After a fatal silver mine collapse, in Mullen, Idaho, a Washingtonville, Ohio, man was killed April 25 in a coal mine accident.
Officials with the East Fairfield Coal Company says the cave in was a freak accident. They claim it was the first fatal accident in the mine’s 80 years of operation. State and Federal authorities are investigating.
The Kostenko coalmine in central Kazakhstan is on fire. At least 319 people have been evacuated out of the mine. The fire is 30 meters (98 feet) down.
Dozens of emergency units are working to put the fire out. Coal mine fires are disastrous, they can last for years. Amazingly the mine owner, ArcelorMittal, doesn’t expect any interruption in its operations.
A volcano that erupted in January this year, is causing more problems for the people of Miyakonojo, Japan.
The southern island of Kyushu is home to some powerful volcanoes. In January, 2011, the Shinmoedake volcano threw ash more than 3,000 meters high, covering the Kyushu prefectures. Now there is another warning.
People in the city of Miyakonojo are being told to prepare to evacuate, due to possible mudslides. This is not the first time. Ever since the volcano started spewing ash, heavy rains have created a muddy mess, resulting in periodic evacuations.
Sony is warning PlayStation users to monitor their credit card accounts, after a hacker got into 77 million accounts. Sony says it ”cannot rule out the possibility” that credit card data was hacked.
The incident also includes the music and video service Qriocity. This could be the worst case of information leaks in Sony’s history. Sony wants all users of PlayStation and Qriocity to change their passwords and user IDs.
According to international law a refugee is a person who’s been forced to leave their home, due to war or other violence in their home country. They are supposed to be given certain protections under international law.
The Europeans, along with the United States, were so keen on escalating the violence in North Africa (Libya), yet they don’t want to deal with the flood of refugees that are a natural result of war! Instead the Europeans are calling the people fleeing the war, “migrants”. In this way the Europeans don’t have the same legal requirements as they would if they called them refugees.
In fact, the Europeans are scrambling to figure out how to get rid of these refugee/migrants. The Europeans are even going so far as to dismantle one of the corner stones of the European Union, free travel across borders. The EU is now considering adopting a law that would allow them to close their borders.
How hypocritical is this? The “Western world” launches a war against North African countries, in the name of supporting freedom and democracy, and then they refuse to help any of the people fleeing the violence!
For those people out their who think the military action of U.S. led NATO is still about “protecting civilians”, please explain why refugees, ooops, I mean migrants are being treated like sh*t by the Europeans.
The city of Koriyama is 50km (31 miles) away from Fukushima Daiichi, well out of the evac zones, yet the soil at their schools are so contaminated they have get rid it.
Starting this weekend, they will remove the top 2 centimeters (.78 inches) of soil from 28 schools. Even after the soil removal, school officials say they will not allow the children to play in the yards for more than one hour per day.
A female employee, working at the Fukushima Daiichi nuke plant, is contaminated with three times the safe limits for women. She was working at the damaged plant, directing emergency crews.
Tokyo Electric Power Company thinks she was contaminated when taking off the protective suit. They say most of her contamination is internal, so they think she inhaled the radiation. TEPCo is now testing all female employees at the nuke plant. Safe exposure limits for women are set lower than men.
Japan’s big three automakers, Toyota, Nissan and Honda, have been downgraded to negative by Standard & Poor’s.
S & P also downgraded the biggest parts suppliers for the Japanese car companies. S & P blames the disruption to manufacturing caused by the March 11 disasters.
Toyota officials claim they have a better idea of the parts supply problem, but they refuse to go into any detail.
Supplies of microchips, rubber materials and paint additives are the main problems (affected by the loss of electrical power by the shutdown of nuclear plants, most of Japan’s electricity comes from nuclear power). However, Toyota officials refuse to discuss how many parts they might have, or if there are going to be anymore production delays.
One Toyota official said they normally have two and a half months of inventory on hand, but did not elaborate.
Standard & Poor’s has reduced Japan’s rating from stable to negative. The cut is in regards to Japan’s sovereign debt (things like bonds).
S & P says the cost of rebuilding after the March 11 disasters, will raise Japan’s estimated debt load beyond 2013.