Reuters Investigates

All Japan, all the time

Two more special reports from Japan today: first up, a look at how globalization has made companies around the world vulnerable to a shock like the earthquake. ”Disasters show flaws in just-in-time production.”

The PDF version, here, has a nice graphic showing the location of Japan’s ports, some of which have been hard hit by the disaster.

The second report takes another look at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. It makes worrying reading:

TOKYO (Reuters)- When the massive tsunami smacked into Fukushima Daiichi, the nuclear power plant was stacked high with more uranium than it was originally designed to hold and had repeatedly missed mandatory safety checks over the past decade.

 The Fukushima plant that has spun into partial meltdown and spewed out plumes of radiation had become a growing depot for spent fuel in a way the American engineers who designed the reactors 50 years earlier had never envisioned, according to company documents and outside experts.

The full story is here: “Fuel storage, safety issues vexed Japan plant.”

Diplomacy Inc

By Ben Berkovitz

Diplomacy is a complex thing, and it gets even more complicated when diplomats are trying to act as salesmen.

A series of State Department cables, obtained by WikiLeaks and provided to Reuters by a third party, demonstrates just how intertwined American political and commercial interests really are. (See special report “Weapons, frozen chicken, and the art of diplomacy“)

Sometimes it takes an illustration, like this one, to explain just how these sorts of deals work. One conversation leads to another, which leads to the mention of someone’s interest, which gets passed up a chain of command – and all of a sudden, perhaps unexpectedly, someone gets what they wanted. It may seem simple but it rarely is – some of the transactions mentioned in the cables played out over the course of years, and in some cases they still have not been finalized. (There are examples where the flowchart would take up two computer screens just to summarize.)

(For a multimedia PDF version of the special report, click here)

Inside the Pirates’ Web

Reuters trade correspondent in Washington Doug Palmer had an unusual assignment: buy a fake Louis Vuitton handbag on the Internet, and take it to a LVMH store for a comparison test, before handing it over to U.S. authorities.

    What was startling was how easy it was to find websites selling a dazzling array of stuff online. This is the new face of piracy and its costing businesses billions.   No need to skulk around back alleys or some pirate’s rental van to browse through footwear, watches, DVDs and whatnot. Just pick out your LV shoulder tote from a virtual catalog on a website based in China. It looks and feels like the real thing at a fraction of the price.

Counterfeit goods ranging from shoes to software seized by the U.S. government  on display at the National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center in northern Virginia, October 7, 2010.  REUTERS/Jason Reed  

    The bulk of these goods comes from China. The workshop of the world is also the sweatshop oif the world when it comes to making fake goods.

    Reuters Shanghai correspondent Melanie Lee and a photographer accompanied a private investigator to grubby neighbourhoods around Guangzhou to find the leather workshops that make these fake bags. She saw mothers and daughters through the windows working the leather, and young toughs outside serving as lookouts. Chinese authorities occasionally do raid these places, which are often run by triad gangs. Photographer Tyrone Siu stealthily took photos with his iPhone.

 Melanie and her PI then followed the trail of the fake handbags to an illegal market a few miles away. The Baiyun wholesale market, occupying a space equivalent to five football fields, is the biggest market for leather goods in the world. Much of the merchandise is counterfeit.

    The market is occasionally raided — including the day they went. But the shopkeepers are used to it. It’s like the Whack a Mole game. As fast as you can hammer down one operation, another one pops up somewhere else.

It’s all Brazil, all the time

Another day, another Brazil story. No, not Petrobras, though that is worth reading too.

Luciana Lopez has a story about soy and shoes. It might seem like an odd combination but the two are important industries in Brazil which is undergoing an economic transformation as it comes to terms with China’s growing global clout.

Agriculture is booming, helped by China’s appetite for soy, but factories that used to produce shoes for the global market are struggling to compete with cheaper Chinese goods.

The question is will Brazil be able to take advantage of the huge benefits from China’s growth without seeing its manufacturing industry wiped out. Read the full story here.

And if you missed our special report on Dilma Rousseff yesterday, here it is again.