TEPCO stock surges on rescue plan

The Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant is owned by TEPCO.Government rescue plan fuels power company's reboundTokyo Electric Power Co. stock gains 32%Tokyo Electric shares added 80 yen to close at 329 yen

(CNN) -- Japan's beleaguered Tokyo Electric Power Co. received some rare good financial news Wednesday as its stock soared 32% after the government approved a rescue plan a day earlier.

TEPCO shares added 80 yen to close at 329 yen.

Speculators were in a buying mood after Japan's government approved the rescue plan for the owner of the crippled Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant. The plan also must be approved by the Japanese parliament.

The plant was damaged during the March 11 earthquake and resulting tsunami.

The electricity and gas sector led overall gains in Tokyo's market.

Overall, Tokyo stocks rose Wednesday, after a smaller-than-expected fall in May US retail sales data, as investors' concerns eased over a slowdown in the world's largest economy.

The 225-issue Nikkei Stock Average advanced nearly a third of point Wednesday, while the broader Topix was up 0.22% to 825.65.

CNN

Upgrade Your Life: Wet cell phone rescue (Yahoo! News)

Did you just drop your cellphone in water? Or maybe you'd like to know what to do if that happens! This week on Upgrade Your Life, Yahoo! News' Becky Worley shows us first aid techniques for rescuing a drowned smartphone.

To test them out, Becky took a BlackBerry, a Droid, and an iPhone, and dropped all three into room temperature water for 60 seconds. Then she went through the following steps:

Step 1: Do NOT turn on the phone

Why do water and smartphones not mix? Because the water shorts out your smartphone's electrical circuits. So whatever you do, don't turn it on to check to see if it still works.

Step 2: Pull out the battery and SIM card

You want to remove anything removeable: Pull out the battery, the SIM card and the memory card, if your phone has one. As long as that battery's in there it's providing power to your phone, and that's what you need to stop immediately.

Some phones, like the iPhone, don't have a removable battery. Unfortunately, you'll just have to skip this step and hope for the best if you dunk one of them.

Step 3: Freshwater rinse

Did you drop your phone in salt water? The salt can corrode your device. So after you pull out the battery and SIM card, immerse your phone in fresh water to rinse out the salt.

Step 4: Dry your phone using compressed air

If you have a compressed air can handy -- the kind that's used to clean computers or keyboards -- run it full-blast all over your phone, with the back cover taken off if you can. A vacuum cleaner also works, even though it's pulling the air in the other direction. As long as it's blowing cool air over those circuits to dry them out, it's all good.

Don't stick your phone in the oven, even on low. The heat can warp your phone's circuits, and melt its internal components. You shouldn't use a blow dryer either, unless it has a heatless setting. A fan might help, but a microwave is out of the question.

Step 5: Cover your phone with uncooked rice

The premise of our experiment was to test if putting a wet phone into a sealed container of rice would actually dry it out, and bring it back form the dead. See, the idea behind the rice is that the dry grains will absorb moisture. So get a sealable plastic container, and fill it with enough rice to cover your smartphone. (A plastic zipper bag will work too, in a pinch.) Then bury your phone in the rice, along with its battery and other parts. You'll want to wait at least 24 hours for the rice to do its job -- Becky waited for 48 hours, in her test.

What would work better than rice? Silica gel, the stuff in those packets that keep new clothes or shoes dry. But most of us don't have a shoebox full of the stuff laying around, so rice will probably have to do. It may get pieces of rice into the crevices and cavities in your smartphone, but this is an emergency, and time is of the essence.

Should you use white or brown rice? It doesn't matter, so long as it's hard and dry and uncooked. You can even use rice from boxed meals like Rice-a-Roni. Just don't add in the seasoning packet, unless you want your phone to smell like mixed vegetables.

Step 6: Turn your phone back on

After you've waited at least 24 hours, it's time for the moment of truth. Reassemble your phone, charge it and try to power it on.

The results of our experiment weren't encouraging: the BlackBerry that Becky tested did restart, with no seeming long-term damage. But the iPhone and the Droid were dead. After two days in the rice and a full battery charge, neither phone came back to life.

One in three may be slim odds. But since water damage isn't covered by most warranties, it can't hurt to try.

Yahoo! News

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Chile experts to aid Mexico mine rescue

Mexico City (CNN) -- Experts from Chile who helped rescue miners there in October are expected to arrive in northern Mexico Thursday, where nine workers remained trapped in a mine after an explosion, Mexico's foreign ministry said.

At least two of them "participated actively" in the rescue of 33 miners who were trapped for more than three months in a Chilean mine, Mexico's state-run Notimex news agency reported.

A blast Tuesday morning at the mine just outside Sabinas, Mexico, left 14 workers trapped inside. Search teams pulled out five bodies late Tuesday and early Wednesday, Mexico's labor secretary said in posts on his Twitter account.

Rescuers continued to look for the nine remaining miners. But in one Twitter post, Mexican Labor Secretary Javier Lozano Alarcon described the prognosis as "not at all encouraging."

Authorities waited until toxic gases dissipated enough to allow rescuers to begin exploring the mine's tunnels, the state-run Notimex news agency reported.

A 15-year-old worker had both arms amputated after he was seriously injured in the blast, Mexico's attorney general's office said.

Lozano took a critical tone in a Twitter post as rescue operations began, saying "having a minor working here" was a "fault of the owner of this 'mine.'"

The mine had only been operating for 20 days and had 25 workers who were not unionized, Lozano said.

He described such small, makeshift coal mines as "unsafe places," calling them "irregular, deadly traps, as we are seeing."

The owner of the mine is a company known as Binsa, the statement from Mexico's attorney general's office said.

Federal authorities said they had no record of the company, and that the owners of the land where the mine is located never registered any excavation at the site, said Ricardo Rojo, a spokesman for Mexico's economic ministry.

But a Binsa spokesman rejected government claims the company was operating in an irregular manner.

"It is one of the companies with the best safety," spokesman Jesus Espinosa said in an interview with Mexico's W Radio, adding that government and union officials had reviewed its operations.

The mine contains a shaft that is 60 meters (197 feet) deep, Sabinas Mayor Jesus Montemayor Garza said.

Federal authorities are investigating what caused the explosion while family members anxiously wait outside the mine and local workers from other mines help with the search.

"They are miners from Sabinas who are risking their lives in order to pull out the bodies of their peers," Montemayor said.

Sabinas is in the coal production center of Mexico and has a museum dedicated to the history of coal mining.

Several chapters of that history, however, have been tragic.

In 2006, in the nearby town of San Juan de Sabinas, 65 miners perished after an explosion in the mine where they were working. Explosive gas inside the mine hindered the rescue of the miners at the Pasta de Conchos mine, which the government eventually abandoned.

An organization representing family members of the victims of that accident said Tuesday's blast was a tragic reminder that the federal government must do more to regulate mines. One activist from the organization said there had been more than 40 people killed in local coal mines since the 2006 accident.

"How long will it take to recognize that there is a very serious crisis in coal mining (in the Mexican state of) Coahuila, in which the workers and their families are those who must endure the worst, with dead, widows and orphans?" a statement from the organization said.

CNN's Rey Rodriguez, Rafael Romo and Catherine E. Shoichet and journalists Hanako Taniguchi and Tania L. Montalvo of CNNMexico.com contributed to this report.

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San Quentin inmates rescue boaters

San Quentin Prison staffers and inmates helped pull two boaters to shore near the facility early Wednesday. STORY HIGHLIGHTSInmates with prison's fire department help pull man, woman from San Francisco BayMan pronounced dead at hospital, sheriff's department saysAuthorities: Man fell from boat and capsized it trying to get back inInmate firefighters trained as paramedics, work almost exclusively inside facilityRELATED TOPICSSan Quentin State PrisonBoating AccidentsCaliforniaMarin County (CNN) -- Inmates at California's San Quentin prison helped rescue two boaters -- one of whom later died -- who had fallen into frigid San Francisco Bay early Wednesday, authorities said.

A San Quentin officer alerted the prison's inmate-staffed, in-house fire department around 1 a.m. after hearing faint calls for help and seeing a man and a woman in the water near the facility's shoreline, prison spokesman Lt. Sam Robinson said.

Prison staffers and 10 fire department inmates went into the water and grabbed the man, who was without a life jacket, and lifted him over a retaining wall to get him on land, Robinson said. San Rafael Fire Department personnel arrived and helped rescue the woman, who was wearing a life jacket.

The man, who was breathing but apparently unconscious when he was rescued, went into cardiac arrest on shore, Robinson said.

"A staff member and inmates then began CPR and other life-saving measures" until an ambulance took him to a hospital, Robinson said.

The man, James Laurel, 44, of Larkspur, was pronounced dead at Marin General Hospital, Marin County sheriff's Lt. Barry Heying said in a press release. The woman, whose name wasn't announced, was treated at a hospital for exposure and released, according to the sheriff's office.

Deputies determined that the pair had been in a small boat, leaving a dock on Corte Madera Creek at about 10 p.m. Tuesday, the sheriff's office said.

The boat had engine trouble in the bay, and Laurel fell overboard while trying to restart the engine. He then capsized the boat while trying to get back onboard, according to the sheriff's office.

The pair drifted from the boat and toward the prison, Robinson said. Officials estimate they were in the water for up to 90 minutes, he said.

Deputies believe alcohol was a factor in the incident, and Laurel's death is being investigated by a coroner's office, the sheriff's office said.

The inmates in the prison's fire department are trained paramedics who were not convicted of violent or sexual offenses, Robinson said. He said they almost exclusively respond to emergencies inside the facility, and that this is the only water rescue involving the unit that he's aware of.

"Ninety-nine percent of what they do happens inside the facility," he said.

CNN's Amanda Watts contributed to this report.

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Bartlett 'Sanctuary' Plan Would Rescue Chimps, Taxpayers

FoxNews.com

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WASHINGTON -- Rep. Roscoe Bartlett, R-Md., a noted budget hawk, has introduced a novel way to take a tiny chunk out of the federal deficit: Pinch pennies by preserving primates.

Bartlett joined with the Humane Society of the United States and the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine to stump for a bill to prohibit "invasive research" on chimpanzees and retire the approximately 500 government-owned chimps currently in laboratories to private sanctuaries within three years.

At a news conference Wednesday at the U.S. Capitol Visitor Center, Bartlett, who has a doctorate in human physiology, said science has changed and it is time to end chimp research.

"There's just no valid argument to continue to keep these great apes as they're now being kept," Bartlett said. "Very few of them are used in research and I'm not sure that any of them need to be used."

With his background in science and his reputation as a fiscal conservative, Bartlett would seem to be the perfect spokesman for the bill, called the "Great Ape Protection and Cost Savings Act."

With Bartlett's backing, it has become an endangered species of Capitol Hill politics: a bipartisan effort. The bill had almost 170 co-sponsors when it was introduced in the last congressional session, and already has 40 this time around -- a list that includes Democrats, Republicans and Independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.

Michael Markarian, the Humane Society's executive vice president of external affairs, said that 80 to 90 percent of the chimps in U.S. laboratories are not part of active research, but are being warehoused in crowded conditions at taxpayer expense. Under National Research Council guidelines published in 1997, "surplus" chimps may not be euthanized, but must be kept for their natural life span, which can run to 60 years.

Markarian's organization estimates that the bill could save $25 million to $30 million per year.

That figure is contingent on a lot of variables, though. According to Humane Society estimates, only about $7 million in savings would come from transferring the 511 government-owned chimps to private sanctuaries and ending government support of research on 244 privately-owned chimps. The rest of the savings -- about $22.2 million -- comes from ending the research itself.

The cost to medical advancements is also matter of debate. The Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology opposed the bill when it was introduced last year, saying it would "harm medical research that helps both humans and great apes." The group noted that chimps are used as research models for a host of diseases, including hepatitis C, malaria and rotovirus.

"Our position on research using great apes has not changed," FASEB spokesman Howard Garrison said by phone Wednesday.

According to the New England's Anti-Vivisection Society's "Project R&R: Release and Restitution for Chimpanzees at U.S. Laboratories," the National Institutes of Health owns about 500 chimps.

NIH spokeswoman Jenny Haliski declined to comment on the pending legislation, but provided a link to an NIH website on animal research. It notes that the use of animals in research is heavily regulated, advanced computer research models often stem from animal research and that the polio vaccine was developed using a monkey as the research model.

But Elizabeth Kucinich, spokeswoman for PCRM and wife of Bartlett's ideological opposite, Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, said little would be lost in the world of medical research if the chimps were retired. She said there were significant physiological differences between chimps and humans -- particularly in their response to hepatitis C -- and the suffering and stress that chimps endure in captivity skews research results anyway.

Bartlett agreed, and said modern research methods with human cells are more effective than "whole animal" research. He said his own work with primates for NASA in the 1950s was necessary because methods were crude and human lives were at risk.

"Nobody had ever been weightless before and we had no idea what would happen when you were weightless," Bartlett said. "So this was a pioneering thing and it was probably a legitimate use of these animals."

He said better alternatives have been developed since then and groups like MD Anderson Cancer Center should no longer need primate research.

"I'm surprised that we're still doing whole-body experiments with cancer," Bartlett said. "I would think that they know enough about it now that they should be down at the cellular level."

MD Anderson spokesman Scott Merville said his organization is doing research at the molecular level, but also has 176 NIH-owned chimps, some of which are being used to test drugs targeting genes and proteins only present in humans and chimpanzees.

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