From the San Francisco Chronicle, Nov. 8:

Man who sought safe streets killed in S.F. crash
A wheelchair-using San Francisco man who fought for safe streets for the disabled is being mourned this week by friends and family after he was fatally struck by a car in one of the city's most dangerous intersections.

While the world media are paying little note, and most of the stateside public thinks of the Fukushima disaster in the past tense, in fact the ongoing effort to stabilize the stricken nuclear complex is now about to enter its most dangerous phase. Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) will this month begin removing fuel rod "assemblies" from reactor building No. 4—where they are vulnerable because the containment dome was shattered by a hydrogen explosion four days into the disaster, on March 15, 2011. They are to be transferred to an "undamaged facility" within the complex. There are 1,533 of these zirconium-plated "assemblies," and they are said to be in a chaotic "jumble." The transfer is to take about a year—if all goes well. (Japan Times, FukuLeaks, Nov. 14; EneNews, Nov. 6; Fukushima Update, Sept. 14)

Renowned Mexican investigative journalist Anabel Hernández, author of Narcoland: The Mexican Drug Lords and Their Godfathers, has been receiving police protection since her reportage outed top figures in the country's security apparatus as drug cartel collaborators—resulting in threats on her life. On Sept. 26 she spoke at an event hosted by New York University in Lower Manhattan, entitled "Too Dangerous for Words: Life & Death Reporting the Mexican Drug Wars." She spoke about her journey, and how she views the state of Mexico's narco-wars following last year's change of government.

OK loyal readers, here's an update on World War 4 Report's ongoing crisis. Although nobody has been able to diagnose what is worng with it, your editor and chief blogger's computer is now in the hopefully able hands of Apple. I have got a loan computer, but it is painfully slow and full of bugs. However, I am going to endeavor to keep the Daily Report at a minimum level of activity. With luck, I will have a fully functional computer again next week. Then we can get back to the ongoing effort to de-bug the website! Please help us pay for this necessary maintanence by supporting our fund drive! Thank you!

Malala Yousafzai is still taking abuse even amid the adulation accompanying her American tour last week. Upon her shooting one year ago, her Taliban would-be assassins claimed she had praised Obama and expressed support for "Western culture." This was quickly exposed as nonsense, as it became clear that Malala was a sympathizer of a Marxist tendency that was fighting for secularism in the mullah-dominated Swat Valley! However, some voices on the "left" continued to diss her in self-righteous terms, even engaging in lugubrious conspiracy-mongering that the whole affair had been set up as a propaganda job. So what are we to make now that Malala has spoken before the United Nations, appeared on Jon Stewart, and met with Obama in the White House? Are the cynics vindicated? Has Malala now, finally, been co-opted?

World War 4 Report is on a hiatus of a few days due to technical difficulties. We are being hit with a trifecta of angst—glitches with our wesbite hosting, your chief blogger and editor's Internet connection, and my computer. The computer is going into the hospital today, so the Daily Report will be inactive—hopefully for less than a week. Please check back with us periodically to see if the Daily Report is being updated. And please help us pay for this necessary maintanence by supporting our fund drive! Thank you!

Moscow's state broadcaster Russia Today on Sept. 27 runs an interview with Bolivia's President Evo Morales from the network's Spanish-language affiliate, Actualidad, in which he called for Barack Obama to be tried for crimes against humanity and accused him of waging wars to secure US control of the world's energy resources. "[T]hey arranged for the president to be killed, and they usurped Libya's oil," he said—but it was clear his comments really concerned Syria. "Now they are funding the rebels that fight against presidents who don't support capitalism or imperialism," Morales told Actualidad's extremely problematic Eva Golinger. "And where a coup d'état is impossible, they seek to divide the people in order to weaken the nation—a provocation designed to trigger an intervention by peacekeeping forces, NATO, the UN Security Council. But the intervention itself is meant to get hold of oil resources and gain geopolitical control, rather than enforce respect for human rights."

On the evening of Sept. 29, Holocaust survivor and Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel joined Rwandan President Paul Kagame on a panel sponsored by This World: The Jewish Values Network at New York's Cooper Union entitled "Genocide: Do the Strong Have an Obligation to Protect the Weak?"—with the obvious context being the crisis in Syria. But outside a small group of local Congolese protested, holding banners reading "KAGAME IS A CRIMINAL OF MASS MURDER" and "PROTECT THE WEAK FROM KAGAME." Said protester Kambale Musavuli of the group Friends of the Congo: "He should be on the terrorist list and instead he's being invited to speak about genocide. This is really sick."