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US Economic Envoy Kelly resigns

Declan Kelly will make a number of keynote speeches in Northern Ireland during his one-day visit

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The US Special Economic Envoy Declan Kelly has resigned.

The 42-year-old has worked alongside Invest NI on inward investment projects and events since taking up the role in September 2009.

He has helped to create hundreds of jobs since his appointment by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

There is no indication if Mrs Clinton has any immediate plans to replace Mr Kelly.

Major US companies such as the New York Stock Exchange, Euronext, Citi and Kana Software have brought employment to Northern Ireland.

Mrs Clinton said: “During his time as envoy, Declan has helped our friends in the Northern Ireland executive and assembly, Invest NI, and the business community make Northern Ireland one of the best per capita attractors of investment in the world.”

The first and deputy first ministers paid tribute to Mr Kelly’s efforts to help regenerate the NI economy and for his assistance in securing record levels of foreign direct investment.

Peter Robinson said: “The assistance and advice that Declan has provided has been invaluable as we have set about the task of rebalancing Northern Ireland’s economy.

“In recent times we have created more jobs than ever before at a higher level than ever before, Declan has worked closely with Invest NI to help make this happen.”

Martin McGuinness said: “Declan Kelly has been a great friend of the peace process and has played a key role in helping the executive attract increasing levels of inward investment over the past couple of years.”

Mr McGuinness also thanked Mr Kelly for the role he played in helping to secure the Londonderry City of Culture 2013 bid.

Mr Kelly was born in Portroe, County Tipperary, and advised Mrs Clinton during her campaign for the presidency.

He is a former vice-president of FTI, a global business consultancy.

Mr Kelly was not the first person to assume the role of special envoy.

The post was initially created by Bill Clinton with the appointment of Senator George Mitchell in 1995.

Following Senator Mitchell’s departure to the role as talks chairman, a purely economic role was filled by another Clinton supporter – Denver lawyer Jim Lyons.

The post did not exist during George W Bush’s years in the White House but was resumed with Declan Kelly’s appointment in 2009.

There is no indication that the US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has any immediate intention to replace Mr Kelly – something which may concern politicians and business leaders on this side of the Atlantic.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Tear gas fired at Athens protest

Striking Greek teachers stage a protest outside the country's parliament - 10 May 2011

Many Greeks are angry over increased taxes and government cuts to wages and pensions

Japan nuclear owner agrees deal

Water flows into a storage pit near the intake canal of reactor No 3

Tepco says workers stopped a leak into a storage pit outside reactor No 3

The operator of Japan’s crisis-hit nuclear plant has agreed to drastic restructuring in return for government help paying a huge compensation bill.

The conditions agreed by Tepco include massive cost-cutting, no upper limit for compensation payouts and accepting an investigation of its management.

The move comes exactly two months after the devastating earthquake and tsunami.

Earlier Tepco said it had found another leak of highly contaminated water into the sea but was able to halt the flow.

A Tepco spokesman said workers stopped a leak into a storage pit, which lay outside reactor No 3 and within metres of the ocean.

A similar leak at the Fukushima Daiichi plant’s reactor No 2 was sealed in April with a special chemical known as liquid glass.

The plant has been leaking radiation since the 11 March earthquake and subsequent tsunami damaged cooling systems at the six-reactor plant.

More than 80,000 local residents living within a 20km (12 mile) radius of the plant have been evacuated from their homes.

Agriculture and businesses have been hit and there is no timescale yet for allowing residents to return – Tepco has said that it may take up to nine months to achieve a cold shut-down at the plant.

Tepco is seeking a 2 trillion yen ($24.8bn) loan to see it through the initial emergency. It also expects to pay 50 billion yen ($620m) in initial compensation to those evacuated around the plant.

Overall damages are unknown but are expected to be much higher.

The government is considering establishing a new body to deal with the payments in case they exceed Tepco’s ability to pay.

In a statement on Tuesday, the company said it faced “an extremely severe situation” in terms of raising funds and that it needed state help so that “fair and prompt” compensation could be paid to residents.

Two months since the twin natural disaster, people across the affected region held a moment of silence for the victims.

Japan's Emperor Akihito (L) and Empress Michiko visit at an area devastated by the 11 March tsunami in Fukushima prefecture

Fukushima’s mayor said the imperial visit had lifted evacuees’ spirits

Nearly 15,000 people are confirmed dead and more than 9,800 remain unaccounted for, according to the latest police figures.

The number of people still living in evacuation centres stands at about 115,000 – mostly in Miyagi, Iwate and Fukushima prefectures.

Earlier on Wednesday Emperor Akihito and his wife visited evacuees living in a gymnasium in Fukushima City.

Fukushima Mayor Takanori Seto said the imperial visit had lifted spirits.

“In reality, evacuees are going through serious pain. They want to go home. But in front of their majesties, they said ‘Yes, we are OK.’ I was moved by that,” the mayor told reporters.

“At evacuation shelters, people are worried because they don’t know what will happen to them in the future,” he said.

“The nuclear plant has to be stabilised as soon as possible.”

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

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In Italy, Asia and New Zealand, long-range earthquake predictions from self-taught forecasters have recently had people on edge. But is it possible to pinpoint when a quake will strike?

It’s a quake prediction based on the movements of the moon, the sun and the planets, and made by a self-taught scientist who died in 1979.

But on 11 May 2011, many people planned to stay away from Rome, fearing a quake forecast by the late Raffaele Bendandi – even though his writings contained no geographical location, nor a day or month.

In New Zealand too, the quake predictions of a former magician who specialises in fishing weather forecasts have caused unease.

“The date is not there, nor is the place”

Paola Lagorio, of the foundation that honours Bendandi

After a 6.3 quake scored a direct hit on Christchurch in February, Ken Ring forecast another on 20 March, caused by a “moon-shot straight through the centre of the earth”. Rattled residents fled the city.

Predicting quakes is highly controversial, says Brian Baptie, head of seismology at the British Geological Survey. Many scientists believe it is impossible because of the quasi-random nature of earthquakes.

“Despite huge efforts and great advances in our understanding of earthquakes, there are no good examples of an earthquake being successfully predicted in terms of where, when and how big,” he says.

Many of the methods previously applied to earthquake prediction have been discredited, he says, adding that predictions such as that in Rome “have little basis and merely cause public alarm”.

Woman holding pet cat in a tsunami devastated street in Japan

Can animals pick up quake signals?

Seismologists do monitor rock movements around fault lines to gauge where pressure is building up, and this can provide a last-minute warning in the literal sense, says BBC science correspondent Jonathan Amos.

“In Japan and California, there are scientists looking for pre-cursor signals in rocks. It is possible to get a warning up to 30 seconds before an earthquake strikes your location. That’s enough time to get the doors open on a fire station, so the engines can get out as soon as it is over.”

But any longer-range prediction is much harder.

“It’s like pouring sand on to a pile, and trying to predict which grain of sand on which side of the pile will cause it to collapse. It is a classic non-linear system, and people have been trying to model it for centuries,” says Amos.

In Japan, all eyes are on the faults that lace its shaky islands.

Who was Raffaele Bendandi?Born in 1893 in central ItalyIn November 1923, he predicted a quake would strike on January 2, 1924Two days after this date, it did, in Italian province of Le MarcheMussolini made him a Knight of the Order of the Crown of ItalyBut he also banned Bendandi from making public predictions, on pain of exile

On Monday, Trade and Industry Minister Banri Kaieda urged that the Hamaoka nuclear plant near a fault line south-west of Tokyo be shut down, pending the construction of new tsunami defences.

Seismologists have long warned that a major earthquake is overdue in this region.

But overdue earthquakes can be decades, if not centuries, in coming. And this makes it hard to prepare, beyond precautions such as construction standards and urging the populace to lay in emergency supplies that may never be needed.

Later this year, a satellite is due to launch to test the as-yet unproven theory that there is a link between electrical disturbances on the edge of our atmosphere and impending quakes on the ground below.

Then there are the hypotheses that animals may be able to sense impending earthquakes.

Last year, the Journal of Zoology published a study into a population of toads that left their breeding colony three days before a 6.3 quake struck L’Aquila, Italy, in 2009. This was highly unusual behaviour.

But it is hard to objectively and quantifiably study how animals respond to seismic activity, in part because earthquakes are rare and strike without warning.

A man in Christchurch carrying a young girl through stricken streets

Countries in the Pacific’s “Ring of Fire”, like New Zealand, are regularly shaken by quakes

“At the moment, we know the parts of the world where earthquakes happen and how often they happen on average in these areas,” says Dr Baptie.

This allows seismologists to make statistical estimates of probable ground movements that can be use to plan for earthquakes and mitigate their effects. “However, this is still a long way from earthquake prediction,” he says.

And what of the “prophets” who claim to predict these natural disasters?

“Many regions, such as Indonesia and Japan, experience large earthquakes on a regular basis, so vague predictions of earthquakes in these places requires no great skill.”

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.