Who owns the radioactive fallout from Japan?

Here's a good one-- the owners of the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant, which spewed radioactive materials over much of Japan, say they don't "own" the material, and that it now belongs to the people on whose property it fell!

A local golf course which is contaminated by radioactivity is concerned about its employees and its customers, and wants the Tokyo Electric Power Co. to clean up its property.  But Tokyo Electric Power Co. says the golf course will have to clean it up, because the golf course owns it!  See story at Asahi Shimbun. 

I wonder if Palmer Renewable Energy will say that the air pollution that would come from their proposed plant 'belongs" to the breather?

20,000 Dolphins a year slaughtered in Japan

The New York Times has a story this morning about The Cove, an award-winning documentary that opens on July 31. It will be shown at the Amherst Cinema Arts Center 3 starting August 14.

A central character is Ric O'Barry, a dolphin activist atoning for his role in commercializing dolphins. From an interview in New York:

You had captured the dolphins on Flipper, right?
I captured the five dolphins that collectively played the part of Flipper. I trained all of them, from the very beginning of the first show to the last show. I lived with all five of them in the Seaquarium. And on Friday nights, at 7:30, I would take the TV set, with a long extension cord, out to the end of the dock, so Flipper could watch Flipper on television. And that’s when I knew they were self-aware. I could tell when the dolphins recognized themselves and each other. Cathy, for example, would recognize the shots she was in, Suzy would recognize her shots, and so on. Dolphins are hard to read, because you have to look at body language. Almost all other animals you can read by looking at their faces. But dolphins have this built-in “smile” that makes it look like they’re always happy.

How did your ideas about captivity turn around?
Cathy died in my arms, of suicide. It was just before Earth Day, 1970. The next day, I found myself in a Bimini jail, trying to free a dolphin for the first time. I completely lost it.

How do you know it was suicide?
You have to understand, dolphins are not automatic air breathers like we are. Every breath for them is a conscious effort. She looked me right in the eye, took a breath, held it — and she didn’t take another one. She just sank to the bottom of the water. That had a profound effect on me.

Photo from Jurvetson's photostream at Flickr.

Greenpeace activists: 19th day of detention

From Greenpeace:

Junichi Sato and Toru Suzuki are charged with stealing a box of whale meat which they presented as evidence of a whale meat smuggling operation. The activists requested a Japanese government investigation into the scandal, and the Tokyo public prosecutor agreed there was sufficient evidence of wrongdoing. His investigation has now concluded. The only persons charged are the Greenpeace activists who presented the evidence.

Our activists are innocent of any crime. They have been arrested for returning whale meat that was stolen from Japanese taxpayers, and exposing a fraud that may reach high into the Japanese government agencies that run the whaling program.

This is a message from Junichi: "Thank you everyone for your support and vigilance over the last days. Thank you to the 200,000 of you who have sent the email to the Japanese Government asking for our release and those of you who have sent it to your friends. We have heard from our lawyers about how many emails that have been sent, and it reminds us that we are not alone. Thank you also to those who mounted peaceful protests and vigils at Japanese Embassies around the world calling for justice for myself and Toru and justice for the whales. It helps us to know that so many are thinking of us and of the fate of the whales."

You can go here to send a message to the Japanese Ambassador Ichiro Fujisaki, Foreign Minister Masahiko Koumura, Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda, asking for the activists' immediate release.

Tokyo homeless encampment

"being homeless in Tokyo is different than being homeless in other countries of the world... " from Cliostaad, a site that talks about Toyko's homeless population and some of the shelters they built for themselves Site owners also show a polycarbonate house they designed for short-term visitors to Japan, where housing is extremely scarce.

GM crops yield less, not more, food

For the last three years the University of Kansas has been studying genetically modified soybean crops. Professor Barney Gorden in the agronomy department started the study because some farmers in the region who were using genetically modified soybeans said their crop yields were down. So Gorden grew a Monsanto GM version in one field and regular soybeans in another. The GM modified field produced 70 bushels to the 77 bushels produced by the non-modified field-- a 10% difference!

It turned out that the GM crops needed more manganese, and something about the GM Monsanto seeds-- modified to resist Monsanto's own Roundup weedkiller-- prevented the mineral's uptake. The crops recovered when extra manganese was added, but still, the yield only equaled, not exceeded, the yield of the non-modified. Farmers, of course, would have to pay the extra cost of the manganese.

Meanwhile, some countries that have resisted buying GM because of public mistrust are changing their policies. Japan and North Korea have already started importing GM crops, justifying their actions because of rising prices and the global food crisis. Today's New York Times reports that even Europe may be pushed closer to acceptance of GM foods based on their pocketbooks.

The Times article also makes the first reference I've seen to the study I wrote about last week by the International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development (although the article didn't refer to the group by name). This five year examination and re-envisioning of agricultural production to meet the world's needs had nothing positive to say about the role of genetically modified crops, questioning both their safety and their efficacy.

75% of all the corn grown in the U.S. last year was genetically modified.

Tough all over

The Homeless Services Center in Santa Cruz, CA is running a deficit so they’ve decided to cut the meals they serve to homeless people from seven meals a week to five…A homeless teen in Michigan died when the dumpster he was sleeping in was picked up by the recycling truck and he was crushed to death…Osaka, Japan is getting ready to evict 3,500 squatters in Nishinari Ward because it won’t look good when the city hosts the International Association of Athletics Federations 2007 World Championships this summer.