First, an inspirational photo capturing an inspirational event:
A four-month old survivor in the rescuing hands of a soldier from the Self Defense Force. She has reportedly been reunited with her surviving parents. "When you save a life, you save the universe."
OK. To the News
The Humanitarian Crisis
The Humanitarian Crisis continues, and with the nuclear crises, may become more complicated.
A widening cloud of radiation have added to the misery of millions of people in Japan's devastated northeast, already short of water and food and trying to keep warm in near-freezing temperatures.
As bodies washed up on the coast from Friday's devastating earthquake and tsunami, injured survivors, children and elderly crammed into makeshift shelters, often without medicine. By Tuesday, 550,000 people had been evacuated after the earthquake and tsunami that killed at least 10,000.
The current displacement and damage alone appears to have overwhelmed Japan's capacity to help all but the most in need. Everyone else is on their own for now. I got a desperate call from a family friend asking me to help their two sons. They had been studying at the University of Sendai. The University no longer exists, and the staff simply abandoned them in the wake of the tsunami. They had no money, as all the banks do not work. I got news late last night that they somehow made it to Tokyo, and got some help from the Chilean embassy (they are Chilean). But their fellow exchange students from other countries had to spend the night on the streets. And they were the lucky ones. Many Japanese have no place to go. The devastated areas are their home. And the growing nuclear crisis will only make all rescue and relief efforts that much more difficult. More on that below.
Some other good anecdotal news coming out of from Ofunato: a co-worker of my wife's has a brother living there and he finally made contact. He is alive and well, and even his house is intact. Previously, it seemed the tsunami wiped the entire town clean, as this photo shows;
It turns out the tsunami left some of the town unscathed, which means more survivors than initially feared lost.
Nuclear Crisis
How Bad Is It? Depends on Which Expert You Ask
You can follow the latest at the Guardian or our Mother Ship.
Economic Effects
First, in response to Mr. Ugly Republican's money-counts-more-than-people callousness, check out Derik Thompson's Japan Is a Humanitarian Tragedy, Not a Global Economic Crisis:
The upshot: The images of Japan are tragic and the damage long-lasting. But Japan's impact on markets should be neither.
Others are not so sanguine:
The four prefectures most heavily affected by the Tohoku earthquake are Iwate, Miyagi, Fukushima and Ibaraki. This region accounts for about 6-7% of the overall Japanese economy… The latest earthquake is expected to inflict more human and physical damage than the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake of 1995. Given the region’s character as a “trading” economy, there is also a need to consider impacts on other regions. Based on currently available information, we estimate that damages could exceed 15 trillion yen (3% of GDP).
Finally, to put complaints about the Japanese taxpayer bailing out TEPCO in some context, Japan’s Government Likely to Bear Much of the Loss for the whole disaster.
Apart from an expected $35 billion in insurance claims from last week’s earthquake, the financial losses in Japan will probably fall most heavily on the Japanese government once it tallies the damage from the tsunami and the nuclear disaster.
Japanese insurance companies, global insurers and reinsurers, hedge funds and other investors in catastrophe bonds are all expected to bear a portion of the losses that seem likely to exceed $100 billion. Total damage from the 1995 earthquake in Kobe, Japan, was estimated at $100 billion, according to the Insurance Information Institute, but only about $3 billion of that was covered by insurance.
Social safety nets are good things...
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As usual, if you find an article you think important, put it in the comments or send me link via the group message board. I can always include it in tomorrow's News Round-up.