Storms, floods, earthquakes, tsunamis — with more than half the world’s population now concentrated in cities, the economic threat of natural disasters in metropolitan areas looms ever larger.
The 2011 earthquake and tsunami in northern Japan set a new standard for disaster with almost 20,000 people killed and a record $300 billion in economic losses. Later that year, Bangkok broke the cost record for freshwater floods, with $47 billion in losses. A year later Hurricane Sandy caused $60 billion in storm-surge damage in New York and New Jersey.
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A new report by Swiss Re Ltd., the world’s second-biggest reinsurer, ranks 616 metro areas by the value of working days at risk from five natural perils, as well as by number of residents potentially affected. Click ahead to see whether your city is among the most vulnerable. The areas are ranked by potential economic impact.
India-Pakistan:For the record. Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Pakistani Prime Minister Mohammad Nawaz Sharif met in New York on the 29th. Shivshankar Menon, Indian national security affairs adviser, said that the talks were useful and constructive and that both sides agreed on the need to promote the realization of a complete ceasefire in Kashmir and accepted invitations to visit each other's country.
Comment: Although meetings at the UN General Assembly session are mostly symbolic, they become substantive when they do not take place. The reciprocal invitations stake out a way ahead for more substantive exchanges.
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The fundamental obstacle to a durable peace is Kashmir. Pakistani governments must at least pay lip service to Kashmiri independence in some form in order to mollify powerful security and political interests. India cannot alter the status of Jammu and Kashmir State without amending its constitution, wherein the state is listed as one of the constituent Indian states.
There is little room for compromise except to agree to combat terrorism, maintain trade and a ceasefire along the Line of Control and the borders and not permit provocations to escalate. Yet there are hotheads on both sides that do and will violently oppose peace.
Nominally a sequel to The Good Soldiers, his 2009 account of an American infantry battalion at war in Iraq, David Finkel’s new book actually serves as a perfect companion to George Packer’s recent bestseller, The Unwinding. Like Packer, Finkel examines the human detritus left in the wake of fraudulent promises and collapsed illusions. In The Unwinding, Packer contemplates the fate of those victimized by cataclysmic economic change. In Thank You for Your Service, Finkel looks at those victimized by egregious military malpractice.
The post-industrial, high-tech, information-age economy unveiled near the end of the 20th century supposedly offered a template for permanent prosperity. The Great Recession upended such expectations. Although some Americans have gotten very rich indeed, far larger numbers of ordinary citizens find themselves unemployed and unemployable. With impressive sensitivity, Packer tells their story.
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Concocted at about the same time, a post-industrial, high-tech, information-age approach to waging war supposedly offered a template for assured victory. Iraq and Afghanistan have shredded such pretensions. Although some high-ranking military and civilian officials found ways to cash in, far larger numbers of ordinary soldiers (and their families) suffered, many of them grievously. In painful, intimate and at times almost voyeuristic detail, Finkel tells their story.
More specifically, Finkel, a reporter with The Washington Post, attends to what he calls the “after war.” His concern is with the soldiers who return from the war zone bearing wounds — and with the loved ones on whom those wounds also become imprinted. Above all, he is concerned with wounds that may not be fully visible: the post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), traumatic brain injury and related conditions that affect roughly a half-million younger veterans. Make that a half-million and counting.
To translate this disturbing statistic into flesh and blood, Finkel checks in on some of the soldiers featured in his previous book. What he finds is anger, anxiety, shame, depression, guilt, sleeplessness, self-abuse, spousal abuse, child abuse, alcohol abuse, drug abuse and suicidal tendencies, sometimes acted on, sometimes not. Shouting matches, crying jags and bizarre behavior along with guns and two-pack-a-day smoking habits abound, but not much in the way of useful therapy. Of one soldier, Finkel writes: “He began to take sleeping pills to fall asleep and another kind of pill to get back to sleep when he woke up. He took other pills, too, some for pain, others for anxiety. He began to drink so much vodka that his skin smelled of it, and then he started mentioning suicide.”
The VA is prescribing 270 percent more opiates to veterans than it was 12 years ago, sometimes pushing the drugs to known addicts who later overdose, writes Aaron Glantz.
This story aired on Reveal, a new public radio show from The Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX.
Before dawn, a government van picked up paratrooper Jeffrey Waggoner for the five-hour drive to a Department of Veterans Affairs hospital in southern Oregon. His orders: detox from a brutal addiction to painkillers.
He had only the clothes on his back, his watch, an MP3 player, and a two-page pain contract the army made him sign, a promise to get clean.
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But instead of keeping Waggoner away from his vice, medical records show the VA hospital in Roseburg kept him so doped up that he could barely stay awake. Then, inexplicably, the VA released him for the weekend with a cocktail of 19 prescription medications, including 12 tablets of highly addictive oxycodone.
Three hours later, Waggoner, 32, was dead of a drug overdose, slumped in a heap in front of his room at the Sleep Inn motel.
The first scoop of Martian soil analyzed by Curiosity Rover’s built-in laboratory has revealed a high amount of water in the soil, according to NASA.
“One of the most exciting results from this very first solid sample ingested by Curiosity is the high percentage of water in the soil,” said Curiosity researcher Laurie Leshin, of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. “About 2 percent of the soil on the surface of Mars is made up of water, which is a great resource, and interesting scientifically.”
SAM allowed the scientists to identify a wide range of chemical compounds and to calculate the ratios of different isotopes of the sample’s key elements.
The same soil sample, when heated to 835 degrees Celsius, showed significant amounts of carbon dioxide, oxygen and various sulfur compounds.
These reports are evidence of the beginnings of what will be a nuclear and sure to be, economic meltdown in Japan. Other foodstuffs and electronics or factory items – Toyotas, Nissans? – will accumulate nuclear residues to a degree which will force other import bans on items of all kinds from Japan.
“Concerns over Japan’s radioactive contamination and its seafood is spreading to most countries in the Pacific basin. The United States has recently banned agricultural and fishery imports from 14 prefectures in Japan, up from eight. South Korea puts a similar ban on fishery imports from eight prefectures, while China and Taiwan does so for 10 and five prefectures, respectively. FDA Import Alert: U.S. bans agricultural and fishery products from 14 prefectures in Japan due to Fukushima radionuclides — Top Newspaper: Concern over contamination is spreading to most countries around the Pacific.”
80 Percent of U.S. Adults Face Near-Poverty, Unemployment
Four out of 5 U.S. adults struggle with joblessness, near-poverty or reliance on welfare for at least parts of their lives, a sign of deteriorating economic security and an elusive American dream.
Survey data exclusive to The Associated Press points to an increasingly globalized U.S. economy, the widening gap between rich and poor, and the loss of good-paying manufacturing jobs as reasons for the trend.
