Land of the Rising Sun?

A week is a long time in politics; in a quake zone it can seem forever. It was just last Friday that so much destruction was wrought on north eastern Japan. Few cannot have been moved by the images beamed around the world. As one US reporter said, it was like Apocalypse Now meeting My Worst Nightmare. Ocean-going trawlers thrown onto dry land, houses smashed like matchwood, and a death toll already over 11,000. An appeal has now gone out for more body bags and coffins as local supplies are overwhelmed. Our thoughts are with the relatives.

To make long term matters worse the quake and accompanying tsunami ... ironically a Japanese word ... has renewed the arguments about nuclear power, thought by some experts to be capable of generating one fifth of world energy supplies in the near future.