A record breaking turnout for a Sony shareholders meeting; more than 8,300 people showed up on June 28.
They want to overthrow Sony management. It’s all because of the huge hack attack that breached the personal data of at least 100 million Sony customers.
One shareholder said the management lacks a sense of crisis. Gee that seems to be the norm for Japanese officials.
For at least the third time Tokyo Electric Power Company had to stop water decontamination at Fukushima Daiichi, this time because pipes were leaking.
You might not think that’s such a big deal, but how does one ton of radioactive water leaking out within two minutes sound? That’s what happened. But to make that worse it didn’t have to happen. Turns out that TEPCo decided to skip what should have been a routine check of pipe fittings before starting the decontamination. According to an NHK report, four kilometers (8 miles) of pipe were loose (that’s how you dump one ton of water in two minutes).
A few months ago it was reported that waste incinerators (which is how Japan handles its trash) were finding high levels of radiation in the ash of the burned trash. The disaster at Fukushima Daiichi was blamed.
Today, waste incinerators as far south as Tokyo are still emitting cesium through their exhaust stacks. One incinerator in Edogawa ward registered 9,740 becquerels of cesium per kilogram! The incinerator handles only household trash. This is an indicator that cesium is still being spewed into the air, and it’s settling as far south as Tokyo.
For the first time strontium 89 and 90 have been found on the seabed near the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.
Tokyo Electric Power Company tested the soil at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, on 02 and 03 June 2011, at locations 20 kilometers (12 miles) from the nuke plant.
While this is the first time strontium has been found in the seabed, it is not the first time it’s been found in the water.
The USPS is in real bad shape, much worse than its counterpart Canada Post.
The USPS stopped about $800 million in contributions to its employee retirement plan. This is an effort to prevent becoming insolvent, over a $5.5 billion employee health plan payment.
Also, USPS Inspector General David Williams, claims they were overcharged $75 billion for the Federal Employees Retirement System plan, and they want Congress to give it back.
On top of that, a bill has been introduced in Congress that would cut billions of dollars from the postal service, by reducing employees (even more than they have) and reducing hours by going to a five day work week (instead of the current six). The bill is called the Postal Reform Act. It was introduced by Kalifornian (sic) Darrel Issa.
The USPS lost $8.5 billion in 2010. The United States Postal Service does not make money off taxpayers, they are solely funded by the postage they charge. The problem is that Congress controls the postage they are allowed to charge, and so far Congress has refused to allow postal rates to reflect the actual operating cost of the USPS.
The United States Postal Service announced it will resume shipping to Canada, on June 28. The announcement followed the creation of a new law in Canada, which forces striking workers back to their jobs.
The USPS warns that there will be delays in getting mail to Canada, because a huge backlog of mail has built up.
The USPS stopped shipping to Canada after Canada Post locked out its union workers. The Canadian government just passed a new law which makes it a criminal offense to strike. Canada’s postal workers (called “posties”) now have the choices of going back to work, quitting or pay huge fines.
Members of Canada’s New Democratic Party admit it’s all about destroying workers rights: “…an indication of what’s to come for other public service workers who are unionized. … It’s also a signal from the Conservatives to all employers—in a union setting or otherwise—that it’s an open bar. They can start going after the acquired rights of their workers.”-Thomas Mulcair, Deputy NDP leader
The new law targets posties only, and is in effect until the end of a new four year contract that will be mandated by the Canadian government. Any postal worker who does not comply can face a $1,000 per day fine, and union officials could be hit with $50,000 per day fines.
The new contract will greatly reduce wages and benefits for Canada’s posties.
The Israeli government has stopped all flights from Denmark, because Danish officials refuse to allow Israeli security forces to patrol Denmark’s airports and aircraft.
A new airlines was created to fly from Copenhagen to Tel Aviv. Israel says they now consider the airline, and Danish airports ‘Israeli Security Zones’.
Denmark offered to let unarmed Israeli security agents to work alongside Danish agents, but Israeli officials refused, demanding that Israeli security agents must work alone and armed.
Danish officials said that would violate their human rights policies. The new Copenhagen-Tel Aviv flights were supposed to begin July 4.
Toyota announced the premier of a new car, not in the United States, but India!
The new car is a small low priced car called the Etios Liva. It’s smaller than most Toyota sedans. The price is about U.S.$9,000.
Toyota also announced that India was becoming its fastest growing car market. The number of Toyotas sold in India, last year, was double the number sold five years ago.
Nissan/Renault announced they plan to expand their global market share by 8% (an increase of about 10 million cars by 2017). How are they going to do that? Definitely not by selling more cars in the United States.
Nissan/Renault says it will expand sales in China, India and Brazil. They will boost production in China and India, and build a new factory in Brazil, that will produce 200,000 cars per year.
They will also buy more than 50% stake in Russian car maker Avtovaz.
According to a Fortune article, some counties across the United States are trying to save their budgets by jacking up property taxes. As a resident of Bannock County, Idaho, I can vouch for that! Recently Bannock County announced they were jacking up farmland property taxes by at least 90%!!!
The National Association of Counties found that 15% of U.S. counties admitted to arbitrarily raising property taxes, for this year alone.
Real estate analysts say it’s the wrong thing to do, not just ethically, but economically: “Given the situation we’ve been in for the past few years, increasing property taxes is not likely to aid in the short-term recovery of the housing market.” McKay Price, real estate finance analyst Lehigh University
The fear by analysts is that by increasing property taxes homes sales will drop even more. The National Association of Counties says the trend of counties raising property taxes, as property values fall, is increasing.