The typhoon that is bearing down on Japan has been downgraded to a lesser level of tropical storm, but it's already dumping buckets of rain on that country and is expected to bring six or seven inches of precipitation over two days to the meltdown site at Fukushima. The winds won't be gale-force, but they'll be hitting buildings that have already taken major shots with the big earthquake, the tsunami, and hundreds of sizable aftershocks. The next 48 hours could turn out to be a crucial time.

Meanwhile, Tokyo Electric claims that it has restored some sort of organized cooling systems to the spent fuel pools in the four trashed reactors -- an improvement which, if true and lasting, is a significant step back toward normalcy. But at this point, the reports are being taken with a grain of salt -- a new poll shows the Japanese public highly distrustful of the company, with 73% saying they don't trust it. It's also been revealed over the past few days that the company lied about what its president was doing when the tsunami hit. It turns out he was on a pleasure trip, not business, at the time, and it took him quite a while in the chaos to take the reins on the crisis.