Beijing Blames Foreigners for Its Fears of Unrest

 

But that kind of theater seems more removed from events within China than at any time in recent years. In the past three months, some significant foreign groups have been subjected to intensifying pressure from the authorities, reflecting growing fears here about the influence of foreigners and Western liberal ideas.

Good will between the United States and China is scarce. At the meetings this week, the Americans are expected to talk bluntly about human rights, while the Chinese government has already increased its criticism of the West, with some officials telling foreign diplomats that they believe the United States is fomenting revolution.

At least 60 activities organized by the United States Embassy in Beijing — including cultural forums, school programs, ambassadorial visits — were canceled between February and April because of interference by the Chinese authorities, and some European missions have been similarly pressured. Several university conferences involving foreigners have been canceled, and the Ministry of Education is stepping up warnings to Chinese scholars heading abroad that they not take part in “anti-China” activities or engage with groups that promote democracy.

The scrutiny has applied to some nonprofit groups, too, with several — particularly those that receive financing from the United States government or the European Union — being visited more frequently by tax officials.

At the same time, China has waged its harshest crackdown on liberal speech in years: hundreds of Chinese have been detained, imprisoned, beaten, interrogated or put under house arrest.

The government had for years guarded against Western influences, including blocking sites like Twitter and Facebook, but those restrictions have intensified since revolts began sweeping the Middle East and North Africa.

The clampdown is concentrated on foreign groups or activities that have significant ties to foreign governments, run prominent outreach programs, encourage free speech or promote Internet freedom.

Senior Chinese officials appear to believe that the United States in particular helped set off and sustain the uprisings that toppled dictators in the Arab world. In mid-February, messages appeared on the Chinese Internet calling for people to hold similar protests across the nation. Some of the people spreading word of the so-called Jasmine Revolution are Chinese who live overseas.

One message called for Chinese to protest on Feb. 20 at a McDonald’s outlet on Wangfujing, a popular shopping street in Beijing, and the government became concerned when Jon M. Huntsman Jr., who was then the American ambassador to China, appeared that afternoon outside the restaurant.

Embassy officials said Mr. Huntsman, who left his job at the end of April, was not aware of the calls for a protest, but the Chinese government quickly began canceling outreach activities sponsored by the American Embassy. That included one-time appearances by Mr. Huntsman in Chinese cities and regularly scheduled education programs in which American officials meet with Chinese students, according to interviews with foreigners and Chinese.

“We have expressed our objections to these measures to senior Chinese officials on multiple occasions,” said Richard Buangan, an embassy spokesman.

Although some embassy programs have resumed, few people here expect the government’s attitude to thaw anytime soon.

“I think this is a new normal,” said Sara Davis, executive director of Asia Catalyst, a nonprofit group in New York that works with about a dozen grassroots Chinese organizations on issues concerning H.I.V. and AIDS. “I don’t think China has any reason to loosen restrictions. They geared up for a trial run and didn’t get any pushback.”

“They’re casting a broader net,” she added, “and targeting anyone willing to speak their minds.”

Ms. Davis said her group had not experienced difficulties because its Chinese partners worked quietly. But other foreign nonprofit groups and their employees say they are under a microscope, in an acceleration of a trend that took shape last year.

A Chinese worker for one group was recently interviewed by state security officers and told that officials were carefully assessing the effects of foreign nonprofit organizations in China, according to a foreigner who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the delicacy of the situation.

The Beijing office of one American nonprofit group was visited three times in three weeks by officials from local tax and commerce bureaus, after having been paid just one such call in the previous eight months, a representative of the group said. The officials characterized the inquiries as routine, but the timing and lines of questioning left little doubt that the visits were linked to the calls for a Jasmine Revolution. Tax and commerce officers asked the representative for details about the group’s source of financing as well as its activities, partners and means of promoting itself.

Other American groups have faced a similar increase in scrutiny, the representative said, particularly those that receive money from the State Department. One group had been forced to account for virtually every project it financed, he said. Groups that received money from the E.U. also faced new bureaucratic hassles, he said.

Meanwhile, several conferences involving foreigners have been canceled in recent weeks. One theory is that the cancellations were related to new rules posted on a central government Web site on Feb. 14 that were ostensibly aimed at controlling government expenses. But the rules impose severe restrictions on foreign participation: such meetings cannot exceed 100 people, international conferences must be approved by both provincial and central officials, and no “important” foreign guests can be invited without permission.

“The cynic in me believes that, given the likely timing of this decision and of the onset of the Egyptian protests, this is not really about money or the value of international conferences, but about minimizing extended face-to-face dialogues with foreigners who might share ideas that were ‘bu shufu,’?” said one American involved in cultural events, using the Chinese phrase for “discomforting.”

Foreign journalists have also faced unusually direct harassment from security officials. Starting in late February, scores of journalists were warned about their coverage and visited at their homes.

In meetings in February and March with one American journalist, security officers tried to make the case that American officials, together with foreign journalists and others with ties overseas, were conspiring to stir up chaos in China. They talked about the appearance of Mr. Huntsman at the McDonald’s on Feb. 20, and they mentioned a meeting that he held with foreign journalists at the embassy on March 10, citing them as proof of the United States’ hand in fanning the flames of revolution.

 

Beijing Blames Foreigners for Its Fears of Unrest

But that kind of theater seems more removed from events within China than at any time in recent years. In the past three months, some significant foreign groups have been subjected to intensifying pressure from the authorities, reflecting growing fears here about the influence of foreigners and Western liberal ideas.

Good will between the United States and China is scarce. At the meetings this week, the Americans are expected to talk bluntly about human rights, while the Chinese government has already increased its criticism of the West, with some officials telling foreign diplomats that they believe the United States is fomenting revolution.

At least 60 activities organized by the United States Embassy in Beijing — including cultural forums, school programs, ambassadorial visits — were canceled between February and April because of interference by the Chinese authorities, and some European missions have been similarly pressured. Several university conferences involving foreigners have been canceled, and the Ministry of Education is stepping up warnings to Chinese scholars heading abroad that they not take part in “anti-China” activities or engage with groups that promote democracy.

The scrutiny has applied to some nonprofit groups, too, with several — particularly those that receive financing from the United States government or the European Union — being visited more frequently by tax officials.

At the same time, China has waged its harshest crackdown on liberal speech in years: hundreds of Chinese have been detained, imprisoned, beaten, interrogated or put under house arrest.

The government had for years guarded against Western influences, including blocking sites like Twitter and Facebook, but those restrictions have intensified since revolts began sweeping the Middle East and North Africa.

The clampdown is concentrated on foreign groups or activities that have significant ties to foreign governments, run prominent outreach programs, encourage free speech or promote Internet freedom.

Senior Chinese officials appear to believe that the United States in particular helped set off and sustain the uprisings that toppled dictators in the Arab world. In mid-February, messages appeared on the Chinese Internet calling for people to hold similar protests across the nation. Some of the people spreading word of the so-called Jasmine Revolution are Chinese who live overseas.

One message called for Chinese to protest on Feb. 20 at a McDonald’s outlet on Wangfujing, a popular shopping street in Beijing, and the government became concerned when Jon M. Huntsman Jr., who was then the American ambassador to China, appeared that afternoon outside the restaurant.

Embassy officials said Mr. Huntsman, who left his job at the end of April, was not aware of the calls for a protest, but the Chinese government quickly began canceling outreach activities sponsored by the American Embassy. That included one-time appearances by Mr. Huntsman in Chinese cities and regularly scheduled education programs in which American officials meet with Chinese students, according to interviews with foreigners and Chinese.

“We have expressed our objections to these measures to senior Chinese officials on multiple occasions,” said Richard Buangan, an embassy spokesman.

Although some embassy programs have resumed, few people here expect the government’s attitude to thaw anytime soon.

“I think this is a new normal,” said Sara Davis, executive director of Asia Catalyst, a nonprofit group in New York that works with about a dozen grassroots Chinese organizations on issues concerning H.I.V. and AIDS. “I don’t think China has any reason to loosen restrictions. They geared up for a trial run and didn’t get any pushback.”

“They’re casting a broader net,” she added, “and targeting anyone willing to speak their minds.”

Ms. Davis said her group had not experienced difficulties because its Chinese partners worked quietly. But other foreign nonprofit groups and their employees say they are under a microscope, in an acceleration of a trend that took shape last year.

A Chinese worker for one group was recently interviewed by state security officers and told that officials were carefully assessing the effects of foreign nonprofit organizations in China, according to a foreigner who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the delicacy of the situation.

The Beijing office of one American nonprofit group was visited three times in three weeks by officials from local tax and commerce bureaus, after having been paid just one such call in the previous eight months, a representative of the group said. The officials characterized the inquiries as routine, but the timing and lines of questioning left little doubt that the visits were linked to the calls for a Jasmine Revolution. Tax and commerce officers asked the representative for details about the group’s source of financing as well as its activities, partners and means of promoting itself.

Other American groups have faced a similar increase in scrutiny, the representative said, particularly those that receive money from the State Department. One group had been forced to account for virtually every project it financed, he said. Groups that received money from the E.U. also faced new bureaucratic hassles, he said.

Meanwhile, several conferences involving foreigners have been canceled in recent weeks. One theory is that the cancellations were related to new rules posted on a central government Web site on Feb. 14 that were ostensibly aimed at controlling government expenses. But the rules impose severe restrictions on foreign participation: such meetings cannot exceed 100 people, international conferences must be approved by both provincial and central officials, and no “important” foreign guests can be invited without permission.

“The cynic in me believes that, given the likely timing of this decision and of the onset of the Egyptian protests, this is not really about money or the value of international conferences, but about minimizing extended face-to-face dialogues with foreigners who might share ideas that were ‘bu shufu,’?” said one American involved in cultural events, using the Chinese phrase for “discomforting.”

Foreign journalists have also faced unusually direct harassment from security officials. Starting in late February, scores of journalists were warned about their coverage and visited at their homes.

In meetings in February and March with one American journalist, security officers tried to make the case that American officials, together with foreign journalists and others with ties overseas, were conspiring to stir up chaos in China. They talked about the appearance of Mr. Huntsman at the McDonald’s on Feb. 20, and they mentioned a meeting that he held with foreign journalists at the embassy on March 10, citing them as proof of the United States’ hand in fanning the flames of revolution.

 

Japan to Halt 3 Nuclear Reactors Over Quake Fears

在 ServiceModel 客户端配置部分中，找不到引用协定“TranslatorService.LanguageService”的默认终结点元素。这可能是因为未找到应用程序的配置文件，或者是因为客户端元素中找不到与此协定匹配的终结点元素。
在 ServiceModel 客户端配置部分中，找不到引用协定“TranslatorService.LanguageService”的默认终结点元素。这可能是因为未找到应用程序的配置文件，或者是因为客户端元素中找不到与此协定匹配的终结点元素。

TOKYO (AP) — Japan's prime minister said Friday he instructed a utility to halt all three reactors at a power plant in central Japan because of safety concerns in the event of a major earthquake and tsunami.

Prime Minister Naoto Kan said the measure was to ensure safety, citing experts' forecast of a 90 percent probability of a major quake striking the central region within 30 years.

The government has asked operator Chubu Electric Power Co. to suspend two running reactors and a third shut for a regular inspection at its coastal Hamaoka nuclear plant in Shizuoka, west of Tokyo.

"If an accident occurs at Hamaoka, it could create serious consequences," Kan said.

Kan's action followed a safety review of all Japan's nuclear plants after the radiation crisis at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant, which was crippled by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami that also left more than 25,000 people dead and missing on the northeast coast.

The Hamaoka plant is the only one where operations have been ordered halted until the utility can implement safety measures. The plant is about 155 miles (250 kilometers) west of Tokyo.

The Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant lost its power and cooling systems, triggering fires, explosions and radiation leaks in the world's second-worst nuclear accident.

Radiation leaks from the Fukushima plant have forced 80,000 people living within a 12-mile (20-kilometer) radius to leave their homes. Many are staying in gymnasiums and community centers.

Residents in Shizuoka have long demanded suspension of the Hamaoka reactors.

View the original article here

Shell Tries to Calm Fears on Drilling in Alaska

The forbidding ice-clogged region is believed to hold vast reserves of oil, potentially enough to fuel 25 million cars for 35 years. And with production in Alaska’s North Slope in steep decline, the oil industry is eager to tap new offshore wells.

Shell has led the way, working for five years to convince regulators, environmentalists, Native Alaskans and several courts that it could manage the process safely, protect polar bears and other wildlife, safeguard air quality for residents and respond quickly to any spill in the region. But BP’s Deepwater Horizon disaster a year ago put a chill on new offshore drilling.

Shell’s renewed application will pose a test for President Obama, who promised to put safety first after the BP spill. But he has also reiterated his support for offshore drilling amid voter worries about rising gasoline prices.

Environmental groups say a spill in the Arctic’s inaccessible waters could be even more catastrophic than the Gulf of Mexico accident. Republicans, meanwhile, are threatening to excoriate the president for turning his back on energy security if he says no to Shell.

“Americans are reeling from staggering prices at the pump,” said Representative Cory Gardner, a Colorado Republican on the House Energy and Commerce Committee. “So the president has to justify to the American people why we are not replacing Saudi Arabian oil imports with U.S.-produced oil.”

Whatever the administration decides, it will anger somebody. “If the Obama administration approves drilling in the Arctic, it will demonstrate that they have learned nothing from the gulf spill,” said Brendan Cummings, senior counsel at the Center for Biological Diversity, which is suing to stop Shell.

Administration officials say only that they will thoroughly review Shell’s new proposal. “We need to continue to take a cautious approach in the Arctic that is guided by science and the voices of North Slope communities,” said Kendra Barkoff, a spokeswoman for the Interior Department, which oversees most of the process.

The politics extend as far as Alaska’s remotest villages, where support from Native Alaskans, or at least their acquiescence, is essential to win several permits. With that in mind, Pete Slaiby, Shell’s top executive in Alaska, was glad-handing last week in Savoonga, a village on an island in the Bering Sea. He passed out raffle tickets, bought a trinket and congratulated the Yupik hunters for harpooning two bowhead whales.

One hunter waved a copy of the movie “An Inconvenient Truth,” and launched into an attack on oil as a cause for the warming temperatures that are melting the Arctic ice. Other hunters pressed Mr. Slaiby on concerns that the migrating walruses they depend on for food would suffer from the noise if drilling operations began north of here.

Mr. Slaiby said Shell was concerned about climate change too, and promised that the company would take painstaking precautions to protect wildlife. “We won’t be successful here if we deprive people of their subsistence,” he said. “If the oil companies are doing well and the people living around them are not, it’s a recipe for disaster.”

Shell has already spent $3.7 billion on the 10-year offshore leases and preparations for exploration, although the company has yet to drill a single hole. Shell will formally present its new proposal — to drill up to 10 wells over the next two years in remote waters north of Alaska, in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas — in the next few days. If the plan is approved within nine months or so, exploration could begin next year.

Just as in the past, executives realize they need to fight the battle on multiple regulatory and legal fronts. “It’s like holding a bunch of pins in your hand, and trying to make sure not one drops,” said Brian Malnak, Shell’s vice president of government affairs.

Perhaps the toughest hurdle this year will be convincing the government that Shell could protect the Arctic from a devastating spill. An Interior Department agency recently estimated that a “hypothetical” blowout of an oil well in the Chukchi Sea could release 1.4 million barrels of crude over a 39-day period before a relief well could be drilled. A leak of that magnitude would severely test the capacity of the boats, barges, skimmers and a spill containment tanker that Shell plans to deploy around its rigs, although the company promises to add whatever equipment regulators find necessary.

Shell is proposing to use two drill ships, each capable of drilling a relief well for the other in case of the kind of blowout that destroyed the Deepwater Horizon rig. The company is also promising to add more testing and an extra set of shears to its blowout preventers and to keep emergency capping systems near drilling sites to capture any potential leaks.

Alaska once accounted for a third of the nation’s oil production, but its fields are now in steep decline. The decrease in production threatens the continued safe use of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System, also known as TAPS, which requires a steady flow of oil to avert corrosion and spills.

The Alaskan Arctic potentially holds 27 billion barrels of oil. “If we could open the Arctic to oil exploration,” said Alaska’s governor, Sean Parnell, “we can fill that TAPS line in a way to preserve it for another 50 to 100 years.” Major production from the Arctic would probably be a decade away, however.

Environmentalists contend that the risks of drilling are too great. They warn that hurricane-force winds, high seas, and frigid cold and ice would make cleaning up a spill far more difficult than in the gulf, and they say that oil operations could disturb migration and reproduction of marine mammals.

“We believe there need to be more spill drills, more testing, more inspections of the drill rig and blowout preventer before they begin,” said Marilyn Heiman, director of the United States Arctic Program of the Pew Environment Group.

In his presentation in Savoonga, Mr. Slaiby said Shell and other companies had safely drilled in?Alaska’s Arctic waters in the 1980s and 1990s, without a spill or major damage to wildlife. And he noted that the wells Shell intended to drill here were far shallower than BP’s ill-fated Macondo well, making the possibility of a blowout more remote.

“We’ve never told people that what we do doesn’t entail risk,” Mr. Slaiby said, “but the risks are different from the Gulf of Mexico.”

 

Personal Health: Thyroid Fears Aside, That X-Ray’s Worth It

So I was not surprised by a stream of panicked e-mails I received after a television show in which the popular Dr. Mehmet Oz called thyroid cancer “the fastest-growing cancer in women” and cited the harmful effects of radiation from sources like dental X-rays and mammograms.

Dr. Oz warned that people who have more than five X-rays a year have a fourfold greater risk of developing this cancer, and recommended the use of a lead thyroid shield when getting dental X-rays or mammograms. One of his guests on the program, Dr. Carolyn Runowicz, a gynecological cancer specialist, said she would not get dental X-rays if the only reason was to check her teeth.

Thyroid cancer is much on people’s minds, particularly because of the nuclear reactor accident in Japan. After all, it has only two known causes: a rare genetic condition and exposure to large doses of radiation, especially during childhood.

The effects of radiation are cumulative, so in theory frequent exposure to even low doses could add up to a cancer risk. So what are the facts about radiation and the thyroid, and how concerned should you be about an annual mammogram or dental X-rays every few years?

Here are a few things to remember:

?Thyroid cancer is relatively rare, accounting for about 3 percent of all cancers in women, 1 percent in men and 1.4 percent in children.

?Diagnoses of thyroid cancer have increased sharply in recent decades. Between 1980 and 2007, the incidence rose to 17 per 100,000 from 6 per 100,000 each year, and to 5.8 per 100,000 from 2.5 per 100,000 men each year. The number of diagnoses in women nearly doubled from 2000 to 2008.

?Yet the death rate from this disease has not increased, and more than 97 percent of patients survive.

Dr. Otis W. Brawley, chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society, said the stable death rate despite a rising incidence strongly suggests that most of the thyroid cancers now being diagnosed would never have become a health threat.

“Our technology has gotten so good that we are finding cancers today that even 15 years ago would not have been diagnosed,” Dr. Brawley said in an interview. “We’re finding and treating cancers that would never have killed anyone.”

Advances in Diagnostics

In a study describing a 140 percent increase in thyroid cancers diagnoses from 1973 to 2002, published in The Journal of the American Medical Association in 2006, researchers at the Veterans Affairs medical center in White River Junction, Vt., also concluded that the rise was the result of “increased diagnostic scrutiny.”

They noted that if there were a true increase in thyroid cancer, the rise would be reflected in patients at every stage of the disease. But in their study, 87 percent of the increase was attributable to diagnoses of small papillary thyroid cancers, many of which would never have caused any problem.

The fact that thyroid cancer increased in all age groups from 2000 to 2008, Dr. Brawley said, “is more consistent with the introduction of new diagnostic technology than with any cause like mammography.” If mammography were a factor in the rise of thyroid cancer, he added, you’d expect to see a greater rise in women older than 50 than in women ages 20 to 40.

Dr. Leonard Wartofsky, a thyroid cancer specialist at Washington Hospital Center in the District of Columbia, said in an interview, “The doses associated with mammography have been well studied and well calibrated. As long as it is done with modern equipment, women should not be concerned. That degree of radiation is not consequential.”

The higher rates of thyroid cancer found in women could also reflect the fact that many are checked annually by gynecologists, who routinely examine the thyroid region for possible enlargement, Dr. Brawley suggested.

With regard to dental X-rays, he noted that the amount of radiation exposure associated with them has decreased considerably in the last 20 years, which is inconsistent with a rise in thyroid cancer diagnoses.

Radiation Risks

To be sure, exposure to high doses of radiation, especially in childhood, raises the risk of cancer, and thyroid cancer in particular. Well before this risk was recognized, radiation was widely used to treat benign conditions like enlarged tonsils and adenoids, acne and ringworm of the scalp.

Thyroid cancers afflicted many who were exposed as children, or even prenatally, to large amounts of radiation when Americans dropped atomic bombs in Japan in 1945 and when the Chernobyl accident occurred in 1986.

While very large doses of radiation destroy the thyroid, moderately high doses — like those that are used to treat Hodgkin’s disease or tumors of the head and neck — can cause genetic mutations that develop into cancer.

But what of lower doses? Studies of the relationship between frequent dental X-rays and thyroid cancer have been conflicting, and in some the methodology has been suspect. (Some reports, including a frightening one from Kuwait, relied on people’s ability to remember the X-rays they received.)

But the best study of diagnostic X-ray exams, conducted in Sweden, where precise medical records are kept, found no connection to thyroid cancer.

Other factors linked to an increased risk of thyroid cancer include consumption of nitrates in public water supplies (from fertilizer runoff) and certain vegetables, and goiter caused by insufficient iodine in the diet.

Playing It Safe

There’s no harm in asking a mammographer to use a lead thyroid collar, and a lead apron should cover the front of the neck during dental X-rays. Still, some internal radiation scatter will occur, Dr. Brawley said.

Dr. Wartofsky suggested that women worried about the radiation from a mammogram could have an M.R.I. or ultrasound exam instead. But check first on insurance coverage for these alternatives.

For dental checkups, find a dentist who uses digital X-rays, which deliver much less radiation. “We’ve said for years that the amount of radiation from dental X-rays is not enough to cause cancer,” Dr. Wartofsky said.

And don’t let irrational fear get the better of you: It is simply not possible to detect all dental decay without X-rays, and missing hidden decay could result in the need for a root canal or extraction of the tooth.

 

Personal Health: Thyroid Fears Aside, That X-Ray’s Worth It

So I was not surprised by a stream of panicked e-mails I received after a television show in which the popular Dr. Mehmet Oz called thyroid cancer “the fastest-growing cancer in women” and cited the harmful effects of radiation from sources like dental X-rays and mammograms.

Dr. Oz warned that people who have more than five X-rays a year have a fourfold greater risk of developing this cancer, and recommended the use of a lead thyroid shield when getting dental X-rays or mammograms. One of his guests on the program, Dr. Carolyn Runowicz, a gynecological cancer specialist, said she would not get dental X-rays if the only reason was to check her teeth.

Thyroid cancer is much on people’s minds, particularly because of the nuclear reactor accident in Japan. After all, it has only two known causes: a rare genetic condition and exposure to large doses of radiation, especially during childhood.

The effects of radiation are cumulative, so in theory frequent exposure to even low doses could add up to a cancer risk. So what are the facts about radiation and the thyroid, and how concerned should you be about an annual mammogram or dental X-rays every few years?

Here are a few things to remember:

?Thyroid cancer is relatively rare, accounting for about 3 percent of all cancers in women, 1 percent in men and 1.4 percent in children.

?Diagnoses of thyroid cancer have increased sharply in recent decades. Between 1980 and 2007, the incidence rose to 17 per 100,000 from 6 per 100,000 each year, and to 5.8 per 100,000 from 2.5 per 100,000 men each year. The number of diagnoses in women nearly doubled from 2000 to 2008.

?Yet the death rate from this disease has not increased, and more than 97 percent of patients survive.

Dr. Otis W. Brawley, chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society, said the stable death rate despite a rising incidence strongly suggests that most of the thyroid cancers now being diagnosed would never have become a health threat.

“Our technology has gotten so good that we are finding cancers today that even 15 years ago would not have been diagnosed,” Dr. Brawley said in an interview. “We’re finding and treating cancers that would never have killed anyone.”

Advances in Diagnostics

In a study describing a 140 percent increase in thyroid cancers diagnoses from 1973 to 2002, published in The Journal of the American Medical Association in 2006, researchers at the Veterans Affairs medical center in White River Junction, Vt., also concluded that the rise was the result of “increased diagnostic scrutiny.”

They noted that if there were a true increase in thyroid cancer, the rise would be reflected in patients at every stage of the disease. But in their study, 87 percent of the increase was attributable to diagnoses of small papillary thyroid cancers, many of which would never have caused any problem.

The fact that thyroid cancer increased in all age groups from 2000 to 2008, Dr. Brawley said, “is more consistent with the introduction of new diagnostic technology than with any cause like mammography.” If mammography were a factor in the rise of thyroid cancer, he added, you’d expect to see a greater rise in women older than 50 than in women ages 20 to 40.

Dr. Leonard Wartofsky, a thyroid cancer specialist at Washington Hospital Center in the District of Columbia, said in an interview, “The doses associated with mammography have been well studied and well calibrated. As long as it is done with modern equipment, women should not be concerned. That degree of radiation is not consequential.”

The higher rates of thyroid cancer found in women could also reflect the fact that many are checked annually by gynecologists, who routinely examine the thyroid region for possible enlargement, Dr. Brawley suggested.

With regard to dental X-rays, he noted that the amount of radiation exposure associated with them has decreased considerably in the last 20 years, which is inconsistent with a rise in thyroid cancer diagnoses.

Radiation Risks

To be sure, exposure to high doses of radiation, especially in childhood, raises the risk of cancer, and thyroid cancer in particular. Well before this risk was recognized, radiation was widely used to treat benign conditions like enlarged tonsils and adenoids, acne and ringworm of the scalp.

Thyroid cancers afflicted many who were exposed as children, or even prenatally, to large amounts of radiation when Americans dropped atomic bombs in Japan in 1945 and when the Chernobyl accident occurred in 1986.

While very large doses of radiation destroy the thyroid, moderately high doses — like those that are used to treat Hodgkin’s disease or tumors of the head and neck — can cause genetic mutations that develop into cancer.

But what of lower doses? Studies of the relationship between frequent dental X-rays and thyroid cancer have been conflicting, and in some the methodology has been suspect. (Some reports, including a frightening one from Kuwait, relied on people’s ability to remember the X-rays they received.)

But the best study of diagnostic X-ray exams, conducted in Sweden, where precise medical records are kept, found no connection to thyroid cancer.

Other factors linked to an increased risk of thyroid cancer include consumption of nitrates in public water supplies (from fertilizer runoff) and certain vegetables, and goiter caused by insufficient iodine in the diet.

Playing It Safe

There’s no harm in asking a mammographer to use a lead thyroid collar, and a lead apron should cover the front of the neck during dental X-rays. Still, some internal radiation scatter will occur, Dr. Brawley said.

Dr. Wartofsky suggested that women worried about the radiation from a mammogram could have an M.R.I. or ultrasound exam instead. But check first on insurance coverage for these alternatives.

For dental checkups, find a dentist who uses digital X-rays, which deliver much less radiation. “We’ve said for years that the amount of radiation from dental X-rays is not enough to cause cancer,” Dr. Wartofsky said.

And don’t let irrational fear get the better of you: It is simply not possible to detect all dental decay without X-rays, and missing hidden decay could result in the need for a root canal or extraction of the tooth.

 

Miharu Journal: Japan’s Cherry Blossoms Bloom, but Nuclear Fears Keep Tourists Away

 

The town, however, may not be as resilient. The hundreds of thousands of people who come here each cherry blossom season to view the prized tree, one of the three oldest in the country and a designated national monument, are largely staying away this year, scared off by the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, just 30 miles away.

“This tree has lived through many disasters,” said Masayoshi Hashimoto, 85, a local vegetable farmer whose produce has also been rendered largely unsalable by the radioactive plume. “It may survive the nuclear accident,” he said, “but the town may not.”

Sakura, or cherry blossom season, reaches its peak this week along the Tohoku coast, a region still reeling from the March 11 quake, tsunami and accident at the Fukushima Daiichi plant. Tohoku’s famous sakura trees usually draw hundreds of thousands of visitors, many from greater Tokyo, bringing precious tourist income to villages and towns that have little industry to speak of.

Even though many cherry trees in the disaster zone have survived, it will very likely take years to rebuild the tourism industry, officials warn. The troubles are many: severe damage to the tourism infrastructure, fears of heightened radiation levels in areas around Fukushima and an overall plunge in travelers in a country still shell-shocked by its worst disaster since World War II. JTB Corporation, Japan’s largest travel agency, said last week that it expected travel to fall 28 percent during a holiday period known as Golden Week, which starts this month.

Damage to tourism in the area adds to the woes of a local economy that has suffered severe blows: many fishing and farming communities were decimated in the tsunami, and many of the factories in the region are struggling to rebuild or restart production lines.

In Miharu, the weeping sakura has been an important source of income for an aging farming community. About 300,000 people descended on the town to view the 40-foot tree last year, spending generously at local inns and eateries, as well as on produce.

This year, the town expected the number of visitors to fall by about 80 percent. Though the town is not affected by the evacuation zone, which is now a 12-to-18-mile radius around the Fukushima plant, visitors “are playing it safe and staying away,” said Susumu Yamaguchi, a tourism official at Miharu’s town hall. “It’s a big blow for us,” he said.

In a bid to attract visitors, the town abolished its usual $3.60 viewing fee and went on a media offensive. “There won’t be any crowds this year, no traffic jam,” Miharu’s mayor, Yoshinori Suzuki, told a local paper last week.

Helped by sunny weather on Sunday, the tree attracted a larger-than-expected throng of visitors, though still far fewer than usual, according to officials.

Asuka Kimura, 29, a homemaker and mother of four from nearby Iwaki City, said that the thrill of an outing to see the cherry tree at Miharu had outweighed concerns over radiation. “I’ve had the kids play indoors for so long,” she said. “Today we’re spending the day outside, just for the day.”

The town has been desperate to protect its prized tree. Visitors were scarce during World War II, elders recall, but villagers still tended to the tree, preparing for the return to more peaceful times. Five years ago, when a blizzard threatened to overwhelm the tree, local farmers lovingly brushed off the snow and erected wooden supports to keep its branches from breaking.

They again raced to the tree after the devastating March 11 quake, which damaged some homes in the area. The tree remained intact and was far enough inland to escape the tsunami, but the bad news came the next day as the plant spewed radioactive steam toward the town. Local inns, which had been booked solid with reservations ahead of the sakura season, were inundated with cancellations.

Still, as the trees bloom, sometimes amid mountains of rubble, they have become symbols of resilience.

“These cherry trees blossom each year despite any catastrophe,” said Noriyuki Kasai, the mayor of Hirosaki, a city on the edge of the disaster zone, some 400 miles north of Tokyo. Though the city and its 2,600 cherry trees escaped the brunt of the damage, far fewer visitors are expected this season. “Like the trees, we will also recover,” he said.

 

Truckers Protest, Adding to Chinese Fears of Unrest

Hundreds of demonstrators gathered at a container-handling facility at the city’s Baoshan port, news reports stated, monitored by dozens of police officers. On Thursday, thousands of drivers staged a noisy protest at the huge Waigaoqiao port, smashing truck windows of drivers who had refused to join them, and officers arrested several drivers who tried to overturn a police car.

The protests threatened to snarl operations at the world’s busiest harbor, but analysts said that any impact was likely to be small. China’s state-controlled newspapers ignored the strike, and censors removed reports on the disturbance from Web sites.

Online reports quoted by the Chinese newspaper Economic Observer said that the truckers intended the blockage of the Shanghai ports to last three days.

The drivers were protesting low wages, increased fuel prices — the government recently raised diesel prices by five percent — and higher fees imposed by port operators. “The various fees they have to pay leave them no profit,” said Liu Cheng, a law professor and labor specialist at Shanghai Normal University. “This kind of conflict is hard to resolve because it’s the government that is collecting those fees.”

The complaints mirror general unhappiness with inflation here. Prices rose 5.4 percent last month compared with the preceding March, the largest increase since 2008, but a worrisome rise in month-to-month prices suggests to some analysts that the annual inflation rate could approach the double-digit range.

The increase in food prices — 11.7 percent in the first quarter of this year — is a crucial factor in a nation where food is the major expense in some household budgets.

Other protests so far have been scant. But the government, mindful that soaring inflation played a crucial role in the 1989 protests that climaxed in the bloody suppression of demonstrations in Tiananmen Square in Beijing, has taken pains to show concern.

Premier Wen Jiabao has said that he checks prices of staples daily, and has frequently said that inflation and corruption are the greatest dangers to national stability.

But the government has other worries as well. For months, it has been vigorously squelching civil dissent by political activists, a campaign that has included the arrests and disappearances of prominent human rights lawyers and social critics like Ai Weiwei, the artist.

The government appears determined to crush even isolated protests lest they merge into a larger uprising that might threaten the Communist Party’s hold on power.

China was hit with a spate of worker protests last year, also fueled by complaints about low wages and high prices, which led to wage increases in some key industries. But inflation now appears to be eroding those gains.

On Friday, in what appeared to be a government bid to assuage some of the current economic unhappiness, Shanghai newspapers reported that the government would reduce the monthly fees that independent taxi drivers must pay the companies that employ them, to $1,260 from $1,305.

In 2008, China was hit with a wave of strikes by taxi and bus drivers unhappy with the erosion in their take-home pay.

Many experts say that China’s own monetary policies fuel inflation, and that the global rise in food and oil prices has only worsened the situation here.

 

Truckers Protest, Adding to Chinese Fears of Unrest

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在 ServiceModel 客户端配置部分中，找不到引用协定“TranslatorService.LanguageService”的默认终结点元素。这可能是因为未找到应用程序的配置文件，或者是因为客户端元素中找不到与此协定匹配的终结点元素。

Hundreds of demonstrators gathered at a container-handling facility at the city’s Baoshan port, news reports stated, monitored by dozens of police officers. On Thursday, thousands of drivers staged a noisy protest at the huge Waigaoqiao port, smashing truck windows of drivers who had refused to join them, and officers arrested several drivers who tried to overturn a police car.

The protests threatened to snarl operations at the world’s busiest harbor, but analysts said that any impact was likely to be small. China’s state-controlled newspapers ignored the strike, and censors removed reports on the disturbance from Web sites.

Online reports quoted by the Chinese newspaper Economic Observer said that the truckers intended the blockage of the Shanghai ports to last three days.

The drivers were protesting low wages, increased fuel prices — the government recently raised diesel prices by five percent — and higher fees imposed by port operators. “The various fees they have to pay leave them no profit,” said Liu Cheng, a law professor and labor specialist at Shanghai Normal University. “This kind of conflict is hard to resolve because it’s the government that is collecting those fees.”

The complaints mirror general unhappiness with inflation here. Prices rose 5.4 percent last month compared with the preceding March, the largest increase since 2008, but a worrisome rise in month-to-month prices suggests to some analysts that the annual inflation rate could approach the double-digit range.

The increase in food prices — 11.7 percent in the first quarter of this year — is a crucial factor in a nation where food is the major expense in some household budgets.

Other protests so far have been scant. But the government, mindful that soaring inflation played a crucial role in the 1989 protests that climaxed in the bloody suppression of demonstrations in Tiananmen Square in Beijing, has taken pains to show concern.

Premier Wen Jiabao has said that he checks prices of staples daily, and has frequently said that inflation and corruption are the greatest dangers to national stability.

But the government has other worries as well. For months, it has been vigorously squelching civil dissent by political activists, a campaign that has included the arrests and disappearances of prominent human rights lawyers and social critics like Ai Weiwei, the artist.

The government appears determined to crush even isolated protests lest they merge into a larger uprising that might threaten the Communist Party’s hold on power.

China was hit with a spate of worker protests last year, also fueled by complaints about low wages and high prices, which led to wage increases in some key industries. But inflation now appears to be eroding those gains.

On Friday, in what appeared to be a government bid to assuage some of the current economic unhappiness, Shanghai newspapers reported that the government would reduce the monthly fees that independent taxi drivers must pay the companies that employ them, to $1,260 from $1,305.

In 2008, China was hit with a wave of strikes by taxi and bus drivers unhappy with the erosion in their take-home pay.

Many experts say that China’s own monetary policies fuel inflation, and that the global rise in food and oil prices has only worsened the situation here.

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