It’s safe to say that prioritizing — at least in a way the rest of the world can relate to — has never been one of the hallmarks of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il. While the nation’s International Olympic Committee was lobbying last week to co-host the 2018 Winter Olympics with the South, North Korean citizens were scouring the …
The specter of unintended consequences has haunted most military decisions made since the U.S. declared its war on terror nearly a decade ago. And so it should not be surprising that the death of Osama bin Laden — once envisioned as the blow to end this now-global fight — may itself be causing a fresh and unforeseen aftershock in …
The verdict, it seems, is already in. Many are already calling South Sudan, which will become the world’s 193rd nation on July 9, a soon-to-be failed state. Indeed, the prognosis is grim: as its secession from Sudan has drawn near, nearly 2000 people in the south have been killed in inter-militia fighting. Hundreds more are dead …
Naoto Kan, Japan’s beleaguered prime minister, has acknowledged for the first time since March 11 that he may step down — but not until he’s done doing what he needs to do.
Kan has come under increasing pressure from both inside and outside his party to give up his post after his handling of the March 11 …
On Saturday, the leaders of the world’s second, third and 15th largest economies got together in Fukushima City and ate veggies to demonstrate how safe it is to do just that. I think it’s always a little embarrassing to observe politicians in orchestrated eating and/or drinking events (see Obama’s three-guys-just-having-a-beer moment …
The people running the show at Tokyo Electric Power Company, the embattled utility that is struggling to shut down its Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, were probably not out enjoying the sunny, late spring Friday in Tokyo. It’s been a bad week for the Japan’s largest utility, even given the astoundingly bad couple of months …
In the two months since Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant was pummeled by a quake and tsunami, no news has generally been good news.
Unfortunately, today, there’s some news.
Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) announced on Thursday that the damage to fuel rods inside Unit 1′s reactor core is worse than the …
One of the most unnerving things about the situation at the Fukushima nuclear power plant is that it just keeps going. As U.S. special forces prepared to raid a white house in Abbottabad, as Gaddafi’s forces and NATO remain mired in their deadly standoff, the workers at the stricken power plant have continued their Sisyphean task of …
Wasabi peas. It’s not the first thing one might think of salvaging from the wreck of a slightly irradiated house, but then again, they hadn’t been opened. Reiko Nakashima deposits the snacks on the bed of a mini truck next to plastic bags crammed full of clothes and other miscellany she’s spent the morning picking from the mud of …
IITATEMURA — Spring got off to a something of a false start this year in Iitatemura. On Tuesday afternoon in the farming village in Fukushima prefecture, cherry blossom petals fell to the ground with flurries of snow. Roadside bursts of daffodils hung heavy under white slush, and fields of rice, flowers and strawberries, dusted in …
From the earliest days of Japan’s triple disaster, the residents forced to flee their homes in the evacuation zone around the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant have not had a lot of information to work with. Many only found out that they were supposed to leave by grace of the internet or the evening news, and when they …
Veterinarians notice things walking around in this world that you and I do not. In December, I traveled to the far north of Burma with a team of disaster response vets who work for the World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA). Two months earlier, the region around Sittwe, the capital of northern Rakhine State, had been hit hard …
As more details emerge from inside the evacuation zone in Fukushima, it’s becoming more and more evident that workers at the Daiichi power plant, feted as heroes since the early days of Japan’s nuclear crisis, will be bearing their burden for years to come.
Tepco gave its workers the option not to go to Fukushima days after …
