Finally A Flying Car

Road legal at last: The flying car finally gets its driving licence after years of delays

It's been cleared to take to the skies for more than a year - but that's not much use when you're supposed to be able to drive it, too.

But now the flying car has at least been declared officially road legal.
It means the Terrafugia Transition could be in U.S. garages as early as next autumn, after two years of delays.

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Ready to go: The Terrafugia Transition has finally been declared road legal, and it could be in U.S. garages as early as next year. It was first developed in 2009, but has faced years of hold-ups

It may not be the world's first flying car, but its makers say it is the first to have wings that fold up automatically at the push of a button.
It costs $200,000 - about the same price as a Ferrari - and can be reserved online for what Terrafugia describes as a 'modest' $10,000 deposit.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has officially announced the Transition, called a 'roadable aircraft' by its makers, can now be legally driven on America's roads.

It granted the vehicle special dispensations, which allow it to use airplane-style plastic windows instead of the safety glass usually used in cars, as it would be too heavy.

Innovative: The Transition 'roadable aircraft' costs $200,000, and can be reserved for a $10,000 deposit

Ready for lift-off: It takes just 30 seconds for the Transition to convert from a car into a plane

The polycarbonate windscreens can withstand the impact of birds, so they won't fracture.

The administration has also granted Terrafugia permission to use heavier-grade tyres, which are not normally allowed on multi-purpose vehicles.

It's the second hurdle the Transition had to overcome before it could go on sale, after the Federal Aviation Administration ruled last year it could fly with its current weight, 110lbs over the normal legal limit for light sport aircraft category.

Terrafugia had originally hoped to deliver its first production vehicles as early as this year, but after problems with suppliers it has had to delay the release date to late 2012.

Ground-breaking design: The Transition is the first flying car with wings which fold up at the touch of the button. When they are fully retracted, it resembles an ordinary car - almost

According to Terrafugia, it 'combines the unique convenience of being able to fold its wings with the ability to drive on any surface road in a modern personal airplane platform.'

THE FLYING CAR'S SPEC

Cost: $200,000
Length: 19ft
Width: 5ft 6ins when wings are folded, 27ft when they're open
Top speed on the road: 65mph
Top speed in the air: 115mph
Range in the air: 500 miles on one 20-gallon tank of fuel
Power: 100hp four-stroke engine

Prospective owners will need plenty of space for their new toy - it requires 1,700ft of road for take-off.

Its creators, which include former Nasa engineers, say the vehicle is easy to keep and run because it can fit into a normal domestic garage and uses regular gas.

It measures 19ft long and just 5ft 6ins wide when the wings are folded up, but they have a full span of 27ft.

It has a top speed of 65mph on the road, but that soars to 115mph in the air.

Drivers can convert it from a two-seater road car to a plane in less than 30 seconds with the touch of a button.

It doesn't have a gearstick, but on the road can be controlled with brake and accelerator pedals and a steering wheel like an ordinary car. In the air it is operated with a joystick near the steering wheel.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2011985/Flying-car-Terrafugia-Transition-declared-road-legal.html#ixzz1RV20iaq4

Man loses his job after Chase bank has him arrested for cashing their own check

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Lynda Bryon at KING-5 News in Seattle has the story, ably summed up at The Consumerist:

Ikenna [Njoku], a 28-year old construction worker, went to deposit a $8,463.21 Chase cashier's check at his local Chase branch, only for the teller to decide that neither he nor his check looked right and he got tossed in jail for forgery, KING5 reports. The next day, a Friday, the bank realized its mistake and left a message with the detective. But it was her day off, so he spent the entire weekend in jail.

By the time he got out, he had been fired from his job for not showing up to work. His car had been towed as well. It ended up getting sold off at auction because he couldn't afford to get it out of the pound. He had been relying on that cashier's check for his money but it was taken as evidence and by the time he got it back it was auctioned off.

All this while the cashier's check had been issued by the very bank he was trying to cash it at.

Chase didn't even apologize, not even after a year. A lawyer volunteered to help write a strongly-worded letter requesting damages. After trying hard to get a response, they sent KING 5 a two-sentence reply: 'We received the letter and are reviewing the situation. We'll be reaching out to the customer.'

I dunno about you, but I have a sneaking suspicion that if he had been another color, none of this would have happened. Auburn is not a lily-white suburb by any means, but the man's description of her questions raises all kinds of red flags.

Meanwhile, I just love being at the mercy of the people who run the financial-services sector, don't you?

Does Michelle Obama Know About This?

Oak Park, Michigan:

Their front yard was torn up after replacing a sewer line, so instead of replacing the dirt with grass, one Oak Park woman put in a vegetable garden and now the city is seeing green.

The list goes on: fresh basil, cabbage, carrots, tomatoes, cumbers and more all filling five large planter boxes that fill the Bass family’s front yard.

Julie Bass says, “We thought we’re minding our own business, doing something not ostentatious and certainly not obnoxious or nothing that is a blight on the neighborhood, so we didn’t think people would care very much.”

But some cared very much and called the city. The city then sent out code enforcement.

“They warned us at first that we had to move the vegetables from the front, that no vegetables were allowed in the front yard. We didn’t move them because we didn’t think we were doing anything wrong, even according to city code we didn’t think we were doing anything wrong. So they ticketed us and charged me with a misdemeanor,” Bass said . . .

City code says that all unpaved portions of the site shall be planted with grass or ground cover or shrubbery or other suitable live plant material. Tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers are what Basses see as suitable.

However, Oak Park’s Planning and Technology Director Kevin Rulkowski says the city disagrees. He says, “If you look at the dictionary, suitable means common. You can look all throughout the city and you’ll never find another vegetable garden that consumes the entire front yard.”

So what is suitable? From another local news report:

. . . we asked Rulkowski why it’s not suitable.

“If you look at the definition of what suitable is in Webster’s dictionary, it will say common. So, if you look around and you look in any other community, what’s common to a front yard is a nice, grass yard with beautiful trees and bushes and flowers,” he said.

God forbid your yard doesn’t include beautiful trees, bushes and flowers. It’s your job, Oak Park citizens, to give Kevin Rulkowski pretty things to look at. According to Bass’s blog, she’s demanding her right to a jury trial. So the city plans to throw the book at her.

our attorney spoke to the prosecutor today. (for the record, my crush on him is totally finished after today.)

his position: they are going to take this all the way.

officially, this means i am facing 93 days in jail if they win.

no joke.

Faked: Japan nuke company caught using employees to ask questions during televised hearing — Told to impersonate private citizens who want reactors restarted

President of Japan Nuclear Operator May Resign Over E-Mails, New York ...Read More

Where is the Gold in Fort Knox?

Did you know that no member of Congress has been allowed to look at the gold in Fort Knox for over 40 years?

TSA Can Grope Dying Old Ladies; But Can't Catch Guy Boarding Flight Illegally?

Apparently the TSA's Security Theater is a comedy. Pjerky was the first of a whole bunch of you to alert us last week about the TSA's massive failure to catch a Nigerian man who boarded a flight without a valid boarding pass. The man successfully flew from New York to Los Angeles. Apparently, the flight crew discovered they had a stowaway after people complained about the man's smell (even though he was seated in a seat). I'm not quite sure how complaining about someone's smell leads to them being found out as a stowaway, but what I do know is that the guy was not arrested when the flight landed. Instead, he was taken into custody a few days later when he tried to do it again by getting on a Delta flight from LA to Atlanta without a boarding pass. This time, the FBI took him in, but later released him. Meanwhile, the TSA was busy groping 95-year-old cancer patients.

How To Protect Yourself From Airport Thieves — Otherwise Known As TSA Agents

Since it’s Conspiracy Saturday, how about this one: TSA agents are supposed to steal stuff to help with the security theatrics to make you feel unsafe.

It defies public-trust expectations, but there are rogue officers at the Transportation Security Administration who think nothing of stealing your stuff.

[...]

The TSA also estimates that for every TSA employee who touches a bag, some six to 10 airline or airport employees and contractors also have — mostly out of view of the passenger.

[...]

There are steps you can take to keep your things out of thieves’ hands:

• As much as possible, keep a watchful eye on your belongings. “You are responsible for your property as it proceeds through the screening process,” according to the TSA.


• Do not pack jewelry, cash, laptops, electronics or any fragile items in your baggage. Leave anything that you can’t live without at home.


• Skip the trays that the airport provides for jewelry, watches and wallets, and belts — using them invites theft. Take off those items before you get to the security line and put them in the pocket of a carry-on.

If you have a lost or missing item from a security checkpoint, check the airport’s lost and found first. The TSA has a list of all the phone numbers at every airport.

If you think your property was stolen, or damaged, during the screening process you can file a claim online.

Is The Mainstream Media Covering Up The Truth At Los Alamos, Ft. Calhoun And Fukushima?

What in the world is really going on at Los Alamos, Ft. Calhoun and Fukushima? There are millions of Americans that would like the truth about what is happening at these nuclear facilities, but the mainstream media has been strangely quiet. Instead, the mainstream media is running headlines such as '10 Dirtiest U.S. Beaches Named' and 'Pole Dance Stops Times Square Cold'. Yes, those are actually headlines that appeared on the front pages of major mainstream news websites in the United States today. Sadly, you really have to dig to find anything about the problems that are currently happening at nuclear facilities in the United States, and the mainstream media seems to have gotten really tired of talking about Fukushima. It is almost as if the mainstream media actually prefers to talk about mindless things rather than focus on the truly important events that are happening all around us.

Look, most of us are not nuclear experts, but when one of our nuclear plants is completely surrounded by flood waters and another one is being seriously threatened by a raging wildfire we have a right to be concerned.

Sadly, the coverage by the mainstream media has been so sparse that the majority of Americans don't even know that there are problems at Los Alamos and Ft. Calhoun. Most Americans also don't understand how serious the Fukushima disaster really is.

Let's take a closer look at what has been happening at Los Alamos, Ft. Calhoun and Fukushima lately....

Los Alamos

A 93 square mile wildfire has approached the perimeter of the Los Alamos nuclear lab in New Mexico. Authorities are warning that this wildfire could soon double or triple in size and an all-out effort is being made to fight it.

Right now the major concern is that the raging wildfire could threaten a dump site where an estimated 20,000 55-gallon drums of nuclear waste are being stored.

Instead of being stored securely, these 20,000 drums of nuclear waste are being stored in above-ground tents.

Authorities are telling the public that the wildfire has gotten to within a few miles of the dump site.

However, it has also been reported that the wildfire is now within 50 feet of the Los Alamos facility itself, and there was even one report that flames were 'just across the road' from the southern edge of the famous lab where the very first nuclear bomb was developed during World War II.

Authorities at Los Alamos continue to insist that there is nothing to be concerned about.

But that is also what they said about Fukushima at first.

Joni Arends, the executive director of the Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety, says that if the wildfires reach the nuclear waste it could be a total nightmare....

'The concern is that these drums will get so hot that they’ll burst. That would put this toxic material into the plume. It’s a concern for everybody.'

But the dump site is not the only concern.

According to a recent Reuters article, there is quite a bit of plutonium at the Los Alamos facility....

John Witham, a spokesman for the anti-nuclear group Nuclear Watch New Mexico, said it is the only place in the country that produces plutonium pits that are carried in the core of nuclear bombs.

Three metric tons of highly radioactive weapons-grade plutonium is stored in concrete and steel vaults in the basement floor of a building near the center of the complex, with an air-containment system surrounding it, Witham said.

So in light of all of this information, don't you think that the mainstream media should be keeping us better informed about what is really going on out there?

Ft. Calhoun

As you read this, the Ft. Calhoun nuclear power plant in Nebraska is completely surrounded by water, and there has been some minor leakage into some of the buildings.

On Sunday, the swelling Missouri River surged past a 2000 foot inflatable berm. Approximately 2 feet of water rapidly surrounded all of the buildings at the facility.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission insists that there is nothing to worry about, but it is also being reported that flood waters are literally 'at the door' of the primary buildings.

Yes, this is not going to be another Fukushima, but it is a very, very serious situation. The American people deserve to be told about what is happening.

In a recent article about the Ft. Calhoun disaster, Michael Wolf raised some very interesting questions about what is going on at Ft. Calhoun....

The government is telling us not to panic. All is under control, just like in Japan. But here are a few troubling inconsistencies. One, the Red Cross shelter next to the Fort Calhoun plant has been closed. They claim it was due to “decreased need.” During a flood? Now there is a no-fly zone around the plant. Then there is the disturbing news that the spent fuel rod pool was so full that they store the surplus fuel rods in a dry storage area outside the safety of the pool. How long will that area stay dry and what happens if it gets wet? One reporter claims the dry storage bunker is now half-submerged. One of the intake structures is prone to flooding that could affect the water pumps. Non-functional water pumps? Does that sound familiar?

The few news reports that we have gotten out of the area have been more than a little alarming....

Sadly, most Americans don't know anything about Ft. Calhoun because the mainstream media has been largely ignoring this story.

Fukushima

Of course the ongoing saga at Fukushima is one of the biggest news stories of this century. Most analysts are finally acknowledging that this is the worst nuclear disaster in history. The disaster at Fukushima will be seriously affecting our environment and the health of millions of people for decades to come.

More bad news is continually pouring out of the region. For example, did you know that large numbers of people living in northern Japan now have radioactive urine?

It's true.

More than 3 millisieverts of radiation has been measured in the urine of people living 30 to 40 kilometers away from Fukushima.

How would you feel if that happened to you?

Very, very high radiation levels continue to be detected all around Fukushima. For example, check out what an article in the Telegraph recently had to say about the level of radiation that was found in the water in one trench near the facility....

The water seeping into a trench outside the Number two reactor at Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in northeast Japan had a radiation level of more than 1,000 millisieverts per hour.

Such a high level can cause temporary radiation sickness including nausea and vomiting and far exceeds the 100 millisievert per hour which is generally regarded the lowest amount at which cancer risks are apparent.

How many people in Japan (and around the world) are going to end up developing cancer as a result of this disaster? The truth is that we will probably never know the full health toll.

Radiation meters are now being handed out to approximately 34,000 children that live near Fukushima.

Shouldn't this have been done about 3 months ago?

The way that the Japanese authorities have handled Fukushima has been a complete and total nightmare. We may never know the full truth about what has been going on.

But what we do know is that Fukushima is now the worst nuclear disaster in history. Just check out the following excerpt from a recent article by Stephen C. Jones....

By way of comparison, the Chernobyl nuclear disaster that occured in 1986 in the Ukraine, Russia- heretofore the worst nuclear disaster on record- burned for 10 days and cumulatively killed an estimated 1 million people worldwide. The Fukushima, Japan nuclear disaster has 5 nuclear reactors burning, 2 in partial meltdown and 3 in full meltdown- and they've ALL been uncontrollably burning since March 11th. Its been over 3 months and this nuclear disaster remains completely out of control. In fact, some industry estimates cite the possibility that these meltdowns will be contained (optimistically) in 1-3 years, at the very earliest.

Sadly, our politicians and those that control the media apparently believe that it is better for us 'not to panic' than to receive the truth.

Roundup: Birth Defects Caused By World's Top-Selling Weedkiller, Scientists Say

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TSA VIPR Program Expanded to Warrantless Random Searches of Your Auto

Planes, trains and automobiles — the Transportation Security Administration is now inspecting them all. And trolleys, ferries, subways and even private cars. For several years now, TSA has coordinated with local and federal law enforcement agencies to perform inspections and large-scale training operations through its VIPR (Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response) program, targeting random transportation centers and giving unsuspecting citizens its trademark pat-downs. (AFL-CIO wins representation of TSA agents)

TSA conducted more than 8,000 VIPR operations in the past 12 months alone, including more than 3,700 operations in mass transit and passenger railroad venues. In 2009, the total cost to taxpayers was $30 million. And now the agency is requesting funding for 12 more VIPR teams, which would bring the total to 37 squads and a budget of almost $110 million a year.

16 Reasons Why The United States Can No Longer Afford To Be The Police Of The World

Did you know that the United States military is now bombing 6 different countries? U.S. aircraft are conducting air strikes in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Libya, Yemen and now Somalia. There is a U.S. military base in over half of the countries on the planet and U.S. military spending is over 7 times larger than the military spending of any other nation on earth. Yes, the United States will always need a strong military. But with our national debt exploding at an exponential rate, can the United States really afford to continue to be the police of the world?

There are always going to be nutjobs in other countries that want to destroy the United States. In fact, the more we bomb the more they seem to multiply. The federal government seems obsessed with stamping out all terrorists wherever they may be found around the globe. But how will we ever know if we have gotten all of them? Does our government intend to occupy all of the countries of the Middle East eventually? Do we really have to police the entire globe in order to feel secure at home?

Trying to be the police of the world is getting awfully expensive. We have run up almost 4 trillion dollars more debt since Barack Obama was elected. Many thought that Barack Obama would reduce our foreign entanglements, but instead he has greatly expanded them.

In an article posted on a major UK news source describing the new U.S. airstrikes in Somalia, Declan Walsh noted that this is now the 6th country that the U.S. military is bombing on a regular basis....

Armed Predator and Reaper drones already operate in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Yemen and Libya, where they are controlled by the US military or the CIA.

So are all of these airstrikes winning any 'hearts and minds'?

Hardly.

Only 3 percent of the population of Pakistan supports our drone strikes in that country.

What we are doing is not working.

Perhaps it is time to fundamentally reassess our foreign policy.

Barack Obama seems to have gotten a real taste for using the military. He didn't even bother to ask Congress when we started bombing Libya, and now there are persistent rumors that U.S. ground forces may soon be involved.

In fact, high ranking Russian diplomat Dmitry Rogozin says that he is convinced that NATO is beginning preparations for a ground invasion of Libya....

'I think that now we are witnessing the preparation stage of a ground operation which NATO, or at least some of its members… are ready to begin'

But Libya is not the only place that U.S. troops may be sent to.

The way that Obama administration officials are talking, war with Syria could potentially be on the horizon.

Things are getting really crazy out there. The U.S. government is absolutely drowning in debt and yet we think that we can push around everyone else in the world.

This even extends to nations that are supposed to be our allies. According to the Jerusalem Post, Barack Obama has given Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a one month ultimatum to agree to resume peace talks with the Palestinians based on pre-1967 borders.

The U.S. government doesn't even try to do much diplomacy in the Middle East anymore. It seems like threats, ultimatums and bombings are the preferred tools.

The rest of the world is going to remember our arrogance and our ruthlessness. When the United States needs help someday, the rest of the world might not be very inclined to give it.

Right now, the U.S. government is essentially bankrupt and the U.S. financial system is on the verge of the collapse. We have got to stop spending so much money.

The following are 16 reasons why the United States can no longer afford to be the police of the world....

#1 Prior to the beginning of the 'War on Terror' our national debt was under 6 trillion dollars. Today, it has more than doubled and currently sits at a whopping 14.3 trillion dollars.

#2 Today, the U.S. military is in nearly 130 different nations and it has a total of about 700 military bases around the globe. It costs approximately 100 billion dollars each year to maintain these military bases.

#3 U.S. military spending is greater than the military spending of China, Russia, Japan, India, and the rest of NATO combined.

#4 The United States already accounts for 46.5% of all military spending on the planet. China is next with only 6.6%.

#5 If Bill Gates gave every penny of his fortune to the U.S. government, it would only cover the U.S. budget deficit for 15 days.

#6 When you throw in all 'off budget' items and other categories of 'defense spending' not covered in the Pentagon budget you get a grand total of somewhere between $1.01 and $1.35 trillion spent on national defense in 2010.

#7 The U.S. government borrows an average of about 168 million more dollars every single hour.

#8 The Pentagon currently gobbles up 56 percent of all discretionary spending by the federal government.

#9 Between 2007 and 2010, U.S. GDP grew by only 4.26%, but the U.S. national debt soared by 61% during that same time period.

#10 The cost for the first week of airstrikes on Libya was 600 million dollars. Keep in mind that the leader of the opposition in Libya has admitted that his forces contain large numbers of the same 'al-Qaeda fighters' that were shooting at American troops in Iraq. So we are going broke and we are helping al-Qaeda take power in Libya at the same time.

#11 The total price tag for each F-22 fighter jet is approximately $350 million.

#12 Over the past decade, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have cost U.S. taxpayers well over a trillion dollars.

#13 If you went out today and started spending one dollar every single second, it would take you over 31,000 years to spend one trillion dollars.

#14 Since 2001, the total cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan breaks down to well over $3,600 for every man, woman and child in the United States.

#15 Just one day of the war in Afghanistan costs more money than it took to build the entire Pentagon.

#16 The United States government is now responsible for more than a third of all the government debt in the entire world.

The U.S. national debt is escalating out of control and all of these wars are not helping one bit.

Occupying and bombing all of these nations is not even making us safer. In fact, it is creating more enemies than it is destroying.

In addition, our military is now spread so incredibly thin that there are real questions about our ability to respond if a major threat did actually arise.

If you support our troops, then you should want the U.S. government to stop trying to police the world. We are getting a lot of young men and women hurt and killed and we are accomplishing a whole lot of nothing.

At the same time we are bombing nations all over the globe, Barack Obama is absolutely gutting our strategic nuclear arsenal and has made us far more vulnerable to real threats such as Russia and China.

It is almost as if our government is cursed. It just cannot seem to do anything right these days. Virtually everything that either George W. Bush or Barack Obama has tried to do has been an utter failure.

Look, I am pro-military. My father was in the military. The United States will always need a very strong military.

But trying to police the world is stupid. Occupying and bombing countries all over the Middle East is a massive strategic mistake and it is creating a lot of new enemies.

Plus all of this military spending is contributing significantly to our national debt nightmare.

If someone can explain why I am wrong I would love to hear it....

Guardian: Leaked Emails Reveal Government Conspiracy To Downplay Fukushima Nuclear Disaster

The British newspaper The Guardian has obtained emails showing that government officials conspired with the nuclear industry to downplay and coverup the Fukushima nuclear disaster to prevent damage to the nuclear power industry.

The Alexander Higgins Blog, by Alexander Higgins

The British newspaper the Guardian has written a series of investigative articles revealing government officials reached out to top nuclear industry officials following the Fukushima disaster to plan a PR campaign to cover upthe Fukushima nuclear disaster.

According to the Guardian, leaked emails show the officials the government conspiring with the nuclear industry to come up with a plan, not to protect the health and safety of the public, but to prevent damage to the nuclear industry by keeping the severity of the disaster from the public.

The Guardian reports:

Call for Chris Huhne to resign over Fukushima emails

Former party chief executive in Scotland says Huhne must go over ‘conspiracy’ to protect nuclear industry

Rob Edwards, written for guardian.co.uk, Friday 1 July 2011 22.03 BST.

Chris Huhne faces mounting criticism over his department's attempts to co-ordinate a PR strategy around the Fukushima disaster. Photograph: Dominic Lipinski/PA

A prominent Liberal Democrat has called for Chris Huhne to resign immediately as energy and climate change secretary after emails were released detailing his officials’ efforts toco-ordinate a PR response to the Fukushima disaster with the nuclear industry. Civil servants in the energy and business departments were apparently trying to minimise the impact of the disaster on public support for nuclear power.

Andy Myles, the party’s former chief executive in Scotland, said: “This deliberate and (sadly) very effective attempt to ‘calm’ the reporting of the true story of Fukushima is a terrible betrayal of liberal values. In my view it is not acceptable that a Liberal Democrat cabinet minister presides over a department deeply involved in a blatant conspiracy designed to manipulate the truth in order to protect corporate interests”.

The leader of the Lib Dems in the European parliament, Fiona Hall, said nuclear plans should be put on hold.

“These emails corroborate my own impression that there has been a strange silence in the UK following the Fukushima disaster … in the UK, new nuclear sites have been announced before the results of the Europe-wide review of nuclear safety has been completed. Today’s news strengthens the case for the government to halt new nuclear plans until an independent and transparent review has been conducted.”

Source: The Guardian

The Guardian provides more background information.

Revealed: British government’s plan to play down Fukushima

Internal emails seen by Guardian show PR campaign was launched to protect UK nuclear plans after tsunami in Japan

Rob Edwards, written for guardian.co.uk, Thursday 30 June 2011 21.36 BST

Read the emails here

Government officials launched a PR campaign to ensure the accident at the Fukushima nuclear facility in Japan did not derail plans for new nuclear power stations in the UK. Photograph: AP

British government officials approached nuclear companies to draw up a co-ordinated public relations strategy to play down the Fukushima nuclear accident just two days after the earthquake and tsunami in Japan and before the extent of the radiation leak was known.

Internal emails seen by the Guardian show how the business and energy departments worked closely behind the scenes with the multinational companies EDF Energy, Areva and Westinghouse to try to ensure the accident did not derail their plans for a new generation of nuclear stations in the UK.

“This has the potential to set the nuclear industry back globally,” wrote one official at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), whose name has been redacted. “We need to ensure the anti-nuclear chaps and chapesses do not gain ground on this. We need to occupy the territory and hold it. We really need to show the safety of nuclear.”

Officials stressed the importance of preventing the incident from undermining public support for nuclear power.

The Conservative MP Zac Goldsmith, who sits on the Commons environmental audit committee, condemned the extent of co-ordination between the government and nuclear companies that the emails appear to reveal.

“The government has no business doing PR for the industry and it would be appalling if its departments have played down the impact of Fukushima,” he said.

Louise Hutchins, a spokeswoman for Greenpeace, said the emails looked like “scandalous collusion”. “This highlights the government’s blind obsession with nuclear power and shows neither they, nor the industry, can be trusted when it comes to nuclear,” she said.

The Fukushima accident, triggered by the Japan earthquake and tsunami on 11 March, has forced 80,000 people from their homes. Opinion polls suggest it has dented public support for nuclear power in Britain and around the world, with the governments of Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Thailand and Malaysia cancelling planned nuclear power stations in the wake of the accident.

The business department emailed the nuclear firms and their representative body, the Nuclear Industry Association (NIA), on 13 March, two days after the disaster knocked out nuclear plants and their backup safety systems at Fukushima. The department argued it was not as bad as the “dramatic” TV pictures made it look, even though the consequences of the accident were still unfolding and two major explosions at reactors on the site were yet to happen.

“Radiation released has been controlled – the reactor has been protected,” said the BIS official, whose name has been blacked out. “It is all part of the safety systems to control and manage a situation like this.”

The official suggested that if companies sent in their comments, they could be incorporated into briefs to ministers and government statements. “We need to all be working from the same material to get the message through to the media and the public.

“Anti-nuclear people across Europe have wasted no time blurring this all into Chernobyl and the works,” the official told Areva. “We need to quash any stories trying to compare this to Chernobyl.”

Japanese officials initially rated the Fukushima accident as level four on the international nuclear event scale, meaning it had “local consequences”. But it was raised to level seven on 11 April, officially making it a major accident” and putting it on a par with Chernobyl in 1986.

The Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC) has released more than 80 emails sent in the weeks after Fukushima in response to requests under freedom of information legislation. They also show:

• Westinghouse said reported remarks on the cost of new nuclear power stations by the deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, were “unhelpful and a little premature”.


• The company admitted its new reactor, AP1000, “was not designed for earthquakes [of] the magnitude of the earthquake in Japan”, and would need to be modified for seismic areas such as Japan and California.


• The head of the DECC’s office for nuclear development, Mark Higson, asked EDF to welcome the expected announcement of a safety review by the energy secretary, Chris Huhne, and added: “Not sure if EDF unilaterally asking for a review is wise. Might set off a bidding war.”


• EDF promised to be “sensitive” to how remediation work at a UK nuclear site “might be seen in the light of events in Japan”.


• It also requested that ministers did not delay approval for a new radioactive waste store at the Sizewell nuclear site in Suffolk, but accepting there was a “potential risk of judicial review”.


• The BIS warned it needed “a good industry response showing the safety of nuclear – otherwise it could have adverse consequences on the market”.

On 7 April, the office for nuclear development invited companies to attend a meeting at the NIA’s headquarters in London. The aim was “to discuss a joint communications and engagement strategy aimed at ensuring we maintain confidence among the British public on the safety of nuclear power stations and nuclear new-build policy in light of recent events at the Fukushima nuclear power plant”.

Other documents released by the government’s safety watchdog, the office for nuclear regulation, reveal that the text of an announcement on 5 April about the impact of Fukushima on the new nuclear programme was privately cleared with nuclear industry representatives at a meeting the previous week. According to one former regulator, who preferred not to be named, the degree of collusion was “truly shocking”.

A spokesman for the DECC and BIS said: “Given the unprecedented events unfolding in Japan, it was appropriate to share information with key stakeholders, particularly those involved in operating nuclear sites. The government was very clear from the outset that it was important not to rush to judgment and that a response should be based on hard evidence. This is why we called on the chief nuclear inspector, Dr Mike Weightman, to provide a robust and evidence-based report.”

A DECC source played down the significance of the emails from the unnamed BIS official, saying: “The junior BIS official was not responsible for nuclear policy and his views were irrelevant to ministers’ decisions in the aftermath of the Japanese earthquake.”

Tom Burke, a former government environmental adviser and visiting professor at Imperial College London, warned that the British government was repeating mistakes made in Japan. “They are too close to industry, concealing problems, rather than revealing and dealing with them,” he said.

“I would be much more reassured if DECC had been worrying about how the government would cope with the $200bn-$300bn of liabilities from a catastrophic nuclear accident in Britain.”

The government last week confirmed plans for eight new nuclear stations in England and Wales. “If acceptable proposals come forward in appropriate places, they will not face unnecessary holdups,” said the energy minister, Charles Hendry.

The NIA did not comment directly on the emails. “We are funded by our member companies to represent their commercial interests and further the compelling case for new nuclear build in the UK,” said the association’s spokesman.

“We welcome the interim findings of the independent regulator, Dr Mike Weightman, who has reported back to government that UK nuclear reactors are safe.”

Source: The Guardian

Exxon tries to downplay Yellowstone oil spill

Exxon tries to downplay Yellowstone oil spill

American Productivity At Record Levels -- With Income And Wages In The Basement

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First, go look at these charts. Now read this, and then this Mother Jones piece:

Webster's defines speedup as 'an employer's demand for accelerated output without increased pay,' and it used to be a household word. Bosses would speed up the line to fill a big order, to goose profits, or to punish a restive workforce. Workers recognized it, unions (remember those?) watched for and negotiated over it—and, if necessary, walked out over it.

But now we no longer even acknowledge it—not in blue-collar work, not in white-collar or pink-collar work, not in economics texts, and certainly not in the media (except when journalists gripe about the staff-compacted-job-expanded newsroom). Now the word we use is 'productivity,' a term insidious in both its usage and creep. The not-so-subtle implication is always: Don't you want to be a productive member of society? Pundits across the political spectrum revel in the fact that US productivity (a.k.a. economic output per hour worked) consistently leads the world. Yes, year after year, Americans wring even more value out of each minute on the job than we did the year before. U-S-A! U-S-A!

Except what's good for American business isn't necessarily good for Americans. We're not just working smarter, but harder. And harder. And harder, to the point where the driver is no longer American industriousness, but something much more predatory.

Productivity has surged, but income and wages have stagnated for most Americans. If the median household income had kept pace with the economy since 1970, it would now be nearly $92,000, not $50,000.

SOUND FAMILIAR: Mind racing at 4 a.m.? Guiltily realizing you've been only half-listening to your child for the past hour? Checking work email at a stoplight, at the dinner table, in bed? Dreading once-pleasant diversions, like dinner with friends, as just one more thing on your to-do list?

Guess what: It's not you. These might seem like personal problems—and certainly, the pharmaceutical industry is happy to perpetuate that notion—but they're really economic problems. Just counting work that's on the books (never mind those 11 p.m. emails), Americans now put in an average of 122 more hours per year than Brits, and 378 hours (nearly 10 weeks!) more than Germans. The differential isn't solely accounted for by longer hours, of course—worldwide, almost everyone except us has, at least on paper, a right to weekends off, paid vacation time (PDF), and paid maternity leave. (The only other countries that don't mandate paid time off for new moms are Papua New Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Samoa, and Swaziland. U-S...A?)

To understand how we got here, first let's consider the Ben Franklin-Horatio Alger-Henry Ford ur-myth: To balk at working hard—really, really hard—brands you as profoundly un-American. Who besides the archetypical Japanese salaryman derives so much of his self-image from self-sacrifice on the job? Slacker is one of the most biting insults available in polite company.

And so we kowtow to—nay, embrace—a cultural maxim that just happens to be enormously convenient to corporate America. 'Our culture has encouraged me to only feel valuable if I'm barely hanging on to my sanity,' one friend emailed as we were working on this article. In fact, each time we mentioned this topic to someone—reader, source, friend—they first took pains to say: I'm not lazy. I love my job. I come from a long line of hard workers. But then it would pour out of them—the fatigue, the isolation, the guilt.

I think I was ahead of the curve on this one, because back in the 1980s, during the Age of Reagan, I lost every shred of anything resembling company loyalty and started telling my friends: If you're not paid for it, don't do it. Even today, I'm amazed at the number of people who refuse to go out for lunch, instead eating at their desks while checking their email and working.

I also told my friends, 'Don't have higher standards for your work than your boss does.' Meaning, if your boss doesn't think strongly enough about getting something done to hire additional people or pay overtime to get it done, why should you break your back trying to do it?

Because if there's one thing I know, it's that bosses rarely appreciate all that extra effort. Instead, they nod and say to themselves, 'See, I knew they could do it.' And then the next thought: 'So why don't they work that hard for me all the time?' It's a no-win game.

I can understand why people feel they have to do that now, because we're back in the Gilded Age and we're supposed to be grateful to have a job. But really, why should you be? They should be grateful you're still vulnerable enough to be exploited while they make record profits.

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