Chilean Miners Begin Returning To Surface After Being Trapped For More Than 2 Months

The video shows the first of 33 miners that were trapped more than 2,500 feet underground since the summer in a Chilean mine.



I can't begin to imagine what they were feeling during that time - or during the perilous ride up the narrow passage drilled down to their refuge underground. A rescuer was first sent down to help evaluate the miners and determine the order in which they would return to the surface. They were also provided with special food and compression stockings and sunglasses to prepare them for the trip to the surface.

Manhunt Underway in Chile For van der Sloot: UPDATE: Caught

Peruvian officials are getting assistance from Chilean law enforcement in hunting down Joran van der Sloot in connection with the murder of a 21-year-old woman, Stephany Flores, in a Lima hotel room.

Flores' body was found clothed, face down on the hotel room floor Wednesday, abrasions on her face and body, and signs of trauma, Peruvian Police Gen. Cesar Guardia said. An autopsy is in progress.

Van der Sloot was in Lima for a poker tournament, police said, and appears with Flores in a video at a casino. A hotel employee spotted the pair around 5 a.m.

"We have an interview with a worker at the hotel who says she saw this foreigner with the victim enter his room," said Guardia.

The police say van der Sloot fled the hotel, alone, four hours later.

Chilean authorities believe he is still in their country and are searching hotels in the tiny towns of its northern provinces.

This murder took place five years to the day following the infamous murder of Natalee Holloway in Aruba. No one was ever charged in that murder, and her body was never recovered. Here, there is considerable forensic evidence and the body is in the hands of the medical examiner.

To clarify something I wrote yesterday, this report spells out where Flores was found:

In Lima, police Gen. Cesar Guardia said at a news conference that the slain woman was found Wednesday in a room at a hotel where van der Sloot had been staying and that she had been seen with the suspect early Sunday, when she was killed.

UPDATE:
Van der Sloot was apprehended by Chilean police in Santiago, Chile:

The suspect, Joran van der Sloot, was escorted by three police officers as he was taken from a dark vehicle into a police office in downtown Santiago, Chile. He made no comment as he entered, walking calmly and without handcuffs as journalists shouted his name. It was not immediately clear where he was picked up.

In Lima, police Gen. Cesar Guardia said the slain woman was found Wednesday in a room at a hotel where van der Sloot had been staying and that she had been seen with the suspect early Sunday, when she was killed.

The killing happened exactly five years after the May 30, 2005, disappearance of Holloway during a high school trip in Aruba, a Dutch Caribbean island where van der Sloot's late father was a prominent judge.

Prosecutors said van der Sloot is still their main suspect in the case even though he was never charged.

Guardia said the 22-year-old Dutchman was in Peru for a poker tournament and appears with the dead woman in a video taken at a Lima casino early Sunday. The two were later seen entering the hotel by one of its employees about 5 a.m. and the Dutchman departed alone about four hours later, he said.

"We have an interview with a worker at the hotel who says she saw this foreigner with the victim enter his room,'' said Guardia.

UPDATE:
The hits keep on coming. Van der Sloot is now being charged in Alabama for trying to extort $250,000 in return for revealing the location of Natalee Holloway.

Are you kidding me?

US Moving Ahead With Nuclear Weapons Reduction and Nonproliferation Initiatives

President Barack Obama signed the New START treaty today, reducing the current level of US and Russian nuclear warheads by 30%.

The new treaty will shrink the limit of nuclear warheads to 1,550 per country over seven years.

But the two quickly turned serious when they took to the podiums, hailing the moment as an important step to improving the U.S.-Russian relationship and the safety of the world.

Obama, who said last year in a London summit that the American-Russian relationship had started to "drift," said that problem was fixed.

"Together, we stopped that drift, and have proven the benefits of cooperation," he said, arguing that the deal lets the two country start talking about cooperation on missile defense.

Medvedev said that at some points signing the deal — with the old START treating expiring last December — looked like "Mission Impossible."

But he was as upbeat as Obama in hailing it.

"This is a win-win situation — no one stands to loose because of this agreement," he said. "The entire world community has won.

Obama has been no fan of nuclear weapons and this is a feather in his cap for winning the treaty. Not only can this result in further cost savings for both the US and Russians, although the Russians are ever more reliant on their nuclear stockpile to offset a clear US technological advantage in conventional weapons, but it means that the dismantled weapons can provide another source of uranium for civilian nuclear power plants once the weapons grade uranium is processed into LEU. The treaty still needs to be confirmed by the US Senate, but I expect that to happen.

Meanwhile, a series of initiatives that began with the Bush Administration continues to bear fruit. The US has been working with various nations to shut down high enriched uranium reactors and convert it into a low-enriched uranium. The latest such country is Chile, which transported a shipment to the US for reprocessing:

Even as aftershocks from last month's magnitude 8.8 earthquake shook their equipment, U.S. and Chilean engineers worked together to carefully extract Chile's last HEU. It was no simple operation — the radioactive material was carefully loaded into specially designed casks and then lowered into two huge shipping containers for the ocean voyage. All told, 60 tons of metal were needed to keep just 18 kilograms (40 pounds) of HEU from leaking radioactivity.

After two and a half weeks at sea, including passage through the Panama Canal, a specially outfitted double-hulled ship arrived under U.S. Coast Guard escort at the Charleston Weapons Station in South Carolina last month.

Customs agents and nuclear inspectors made radiation checks as the containers were loaded onto flatbed trucks and then driven to the Savannah River Site in South Carolina and the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, where much of it will be converted to safer fuel and resold for nuclear power.

A year ago, Obama made a promise to lead a global effort to recover all of this material within four years — ambitious because it not only requires years of planning and diplomacy, but also highly specific technology and expertise.

No other country but the U.S. has put all these elements together — even Russia depends on U.S. help to safely dispose of uranium.

The U.S. has already helped convert or verified the shutdown of 67 reactors in 32 countries from HEU to low-enriched uranium, or LEU, which is much harder to weaponize. It also has secured HEU supplies in more than 750 vulnerable buildings and removed 2,691 kilograms of weapons-grade nuclear material for safer storage.

To help keep his promise, Obama has proposed a 68 percent increase in the Global Threat Reduction Initiative's budget to $559 million for fiscal year 2011, not only to recover more HEU but also to prevent smuggling of nuclear material by strengthening export and border controls and port security.

Next year's $2.7 billion budget for nuclear nonproliferation work begins to do this for plutonium as well, committing $300 million for a plant at Savannah River to convert 34,000 kilograms of plutonium recovered from warheads to fuel for nuclear power.

The program is operated through the National Nuclear Security Administration, which is part of the Department of Energy. It's important to note that the US is actually assisting the Russians in dismantling their nuclear inventory:

# Monitored downblending of over 352 MT of former Soviet weapons-origin HEU (enough for more than 14,000 nuclear weapons) for use in U.S. power plants, providing 10% of U.S. electricity.
# Downblended over 108 MT (enough for approximately 2,376 nuclear weapons) of surplus U.S. HEU into LEU for use as nuclear reactor fuel, with an additional 12 MT packaged and shipped for downblending (total of over 120 MT). Downblended over 11 MT of Russian civilian HEU to LEU.
# Downblending an additional 17.4 MT of HEU for the Reliable Fuel Supply initiative.
# Working to dispose of at least 68 MT of U.S. and Russian weapons-grade plutonium by converting it into mixed-oxide (MOX) fuel for commercial nuclear power reactors. Continuing construction of the U.S. MOX Fuel Fabrication Facility.
# Ended 43 years of weapons-grade plutonium production in Seversk by shutting down two reactors. Completed 53% of the Zheleznogorsk fossil fuel plant to replace the last reactor, to end all weapons-grade plutonium production in Russia.
# Monitoring safe storage of over 9 MT of Russian weapons-grade plutonium (nearly 1,125 warheads) to ensure its non-military use.

All this is on the heels of the consummation os a 2008 deal with India for that country to reprocess US nuclear materials for its own civilian nuclear program.

Major Aftershocks Reported In Chile

Reports are coming in of serious earthquakes hitting the already ravaged country of Chile as the Chilean government was inaugurating its president. A 5.1 quake preceded the larger 7.2 quake:

Two quakes actually - a 7.2 and a 6.9 - occurred within minutes of each other:

MAP 6.9 2010/03/11 14:55:30 -34.222 -71.954 28.0 LIBERTADOR O'HIGGINS, CHILE
MAP 7.2 2010/03/11 14:39:48 -34.290 -71.950 35.0 LIBERTADOR O'HIGGINS, CHILE

With those kinds of aftershocks, significant damage could occur, particularly to those buildings previously damaged. The country is already having issues trying to cope with the damage from the massive 8.8 magnitude quake, so this will further complicate relief and recovery efforts. The upside from these two aftershocks is that they were deeper underground and aren't likely to transmit as much energy to the surface and structures as a more shallow quake would, limiting the scope of damage.

Getting the Wrong Lessons From Natural Disaster Responses

Haiti was hit with a strong earthquake. It killed more than 200,000 people (and the ultimate death toll is likely far above that level.

Chile was hit with a massive 8.8 earthquake, which was several magnitudes more powerful. Less than 1,000 were killed.

Taiwan was hit with a 6.6 quake, which was slightly smaller than that of the Haiti quake. No deaths were reported in that quake and the damage was limited.

What was the difference between those outcomes?

Joe Conason thinks that the difference is in the nature of the political system.

If the earthquakes in Chile and Haiti carry any message for those of us fortunate enough not to live in those places, perhaps it is that government regulation could save your life — while right-wing ideology may kill you someday.

(snip)

In a society with sane politics, rules and regulations needed to safeguard life don't provoke much debate, even on the furthest ends of the ideological spectrum.

Everyone realizes that there are certain dangers to which anyone can fall victim; protecting and insuring against those dangers is a social responsibility, a government function and a measure of human progress.

Here in the United States, however, anti-government ideology is a pandemic mental tic that has now developed into a virulent disorder afflicting a large number of citizens — including many of our self-styled conservatives. Infuriated because their party cannot permanently control the White House and the Congress, they have gradually persuaded themselves that all government is evil, that all taxation is theft and that all regulation is tyranny. Or at least that is the tone of their rhetoric.

If the Chileans had adopted this kind of manic and reflexive attitude, many more of them would undoubtedly be dead today. The "free market" extremists who call themselves conservative probably wouldn't worry much about the loss of life, because they are far more concerned with ideological consistency than with practical effects. But the rest of us might consider the wiser approach of Friedrich von Hayek, the Austrian economist whose work is often cited by the extremists when they claim to be defending freedom.

Conason doesn't realize that his argument is undermined by the fact that the Chilean government first instituted its stringent building codes following the massive 9.5 quake (one of the largest ever recorded). That it further strengthened it decades later is besides the point. Chile had learned the lesson in blood- it needed to improve its seismic codes because many structures would otherwise crumble and kill and maim.

Taiwan has stringent building codes that were likewise born of blood - deadly quakes and improved science have resulted in better construction techniques.

Haiti has no such history. Strong quakes are simply not a part of the legacy of Haiti's collective memory and no quake has struck within the last 100 years that was sufficient to show that the building of structures without rebar and modern seismic system would have devastating consequences.

The US likewise has a mixed history of improved seismic codes born in blood. California and the West Coast has endured major quakes and significant death tolls and each quake has resulted in incremental improvements in construction practices and engineering, but many thousands of structures are still ill-equipped for major quakes. Other parts of the country aren't nearly as prepared, even though they've seen significant quakes including Charleston, South Carolina and the New Madrid area.

Moreover, changes to building codes often result in disagreements over their applicability to existing structures and grandfathering of structures means that while new buildings may survive major quakes, older structures might not - and could conceivably affect nearby intact structures by collapsing into them.

We can only hope that Haiti learns the lessons of improved seismic construction techniques that would also result in improved resilience to hurricanes and severe storms but the country's dire economic situation makes those needed changes all the more difficult to come by.

What we do know about government and economics is that totalitarian regimes and dictatorships and failed states are much less capable of providing sufficient means to protect their citizens from natural disasters and to engage in relief and recovery efforts. Affluent countries are much more capable of absorbing such natural disasters and rebounding.

Chavez in Venezuela or Castro in Cuba would be hard pressed to deal with a significant natural disaster, even though they're left leaning regimes. They've decimated their infrastructure and the capability to respond to natural disasters.

If hit by a similar sized natural disaster, North Korea would not do well in a natural disaster, while South Korea would likely end up providing assistance and shrugging off the disaster - and the South would likely come to the aid of the North while the North never could because it would lack the resources to do so.

No, the true test to whether a country can build survivable structures isn't whether they lean left or right, but whether they've endured the loss in blood and sweat from such natural disasters to attune them to the existence of the threat and the affluence to make sure that the damage can be minimized. And on that front - countries that promote capitalism and wealth are more likely to be able to provide on that basis than regimes that socialize the care (see China's infrastructure failures resulting from the Sichuan quake that killed tens of thousands of kids in their schools when they collapsed despite claims from their leadership that the structures were safe).

Death Toll From Chilean Earthquake Tops 700

The death toll from the massive 8.8 quake that struck off the coast of Chile has topped 700, and the toll is expected to rise. It is quite the contrast between the death toll in the Chilean quake and those of two other massive quakes to hit in recent years. The Haitian quake killed upwards of 200,000 for a magnitude 7 quake, while the Indonesian quake registered a 9.0 and killed 230,000 in the quake and resulting tsunami that hit more than 45 countries.

There was a tsunami caused by the Chilean quake, but it was nowhere near the magnitude of those seen by the Indonesian quake, although some communities near the epicenter were badly damaged.

Part of that has to do with good fortune that the quake was not focused near the most heavily populated areas of Chile and the nature of the quake itself, but part had to do with the modern building codes enacted following a devastating 1960 quake (which also spawned a deadly tsunami that struck Hilo, Hawaii).

That doesn't mean that Chile is in the clear; many parts of the country suffered serious damage, including damage to key infrastructure.



The US will be available to provide humanitarian aid, and Secretary of State Clinton will be heading to the region to monitor the situation.

Massive 8.8 Quake Shakes Chile; Tsunami Warnings Issues Around Pacific

A massive 8.8 quake, 500 times the intensity of the deadly quake to hit Haiti, hit just outside Santiago, Chile.At least 70 people have been killed, but sadly the death toll is likely to rise seriously. Multiple aftershocks, including a 6.9 and 6.1 have also been experienced.

Tsunami warnings have been issued throughout the Pacific Rim, including South America, Australia and New Zealand, Japan, the Philippines, Russia and many Pacific islands and Hawaii, which saw massive devastation in 1960 when a tsunami hit Hilo Bay.

The USGS has issued tsunami warnings, and has indicated where tsunamis have already hit.

Some of the footage from Santiago shows collapsed elevated roadways (photo via Daylife), apartment and office buildings on fire, and all manner of buildings that have collapsed on lower levels and garages.Expect the US to send humanitarian assistance within a few days. What may mitigate the number of casualties in Chile is that the earthquake occurred offshore and the affected population densities aren't as high as in the deadly Haitian quake.

The main concern right now is that tsunamis could strike across the Pacific Ocean within hours of the initial quake. Those living near the Pacific coast in the affected areas should take heed of any warnings issued for those areas - and if they see the ocean receding from the normal shoreline, get to higher ground immediately as it is a sign of an impending tsunami coming ashore.

UPDATE:
Video from Chile:



UPDATE:
Tsunami warnings issued: