SHAFAQNA

The American sailor, who serves aboard the US aircraft carrier George Washington, broke into the house of a 72 year old woman on Monday, despite a night-time curfew. Last week another drunken sailor was taken into police custody for trespassing.

SHAFAQNA (Shia International News Association) – Japanese police arrested a drunken American sailor for trespassing on an elderly woman’s property in the port city of Yokosuka. Manuel Silva, 20, who serves aboard the US aircraft carrier George Washington, broke into the house of a 72 year old woman on Monday, despite a night-time curfew. Last week another drunken sailor was taken into police custody for trespassing. The arrested sailor claimed he entered the house because he was called in by a police officer.

Upon arrival the police found the drunken soldier lying down in the old woman's house. The US military imposed a night-time curfew on all its servicemen in Japan after two US soldiers were arrested for raping a woman in Okinawa last October. The sexual assault angered the Japanese public, who are against the presence of US military forces. Despite the curfew, US servicemen stationed in Japan have continued their misconduct in the country which shows lack of discipline and supervision within the American military bases in Japan.

On December 28, 2012, a US Marine was arrested for entering an apartment building in Naha, the capital of Okinawa. On November 18, Japanese police arrested another US Marine for trespassing in the southern island of Okinawa. The immorality of American forces has provoked anti-US sentiments and protests in Japan. Currently about 47,000 US military personnel are in Japan.

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SHAFAQNA (Shia International News Association) — Six Chinese ships entered Japanese waters near a group of disputed islets claimed by both Beijing and Tokyo early on Friday, ignoring the Japanese coast guard's orders to vacate its territorial waters.

The first two ships in the battalion entered the disputed waters at around 21:20 GMT on Thursday. After a few hours of “patrolling,” three of the ships have left the disputed waters, while another three stayed, local media reported.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry confirmed that six of its surveillance ships had entered the waters near the islands.

So far, Japanese border patrol ships have not taken any active measures against the Chinese vessels.

“The patrol activity is intended to demonstrate the jurisdiction of the Chinese government over the Diaoyu Islands and the adjacent islands, and also to protect the country’s naval interests,” the statement reads.

Japan has created a crisis headquarters in response to the incident. The country's officials urgently summoned the Chinese Ambassador to a meeting with the Japanese Foreign Ministry.

This is the latest in a series of diplomatic rows between China and Japan centered on control of the Senkaku, or Diaoyu in Mandarin, islands.

On Tuesday, Japan announced it had purchased the islands from a private owner, ignoring Chinese territorial claims. Following the announcement, two ships from the China Marine Surveillance were dispatched to the tiny archipelago in the South China Sea “to assert the country’s sovereignty.”

At that time, however, the vessels did not come within 12 nautical miles of the islands, an area Japan considers its territorial waters.

Chinese smash Japanese cars in protest

Meanwhile, the nationalistic spirit has taken a hold in China. Blogs and forums have been throbbing with discussion over various protests against the Japanese repatriation of the disputed islands.

In Shanghai, an angry man was said to have driven his Honda Civic to a local dealership and set the vehicle ablaze. In Shenzhen, several Japanese-made cars have been smashed.

The tourist industry is reacting as well by canceling plans to visit Japan in early October, when China celebrates its National Day. A couple in Kunming told the state-run Xinhua news agency that they had canceled a wedding photo shoot because the studio couldn’t meet their demand to take their pictures with cameras not made by Japanese companies, reports the Los Angeles Times. Many Chinese celebrities and politicians are refusing to travel to Japan.

On Wednesday, a crowd of people demonstrated outside the Japanese Consulate General in Shanghai; and about 60 people rallied outside Japan's Interchange Association, Japan's de facto embassy in Taipei, to protest the nationalization move, as Taiwan also lays claim to the islands.

Recently, Chinese state media began broadcasting weather reports for the islands for the first time.—www.shafaqna.com/English

SHAFAQNA (Shia International News Association) — Tens of thousands of people rallied Sunday against U.S. plans to deploy Osprey hybrid aircraft on a southern Japanese island amid renewed safety concerns.

The protesters — as many as 100,000, according to organizers — gathered at a seaside park on Okinawa to demand that the plan to deploy 12 MV-22 Osprey aircraft on the island be scrapped, saying they are unsafe. The U.S. plans to deploy the Osprey, which takes off like a helicopter and flies like an airplane, to replace older CH-46 helicopters that are already there.

Safety concerns boiled over after Osprey crashes in Morocco and Florida earlier this year. An incident in North Carolina last week that officials called a “precautionary landing” further aggravated the sentiment.

“We refuse to accept a deployment of Osprey that has already proven so dangerous,” said Atsushi Sakima, mayor of Okinawa’s Ginowan City, home to the base where the Ospreys will be deployed. “Who is going to take responsibility if they crash onto a populated neighborhood?”

Participants cheered in support, waving red banners and placards with a message saying “Osprey No!”

The tilt-rotor planes have been used extensively in Iraq and Afghanistan. The United States says they have a solid record and can fly faster and carry bigger loads than the CH-46, which it is replacing worldwide.

Okinawa Gov. Hirokazu Nakaima has asked Japan’s central government to seek a full U.S. investigation into the Osprey crashes and suspend their deployment until the aircraft’s safety is verified.

The Osprey deployment plan has also reignited longstanding anger over the heavy presence of American troops on Okinawa and has become a headache for officials in Tokyo and Washington hoping to calm anti-base sentiment. More than half of the roughly 50,000 U.S. troops stationed throughout Japan are based on Okinawa.

Okinawans are particularly angry because the Ospreys will be deployed to Marine Corps Air Station Futenma, which the two countries decided to close more than a decade ago. The base has remained in operation because a replacement site hasn’t been readied.  —www.shafaqna.com/English

Source: Tehran Times

SHAFAQNA (Shia International News Association) — Harmless traces of radioactive cesium have been discovered in fish and seawater in several areas of Japan, as the country continues to debate whether their fish is safe to consume and anti-nuke protests grow in the wake of the Fukushima disaster.

Japan’s Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) stated that radioactive cesium, presumably from the crippled Fukushima I nuclear plant, was found in seawater and fish in several regions of the country, Russian news agency Itar-Tass reported from Tokyo.

The aquatic radiation was detected in central Japan (Shizuoka Prefecture), the western part of central Honshu (Niigata) and the country’s northeast (Iwate).

The concentrations of radioactive particles are very small, and pose no health risks to humans, MEXT said. The ministry believes that cesium may have traveled to the area in rainfall.

Radioactive cesium is a human-made radioactive isotope produced through the nuclear fission of the element cesium. It has a half-life of 30 years, making it extremely toxic.

Earlier this year, low levels of radioactive cesium were found in fish just off Japan’s east coast, which was believed to have originated from the Fukushima plant.

The Ministry continues to closely monitor and verify traces of radiation in seawater and fish following the 2011 nuclear disaster at the Fukushima-Daiichi complex.

How safe is Japan’s fish and seafood?

Many countries restricted their food imports from Japan in the wake of the catastrophe. India suspended food imports from Japan for three months in April 2011, fearing radioactive contamination. The EU imposed tighter radiation controls on its imports of food and animal feed from Japan.

The full extent of the spread of radioactive contamination in Japan remains unclear. The discovery of radioactive Japanese fish and seawater could further damage Japan's flagging seafood industry.

Reports of contaminated seafood are worrisome for the country, since contaminated seawater and fish move in uncontrollable and untraceable paths.

Low levels of nuclear radiation from the Fukushima disaster were detected in bluefin tuna off the California coast in May of this year, suggesting that fish are carrying the contaminants across the Pacific Ocean faster than wind or water. US researchers carried out a study showing the tuna were responsible for transporting radionuclides from the 2011 Fukushima disaster across the entire North Pacific Ocean.

Many question whether fish from the Pacific Ocean and Japan’s coastal waters are safe to eat in the wake of the Fukushima disaster. Japanese officials and many scientists say they are, but the data on radiation levels in Japan’s fish stock tells a different story.

Radiation levels are high in many species that Japan has exported to Canada in recent years, such as cod, sole, halibut, landlocked kokanee, carp, trout and eel. And radiation levels in certain species are higher this year than in 2011, Vancouver’s Straight.com reports.

The highest levels of cesium in fish were detected in March, a year after the accident, when a landlocked masu salmon caught in a Japanese river was found to have 18,700 Becquerel of cesium per kilogram, or 187 times Japan’s legal limit for radiation in seafood. (A Becquerel is a unit of radioactivity equal in which one nucleus decays per second).

Tim Takaro, an associate professor at Simon Fraser University, now avoids eating fish from Japan: “I would find another source for fish if I thought it was from that area,” he told Straight.com. “There are way too many questions and not enough answers to say everything is fine.” Takaro is a member of the Canadian anti-nuclear group Physicians for Global Survival.—www.shafaqna.com/english

Source: RT