Japanese Cabinet Secretary, Yukio Edano, announced that milk and spinach has tested positive for radiation contamination.
The milk tested came from Fukushima Prefecture. The spinach came from Ibaraki Prefecture. 6 samples of spinach were tested. The radiation levels exceeded Japanese Food Safety codes. They are now trying to determine if any contaminated milk, or spinach was actually shipped out.
Ministry of Health officials will be issuing more detailed info later.
Water spraying with fire trucks resumed. The target is the spent fuel pool on reactor 3, Fukushima Daiichi plant. Temperatures are still rising.
They will attempt to spray water for 7 hours on Saturday for a total of 60 tons of water. They also say the trucks are set up so they do not have to be manned while the spraying takes place.
Hopes for reactor 5 are increasing, as signs that cooling has resumed after workers got the cooling pump running.
Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant officials have good news.
Reactor 5 coolant pump is now working.
Reactor 6 now has one the reactor’s back up generator working.
Officials say the water trucks sprayed about 60 tons of water, so far, on reactor 3 at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.
That isn’t going to be enough: Each spent fuel pool can hold up to 2000 tons of water, so you can see it’s going to take a lot of water (there are 6 reactors and several spent fuel pools).
Another problem is that even if they get outside power hooked to the plant, most of the power panels, and cooling pumps, have been destroyed by the tsunami. So they are now working to fix that problem as well.
NHK reporting that a convoy of concrete trucks are being prepared to head to the Fukushima Daiichi plant.
Concrete was used by the Soviets during the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.
A hospital in Minami-Soma, Fukushima Prefecture, inside the zone where people have been instructed to stay indoors, more than half the hospital’s staff have evacuated. But, about 170 inpatients are still at the hospital.
“We’re reaching the limits of our ability to provide treatment,” hospital director Yukio Kanazawa said. Only a small number of hospital staff stayed behind to care for the patients.
Ohmachi Hospital staff is now less than 40%. The hospital is rationing meals for patients, two meals a day.
Doctors who normally work at Tono Hospital, cannot get there because of a fuel shortage.
Ninohe Hospital has run out of supplies, including heating fuel. “It’s as if some enemy is starving us out,” a hospital official said.
Kunihiro Mashiko, chief of the emergency treatment center of Nippon Medical School Chiba Hokusoh Hospital says “Lives that were saved once may be lost because of the shortage of both doctors and medicine.”
At Ishinomaki Hospital, tap water, electricity and gas have been cut off. Requests for help with about 120 inpatients were declined.
A philanthropy newspaper reports that international non-profit donations to help Japan, one week after the 9.0 quake, total $87 million.
Compared to the number of donations, within the same time period, to Haiti and survivors of Hurricane Katrina, it is piddly.
Haiti received $275 million in donations to non-profits one week after their big quake. Areas hit by Hurricane Katrina saw $522 million one week after that disaster.
This could be due to the bad economic situation, but I have seen plenty of comments on the web, many made by people in the United States, that show that a lot of people think Japan “deserves” this situation. Xenophobia continues to build.
150 Russians, including rescue workers sent to help Japan, and Russian news reporters, are trapped in Sendai, dozens of kilometers from the Fukushima Daiichi plant.
They ran out of fuel for their vehicles, and where apparently left behind by rescue workers from other countries. It sounds as if there was a panic to escape the area after the Japanese government order evacuations.
Every now and then, a new law enforcement officer in Idaho mistakenly arrests someone for OPEN possession of a gun. As well, sometimes a citizen freaks out and calls in the police after seeing someone in OPEN possession of a gun.
In Idaho OPEN CARRY of guns is legal. Open carry, as opposed to concealed carry, means you can carry a gun in public as long as it is visible.
Idaho Constitution, Article I Section 11: “….No law shall impose licensure, registration or special taxation on the ownership or possession of firearms or ammunition….”
Of course they are limits to Idaho’s open carry law, like being a convicted felon, being intoxicated and being under the age of 18.
As far as Idaho’s concealed carry licensing, it seems it applies only to handguns.
“The Saudi’s should know for a fact that Tehran will use all the power and potentials at its disposal to halt the oppression of the people of Bahrain.”said Iranian lawmaker Hossein Naqavi.
Majority Sunni Arab countries invaded majority Shia Arab Bahrain, in order to protect the Sunni rulers there from the Shia revolution. Iran and Bahrain are majority Shia Muslim countries.
Iran has asked the UN to take action. The United Nations, pushed by France, U.K. & U.S., has authorized military force against Libya, supposedly to protect the revolutionaries there.
A Bahraini women, who is Sunni, is supporting the Shia rebels; “The government is making this a sectarian issue. I see the way my [Shia] friends are treated and I came here to show solidarity.”
The headquarters of the U.S. 5th Fleet is in Bahrain.