. Burpo said.

And the Burpos said that Colton painstakingly described images that he said he saw in heaven — like the bloody wounds on Jesus’ palms — that he had not been shown before.

Eventually the Burpos decided to tell their story beyond their town. Mr. Burpo, in his Sunday sermons, had already introduced some anecdotes to his congregation. Through a pastor friend, they met Joel Kneedler, an agent with Alive Communications, a Christian literary agency in Colorado Springs. Mr. Kneedler sold the book to Thomas Nelson, a publisher known for Christian titles like “40 Days With Jesus” by Sarah Young. The advance was in the low five figures.

The book’s list price is $16.99, but that is discounted to $9.34 on amazon.com.

At the outlets of Barbara’s Bookstore, an independent chain mostly in the Chicago area, the book is No. 1 on the store’s nonfiction best-seller list. Interest in it began to perk up around mid-February, said Greg Sato, a store manager.

“Of the nonfiction books lately that seems to be the one that people are asking about the most,” Mr. Sato said. “I have pegged it in the same vein as ‘The Five People You Meet in Heaven’ or ‘The Shack.’ Like an Oprah book, but a little more religious or spiritual.”

Colton, who appears as a blond, round-faced little boy on the cover of the book, now plays the piano and trumpet, is fascinated by Greek mythology, listens to Christian rock and loves Nebraska football.

Telling his story matter-of-factly, Colton said he was pleased that people were finding the story inspirational.

“People are getting blessed, and they’re going to have healing from their hurts,” he said. “I’m happy for that.”

10/03 Rebuilt Iraq Mosque Buoys Spirits, but New Sectarian Splits Loom

March 10, 2011
By JACK HEALY and OMAR AL-JAWOSHY

SAMARRA, Iraq — The mosque at the heart of this ancient city, once a bombed-out epitaph for Iraq’s spiral into civil war, is now heralded as a symbol of its painstaking recovery.

Five years after an insurgent bombing partly destroyed the shrine and spawned waves of sectarian killings, its rebuilt concrete dome again hangs like a low moon over the city. Two new minarets are wrapped in a bird’s nest of scaffolding. And with violence down sharply here and across the country, throngs of pilgrims again pray at Samarra’s Askariya Shrine, one of the holiest sites in Shiite Islam.

But in Iraq, even stories of revival are not so straightforward. And this one, which lies at the intersection of religion and real estate, has reawakened old suspicions and sectarian divisions in a town where the fighting never fully ended.

The current dispute centers on a warren of old houses and twisting stone streets near the Shiite shrine, where about 1,500 people, most of them Sunni Muslims, have lived and worked for generations.

As Samarra rebuilds, planners and developers with connections to Iraq’s Shiite-led central government have begun to imagine a gleaming new city center flanking the shrine, with new hotels, parks, restaurants and parking lots to serve the one million pilgrims who visit each year.

“The plan for improving the shrine is to tear down everything around it,” said Mohammed al-Mashqor, a member of Iraq’s Parliament who sits on a committee that deals with religious affairs and holy sites. “It will be a great entertainment and tourism area.”

Some of the area’s Sunni residents see their patrimony at risk.

They say the Shiite Endowment, an Iraqi council that oversees the country’s Shiite shrines, has been making generous offers to buy out homeowners, with the aim of taking control of the old city.

“What’s happening now is a challenge to the people,” said the head of Samarra’s city council, Omar Mohammed Hassan. “If they take this area, the economy of Samarra will die. I think Samarra will explode one day in protests after suffering for so long.”

The redevelopment of the area is still in its early stages, but it poses a vexing question, one that resonates in ethnically splintered towns and neighborhoods segregated between Sunnis and Shiites: As Iraq rebuilds after years of war and stagnation, who gets to draw up the blueprints?

The Askariya Shrine, built in 944, is claimed both by Shiite worshipers and by Samarra’s Sunnis.

For the busloads of pilgrims arriving from Iran and across Iraq, it is the burial ground of two of Shiite Islam’s 12 imams, a spiritual destination in Iraq secondary only to the shrine cities of Najaf and Karbala. The pilgrims are a mainstay of the city’s economy, and a rich source of income for whoever runs the hotels, shops and businesses in the central city.

“This old village is the real Samarra, the heart of Samarra,” said Sheik Khatan Yehiya al-Salim, a tribal leader. “They want to change the faces of this area.”

Officials from Unesco, which designated Samarra as one of three World Heritage Sites in Iraq, said they were trying to negotiate an accord between the central government and provincial officials to balance preservation against development.

Mr. Mashqor, the member of Parliament, said that the Shiite Endowment planned to spend the next three years buying houses and stores in a 650-foot radius surrounding the mosque, then begin construction in the neighborhood.

He said the expansion and modernization was critical to accommodating more pilgrims, and would jump-start Samarra’s staggering economy. Already, the Shiite Endowment has bid up home prices to entice people to sell, offering more than double or triple what homes were worth a few years ago, residents said.

“We know there are some people who don’t want to sell their homes,” Mr. Mashqor said. “But with money, everybody gets convinced.”

Mr. Mashqor said 80 homes had already been purchased. Dhia Abdul Rahman, 53, said he jumped at an offer of nearly $400,000 for his crumbling home.

“I have six sons, all of them unemployed,” he said. “With this money, I can support them.”

These days, the people who live in the shrine’s shadow offer elegies to something they say is slipping into the past.

Though the shrine’s reconstruction has already come a long way, residents reminisce about the days before bombings destroyed its gold-plated dome in February 2006, and its minarets, in June 2007. They talk about how, before blast walls and pat-downs, they would stroll past it every day, visit before weddings, take bodies there before funerals. Residents of the neighborhood have long worked there, serving food and sweeping the grounds at day’s end.

“It’s very painful for our history,” said Mustafa Abed al-Mounem, a burly 36-year-old Koranic scholar who lives a short walk from the shrine. “You lose neighbors, you lose your neighborhood. You lose your closeness to the imams.”

Mr. Mounem, the scion of orange growers and palm-tree cultivators, lives in an eight-room house his great-great-grandfather built, on land his family owned before there was even a country named Iraq. For 400 years, he said, his ancestors have lived in the same neighborhood, watching empires, strongmen, coups and invasions pass by like eddies in the Tigris.

He says he is determined to stay, but believes it is ultimately a doomed effort.

“This is the land of my grandfathers,” he said. “I will be the last one.”

11/03 Japan’s Industrial Heart Escapes Heaviest Blows

March 11, 2011
By STEVE LOHR

As bad as the toll might eventually be in lives and property from Japan’s earthquake and tsunami, the fact that the disaster hit far from Japan’s industrial heartland will at least soften the economic blow, both at home and abroad.

The epicenter was in and around the coastal city of Sendai, nearly 200 miles northeast of Tokyo, the nation’s population center, and well north of Japan’s primary manufacturing region running from Nagoya to Osaka and farther south and west.

“If this had been a couple hundred miles to the south, the economic and human toll would have been almost incomprehensible,” said Marcus Noland, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. “In that respect, Japan dodged an enormous bullet here.”

The disaster could prompt the Japanese government to pump more money into the economy, analysts say, and is very likely to result in increased public spending on buildings and roads.

And it could propel Japan’s already strong currency, the yen, even higher against the dollar and other global currencies, as Japanese money invested abroad returns to help in the rebuilding. In global currency trading on Friday, after the earthquake, the yen did edge higher.

Japan is a major exporter of cars, consumer electronics goods, and parts and sophisticated industrial machinery. In the wake of the disaster, some factories were shut down temporarily. Japanese ports were closed, and so were several airports, including Narita International Airport, which serves Tokyo.

The ripple effects, analysts say, are likely to be some delays in shipping goods, and possibly higher prices in certain products and components. But the impact is expected to be relatively modest and short-lived.

Japan, for example, produces 40 percent of lightweight memory chips most commonly used for storage in digital music players, smart phones and tablet computers, estimated Jim Handy, an analyst at Objective Analysis, a research firm. But most of the plants that make such chips, and other electronics components, are south and west of Tokyo.

Still, a high-tech factory does not have to topple to halt production. A strong shaking, like that generated by the magnitude-8.9 earthquake — the most powerful ever recorded in Japan, and felt across much of the nation — can upset the delicate machinery used in production.

Recalibrating the machines, analyst say, can take a week or two, crimping supplies.

“We do expect some upward price pressure because of this,” said Dale Ford, an analyst at IHS iSuppli, a technology market research firm. But it is too soon, Mr. Ford noted, to predict how much prices might rise, though it should not have a long-term impact.

Because Japan occupies an unstable slice of the earth’s crust and tremors are a routine part of life, Japan’s government, scientists and industry are almost continually engaged in moderating the impact of earthquakes through innovative building designs, strict construction codes and advance planning.

Japan’s major automakers, for example, have long had contingency plans in place to keep supplies moving. Car companies on Friday did report damage to some factories and offices, and Honda said one employee was killed at a research center in Tochigi, north of Tokyo, when a cafeteria wall collapsed.

Toyota, Japan’s largest automaker, reported that its car assembly plants had resumed production after a brief stoppage — though four factories operated by Toyota subsidiaries remained closed while workers were evacuated to safer areas.

But most of Toyota’s Japanese production is done south of Tokyo, especially around Nagoya, including the Prius hybrid, which is built only in Japan.

And over the past two decades, the Japanese automakers have shifted a large portion of production of cars sold for the United States to American plants, while Japanese parts suppliers have set up shop in North America as well.

“Given their contingency plans for earthquakes, and all the production done abroad these days, I’d be amazed if this had a real impact on Toyota or other leading Japanese car companies,” said Clyde V. Prestowitz Jr., a Japan expert and the president of the Economic Strategy Institute, a nonpartisan policy research group in Washington.

In 1995, after the devastating earthquake centered in Kobe, a port and industrial city, which killed more than 6,000 people and caused more than $100 billion in damage, the yen rose in value against the dollar 20 percent in the following two months. Some analysts predict that the yen will strengthen in the wake of this earthquake, too.

Why would a disaster cause a nation’s currency to gain in value? In Japan’s case, the answer lies partly in the country’s high savings rate and sizable investments abroad. “As households see their physical assets destroyed, need funds for reconstruction and become more risk averse,” Michael Hart, an analyst for Roubini Global Economics, wrote on Friday, “they are likely to repatriate their savings.”

In doing so, they would convert their foreign holdings back into yen, increasing the demand for the Japanese currency, thus driving up its value. Still, a strong yen could pose problems for Japanese exporters, by making their products relatively more expensive on the global market.

For Japanese consumers, spending to increase household inventories of food and other daily necessities will probably increase, but outlays for luxury goods and services, notably tourism, will fall sharply, Masaaki Kanno, a Tokyo-based economist for JPMorgan Securities, predicted in a note to clients.

Japan’s central bank announced on Friday that it would speed up its monetary policy meeting, to conclude on Monday instead of Tuesday. The bank, analysts say, is expected to add to the money supply, probably by expanding a program to buy government bonds and thus inject more funds into the economy.

The disaster, economists say, may well prod Japanese policy makers to increase government spending to stimulate the economy, despite adding to the nation’s sizable debt burden in the near term. And private investment on construction should increase as well.

“There should be some positive impact because of the rush to rebuild,” said Edward J. Lincoln, a Japan expert at New York University’s Stern School of Business. “Perversely, you may have an economic benefit from this over the next year or two.”


Nick Bunkley contributed reporting from Detroit, and Hiroko Tabuchi from San Francisco.

12/03 Nuclear Industry Braces for Increased Scrutiny

March 12, 2011
By NORIMITSU ONISHI, HENRY FOUNTAIN and TOM ZELLER Jr.

This article is by Norimitsu Onishi, Henry Fountain and Tom Zeller Jr.

The explosion and radiation leaks at the earthquake-damaged nuclear plant will raise fresh questions about the ambitious plans to develop nuclear energy in Japan, despite the industry’s troubled history there and years of grass-roots objections from a people uniquely sensitive to the ravages of nuclear destruction.

The damage to the plant, the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, could also stir wider doubts in a world that, while long skeptical of nuclear energy’s safety, has increasingly accepted it as a source of clean energy in a time of mounting concerns about the environmental and public health tolls of fossil fuels.

In France, for example, green parties and environmental groups have called for an end to the dependence on nuclear power. The failures of the 40-year-old Fukushima Daiichi plant’s cooling system apparently caused the explosion, which destroyed a structure surrounding the reactor. The reactor was unaffected, government officials and the plant’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power, said. They described the resulting radiation leak as small and getting smaller. Foreign experts have agreed with that assessment so far, although Japanese plant operators, wary of the public reaction, have minimized past accidents.

James M. Acton of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace said the accident had unquestionably dealt a blow to the nuclear industry. While Japan may close the Fukushima Daiichi plant, one of its oldest, and point to the safety of its newer facilities, that might not satisfy concerns in Japan and elsewhere, he said. Decades ago, after the Chernobyl and Three Mile Island accidents, Mr. Acton said, the nuclear industry tried to argue that newer reactors incorporated much better safety features. “That made very little difference to the public,” he said.

Benjamin Leyre, a utilities industry analyst with Exane BNP Paribas in Paris, said that politicians in Europe and elsewhere would almost certainly come under increased pressure to revisit safety measures at nuclear power plants — existing ones and those being planned — and that a pause in development could result.

“What is likely to come will depend a lot on how transparent the regulators in Japan are,” Mr. Leyre said. “There will be a lot of focus on whether people feel confident that they know everything and that the truth is being put in front of them.”

Nuclear advocates argued that the accident in Japan was singular in many ways and might have been mishandled, and that it was caused by a natural disaster on a scale never before experienced in Japan. They said that the excavation of fossil fuels has its own history of catastrophic accidents, including coal mine collapses and the recent BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Critics of nuclear energy have long questioned the viability of nuclear power in earthquake-prone regions like Japan. Reactors have been designed with such concerns in mind, but preliminary assessments of the Fukushima Daiichi accident suggested that too little attention was paid to the threat of tsunami. It appeared that the reactors withstood the powerful earthquake, but the ocean waves damaged generators and backup systems, harming the ability to cool the reactors.

A quick alternative source of water for cooling the destabilizing core should have been immediately available, said Nils J. Diaz, a nuclear engineer who led the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission from 2003 to 2006 and had visited the Daiichi plant.

Mr. Diaz also suggested that the Japanese might have acted too slowly to prevent overheating, including procedures that might have required the venting of small amounts of steam and radiation, rather than risk a wholesale meltdown. Fear among Japanese regulators over public reaction to such small releases may have delayed plant operators from acting as quickly as they might have, he said — a problem arising in part from the country’s larger nuclear regulatory culture.

“They would rather wait and do things in a perfect manner instead of doing it as good as it needs to be now,” Mr. Diaz said. “And this search for perfection has often led to people sometimes hiding things or waiting too long to do things.”

With virtually no natural resources, Japan has considered nuclear power as an alternative to oil and other fossil fuels since the 1960s; looking into the future, Japan regards its expertise in nuclear power as a way to cut down on its emission of greenhouse gases and to capture energy-hungry markets in Asia.

It was too early to tell whether Saturday’s accident would have any effect on a national policy that has made Japan one of the world’s top consumers of nuclear energy, with some 55 nuclear reactors, providing about 30 percent of its electricity needs, or whether it would fan public opposition sharpened by the atomic bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

To make plants resistant to earthquakes, operators are required to build them on bedrock to minimize shaking and to raise anti-tsunami seawalls for plants along the coast. But the government gives power companies wide discretion in deciding whether a site is safe.

In the case of Saturday’s blast, experts said that problem was avoidable.

Mr. Diaz said that a comprehensive nuclear power plant safety program developed in the United States after the Sept. 11 attacks would have prevented a similar accident at any of the nation’s nuclear facilities.

Over the years, Japanese plant operators, along with friendly government officials, have sometimes hidden episodes at plants from a public increasingly uneasy with nuclear power.

In 2007, an earthquake in northwestern Japan caused a fire and minor radiation leaks at a plant in Kashiwazaki City. An ensuing investigation found that the plant’s operator, also Tokyo Electric, had unknowingly built the facility, the world’s largest nuclear plant, directly on top of an active seismic fault. Though a series of fires inside the plant after the earthquake deepened the public’s fear, the company, which said it upgraded the facility to withstand stronger tremors, was allowed to reopen it in 2009.

Last year, another reactor with a troubled history was allowed to reopen, 14 years after a fire shut it down. The operator of the plant, the Monju Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor, located along the coast about 220 miles west of Tokyo, tried to cover up the extent of the fire by releasing altered video after the accident in 1995.

Andrew C. Kadak, a consultant and former chief executive of the Yankee Atomic Electric Company, said Japanese and American cultures were different when it came to communicating nuclear issues to the public.

“We have the Nuclear Regulatory Commission — everything is out in public view,” he said. “The Japanese system is a little different. They are not used to openness and transparency.”