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From the Los Angeles Times

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U.S., allies launch missile strikes on Libyan targets

The U.S. takes the lead in the assault to cripple air-defense systems and armor in order to establish a no-fly zone to protect rebel-held areas. Kadafi vows to fight the 'flagrant military aggression.'

by Borzou Daragahi and Brian Bennett, Los Angeles Times

March 19, 2011

Reporting from Tripoli, Libya, and Washington

U.S., French and British forces blasted Libyan air defenses and armor, drawing intense volleys of tracer and antiaircraft fire over Tripoli early Sunday at the start of a campaign aimed at protecting rebel-held areas that will severely test Moammar Kadafi's powers of survival.

French fighter jets and U.S. and British warships, firing more than 110 cruise missiles from the Mediterranean Sea, struck multiple military targets. The assault cheered the rebels, who had seized control of large areas of Libya as they sought to build on months of discontent across the Arab world but in recent days found themselves retreating in the face of Kadafi's superior firepower.

Libyan officials accused international forces of hitting a hospital and other civilian targets. The armed forces said in a statement that 48 people had been killed in the strikes and 150 injured. Kadafi declared he was willing to die defending Libya, and in a statement broadcast hours after the attacks began, condemned what he called "flagrant military aggression." He vowed to strike civilian and military targets in the Mediterranean.

A nighttime gathering of supporters at Kadafi's compound in Tripoli evaporated when word began circulating of missile strikes in the capital. The thud of cruise missile explosions gave way to deafening barrages of antiaircraft fire that lighted up the sky.

Both Kadafi and his international foes, who began their campaign less than two days after the United Nations Security Council passed a resolution demanding Libyan forces pull back from rebel-held areas, positioned themselves for an end game that focused on whether the long-time leader would remain in power.

U.S. officials acknowledged that they were seeking to oust Kadafi, but also that they did not have a clear path to do so. For now, said a senior administration official, the military strategy was aimed at driving Kadafi's forces into retreat and protecting civilians.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said Washington and its allies also were committed to using nonmilitary means to force Kadafi out, including steps intended to cripple the Libyan economy and isolate him diplomatically.

Yet the limited advance planning put the Obama administration and its allies at risk of falling into a protracted standoff in which Kadafi controls part of the country and the rebels another. U.S. officials have warned in recent weeks that a large ungoverned expanse could become a haven for terrorists.

Seeking to rally regional opinion to his side, the Libyan leader cast the military campaign as another example of Western colonialism and a Christian "crusader" mentality toward the predominantly Muslim countries of the Middle East — an effort likely to be hampered by Kadafi's long history of meddling in neighbors' affairs.

France initiated the military action Saturday, launching attacks on Libyan government armored vehicles near Benghazi after an emergency meeting of U.S., European and Middle East leaders in Paris. French President Nicolas Sarkozy said his country and its partners were determined to stop Kadafi's "killing frenzy."

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who represented the United States in Paris, said that despite his promises of a cease-fire, made after the U.N. resolution, Kadafi's forces had continued their attacks. "We have every reason to fear that, left unchecked, Kadafi will commit unspeakable atrocities," she said.

Clinton said that in addition to France and Britain, 12 European countries and Turkey would take part in the campaign.

The military campaign put France and many of its allies in an awkward position. Through most of his four decades in power, Kadafi has been an international pariah accused of fomenting terrorism — including the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 in 1988 over Lockerbie, Scotland.

But in 2003, Libya announced it was giving up a covert nuclear program. In 2006, the United States reestablished diplomatic relations. The next year, Libya gained a rotating seat on the Security Council and Kadafi made a highly publicized visit to Paris. Western countries scrambled for a share of Libya's oil wealth.

Kadafi now is trying to withstand a wave of unrest that has gripped North Africa and the Middle East. The strongmen who for decades ruled his neighbors, Tunisia to the west and Egypt to his east, have been swept away by people power. As the uprising grew, Kadafi quickly lost control of much of eastern Libya, where many have long been opposed to his rule, and a number of cities in his western stronghold also rebelled.

The Libyan leader resorted to ground attacks and airstrikes against the rebels' ragtag militias, regaining territory but drawing international ire and hurting his effort to portray himself as a victim of Western interference. And his poor relations with many countries in the region may also be coming back to haunt him.

Lebanon, which severed formal ties with Tripoli over the 1978 disappearance of a popular Shiite Muslim cleric while on a trip to Libya, introduced the U.N. resolution that authorized the air strikes. The Arab League booted Libya from its ranks over its attacks on government opponents and endorsed the imposition of a no-fly zone. Even Iran, a sharp critic of Western intervention in the Muslim world, has remained silent.

With the United States still engaged militarily in Iraq and Afghanistan, President Obama said U.S. forces would play a limited role in the campaign. But the U.S. will have to lead the operation in its early days because it has the greatest capability to destroy Kadafi's air defenses, a key prerequisite to establishing control over Libya's airspace, the Pentagon said.

The U.S. goal is to finish that job "in days, not weeks," said a senior administration official. The U.S. would fly Global Hawk drone aircraft over the area to confirm that antiaircraft batteries have been taken out, and then other countries, including France, Britain and Arab states, will enforce the no-fly zone, U.S. officials said.

Missile strikes Saturday targeted surface-to-air missile sites and radar detectors that are part of the Libyan military's air defense infrastructure, said Vice Admiral William E. Gortney, commander of U.S. Naval Forces Central Command. Libyan air defenses use older Soviet-era technology similar to what U.S. warplanes faced in Iraq, he said.

Eleven U.S. ships in the Mediterranean are part of the operation, joining 11 from Italy, one Canadian ship and one British submarine. Officials would not specify the total number of planes being flown in the operation, but the United States is flying at least four signal-jamming aircraft.

The U.S. had identified sites along the coast of Libya, including around Tripoli and the city of Misurata, the Pentagon said.

In Misurata, a rebel-held city in western Libya, a doctor said international forces had struck the airport, where Kadafi's troops had massed, silencing artillery that had been hitting the city for the last four days. An amateur video said to be taken in Misurata, showed explosions in the distance and men crying out joyously, "God is great!"

Earlier, opposition leader Mustafa Abdul Jalil in Benghazi, the rebels' de facto capital, told Al Jazeera that the city was under attack by Kadafi's tanks and artillery, and that frightened families were jamming the roads toward the Egyptian border, seeking to escape the violence.

Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Norton A. Schwartz told the Senate Armed Services Committee last week that Kadafi had 'multiple tens" of combat aircraft capable of flying missions, and that they had been completing about 10 sorties a day.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-libya-fighting-20110320,0,1371774,print.story

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Utah bucks conservative trend on illegal immigration

A state effort to offer legal residency to many illegal immigrants is driven in part by the influence of the Mormon Church.

by Nicholas Riccardi, Los Angeles Times

March 19, 2011

Reporting from Salt Lake City

President Obama's aides were flabbergasted. Here was Mark Shurtleff, the conservative Republican attorney general of deeply red Utah, explaining how he and other GOP officials had approved a statewide version of the immigration measures that the president and his progressive allies have long sought.

"You sued us on healthcare," Shurtleff recalls the aides saying during his meeting in Washington this month. "How is it you did something differently on immigration?"

The answer lies in how Utah expresses its conservative values — particularly the importance placed on family and business — and the influence of the Mormon Church.

Gov. Gary Herbert last week signed a bill that would give illegal immigrants who do not commit serious crimes and are working in Utah documents that, in the state's eyes at least, make them legal residents. For the law to work, however, the Obama administration would have to permit Utah to make it legal to employ people who entered the United States illegally — a federal crime.

Even the law's proponents acknowledge that's an uphill battle.

But they contend that, in symbolism alone, the effort by Utah's conservative government to offer a warm welcome to illegal immigrants can reshape the contentious debate over the issue. Washington has been paralyzed since 2006, when President George W. Bush was unable to persuade other Republicans to approve a national version of what Utah has enacted.

"Utah is proof that there is a true silent majority of decent, level-headed Americans," said Paul Mero, head of the conservative Sutherland Institute here. "Conservative Republican members of Congress will be able to take a step back, not be so knee-jerk and caught up in the fear-mongering, and say, 'Look at Utah, the reddest of the red.' "

Opponents of the measure are hoping to turn Utah into another sort of symbol. They're organizing primary challenges against Herbert and state lawmakers who backed the bill. Activists are pushing county Republican Party committees to censure legislators who voted for it.

"A large percentage of elected officials will lose their seats," vowed Arturo Morales Llan, an activist against illegal immigration. Legislators in other states will say, 'Wow, if this happened in Utah and we do it here, we may face the same consequences.' "

Utah has long had softer laws on illegal immigration than even states such as California. It allows illegal-immigrant students to pay in-state tuition at public universities and gives "driving privilege cards" to undocumented migrants to allow them to obtain insurance.

The dynamic is partly explained by the number of people in Utah who have performed missions in other countries for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and are sympathetic to the plight of outsiders.

But in recent years, anger against illegal immigration has spread to Utah as well. Two veteran GOP members of Congress — Rep. Chris Cannon and Sen. Robert F. Bennett — were ousted in primaries partly because of their defense of illegal immigrants. After Arizona passed a tough measure targeting illegal immigrants, polls in Utah showed a wide majority favoring a similar law.

The Salt Lake City Chamber of Commerce was alarmed. It had noted a sharp uptick in convention business after Arizona passed its law and conventions there were canceled as the state became the target of boycotts. It didn't want Utah's image to go the way of its southern neighbor.

"There's a core of decency and goodness and friendliness here," Jason Mathis, the chamber's executive director, said of Utah. "We wanted something that was short and sweet and would remind people of the better angels of their nature."

The chamber and other business and civic groups wrote a document they called the "Utah Compact." It called for a focus on families and empathy in immigration policy, and using police to fight crime rather than enforce immigration laws. The Mormon Church endorsed the document.

Lawmakers drew up several versions of the guest-worker program, which moved through both houses at the same time as Republican state Rep. Stephen Sandstrom's proposed Arizona-style bill. But Sandstrom's bill was watered down in the legislative process, while the guest-worker bills passed with key provisions intact. Sandstrom skipped the signing ceremony in protest.

Arizona requires police to check the immigration status of people stopped for any violation — including infractions such as jaywalking — if police suspect they are illegal immigrants. Utah's law applies only to people arrested for felonies and serious misdemeanors.

Under the guest-worker law, anyone who worked in Utah before May of this year — and their immediate family — can receive documents if they pass a background check and pay a fine of up to $2,500 if they entered the country illegally. They will, however, still be subject to possible deportation by federal immigration agents. A statewide poll last month found 71% support for the law's provisions.

Sandstrom said church lobbyists spent the final week of the legislative session at the Capitol pushing for the law. H. David Burton, the church's presiding bishop, stood by Herbert as the governor signed the measure last week, along with Sandstrom's bill.

"If the church had been silent, the [guest-worker] bill wouldn't have passed," Sandstrom said. "It's an absolute tragedy for the state of Utah."

Ronald Mortensen, an activist against illegal immigration who is also a church member, said some people are thinking of cutting back donations to the church. "They're trying to protect their international interests at the expense, I'd say, of their Utah interests," he said of the church leadership.

Meanwhile, backers of the Utah Compact are meeting with business and political leaders in other states to try to create a national version of document.

"Something has got to break the gridlock on immigration policy in the United States," said Republican state Sen. Curtis Bramble, a longtime supporter of a guest-worker program. "If we've done nothing more than push the debate further down the road than the year before, it's hard to say that's bad for the country."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-utah-immigration-20110320,0,4798051,print.story

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White supremacists, immigrant rights activists face off

About two dozen white supremacists took to the streets in Claremont on Saturday to protest what they view as an unbridled flow of illegal immigration into the region, including the small college town.

Their demonstration along Foothill Boulevard was interrupted by a counter-protest by more than 200 immigrant rights activists, who decried the group as racist.

The screaming confrontation appeared to be tense but nonviolent. Dozens of officers from several police agencies watched over both sides, but Claremont police could not be reached for comment on whether anyone was arrested.

Jeff Hall, southwest regional director of the National Socialist Movement, said his group was concerned about protecting U.S. borders.

"We patrol the borders, we see the devastation, we see the drugs, we know the reality," Hall said.

But immigrant rights activist Ernesto Ayala, a member of the Brown Berets and La Raza Unida, said Hall and his fellow demonstrators had "backward and racist beliefs."

"We're not going to stand by and let them roll over peoples' rights," he said.

On its website, the National Socialist Movement states its core principals as defending the rights of white people everywhere, preserving European culture and heritage, and reforming illegal immigration policies, among other positions.

The Southern Poverty Law Center describes the organization as one of the largest and most prominent neo-Nazi groups in the United States, and says it is notable for "its violent anti-Jewish rhetoric" and "its racist views," among other stances.

Hall said his group had been invited to rally in Claremont by the group's local members, who are concerned about what they view as the city's overly liberal policies of protecting illegal immigrants. These include allegedly allowing students who are in the country illegally to easily enroll at Claremont Colleges; and allegedly supporting illegal day laborers.

On Saturday, Hall and his cohorts gathered on a street clutching a banner adorned with the letters of the National Socialist Movement and a swastika in the middle. Some in the group wore black battle uniforms. Others were shirtless sporting heavy tattoos. Many had shaved heads.

Student Chuco Felix, 21, said he attended the rally "to protest the neo-Nazis in Claremont."

They are promoting white supremacy and hate against all people of color," Felix said. "I think I am making a difference. Every voice counts. My word is my weapon."

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2011/03/white-supremacists-immigrants-rights-activists-face-off-in-claremont.html#more

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From the New York Times

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Help From the U.S. for Afflicted Sister Cities in Japan

In Napa, Calif., residents planned a fund-raiser for Iwanuma, Japan, after seeing photographs of the damage caused when the tsunami swept over it. In Galveston, Tex., a group stitched blankets for the residents of Niigata to protect them against radiation that could fall with the snow and rain there. In Tuscaloosa, Ala., residents gathered money for Narashino, a city in Tokyo Bay.

In each case, the American aid was going to a sister city in Japan that had been hit by the earthquake and tsunami. It was an effort repeated across the United States, as towns big and small responded to the destruction and lives lost in their Japanese sister cities.

“This is a very powerful network of people who care about each other like neighbors,” said James Doumas, executive vice president and interim chief executive officer for Sister Cities International, a nonprofit group that is underwritten by the State Department.

During an emergency meeting Monday, more than 100 residents of Riverside, Calif., discussed how to get aid to Sendai, their sister city, which is on the coast near the epicenter of the quake.

“There is a very visceral connection between our two cities, and there has been for a long time,” said Lalit Acharya, the international relations officer for the Riverside mayor's office.

Mr. Acharya said the funds raised in Riverside would be sent to Sendai City Hall instead of to international aid organizations to ensure that the money would be spent locally.

Riverside and Sendai have been sister cities since 1957, the year after President Eisenhower announced the program as a way to build international cooperation at the local level in the aftermath of World War II. The effort had actually begun in 1955, when St. Paul declared a sister city relationship with Nagasaki, 10 years after the United States dropped an atomic bomb there.

“Countries we fought against in World War II were the natural choices for those first partnerships,” Mr. Doumas said.

Now, some 600 American cities have 2,000 such partnerships with communities in 136 countries. The United States has more sister city relationships in Japan than in any other country, 188 in all.

Mayors and city councils broker the relationships, which often include the exchange of gifts and students. Sendai recently gave Riverside a Japanese garden, and the University of California, Riverside, regularly hosts researchers who specialize in alternative energy from Sendai's Tohoku University, which has been closed because of the quake damage.

The crisis has residents of Hot Springs, Ark., making plans to help their sister city, Hanamaki, Japan, which is about 90 miles north of Sendai. A Hot Springs beauty college is planning a “haircuts for Hanamaki” event on March 30, with all proceeds going to the Japanese relief fund.

For a week, students at five Hot Springs schools have been collecting coins for the relief effort. In 2005, Hanamaki schoolchildren raised about $3,500 in spare change for Hurricane Katrina victims who had been evacuated to Hot Springs.

“Many Japanese students have come to do home stays here, and once you've taken a child into your home they are very much a part of your family,” said Mary Neilson, the sister city program coordinator for Hot Springs.

Hanamaki and Hot Springs were coupled in 1993 because both are destinations for hot-tubbing tourists. Almost every year since, the cities have swapped schoolchildren and citizen delegations.

In Hot Springs' St. Patrick's Day parade on Thursday, marchers carried a Japanese shrine — a replica from an annual festival in Hanamaki — on their shoulders.

“If it weren't for our sister city program,” Ms. Neilson said, “I'm not sure people here would care as much and as deeply about what is happening in Japan.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/20/us/20sister.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print

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OPINION

The Japanese Could Teach Us a Thing or Two

When America is under stress, as is happening right now with debates about where to pare the budget, we sometimes trample the least powerful and most vulnerable among us.

So maybe we can learn something from Japan, where the earthquake, tsunami and radiation leaks haven't caused society to come apart at the seams but to be knit together more tightly than ever. The selflessness, stoicism and discipline in Japan these days are epitomized by those workers at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, uncomplainingly and anonymously risking dangerous doses of radiation as they struggle to prevent a complete meltdown that would endanger their fellow citizens.

The most famous statue in Japan is arguably one of a dog, Hachiko, who exemplified loyalty, perseverance and duty. Hachiko met his owner at the train station when he returned from work each day, but the owner died at work one day in 1925 and never returned. Until he died about 10 years later, Hachiko faithfully went to the station each afternoon just in case his master returned.

I hope that some day Japan will erect another symbol of loyalty and dedication to duty: a statue of those nuclear plant workers.

I lived in Japan for five years as the Tokyo bureau chief for The New York Times, and I was sometimes perceived as hostile to the country because I was often critical of the Japanese government's incompetence and duplicity. But the truth is that I came to cherish Japan's civility and selflessness. There's a kind of national honor code, exemplified by the way even cheap restaurants will lend you an umbrella if you're caught in a downpour; you're simply expected to return it in a day or two. If you lose your wallet in the subway, you expect to get it back.

The earthquake has put that dichotomy on display. The Japanese government has been hapless. And the Japanese people have been magnificent, enduring impossible hardships with dignity and grace.

As I recalled recently on my blog, I covered the 1995 Kobe earthquake that killed more than 6,000 people, and I looked everywhere for an example of people looting merchandise from one of the many shops with shattered windows. I did find a homeowner who was missing two bicycles, but as I did more reporting, it seemed as if they might have been taken for rescue efforts.

Finally, I came across a minimart owner who had seen three young men grab food from his shop and run away. I asked the shop owner if he was surprised that his fellow Japanese would stoop so low.

“No, you misunderstand,” the shop owner told me. “These looters weren't Japanese. They were foreigners.”

Granted, Japan's ethic of uncomplaining perseverance — gaman, in Japanese — may also explain why the country settles for third-rate leaders. Moreover, Japan's tight-knit social fabric can lead to discrimination against those who don't fit in. Bullying is a problem from elementary school to the corporate suite. Ethnic Koreans and an underclass known as burakumin are stigmatized. Indeed, after the terrible 1923 earthquake, Japanese rampaged against ethnic Koreans (who were accused of setting fires or even somehow causing the quake) and slaughtered an estimated 6,000 of them.

So Japan's communitarianism has its downside, but we Americans could usefully move a step or two in that direction. Gaps between rich and poor are more modest in Japan, and Japan's corporate tycoons would be embarrassed by the flamboyant pay packages that are common in America. Even in poor areas — including ethnic Korean or burakumin neighborhoods — schools are excellent.

My wife and I saw the collective ethos drummed into children when we sent our kids to Japanese schools. When the teacher was sick, there was no substitute teacher. The children were in charge. When our son Gregory came home from a school athletic meet, we were impressed that he had won first place in all his events, until we realized that every child had won first place.

For Gregory's birthday, we invited his classmates over and taught them to play musical chairs. Disaster! The children, especially the girls, were traumatized by having to push aside others to gain a seat for themselves. What unfolded may have been the most polite, most apologetic, and least competitive game of musical chairs in the history of the world.

Look, we're pushy Americans. We sometimes treat life, and budget negotiations, as a contest in which the weakest (such as children) are to be gleefully pushed aside when the music stops. But I wish we might learn a bit from the Japanese who right now are selflessly subsuming their own interests for the common good. We should sympathize with Japanese, yes, but we can also learn from them.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/20/opinion/20kristof.html?ref=opinion&pagewanted=print

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EDITORIAL

D.I.Y. Immigration Reform

Political, business, labor and religious leaders in Utah were widely praised last year for signing the Utah Compact, agreeing to seek practical solutions to the problems of illegal immigration while avoiding the extremist oratory and harsh enforcement schemes that have given its neighbor Arizona such a toxic reputation.

The state has now adopted a series of laws to put those goals into practice. They amount to one state's effort to enact its own comprehensive immigration reform, given Washington's continuing failure to do so.

We understand the frustration, but going solo on immigration is not a good idea, even with good intentions.

On the enforcement side, Utah's new laws have some aspects that are sensible in principle, including stricter procedures for verifying immigrants' eligibility to work. We are concerned about the effort to draw local police agencies into federal immigration enforcement.

Arizona's immigration law, which orders its police officers to check the immigration status of anyone they suspect of being here illegally, is a wide-open invitation to racial profiling and an intrusion onto federal authority. The Obama administration sued to block it, and a federal judge has declared much of it unconstitutional.

Though Utah's bill seeks to temper Arizona's approach — it would, for example, require officers to check immigration status only when people are arrested for serious crimes — it is still too open to abuse.

Utah's planned guest-worker program would issue permits to immigrants, even undocumented ones, allowing them to work in Utah after they pass a background check and pay a fine. This is magnanimous, practical and respectful of federal authority — it would go into effect only after Washington granted a waiver — but even so, it is troubling. Illegal immigrants cannot legally be hired, and it is hard to see how any state could carve out its own exception to that rule — or why the federal government would allow it. It should not.

Another new law allows the governor to enter into a pilot program with the Mexican state of Nuevo León to supply legal workers through existing federal guest-worker programs. Those programs are cumbersome and offer too few protections to workers. We certainly applaud efforts to streamline legal immigration. Utah will need to commit to defending the workers it recruits and to detect and root out employer abuse.

Utah's legislators deserve credit for trying. But the country cannot have 50 separate immigration systems, 50 separate foreign policies, 50 states following, leading or stumbling around one another.

The states still have a major role to play. They can increase oversight and workplace protections for all low-wage workers, native-born and immigrant. They can push back at the Obama administration's misguided efforts like Secure Communities, which muddies the line between local policing and federal enforcement — straining local resources and making it much less likely that immigrant communities will cooperate with the police.

They can work harder to integrate immigrants into their communities, increase support for citizenship and English language education, and issue driving privilege cards. And they can keep the pressure on Congress and the president to fix things the right way, in Washington.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/20/opinion/20sun2.html?ref=opinion&pagewanted=print

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From Google News

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At ground zero, future takes shape

NEW YORK — The noise at ground zero is a steady roar. Cement mixers churn. Air horns blast. Cranes soar and crawl over every corner of the 16-acre site.

For years, the future has been slow to appear at the site of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. But with six months remaining until the 9/11 memorial opens, the work to turn a mountain of rubble into some of the inspiring moments envisioned nearly a decade ago is thundering forward.

One World Trade Center, otherwise known as the Freedom Tower, has joined the Manhattan skyline. Its steel frame, already clad in glass on lower floors, now is 58 stories tall and starting to inch above many of the skyscrapers ringing the site. A new floor is being added every week.

The mammoth black-granite fountains and reflecting pools that mark the footprints of the fallen twin towers are largely finished, and they are a spectacle. Workers have already begun testing the waterfalls that will ultimately cascade into a void in the center of each square pit.

The memorial plaza won't be done when it opens on Sept. 11, 2011. But the agency that has been building it is aiming to deliver a memorial experience on the 10th anniversary that closes one chapter — marked by mourning — and ushers in a new one, where ground zero again becomes part of the city's fabric. “We want people to be able to see that downtown does have this incredible future to it,'' said Chris Ward of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2011/03/20/at_ground_zero_future_takes_shape/

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Radiation Levels Said to Rise In California: Find Out About Your Town

The Associated Press reported Friday that radioactive fallout from Japan's damaged nuclear reactors had made its way to Southern California; however, radiation readings appeared low enough that they did not pose a health threat. Later that day, the Southeast Air Quality Management District said there was no increase in radiation. In fact, AQMD spokeswoman Tina Cherry said, "There's no risk detected through the monitor."

As an East-Coaster whose never given radiation levels much thought, the news about rising levels in Cali (and then not rising) made me think--what are the effects of high radiation levels? What's considered a dangerously high level of radiation? And do I even know what the radiation levels are in my area?

The NRC Presents Facts About Radiation According to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, "Radiation is all around us." Our environment naturally possesses some radiation, which comes from outer space, the ground, and even our own bodies. What's more, radiation levels can vary from one location to another depending on factors such as altitude. "About half of the total annual average U.S. individual's radiation exposure comes from natural sources," says the NRC. "The other half is from diagnostic medical procedures."

The NRC says that low level exposure to radiation has biological effects so small they are undetectable because the body has repair mechanisms that protect against any damage. However, damaged cells could potentially incorrectly repair themselves, resulting in a biophysical change. Furthermore, an association exists between high levels of radiation and cancer. "Cancers associated with high-dose exposure (greater than 50,000 mrem) include leukemia, breast, bladder, colon , liver, lung, esophagus, ovarian, multiple myeloma, and stomach cancers," says the NRC. However, no data proves the unequivocal occurrence of cancer following low doses of radiation. "Low doses" are considered to be those that are less than 10,000 mrem--spread out over many years.

Normal background radiation levels in the environment should be anywhere from 5 to 60 counts per minute (CPM). Fortunately, online geiger counters are available, which report to the public the radiation levels in most locations throughout the 48 contiguous U.S. states. One is the Radiation Network , at www.radiationnetwork.com , presented by Mineralab, LLC. Here, you can also find links that will take you to geiger maps of Japan, Alaska, and Hawaii. The radiation level where I live is currently about 35, which is interestingly higher than central California's current 29. Within minutes, the radition level in my area rose to 37, and central California went down to 19.

However, Radiation Network doesn't report southern California, where the radiation was originally said to be on the rise. For southern Californian's concerned about radiation levels, a good site to check out is Enviro Reporter's streaming video footage of radiation monitors in West LA.

http://inventorspot.com/articles/radiation_levels_said_rise_california_find_out_about_your_town

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