The Japan's bullet trains..[ 2011 ]

Snow slows Japan's bullet trains, closes Toyota plants

By the CNN Wire Staff

January 17, 2011 11:51 a.m. EST

A pedestrian walks in a heavy snowfall in Nagoya in Aichi prefecture, central Japan on Monday.

(CNN) -- As much as 8 feet of snow has fallen in parts of Japan since Sunday, slowing train travel and forcing automaker Toyota to close down 12 factories.

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The heavy snow disrupted the bullet train, or Shinkansen, system in central Japan on Sunday and Monday, affecting 67,000 passengers, according to Central Japan Railway.

Snow totals on the ground Monday ranged from nearly 3 feet in Shimane Prefecture to 8 feet in Tottori Prefecture, according to CNN meteorologist Brandon Miller.

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Passengers on the bullet train network also suffered delays Monday due to a problem with a computer control system. The failure disrupted traffic for 75 minutes Monday morning, disrupting bullet trains nationwide for most of Monday morning, according to East Japan Railway.

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Toyota also had to close 12 factories Monday in Aichi Prefecture as heavy snowfall caused problems getting car parts to the facilities.

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CNN's Yoko Wakatsuki contributed to this report

Philippines : almost 51 dead from floods...[ 2010 ]]

   Philippines : almost 51 dead from floods 

the CNN Wire Staff

January 17, 2011 6:51 a.m. EST

A passenger jeepney traverses a flooded road in the town of Sto. Domingo, southeast of Manila on December 30, 2010.

(CNN) -- Some 51 people are dead in the Philippines after weeks of intense rain caused severe flooding across the Asian nation, the country's national disaster agency said early Monday.

Rains continued to linger over much of the the island of Luzon, with land around the Visayan Sea and the eastern island of Mindanao also experiencing significant precipitation, the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council said in a statement.

Those killed, ranging from ages 1 to 80, died from drowning, landslides or electrocution, according to the disaster agency.

Twelve people are still missing, while another eight were hurt -- all in landslides in southern Leyte province.

The crisis began weeks ago, on December 29, when a monsoon over northern and central Luzon met a cold front in southern Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao. The result was severe flooding and landslides in 25 provinces.

The storms have affected nearly 1.6 million people from more than 300,000 families, according to the disaster agency.

Some of the worst conditions have been in Caraga, on Mindanao island, where more than 600,000 people have been impacted and 20 killed. Leyte and Samar also have been hard hit, with about 530,000 people in that region affected.

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The monsoon has wreaked havoc on structures and infrastructure as well. More than 500 homes have been destroyed, and just under 2,000 partially damaged. The disaster agency estimated that, in total, the storms caused 417,715,140 Philippine pesos' ($9.5 million U.S.) worth in damage to agriculture, infrastructure and private properties.

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December and January are traditionally part of the Philippines' dry season, with heavy rains more common in the islands from May to October during the summer monsoon.

London 2011: Homeless men..[ 2009 ]

London 2011: Homeless men forced to sleep in bins

David Cohen and Ross Lydall
17 Jan 2011

Roughing it: Gurpreet Singh and Pirthy Sandhu in the dustbin room at the havelock estate in Southall

Homeless men are sleeping rough among piles of household rubbish in a desperate attempt to stay alive this winter.

The scandal of “the bin men of Southall” is exposed today after the Standard discovered the appalling conditions endured by more than 50 people on the Havelock estate. Every night they slide down rubbish chutes into huge wheelie bins and then spend the night huddled in sleeping bags on the floor. 

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Labourer Pirthy Sandhu, 39, said: “We get massive rats crawling over us at night and sometimes foxes jump into the bins and we have to chase them out. The place is disgusting but we have nowhere else to go and on freezing nights it's a roof over our heads to keep us dry before the caretaker throws us out at 6am.”

FULL STORY: The homeless who slide down rubbish chute to their beds

Rare whale heading to Alaska..[ 2008 ]

Rare whale heading from Russia to Alaska

Dan Joling Associated Press

 

In this photo provided by Oregon State University, a western gray whale surfaces off the northeast coast of Sakhalin Island in the Sea of Okhotsk on Sept. 15.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska –January 17, 2011 in City

A highly endangered whale typically seen near Russia’s shore is taking a swim across the Bering Sea toward Alaska.

U.S. and Russian researchers are tracking a 13-year-old male western Pacific gray that has made it more than halfway across the Bering Sea, reaching shallow continental shelf waters, said Bruce Mate, director of Oregon State University’s Marine Mammal Institute.

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“I think this animal is probably surprising everybody by having crossed most of the Bering Sea so far in the last two weeks,” Mate said.

Scientists can’t say the whale is out of place. They don’t know where western Pacific gray whales usually are in January.

“That’s why we did this,” Mate said of the tracking project. “We only really know these animals during their summer feeding season, and they’re predominantly around Sahkalin Island at the south end of the Sea of Okhotsk.”

Eastern Pacific gray whales, also called California gray whales, are a familiar sight in Alaska waters. They feed in the Bering, Chukchi and Beaufort seas in summer and migrate down the West Coast each winter to breed, mostly in the bays of Baja California. They were taken off the endangered species list in 1994. Their population stands at about 18,000, Mate said.

In contrast, western Pacific gray whales are the second-most threatened species of the large whales, behind North Pacific right whales, Mate said, and their population stands at just 130 animals.

“Almost all of those animals are known on sight from photo catalogs, and most of them have been biopsied for genetic analysis,” he said.

Western gray whales were decimated by whaling in previous centuries and feared to be extinct in the mid-1970s. A population was rediscovered off Sakhalin Island, the Russian Island north of Japan, and has been monitored since the mid-1990s.

Sakhalin Island is the site of major offshore oil and gas activities. Whales also face threats from accidental entanglement in fishing gear. Five female western gray whales have died by entanglement over the past four years.

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Gray whales are the only baleen whales that are mainly bottom feeders, according to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. They feed by scraping the side of their head along the ocean floor and scooping up sediment, capturing small invertebrates on baleen and expelling sediment and other particles through the baleen fringes.

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Gray whales rarely feed while migrating or during the winters in the tropical waters. Instead, they live off fat reserves built up during summers, when they each eat about 1.3 tons of food per day. A typical male is 45-46 feet long.

Mate and others in the research program had hoped to tag a dozen western Pacific gray whales but two typhoons and two gales interfered.

“We felt pretty lucky when we tagged this animal on the last possible day of our field work,” he said.

The whale, dubbed Flex, was tagged in September with a tracking device the size of a small cigar.

There were hypotheses about where the animals spend their winters.

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“One was that it would go down the Asian Coast and perhaps wind up in the southeast China Sea,” Mate said. “Another was it might spend time off the Kamchatka Peninsula.”

Instead, from about point about where the Aleutian Islands would intersect with Russia’s Kamchatka coast, the whale on Jan. 3 began swimming east. By Jan. 9, it had reached the slope edge of the Bering Sea shelf north of the Aleutians, where waters decrease in depth from about 13,000 feet to about 240. The whale had covered more than 750 miles, or 1,210 kilometers, in 164 hours, for an average of 4.6 mph.

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Satellite monitored radio tags have lasted as long as 385 days on a gray whale but average four months. The tag on Flex has been attached about 100 days. Mate can’t predict how long it will stay attached.

The public can track the rare western Pacific whale at the Oregon State web site at http://mmi.oregon state.edu/Sakhalin2010. It’s updated every Monday.

Italy : Sex Matters..[ 2007 ]

Berlusconi denies ever paying for sex

From Hada Messia, CNN

January 17, 2011 7:21 a.m. EST

Silvio Berlusconi has been tried on at least 17 charges since first taking office as prime minister in 1994.

Rome (CNN) -- Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said Monday he had never paid for sex, "not even once in my life," as Italian prosecutors investigate allegations that he had sex with a teenage prostitute.

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"It is absurd only to think that I've paid to have rapport with a woman. It is something that I've never done, not even once in my life. It is something that I find degrading for my dignity," the scandal-prone but popular prime minister said on television.

Berlusconi is under investigation for allegedly having sex with the teenager, say prosecutors in Milan, who are linking the case to prostitution activity.

The teen, identified as nightclub dancer Karima El Mahrough and nicknamed Ruby, was 17 at the time of the alleged activity, from February till May.

She denied ever having sex with him in an interview recorded Saturday and broadcast Sunday. She also said she told everyone she was 24.

Berlusconi cited her denials in his own statement the next day.

"The underage person denies ever receiving advances from me and even less a sexual rapport with me, and she affirms that she introduced herself to everybody as a 24-year-old as so many witnesses say," Berlusconi said.

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He also said he was now in a "stable affectionate relationship" since separating from his second wife, Veronica Lario, in 2009. Italian media reported then that she decided to leave him after press reports that he went to the birthday party of an 18-year-old girl.

Berlusconi Saturday called the teenage prostitute allegation "mud" thrown on him by political opponents who want to get rid of him.

"But this time they've surpassed any limit," Berlusconi said in a statement. "The mud will fall on those who use justice as a political weapon."

The nightclub dancer said over the weekend that she had received 7,000 euros (about $9,300) from him the first time they met, on Valentine's Day 2010, because a friend told Berlusconi she needed help.

She said she was a guest at several dinners he gave, but that she did not know him well.

She told the prime minister, among others, that she was 24 "because I didn't want people to know that I was a minor," she said in the interview broadcast on Italy's Sky TG24.

The Milan prosecutor said Berlusconi is being probed for complicity in prostitution with a minor and abuse of power.

The premier's attorneys called the investigation "absurd and groundless" and a "grave interference" in Berlusconi's private life.

Milan prosecutors started the investigation of this case in December after the premier called police and urged the teen's release from prison. She had been arrested in May on charges of theft.

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Prosecutors also sent police to search the home of Nicole Minetti, a member of Berlusconi's party and a Lombardy regional council member.

Berlusconi allegedly asked Minetti to serve as Ruby's tutor so the girl would be able to leave prison.

Minetti is under investigation for allegedly favoring and aiding juvenile prostitution, prosecutors said. The teen is now 18 and is considered an adult.

The premier has always denied having any involvement with any prostitutes or helping prostitution or having wild parties at this house.

The latest investigation emerges after Italy's Constitutional Court struck down last week key parts of a law that would protect Berlusconi from prosecution.

The law was designed to halt criminal proceedings against top government officials for 18 months on the grounds that they are too busy to appear in court.

But Italy's top court ruled that judges, not politicians, should be the ones to determine if a defendant is free to appear in court.

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Separate trials against Berlusconi are pending. He's accused of bribing a witness to commit perjury in one case and of tax fraud and other financial irregularities in another. Both trials began but were suspended when the immunity law was passed.

Berlusconi has called the charges politically motivated.

A third case against the prime minister, also related to tax fraud, is in preliminary stages.

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Berlusconi has been tried on at least 17 charges since first taking office as prime minister in 1994, but he remains very popular with the Italian public.

Its' very fanny  the insistence of the Italian leftist  Minority ..with the..sex..in general !!