Credit Cards Under Pressure To Police Online Expression

A screengrab of a cached version of The International Conspiratological Association website, an anti-Semitic organization. Under pressure from advocacy groups, MasterCard has since ended its merchant network relationship with the organization.

The Internet Archive

A screengrab of a cached version of The International Conspiratological Association website, an anti-Semitic organization. Under pressure from advocacy groups, MasterCard has since ended its merchant network relationship with the organization.

The Internet Archive

Earlier this month, major credit card processors including MasterCard, Visa and America Express announced they would stop processing payments to websites that collect and publish mug shots online. The sites say they are providing a public service, but they make their money by charging people a fee to remove these embarrassing photos from the Internet.

Critics call that business model extortion, and after an expose in The New York Times, credit card companies announced they wanted no part of it.

The incident serves as a reminder that, increasingly, credit card companies are being asked to act as the cops and regulators of online commerce and expression.

Credit card companies carefully cultivate their brands, says Jamie Chandler, a political scientist with Hunter College. Part of that, he says, is through aggressive niche marketing to minority groups.

For example, in June, MasterCard purchased promoted tweets to celebrate the Supreme Court's Defense of Marriage Act ruling, the case that found the federal government couldn't discriminate against same-sex marriages. Card companies have also invested heavily in creating and marketing products that work for observant Muslims.

But these same card companies sometimes also end up in a kind of business partnership with hate groups, Chandler says. That's because the companies make money from every transaction they process. So, if MasterCard processes a donation to a hate group, it profits.

'An Inherent Contradiction'

"There is an inherent contradiction there," Chandler says, "because you're generating the perception you are a diversity-promoting organization." At the same time, he says, "if you go to the International Conspiratological website, the credit card acceptance icons are directly over a graphic that says, 'White Pride World Wide.' "

At least, they used to be. Chandler, working with a state legislator in New York, approached MasterCard about changing that. "And they decided to drop the eight Holocaust-denial organizations we have identified from their merchant network," he says — including the International Conspiratological Association.

That means the group really can't do business online right now. To buy a T-shirt, you'd have to mail them a check.

And this is just the start, Chandler says. He has identified more than 40 groups that he wants card companies to stop doing business with. "The next step is to expand that to the anti-gay, Islamophobic, xenophobic organizations that we identify," Chandler says.

One of the groups on Chandler's list of targets is the Family Research Council, because of its opposition to same sex marriage and gay rights. But the organization is also a major force in mainstream conservative politics.

Rainey Reitman, director of the activism team at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, says efforts like Chandler's are becoming more common, and come from all over the political spectrum.

"Certainly WikiLeaks was a game-changing moment in sort of the financial privacy, financial censorship fight," she says. In that case, credit card processors said WikiLeaks was either engaged in illegal activity or actively encouraging it.

Concerns About A Chilling Effect

Credit card companies have a huge amount of discretion, Reitman says. "I have noticed a serious trend toward what we often call the weakest link of taking down free speech, which is putting pressure on payment providers to suspend the accounts of controversial websites in order to basically shut the website down," she says.

Chandler argues that this isn't a free speech issue. He says companies like MasterCard have the right to decide who they do business with, and he is simply pressuring them to live up to their own policies on diversity and inclusion.

Other groups are asking card companies to stop processing payments to "mail order bride" businesses. And Reitman says the publishers of websites that feature controversial erotic literature or feminist pornography have had their ability to accept cards just ripped away.

John Muller, a vice president at PayPal, says his firm's philosophy is to make it easy for anyone, like small businesses and individuals, to accept payments. That often leaves companies like PayPal caught in the middle, he says.

They have to comply with a web of state and federal regulations and depend on payment networks owned by the big card companies to clear transactions. "So we certainly have to respect their interests and their rules as well," he says.

"Ultimately, Visa and MasterCard are the ones with the problematic policies," says Reitman, who has written about PayPal and censorship concerns for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "They've got vague polices. Payment-card providers like PayPal don't know how to interpret them ... and they are shutting down sites that aren't even violating the First Amendment — legal sites with legal content."

I was hoping MasterCard and Visa would explain how they made decisions like these. Why, for example, did MasterCard decide to flag Holocaust deniers, but continue to facilitate payments for a group that advocates the death penalty for homosexuals?

But MasterCard officials declined to explain their decision-making process in detail. Instead, they said that all credit card companies face the same challenges. They said they are required by law to block illegal commerce and they pointed me to the rules they publish for merchants and banks that want to use their network. The rules reserve MasterCard's right to penalize anyone on its network who facilitates transactions that reflect negatively on the company's brand.

Source: http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2013/10/19/237077776/credit-cards-under-pressure-to-police-online-expression?ft=1&f=1006
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Kenya's President Faces Ongoing Battle With ICC

Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta (left) and Deputy President William Ruto face charges in the International Criminal Court at The Hague of instigating and financing deadly tribal violence in Kenya after that country's disputed 2007 election.

AP Photo/Kenya Presidency

Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta (left) and Deputy President William Ruto face charges in the International Criminal Court at The Hague of instigating and financing deadly tribal violence in Kenya after that country's disputed 2007 election.

AP Photo/Kenya Presidency

Kenya's deputy president William Ruto is back before the International Criminal Court in The Hague on Monday. He and his boss, President Uhuru Kenyatta, face charges of instigating and financing deadly tribal violence in Kenya after that country's disputed 2007 election.

But their cases might never have reached this stage if not for one Kenyan judge and a remarkable disappearing act.

Justice Philip Waki was a Kenyan appellate judge appointed to chair a Commission of Inquiry to find the top political officials who instigated the post-election violence of 2007 and 2008; violence that killed more than 1,100 people.

But in Kenya, Commissions of Inquiry are viewed with skepticism. "Commissions end up being toothless bulldogs," says Maina Kiai, a human rights advocate and government critic. "They make a lot of noise. Some that have got good reports, they go nowhere."

Justice Philip Waki didn't want his report to fall prey to politics, so he made an unexpected move, Instead of publishing the names of the accused, he sealed them in an envelope. To keep justice blind, Judge Waki kept the names in the dark.

Then he ordered that envelope not to be opened until Kenyan politicians established a special court to try these people. If the government of Kenya failed to set up a special tribunal, he ordered, the envelope with its names and the evidence collected by the commission would be handed over to the International Criminal Court.

That's what happened when Kenya's parliament failed to set up a tribunal. And at this time, there was wide support in Kenya for the ICC. One survey showed that 80 percent of Kenyans supported the ICC, but politics could be kept out of the justice process only so long.

A Change In Tone

In December of 2010, ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo released the names of the people he had decided to prosecute.

The announcement of the names changed the fault lines of Kenyan domestic politics. The two most powerful people on the list, Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto, teamed up to run on the same presidential ticket. These were the leaders of two tribes that were murdering each other after the last election. Now they were waving from the windows of the same tour bus.

Most surprising to some Western observers, they won the election, not despite the ICC, but by playing the ICC charges to their advantage. In campaign stops, Kenyatta and Ruto hit the message that the ICC was an instrument of the West to sideline not just the two of them, but both of their tribes, the two biggest tribes in Kenya. To some it sounded like a conspiracy theory, but Maina Kiai says in Kenyan tribal politics, it made sense.

"In this country the presidency has historically been everything," Kiai says. "You capture the presidency; your people, your constituents get roads, they get water, they get electricity [and] they get good schools they get health care."

Kenyan voters from Ruto's Kalenjin and Kenyatta's Kikuyu tribes could be convinced that if their leaders were sent to jail, then they would be the ones to suffer. After all, Kiai says, if the leaders are made to "pay for their crimes," then the little people "won't have access to the little crumbs we get from them in the patronage system."

This, he says, is the biggest challenge of the international court. It was created in order to hold powerful people accountable in countries without strong systems of justice. But in those countries without strong institutions, where patronage prevails, can the ICC hold an individual leader accountable and not seem to punish all the people under him?

Questioning The International Criminal Court

John Githongo, a prominent activist and former whistle blower on government corruption, says the ICC is at best "a blunt instrument."

"It doesn't understand the nuances of Kenyan tribal history and politics," he said from his office at Ni Sisi. "It takes evidence and says, 'OK we can build a case against these six guys.'"

The six men that the ICC chose to prosecute all came from just two tribes. Kenyans widely believe that other names, from other tribes, were in Judge Waki's still secret envelope. Githongo says the ICC could have had perfectly sound legal reasons to choose just those six, but in limiting itself to trying people only from those two tribes, he says, the ICC made itself vulnerable to the charge of tribal favoritism.

"Politics is beginning to chip away at ICC support," says Mwalimu Mati, director of Mars Group Kenya, a government accountability watchdog. He says the recent terrorist attack on Westgate Mall may have chipped away support still further, highlighting for the first time since his election President Kenyatta's role as commander-in-chief.

"[Commander-in-Chief] is different from the head of your government," Mati says. "As head of government, his election is disputed by half the country. But as commander-in-chief, you do need someone sitting in that seat. Now the question: do you want your commander-in-chief to go to Holland to attend a trial in November, when in late September, terrorists attacked a mall killing more than 67 people?

"Or put another way: [Is it] justice for the victims or security for me? And that's what's happening to people," he says.

These questions are pulling at Kenyans at the same time. Even as bodies are still being identified in the rubble of Westgate, witnesses back in The Hague have resumed testimony against Kenyatta's deputy, William Ruto. And as for President Kenyatta, the judges at the ICC denied his petition to delay his own court date to deal with Kenya's security. His trial begins as scheduled in November.

This past weekend, the political backlash against the ICC went continent-wide. African leaders asked the United Nations Security Council to suspend the case. The head of the African Union even said that the ICC should not be allowed to bring charges against any acting head of state.

The AU instructed Kenyatta to boycott his own trial at The Hague if the U.N. doesn't answer its request to delay the trial at least a year. A no-show by the president could technically trigger an arrest warrant. But Western nations may be reluctant to antagonize a key partner in the war on terror.

Source: http://www.npr.org/2013/10/14/233584399/kenyas-president-faces-ongoing-battle-with-icc?ft=1&f=1001
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Is Pitbull 'Mr. Education'? Rapper Opens Charter School In Miami

Pitbull is one of a growing list of celebrities who have opened their wallets or given their names to charter schools.

Jeff Daly/AP

Pitbull is one of a growing list of celebrities who have opened their wallets or given their names to charter schools.

Jeff Daly/AP

Rapper Pitbull (Armando Christian Pérez) is the latest in a long list of celebrities lending their star power to the flourishing charter school movement. Alicia Keyes, Denzel Washington, Shakira, Oprah — all support or sponsor charter schools.

The Sports Leadership And Management Academy (SLAM), Pitbull's new public charter school for students in grades six through 12, opened this fall in Miami's Little Havana neighborhood. Pitbull says SLAM's sports theme has a vocational bent as a way to hook kids for whom school is boring.

"If sports is what you love, one way or another, it's a business you can get involved with ... whether you're a therapist, an attorney, a broadcaster," he says. "They're already labeling me 'Mr. Education.' "

It's an interesting twist, considering that at the last school Pitbull attended, the principal couldn't wait to get rid of him. "He literally told me, 'I don't want you in my school ... gonna give you your diploma ... get out of here.' "

Pitbull's parting words were: "Thank you."

Seventeen-year-old Austin Rivera says he transferred to SLAM after Pitbull spoke at his previous school. "He came from nothing and became something huge. ... It shows like not a lot of people are handed everything," Austin says.

"[A] lot of these kids are so creative ... but no one believes in them. ... No one motives them," Pitbull says. "I relate to them ... but then I give it to them raw."

The rapper's parents fled Cuba and settled in Miami, where they struggled. His father went to jail for dealing drugs. And at 16, Pitbull began dealing, too — and rapping. He chose the name "Pitbull" because, he says, pit bulls are too stupid to lose. The name and the "outlaw" image stuck.

Pitbull's breakthrough hit came in 2004 with a song titled "Culo," a vulgar word in Spanish and "booty" in the rap vernacular.

It wasn't long before Pitbull was making millions, touring with rappers Eminem and 50 Cent. Pitbull's problems with drugs and alcohol, his womanizing and his profanity-laced lyrics didn't exactly qualify him for opening a charter school. Surprisingly, parents and educators at SLAM didn't think that should disqualify him, either.

Critics say Pitbull is not the issue. It's the school itself that they find objectionable.

"[I] don't know if it's going to provide something useful at the end of the day," says Raquel Regalado, who is on the Miami-Dade County Public Schools' school board. "I guess you can expect Pitbull to show up every now and then, and that's cool if you're a Pitbull fan ... [but] how does that translate into academic achievement? That's the difficult part of this that parents don't understand. ... I think it's a marketing ploy, honestly."

Nina Reese, who heads the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, says she's not about to apologize for supporting the rapper's school.

"Whether it's Pitbull or Meryl Streep in Rhode Island or Sandra Bullock in Louisiana," she says, "charters do benefit from celebrities because public schools, they do have to market themselves to families because these are schools of choice."

Reese says she has no problem with Pitbull's music, either.

"We're not endorsing his music, but welcoming him as an investor," Reese says. Besides, she adds, everybody is entitled to their own tastes. "I admit that I'm a fan of his music."

Three of Pitbull's six children attend charter schools.

"I'm not just a charter school advocate. ... I'm a charter school parent," Pitbull said when talking at this year's National Charter School Conference in D.C. "And that makes me one of you."

Source: http://www.npr.org/blogs/codeswitch/2013/10/15/234683081/is-pitbull-mr-education-rapper-opens-charter-school-in-miami?ft=1&f=1013
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Why Scientists Are Trying Viruses To Beat Back Bacteria

Clostridium difficile, a bacterium that causes severe diarrhea, can be difficult to treat with antibiotics.

Stefan Hyman/University of Leicester

Clostridium difficile, a bacterium that causes severe diarrhea, can be difficult to treat with antibiotics.

Stefan Hyman/University of Leicester

Not all viruses are bad for us. Some of them might even help up us fight off bacterial infections someday.

Naturally occurring viruses called bacteriophages attack specific types of bacteria. So researchers at the University of Leicester decided to try and take advantage of phages' bacteria-destroying powers to treat infections with Clostridium difficile, a germ that that can cause severe diarrhea and inflammation of the gastrointestinal tract.

Over the last six years, microbiologist Martha Clokie has isolated hundreds of phages that can kill various strains of C. difficile. Now her lab has teamed up with the pharmaceutical company AmpliPhi to try and turn phages into a product, perhaps a pill, that could be used in humans.

There's no guarantee the approach will work, and so far it hasn't been put to a rigorous test in humans infected with C. difficile. Still, there are some good reasons to check it out.

C. difficile is difficult to treat with antibiotics and is resistant to many of them. Another problem is that the germ often strikes when people take antibiotics to treat other infections. The antibiotics kill good bacteria along with the bad, weakening the gut's defenses against C. diff.

Doctors are using fecal transplants and synthetic poop as possible solutions. But Clokie says that phages could be a useful alternative. "We're simply harnessing the natural enemy of the bacteria," she tells Shots.

Unlike bacteria, Clokie says, phages are very specific about what they attack—right down to the sub-species. In fact, a single phage wouldn't be able to take on all the strains of C. difficle. So Clokie is working to develop a cocktail of viruses that would be able to kill the most common strains.

While the bacteria can evolve and try to outsmart the viruses, the viruses can do the same, Clokie says. They've been involved in this arms race for thousands of years.

As long as they can come up with the right cocktail, there's a very good chance that this phage therapy could work, according to Tim Lu, an associate professor of bioengineering at MIT. "If you know what you want to kill, it's kind of like a silver bullet targeting that bacteria," he tells Shots.

And delivering the phages to a person's gut shouldn't be a challenge, Lu says.

Phages are already approved for use in meat and poultry production. Manufacturers sometimes spray food with phages that target listeria, a common food-borne bacterium.

But using phage therapy in humans is a bit more complicated. "Phages were discovered before antibiotics came around," Lu says. And they've been used in humans, he says. But the problem is, they have yet to be tested in well-controlled clinical trials.

There's also the question of intellectual property. Phages are naturally occurring, and therefore they're difficult to patent, which could discourage pharmaceutical companies.

Ultimately, Lu says, "The science is real." The stuff does work. But, he says, "It's a change in the way we think about treating infections, I think that's the biggest hurdle in a way."

Source: http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2013/10/18/237080008/why-scientists-are-trying-viruses-to-beat-back-bacteria?ft=1&f=1004
Tags: LC Greenwood   aldon smith   Cal Worthington   bradley manning   pippa middleton  

This Animated Globe Lets You See the Earth Like You Were in Space

When Google Maps can deliver detailed views of the world with imagery that zooms right down to our backyards, they're can't be much demand for desk globes anymore. So a Japanese company called Gakken has taken its Worldeye globe to another level by turning it into a display that can show everything from weather patterns to stars.

Read more...

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/YUGV2LDh-Eg/this-animated-globe-lets-you-see-the-earth-like-you-wer-1447859124
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Google flies high -- but Motorola sinks further

The good news about Google in its third-quarter results aren't hard to find: The company beat analyst estimates for revenue and earnings per share. But there is bad news, and it hints at how the company's big mobile hardware investment may be a much longer-term proposition for a profit.

Nobody, save maybe for Google's competition, is complaining about the company's revenues: $14.89 billion total, $11.92 billion net, up 12 percent from Q3 2012. The projections were for $11.7 billion revenue, and a $10.36 EPS (for the latter, Google made $10.74). Small wonder Google's shares jumped some 5 percent in after-hours trading.

One sign of how Google's business could change up with the ongoing shift away from desktops and toward mobile devices, is the dropping cost-per-click, or CPC, rate. A metric that measures the average price for an ad, CPC fell 8 percent over last year, and 4 percent from Q2, even while paid clicks rose 26 percent year-over-year and went up 8 percent from Q2.

Carolina Milanesi, a research VP at Gartner, described these steady-rather-than-drastic changes as a consequence of the movement toward mobile ads, "where there is a reluctance to pay as much." On the other hand, "the main thing is that more users are clicking on the ads that Google is serving."

Some of that may be due to the recently launched Enhanced Campaigns ad system (courtesy of its acquisition of AdMob). But other hints of how that might be happening came during the quarterly analyst conference call, where Chief Business Officer Nikesh Arora talked about how localized product-listing ads (a major component of the mobile ad strategy) and the transition "from links to answers" has been playing out.

"We’re transitioning from links to answers," he said, referring to the way Google has been reworking its results via its Hummingbird tuneup, "and product-listing ads are part of that because they're a good experience for the user, especially on mobile devices." But he declined to comment "on how that will impact going forward."

If Google plans to continue making up in volume what it loses in individual sales, it may well be one of the few entities on the planet with the muscle and the means to do so.

But Motorola Mobility, the in-house hardware side of Google's mobile strategy, hasn't experienced a turnaround of its own. Instead, it's slid even further into the red, with a Q3 loss of $248 million. At least the dip wasn't as pronounced as in Q2, where Motorola lost $342 million. Total Q3 revenue: $1.18 billion, down from $1.78 billion last year.

The real question: Is anyone even surprised by such lackluster performance? Under Google's stewardship, Motorola hasn't differentiated itself except by being remarkably underwhelming in most every respect. The U.S.-made Moto X phones have stolen no thunder from the likes of Samsung's Galaxy S4, let alone the iPhone 5s, and its "Motomaker" customization system hasn't done much for sales either.

Milanesi's observation on this point was blunt: "It is hard to see what the advantage of having Moto is, considering the fact that they have lost close to $1 billion." But she also pointed out Google is "looking years ahead, not quarters ahead, a strategy that might make earnings analysis quite complex as we do not see the quick results on investments such as Moto."

On the analyst call, CFO Patrick Pichette reiterated a similar line: The company had a quality product in the Moto X, and it was still the early days for the new Motorola. How long those early days will go on is another story entirely -- especially with the mobile market fast becoming a settled field with Apple on top, Samsung under that, and everyone else far, far behind.

This article, "Google flies high -- but Motorola sinks further," was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Get the first word on what the important tech news really means with the InfoWorld Tech Watch blog. For the latest business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter.

Source: http://www.infoworld.com/t/technology-business/google-flies-high-motorola-sinks-further-229051?source=rss_infoworld_top_stories_
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Uneven enforcement suspected at nuclear plants

BOSTON (AP) — The number of safety violations at U.S. nuclear power plants varies dramatically from region to region, pointing to inconsistent enforcement in an industry now operating mostly beyond its original 40-year licenses, according to a congressional study awaiting release.

Nuclear Regulatory Commission figures cited in the Government Accountability Office report show that while the West has the fewest reactors, it had the most lower-level violations from 2000 to 2012 — more than 2½ times the Southeast's rate per reactor.

The Southeast, with the most reactors of the NRC's four regions, had the fewest such violations, according to the report, a copy of which was obtained by The Associated Press.

The striking variations do not appear to reflect real differences in reactor performance. Instead, the report says, the differences suggest that regulators interpret rules and guidelines differently among regions, perhaps because lower-level violations get limited review.

The study also says that the NRC's West region may enforce the rules more aggressively and that common corporate ownership of multiple plants may help bolster maintenance in the Southeast.

However, the reasons aren't fully understood because the NRC has never fully studied them, the report says. Right now, its authors wrote, the "NRC cannot ensure that oversight efforts are objective and consistent."

Told of the findings, safety critics said enforcement is too arbitrary and regulators may be missing violations. The nuclear industry has also voiced concern about the inconsistencies, the report said.

The analysis was written by the GAO, the investigative arm of Congress, at the request of four senators. Before the government shutdown, the report had been set for public release later this month.

Steven Kerekes, a spokesman for the industry group Nuclear Energy Institute, declined to comment pending release of the report. The NRC's public affairs office had no comment, citing the government shutdown.

The GAO analysis focuses on lower-level safety violations known as "nonescalated." They represent 98 percent of all violations identified by the NRC, which regulates safety at the country's commercial reactors.

Lower-level violations are those considered to pose very low risk, such as improper upkeep of an electrical transformer or failure to analyze a problem with no impact on a system's operation, such as the effect of a pipe break. Higher-level violations range from low to high safety significance, such as an improperly maintained electrical system that caused a fire and affected a plant's ability to shut down safely.

The GAO's analysis shows 3,225 of these violations from 2000 through the end of 2012 across 21 reactors in the West. By contrast, there were 1,885 such violations in the Southeast. Yet that region is home to 33 reactors — 12 more than in the West. The West registered 153.6 violations per reactor, while the Southeast saw just 57.1.

The Midwest, with 24 reactors, had 3,148 violations, for a rate of 131.2 per reactor. The 26-reactor Northeast also fared worse than the Southeast, with 2,518 violations, or 96.8 per reactor.

The Cooper nuclear station in Brownville, Neb., led all sites in lower-level violations per reactor with 363. The next four were Wolf Creek, in Burlington, Kan., with 266; Kewaunee, in Kewaunee, Wis., 256; Perry, in Perry, Ohio, 256; and River Bend, in St. Francisville, La., 240.

The GAO found less regional variation in higher-level safety violations. The six plants with the most higher-level violations per reactor from 2000 to 2012 were Davis-Besse in Oak Harbor, Ohio, with 14; Cooper, 11; Kewaunee, nine; Perry, eight; Palisades, in Covert, Mich., eight; and Fort Calhoun, in Fort Calhoun, Neb., eight.

"I believe the oversight process is totally arbitrary," said Paul Blanch, an engineer who once blew the whistle on problems from within the industry and later returned to work on safety. He also said the NRC isn't providing consistent training to inspectors and regional staff. Blanch was made aware of the GAO findings by the AP.

The report also indicates that some regulators may be missing small problems or giving them short shrift, safety experts said. And they said little violations can pile up and interact with one another to create bigger risks.

"Any time you start tolerating minor problems, you're just setting the stage for major safety problems down the road," said nuclear engineer David Lochbaum of the Union of Concerned Scientists. He once trained NRC staff.

Phillip Musegaas, a lawyer with the environmental group Riverkeeper, said regulators should do more to make sure that lower-level violations are fixed. "NRC's tracking to make sure these violations are resolved is completely ineffectual," he said.

In its official response to the report, the NRC defended the objectivity of its plant assessments. At the same time, it acknowledged the regional differences and promised to look deeper into why they happen.

According to the GAO, the NRC regulatory staff also offered several explanations, including regional variations in reactor ages and time spent on inspections. However, the congressional watchdog said those explanations are not supported by the data.

The agency did offer that regulators may be right when they cite the possible impact of joint ownership of sites, a circumstance most prevalent in the Southeast. Nuclear plants under one owner may benefit from more corporate resources and thus avoid violations, the GAO suggested. The NRC also said higher-level violations are more consistent because they are more deeply reviewed.

On other issues, the report said the NRC needs an easier-to-use internal database to help staff learn of historical safety issues that apply to current problems. It also pressed the agency to improve its public documents website to allow tracking of safety violations. The NRC said it would work to improve both tools.

Senators requested the report in reaction to the Japanese nuclear accident at Fukushima in 2011 and an Associated Press investigative series later that year about aging U.S. nuclear plants. The AP series found that federal regulators had relaxed safety rules to keep plants running beyond their initial licenses. It also reported leaks of radioactive tritium at three-quarters of plants and outdated estimates of evacuation times.

The GAO analyzed data for 104 commercial reactors, but four permanently shut earlier this year: Crystal River in Florida, Kewaunee, and the two units at San Onofre in California.

___

The AP National Investigative Team can be reached at investigate@ap.org

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/uneven-enforcement-suspected-nuclear-plants-191626989--finance.html
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