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China 'Ill-Prepared' for Unrest, Says Security Chief

Sun, 2011-12-04 21:00 — Kathy Gilbeaux

BBC News - December 4, 2011

There has been a rise in worker protests in recent weeks in different parts of China

China's security chief has warned that the government needs better methods to deal with social unrest due to a slowing economy.

Zhou Yongkang, a member of the politburo, asked provincial officials for improved "social management".

China has seen an increase in labour unrest in recent weeks.

The comments are a sign that the Chinese government is worried that another slowdown could spark public anger.

(READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)

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Research - Radioactive Contamination

Tue, 2011-11-22 23:40 — Kathy Gilbeaux
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Copyright Issues

Wed, 2011-11-16 08:36 — mdmcdonald


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"The Arab Spring: A New Era in a Transforming Globe" -- What is the Catalytic Role of Social Media?

Wed, 2011-11-09 07:56 — mdmcdonald

This article by Alon Ben-Meir at NYU's Center for Global Affairs brings to light a globalizing transformation being driven by youth using social media, which he predicts has long-lasting world-changing implications. 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alon-benmeir/the-arab-spring-a-new-era_b_1082577.html

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Vietnam’s Exploding Reefers

Tue, 2011-11-08 22:01 — Kathy Gilbeaux

by Ben Bland - Financial Times - November 7, 2011

It is thanks to the seemingly seamless international shipping network that Americans can buy computers made in China, Europeans can enjoy Argentine steak and people from all over the world can sustain themselves with rice, fish and coffee produced in Vietnam.

But the ease of transporting the humble twenty-foot container around the world means that problematic cargo in one port can swiftly become a global problem, as with a recent spate of exploding refrigerated containers traced to Vietnam. 

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Xenon Means Recent Fission in Reactor 2

Wed, 2011-11-02 21:55 — Kathy Gilbeaux

               

Graphic by The Asahi Shimbun

____________________________________________________________________________________________________

By KAZUAKI NAGATA and MIZUHO AOKI - The Japan Times - November 3, 2011

Tepco claims level in gas too small to affect shutdown effort

Tokyo Electric Power Co. said Wednesday that some of the melted fuel in reactor 2 at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant may have triggered a brief criticality event.

Although the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said there have been no drastic changes in the reactor's temperature and pressure level, and the reactor itself is stable overall, the discovery may mean the goal of Tepco and the government to achieve cold shutdown of all three crippled reactors by the end of the year may not be possible.

Suggesting that criticality, or a sustained nuclear chain reaction, may have occurred temporarily, or partially, Tepco said one hundred thousandth of a becquerel per cubic centimeter of xenon-133 and xenon-135 was detected in gas samples.

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New Trouble Reported at Japan Nuclear Plant

Wed, 2011-11-02 00:28 — Kathy Gilbeaux

by Eric Talmadge - Associated Press (AP) - msnbc.com - November 1, 2011  

          

An aerial photo taken by a small unmanned drone and released by AIR PHOTO SERVICE, damaged Unit 3, left, and Unit 4 of the crippled Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant are seen in Okuma, Fukushima prefecture, northeastern Japan on March 24, 2011. (AP / AIR PHOTO SERVICE)

TOKYO — Officials detected a radioactive gas associated with nuclear fission at Japan's tsunami-damaged atomic power plant Wednesday, indicating there could be a new problem at one of its reactors. They injected a substance that neutralizes nuclear reactions as a precaution.

Gas from inside the reactor indicated the presence of radioactive xenon, which could be the byproduct of unexpected nuclear fission. Boric acid was being injected through a cooling pipe as a countermeasure because it can counteract nuclear reactions.

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The Sky Is Falling In

Tue, 2011-11-01 23:51 — Kathy Gilbeaux

submitted by Theresa Bernardo

by Cathy Buckle - cathybuckle.com - October 29, 2011

The chat in the queue at a government hospital Outpatients department this week was about the searing heat that has been beating down on the country in the last few days. The extremely high temperatures scorching Zimbabwe have been the national talking point as day after day we’ve looked up into dazzling blue skies without even a whisp of cloud. One woman in the hospital queue said that God must have dropped the sun, letting it fall down lower in the sky. People laughed and her words made me think of Chicken Licken, Turkey Lurkey and all their mates who were sure the sky was falling in! Someone else in the hospital queue said that this heat was a sign from the ancestors: a warning of something, although no one volunteered what. The dreaded word on everyone’s lips is ‘drought.’ Memories of hunger and starvation are still very fresh in our minds although the hunger in our recent past was caused more by political mis-governance and negligence than by weather.

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Independent, Skeptic-Funded Study Confirms Global Warming is Real

Sun, 2011-10-30 22:10 — Kathy Gilbeaux

dvice.com - October 30, 2011

            

The Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature study has just released a summary of a recently completed global land warming analysis showing "reliable evidence of a rise in average world land temperature by approximately one degree Celsius since the mid-1950s." Yeah, we've heard that before, but this is one study that even skeptics may have to believe.

Here's why the Berkeley Earth Project is different from all previous studies on global warming:

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Polio Parallels

Sun, 2011-10-30 00:52 — Kathy Gilbeaux

by Dr. Orin Levine - Executive Director, International Vaccine Access Center, Johns Hopkins University - huffingtonpost.com - October 27, 2011

Last week in Seattle, Bill Gates announced breakthrough results from a large malaria vaccine trial. The study, conducted in seven sub-Saharan African countries, showed that the most advanced malaria vaccine -- called RTS,S -- could cut the risk of malaria by as much as 56 percent among African children.

The results generated international buzz and raised the hopes that malaria, a disease that extracts a major toll in Africa and a handful of other countries, might be controllable through vaccination. What struck me most about this announcement is how it resembled -- and in some unfortunate ways, currently differs from -- the effort to develop a safe, effective polio vaccine as outlined by David Oshinsky in his award winning book, Polio: An American Story.

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