Top Oil Market News: Crude Rises: Fuel Oil Crack Spread Loss

The following is a selection of the most important news affecting the oil market.
Oil Trades Near Two-Week High on Libya; JPMorgan Raises Outlook
Oil traded near a two-week high in New York as continued fighting in Libya fanned concern that unrest in the Middle East will further disrupt supply.

TOP MARKETS NEWS

Crack Spread Loss on Fuel Oil Most Since Quake: Energy Markets
The losses companies incur from turning crude into fuel oil are close to their highest level since Japan’s March 11 earthquake, a sign traders are betting the nation is starting to cope with its power shortages.
BP-Rosneft Deal Halted as Russian Billionaires Win Challenge (1)
BP Plc’s proposed $7.8 billion share swap and Arctic exploration deal with OAO Rosneft was thrown out by an arbitration tribunal after a legal challenge by its Russian billionaire partners.
JPMorgan Raises Second-Quarter Brent Oil Forecast on Libya (1)
JPMorgan Chase & Co. raised its price forecast for Brent crude oil for the second quarter to $118 a barrel as supply disruptions in Libya appear to be “larger and more protracted” than initially expected.
Glencore ‘Not Clear’ Why Employee Detained by China in Oil Probe
Glencore International AG is “not clear” why its representative officer was detained by Chinese customs authorities, spokesman Simon Buerk said by phone today. The employee has been released and doesn’t face charges, Buerk said.

REFINERIES Map global refinery outages

BP Said to Plan 60-Day Whiting Ultraformer Shutdown for Work
BP Plc is preparing to shut the No. 4 ultraformer at its Whiting refinery in Indiana for planned work scheduled to last 60 days, two people with knowledge of the plans said.
Reliance Industries Starts Jamnagar Cracker Unit After Shutdown
Reliance Industries Ltd. started a catalytic cracker unit at its Jamnagar refinery after a planned maintenance and inspection shutdown, according to a statement on the Bombay Stock Exchange today.
Breya Canyon Oil Spills Crude Oil, Saltwater, NRC Filing Shows
Breya Canyon Oil was yesterday spilling crude mixed with seawater from a Los Angeles pipeline at the rate of 200-300 gallons per minute, according to a filing with the National Response Center.
OMV Petrom Permanently Shuts Arpechim Refinery, Reappoints Chief
OMV Petrom SA will permanently close its Arpechim refinery and convert the site into a crude oil and fuel storage facility, the company said today in an e-mailed statement.
Tesoro Has Flaring at Wilmington Oil Refinery, Filing Shows
Tesoro Corp. has flaring at Wilmington refinery, according to a filing with California state regulators. The incident occurred on March 24 and has been contained, the filing shows.
Exxon Mobil Torrance Releases Gas on Tubing Leak, Filing Shows
Exxon Mobil Corp.’s Torrance, California, plant had a release of hydrogen sulfide because of a tubing leak, according to a filing with the National Response Center.
ConocoPhillips Borger Refinery Has Process Upset, Filing Shows
ConocoPhillips had gas emissions at its Borger, Texas, refinery because of a process upset, a filing to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality showed. The event occurred yesterday at 9:45 a.m. local time, the filing showed.

OTHER OIL MARKET NEWS

Jet Fuel Hedging Positions for U.S., Canadian Airlines (Table)
The following table shows the amount of jet fuel consumption hedged by U.S. and Canadian airlines to guard against price fluctuations.
BASF Gets China’s Approval for Chemical Project in Chongqing (1)
BASF SE, the world’s biggest chemical maker, has received approval from the Chinese authorities to build a 400,000 metric- ton-a-year project in Chongqing.
Osborne’s North Sea Oil Tax May Block $3 Billion of Field Sales
George Osborne’s increased tax on U.K. oil production risks holding back investment in the North Sea and stalling BP Plc and ConocoPhillips’s plans to sell off mature assets.

TOP ENERGY STORIES

U.S. Nuclear Plants Aren’t Disclosing All Defects, Report Says
Operators of almost a third of U.S. nuclear reactors aren’t telling regulators about equipment defects that might pose safety risks because of “contradictory and unclear” regulations, according to a government watchdog.
Woodside Rises on Speculation Shell Stake Will Be Resolved (2)
Woodside Petroleum Ltd. rose in Sydney amid speculation Australia’s second-biggest oil and gas producer is close to resolving how Royal Dutch Shell Plc will dispose of its remaining stake in the company.
Reactor Core May Be Breached at Damaged Fukushima Plant (1)
Japan’s nuclear regulator said one reactor core at the quake-damaged Fukushima Dai-Ichi power plant may be cracked and leaking radiation.

OTHER MARKETS

Stocks, U.S. Index Futures Gain on Oracle; Portugal Bonds Fall
Stocks and U.S. index futures gained after forecasts at Oracle Corp. and Accenture Plc beat analysts’ estimates. Portuguese bonds fell for a fourth day following Standard & Poor’s downgrade of the country’s debt.
Foreigners Bought Record Japanese Stocks After Earthquake (3)
Foreign investors bought a record amount of Japanese stocks last week after the nation’s equities markets tumbled in the wake of the March 11 earthquake and resulting nuclear accident.
French, British Forces Strike Libyan Military as NATO Steps In
French and British forces struck Muammar Qaddafi’s ground forces as NATO agreed to take command of the Libya no-fly zone without assuming responsibility for air strikes against military targets.
Yemenis Plan Opposing Rallies in Defiance of Emergency Law (1)
Yemenis poured into Sana’a for rallies, including soldiers who have defected to the strengthening opposition and tribesman marching in support of the government.

SPORTS

Duke’s Title Run Ends With Loss to Arizona; Connecticut Wins
Duke University’s reign as national champion ended with a 93-77 loss to the University of Arizona that left coach Mike Krzyzewski stuck on 900 wins, two short of tying the men’s major college basketball career mark.

ENERGY PRICES

Last Chg %Chg Exch Contract

---- ---- ---- ---- -------- WTI Crude ($/Bbl) 105.60 -- -- Nymex May Brent Crude ($/Bbl) 115.57 -0.15 -0.1 Ice April Gasoil ($/Ton) 977.50 -3.25 -0.3 Ice May Gasoline (c/Gal) 304.35 -0.13 0.0 Nymex April Natural gas ($/MMBtu) 4.27 +0.03 +0.7 Nymex April Dated Brent ($/Bbl) 115.38 -0.20 -0.2 OTC 21 Days Heating Oil 306.08 -0.12 0.0 Nymex April
Other markets:

Last %Chg

----- ----- Dollar Index 75.79 +0.1 Gold ($/Oz) 1,434.90 -0.2 MSCI World Index 1,323.48 --
Prices as of 12 p.m. GMT
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Steve Voss in London at sev@bloomberg.net

Telangana leaders demand Srikrishna committee's prosecution

Hyderabad, March 24 (IANS) Cutting across party lines, leaders from Telangana Thursday demanded prosecution of members of the Srikrishna committee for allegedly hurting the sentiments of people of the region in its report on a separate Telangana state.
Reacting sharply to the 'secret' eighth chapter of the report, Telangana Joint Action Committee (TJAC) said it would take legal action against the five-member panel formed by the central government and headed by former Supreme Court judge B.N. Srikrishna.
Leaders of the ruling Congress, opposition Telugu Desam Party (TDP) and Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) called for prosecution of the panel members for allegedly making suggestions to New Delhi to suppress the agitation for a separate state.
A day after the Andhra Pradesh High Court directed the central government to make public the eighth chapter of the report, the Telangana leaders said the panel had lost whatever credibility it had by suggesting that the centre should 'manage' the media and 'counsel' Congress party's public representatives supporting the demand for Telangana.
'The members of the committee should be prosecuted for hurting the sentiments of Telangana people through their false report,' senior TDP leader N. Janardhan Reddy told reporters.
He said legal proceedings would be launched against the officials who fed false information to the committee.
The former minister alleged that the committee members had sold out to leaders of Andhra and Rayalaseema regions opposing the demand for Telangana.
Congress legislator Yadav Reddy termed the panel as a 'gang of thieves'.
'Those suggesting ways to suppress the Telangana movement by managing the media and counselling us are nothing but a gang of thieves,' he said.
The Srikrishna committee, which looked into the demands for and against separate Telangana state, submitted its report to the centre in December last year. It was made public Jan 6 but the eighth chapter 'law & order and internal security dimensions' was not revealed.
The five-member panel submitted the note to union home ministry in a separate cover.

Kerala Babus On Top In Delhi's Corridors Of power

NEW DELHI: Slowly but surely, the reins in Delhi's corridors of power are passing on to civil servants from the relatively backward states of Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand, Orissa and Madhya Pradesh.

They dominate the premier cadre of civil servants, the IAS. Thirty-five of the 100-odd senior-most bureaucrats, of the rank of secretary in the Union government or equivalent, come from these states.

This trend has several implications, most of them regarded positive. Above all, it is assumed that these senior policy-making babus would be extra-sensitive to the special requirements of the backward regions, and with so many of them in top jobs, would be able to influence thinking on development issues.

But, the buzz in babusphere is all about the dominance of the "Kerala mafia". It is so strong that the US embassy picked it up and cabled it — as WikiLeaks reported — to Washington.

In that probably lies a lesson: Numerical strength doesn't necessarily signify clout. There are offices and key offices. It's pointed out that the latter are occupied by the officers either belonging to Kerala or belonging to that cadre.

The numbers game is as follows. Secretary-wise, the largest number come from UP (13), followed by Bihar and Kerala (8 each), Madhya Pradesh (7), Punjab (4), Andhra Pradesh (3), Jharkhand, Tamil Nadu, Nagaland, Himachal, West Bengal (2 each), and Maharashtra 1.

In addition, there are officers at the secretary level in the IFS and other cadres.

Brandishing "evidence" of Kerala's alleged dominance, a senior bureaucrat says: "The man at the helm, cabinet secretary K M Chandrasekhar, belongs to the Kerala cadre. National Security Adviser Shiv Shankar Menon is from Kerala as also home secretary G K Pillai. The PM's principal secretary, a hot job, if there's one in babudom, is T K A Nair, who too is from Kerala.

Indian Pm Seems To Be Misleanding Public On Cables

Indian PM seems to be misleading public on cables: WikiLeaks chief

By Indo Asian News Service | IANS – Mon, Mar 21, 2011 8:45 PM IST

• retweet
• Email
• Print

New Delhi, March 21 (IANS) The head of whistleblower website WikiLeaks Monday accused Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of deliberately misleading the public by claiming that leaked US diplomatic cables allegedly pointing to payoffs to MPs during a 2008 parliamentary trust vote were not authentic.
'The comments I have been hearing from Prime Minister Singh these, to me, seem to be a deliberate attempt to mislead the public by suggesting that governments around the world do not accept the material,' Wikileaks editor-in-chief Julian Assange told NDTV's Pranoy Roy in an interview.
As per the WikiLeaks cables published in The Hindu, a US diplomat was told that Rs.50-60 crore was kept aside by the Congress party to get some opposition members of the Lok Sabha on board before the trust vote in July 2008 during the first tenure of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government.
The prime minister said in parliament that the government could not 'confirm the veracity, contents or even the existence of such communications', and added that many persons mentioned in the cables have 'stoutly denied the veracity of the contents'.
Assange asserted that there 'is no doubt, whatsoever, that the cables are authentic', which was the reason why the US government has been very upset over the leak of the diplmomatic cables.
He said that there was 'no doubt that these are bonafide reports sent by the American ambassador (in India) back to Washington and these should be seen in that context'.
'That does not mean every fact in them are correct, you have to look at their sources and how they have this information,' added Assange.
He said that the defence argument was 'actually the behaviour of guilty men'.
'A man who is innocent doesn't tend to behave like that. That doesn't mean people making those statements, like Prime Minister Singh and so on, are guilty of this particular crime. It suggests something that how Indian parliamentarianss and politicians respond to very serious allegations. They respond through indirection and attempting to cover up the issue for the public rather than address it fully and frankly,' Assange asserted.
He felt that if the cable on bribery was incorrect, the US envoy in India 'has a lot to answer' for sending cables to Washington 'about senior politicians and the behaviour of Indian parliaments, which is cast in very negative light'.
'Either he has committed a grave error that would damage Indian and American relations and should resign on that matter; or the report was correct and he was reporting correctly and he had checked his fact before reporting back to Washington,' Assange said.
He suspected that the 'most serious issue in the cable, I suspect, is yet to be revealed'. 'There is quite a bit of time to go through the material: the material from Pakistan, China. It is likely to be of interest to the Indian population,' he said.
There are about 6,000 cables from the US embassy in India.
'What we are looking at more carefully are the cables from Pakistan and those are something that are yet to be published. We are working to have those published,' he said.
-- Indo-Asian News Service
dm/vm

Japan sees some stabilisation

Related content

• Enlarge Photo Japan sees some stabilisation in nuclear crisis

TOKYO (Reuters) - One of six tsunami-crippled nuclear reactors appeared to stabilise on Saturday as Japan raced to restore power to the stricken power plant to cool it and prevent a greater catastrophe.
Engineers reported some rare success after fire trucks sprayed water for about three hours on reactor No.3, widely considered the most dangerous at the ravaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex because of its use of highly toxic plutonium.
"The situation there is stabilising somewhat," Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano told a news conference.
Engineers earlier attached a power cable to the outside of the mangled plant in a desperate attempt to get water pumps going that would cool overheating fuel rods and prevent a deadly radiation leak.
They hope electricity will flow by Sunday to four reactors in the complex about 240 km (150 miles) north of Tokyo.
Edano said radiation levels in milk from a Fukushima farm about 30 km (18 miles) from the plant, and spinach grown in Ibaraki, a neighbouring prefecture, exceeded limits set by the government, the first known case of contamination since the
March 11 earthquake and tsunami that touched off the crisis.
But he said these higher radiation levels still posed no risk to human health.
Prime Minister Naoto Kan, facing Japan's biggest disaster since World War Two, sounded out the opposition about forming a government of national unity to deal with a crisis that has left nearly 7,000 people confirmed killed and turned whole towns into waterlogged, debris-strewn wastelands.
Another 10,700 people are missing, many feared dead in the disaster, which has sent a shock through global financial markets, with major economies joining forces to calm the Japanese yen.
Officials connected a power cable to the No. 2 reactor and planned to test power in reactors No. 1, 2, 3 and 4 on Sunday.
Working inside a 20-km (12-mile) evacuation zone at Fukushima, nearly 300 engineers got a second diesel generator attached to reactor No. 6 working, the nuclear safety agency said. They used the power to restart cooling pumps on No. 5.
"TEPCO has connected the external transmission line with the receiving point of the plant and confirmed that electricity can be supplied," the plant's operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co, said in a statement.
Nearly 1.5 km (a mile) of cable is being laid before engineers try to crank up the coolers at reactor No.2, followed by numbers 1, 3 and 4 this weekend, company officials said.
"If they are successful in getting the cooling infrastructure up and running, that will be a significant step forward in establishing stability," said Eric Moore, a nuclear
power expert at U.S.-based FocalPoint Consulting Group.
If that fails, one option is to bury the sprawling 40-year-old plant in sand and concrete to prevent a catastrophic radiation release. The method was used at the Chernobyl reactor in 1986, scene of the world's worst nuclear reactor disaster.
Underlining authorities' desperation, fire trucks sprayed water overnight in a crude tactic to cool reactor No.3, considered the most critical because of its use of mixed oxides, or mox, containing both uranium and highly toxic plutonium.
Japan has raised the severity rating of the nuclear crisis to level 5 from 4 on the seven-level INES international scale, putting it on a par with the Three Mile Island accident in Pennsylvania in 1979. Some experts say it is more serious.
Chernobyl, in Ukraine, was a 7 on that scale.
HUMANITARIAN EFFORT
The operation to avert large-scale radiation has overshadowed the humanitarian crisis caused by the 9.0-magnitude quake and 10-metre (33-foot) tsunami.
Some 390,000 people, many elderly, are homeless, living in shelters in near-freezing temperatures in northeastern coastal areas.
Food, water, medicine and heating fuel are in short supply and a Worm Moon, when the full moon is closest to Earth, could bring floods to devastated areas.
"Everything is gone, including money," said Tsukasa Sato, a 74-year-old barber with a heart condition, as he warmed his hands in front of a stove at a shelter for the homeless.
Health officials and the U.N. atomic watchdog have said radiation levels in the capital Tokyo were not harmful. But the city has seen an exodus of tourists, expatriates and many Japanese, who fear a blast of radioactive material.
"I'm leaving because my parents are terrified. I personally think this will turn out to be the biggest paper tiger the world has ever seen," said Luke Ridley, 23, from London as he sat at Narita international airport using his laptop.
Officials asked people in the 20 km "take cover" zone to follow some directives when going outside: Drive, don't walk. Wear a mask. Wear long sleeves. Don't go out in the rain.
Though there has been alarm around the world, experts say dangerous levels of radiation are unlikely to spread to other nations.
The U.S. government said "minuscule" amounts of radiation were detected in California consistent with a release from Japan's damaged facility, but there were no levels of concern.
Amid their distress, Japanese took time to laud the 279 nuclear plant workers toiling in the nuclear plant's wreckage, wearing masks, goggles and protective suits sealed by duct tape.
"My eyes well with tears at the thought of the work they are doing," Kazuya Aoki, a safety official at Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, told Reuters.
G7 INTERVENTION FOR YEN
The Group of Seven rich nations succeeded in calming global financial markets in a rare concerted intervention to restrain a soaring yen -- the first such joint intervention since the group came to the aid of the newly launched euro in 2000.
Japan's Nikkei share index recovered some lost ground by the end of a week which wiped $350 billion off market capitalisation.
The government plans to provide up to 10 trillion yen ($127 billion) in cheap loans to help businesses get back on their feet. The plight of the homeless worsened following a cold snap that brought heavy snow to the worst-affected areas, the Nikkei
daily reported.
But the immediate problems remained huge for many people. Nearly 290,000 households in the north still have no electricity and about 940,000 lack running water.
Aid groups say most victims are getting help, but there are pockets of acute suffering.
"We've seen children suffering with the cold, and lacking really basic items like food and clean water," Stephen McDonald of Save the Children said in a statement.
(Additional reporting by Nathan Layne.; Writing by Nick Macfie and Jason Szep, editing by Miral Fahmy)

Live: Japan - one week after the quake

Nearly a week after their home town was annihilated in a catastrophic tsunami, the 1,000-plus survivors of the small Japanese fishing town of Otsuchi are hanging by a thread.
With no water or electricity, and scant food, survivors keep each other company at one of three emergency shelters on the outskirts of what remains of the town.  Refresh this page for updates

5:42 pm: The Toyota Prius, America's best-selling hybrid car, could become harder to get, Time reports. The car is made exclusively in Japan; its main assembly plant is just west of Tokyo and another key plant is in the Sendai region. While both survived the quake and the tsunami, the power outages in the region will cripple production, Time says. Read the report

5:25 pm: When information comes in dribs and drabs, it is hard to get a sense of the magnitude of a catastrophe. This time lapse visualization of the Sendai quake and the aftershocks helps fill that need. The map plots all seismic activities in and around Japan from March 11, with each incident marked by a circle that represents the magnitude. Press play, and watch as dots appear in the sequence in which the quake, aftershocks, and smaller quakes shook Japan. The Visualization

5:11 pm: Japan's Prime Minister Naoto Kan says the government will make every effort to disclose information about the quake-hit Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. He also says Japan must rebuild from scratch, should not be discouraged.

4:59 pm: Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) crews from Amberley's 36 Squadron, flying C-17 Globemaster IIIs, have been working in shifts to help ferry personnel and supplies from Okinawa to the Japanese disaster zone as part of Operation Pacific Assist, the Australian government announced. Full story

4:55 pm: The elevation of the Fukushima incident to a level five on a scale of 7 means this: A level 4 is a nuclear incident with local consequences; a level 5 rating implies larger international consequences. And that in turn elevates the urgency of looking for final solutions. Tokyo Electric Power Company, which runs Fukushima, is considering among other things the option of burying the reactors in concrete, Kyodo reports. For now, TEPCO officials are attempting to attach a power cable to the two affected reactors that have been without power for days now, in the hopes the water pumps can start working again and cool the fuel rods down.

4:50 pm: Admiral Robert Willard, commander of the US military forces in the Pacific, is quoted as saying he is sending his troops into the nuclear danger zone at Fukushima, and will send even more personnel in. The objective, he said, should be to do everything possible to contain the fires before the plant reaches meltdown. Full story

3:10pm: The Laboratory of Applied Bioacoustics, a unit of Spain's Polytechnic University of Catalonia, recorded the sound of the earthquake that hit Japan last week, as it sounded under water. The recording can be heard here.
3:05pm: IAEA has raised the level of nuclear accident at Fukushima Daiichi to 5. There are seven points on the scale. The disaster at Chernobyl in 1986 was at 7 on the scale. Three Mile Island, America's worst commercial nuclear accident in 1979 was at 5 on the scale. BBC has published this article on nuclear lessons from Three Mile Island accident.

3:00pm: Finally, BBC reports some heartening news for the earthquake and tsunmai affected areas where weather has been bitterly cold - temperatures are set to rise in Miyagi prefecture and surrounding areas over the weekend.
2:45pm:  Japan nuclear agency expects to connect electric cables to reactors no.1, no.2 generators by Saturday morning.
2:30pm: General Electric has sent nuclear engineers to a Japanese emergency response centre where they are working with Tokyo Electric Power Co to prevent a meltdown at the stricken nuclear power plant, a company spokesman told the Wall Street Journal.
2:15pm: Round the clock media coverage of the Japan earthquake disaster could put people at greater risk of developing traumatic reactions, says a clinical psychologist. His argument
2:00pm: Indian Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB) today said that there was no radiological "impact" on India due to radiation leak from the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan.
"AERB is constantly monitoring the situation at the nuclear plants based in Fukushima in the aftermath of the earthquake and tsunami. The Board is also keeping a constant eye on the data being reported by the Indian Environmental Radiation Monitoring Network (IMERMON) from various locations across India," AERB secretary R Bhattacharya said.
<iframe title="YouTube video player" width="640" height="390" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/JGPjb-Kwk4k" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

1:30pm: The crisis at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant is "grave and serious", Yukiya Amano, head of the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog, said. Amano returned to his native Japan and says he will not visit the plant, but that a team of scientists will go in its general direction.
1:15pm: A week after their lives were turned upside down by the biggest recorded earthquake in Japan's history, many survivors are too shocked to contemplate the future.

"My house does not exist anymore. Everything is gone, including money," said Tsukasa Sato, a 74-year-old barber with a heart condition, as he warmed his hands in front of a stove at a shelter in Yamada, northern Japan. "This is where I was born, so I want to stay here. I don't know how it will turn out, but this is my hope."

12:55pm: The official death toll from the March 11 earthquake and tsunami now stands at 6,539, making it Japan's worst peacetime disaster, surpassing the 1995 Kobe earthquake.

12:15pm: Japanese shares have climbed and the yen weakened after finance ministers from the G7 group of the world's richest countries agreed to step into the currency market. The Nikkei 225 stock index rose 2.7% to 9,206.75, while the yen weakened against the US dollar to 81.71. The yen hit a post-World War II high of 76.25 yen earlier this week, raising concerns about Japan's recovery. Analysts said markets will remain volatile.

11:55am: In Japanese disaster films they like heroes who sacrifice everything for the greater good - stoic, determined, refusing to back down in the face of adversity or even certain death. These are the qualities the country admires. Now the newspapers here have a new band of heroes to lionise - the workers, emergency services personnel and the scientists battling to save the Fukushima nuclear plant, their fellow citizens and themselves. More
11:45am: According to a BBC report,emergency workers are battling to cool and restore power to reactors at the earthquake-damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant but say progress is slow.Power is needed to restart pumps to pour cold water on the overheating fuel rods and avert a major radiation leak.There have been a number of explosions in the reactor buildings since Friday's magnitude 9.0 earthquake in Japan.

11:15am: The first readings from American data-collection flights over the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in northeastern Japan show that the worst contamination has not spread beyond the 19-mile range of highest concern established by Japanese authorities. But another day of frantic efforts to cool nuclear fuel in the troubled reactors and in the plant’s spent-fuel pools resulted in little or no progress, according to United States government officials. Read on New York Times
11:00am: The nuclear crisis in Japan has prompted a re-examination of the safety net for nuclear power in the United States, with former regulators and safety advocates warning that gaps in the nation's regulatory armor could leave Americans similarly vulnerable to disaster. Full story on Huffington Post
10:45am: International Atomic Energy Agency chief Yukiya Amano urged that Japan have closer contact with the U.N. nuclear watchdog over the country's quake-triggered nuclear crisis that has stirred international concerns.

10:30am: Efforts to cool down the overheating reactors and spent fuels continued Friday at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, which was crippled a week ago by a massive earthquake and tsunami, with workers braving the risk of radiation exposure to prevent the problems from developing into a catastrophe.
10:15am: Special Report: Mistakes, misfortune, meltdown: Japan's quake
10:00am: Adding to their woes, an unseasonal snowstorm sent temperatures plunging to below zero and blanketed acres of tsunami debris in white.
While international attention has been focused on Japan's efforts to stop damage at a quake-hit nuclear power plant from spiraling out of control, a massive salvage and rescue operation has slowly been gathering steam.

Photos: Japan before and after tsunami

9:30am: International experts say that panic over fears of radiation leaks from the Daiichi nuclear plant could detract from problems likely to affect survivors of the quake and tsunami, such as the cold, access to clean water and getting enough food.
9:00am: Radiation readings at the troubled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant have consistently followed a downward path through Friday morning, according to Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency measurements taken roughly 1 kilometer west of the plant's No. 2 reactor. Meanwhile, Japanese engineers are racing to extend an emergency power cable to a nuclear reactor complex crippled by the country's earthquake and tsunami a week ago.

8:30am: The death toll from the monster 9.0-magnitude earthquake and massive tsunami that hit Japan climbed past 6,400 Friday as search teams continued to comb through the rubble. Japan's National Police agency said 6,406 people were confirmed dead and 10,259 were reported missing

8:00am: A top U.S. nuclear regulator indicated Thursday it is likely to take several weeks to cool down troubled nuclear reactors in Japan's northeastern prefecture of Fukushima. ''This is something that will take some time to work through, possibly weeks, as you eventually remove the majority of the heat from the reactors and then the spent fuel pools,'' U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chairman Gregory Jaczko told a news conference at the White House.