International jets take action as Gadhafi strikes
BENGHAZI, Libya – Jets from an international force launched missions over Libya on Saturday, hours after Moammar Gadhafi dispatched troops, tanks and warplanes to the heart of the 5-week-old uprising against his rule in a decisive strike on the first city seized by rebels.
Crashing shells shook buildings, and the sounds of battle drew closer to the center of Benghazi, where a doctor said 27 bodies were brought to the hospital by midday. By late in the day, warplanes could be heard overhead.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy said after an emergency summit in Paris that French jets were already targeting Gadhafi's forces. The 22 participants in Saturday's summit "agreed to put in place all the means necessary, in particular military" to make Gadhafi respect a U.N. Security Council resolution Thursday demanding a cease-fire, Sarkozy said.
"Our planes are blocking the air attacks on the city" of Benghazi, he said, without elaborating. French planes have been readying for an attack in recent days.
In an open letter, Gadafhi warned: "You will regret it if you dare to intervene in our country."
Earlier Saturday, a plane was shot down over the outskirts of Benghazi, sending up a massive black cloud of smoke. An Associated Press reporter saw the plane go down in flames and heard the sound of artillery and crackling gunfire.
Before the plane went down, journalists heard what appeared to be airstrikes from it. Rebels cheered and celebrated at the crash, though the government denied a plane had gone down — or that any towns were shelled on Saturday.
The fighting galvanized the people of Benghazi, with young men collecting bottles to make gasoline bombs. Some residents dragged bed frames and metal scraps into the streets to make roadblocks.
Abdel-Hafez, a 49-year-old Benghazi resident, said rebels and government soldiers were fighting on a university campus on the south side of the city, with government tanks moving in, followed by ground troops. In the city center, tank fire drew closer and rebel shouts rang out.
At a news conference in the capital, Tripoli, the government spokesman read letters from Gadhafi to President Barack Obama and others involved in the international effort.
"Libya is not yours. Libya is for the Libyans. The Security Council resolution is invalid," he said in the letter to Sarkozy, British Prime Minister David Cameron, and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon.
To Obama, the Libyan leader was slightly more conciliatory: "If you had found them taking over American cities with armed force, tell me what you would do."
Government spokesman Moussa Ibrahim said the rebels — and not Gadhafi's forces — broke a cease-fire called by the government.
"Our armed forces continue to retreat and hide, but the rebels keep shelling us and provoking us," Musa told The Associated Press.
In a joint statement to Gadhafi late Friday, the United States, Britain and France — backed by unspecified Arab countries — called on Gadhafi to end his troops' advance toward Benghazi and pull them out of the cities of Misrata, Ajdabiya and Zawiya. It also called for the restoration of water, electricity and gas services in all areas. It said Libyans must be able to receive humanitarian aid or the "international community will make him suffer the consequences" with military action.
In Benghazi, crowds gathered at the courthouse that is the de facto rebel headquarters. About 200 people were in the area, drinking tea and talking. Some brought a tank and a mounted anti-aircraft gun they said they had captured today.
Dr. Gebreil Hewadi of the Jalaa Hospital and a member of the rebel health committee said that 27 dead had been taken to the hospital since Friday night.
Misrata, Libya's third-largest city and the last held by rebels in the west, came under sustained assault well after the cease-fire announcement, according to rebels and a doctor there. The doctor, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he feared reprisals, said Gadhafi's snipers were on rooftops and his forces were searching homes for rebels.
Foreign Minister Moussa Koussa said that Libyan officials had informed the U.N. and the Security Council that the government was holding to the cease-fire and called for a team of foreign observers to verify that.
"The nation is respecting all the commitments put on it by the international community," he said, leaving the podium before answering any questions about Benghazi.
In the course of the rebellion, Libya has gone from a once-promising economy with the largest proven oil reserves in Africa to a country in turmoil. The foreign workers that underpinned the oil industry have fled; production and exports have all but ground to a halt; and its currency is down 30 percent in just two weeks.
The oil minister, Shukri Ghanem, held a news conference calling on foreign oil companies to send back their workers. He said the government would honor all its contracts.
"It is not our intention to violate any of these agreements and we hope that from their part they will honor this agreement and they will send back their workforces," he said.
Italy, which had been the main buyer for Libyan oil, offered the use of seven air and navy bases already housing U.S., NATO and Italian forces to enforce the no-fly zone over Libya.
Italy's defense minister, Ignazio La Russa, said Saturday that Italy wasn't just "renting out" its bases for others to use but was prepared to offer "moderate but determined" military support.
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Japan cites radiation in milk, spinach near plant
FUKUSHIMA, Japan – In the first sign that contamination from Japan's stricken nuclear complex had seeped into the food chain, officials said Saturday that radiation levels in spinach and milk from farms near the tsunami-crippled facility exceeded government safety limits.
Minuscule amounts of radioactive iodine also were found in tap water in Tokyo and elsewhere in Japan — although experts said none of the tests showed any health risks.
The discovery came as officials said the crisis at the nuclear plant appeared to be stabilizing, with near-constant dousing of dangerously overheated reactors and uranium fuel, but the situation was still far from resolved.
"We more or less do not expect to see anything worse than what we are seeing now," said Hidehiko Nishiyama of the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency.
Japan has been grappling with a cascade of disasters unleashed by the 9.0-magnitude earthquake on March 11. The quake spawned a tsunami that ravaged Japan's northeastern coast, killing more than 7,300 people and knocking out cooling systems at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant, causing the complex to leak radiation.
Nearly 11,000 people are still missing, and more than 452,000 are living in shelters.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano, meanwhile, insisted the contaminated foods "pose no immediate health risk."
The tainted milk was found 20 miles (30 kilometers) from the plant, a local official said. The spinach was collected from six farms between 60 miles (100 kilometers) and 75 miles (120 kilometers) to the south of the reactors.
Those areas are rich farm country known for melons, rice and peaches, so the contamination could affect food supplies for large parts of Japan.
More tests was being done on other foods, Edano said, and if they show further contamination, then food shipments from the area would be halted.
Officials said it was too early to know if the nuclear crisis caused the contamination, but Edano said air sampling done near the dairy showed higher-than-normal radiation levels.
Iodine levels in the spinach exceeded safety limits by three to seven times, a food safety official said. Tests on the milk done Wednesday detected small amounts of iodine-131 and cesium-137, the latter being a longer-lasting element that can cause more types of cancer. But only iodine was detected Thursday and Friday, a Health Ministry official said.
After the announcements, Japanese officials immediately tried to calm an already-jittery public, saying the amounts detected were so small that people would have to consume unimaginable amounts to endanger their health.
"Can you imagine eating one kilogram of spinach every day for one year?" said State Secretary of Health Minister Yoko Komiyama. One kilogram is a little over two pounds.
Edano said someone drinking the tainted milk for one year would consume as much radiation as in a CT scan; for the spinach, it would be one-fifth of a CT scan. A CT scan is a compressed series of X-rays used for medical tests.
Masayuki Kubo, an environmental protection official in Tochigi prefecture, where the highest tap water reading was found, said the water was also safe.
"You can drink it safely without limiting the amount of water you take," Kubo said.
At the Fukushima plant, emergency workers have been struggling to cool the reactors and the pools used to store used nuclear fuel, as well as to put the facility back on the electricity grid.
A replacement power line reached the complex Friday, but workers needed to methodically work through badly damaged and deeply complex electrical systems to make the final linkups without setting off a spark and potentially an explosion. Company officials hoped to be able to switch on the cooling systems Sunday.
Once the power is reconnected, it is not clear if the cooling systems will still work.
A fire truck with a high-pressure cannon pumped water directly from the ocean into one of the most troubled areas of the complex — the cooling pool for used fuel rods at the plant's Unit 3. Because of high radiation levels, firefighters only went to the truck every three hours to refuel it.
Holes were also punched in the roofs of units 5 and 6 to vent buildups of hydrogen gas, and the temperature in Unit 5's fuel storage pool dropped after new water was pumped in, according to officials with Tokyo Electric Power Co., which owns the complex.
More workers were thrown into the effort — bringing the total at the complex to 500 — and the safety threshold for their radiation exposure was raised 2 1/2 times so they could keep working.
Officials insisted that would cause no health damage.
Edano said conditions at the reactors in Units 1, 2 and 3 — all of which have been rocked by explosions in the past eight days — had "stabilized."
The reactors and the storage pools both need constant sources of cooling water. Even when they are taken from reactors, uranium rods remain very hot and must be cooled for months, possibly longer, to prevent them from heating up again and emitting radioactivity.
Low levels of radiation have been detected well beyond Tokyo, which is 140 miles (220 kilometers) south of the plant, but hazardous levels have been limited to the plant itself.
People evacuated from around the plant, along with some emergency workers, have tested positive for radiation exposure. Three firefighters needed to be decontaminated with showers, while among the 18 plant workers who tested positive, one absorbed about one-tenth of the amount that could induce radiation poisoning.
Outside the bustling disaster response center in the city of Fukushima, 40 miles (60 kilometers) northwest of the plant, government nuclear specialist Kazuya Konno was able to take only a three-minute break for his first meeting since the quake with his wife, Junko, and their children.
"It's very nerve-racking. We really don't know what is going to become of our city," said Junko Konno, 35. "Like most other people, we have been staying indoors unless we have to go out."
She brought her husband a small backpack with a change of clothes and snacks. The girls — aged 4 and 6 and wearing pink surgical masks decorated with Mickey Mouse — gave their father hugs.
The government conceded Friday that it was slow to respond to the crisis and welcomed ever-growing help from the U.S. in hopes of preventing a complete meltdown.
Nishiyama, of the nuclear safety agency, also said backup power systems at the plant had been improperly protected, leaving them vulnerable to the tsunami.
The failure of Fukushima's backup power systems, which were supposed to keep cooling systems going in the aftermath of the earthquake, let uranium fuel overheat and were a "main cause" of the crisis, Nishiyama said.
"I cannot say whether it was a human error, but we should examine the case closely," he told reporters.
A spokesman for Tokyo Electric said that while the generators were not directly exposed to the waves, some electrical support equipment was outside. The complex was protected against tsunamis of up to 5 meters (16 feet), he said. Media reports say the tsunami was at least 6 meters (20 feet) high when it struck Fukushima.
Spokesman Motoyasu Tamaki also acknowledged that the complex was old, and might not have been as well-equipped as newer facilities.
The crisis has led to power shortages and factory closures, and triggered a plunge in Japanese stock prices.
On Saturday evening, Japan was rattled by 6.1-magnitude aftershock, with an epicenter just south of the troubled nuclear plants. The temblor, centered 150 kilometers (90 miles) northeast of Tokyo, shook buildings in the capital.
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With aid slow to come Japanese fend for themselves
KARAKUWA, Japan – There may be no water, no power and no cell phone reception in this tsunami-struck town, but in the school that serves as a shelter, there are sizzling pans of fat, pink shrimp.
Relief supplies have only trickled into the long strip of northeast Japan demolished by a powerful earthquake and the wave it unleashed a week ago, leaving affected communities to fend for themselves.
Many have risen to the occasion.
No water for the toilets? No problem. Students in Karakuwa bring buckets of water from the school swimming pool to give survivors the dignity of a proper flush. In the kitchen, a giant rice cooker given to the school by a resident sits on a table, steam rising from the heaping mounds of rice inside.
"For a long time, in the countryside, even if you didn't have enough for yourself, you shared with others," said Noriko Sasaki, 63, as she sat on the ground outside another relief center in the town. "That is our culture. Even if they're not relatives, we feel as if they're sisters or brothers."
There are hardships — a junior high hardly offers the comforts of home — and while the sense of community runs all along the coast, not all survivors are as well off.
Blustery snow, fuel shortages and widespread damage to airports, roads and rails have hampered delivery of badly needed assistance to more than 450,000 homeless trying to stay fed and warm, often without electricity and running water in shelters cobbled together in schools and other public buildings.
More than 6,900 people are confirmed dead so far and another 10,700 are missing. The disaster also damaged a seaside nuclear power plant, which remains in crisis as workers struggle under dangerous conditions to prevent a meltdown and major radiation leaks.
In the flattened hamlet of Shizugawa, Koji Sato, a carpenter who usually builds homes, is making coffins.
He said he hasn't had time to really think about the hardship he's faced. "All I have been doing is making coffins."
In Hirota, helicopters have delivered some food, but not much. So far, the survivors have instant noodles, fruit and bread. Water comes from wells and mountain rivers. Companies and residents unaffected by the disaster have donated bedding and blankets.
Kouetsu Sasaki, a 60-year-old city hall worker, said they still need gas, vegetables, socks, underwear, wet wipes and anti-bacterial lotion. There is some medicine, but not enough.
"People here aren't angry or frustrated yet. ... But it's a big question mark whether we can keep living like this for weeks or months," said Sasaki, who is not related to Noriko. "I try to concentrate on what I need to do this morning, this day, and not think about how long it might last."
With roads and airport runways being cleared of debris, aid workers hope to ramp up relief soon.
Helicopters operating from two U.S. aircraft carriers off the coast of Japan are already ferrying in supplies.
Two American helicopters touched down on a hilltop above Shizugawa on Friday with boxes of canned beans and powdered milk for a community center that has become a shelter for those who lost their homes.
But snow has limited helicopter flights, and American aircraft are also under orders to skirt the area around the nuclear plant to reduce the risk of radiation exposure.
The region can expect some relief in about 24 hours in the way of warmer weather replacing bitter cold and snow, said Herbert Puempel of the U.N.'s World Meteorological Organization in Geneva. He said temperatures should climb enough to "take a little pressure off the people who are not housed."
"It's frustrating," said U.S. Navy rescue swimmer Jeff Pearson, 25, of Amarillo, Texas. "But we're doing all we can do. I think we are going to be able to get much more involved very soon."
His helicopter crew, based on the southern island of Okinawa, was heading farther north from Japan's Jinmachi Air Base in Yamagata city.
A 24-vehicle U.S. Marines convoy reached the base Friday, where the Marines will run a refueling hub, move supplies by road and provide communications support.
Also Friday, the airport in Sendai, the city closest to the epicenter, was declared ready to receive aid deliveries on jumbo C-130 and C-17 military transport planes. The tsunami had flooded the tarmac, piling up small planes and cars and leaving behind a layer of muck and debris.
At the school in Karakuwa, 43-year-old Emi Yoshida reads a book, still wearing the same clothes she had on the day the tsunami roared into town. She has not showered in a week and longs for a bed. Still, she is grateful for the comfort the community has provided her and her two sons.
Nearby, 62-year-old Yoko Komatsu and her 88-year-old father-in-law Tetsuo Komatsu sit in a patch of sunlight streaming in through the giant classroom windows, warming themselves next to an oil-powered heater.
Yoko feels trapped by the one thing the volunteers cannot give her: a way to communicate with the outside world. She has no idea if her relatives, who live in other hard-hit coastal towns, are alive.
"I want to go there to check on them," she said. "Even if I go, I can't come back, so I can't move. What I want most is gas."
In the kitchen, teachers, mothers of students and the newly homeless whip up three meals and two snacks a day.
The women mix together squid, shrimp and stir-fried vegetables in large pots, turning it into a nourishing stew that they ladle onto bowls of rice. They're delivered with slices of apples throughout the building.
In the middle of one classroom, a group of boys plunk themselves in seats around a table, the bowls of stew sending plumes of steam into the air. In unison, they bow their heads.
"Thank you," they say. "For everything."
Then, their chilled hands armed with chopsticks, they gobble their dinner down.
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Diet Coke Wins Battle in Cola Wars
U.S. sales of Diet Coke overtook those of Pepsi-Cola for the first time in 2010, making the diet soda the No. 2 carbonated soft drink in the country behind Coca-Cola, industry data are expected to confirm Thursday.
Occupying the top two rankings would mark a historic win for Coca-Cola Co. (NYSE: KO - News) in its decades-old rivalry with PepsiCo Inc. (NYSE: PEP - News), which has seen its market share slip in recent years and is trying to retool its marketing.
The two companies have fought over the past decade to win market share from one another as cola sales overall have dropped.
Pepsi-Cola commanded only a slight lead over Diet Coke in 2009, when each brand had slightly less than a 10% market share among carbonated soft drinks. That year, regular Coke won the cola wars with a 17% market share, according to Beverage Digest, a trade publication and data service.
But market-share data to be released Thursday by Beverage Digest is expected to confirm Diet Coke pulled ahead in 2010.
The signs are there: Last month, Beverage Digest reported Pepsi-Cola's market share fell 0.5 percentage point while Diet Coke slipped just 0.1 percentage point in U.S. supermarkets, convenience stores and other retail outlets. This week's comprehensive data will also include food-service data, including restaurant fountain sales, where Coca-Cola is larger.
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PepsiCo made a big bet in 2010, when it didn't market its flagship cola on the Super Bowl or in other TV spots. Instead, it launched the Refresh Project, an online charitable-giving program that disbursed $20 million in donations "for refreshing ideas that change the world.''
Some industry analysts have questioned whether that program would translate into cola sales. PepsiCo says that the initiative improved its corporate profile as more than 87 million votes were cast for charitable projects, and that it will help boost revenue in the long run.
Coca-Cola has ramped up its traditional TV marketing in recent years to focus on its core brands. After a nine-year hiatus, it has advertised its flagship Coke brand during the past five Super Bowls. It has also pitched Diet Coke during the past five Academy Awards.
PepsiCo says it will continue its Refresh Project but also plans more traditional ads to try and boost Pepsi-Cola and Diet Pepsi.It plans to promote Pepsi-Cola on "X Factor," a televised music competition created by Simon Cowell to compete against "American Idol," which Coca-Cola sponsors.
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PepsiCo also returned to the Super Bowl this year to promote Pepsi Max, a diet cola that targets males and competes against Coke Zero, another diet cola.
Increasing the stakes, Coca-Cola and PepsiCo also spent billions of dollars last year to acquire their largest independent U.S. bottlers in a bid to bring drinks to stores more quickly.
TV's Biggest Moneymakers
When it comes to selling ads, it's pretty hard to beat "American Idol." Every year, three times per week, the show attracts millions of fans who sit glued to their televisions, watching and judging in real time. This isn't the kind of show you can watch two days later.
And that's why it earns the big bucks. In 2010, "American Idol" brought in $7.11 million for News Corp.'s Fox network every half hour. That was actually down 12% from 2009, but it was enough to land the show at the top of our annual list of TV's Biggest Moneymakers, way ahead of the closest competition.
Last year was a rough one for the show. New judge Ellen DeGeneres didn't do much to stem criticism that the show was going downhill. Simon Cowell seemed positively giddy to take off. Impressively, "American Idol" didn't completely fall apart when Cowell left. New judges Steven Tyler and Jennifer Lopez are holding their own. The show can still attract 24 million viewers, according to The Nielsen Company.
To determine which series generated the most advertising revenue in 2010, we turned to the data crunchers at Kantar Media who track ad spending among other metrics. The firm surveyed all regularly scheduled primetime shows, excluding sports events, for our fourth annual version of the list. For an apples-to-apples comparison of network programs of differing lengths, the series are ranked based on ad revenue per average 30 minutes.
To be sure, the revenue figures provided are estimates. The amount individual buyers actually forked over for their collection of 30-second spots varies, depending on advertisers' perceptions about a show's value to their clout with the respective network. What's more, this list doesn't factor in the millions spent to produce and license these shows.
Ranking second, far behind "American Idol," is "Two and a Half Men ," which brought in $2.89 million per half hour show. Considering star Charlie Sheen's recent meltdown and subsequent firing from the show, it's going to be hard for "Two and a Half Men" to continue at that rate.
"The show is built around the interplay between two contrasting characters," says Jon Swallen, senior vice president of research at Kantar. "If you remove one, it fundamentally makes it a different show. If it comes back on the air there will be a curiosity factor but after a few episodes it will have to rise or fall on its own merit."
There are rumors that CBS and Warner Bros. might be looking to replace Sheen but nothing has been formalized yet.
"Desperate Housewives"ranks third with $2.74 million in earnings per half hour. After seven seasons, the show continues to earn strong ratings, attracting 5 million viewers per show, according to TV By The Numbers. It debuted in 2004 on ABC around the same time that "Lost" hit the airwaves. That show ended last year earning less money than "Desperate Housewives" per half hour. It ranks sixth on our list with $2.6 million.
Noticeably missing from the list are hot newer shows like "Glee" and "Modern Family." Both almost made the list: "Glee" brings in $2 million per half hour, which would rank it 11th, and "Modern Family" earns $1.6 million, which would rank it 16th.
"Mike & Molly" is the only new show which makes the top 10. Ranking 10th, the show from "Two and a Half Men" creator Chuck Lorre earns $2.11 million per half hour.
Biggest Facebook Security Threats
Forget those phishing emails that attempt to get your credit card or bank sign-in information. When crooks want to know how to get into your bank account, they post a message on Facebook. These messages appear so innocuous and so appropriate in the Facebook setting that you are likely to not only get conned, but pass on the scam.
Facebook is the new frontier for fraud, says Tom Clare, head of product marketing at Blue Coat, an Internet security company that does annual reports on web threats. In just this past year social networks have soared to 4th from 17th most treacherous web terrain -- behind porn and software-sharing sites, which you probably know to avoid.
What makes Facebook so treacherous? Us.
It starts with the fact that we are inundated with requests to set up passwords to get into our work computers, our online bank accounts, Facebook and every other web-based subscription. So what do we do? We use the same password.
"Crooks understand that most users use the same password for everything," says Clare. "If they can get your user credentials for your Facebook account, there's a good chance that they have the password for your bank account."
If you are smart enough to have separate passwords for Facebook and your financial accounts, crooks get at you through a variety phishing attempts that you might think are Facebook games and widgets. But look closely and you'll realize that they deliver answers to all of your bank's security questions -- and possibly clues to your passwords -- right into the hands of the crooks.
Think it couldn't happen to you? Let's see if you recognize any of these recent Facebook messages that jeopardize your security. All of these came from my Facebook friends in just the past few weeks:
1. Who knows you best?
The message reads:
Can you do this? My middle name __________, my age ___, my favorite soda _______, my birthday ___/___/___, whose the love of my life ______, my best friend _____, my favorite color ______, my eye color _______, my hair color ______ my favorite food ________ and my mom's name __________. Put this as your status and see who knows you best.
How many of these are the same facts your bank asks to verify your identity? Put this as your status and everybody -- including all the people who want to hijack your bank account and credit cards -- will know you well enough to make a viable attempt.
2. Your friend [Name here] just answered a question about you!
Was it possible that an old friend answered a question about me that I needed to "unlock?" Absolutely. But when you click on the link, the next screen should give you pause: 21 Questions is requesting permission to ... (a) access your name, profile picture, gender, networks, user ID, friends and any other information shared with everyone ... (b) send you email ... (c) post to your wall ... and ... (d) access your data any time ... regardless of whether or not you're using their application.
Can you take that access back -- ever? It sure doesn't look like it. There's no reference to how you can stop them from future access to your data in their "terms and conditions." Worse, it appears that to "unlock" the answer in your friend's post, you need to answer a bunch of questions about your other friends and violate their privacy too. I didn't give 21 Questions access to my information, but the roughly 850 people who joined "People Who Hate 21 Questions on Facebook" apparently have and can give you insight into just how pernicious this program can be.
3. LOL. Look at the video I found of you!
This is the most dangerous of all the spam messages and it comes in a variety of forms, says Clare. It's actually a bid to surreptitiously install malware on your computer. This malware can track your computer keystrokes and record your sign-in and password information with all of your online accounts.
How does it work? When you click on the link, it says that you need to upgrade your video player to see the clip. If you hit the "upgrade" button, it opens your computer to the crooks, who ship in their software. You may be completely unaware of it until you start seeing strange charges hit your credit cards or bank account. Up-to-date security software should stop the download. If you don't have that, watch out.
Better yet, if you really think some friend is sending you a video clip, double-check with the friend to be sure before you click on the link. When I messaged my high-school classmate to ask if she'd really sent this, she was horrified. Her Facebook account had been hijacked and anyone who clicked through was likely to have their account hijacked too. That's how this virus spreads virally.
4. We're stuck!
It started out as an email scam, but now the "We're stuck in [Europe/Asia/Canada] and need money" scam has moved to instant messages on Facebook, where it can be more effective. Most people have learned not to react to the email, but instant messages help crooks by forcing you to react emotionally -- They're right there. They need help, now. A friend got one of these messages last week from the parents of a close friend. Her reaction was the perfect way to deal with it: She immediately called her friend and said "Have you talked to your parents lately?" The response: "Yeah. They're right here."
Facebook has launched a security system to combat account hijacking that allows crooks to send messages and posts through your account. You can get updates on what they're doing at Facebook's security page,where they've also got a nice little security quiz that's definitely worth taking.
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Ichiro donates 100 million yen to relief efforts in Japan
Ichiro Suzuki(notes)still hasn't offered any public comment about the ongoing crisis in Japan, but the message he sent on Friday will certainly go a lot further than any press conference remarks or a prepared statement of concern ever would.
The Seattle Mariners great will donate 100 million yen to the relief efforts stemming from last week's earthquake and tsunami. Using today's conversion rate, the amount equates to about $1.23 million — or roughly 7 percent of the $18 million he'll make playing baseball in Seattle this year.
In usual Ichiro fashion, he hasn't said anything about his impressive support with his checkbook and he likely won't. Helping out his homeland in a time of great need seems to be enough for the right fielder — as it was last month, when he quietly donated 10 million yen to relief efforts following the volcano eruption in the Miyazaki Prefecture.
His gesture reminds me of the 2001-02 NBA season, when Michael Jordan donated his entire $1 million salary to Sept. 11 efforts. And just like in that great time of need, Ichiro isn't alone in his generosity. The Mariners also announced on Friday that they'll be matching any front office or fan donations made over the regular-season's first game homestand at Safeco Field with a minimum of $100,000 guaranteed. The San Francisco Giants also announced their plans to offer aid earlier this week.
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