Word: japanized
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...magnitude 6.8 earthquake that hit the northwest coast of Japan Monday morning is rocking the country's faith in its nuclear power plants, raising questions about the safety of facilities that provide a third of the energy consumed by the quake-prone archipelago...
...area and killed more than 60 while leaving 16,000 homeless. But instead of feeling relief, the entire country has been rattled by TV images of black smoke billowing from Niigata's Kashiwazaki Kariwa nuclear power plant, located just 9km (5.6 miles) from the epicenter in the Sea of Japan. The plant suffered a string of problems when the temblor struck. Tokyo Electric, the Kashiwazaki plant's owner/operator, was quick to point out that a smoky fire that broke out in an electric transformer posed no threat to the rest of the facility and was extinguished in a few hours...
...amount of radioactivity escaping into the environment from the water and exhaust leaks was reportedly minuscule and posed no threat to people or the surrounding area. But questions are being raised over the safety of 16 other nuclear plants located throughout Japan, a nation that lies atop numerous active fault lines. The intensity of Monday's quake was 2.5 times the level the power plant's structures were built to sustain without any damage...
Thottam's report on the dangers of Chinese imports, from toys to seafood, takes me back to the 1940s, when Japan had a struggling economy. "Made in Japan" was a byword for inferior products. If economists' predictions prove correct and China progresses similarly, both economically and politically, the entire world will be a safer place, and the U.S. will be fighting for economic survival...
...quiz for all you global-warming experts: After China and the U.S., which country emits the greatest quantity of greenhouse gases per year? Answer high-tech Japan or industrial Germany, and you flunk. A holographic Al Gore will be beamed over to give you remedial lessons. It's rural Indonesia, which emits 3.3 billion tons of carbon dioxide annually--almost entirely from deforestation. Living trees absorb CO2, and as they are cut down or burned, they release their stored carbon into the air. Trees also absorb sunlight, warming the earth, but in the tropics their ability to absorb...