Ban smoking in all vehicles, doctors demand - protect the young.

• Smoking should be banned in all cars as well as in public places where young people congregate, doctors are urging.
• The Royal College of Physicians wants England's imminent review of anti-smoking laws to consider such measures to protect the young.
  It says passive smoking results in 300,000 extra child visits to GPs in the UK every year for problems such as asthma and bacterial meningitis.
• But driving and smoking lobby groups say cars are a "private space". = idiots / these people should be considered as pedo... right!
• Wheezing
  A number of medical bodies have supported a ban on smoking in cars transporting children, but the RCP goes a significant step further, urging a blanket ban on anyone lighting up in a vehicle - regardless of whether children or indeed any other passengers are inside. = very good.
• It is calling for a two-pronged approach which would see children protected from second-hand smoke and shielded from the sight of adults smoking - whether in the playground or on the TV.
• The RCP's report - Passive Smoking and Children - is being released ahead of the three-year review of the ban on smoking in enclosed public spaces in England. Similar bans have been introduced across the UK, with Scotland having led the way.
• Drawing on a series of studies, the report suggests that in the UK, tens of thousands of youngsters are falling ill as a result of exposure to cigarette smoke.
• Exclusion zones
  These calculations include 20,000 chest infections, some 22,000 new cases of asthma and wheezing, as well as 200 cases of bacterial meningitis and 40 cases of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome - or cot death.
• When will they learn... idiots it took them this long to reqest for the law to be passed, and how long will it take to get this passed... idiots
• Ban smoking in public places, if someone want to smoke in public, let them do it just like when some people want to have sex, they do it when no one around. get it, still they get arrested if they cought, I would let the smokers off, long as they do not do it front of others.

Toyota staff memo on 'safety sacrifices' handed to US investigators

Tadao Wakatsuki in Toyota City, Japan. He sent a memo to Toyota's president in 2006 condemning "safety sacrifices"

"The Toyota Ways is famous. In reality it is to ignore warnings from within the firm"

• Toyota was forced yesterday to hand over to US congressional investigators a "smoking gun" memo produced by its own factory workers that warned management as far back as 2006 of systemic threats to car safety.
• The two-page memo, drafted by a group of long-term Toyota employees and sent directly to Toyota’s thenpresident Katsuaki Watanabe in 2006, condemns "safety sacrifices" made by the company in pursuit of profit.
• It highlights the inadequate development times for new vehicles and the general decline of craftsmanship at Japan’s most famous manufacturing company, concluding that vital processes were in the hands of "amateurs".
• The document also offered a chilling foretaste of the calamity that was to come, warning that Toyota’s management policies would ultimately threaten the company’s survival.
• Tadao Wakatsuki, the principal author of the memo, was interviewed by The Times two years ago, when he warned that Toyota’s expansionism was creating new victims: its employees were buckling under the burdens of cost-cutting and the customer was about to pay an unhappy price.
• Mr Wakatsuki has worked on the floor of one of Toyota’s largest Japanese factories for 45 years. Along with several other employees both of Toyota and its subsidiaries, he set up a breakaway union in an attempt to improve working conditions throughout the group. His decision to form the All Toyota Labour Union, he said, was based on what he saw as the acquiescence of the official union – a body that rarely challenged management.
• The Toyota Way is famous all over the world. In reality, the Toyota Way is to ignore warnings from within the firm, he said.
• People work themselves to sickness because they are scared to do differently. Do you think that situation is good for the cars or the way they are built?
• We used to do safety and quality checks on every single vehicle that leaves the plant. Not any more. Not even two thirds get the full treatment.
• Mr Wakatsuki, who works in the in the machine press stamping section of the factory, said that cost-cutting and speed had become the dominant ethos at the expense of experience and thoroughness. "Top to toe" safety checks were no longer conducted on 100 per cent of cars, he alleged.
• Even before reports had begun to surface about faulty accelerator pedals, Mr Wakatsuki believed that problems would eventually emerge to haunt Toyota. The company, he said, had allowed itself to grow too fast and in the process forgotten what it was that made its brand so strong. Those exact words were echoed last month by Akio Toyoda, the current Toyota president, when he apologised for mass recalls and attempted to explain how a company of Toyota’s calibre had got into such a mess.
• The memo, by Mr Wakatsuki and five fellow members of the union, was written when Toyota was emerging from a criminal investigation into professional negligence over a car accident where five family members were injured. Toyota was cleared of all charges but Mr Wakatsuki and his collaborators demanded management provide a fuller explanation of what had happened.
• As well as dwelling on numerous alleged shortcomings of Toyota’s management practices, the memo made seven requests. One of them demanded a review of cost reduction measures "so that the company can guarantee the manufacturing of safe cars".
• Toyota acknowledged yesterday that senior management had seen the original memo, but deemed it appropriate to respond to only one of its requests – a polite suggestion that management look into ways of reducing the total number of hours worked by employees each year.
• The carmaker remains in crisis after a global recall of nearly nine million vehicles, a growing barrage of litigation and allegations that accelerator faults caused the death of dozens of people on American roads.

Powerful Chile Quake 'Shifted Earth's Axis' - made days slightly shorter

Shifted the Earth's axis and made days slightly shorter

• The powerful earthquake that killed hundreds of people in Chile on Saturday probably shifted the Earth's axis and made days slightly shorter, a Nasa scientist has said.
• Richard Gross, a research scientist at Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, calculated how much the axis may have changed in position following the the disaster.
• More than 700 people died and two million are estimated to have been affected by the 8.8-magnitude tremor and subsequent tsunamis.
• The quake, the most powerful to hit the nation in 50 years, sent shockwaves out from the epicentre 70 miles from Chile's second city, Concepcion.
• Buildings and roads collapsed and 500,000 homes have been left severely damaged.
• Six aid workers died when a plane carrying them to Concepcion crashed.
• The team was on its way to help organise accommodation for those left homeless by the disaster
• Soldiers were sent to patrol Concepcion's streets after mobs set fire to shops and started looting them, hindering attempts to rescue survivors.
• If the planet's axis did shift by 8cm during the quake, days would have shortened by 1.26 microseconds, Mr Gross calculated.
• A microsecond is one-millionth of a second.
• Earth days are 24 hours long because that is the amount of time it takes the planet to make one full rotation on its axis, so shifting the axis would affect rotation.
• The quake shifted the Earth's axis by even more than the 9.1-magnitude tremor off Indonesia that started the deadly tsunami in Asia in 2004, according to Mr Gross.
• This was partly because the fault line responsible for the quake in Chile "dips into Earth at a slightly steeper angle than does the fault responsible for the 2004 Sumatran earthquake", he said.
• The different angle made Saturday's tremor more effective at moving Earth's mass vertically and shifting the planet's axis, Mr Gross continued.
• The 2004 quake in Asia, which killed hundreds of thousands of people, caused the Earth to move by around 7cm.
• It chopped an estimated 6.8 microseconds off the length of a day, Nasa said.