Middle East arms sales, such as the massive $67 billion military package for Saudi Arabia, are keeping the U.S. defense industry in business. These days, with the Arab world in turmoil, two presidents booted out and a third fighting for survival of his authoritarian regime, that strategy is being questioned.
The wave of unrest in the region has given new weight to concerns that the vast arsenals of weapons the United States has sold to Arab states over the years could fall into the hands of anti-American forces.
U.S. defense industry depends on Mideast
Haiti cholera 'far worse than expected', experts fear
The cholera epidemic affecting Haiti looks set to be far worse than officials had thought, experts fear. Rather than affecting a predicted 400,000 people, the diarrhoeal disease could strike nearly twice as many as this, latest estimates suggest.
Aid efforts will need ramping up, US researchers told The Lancet journal. The World Health Organization says everything possible is being done to contain the disease and warns that modelling estimates can be inaccurate.
AIPAC's newest strategy
Prime minister Benyamin Netanyahu is being heavily criticised in Israel for his blatant exploitation of the murder of five members of one family (including three children) at the Itamar settlement near Nablus.
Particularly egregious has been Netanyahu's demand that president Mahmoud Abbas personally appear on Palestinian radio and television to condemn the killings, although Abbas had issued an unusually strong statement as soon as he heard of the tragedy.
Japan Radiation Leaks Feared as Nuclear Experts Point to Possible Coverup
Nuclear experts have thrown doubt on the accuracy of official information issued about the Fukushima nuclear accident, saying that it followed a pattern of secrecy and cover-ups employed in other nuclear accidents. "It's impossible to get any radiation readings," said John Large, an independent nuclear engineer who has worked for the UK government and been commissioned to report on the accident for Greenpeace International.
"The actions of the Japanese government are completely contrary to their words. They have evacuated 180,000 people but say there is no radiation. They are certain to have readings but we are being told nothing."
The Japanese Learned Nothing From Hiroshima and Nagasaki
You would think that the only nation to actually learn first hand about the potential horrors of nuclear power would be smart enough to realize that nuclear energy and life on Earth cannot coincide. You would think that the nation that suffered not once, but twice from the direct results of nuclear energy unleashed by human technology, would understand the risks associated with this unnecessary evil.
Of course money trumps logic, so the profits made by the nuclear energy industry speak louder than the combined experience of the victims of the premier example of what happens when a society's technology advances faster than it's intelligence.
What will spark the next Fukushima?
The gung-ho nuclear industry is in deep shock. Just as it and its cheerleader, the International Atomic Energy Agency, were preparing to mark next month's 25th anniversary of the Chernobyl accident with a series of self-congratulatory statements about the dawning of a safe age of clean atomic power, a series of catastrophic but entirely avoidable accidents take place in not one but three reactors in one of the richest countries of the world. Fukushima is not a rotting old power plant in a failed state manned by half-trained kids, but supposedly one of the safest stations in one of the most safety-conscious countries with the best engineers and technologists in the world.
US TV host: 'Grateful' earthquake death toll is worse than economic toll
A TV and radio host shocked viewers when he said the human toll caused by the widespread death and destruction of the Japanese earthquake and tsunami was worse than the toll on the economy 'and we can be grateful for that'.
In the wake of devastation which has seen thousands lose their lives following the 9.0 magnitude quake, CNBC's Larry Kudlow said: 'The human toll here looks to be much worse than the economic toll, and we can be grateful for that.'
Further Analysis Finds Deceptive Editing In Sting Tape
Last week, a Project Veritas "sting" operation directed at National Public Radio cost some NPR executives their jobs. Beginning with Senior Vice President for Fundraising Ron Schiller, who was depicted on tape disparaging the Tea Party movement and suggesting that NPR should move away from federal funding (a position with arguable merit, but probably very unpopular at NPR), the fallout eventually cost NPR CEO Vivian Schiller her job as well.
That's sort of the NPR way: when one of the humans under their employ gets in trouble for expressing their opinions, everyone starts panicking and people start getting fired. Further analysis of the original video, however, demonstrates the wisdom of the old maxim, "act in haste, repent in leisure."
Yucca Mountain still alive under GOP nuke plan
Yucca Mountain is still breathing. It's been 24 long years since Congress first designated the desert locale in southern Nevada as the best place to store the nation's nuclear waste.
While opponents have gained the upper hand in trying to block the project in recent years — in 2009, Energy Secretary Steven Chu said that "Yucca Mountain as a repository is off the table" — a group of House Republicans is fighting back. They want to revive the site as part of a broader plan that calls for building 200 new nuclear plants by 2030.
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