SOONER or later, America will suffer an earthquake as devastating as the one that has wreaked havoc on northern Japan. It could happen next week, next year or next century; it has happened on numerous occasions in the past, and will happen again.
FEAR and uncertainty spread faster and farther than any nuclear fallout. To date the crisis at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant in Japan, laid low by the tsunami of March 11th, seems to have done little if any long-term damage to the environment beyond the plant
WHEN in the Arctic, you should at least treat your host well. Royal Dutch Shell, an oil giant, had to learn this the hard way when planning to drill exploration wells in the Beaufort Sea off Alaska a couple of years ago. The firm had spent $84m on offshore leases and had satisfied regulators. But it failed to win over the Inupiat, an Inuit group.
The renewable-energy industry is heading for GlasgowMAKING all the towers, turbines and other kit needed for an anticipated boom in wind, wave and tidal electricity has become one of the big hopes for British manufacturing. Rundown ports on the east coast are wooing foreign engineering firms in the hope of becoming suppliers to the burgeoning offshore renewable industry in the North Sea.
