Frontpage: Wednesday, Mar 14th

1. Twin Earthquakes Hit Japan: Two earthquakes rattled Japan on Wednesday, just days after the anniversary of 2011’s tragic tsunami. No damages or injuries have been reported from either incident. 
2. Newt Vows to Continue: Newt Gingrich is sticking in the race, despite a disappointing second-place finish in Alabama and Mississippi. The GOP campaign is essentially a two-man race between Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum, with Gingrich representing a potential drag on Santorum. But the former speaker doesn’t see it that way. 
3. Santorum: ‘We Did It Again’: Rick Santorum was met with huge cheers from his supporters as he exclaimed at the opening of his victory speech in Alabama, “We did it again,” foreshadowing his subsequent win in Mississippi.
4. Panetta Visits Afghanistan: Defense Secretary Leon Panetta arrived in Afghanistan, pledging that the U.S. would not change its strategy, despite recent tensions. In a possible acknowledgment of tensions after a U.S. soldier allegedly massacred 16 Afghan civilians, Marines were asked to leave their weapons outside the tent before Panetta spoke.
5. Goldman Exec Quits in NYT Op-Ed: Goldman Sachs executive Greg Smith knows how to go out with a bang. “Today is my last day at Goldman Sachs,” he writes in a New York Times op-ed. He’s been at Goldman for 12 years, and says, “The environment now is as toxic and destructive as I have ever seen it.”

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Photo: Indian and U.S. army soldiers performed drills during a two-week joint military exercise in Bikaner, Rajasthan, India. (Dinesh Gupta / AP Photo)

Unbelievable aerial footage of the Tsunami in Japan, shot from a helicopter. Click through to see it full screen.

(via)

This stretch of the Great Kanto highway was wrecked by deep chasms in the March 11 earthquake - but was repaired in just six days

Amazing.

thedailywhat:

Photo Series of the Day: The first photos of the so-called Fukushima Fifty — the fifty heroic nuclear reactor employees working around the clock to prevent a meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant — have finally emerged.

An additional 150 workers have since joined the original fifty, of which five are believed to have died. Many of those inside the plant readily admit that, while they are still alive, they know radiation poisoning will eventually kill them.

[dailymail.]

Jesus.

A model, via NHK, that shows the four damaged reactors at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

itsending:

Fukushima infographic, courtesy of Reuters, to visualize what has happened up to 2011-03-15.

Why stories are sometimes not enough.

Props to the editors for throwing their well-laid plans out the window to cover the earthquake in Japan. In this week’s Newsweek, Simon Winchester tells us why the tsunami that struck Japan should have Californians worried, Andrew Romano and Pat Wingert report on the number of Americans killed by guns since the shooting of Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (hint: it hasn’t let up), and Tony Dokoupil and Ramin Setoodeh on Celine Dion’s return to Sin City after its economic collapse.

This Newsweek cover has been brought to you by Sir Charles the Cat. Also known as Chawlie, Chuck, Charles, sweetface—or just Charlie.