Asia

"Behind Japan's escalating nuclear crisis sits a scandal-ridden energy industry in a comfy relationship with government regulators often willing to overlook safety lapses."

"A second explosion rocked a troubled nuclear power plant Monday, blowing the roof off a containment building but not harming the reactor, Japanese nuclear officials announced on public television. The explosion underscores the difficulties Japanese authorities are having in bringing several stricken reactors under control three days after a massive earthquake and a tsunami hit Japan’s northeast coast and shut down the electricity that runs the crucial cooling systems for reactors.

An explosion at a nuclear power plant in northern Japan on Saturday blew the roof off one building, brought down walls and caused a radiation leak of unspecified proportions, Japanese officials said, after Friday’s huge earthquake caused critical failures in the plant’s cooling system."

"Governments in the Asia-Pacific region face the risk of unprecedented numbers of people displaced by floods, storms and other impacts of climate change, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) said in a report on Monday."

"Nuclear power and high speed rail will top the focus of China's plan to invest $1.5 trillion in seven key industries and shift the world's number two economy away from its role as a supplier of cheap goods, sources said."

"As temperatures drop well below freezing during [Afghanistan's] harsh winter, bombs and bullets from a near-decade long war against a Taliban-led insurgency are not the only threat -- just trying to light a home and stay warm can be deadly." Heating and cooking with solid fuels like wood and coal kills some 54,000 Afghans a year, most of them children under five. By contrast, 2412 civilians were killed by conflict-related violence in the first 10 months of 2010."

"Flooding in Sri Lanka has forced more than one million people out of their homes, the government said Thursday as it began distributing emergency food, clothing and bedding."