The Guatemalan government announced they have discovered 15 thousand cases of chronic malnutrition in the country, for this year so far.
Next week the government will reveal a “nutritional risk” plan. They say the plan follows UN World Health Organization’s guidelines.
The European Union already sent about $9 million last year. Now Guatemalan officials say they will need about $26 million for this year.
Tokyo Electric Power Company says it must cut wages and salaries in order to meet expected compensation payments due to the Fukushima Daiichi disaster.
Wages would be cut by 5%, with bonuses cut in half. Salaries will be cut by 20%. TEPCo will also reduce the number of employees by 100 each year, for the next five years.
Tokyo Electric Power Company has given an estimate on the amount of radiation spilled into the Pacific Ocean, during the first week of April: 4,700 terabecquerels, 20,000 times the safe limits for an entire year! Contaminated water is still getting into the ocean.
Radioactive iodine levels on 02 April 2011, were 7.5 million times safe limits. As of 19 April, iodine levels had dropped to 1,700 times the safe limits.
In another blow to world food supply issues, the nuclear disaster in Japan is making things worse.
Officials say that many livestock left behind in the 20km (12.4 miles) evacuation zone, have starved to death! There were about 30,000 pigs, about 600,000 chickens and about 3,000 cattle the evacuation zone, but the Fukushima Prefectural government believes most have died.
Farmers are demanding that someone go in and humanely put down the remaining livestock, rather than have them starve to death. YouTube video shows many cows starving to death. The farmers fear that their animals are too contaminated with radiation, to try saving.
Robots from the Idaho National Laboratory have been searching through the damaged reactor buildings at Fukushima Daiichi.
They have discovered temperature and radiation levels too high for humans. Tokyo Electric Power Company officials say they will have to use air conditioners, and filtration systems, to bring heat and radiation levels down enough for workers to operate inside the buildings. Latest NHK video
After giving a speech that implied that social programs for citizens of the U.S., such as Food Stamps, would have to be cut, President Obama is considering sending food to North Korea.
U.S. Special Envoy, Robert King, made the announcement in response to the UN World Food Program’s call for 430,000 tons of food aid to North Korea. The United States canceled food aid about two years ago, because of North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.
A company that was going to build two reactors in Texas, abandoned the plan.
NRG Energy, in cooperation with Toshiba, was planning on building two reactors in Texas. The company now says the investment environment has become too risky to continue with the plans. They will now write off U.S.$ 481 million on their taxes, for the canceled project.
Tokyo Electric Power Company says high radiation levels, and high humidity, is slowing up robots being used to inspected the reactor buildings at Fukushima Daiichi.
In Reactor 2 building the humidity was so high it fogged the robot’s camera lens.
In Reactor 3, there is too much debris from the hydrogen gas explosion. They will use another robot that can clear the debris, some of which weighs 100kg (220 pounds).
18 people were killed, and 155 injured after a major hail and wind storm hit southern China.
Most people were killed when 45 houses collapsed. The storm struck on April 17.
Many farms were destroyed, creating tens of millions of U.S. dollars in damage. It now adds to the growing concern over world food supply.
25 years after the deadly nuclear accident at the Chernobyl plant, the Ukraine is still struggling to deal with the disaster.
This week is Black Week, the official anniversary of the nuclear accident, which happened on 26 April 1986. 31 people were killed, as a direct result of the disaster, and many more have suffered cancers, and children being born with defects.
The amazing thing is that clean up efforts continue, and the Ukraine is struggling to pay for it. Officials are trying to raise U.S.$ 1 billion for future clean up projects.