Nuclear Crisis Need to Know

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What You Need to Know about the Japan Nuclear Crisis [Updated]

Confused by the fast-changing pace of events? Here are the key points to know

By The Editors

The Japan Earthquake, Tsunami and Nuclear Crisis On March 11, a powerful, magnitude 9.0 quake hit northeastern Japan, triggering a tsunami with 10-meter-high waves that reached the U.S. west coast. Here's the science behind the disaster  » March 11, 2011

Updated April 5

Image: � DigitalGlobe

• The power plant has dumped about 11,000 tons of water (11 million liters) of radioactive water into the ocean to make room for storage containers holding water that is even more radioactive.

• Japan reported finding radioactive fish that exceeds regulatory limits, although based on the levels found so far, you would need to eat 16 kilograms of the tainted fish meat in a year to get sick. But fish and seaweed could concentrate radioactive particles to levels higher than those in the surrounding waters, so monitoring will be crucial to assess the impact on marine life. Shellfish and other bottom feeders would be the ones most likely to suffer long-term contamination as radioactive particles settle on the sediment.

• Japan has established a fishing exclusion zone of 20 kilometers around the plant, which could be extended depending on the amount of radioactivity found.

Supplemental Material Overview In-Depth Report: The Japan Earthquake and Tsunami

Updated March 28

• Water leaking from at least one of the reactors shows high levels of radioactivity, suggesting a potential core breach that could make the plant even more radioactive. Clean-up remains challenging because high radioactiviity prevents workers from staying too long near the reactors.

• In a meltdown, the reactor cores will not detonate like a nuclear bomb. Any explosions would likely be the result of a build-up of steam pressure.

Updated Saturday, March 19

• Radiation 5 to 7 times the legal limit has been detected in milk and spinach in parts of the country near the plant. The Japanese government said that drinking one glass of contaminated milk every day for an entire year would expose a person to the radiation equivalent to one CT scan. Radioactive iodine was also detected in Tokyo's drinking water, although at levels considered safe.

• Workers have connected a cable to feed power to two of the crippled reactors, with the hope of restarting the water pumps that cool the cores.

Updated Friday, March 18 • The Fukushima Daiichi power plant has six nuclear reactors. Their status ranges from being stable to having varying degrees of core meltdown. • Of greatest concern are the spent fuel rods stored at reactor Nos. 3 and 4. They are not contained in the same kind of vessel as active fuel rods. If left exposed to air, they may catch fire or explode, spreading radioactive particles into the air. • Workers at the plant are trying to keep all fuel rods under water, which cools the rods (thereby preventing fires and explosions) and blocks radiation. • The most damaging radiation are gamma rays and x-rays; energetic alpha rays (streams of helium nuclei) and beta rays (electrons) can also damage cells. These rays are emitted during the decay of certain versions of uranium, iodine, cesium and other elements. • Wearing masks and respirators prevent the ingestion of radioactive particles. • Currently, there is no radiation danger to residents of the U.S. Although higher-than-normal radiation may well be detectable in the U.S., the amount poses no health risk. Unless a large explosion sends radioactive material high into the atmosphere, most of the fallout from Japan will not make it across the Pacific Ocean. • Residents of the U.S. do not need to take iodine pills to prevent radiation-induced thyroid cancer. In fact, overuse of potassium iodide can lead to thyroid problems, especially among children. • Most of the radioactive particles are expected to fall out over the western Pacific Ocean. Quantities will be so diffuse at that point that they're not likely to make fish there unsafe to eat. For complete coverage, see our in-depth report "The Japan Earthquake and Tsunami." Read more at www.scientificamerican.com

 

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Record-breaking 14 quantum bits

Physicists entangle a record-breaking 14 quantum bits

Amplify’d from www.scientificamerican.com

Physicists entangle a record-breaking 14 quantum bits

By John Matson |

Quantum information science is a bit like classroom management—the larger the group, the harder it is to keep everything together. But to build a practical quantum computer physicists will need many particles working in synchrony as quantum bits, or quibits. Each qubit can be a 0 and a 1 simultaneously, vaulting the number-crunching power of a hypothetical quantum computer well past that of ordinary computers. With each qubit in a superposition, a quantum computer can manipulate an exponentially large quantity of numbers at once—2^n numbers for a system of n qubits. So each step toward generating large sets of qubits pushes practical quantum computing closer to reality. Thomas Monz of the Institute for Experimental Physics at the University of Innsbruck in Austria and his colleagues mark just such a step forward in the April 1 issue of Physical Review Letters. Monz and his co-authors report creating entangled states with a record 14 qubits. Other researchers had previously demonstrated entangled states with 10 qubits. Entanglement is a key quantum phenomenon by which particles share correlated properties, even though they are spatially separated. (A common analogy for entangled particles is a pair of dice that always land on matching numbers; if one die comes up 5, for instance, the other will, too.) But entangled particles are a bit like rambunctious children—keeping them on-task is difficult work, and the situation only gets harder to control as more particles are added. Monz and his colleagues encoded information onto a string of trapped calcium atoms, using two energy levels of the atom to represent 0 and 1. Using lasers to manipulate the atomic qubits, the group set the entire ensemble into superpositions of 0 and 1—in other words, each qubit is in a sense both a 0 and a 1 until it is measured, at which point it is forced to settle on being one or the other. With a set of qubits entangled in an certain way, measuring one qubit forces the rest of the set to follow suit, resulting in all 0s or all 1s. Monz and his colleagues ran their experiment with qubit sets of different sizes, and managed to demonstrate multiparticle entanglement with up to 14 qubits. But the data leave some room for doubt—whereas sets of 2, 4, or even 8 qubits showed strong signs of entanglement, the set of 14 just barely cleared the benchmark for fidelity. (Entanglement does not work every time, so it is usually verified by certain statistical tests.) The researchers say that the data support 14-qubit entanglement with a confidence interval of 76 percent, so there is certainly room for improvement. Photo credit: University of Innsbruck Read more at www.scientificamerican.com

 

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Fukushima Health Risks Scrutinized

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Fukushima Health Risks Scrutinized

But scientists are struggling to pick through radiation data.

By Declan Butler of Nature magazine Even as the damaged reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station continue to leak radiation, researchers have begun laying the groundwork for studies that will look for any long-term effects on public health. Academic scientists face major obstacles as they try to collate baseline data on radiation doses in the face of the enormous disruption caused by the earthquake and tsunami that hit the country last month. But the experience of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident shows that such baseline data are vital. Without them, drawing firm conclusions about any adverse health effects will be much more difficult. Researchers emphasize, however, that environmental levels of radiation outside the 20-kilo metre evacuation zone around the power plant are currently far below levels that warrant concerns about human health. The greatest threat to human health from the disaster is consuming contaminated food and drink, they say. Assessing the impact of any exposure to radiation in the environment may require cohort studies to look for a raised incidence of cancers years from now among people living in regions with raised levels of contamination. Just how far-reaching those studies need to be, or whether they are needed at all, will depend on the extent of the ongoing contamination from the damaged reactors. Although the prevailing winds are blowing the bulk of radio isotopes from the plant out over the Pacific Ocean, periodic changes in weather patterns are dumping fallout inland, increasing the doses that residents receive. The Japanese authorities acknowledged last week that it may be months before the reactors are brought under control. For now, "it is difficult to predict what the health effects might be", says Dillwyn Williams, a cancer researcher at the Strangeways Research Laboratory in Cambridge, UK. Plant workers are being exposed to much higher levels of radiation than the general population, and will be monitored for long-term health effects. The Tokyo-based Radiation Effects Association already has an ongoing study of the health of Japanese nuclear-power workers, and new dosimetric data for Fukushima workers will be merged into that study. But the Radiation Effects Research Foundation (RERF), based in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which is responsible for radiation epidemiology studies on survivors of atomic-bomb explosions, is already initiating discussions on broader Fukushima studies. In a joint statement to Nature (see go.nature.com/cckfoe), the RERF's vice-chairman and chief of research Roy Shore, and Kotaro Ozasa, its head of epidemiology, say that it is vital to gather baseline data -- such as the exact locations of people exposed to fallout -- as soon as possible. Several agencies, including Japan's science ministry, local authorities and the Tokyo Electric Power Company, the plant's operator, are already publishing measurements. But compiling and evaluating the information will be a challenge, say Shore and Ozasa, as these data are currently "scattered and uncoordinated". "The problem is that it is very difficult to get a real picture of the exposure of the population," says Elisabeth Cardis, a radiation epidemiologist at the Centre for Research in Environmental Epidemiology in Barcelona, Spain. A critical review of all the available data is desperately needed, she says (see go.nature.com/ejlpny). Questionnaires should also be sent to people in higher-risk areas to identify details such as the time spent outdoors on various dates, and what food and water were consumed, say Shore and Ozasa. "Obviously, it is important to obtain those data sooner rather than later, but at this point, coping with the huge effects of the earthquake and tsunami has to take precedence," their statement says. Japan's prompt evacuation of the 20-kilometre zone around Fukushima, and bans on suspect produce, should have helped to curb exposure to isotopes of concern. Iodine-131, which has a half-life of just 8 days but accumulates quickly in the thyroid gland, is still the major component of the emissions from the nuclear plant and remains the greatest acute radiation health threat to the public, says Richard Wake ford, an epidemiologist at the Dalton Nuclear Institute, University of Manchester, UK. Some of the radioactivity levels detected in food since the accident have been "pretty hefty", he adds. One of the largest health impacts from Chernobyl has been the 6,000 or more cases of thyroid cancer, mostly affecting people who were children at the time of the accident. In most of these cases, people received high radiation doses through drinking milk from cows that had grazed on iodine-contaminated pasture. Children are particularly at risk because their thyroids are still developing and are more prone to radiation damage than adults' mature thyroids. The Japanese authorities are distributing potassium iodide tablets in affected areas, and Williams says that this is a crucial precaution. The tablets swamp the thyroid with non-radioactive iodine, preventing uptake of the radioactive form. Japanese children may also have a cultural advantage that lowers their risk from radioiodine. Whereas the children of Chernobyl tended to be iodine-deficient, the Japanese diet, rich in fish and seaweed, is "one of the most iodine-rich diets in the world", says Williams. Milk is also far less important in the Japanese diet than it was for the rural populations around Chernobyl. Radioiodine doses in the thyroids of children in the most contaminated areas are already being monitored by the Japanese authorities.Nature has learned that the first results of that survey show minimal thyroid doses in 946 children living in areas northwest of the plant, a region where some of the highest fallout over land has been reported. Measurements during 28-30 March found maximum doses of 0.07 microsieverts per hour. This would suggest that the children had received total doses of less than 100 microsieverts, many thousands of times lower than was received by people living in contaminated areas around Chernobyl. The results "seem reassuring that not much iodine-131 has got into children", says Wake ford, adding that if the food bans are being effective, "Japan will have got a grip on what is the major concern in this sort of situation". Vadim Chumak, a health physicist at the Research Center for Radiation Medicine at the Academy of Medical Sciences of Ukraine in Kiev, who has coordinated Chernobyl health studies, says that Japanese radiation researchers should heed a key lesson from that disaster. Dose data are fleeting, he warns, and if they are not collected now, any eventual research would be much more prone to uncertainty. Dosimetric monitoring after Chernobyl was sub-standard, he says, "so in our research we had to invest enormous time and effort in the retrospective estimation of doses". Read more at www.scientificamerican.com

 

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Amplify’d from www.upi.com

Andes villagers have high lithium levels

LUND, Sweden, April 5 (UPI) -- Women in four mountain villages in Argentina are ingesting so much lithium in drinking water they could develop metabolic disorders, Swedish researchers say.

Scientists at Lund University in Sweden say studies show the women are at risk of hypothyroidism, which can cause weight gain, fatigue, depression, sensitivity to cold and memory loss, a Lund release said Wednesday.

While lithium has established medical uses and is a common treatment for bipolar disorders, unregulated intake can cause problems, the Lund researchers said.

"The amounts of lithium that the Latin American women are ingesting via their drinking water are perhaps a tenth of what a patient would take daily for bipolar disorder," Lund occupational and environmental physician Karin Broberg said. "But, on the other hand, they are absorbing this lithium all their lives, even from before birth."

In an earlier study in which Broberg took part, involving the same mountain villages in the Salta province in Northwest Argentina, high levels of arsenic, lithium, cesium, rubidium and boron were found in the drinking water and in the urine of the women studied.

"Lifelong ingestion of arsenic and lithium brings a clear health risk. What the ingestion of the other substances implies is not known, because there is very little research on their role in ordinary drinking water," she said. Read more at www.upi.com

 

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Amplify’d from sabbathsermons.com

Climbing Jacobs Ladder

by Sabbath Sermons

By John Thiel

A few hours ago I listened to the complaints of a distressed soul. Satan came to her in an unexpected way. She thought that she had blasphemed the Saviour because the tempter kept putting into her mind the thought that Christ was only a man, no more than a good man. She thought that Satan’s whisperings `were the sentiments of her own heart, and this horrified her. She thought that she was denying Christ, and her soul was in an agony of distress. I assured her that these suggestions of the enemy were not her own thoughts, that Christ understood and accepted her; that she must treat these suggestions as wholly from Satan; and that her courage must rise with the strength of the temptation. She must say, I am a child of God. I commit myself, body and soul, to Jesus. I hate these vain thoughts. I told her not to admit for a moment that they originated with her; not to allow Satan to wound Christ by plunging her into unbelief and discouragement. {2MR 343.5} Don’t hang on to the thoughts of the devil. He has insinuated himself upon you. As you cast yourself upon Jesus, give your heart to him. You may fall, but you will not utterly fall. You have fallen many times. As you launch in the future with this renewal experience remember; Psalms 37:23 The steps of a [good] man are ordered by the LORD: and he delighteth in his way. 37:24 Though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down: for the LORD upholdeth [him with] his hand. The noble part of us, the good part, the part that God has put and justified and made meaningful in your life, is ordered by the Lord. Although a man falls, he shall not be utterly cast down. Proverbs 24:16 For a just [man] falleth seven times, and riseth up again: but the wicked shall fall into mischief. Who is a just man? The person who has been justified by Jesus Christ are those who have been justified and the justification has taken root. Through the death and resurrection of Jesus a man has been justified. Although a person has taken hold of the gift of Jesus he may still fall seven times but he recovers. He gets up again. That is the condition of the person who is moving upward from the experience of the first thrill of Jesus in his life whereas the wicked will fall and love it because he loves it out there. Jesus is taking us up out of the mud. But Christ reaches us where we are. He took our nature and overcame, that we through taking His nature might overcome. Made in the likeness of sinful flesh (Rom. 8:3), He lived a sinless life. Now by His divinity He lays hold upon the throne of heaven, while by His humanity He reaches us. He bids us by faith in Him attain to the glory of the character of God. Therefore are we to be perfect, even as our Father which is in heaven is perfect. {DA 311.5} If the ladder had failed by a single step of reaching the earth, we should have been lost. As we understand, he is the ladder, he is right down there. He lays hold upon divinity with one arm and with the other he lays hold upon me. Because he is a ladder, what is a ladder for? Climbing. We are to climb the ladder. It is impossible for us, of ourselves, to escape from the pit of sin in which we are sunken. Our hearts are evil, and we cannot change them. Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? not one. The carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. Job 14:4; Romans 8:7. Education, culture, the exercise of the will, human effort, all have their proper sphere, but here they are powerless. They may produce an outward correctness of behavior, but they cannot change the heart; they cannot purify the springs of life. There must be a power working from within, a new life from above, before men can be changed from sin to holiness. That power is Christ. His grace alone can quicken the lifeless faculties of the soul, and attract it to God, to holiness. {SC 18.1} That which you couldn’t do for yourself, God has now done. It’s finally all broken into place. As he inspired you as you were reading those words, his grace quickens. When we see the length of the chain that was let down for us, when we understand something of the infinite sacrifice that Christ has made in our behalf, the heart is melted with tenderness and contrition. {SC 35.4} How long must that chain be to save us out of the pit? Its got to come right deep down. The point is because it’s a ladder, its meant to be climbed. Because the ladder is close to you, that closeness brings you up. As much as it was the ladder that touched you, it’s the ladder that lifts you. When Jesus descended, where was the lowest point? Philippians 2:7 But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: 2:8 And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. That was his lowest point, the bottom of the ladder. He had come down, he let go of one thing after the other until he became obedient until the death of the cross. The lowest rung of the ladder, in the pit, was his last statement, Lord into thy hand I commend my spirit. In that condition when he threw himself into the arms of the Lord, in submission he committed himself to God. Amid the awful darkness, apparently forsaken of God, Christ had drained the last dregs in the cup of human woe. In those dreadful hours He had relied upon the evidence of His Father’s acceptance heretofore given Him. He was acquainted with the character of His Father; He understood His justice, His mercy, and His great love. By faith He rested in Him whom it had ever been His joy to obey. And as in submission He committed Himself to God, the sense of the loss of His Father’s favor was withdrawn. By faith, Christ was victor. {DA 756.3} He wants me to embrace the same experience. As I see the Fathers love exercised to Jesus at the bottom, he has the same love to me. That is the first step of the ladder. I must do that. It must be a constant experience everyday surrendering past experience and future sins. The prayer of the publican was heard because it showed dependence reaching forth to lay hold upon Omnipotence. Self to the publican appeared nothing but shame. Thus it must be seen by all who seek God. By faith–faith that renounces all self-trust–the needy suppliant is to lay hold upon infinite power. {COL 159.2} Jesus is right with you every step of the way. He is the ladder. When you’re climbing Jesus, you can’t do anything of your own so you are clinging on to him for dear life. It is a close experience. As you surrender yourself, that is climbing the ladder. We are taking hold of Jesus at the bottom rung of the ladder by consent. You see him beside you in the pit, you see him as a ladder, you’re nearly drowning and you clutch hold of a straw. But this is the ladder, its Jesus, you’re not going to let go. John 3:16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. He so loved me so that I don’t have to perish in the mud. All this mud experience is related to that text. As Jacob suddenly realised he was grappling with the angel, as you realise I’ve actually got hold of Jesus here, hang on for dear life. You have found the concepts of Jesus in your experience, nothing is to get in the way. In consequence of that, you’re clinging to the ladder and chain and the ladder is upwards. 2 Corinthians 5:17 Therefore if any man [be] in Christ, [he is] a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new. 5:18 And all things [are] of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation; You’ve become a new person, a new outlook. You rejoice in being a new creature now. 2 Corinthians 3:17 Now the Lord is that Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord [is], there [is] liberty. 3:18 But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, [even] as by the Spirit of the Lord. Look at his glory and love, amazing love. From glory to glory to glory by beholding you become changed. John 17:22 And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one: 17:24 Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am; that they may behold my glory, which thou hast given me: for thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world. 17:26 And I have declared unto them thy name, and will declare [it]: that the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them. The character of God’s love, the condition of Gods character which is love, is the glory that you are being lifted to more and more, the creator of the universe. From glory to glory by beholding. As you behold so far, you continue to do that, it takes you higher and higher. Look at the glory of Jesus’s experience and what did the Father do for him. Psalms 40:1 A Psalm of David. I waited patiently for the LORD; and he inclined unto me, and heard my cry. 40:2 He brought me up also out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, [and] established my goings. 40:3 And he hath put a new song in my mouth, [even] praise unto our God: many shall see [it], and fear, and shall trust in the LORD. Jesus was in the bottom of the pit but he waited patiently for the Lord. Cling on. As you are doing this you are shutting out all the inroads as Jesus did it and as he is in heaven doing it with you. He brought me up out of a horrible pit and set my feet on a rock. Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ according to; The prince of this world cometh, said Jesus, and hath nothing in Me. John 14:30. There was in Him nothing that responded to Satan’s sophistry. He did not consent to sin. Not even by a thought did He yield to temptation. So it may be with us. Christ’s humanity was united with divinity; He was fitted for the conflict by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. And He came to make us partakers of the divine nature. So long as we are united to Him by faith, sin has no more dominion over us. God reaches for the hand of faith in us to direct it to lay fast hold upon the divinity of Christ, that we may attain to perfection of character. {DA 123.3} Sin and all its grottiness has no more power over you. As you do what Jesus did, as you unite yourself to him by that faith, the faith that believes that Jesus has died with your sin, it’s done and finished. This is why Jesus said to the Pharisees, you shall die in your sins. If you don’t believe that the divine God came into the mud with you as a human being, took sin and destroyed it, you will die in your sins. The sin will continue to smother your life. But if you take hold of the fact that he really paid your ransom and that he has actually come in the body of sin and completely irradiated your sin in him, take it by faith, that’s it. The tempted one needs to understand the true force of the will. This is the governing power in the nature of man–the power of decision, of choice. Everything depends on the right action of the will. Desires for goodness and purity are right, so far as they go; but if we stop here, they avail nothing. Many will go down to ruin while hoping and desiring to overcome their evil propensities. They do not yield the will to God. They do not choose to serve Him. {MH 176.1} When you give up everything then you are dead with Christ. Amen. Read more at sabbathsermons.com

 

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Radiation monitor levels immeasurable

Amplify’d from www.prisonplanet.com

Plant radiation monitor says levels immeasurable

NHK World April 5, 2011

A radiation monitor at the troubled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant says workers there are exposed to immeasurable levels of radiation.

The monitor told NHK that no one can enter the plant’s No. 1 through 3 reactor buildings because radiation levels are so high that monitoring devices have been rendered useless. He said even levels outside the buildings exceed 100 millisieverts in some places.

Pools and streams of water contaminated by high-level radiation are being found throughout the facility.

The monitor said he takes measurements as soon as he finds water, because he can’t determine whether it’s contaminated just by looking at it. He said he’s very worried about the safety of workers there.

Contaminated water and efforts to remove it have been hampering much-needed work to cool the reactors.

The monitor expressed frustration, likening the situation to looking up a mountain that one has to climb, without having taken a step up. Read more at www.prisonplanet.com

 

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Hell-Questioning Rev.

Hell-Questioning Rev.: Didn't Envision Controversy

Amplify’d from www.newsmax.com

Hell-Questioning Rev.: Didn't Envision Controversy

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Evangelical megachurch pastor Rob Bell says he never meant to stir up the firestorm he did with his book that questions the traditional idea of Christian hell. Bell also says he had no idea that the best-seller "Love Wins" would bring condemnation from people like Southern Baptist Seminary President Albert Mohler. Mohler says Bell is leading people astray. Bell was speaking to 1,600 people at Nashville's Belmont University on Tuesday. He says the last couple weeks have been most painful. But he said that with God's help he has been able to learn and grow from the experience. © Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Read more at www.newsmax.com

 

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Man charged after barking at police dog

Amplify’d from www.ydr.com

Police: Man charged after barking at police dog

The Associated Press

MASON, Ohio—Police say an Ohio man has been charged with a misdemeanor for barking at a police dog. A police report says 25-year-old Ryan James Stephens was charged with teasing a police dog in the Cincinnati suburb of Mason. Officer Bradley Walker wrote that he heard the K9 dog barking uncontrollably inside his patrol car while he was investigating a car crash at a pub early Sunday morning. Walker says Stephens was making barking noises and hissing at the animal. Walker reported that Stephens said "the dog started it" when asked why he was harassing the animal. The officer said Stephens appeared highly intoxicated. There was no answer to calls to Stephens' home in Mason. He is to appear April 21 in municipal court. Read more at www.ydr.com

 

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No charges for burying boy at home

Pennsylvania couple won't be cited for boy buried at home

Amplify’d from www.ydr.com

Pennsylvania couple won't be cited for boy buried at home

The Associated Press

BERNVILLE, Pa.—A township in eastern Pennsylvania has reversed its stance and won't cite a couple who buried their 10-month-old son at home because they couldn't afford a burial plot. The Reading Eagle newspaper reports Colebrookdale Township commissioners announced Monday they will pay James and Chantal Dodson's expenses for resolving legal questions over the burial of their son, Jesse. Township Solicitor Jeffrey Karver says both sides have agreed the grave will remain undisturbed. Last month, the commissioners said the family needed a zoning variance and the burial constituted a zoning violation that could result in fines. James Dodson said he couldn't afford a burial plot for his son, who died in August of a congenital liver condition that left the family with more than $30,000 in medical bills. Read more at www.ydr.com

 

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PA man sentenced for rape, burying baby

Amplify’d from www.ydr.com

Pa. man gets 21 to 41 years for rape, burying baby

The Associated Press

STROUDSBURG, Pa.—An eastern Pennsylvania man has been sentenced to 21 to 41 years in state prison for the rape of a young teenager and for burying a baby's body after the girl performed a home abortion. Thirty-one-year-old Michael Lisk of Polk Township was sentenced Tuesday after pleading guilty to rape of a child, statutory sexual assault and concealing the death of a child. Authorities said Lisk impregnated the Monroe County girl in 2009 when she was 12. They said the girl told them she attempted an abortion on herself and the baby was stillborn. Police said Lisk took the fetus and buried it in a wooded area near his home. Read more at www.ydr.com

 

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