Global

By DAVID QUAMMEN, Published: October 14, 2013, NY Times 

BOZEMAN, Montana — Grim prognostications of pestilence are as old as the Book of Revelation, but they have not gone out of style or been rendered moot. Plague is a tribulation that science, technology and social engineering haven’t fixed. In the mid-1960s, some public health officials imagined that antibiotics and other modern therapies would enable us to “close the book” on infectious diseases and so make it possible to focus on noncommunicable afflictions, like heart attack, diabetes and stroke. But that optimism was mistaken...

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21 October 2013 | Tokyo -- The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)'s international expert mission to review remediation efforts in areas affected by the Fukushima Daiichi accident concluded today with the presentation of a Preliminary Summary Report to Japan's Senior Vice-Minister of the Environment, Shinji Inoue.

The Follow-up IAEA International Mission on Remediation of Large Contaminated Areas Off-site the Fukushima Daiichi NPS recognised the huge effort and enormous resources that Japan is devoting to its remediation strategies and activities, with the aim of improving living conditions for people affected by the nuclear accident and enabling evacuees to return home.

The Mission Team highlighted important progress since the first IAEA remediation mission in October 2011, noted that Japan had made good use of advice from that earlier Mission, and offered fresh advice in a number of areas where it is still possible to further improve current practices, taking into account both international standards and the experience of remediation programmes in other countries.