Thai "red shirts" mark anniversary of chaotic protest

Thai anti-government ''red shirt'' protesters gesture during a rally at the Democracy monument, the site of bloody clashes with security forces last year, in Bangkok March 12, 2011.

Credit: Reuters/Chaiwat Subprasom

By Panarat Thepgumpanat

BANGKOK | Sat Mar 12, 2011 6:23am EST

BANGKOK (Reuters) - At least 20,000 "red shirt" protesters massed in Bangkok on Saturday to mark the anniversary of a 10-week rally that plunged Thailand into prolonged violence and political chaos last year.

The protest was one of the biggest since clashes between troops and demonstrators in April and May that killed 91 people, wounded more than 1,800 and sparked widespread arson and rioting in Bangkok and several rural provinces.

The red shirts said they would continue their regular rallies, despite Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva's announcement on Friday that an election -- their key demand last year -- would be held by the first week of July, after parliamentary dissolution in early May.

"As long as there is no democracy, our people will have to keep moving forward," Jatuporn Prompan, a red shirt leader, told Reuters, adding more rallies would be held on March 19 and April 10.

Police estimated at least 22,000 people had joined the rally by early evening. More were expected to arrive later to mark the beginning of a protest last year that shut down swathes of Bangkok's commercial heart and drew 150,000 people at its peak.

The red shirts say justice and democracy remain elusive in Thailand and are demanding the release of more than 100 demonstrators held in jails across the country and a transparent investigation into the deaths of protesters.

They have promised to honor the result of the election, regardless of who wins, if the vote is fair.

The polls are expected to be a close race between the ruling Democrats and the opposition Puea Thai, and analysts say there is a possibility the outcome will be rejected by supporters of both parties, leaving considerable scope for more instability.

The poll will be his first test of popular support after Abhisit's coalition government came to power in late 2008 in a parliamentary vote the opposition says was influenced heavily by the military.

UNCERTAINTY AHEAD

Many opposition figures believe the army top brass might try to intervene in the formation of another coalition, or even stage a coup to prevent Puea Thai, a party allied with the red shirts and ousted former premier Thaksin Shinawatra, from taking power.

A Puea Thai win is seen as a less favorable outcome for investors because of the intense opposition to Thaksin among the army top brass, influential conservatives and "yellow shirt" nationalists. Another proxy of Thaksin could face a rocky time in office.

Economists say a maintenance of the status quo would bode better for political stability and policy continuity, and allow spending plans and infrastructure projects -- often scrapped or delayed when governments change -- to go ahead.

The red shirts gathered on Saturday in Bangkok's old quarter near to where 25 people, mostly protesters, were killed and hundreds wounded on April 10 in a botched attempt by the military to evict them. Hiro Muramoto, a 43-year-old Japanese cameraman working for Reuters, was among those killed.

The incident remains shrouded in mystery and the military insists it was not responsible for any of the deaths or injuries, a claim most independent observers say is highly implausible.

Two boys and bystander killed in renewed Yemen protests

People carry an injured protester to a makeshift clinic after clashes with police in Sanaa March 12, 2011.

Credit: Reuters/Khaled Abdullah

By Mohammed Ghobari

SANAA | Sat Mar 12, 2011 8:07am EST

SANAA (Reuters) - Police killed a boy and wounded hundreds of people in pre-dawn clashes in the Yemeni capital on Saturday and a 12-year-old youth died during anti-government demonstrations in the southern city of Mukalla, witnesses said.

A man watching protests from his office window in Sanaa was also shot dead by a stray bullet, a security source said.

Thousands of protesters have been demanding the end of President Ali Abdullah Saleh's 32-year rule and at least 30 people have lost their lives in weeks of unrest in this poverty-stricken country, a neighbor of oil giant Saudi Arabia.

In an upswing in the violence, security forces battled protesters in the capital, Sanaa, early on Saturday in an apparent effort to prevent a makeshift camp housing thousands of government opponents from spreading any further.

A doctor said a young boy had been fatally shot in the head. "We think around 300 are wounded," he added.

The Interior Ministry accused protesters of opening fire during the fighting and said 161 police were injured.

Dozens of demonstrators were apparently overcome by volleys of police teargas, with friends using torn pieces of cardboard to fan them as they lay stretched out on the ground.

"The gas used by the police is strange. It causes cramps and a collapse of the nervous system," said Bashir al-Kahli, a doctor helping the injured. "Many of those affected come back with complications after receiving first aid."

The Interior Ministry denied using any sort of nerve gas.

In Mukall the 12-year-old boy died when police fired live rounds to disperse the crowds, residents said.

A wave of protests, inspired by popular revolts in Egypt and Tunisia, has weakened Saleh's grip on Yemen, but he has steadfastly refused calls for his immediate resignation and the police response to the crisis has become increasingly tough.

POLICE OPEN FIRE AT OTHER RALLIES

Opposition to his rule also shows no sign of fading and hundreds of students marched in the southern port city of Aden on Saturday in support of the protesters in the capital, residents said. Police shot in the air and used tear gas to disperse the crowd, wounding two protesters, they said.

In a separate rally in Aden, hundreds of girls from local schools marched, chanting support for demonstrators in Sanaa.

In Taiz, 200 km (125 miles) south of Sanaa, clashes broke out between police and protesters, who set fire to a police car.

Energy leads Wall Street after Saudi protests fizzle

Fri, Mar 11 2011

• Wall St. shakes off Japan quake

Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, March 11, 2011.

Credit: Reuters/Brendan McDermid

By Edward Krudy

NEW YORK | Fri Mar 11, 2011 7:09pm EST

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks closed the week on a high note on Friday, on relief that unrest did not engulf top oil producer Saudi Arabia, calming some investors who worried the market was entering a near-term slide.

Stocks snapped back from early-week losses even as other markets were hit hard by a devastating earthquake in Japan, the country's strongest on record. Oil refiners and industrial-related shares led Wall Street higher.

Investors had been on edge that planned "Day of Rage" protests in Saudi Arabia could lead to further instability in the Middle East and North Africa. Those fears had intensified after police used force to disperse demonstrators in Riyadh on Thursday.

"The Day of Rage in Saudi Arabia did not end up causing as much of a stir as they thought," said Marc Pado, U.S. market strategist at Cantor Fitzgerald & Co. in San Francisco. "That's been the concern all week."

Shares initially fell as investors reeled from images of mass destruction after the Japanese earthquake and tsunami left at least 1,000 dead. But the market reversed losses and notched solid gains as investors shook off fears of the quake's impact on Japan, the world's third largest economy. Japan's major cities and manufacturing facilities were not affected by the quake.

The Dow Jones industrial average .DJI rose 59.79 points, or 0.50 percent, at 12,044.40. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index .SPX climbed 9.17 points, or 0.71 percent, at 1,304.28. The Nasdaq Composite Index .IXIC added 14.59 points, or 0.54 percent, at 2,715.61.

Refiners Valero Energy Corp (VLO.N) rose 6.3 percent and Tesoro Corp (TSO.N) jumped 8.4 percent after Japan's oil refining capacity was hit by the earthquake and tsunami.

Howard Ward, a fund manager at the GAMCO Growth Fund, said speculative moves would likely be a short-lived overreaction. "It's generally a mistake for people to be too reactive to a natural disaster like this," he said.

Short sellers were quick to react to the quake. The ProShares UltraShort MSCI Japan exchange traded fund (EWV.P), which amplifies the reverse of the underlying MSCI Japan index by a factor of two, rose 3.2 percent on over 100 times its usual volume.

Japanese shares traded in New York fell sharply. The Bank of New York Mellon's index of Japanese ADR's .BKJP lost 2.1 percent. Toyota Motor Corp (TM.N) lost 2.1 percent to $85.65.

Investors said some industrial shares could benefit in the rebuilding operation in Japan but said information on the extent of damage was still scarce.

"The long-term impact is probably going to favor large equipment CAT-type stocks and some of the basic materials," said Pado, referring to heavy-equipment maker Caterpillar Inc.

Caterpillar (CAT.N) shares rose 1.7 percent to $100.02. The Dow Jones industrials index .DJUSIN rose 1 percent.

Stocks of global insurers were also in the spotlight on expectations of claims for damages.

Among insurers in the United States likely to have exposure in Japan, Aflac Inc (AFL.N) fell 0.3 percent to $55.55 and Berkshire Hathaway Inc (BRKb.N) rose 0.4 percent to $85.26. The KBW Insurance index .KIX rose 0.6 percent.

Seabed split; quake tilted Earth's axis 10 cm

Saturday, March 12, 2011

ANALYSIS

By ALEX MARTIN

Staff writer

The magnitude 8.8 earthquake that jolted northeast Japan was caused by a tectonic upheaval that created offshore faults stretching for hundreds of kilometers from Iwate Prefecture to Ibaraki, seismologists said Saturday.

Satoko Oki of the University of Tokyo's Earthquake Research Institute said the massive quake, estimated to be nearly 1,000 times more powerful than the 1995 Great Hanshin Earthquake that killed more than 6,000 people, was caused by a rupture near the boundary between the Pacific and North American tectonic plates.

The quake was created when the Pacific plate slipped under Japan at the Japan Trench, causing tsunami as high as 10 meters to slam the east coast, she said.

Experts estimate the impact of the world's fifth-largest quake caused a displacement of about 20 meters and a fault a few hundred kilometers long.

According to the U.S. Geological Survey, the epicenter of the earthquake was 373 km northeast of Tokyo and 130 km east of Sendai.

Japan's seismic risk map indicates there was a 99 percent risk of a magnitude 7.5 or larger earthquake hitting the region in the next 30 years.

Oki said that while quake eruptions at plate boundaries are relatively common, one of this magnitude was unexpected.

"Magnitude-8.8 is really an enormous quake, the largest ever measured in Japan's vicinity," she said.

Oki warned that increases in seismic activity, especially of the inland type, have been historically noted before and following plate boundary earthquakes, although she said it was difficult to determine whether it had any relation to the magnitude-6.7 earthquake that hit Nagano and Niigata prefectures early Saturday.

"Plate boundary earthquakes happen every 100 years or so, but one of this magnitude happens only once in 1,000 years," Oki said.

Yuji Yagi, associate professor at Tsukuba University, said an earthquake of this scale could trigger other earthquakes at faults that are already on the brink of a tectonic upheaval.

"The stress created by a massive quake increases the possibility of other large tremors; extreme caution is needed," he said.

Sadayuki Kitagawa, an officer at the seismic research division of the government's Earthquake Research Promotion headquarters, said that while they had envisioned a smaller earthquake occurring on the coast of Fukushima or Ibaraki prefectures, they did not expect one so close to land and of such intensity.

"We were predicting an earthquake with a magnitude of 8 or smaller, not one this big," he said, adding that the scale of Friday's quake caused an unusually large series of aftershocks that was expected to last for a while.

Kitagawa said Friday's magnitude-8.8 earthquake was close in size to the 2004 earthquake off Sumatra that generated the huge Indian Ocean tsunami.

Bloomberg News on Saturday reported an Italian geological institute as saying Japan's strongest earthquake probably shifted the Earth's axis by about 10 cm.

The institute said the impact the earthquake had on the Earth's axis was far larger than the impact of the Sumatra quake. The report also quoted experts as saying last year's earthquake in Chile probably shifted the Earth's axis by 7.6 cm.

Oki said that with an average 300 earthquakes happening throughout Japan each day, it is extremely difficult to predict when the next big one might hit.

She also warned that the residents of Tokyo, who experienced the quake at a level of 5.0 on the Japanese intensity scale Friday, shouldn't consider themselves safe and should instead prepare for a large quake striking the metropolis.

Oki said the Tokyo area is prone to two types of earthquakes, one caused by ruptures at plate boundaries, which is the same type that caused the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923 and which is expected to hit every 200 years or so, or an epicentral earthquake of the Hanshin variety that has a cycle of a few thousand to a few hundred thousand years, making it almost impossible to predict.

Fukushima reactor has explosion

Saturday, March 12, 2011

Four injured; meltdown feared as nuclear plant spews radiation

Compiled from Kyodo, AP

SENDAI — Officials scrambled to prevent a meltdown Saturday after an explosion at a nuclear power station blew apart the building housing its reactor, injuring four workers.

The blast followed the failure of the power plant's cooling system, which was compromised by Friday's 8.8-magnitude temblor.

Tokyo Electric Power Co., the utility that runs the Fukushima No. 1 plant, said the four workers injured in the blast — two of its own staff and two from another company, do not have life-threatening injuries and all remained conscious.

At the time of the 3:36 p.m. blast, the four were tending to problems caused by the massive quake, which devastated northeastern Japan and generated giant tsunami.

The explosion about 250 km northeast of Tokyo destroyed the walls and roof of the aging facility, which housed the reactor, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano told reporters at a hastily convened news conference Saturday evening.

TV footage showed that the power plant's roof and walls had disappeared. Tepco said the roof of the building collapsed after a large tremor.

Edano urged local residents to stay calm and said radiation levels were being carefully monitored. He also urged all residents living within 20 km of its Fukushima No. 1 and No. 2. plants to evacuate.

"We are now trying to analyze what is behind the explosion," Edano said. "We ask everyone to take action to secure safety."

The nuclear power plant lost cooling ability after being jolted by Friday's devastating quake, and radioactive cesium and iodine were detected nearby Saturday.

Detection of the materials, which are created in the atomic fission process, prompted the nuclear safety agency to admit the reactor has been melting, a first for Japan.

According to the Fukushima Prefectural Government, hourly radiation emissions from the Fukushima plant reached 1,015 microsieverts on the premises — an amount equivalent to the dose an ordinary person would receive in one year.

The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said serious damage to the stricken reactor's containment facility was unlikely despite the explosion.

Wind in the region is weak and headed northeast — toward the sea — for the time being, the Meteorological Agency said.

The company scrambled earlier Saturday to release pressure in the containers housing the reactors to prevent a nuclear meltdown from occurring, the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said.

Even before Tepco succeeded in reducing the pressure, which involved releasing steam that would likely include radioactive materials, radiation had risen to an unusually high level in and near the No. 1 nuclear plant.

Work to depressurize the containers, aimed at preventing the plants from sustaining damage and losing their critical containment function, was conducted under an unprecedented government order.

At the No. 1 plant, the amount of radiation reached around 1,000 times normal inside the control room of the reactor, and 70 times normal near its main gate.

It was the first time an external radioactive leak had been confirmed since the disaster.

Earlier reports said the U.S. Air Force was helping to deliver coolant to the damaged plant, which Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was believed to have confirmed Friday in the U.S.

The plant was using a battery to run systems that keep the reactor's fuel from overheating, officials of the nuclear safety agency had said Friday.

Speaking 2 languages may delay getting Alzheimer's

WASHINGTON —

Mastering a second language can pump up the brain in ways that seem to delay getting Alzheimer’s disease later on, scientists say.

While the new research focuses mostly on the truly long-term bilingual, scientists say even people who tackle a new language later in life stand to gain.

The more proficient the person becomes, the better, but “every little bit helps,” said Ellen Bialystok, a psychology professor at York University in Toronto.

Much of the study of bilingualism has centered on babies, as scientists wondered why simply speaking to infants in two languages allows them to learn both in the time it takes most babies to learn one. Their brains seem to become more flexible, better able to multitask. As they grow up, their brains show better “executive control,” a system key to higher functioning—as Bialystok puts it, “the most important part of your mind.”

Does that mental juggling in youngsters translate into protection against cognitive decline when in older people?

Bialystok studied 450 Alzheimer’s patients, all of whom showed the same degree of impairment at the time of diagnosis. Half are bilingual; they have spoken two languages regularly for most of their lives. The rest are monolingual.

The bilingual patients had Alzheimer’s symptoms and were diagnosed between four and five years later than the patients who spoke only one language, she told the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Being bilingual does nothing to prevent Alzheimer’s disease from striking. But once the disease does begin its silent attack, those years of robust executive control provide a buffer so that symptoms do not become apparent as quickly, Bialystok said.

“They’ve been able to cope with the disease,” she said.

Her work supports an earlier study from other researchers that also found a protective effect.

What is it about being bilingual that enhances that all-important executive control system?

Both languages are essentially turned on all the time, but the brain learns to inhibit the one that is not needed, said psychology professor Teresa Bajo of the University of Granada in Spain. That is pretty constant activity.

That is not the only area. University of British Columbia psychologist Janet Werker studies infants exposed to two languages from birth to see why they do not confuse the two, and says bilingual babies learn very early to pay attention better.

Werker tested babies in Spain who were growing up learning both Spanish and Catalan. She showed the babies videos of women speaking languages they’d never heard—English and French—but with the sound off. By measuring the tots’ attention span, Werker concluded that babies could distinguish between English and French simply by watching the speakers’ facial cues. It could have been the different lip shapes.

“It looks like French people are always kissing,” she joked, while the English “th” sound evokes a distinctive lip-in-teeth shape.

Whatever the cues, monolingual babies could not tell the difference, Werker said Friday at the meeting.

But what about people who were not lucky enough to have been raised bilingual? Scientists and educators know that it becomes far harder to learn a new language after puberty.

Partly that’s because adults’ brains are so bombarded with other demands that they do not give learning a new language the same attention that a young child does, Bialystok said.

At the University of Maryland, scientists are studying how to identify adults who would be good candidates to master a new language, and then what types of training are best. Having a pretty strong executive control system, like the lifelong bilinguals have, is among the good predictive factors, said Amy Weinberg, deputy director of the university’s Center for Advanced Study of Language.

But people do not have to master a new language to benefit some, Bialystok said. Exercising your brain throughout life contributes to what is called cognitive reserve, the overall ability to withstand the declines of aging and disease. That is the basis of the use-it-or-lose-it advice from aging experts who also recommend such things as crossword puzzles to keep the brain nimble.

“If you start to learn at 40, 50, 60, you are certainly keeping your brain active,” she said.

___

Online:

Science meeting: http://www.aaas.org/meetings/

Explosion did not occur at Fukushima reactor: Japan spokesman

Saturday 12th March, 10:02 PM JST

TOKYO —

Japanese authorities have confirmed there was an explosion at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant Saturday afternoon but it did not occur at its troubled No. 1 reactor, top government spokesman Yukio Edano said.

The chief Cabinet secretary also told an urgent press conference that the operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co., has confirmed there is no damage to the steel container housing the reactor.

Edano said the 3:36 p.m. explosion resulted in the roof and the walls of the building housing the reactor’s container being blown away.

The authorities expanded an evacuation area for all local residents from a 10-kilometer radius of the Fukushima No. 1 and No. 2 plants to a 20-km radius.

Officials of Japan’s nuclear safety agency also said after examination that they believe there has been no serious damage to the container of the No. 1 reactor, judging from the latest radiation data monitored around the facility.

The incident came after the plant lost its cooling functions after it was jolted by a magnitude 8.8 earthquake Friday and radioactive substances of cesium and iodine were detected near the facility Saturday.

The detection of the materials, which are created following atomic fission, led Japan’s nuclear safety agency to admit the reactor has been partially melting—the first such case in Japan.

A partial core meltdown also occurred in a major nuclear accident at Three Mile Island in the United States in 1979. About 45 percent of nuclear fuel was melted in the incident, causing radioactive materials to be released.

According to the Fukushima prefectural government, the hourly radiation from the Fukushima plant reached 1,015 micro sievert in its premises before the explosion, an amount equivalent to that allowable for ordinary people in one year.

Four workers—two from the company and two others from another firm—were injured in the explosion, according to Tokyo Electric Power. The four were working to deal with problems caused by a powerful earthquake that hit northeastern Japan on Friday, it said.

The company said the injuries the four have suffered are not life-threatening and that they are conscious.

The operator of the quake-hit nuclear plants in Fukushima Prefecture, successfully released pressure in the container of housing one of its reactors to prevent a nuclear meltdown, the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said.

Even before Tokyo Electric Power succeeded in reducing the pressure, which would involve the release of steam that would likely include radioactive materials, radiation had risen to an unusually high level in and near the No. 1 nuclear plant.

Work to depressurize the containers, aimed at preventing the plants from sustaining damage and losing their critical containment function, has been conducted under an unprecedented government order.

The agency said the core at the No. 1 reactor of the No. 1 plant may be partially melting, and the work to depressurize the container was necessary to prevent the container from sustaining damage and losing its critical containment function.

The agency said that as a result of reducing the container’s pressure radioactive levels at the plant went up. The depressurizing work involves the release of steam including radioactive materials.

But the agency denied that the radiation amount will pose an immediate threat to the health of nearby residents, as wind is currently blowing toward the sea in the northeastern Japan prefecture on the Pacific coast.

At the No. 1 plant, the amount of radiation reached around 1,000 times the normal level in the control room of the No. 1 reactor, and 70 times the normal level near the main gate of the plant.

It was the first time an external radioactive leak had been confirmed since the disaster.