Fukushima plant steps closer to fuel-rod removal

A worker checks radiations on the window of a bus at the screening point of the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant at Okuma in Fukushima prefecture Wednesday, June 12, 2013. Tokyo Electric Power Co., the operator of Japan’s crippled nuclear power plant, showed journalists the massive steel cage-like structure built next to one of the damaged reactor buildings to help extract more than 1,500 fuel rods from a cooling pool on top of it. TEPCO aims to start removing the 1,533 fuel rods in November, officials said during a tour of the plant Wednesday. Three reactors melted down at the plant after the March 11, 2011, earthquake and tsunami. (AP Photo/Toshifumi Kitamura, Pool)

Workers take a break at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant at Okuma in Fukushima prefecture, Japan, Wednesday, June 12, 2013. Tokyo Electric Power Co., the operator of Japan’s crippled nuclear power plant, showed journalists the massive steel cage-like structure built next to one of the damaged reactor buildings to help extract more than 1,500 fuel rods from a cooling pool on top of it. TEPCO aims to start removing the 1,533 fuel rods in November, officials said during a tour of the plant Wednesday. Three reactors melted down at the plant after the March 11, 2011, earthquake and tsunami. (AP Photo/Toshifumi Kitamura, Pool)

OKUMA, Japan (AP) — Damaged vehicles, twisted metal and other debris remain strewn about Japan's crippled nuclear power plant. Scores of black and gray pipes and hoses cover the ground, part of the makeshift system to pump water into the damaged reactors to keep them from overheating.

Plant chief Takeshi Takahashi told journalists on a plant tourWednesday that workers have cleaned up much of the debris in their work areas, but that the priorities are keeping the plant stable and working toward shutting it down — a process that operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. estimates will take 40 years.

"It's a long road, but we will tackle the decommissioning process by paying special attention to safety," he said.

TEPCO showed off a massive, nearly completed steel structure designed to help workers extract more than 1,500 fuel rods from a damaged reactor building — Unit 4 — at the center of international concerns over the plant's safety.

The potentially risky procedure, expected to begin in November and take about a year, would be the first major step in the decommissioning of the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant, where three reactors melted down after the March 11, 2011, earthquake and tsunami, spewing radiation into the surrounding soil and water and forcing about 160,000 people to evacuate.

Concerns have focused on the fuel rods in the cooling pool of Unit 4 because the pool sits atop the damaged building and remains vulnerable to earthquakes. Currently, a jury-rigged system of pipes and hoses pumps water into the fuel pool to keep it cool, as well as into the reactor cores and fuel pools of nearby Units 1, 2 and 3.

TEPCO built the 52-meter (170-foot) tall structure next to and partially over the remains of Unit 4, which suffered a hydrogen explosion after the disaster, to safely remove the 1,533 fuel rods. The rods will be transferred to a joint cooling pool inside a nearby lower building.

After that project is completed, TEPCO will turn its attention to removing the melted fuel from the reactors of Units 1, 2 and 3. The company still isn't sure exactly where the fuel has fallen inside the reactors because radiation levels remain dangerously high inside the buildings.

The Fukushima plant has been hit with a series of problems in recent months, including a rat-induced blackout, adding to concerns about TEPCO's ability to safely shut down the plant.

Viewed from a bus that took foreign journalists — decked out in protective hazmat suits, masks and helmets — within about 20 meters (60 feet) of the four reactor buildings, the area closest to the ocean still was cluttered with tsunami debris, including an overturned car on top of a smashed truck.

All around the plant, there are reminders of the tsunami. There's a clear dividing line between short and tall vegetation on a hill, marking the height of the 15-meter (50-foot) tsunami that walloped the plant, knocking out power to vital cooling systems. An empty building with blown-out windows stands next to Unit 1, which also had a hydrogen explosion

Radiation readings immediately around the plant varied considerably depending on location, ranging from around 50 microsieverts an hour — about the dose of a chest X-ray — to a high of 1.24 millisieverts per hour in front of Unit 3.

During the tour, only a small group of photo and video journalists was allowed off the bus at one point near the reactors. TEPCO officials said this was due to heavy construction activity in the area.

Another major challenge facing TEPCO is storing water that becomes radioactive as it is used to cool the reactors.

TEPCO says about 300,000 tons of water has been stored in about 1,000 tanks around the plant, an amount that will double within a few years. It plans to build more tanks to increase water storage capacity to as much as 800,000 tons by 2016.

Some of the contaminated water is groundwater that has poured into reactor basements. The utility has drilled 12 holes nearby to try to suck up the water and lower the water table so that less pours in.

Myanmar jails man for attack that sparked rioting

YANGON, Myanmar (AP) — A Muslim man whose attack on a Buddhist woman set off sectarian rioting in Myanmar's northeast has been sentenced to 26 years in prison, a local politician said.

The court sentenced 48-year-old Ne Win on Tuesday after he was convicted of attempted murder, causing serious injury and possession and use of illegal drugs, said National League for Democracy member Sai Myint Maung, who attended the trial.

The rioting in Lashio in Shan state marked the extension of deadly anti-Muslim violence from areas in western and central Myanmar.

The failure of President Thein Sein's government to stop the religious strife has cast doubts on the progress of his ambitious political and economic reforms, begun when he took office in 2011 after almost five decades of repressive military rule. The violence has also tarnished the reputation of pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who has not unequivocally condemned the tide of prejudice.

The unrest in Lashio began May 28 after Ne Win splashed gasoline on a woman and set her on fire. She was hospitalized with serious burns.

Buddhist mobs took revenge by burning several Muslim shops, one of the city's main mosques, an Islamic orphanage and a movie theater. One person, a Muslim, died.

While Muslims have overwhelmingly been the victims of the past year's violence, the justice system has been slow to punish the perpetrators, who come mostly from the overwhelmingly Buddhist majority.

The sectarian violence began in western Rakhine state last year, when hundreds died in clashes between Buddhist and Muslims that drove about 140,000 people, mostly Muslims, from their homes. The violence had seemed confined to that region, but in late March, similar Buddhist-led violence swept the town of Meikthila in central Myanmar, killing at least 43 people.

Several other towns in central Myanmar experienced less deadly violence, mostly involving the torching of Muslim businesses and mosques.

A Myanmar court last month sentenced seven Muslims to prison — one of them to a life term — in the killing of a Buddhist monk during the unrest in Meikhtila. In April, a gold shop owner and two employees, all Muslims, were sentenced by the same court to 14 years in prison on charges of theft and causing grievous bodily harm. Their scuffle with Buddhist customers led to the rioting there. No Buddhist has been tried on any serious charge for the violence there.

Prejudice against Muslims — who with generally South Asian features are physically distinct from most other residents of Myanmar — is longstanding and widespread, but passions have been further inflamed by Buddhist monks belonging to a nationalist movement called 969 that urges Buddhists to boycott Muslim businesses and not to marry, sell property to or hire Muslims. They claim Muslims pose a threat to racial purity and national security.

The monks' credibility stems from their religious standing and also from historically playing a vanguard role in politics — in the past against British colonial rule, and in more recent decades against military dictatorship.

More than 200 Buddhist leaders across the country are to attend a meeting near Yangon on Thursday and Friday to discuss how to resolve the communal conflict. However, there is no guarantee that the radical monks in 969, who enjoy popular support, would be constrained by any decisions made at the meeting.

More Americans see man who leaked NSA secrets as 'patriot' than traitor: Reuters/Ipsos poll

By Andy Sullivan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Roughly one in three Americans say the former security contractor who leaked details of top-secret U.S. surveillance activity is a patriot and should not be prosecuted, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Wednesday.

Some 23 percent of those surveyed said former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden is a traitor while 31 percent said he is a patriot. Another 46 percent said they did not know.

Snowden, 29, revealed last week that the NSA is monitoring a wide swath of telephone and Internet activity as part of its counterterrorism efforts.

"I'm neither traitor nor hero. I'm an American," Snowden told the South China Post, an English-language newspaper in Hong Kong, in an interview published on Wednesday.

U.S. authorities have said they are weighing possible criminal charges against Snowden, who was an employee of Virginia-based consultant Booz Allen Hamilton when he leaked documents indicating the NSA's surveillance of Americans is much broader than had been disclosed publicly.

In the Reuters/Ipsos poll, 35 percent of those surveyed said Snowden should not face charges while 25 percent said he should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Another 40 percent said they did not know.

Snowden told the South China Post he intends to stay in Hong Kong and fight any effort to extradite him to the United States to face legal action.

The online survey of 645 Americans was conducted on Tuesday and Wednesday. It has a credibility interval of plus or minus 4.4 percentage points for each result.

Snowden's revelations, first reported by Britain's Guardian newspaper and the Washington Post, have fueled a national discussion over how the United States should balance its national security efforts with Americans' right to privacy in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attacks.

The disclosures have sparked a mix of condemnation and praise. Many members of Congress - which for years had received secret briefings on the NSA's surveillance tactics - have been particularly critical of Snowden. House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner, the top Republican in Washington, called Snowden a "traitor" in a television interview, a sentiment echoed by U.S. intelligence officials.

Snowden also has been the focus of several online support campaigns, an indication that his effort to expose the surveillance tactics has resonated with some Americans.

A petition urging President Barack Obama to pardon Snowden for any crimes he may have committed has collected 63,000 signatures on the White House website since it was posted by a reader on Sunday. The White House reviews and responds to any petition that gathers more than 100,000 signatures.

Reuters/Ipsos polling conducted since the leaks were revealed last Thursday have found Americans divided over the merits of the NSA surveillance program.

Thousands flee Colo. wildfire; 92 homes destroyed

A fire-fighting slurry plane makes a pass in preparation drops its load on a wildfire in the Black Forest area north of Colorado Springs, Colo., on Wednesday, June 12, 2013. The number of houses destroyed by the Black Forest fire could grow to around 100, and authorities fear it's possible that some people who stayed behind might have died. (AP Photo/Brennan Linsley)

A helicopter from Ft. Carson's 4th Combat Aviation Brigade drops water behind a home and between advancing flames as the Black Forest Fire burns out of control for a second straight day near Colorado Springs, Colo. on Wednesday, June 12, 2013. Three Colorado wildfires fueled by hot temperatures, gusty winds and thick, bone-dry forests have together burned dozens of homes and led to the evacuation of more than 7,000 residents and nearly 1,000 inmates at medium-security prison. (AP Photo/Bryan Oller)

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (AP) — Jaenette Coyne estimates she had five minutes to leave home after calling 911 to report forest firesmoke behind her home.

There was no time to grab wedding albums, fingerprint artwork by her 20-month-old daughter, quilts her grandmother made, her family's three cats.

"We left with nothing," she said.

She and her husband later watched on television this week as flames engulfed their house.

"I don't know how to tell you in words what it felt like," she said. "It's the worst thing I've ever felt in my whole life."

Sheriff's officials released a preliminary list Wednesday showing the Black Forest Fire northeast of Colorado Springs has destroyed at least 92 homes and damaged five more. The fire was among several that surged rapidly Tuesday along Colorado's Front Range.

Fueled by hot temperatures, changing gusts, and thick, bone-dry forests, the Black Forest Fire has prompted evacuation orders and pre-evacuation notices to between 9,000 and 9,500 people and to about 3,500 homes and businesses, sheriff's officials said.

Part of neighboring Elbert County, including two camps with a total of about 1,250 children and adults, also was evacuated.

A separate Colorado wildfire to the south has destroyed 20 structures, including some in Royal GorgeBridge & Park, and prompted evacuations of about 250 residents and nearly 1,000 medium-security prison inmates who were taken to other facilities. To the north, another fire burned in Rocky Mountain National Park.

Wildfires also were burning in New Mexico, Oregon and California, where a smokejumper was killed fighting one of dozens of lightning-sparked fires.

On Wednesday, the U.S. Forest Service mobilized a pair of Defense Department cargo planes to help — a step taken only when all of the Forest Service's 12 contracted tankers are in use. At least one was fighting the Black Forest Fire.

No injuries or deaths have been reported, but El Paso County Sheriff Terry Maketa said officials are trying to confirm the whereabouts of one person reported missing.

The area is not far from last summer's Waldo Canyon Fire that destroyed 346 homes and killed two people.

In northeast California, Luke Sheehy was fatally injured this week by part of a falling tree in Modoc National Forest. The 28-year-old from Susanville, Calif., was a member of the Redding-based California Smokejumpers — firefighters who parachute into remote areas from airplanes.

In New Mexico, a wildfire in the steep, narrow canyons of the Pecos Wilderness north of Santa Fe grew to more than 12 square miles Wednesday. Crews planned to build fire lines and clear out fuel miles ahead of the blaze in hopes of protecting communities if the fire heads toward them.

In southwestern New Mexico, firefighters were trying to keep a massive wildfire from reaching an old mining town whose 45 or so residents have been evacuated. That fire was burning in a mountainous area of dense forest.

About 60 miles southwest of Colorado's Black Forest Fire, a 4.5-square-mile wildfire that evacuated Royal Gorge Bridge & Park has destroyed 20 structures, including some in the park.

The Royal Gorge suspension bridge spanning a canyon across the Arkansas River has fire damage to 32 of its 1,292 wooden planks, city officials said. An aerial tram car and tram buildings on either side of the gorge were destroyed, and the tram cable fell into the gorge. An incline railway descending 1,500 feet to the canyon floor was damaged.

Another fire sparked by lightning Monday in Rocky Mountain National Park has grown to an estimated 600 acres in area with trees killed by pine beetles.

Gov. John Hickenlooper has declared disaster emergencies for the Black Forest and Royal Gorge fires and a 60-acre fire in rural Huerfano County, authorizing a combined $10.15 million to help pay for firefighting and other costs.

The cause of the fire near Colorado Springs wasn't clear. The El Paso County sheriff said there were no reports of lightning Tuesday.

At a Wal-Mart and Home Depot parking lot, fire evacuees Greg and Sharon Rambo have set up camp. They had been living in a modular home in Black Forest as they waited to close on a larger house nearby. They believe both have burned.

"It leaves you feeling numb, loss of appetite, disoriented," Greg Rambo said.

The couple previously lived in Southern California and were evacuated during a 2004 blaze that hopscotched over their property without damaging it. Since then, they have carried a briefcase filled with medications and important documents, and kept their trailer far from their house so they'd have a place to sleep in the event their home burns down.

Their daughter, who lives nearby, called them Tuesday and urged them to flee. They do not know if her house also burned.

Meanwhile, Coyne said her young daughter has been asking when her family can go home and "see their kitties." She said the family has a place to stay but could use guidance on what to do next.

"What do you do when you've lost everything," she said.

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Associated Press writers Steven K. Paulson, Ivan Moreno and Catherine Tsai in Denver contributed to this report.

AP Exclusive: Bangladesh factory flaws highlighted

AP Exclusive: Building inspections in wake of Bangladesh disaster show other factories at risk

Associated Press -

DHAKA, Bangladesh (AP) -- Bangladeshi garment factories are routinely built without consulting engineers. Many are located in commercial or residential buildings not designed to withstand the stress of heavy manufacturing. Some add illegal extra floors atop support columns too weak to hold them, according to a survey of scores of factories by an engineering university that was shown to The Associated Press.

A separate inspection, by the garment industry, of 200 risky factories found that 10 percent of them were so dangerous that they were ordered to shut. The textiles minister said a third inspection, conducted by the government, could show that as many as 300 factories were unsafe.

Taken together, the findings offer the first broad look at just how unsafe the working conditions are for the garment workers who produce clothing for major western brands. And it's more bad news for the $20 billion industry that has been struggling to regain the confidence of Western retailers and consumers following a November fire at the Tazreen Fashions Ltd. factory that killed 112 people and the April collapse of the Rana Plaza building that killed 1,129 people in the worst garment industry tragedy. But the proliferation of inspections could signal the industry is finally taking its workers' safety seriously.

Rana Plaza was "a wakeup call for everybody" to ensure their buildings were structurally sound, said Shahidullah Azim, vice president of the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association.

"Earlier it was not in our minds. We never, ever thought of this," he said.

But Rana Plaza wasn't the first factory building to collapse in Bangladesh. In 2005, the Spectrum sweater factory crumbled on top of workers, killing 64. That building was also found to have illegal additions.

After the Rana collapse, the government and the garment manufacturers asked the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology to begin evaluating the buildings. The university formed 15 teams of two engineers each — a structural expert and a foundation expert — to conduct initial inspections, examining a building's support columns, frame, foundation and the soil it was built on, said Mujibur Rahman, head of the university's department of civil engineering.

Rahman said further tests using sophisticated equipment will be completed in the coming months.

AP was shown initial results of some of the inspections of about 200 buildings — many of them garment factories — on condition the factories not be identified. The owners volunteered their buildings for inspection — even paying for the surveys — a decision that suggests they are among the more safety conscious in the industry. The remainder of the country's 4,000 garment factories could be worse, said Rahman.

While initial inspections showed that many of the factories appeared safe, some had problems so serious that engineers recommended they be immediately shut down. Others were told to seal off the illegal floors at the tops of their buildings and gingerly remove the heavy equipment stored there.

"There were buildings that we found that were really critical and we asked them to immediately vacate those buildings," Rahman said.

The engineers found that huge numbers of the factories were housed in commercial or residential buildings not designed to withstand the vibrations and heavy loads of industrial use, Rahman said. Machinery vibrations were blamed as one of the causes along with additional illegal floors as the cause of the Rana collapse.

Most of the examined buildings did not have structural tests dating back to their construction, and it was "very rare" that an engineer supervised construction, Rahman said.

They found a building approved for only six stories that had been expanded to 10. Support columns that were supposed to have five steel bars inside them had only two. Other columns were too small to support the structures. Some of the buildings had structural cracks that threatened their integrity.

In one report, the engineers found structural cracks on two columns and a heavy power generator located on the roof, where its vibrations could threaten the building's integrity. They recommended sealing all the floors above the ground floor pending a more thorough assessment. Rahman said he told the owners it would be safer just to demolish the building and start over.

A five-story factory had 30-centimeter by 30-centimeter (12-inch by-12 inch) structural columns that did not appear strong enough to handle the load. The engineers called for sealing the top floor until the building could be strengthened.

Another factory building had seven stories instead of the approved five and was meant for residential use. Its 25-centimeter by 25-centimeter (10-inch by 10-inch) columns were too small and the foundation was not wide enough to anchor the building in the red Dhaka clay. The engineers recommended closing the top two stories.

In other cases, the engineers called for the demolition of the illegal top floor of a seven-story building and the closure of several other buildings with structural cracks.

Rahman said some owners begged him to change the recommendations, saying they had three months of back orders to fill and then could address the problems. He refused.

Other owners appeared to think twice about the inspections.

The engineers were initially overwhelmed with requests to examine 400 buildings. But after their work began, some owners stopped answering their phones and engineers were unable to visit half of them, Rahman said.

It was not clear whether all the recommendations were being followed, but there were signs that some risky buildings were being forced into compliance.

Not far from the swampy pit where Rana Plaza once stood in the Dhaka suburb of Savar, a factory was dismantling — on government orders — two illegal floors it had been adding.

Industry and government officials said they were taking the results seriously and have announced a steady stream of factory closures in recent weeks.

"We are very much taking care of this thing, because we know that for one or two buildings, we cannot destroy all the industry," said Azim from the garment manufacturers' group.

The group set up its own engineering team and inspected 200 suspect factories in recent weeks, he said. They found violations so worrisome they shut 20 of them, he said.

Some will be moved to other buildings, others will be strengthened and some will be allowed to reopen after heavy equipment is removed from upper floors, he said. It was not clear if those 20 factories overlapped with those inspected by the university.

The garment association also established rules forcing factories to submit structural plans and soil test reports or risk losing their membership in the organization — and their export licenses, he said.

Textiles Minister Abdul Latif Siddique said the government was conducting its own inspections and expects to close factories as well.

"I think 200 to 300 factories will be vulnerable, and I think we will identify those buildings very quickly," he said.

In the wake of the Rana Plaza disaster, the country was under extreme pressure from Western brands to improve safety, he said. But he also appealed to those companies to pay higher rates to cover the upgrades.

"To provide security, better wages and compliance is not cheap," he said.

Swedish retailer H&M, PVH, the parent company of Calvin Klein, and Inditex, which owns Zara, are among companies that signed an agreement to help finance safety improvements in Bangladesh factories. Wal-Mart and the Gap have not.

Experts said the recent disasters were a product of the explosive growth of garment manufacturing here from a cottage industry into a behemoth that employs 4 million people. It began in the 1980s with small factories in residential buildings with no special fire exits, the workers sewing and cutting on the lower floors while the owner lived upstairs. When the business grew, the owner moved out and the factory expanded into the whole building.

Some factories later moved into commercial space. The most successful eventually constructed their own buildings, but even that was unregulated until Bangladesh established its first statutory building code in 2006.

Mubasshar Hussain, president of the Institute of Architects, Bangladesh, said 50 percent of the factories likely have problems, but all of them can be addressed within a year with a coordinated campaign to retrofit those buildings.

"We have the manpower, we have the technology, we have the material. All we need is the awareness of the owner," he said,

But Hussain worried that the burst of activity following the Rana Plaza collapse could dissipate. He pointed to a long-forgotten 2005 garment association report recommending close structural monitoring of factories in the wake of the collapse of the Spectrum sweater factory that killed 64 workers.

Siddique, the textiles minister, said the new disaster was too horrifying to be ignored.

"We are serious now, hopefully it will be better," he said.

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Associated Press reporter Julhas Alam contributed to this report.

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