from nytimes.com: The coming 100th anniversary of the Titanic disaster (on April 15) hasn’t escaped the notice of the home video industry, whose eagle-eyed marketing executives have pounced on the opportunity to release what seems to be every known basic-cable documentary, television mini-series and feature film to examine the subject. It would probably take another hundred years to watch them all end to end, so rich has been our culture’s fascination with the Titanic, a tragedy large enough to provide a functioning allegory for the apocalypse, yet not so huge as to defy rational comprehension. This is a catastrophe you can get your mind around.
The king of this world is James Cameron’s 1997 romantic fantasy “Titanic,” which returns to theater screens on Wednesday, tricked out in a computer generated 3-D version. But there have been many other film versions, including “Saved From the Titanic,” a 1912 one-reeler starring Dorothy Gibson, who had actually survived the disaster and is credited as a co-writer, and a German propaganda film from 1943 that did not please Joseph Goebbels and was quickly banned. (The German “Titanic” was restored in 2004 and is available from Kino International.) The most sober in tone and historically reliable of the Titanic films remains Roy Ward Baker’s British production of 1958, “A Night to Remember.” An early release of the Criterion Collection, the film has now been reissued, in Blu-ray and standard definition, from a thoroughly restored print, accompanied by a generous selection of supplementary material.
90 dead in joplin after deadliest US tornado in 60yrs from abc: The death toll in Joplin, Mo., rose to 90 today as officials described the monster tornado that hit the city as a "once in a generation event." Meteorological records show that this was the deadliest tornado since 1953 when a twister hit Worcester, Mass., and caused 90 fatalities. Rescuers shifted through rubble today looking for survivors as high winds and hail continues to plague the area. The tornado blasted a six mile wide path through the city and left trapped survivors crying out for help this morning. "You see pictures of World War II, the devastation and all that with the bombing. That's really what it looked like," Kerry Sachetta, the principal of Joplin High School, which was mangled by the tornado. "I couldn't even make out the side of the building. It was total devastation in my view. I just couldn't believe what I saw."
from guardian: Furious parents in Fukushima have delivered a bag of radioactive playground earth to education officials in protest at moves to weaken nuclear safety standards in schools. Children can now be exposed to 20 times more radiation than was previously permissible. The new regulations have prompted outcry. A senior adviser resigned and the prime minister, Naoto Kan, was criticised by politicians from his own party.
Some 780 million litres of crude oil - 4.9 million barrels - had poured onto the Gulf. The reddish-brown fluid lapped onto more than 1,000 kilometres of fragile coastline, killing thousands of fish, pelicans, tortoises, whales and dolphins. Officials closed beaches and fishing grounds. Tourism and the fishing industry, major keys to the local economy, collapsed.
Damage compensation payouts have been slow, despite the 20- billion-dollar fund that BP set up after some arm-twisting from US President Barack Obama. The Gulf Coast Claims Facility (GCCF) said this week it has paid out 3.8 billion dollars - a small drop of available money - representing 300,000 claims.
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