Japanese farmer found in empty town

Japanese farmer found in empty town

Reporters in Japan found a stranded 75-year-old Japanese farmer  Kunio Shiga's farm is located within the Fukushima nuclear plants  evacuation zone  but he says he couldn't leave because he can barely walk.

Quran protests spread to turbulent Afghan east

JALALABAD, Afghanistan — Demonstrators battled police in southern Afghanistan's main city on Sunday and took to the streets in the turbulent east for the first time as Western pleas failed to halt a third day of rage over a Florida pastor's burning of the Quran.

An officer was shot dead in a second day of clashes in the city of Kandahar, said provincial health director Qayum Pokhla. Two officers and 18 civilians were wounded, he said.In Jalalabad, the largest city in the east, hundreds of people blocked the main highway for three hours, shouting for U.S. troops to leave, burning an effigy of President Barack Obama and stomping on a drawing of a U.S. flag. More than 1,000 people set tires ablaze to block another highway in eastern Parwan province for about an hour, said provincial police chief Sher Ahmad Maladani.The violence was set off by anger over the March 20 burning of the Quran by a Florida church — the same church whose pastor had threatened to do so last year on the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, triggering worldwide outrage.The protests, which began Friday, also appear to be fueled more broadly by the resentment that has been building for years in Afghanistan over the operations of Western military forces, blamed for killing and mistreating civilians, and international contractors, seen by many as enriching themselves and fueling corruption at the expense of ordinary Afghans.Coverage of the trial of a group of U.S. soldiers charged with killing Afghan civilians and the publication of photos of some posing with dead bodies added to the anger.Thousands of demonstrators in the previously peaceful northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif poured into the streets after Friday's Muslim prayer services and overran a U.N. compound, killing three U.N. staff members and four Nepalese guardsOn Saturday, hundreds of Afghans holding copies of the Quran over their heads marched in Kandahar before attacking cars and businesses. Security forces opened fire and nine protesters were killed but the governor of Kandahar said officers had only fired into the air. He said 81 were wounded and 17 people, including seven armed men, had been arrested.Military commander Gen. David Petraeus and the top NATO civilian representative in Afghanistan, Mark Sedwill, said they "hope the Afghan people understand that the actions of a small number of individuals, who have been extremely disrespectful to the holy Quran, are not representative of any of the countries of the international community who are in Afghanistan to help the Afghan people."The Taliban said in a statement emailed to media outlets that the U.S. and other Western countries had wrongly excused the burning of the Quran as freedom of speech and that Afghans "cannot accept this un-Islamic act."
"Afghan forces under the order of the foreign forces attacked unarmed people during the protests, killing them and arresting some, saying there were armed people among these protesters, which was not true," the Taliban said.
The governor of Kandahar said he and the main leaders of the protests in the southern city had reached an agreement that would end the demonstrations in exchange for the release of those who were arrested. He said they released 25 people but did not provide details.

Missing workers found dead at Japan nuclear plant

Effort to plug up leak of radioactive water into Pacific Ocean fails

RIKUZENTAKATA, Japan — Two missing Fukushima nuclear plant workers were found dead on Sunday as more highly radioactive water spilled into the sea and authorities struggled to seal the leak.
The two workers — a 21-year-old and a 24-year-old — had been missing since a massive March 11 earthquake and tsunami, but their bodies were discovered only last week at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear complex.

Damage to the plant from the tsunami has spiraled into the world's worst nuclear crisis since the 1986 meltdown at Chernobyl in the former Soviet Union.
"It pains me that these two young workers were trying to protect the power plant while being hit by the earthquake and tsunami," Tokyo Electric Power Co. Chairman Tsunehisa Katsumata said in a statement.
 
The announcement of the death was delayed out of consideration for the families, said Naoki Tsunoda, a spokesman for TEPCO.
The men sustained multiple external injuries and are believed to have died from blood loss, Tsunoda said. Their bodies had to be decontaminated because radiation has been spewing from the plant over the past three weeks.
The National Police Agency said that 12,009 people were officially reported dead and 15,472 missing in the aftermath of the magnitude-9.0 earthquake and tsunami.On Saturday, workers discovered an 8-inch-long crack in a maintenance pit at the Fukushima plant that they said was believed to have been caused by the earthquake. Water containing levels of radioactive iodine far above the legal limit spilled from it into the Pacific, said Hidehiko Nishiyama of Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency.
A picture released by TEPCO shows water shooting some distance away from a wall and splashing into the sea, though the amount of water was not clear. The contaminated water was expected to quickly dissipate in the ocean but could pose a danger to workers at the plant.
Pooling water at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear complex — which is believed to come from the reactor cores — has repeatedly forced technicians to pull back and suspend their work.
Word of the leak came Saturday as Prime Minister Naoto Kan toured the town of Rikuzentakata, his first trip to survey damage in one of the dozens of villages, towns and cities slammed by the tsunami.
"The government has been too focused on the Fukushima power plant rather than the tsunami victims. Both deserve attention," said 35-year-old Megumi Shimanuki, who was visiting her family at a community center converted into a shelter in hard-hit Natori, about 100 miles from Rikuzentakata.
More than 165,000 are still living in shelters, and tens of thousands more still do not have electricity or running water.
Although the government had rushed to provide relief, its attention has been divided by the efforts at the Fuskushima plant.
The plant's reactors overheated to dangerous levels after electrical pumps — deprived of power — failed to circulate water to keep them cool. A series of almost daily problems have led to substantial amounts of radiation leaking into the atmosphere, ground and sea. Huge hydrogen explosions destroyed the buildings surrounding two of the reactors.
Quake risk at nuclear plants
1. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has estimated the risk for each nuclear reactor in the U.S. of an earthquake damaging the reactor's core. Geologists estimate that the risk of earthquakes in the central and eastern U.S. is much higher than previously thought. The 104 nuclear reactors are ranked by the NRC's risk estimates in this from msnbc.com.
Over the past 10 days, pools of contaminated water have been found throughout the plant and high levels of radioactivity have been measured in the ocean, but this marks the first time authorities said they had found a spot where the water was directly entering the sea.
A search of the plant found no other similar leaks leading directly to the ocean. "We believe that's the only crack," said Tsunoda, the TEPCO spokesman.
Soon after the discovery, workers tried to seal the crack but could not get the concrete to dry. Next, they will try injecting polymer, according to Tsunoda.
People living within 12 miles of the plant have been evacuated.A nuclear plant worker who fell into the ocean Friday while trying to board a barge carrying water to help cool the plant did not show any immediate signs of being exposed to unsafe levels of radiation, nuclear safety officials said Saturday, but they were waiting for test results to be sure.

Radiation worries have compounded the misery for people trying to recover from the tsunami. Kan's visit Saturday to Rikuzentakata did little to alleviate their worries.
"The government fully supports you until the end," Kan told 250 people at an elementary school serving as an evacuation center. He earlier met with the mayor, whose 38-year-old wife was swept away by the tsunami.
The prime minister bowed his head for a moment of silence in front of the town hall, one of the few buildings still standing, though its windows are blown out and metal and debris sit tangled out front.
Kan also stopped at the sports complex being used as a base camp for nuclear plant workers, who have been hailed as heroes for laboring in dangerous conditions. He had visited the nuclear crisis zone once before, soon after the quake.
Workers have been reluctant to talk to the media about what they are experiencing, but one who spent several days at the plant described difficult conditions in an anonymous interview published Saturday in the national Mainichi newspaper.

When he was called in mid-March to help restore power at the plant, he said he did not tell his family because he did not want them to worry. But he did tell a friend to notify his parents if he did not return in two weeks.
"I feel very strongly that there is nobody but us to do this job, and we cannot go home until we finish the work," he said.
Early on, the company ran out of full radiation suits, forcing workers to create improvised versions of items such as nylon booties they were supposed to pull over their shoes.
"But we only put something like plastic garbage bags you can buy at a convenience store and sealed them with masking tape," he said.
He said the tsunami littered the area around the plant with dead fish and sharks, and that the quake opened holes in the ground that tripped up some workers who could not see through large gas masks. They had to yell at one another to be heard through the masks.
"It's hard to move while wearing a gas mask," he said. "While working, the gas mask came off several times. Maybe I must have inhaled much radiation."

EPA finds radiation in US milk

The Environmental Protection Agency announced radiation from Japan's damaged nuclear reactors has been discovered in U.S. milk  The agency insists the amount of radiation is no greater than that we receive every day. The FDA is still blocking imports of some Japanese food