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Gadhafi’s Soldiers Were Tricked into Fighting

Gadhafi’s Soldiers Tricked

Soldiers from Gadhafi’s army were captured and interrogated by rebels, revealing their corroded loyalty to their leader, from whom they have already defected. They were greatly injured from the war and their faith from their ex-leader was broken, saying they were pushed into battle against their rebellious compatriots in eastern Libya.

A reservist by the name of Azoumi Ali Mohammed was taken on March 20 after coalition aircraft attacked him and his troops on a desert road leading from the eastern city of Ajdabiya. “The planes hit us as soon as we headed out. I saw two people die in front of me. After that I don’t know what happened,” he said. They were instructed to secure the area and “fight mercenaries and Al-Qaeda.” He was shocked for having to fight his countrymen instead.

Mustafa Mohammed Ali, another soldier, survived six shots from a gun during a rebel ambush. “I was loyal (to Kadhafi). Now I’m not, after finding out the truth about the fighting,” he said. “In Benghazi I found young people making a revolution to escape from the darkness they were living in.”

Another was Wanis Ibrahim Assan, 30 years old, a crew in charge of mobilising a tank. When they were assigned to take the airport on March 19, his tank was targeted with a rocket-propelled grenade launcher. He was able to jump out before impact but debris from the blast sank into his skin, wounded his head and ripped into his legs.

Three of the soldiers were lying in a guarded hospital room’s bed in Benghazi, trying to reflect on how they came upon their compassionate enemy’s hands that were supposed to be one with the Al-Qaeda, Israel’s Mossad or the terrorists from foreign countries as described by Gadhafi. The captured soldiers were keen to talk to the media. They switched their loyalty, saying that Gadhafi is just one person, but the county is important.

Low Rates of Japanese Yen Blamed on Pioneers

Low Japanese Yen

A group of seven nations conducted a talk last Thursday to discuss Japan’s undeniably great nuclear crisis. Japanese officials dismissed their intervention in the currency markets, saying that this is not much needed. The forum for the Group of Seven aimed to calm down the financial markets that were striken hard by the nuclear crisis.

Economics Minister, Kaoru Yosano, said that the Japanese yen and the stock markets are merely experiencing psychological behavior. The current Japanese currency roared high against the dollar, while its shares around Asia fell after the threat of radiation leak from the nuclear power plant. The crisis have swept off hundreds of dollars from Japan’s global stock markets. Japan’s Finance Minister Yoshihiko Noda, Yasano, and some other officials said that the speculations were responsible for the gush in the currency.

Yosano said, “I don’t think stock and currency markets are in a state of turmoil.” When asked if the G7 advanced nations should intervene in the currency market of Japan, he answered, “We would like to get psychological support from the Group of Seven.”

Noda confirmed that the group of seven was holding a teleconference where they would discuss the current damages and financial situations of Japan. “Market moves have been nervous amid speculation while trade has been thin”, Noda told the interviewers. “I will be closely watching market moves today”.

Japan Sends off Choppers to Radiating Reactors

Chinook Helicopters

Japanese government is giving a lot of effort to lessen the overheating of the nuclear site using high pressure water machines, fire trucks and even some air vehicles like helicopters and choppers. United States have already declared that the case is worsening and their best nuclear regulatory officials assessed that the situation is more complicated than what the Japanese Government originally thought.

The United States ambassador had warned citizens  within the 50 mile reach of Fukushima Dai-ichi plantation to leave their houses or at least remain inside. The Japanese Government said that it had no concrete plans in expanding the 12 mile barring zone set around the plant. Four of the said reactors are already permanently damaged and often blows out hazardous explosions, fires ,and partial meltdown. The remaining two of the six reactors were also reported to have rising temperatures.

Two of the Japanese Military CH-47 Chinook Helicopters went back and forth to deliver 2,000 gallons of water in the burning reactors for 40 minutes each to limit their radiation exposure. The nuclear case that was damaged by the 9.0 magnitude earthquake and tsunami have destroyed the main generators that are all necessary for the cooling applications of the reactors.

Keiichi Nakagawa, one of the professors in the Department of Radiology at University of Tokyo hospital shared his views, “I don’t know any other way to say it, but this is like suicide fighters in a war.”

Libyan Rebels in Panic

Emerging Rebel Effort

The emerging rebel effort from the eastern Libya, continued for weeks by the radical act and fervor, has started to fight in the muddled battlefield of the country. Most of the naïve young citizens, who plundered army storage of guns and bloody weapons, thought that the tyrannical reign of 41 years of Col. Moammar Kadafi would fall down because of the people’s rebellion.

For many rebel stands, the absence of skilled military leadership and a chance to flee at the first fight have caused the dropping confidence. Though there is a continuous V for victory signs and spirits of “Allahu Akbar!” (God is great), the fighters still believe that they can stand and have a fight.

A businessman expressed his thoughts by saying, “Kadafi is too strong for us, with too many heavy weapons. What can we do except fall back to protect ourselves?”

There are retreating rebels who stop only to eat foods coming from the volunteers that support their act. With many rebels going home, the 140-mile highway between the Port Brega and Benghazi is the only lightly guarded place. Most of the rebels and spokesmen of the opposition cause predicted that Kadafi’s forces would not track them up in the highways in fear of another shot from associated warplanes.

Fighters surrounded by trash and flock of flies at a checkpoint in Ajdabiya protested that their former commanders were lost. Rebels say commands are never planned, except by some of their fellow comrades, and many of those are always ignored. Kadafi family members who manage the Libya’s cellular phone network have cut most of the network communications in the east, leaving gun trucks to fight alone. Rebels hope for the best in their country and ask for prayers to keep their lives.

Elderly Japanese Tsunami Victims Die During Rescue

Tsunami Victims Die

There were about 100 patients that were moved from the hospital to a temporary center at a high school gymnasium in Iwaki, last Monday. Unluckily, the patients were almost in their senior years, and it is reported that fourteen of them, 2 in the transit and 12 in the gym, lost their lives. Many of them have died because of the killer earthquake and tsunami incident and those who still breathe are now struggling for their life in the cold emergency rooms or hospitals that lack everything including water and electricity.

Plans of transferring the survivors were all delayed due to shortage of transits and fuels while most hospitals can not accept more patients. Chuei Inamure, a government official in Fukushima said, “We feel very helpless and very sorry for them”. He also expressed the things that they are experiencing, “The condition at the gymnasium was horrible. No running water, no medicines and very, very little food. We simply did not have means to provide a good car.”

In one of the junior high school in Kesennuma, medical equipments like ointment tubes, bandages, and some boxes of aspirins were stacked on a table. Nearby, there sat a group of elder Japanese trying to keep themselves warm and escape the biting snowy weather by one kerosene heater. Those who are very sick can be taken to hospitals by an ambulance, though with no cellular phone service, setting up the hospital admissions is very difficult.

A 58 year old nurse, Keiko Endo expressed her feelings about the shortage of medicines said, “There is not enough, it’s a problem and it’s freezing, there are people who are sick and injured. People are mostly putting up with whatever’s wrong. We are trying to comfort them but we can’t do too much”.

3 Filipinos Executed in China

3 Filipinos Executed

Vice President of the Republic of the Philippines Jejomar Binay has confirmed the execution of  3 Filipinos Ramon Credo, Sally Ordinario- Villanueva, and Elizabeth Batain in China at noon on Wednesday, March 30, 2011.“I just want to inform you that our three compatriots have been executed,” Binay stated over Philippine television after receiving the information from the foreign affairs ministry.

The court of People’s Republic of China sentenced the three Filipinos who were arrested separately in 2008 for allegedly carrying packages with heroin, an illegal drug. They were convicted and sentenced to put to death through lethal injection. The Philippine government has taken all the possible measures to appeal to China which included three letters from Philippine President Benigno Aquino III to his Chinese counterpart and a visit to Beijing by the vice president in February. This prompted China to postpone the executions for a month but still the sentence was imposed.

Deputy presidential spokesperson Abigail Valte said in national television, “The nation sympathized with the families of the condemned, sharing their sense of looming loss. We sympathize with these families now. Their deaths are a vivid lesson in the tragic toll the drug trade takes on entire families.” She assured that the government will do everything to break the chain of drug syndicates that victimize and destroy lives of people they use to traffic illegal drugs for their benefit.

Days before the executions, people all over the country held masses and vigils for the families of the convicted Filipinos, who up to the last minute insisted the innocence of their family member. Neighbors, relatives and activists held overnight vigils at the homes of the condemned, offering prayers to the distraught family members. The dominant Roman Catholic Church, which opposes the death penalty, held special Mass in Manila.

According to Chinese officials, the three had been trialled and convicted in accordance to their law and despite the efforts of the Philippine government, they had to respect China’s laws.

Uneven Job Growth in The US

U.S Job Growth

Companies in the U.S. have added jobs for a straight year, giving a chance for improvement to those states that were hit hardest by the recession. The problem is; gains are not even and some states are still losing jobs. The jobs that were lost during the recession that began on December 2007 reached up to 1.3 million, and the most populated state still has a long way to go before it can recover by that much.

The two states who have experienced some of the worst losses during the recession, California and Michigan, are already adding jobs again. Last month was California’s single best month for job creation within 20 years.

“California … has been lagging the United States a bit, but it seems to be catching up this year,” said Jerry Nickelsburg, senior economist with the University of California. 96,500 jobs were added last February and the job gains came from transportation, warehousing, manufacturing and also information technology. Construction firms also added 15,000 jobs, but those were most likely for commercial real estate and infrastructure projects.

Michigan also added jobs last month which all summed up to 71,000 slots. The state is benefiting from an increase in auto industry sales. General Motors Co. and Chrysler LLC have increased also in employment since its revival from the bankruptcy in 2009. The companies said that they would hire 1,000 researchers and engineers each. Overall, 28,000 manufacturing jobs were added in the past 12 months.

Six states, namely Arizona, Kansas, Missouri, Nevada, New Mexico and New Jersey, have lost jobs from February 2010 through last month but 44 others have boosted up its employment rate during that timeframe, one of the best years since the recession ended in June 2009. Unemployment decreased for 41 of the states and the report from the Labor Department says that job growth is fairly accelerating.

Highly Contaminated Water in Nuclear Plant

Dai-ichi Nuclear Plant

A huge increase in radioactivity, which occurs up to 10 million times higher than normal, was measured in the cooling reactor of the system on Sunday. The workers have fled the stricken plant before a second reading was taken into consideration. The contaminated water was being pumped out of the nuclear complex since then.

It was not clear right away as to how long the workers were exposed to the highly radioactive water or how long these levels of radiation began to rise critically. The contaminated water was found on all four of the complex’s most troubled reactors. The radiation in the air was measured at 1,000 millisieverts per hour, which exceeds the safety limit by four times, Tokyo Electric Power Co. spokesman Takashi Kurita said.

The nuclear plant’s stabilization cannot be secured any earlier because of the discovery of the high radiation levels and the evacuation of workers which caused the delay. A top official from the Dai-ichi nuclear plant however, insisted that the situation has been partially brought under control. “We have somewhat prevented the situation from turning worse,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said. “But the prospects are not improving in a straight line and we’ve expected twists and turns. The contaminated water is one of them and we’ll continue to repair the damage.”

Two weeks have passed since the nuclear reactor operators have been frantically trying to normalize the damaged complex, but the discovery of the radioactive water over the last three days has been a major setback in the attempt to get the crucial cooling systems up and running. The source of the water isn’t confirmed yet, though Edano said that it is “almost certainly” seeping from one of the unit’s breached reactor.

The workers are already continuously removing the radioactive water from the four units and they are scrambling to find a safe place to store it, said officials.

Cars That Will Last Till The Future

Future Honda Civic

Cars have been a part of daily life of most people and are treated not just as a necessity but also as a luxury for other auto consumers. They however, like any other thing in the world, fades from memories and will someday all look outmoded and thus will be disregarded. Some cars simply defy this theory because there are some rides that will still look good in 10 years.

Awill get its owners noticed, making them reluctant to buy, yet highly appealing to them at the same time. The Civic is equipped only with a simple design and is also affordable and practical. It is wind resistant giving it appreciable speed in a highway and its low gas consumption makes it look even more like a good buy. A downside of the civic is its small interior, allowing for fewer passengers and is suitable only for singles and small families.

If you think you will easily outgrow the Civic, and you need more space and classic styling, you may opt for the Ford Fusion which is comfortable for youngsters and good enough for more riders to fit in. Its design is plain and inoffensive but simplicity really never just goes out of style. Its clean lines will survive today’s generation and remain alive up to your kids’ era.

If you are looking for something jazzier than the two mentioned above, then a Chrysler 300 might be the one for you. It is somewhat boxier than the Civic and Fusion, but it doesn’t look dated at all. The car was actually modelled after Bentley and Rolls Royce, two producers of automotives for nearly 100 years.

There are more cars that simply outlast their current timeline. They can be your children’s hand-me-downs, that would make them actually frankly smile rather than frown.

First Female VP Candidate Passes Away

Geraldine Ferraro Dies

The first woman to run for vice-presidency, Geraldine Ferraro, died because of blood cancer complications Saturday in Boston at the age of 75. She was invited by presidential nominee Walter Mondale to join his ticket, making her the first woman to go for a major position, which emboldened women across the country to seek public office.

Ferraro died at Massachusetts General Hospital. She arrived there on Monday for a procedure which should relieve the pain caused by a fracture. These fractures are common for people who exhibit her type of blood cancer, multiple myeloma, which thin her bones said Dr. Noopur Raje, the doctor who treated her. She has developed Pneumonia which made it impossible to continue the procedure, and it became clear that she didn’t have much time left. She was joined by her family during her last hours.

Mondale’s campaign wasn’t winning any new secured votes until he pulled Ferraro into his list of candidates which, at least momentarily, built up and made them regain momentum and also gave a reason for women to be proud and thrilled to see one of their own on a national ticket.

The spirited Ferraro charmed the audience and polls showed for a time that she gained ground on President Ronald Reagan and Vice President George H. W. Bush. She was at her worst point when she was faced with charges for accusations of sexism and class warfare.

Ferraro later stated; “I don’t think I’d run again for vice president,” then added “Next time I’d run for president.” Reagan may have won with a landslide but Ferraro will be soundly remembered as a great woman in politics. “She was a pioneer in our country for justice for women and a more open society. She broke a lot of molds and it’s a better country for what she did,” Mondale said.