SHAFAQNA

SHAFAQNA (Shia International News Association) Japan has summoned the Chinese ambassador in protest over a flotilla of Chinese government ships that entered territorial waters near a disputed island chain.

Japan's foreign ministry said on Tuesday it had called in the envoy after eight Chinese vessels entered waters near the Senkaku islands, which China calls Diaoyu, the most in a single day since Tokyo nationalised part of the archipelago in September.

The Chinese boats drove out a flotilla of 10 boats carrying about 80 Japanese activists from the nationalist Ganbare Nippon ("Stand Firm, Japan") group, which sailed into waters around the islets early on Tuesday.

They then began to withdraw from the area on the orders of Japanese Coast Guard patrol ships, when Chinese government surveillance ships came nearby.

"Our latest intelligence indicates that a large number of Chinese vessels have entered Japanese territorial waters," an unidentified coast guard member told the activists.

Japanese chief cabinet secretary Yoshihide Suga on Tuesday confirmed the incident. "Today there has been eight Chinese maritime surveillance vessels that have entered the Senkaku island area around Uotsuri Jima," he said.

China said the trip by Ganbare Nippon was "illegal" and "troublemaking," and a foreign ministry spokesman said the government has lodged an official protest with Japan.

'Under our active control'

Japanese Coast Guard vessels then escorted some of the fishing boats back to the the port of Ishigaki, where they originally departed from.

Ganbare Nippon had said the purpose of their trip was to survey fishing grounds. Last August, about 10 activists from the group landed on one of the islets.

Japanese and Chinese patrol ships have been playing a cat-and-mouse game near the Japanese-controlled East China Sea islands, where China is seeking to assert its claim to sovereignty by sending ships into the disputed waters.

Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe however said that it was Japan who was still fully in control of the island chain.

"The Senkaku islands are under our active control," he said when asked in parliament what he thought the status of the islands were.

"Since it has become the Abe government, we have made sure that if there an instance where there is an intrusion into our territory or it seems that there could be landing on the islands then we will deal will it strongly," Abe added.

The waters around the islets are rich fishing grounds and also have potentially huge oil and gas reserves.

The territorial dispute has escalated in recent months to the point where China and Japan have scrambled fighter jets while patrol ships shadow each other, raising fears that an unintended collision could lead to a broader clash.

www.shafaqna.com/English

SHAFAQNA (Shia International News Association) –It could take 30 to 40 years to fully decommission the devastated Fukushima nuclear plant due to complexity of the task, UN nuclear watchdog IAEA has reported. However, the plant's infrastructure may not last that long.

An International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspection last week of the ruined Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Okuma has exposed certain bottlenecks in the plan to clean up the nuclear disaster. A statement by the IAEA released Monday criticized TEPCO's progress on the cleanup.

Experts of the IAEA Division of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology believe that a chain of equipment failures of the plant's essential systems that took place over the last few weeks could become a serious problem in the future. The IAEA called on to TEPCO to maintain plant’s equipment properly to avoid potentially hazardous situations, especially disconnections of the cooling systems of the shutoff reactors and fuel storage pools.

"As for the duration of the decommissioning project, it will be nearly impossible to ensure the time for decommissioning such a complex facility in less than 30 to 40 years as it is currently established in the roadmap," said Juan Carlos Lentijo, the IAEA's Director of the Division of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology (NEFW).

The IAEA statement stressed that Japan must still develop technology and equipment to locate and remove melted uranium fuel, given the harsh conditions and strong radiation levels at the Fukushima facility.

Fukushima saw a chain of incidents over the last five weeks, at least three of which were caused by rats that damaged wires in critically important electrical equipment. And on Monday, TEPCO personnel conducted an emergency shutdown of the cooling system of one of the fuel storage pools after two dead rats were found inside a transformer box.

Lentijo, who headed the IAEA delegation to Fukushima, explained that water management is "probably the most challenging" task for the plant at the moment.

Another issue was the multiple leakages of radioactive water from storage tanks and cooling systems, which are not only further contaminating the area around the plant, but may also be expelling radioactive pollution deep underground, where it could pollute underground water tables.

Earlier, TEPCO reported that a steady inflow of groundwater in the basements of the damaged reactor buildings resulted in about 400 tons of contaminated water daily. With the Fukushima nuclear plant's storage tanks already housing 280,000 tons of liquid radioactive waste, this means the amount of contaminated water would double within just a few years.

Lentijo urged TEPCO to “implement additional countermeasures to regain confidence.” IAEA experts also noted that TEPCO needs to step up protections against “external hazards” similar to the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami that followed it, which devastated the plant on March11, 2011. “It is important to have a very good capability to identify as promptly as possible failures and to establish compensatory measures,” he said.

“You have to adopt a very cautious position to ensure that you always are working on the safe side,”Lentijo added.

A final report by the 12-member IAEA delegation to Fukushima is expected to be published in May.

-www.shafaqna.com/English

Source:RT

SHAFAQNA (Shia International News Association) –Japan has summoned the Chinese ambassador in protest over a flotilla of Chinese government ships that entered territorial waters near a disputed island chain.

Japan's foreign ministry said on Tuesday it had called in the envoy after eight Chinese vessels entered waters near the Senkaku islands, which China calls Diaoyu, the most in a single day since Tokyo nationalised part of the archipelago in September.

The Chinese boats drove out a flotilla of 10 boats carrying about 80 Japanese activists from the nationalist Ganbare Nippon ("Stand Firm, Japan") group, which sailed into waters around the islets early on Tuesday.

They then began to withdraw from the area on the orders of Japanese Coast Guard patrol ships, when Chinese government surveillance ships came nearby.

"Our latest intelligence indicates that a large number of Chinese vessels have entered Japanese territorial waters," an unidentified coast guard member told the activists.

Japanese chief cabinet secretary Yoshihide Suga on Tuesday confirmed the incident. "Today there has been eight Chinese maritime surveillance vessels that have entered the Senkaku island area around Uotsuri Jima," he said.

China said the trip by Ganbare Nippon was "illegal" and "troublemaking," and a foreign ministry spokesman said the government has lodged an official protest with Japan.

'Under our active control'

Japanese Coast Guard vessels then escorted some of the fishing boats back to the the port of Ishigaki, where they originally departed from.

Ganbare Nippon had said the purpose of their trip was to survey fishing grounds. Last August, about 10 activists from the group landed on one of the islets.

Japanese and Chinese patrol ships have been playing a cat-and-mouse game near the Japanese-controlled East China Sea islands, where China is seeking to assert its claim to sovereignty by sending ships into the disputed waters.

Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe however said that it was Japan who was still fully in control of the island chain.

"The Senkaku islands are under our active control," he said when asked in parliament what he thought the status of the islands were.

"Since it has become the Abe government, we have made sure that if there an instance where there is an intrusion into our territory or it seems that there could be landing on the islands then we will deal will it strongly," Abe added.

The waters around the islets are rich fishing grounds and also have potentially huge oil and gas reserves.

The territorial dispute has escalated in recent months to the point where China and Japan have scrambled fighter jets while patrol ships shadow each other, raising fears that an unintended collision could lead to a broader clash. -www.shafaqna.com/English

Source:AL Jazeera

SHAFAQNA (Shia International News Association) –South Korea's foreign minister canceled a trip to Japan on Monday after Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe made an offering to a shrine seen as a symbol of Japan's former militarism, a South Korean government official said.

China also objected to Abe's offering on Sunday to the Yasukuni shrine, where 14 Japanese leaders convicted as war criminals by an Allied tribunal are honored, saying Japan had to face up to its past nationalistic aggression.

Abe, an outspoken nationalist, made a ritual offering of a pine tree to the shrine. He did not go there but two Japanese ministers and a deputy chief cabinet secretary did visit it on the weekend.

Such gestures upset Asian victims of Japan's war-time aggression, including China and South Korea.

"We are disappointed," said a South Korean government official.

"Through a diplomatic channel, we sent a message several times that we did not want any visit to the shrine before our minister's trip," said the official, who declined to be identified.

South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se had aimed to discuss the direction of relations with his Japanese counterpart during his planned visit, the official said.

"It is now almost impossible to have a constructive conversation," the official said, referring to the decision to cancel the trip.

For Koreans, the shrine is a reminder of Japan's brutal colonial rule from 1910-1945.

China, which also suffered under Japanese occupation, also takes offence when Japanese leaders pay their respects at the shrine.

"PRIVATE CONDUCT"

A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman said Japan's relations with its neighbors hinged on its acceptance of its history.

"Japan must face up to its history of nationalist aggression" and respect the feelings of victims, the Chinese spokeswoman, Hua Chunying, told a daily news briefing.

"We believe that only when Japan attains a deep understanding of its past history can it open up its future and develop a cooperative relationship with other Asian countries," she said.

In Tokyo, Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told a news conference that final details of Yun's visit had not been worked out. Visits to the shrine should not disrupt relations between Japan and its neighbors, he said.

"Each country has its own position. We should not let it affect diplomacy."

Suga said the ministers' visits to the shrine were private.

"Cabinet ministers paying visit as private individuals is their private conduct. The government refrains from commenting," he said.

It is not clear how Abe made his offering.

China's Global Times newspaper, published by the Chinese Communist Party's official newspaper, the People's Daily, said the shrine gesture was evidence that Japan was "a troublemaker and provocateur among Asian countries".

"This is yet another time that Japan has gone out of its way to manipulate Asian politics," it said. - www.shafaqna.com/English

Source:Reuters

SHAFAQNA (Shia International News Association) U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry arrived in Japan on Sunday for the last stop of his Asian tour, a trip that has largely focused on the provocations coming out of North Korea.

He spent early Sunday visiting a 620-year-old Buddhist temple and spoke with university students on their views on America and global issues. He is scheduled to meet with Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida later in the day.

His visit comes amid heightened regional tensions.

North Korea issued a scathing warning to Japan on Friday, saying Tokyo should "stop recklessly working for staging a comeback on Korea, depending on its American master," state media reported.

Japanese foreign minister spokesman Masaru Sato said such remarks only hurt North Korea.

"Japan would not be pushed around by rhetoric of North Korea," he said.

Japan's Transport Ministry has issued a notice requiring its airplanes to report to the U.S. military if they fly near the U.S. military's Kadena base in Okinawa prefecture, the Kyodo News Agency said.

The notice, made at the request of the U.S. military in Japan, is believed to be part of precautions taken against possible North Korean missile launches.

As Kerry visited the Japanese capital, North Korea responded to South Korea's call last week for open talks.

"If they have true intent for dialogue, they should drop the attitude of confrontation to begin with, not getting inveigled in wordplay," North Korea's state-run media KCNA reported. "The possibility of dialogue entirely depends on their attitude."

South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se, speaking with Kerry on Friday, urged North Korea to open talks.

"We urge North Korea to cease its reckless behavior and to stop issuing threats," he said.

Visit to Beijing

In his first trip to Asia as secretary of state, Kerry visited South Korean and Chinese leaders as tensions stemming from North Korea loomed.

On Saturday, Kerry and Chinese leaders said their two nations would work together to press North Korea to tone down its provocations.

Kerry told reporters in Beijing that the United States and China are calling on North Korea to refrain from any provocative steps -- including any missile launches.

But, he said, both nations want to focus on a peaceful solution, not "threat-for-threat or confrontational language. There's been enough of that."

No option was left off the table in his talks with Chinese leaders, he said. Among those he met Saturday were Chinese President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang.

Beijing will work with its international partners to help restart the stalled six-party talks on North Korea's nuclear program and hold it accountable to its international agreements, he said.

Kerry landed in Beijing after leaving Seoul, South Korea, where he pledged unbending U.S. military support against any attack from the North.

Washington wants Beijing to "stop the money trail into North Korea" and give Pyongyang a strong message that China wants the Korean Peninsula free of nuclear weapons, two U.S. administration officials said.

Support for Seoul

During his visit to Seoul on Friday, Kerry said the United States would talk to North Korea, but only if the country gets serious about negotiating the end of its nuclear weapons program.

"North Korea will not be accepted as a nuclear power," Kerry said in the South Korean capital.

His trip to Seoul came a day after a Pentagon intelligence assessment surfaced suggesting North Korea may have developed the ability to fire a nuclear-tipped missile at its foes.

The Defense Intelligence Agency assessment is the clearest acknowledgment yet by the United States about potential advances in North Korea's nuclear program.

U.S. officials think North Korea could test-launch a mobile ballistic missile at any time in what would be seen by the international community as a highly provocative move.

But a senior administration official said there's no indication that any such missiles are armed with nuclear material.

Pentagon spokesman George Little said that "it would be inaccurate to suggest that the North Korean regime has fully tested, developed or demonstrated the kinds of nuclear capabilities referenced" in the DIA study.

The DIA has been wrong in the past, producing an assessment in 2002 that formed the basis for arguments that Iraq had nuclear weapons -- a view later found to be incorrect.

www.shafaqna.com/English

SHAFAQNA (Shia International News Association) -- More than three million vehicles made by major Japanese manufacturers will be recalled worldwide because of possible problems with airbags, the companies have said.

Four carmakers - Toyota, Nissan, Honda and Mazda - said separately on Thursday that they combined would recall more than three million vehicles in accordance with local regulations, all citing the same malfunction of passenger-side airbags.

A Toyota spokesman said his company alone was recalling a total of 1.73 million vehicles, manufactured between November 2000 and March 2004 in Japan or abroad, due to a defect in airbags.

Toyota USA said in a statement it was recalling 170,000 vehicles in the United States, out of the company's total recall.

"The involved vehicles are equipped with front passenger airbag inflators which could have been assembled with improperly manufactured propellant wafers," the statement said.

"Improperly manufactured propellant wafers could cause the inflator to rupture and the front-passenger airbag to deploy abnormally in the event of a crash."

Fire risk

The company's spokesman in Japan said this abnormal inflation "could also burn part of the vehicle's inside and cause fire".

However, he said, there were no recorded instances of this happening.

Nissan and Honda released statements giving similar explanations.

A Nissan spokeswoman said the company was recalling a total of 480,000 vehicles globally, all of which were manufactured in Japan between August 2000 and January 2004.

Toyota and Nissan said the airbags were made by Tokyo-based Takata Corp., while the ministry said the airbag parts were supplied by a single company but declined to disclose the name.

"This is a global recall that affects all regions where we do our business," said a spokeswoman with Honda, which is recalling 1.135 million vehicles.

Mazda said its recall target would reach 45,463 units worldwide, including 4,384 at home.

"We will recall the cars at home while taking the same action in accordance with local regulations of each country," a company spokeswoman said.

Its shares dropped nine percent to 1,819 yen on Thursday.www.shafaqna.com/English

SHAFAQNA (Shia International News Association) Japan has deployed Patriot missiles in its capital as it readies to defend the 30 million people who live in greater Tokyo 
from any North Korean attack, officials have said.

Two Patriot Advanced Capability-3 surface-to-air missile launchers were stationed at the defence ministry in Tokyo before dawn, a ministry spokesman said on Monday. 

Itsunori Onodera, Japan's defence minister, said "we are proceeding with measures including deployment of PAC-3 as we are on alert".

Local reports said batteries would be deployed in another two locations in the greater Tokyo area.

"The government is making utmost efforts to protect our people's lives and ensure their safety," Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told reporters Tuesday morning.

"As North Korea keeps making provocative comments, Japan, cooperating with relevant countries, will do what we have to do.

"For the moment, the most important thing is to implement sanctions under the UN Security Council resolutions," Abe said.

Sea-based missiles

Tokyo's response thus far to the threats emanating from Pyongyang has been low key and Tuesday's moves are the most visible yet that it is rattled.PAC-3 batteries will also be installed in the semi-tropical island chain of Okinawa, Onodera told a television programme broadcast Monday.

He said Okinawa was "the place that is most effective in responding to emergencies ... so we should deploy the unit in Okinawa on a permanent basis".

Japan's armed forces are authorised to shoot down any North Korean missile headed towards its territory, a defence ministry spokesman said Monday.

In addition to the PAC-3s, Aegis destroyers equipped with sea-based interceptor missiles have been deployed in the Sea of Japan (East Sea), the defence official said.

Tokyo's moves came as North Korea said Monday it was withdrawing all workers and suspending operations at a lucrative joint industrial zone with South Korea, with reports of heightened activity at the North's nuclear test site and at a missile battery.

North Korea's bellicose rhetoric has reached fever pitch in recent weeks, with near-daily threats of attacks on US military bases including in Japan and South Korea in response to ongoing South Korea-US military exercises.

'Verbal' war

Intelligence reports suggest Pyongyang has readied two mid-range missiles on mobile launchers on its east coast and plans a test-firing before the April 15 birthday of late founding leader Kim Il-Sung.

But Toshimitsu Shigemura, professor of international relations at Waseda University, said Tokyo's measures were purely precautionary and it was unlikely that Pyongyang would actually target Japan.

"This is a verbal war and it's not accompanied by actual military actions," he told AFP news agency.

"Government officials know from satellite images that Pyongyang has not mobilised its troops or weapons on the frontline, except that they moved mobile missile launchers to the east coast."

He said a mistargeted missile that might end up falling uncontrollably towards Japanese territory was most likely what Tokyo was readying for.

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Radioactive water may have leaked into the ground from a storage tank at Japan's crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in the latest of a series of troubles at the facility.

The fresh leak on Sunday comes a day after Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) said up to 120 tonnes of contaminated water may have escaped from another of the seven underground reservoir tanks at the tsunami-damaged plant.

TEPCO said radioactivity was detected in water outside a tank in the latest leak but that the contaminated water was unlikely to flow into the sea.

"We have determined that a minimal amount of water was feared to have leaked from the tank although there was no decline in the level of water inside the tank," it said in a statement.

The tanks store water used to cool down the reactors after radioactive caesium is removed but other radioactive substances remain.

The series of leakages came after one of the systems keeping spent atomic fuel cool at the plant temporarily failed on Friday, the second outage in a matter of weeks, underlining the precarious fix at the plant.

Nuclear fuel, even after use, has to be kept cool to prevent it from overheating and beginning a self-sustaining atomic reaction that could lead to meltdown.

The plant was hit by the giant tsunami of March 2011 as reactors went into meltdown and spewed radiation over a wide area, forcing tens of thousands of people from their homes and polluting farmland.

SHAFAQNA (Shia International News Association) –As many as 120 tons of contaminated water have seeped into the surrounding ground from a compromised tank at Japan’s stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

Though the contaminated water is not expected to reach the sea, as it is located 800 meters inland, Saturday’s incident is yet another reminder to Japan that it will still take decades to fully decommission the facility.
A total of seven water storage tanks were excavated at Fukushima following a massive 9.0 earthquake in 2011, which triggered a tsunami that crippled the plant’s ability to cool its fuel rods. At the time, an all-out effort was made by TEPCO to flood the plant’s reactors with seawater to cool them, though that did not prevent three of the reactors from melting down. Hydrogen reactions also badly damaged the reactors’ housing structures.
This latest incident comes on the heels of failures in the cooling system - only two weeks ago a massive power outage caused the plant’s cooling system to fail for 29 hours. The incident was later attributed to a small animal that had entered an electrical switchboard. In addition, TEPCO conceded that on Friday they had lost the ability to cool the rods at one of the reactors for some three hours following a technical glitch.
Officials with the power company recently admitted that, although it has excavated seven holding tanks, it has struggled to contain groundwater from flooding into the plant’s damaged reactors, and it may take up to four years to correct that issue.
TEPCO is as of yet uncertain what caused one of its seven tanks to leak, though it plans to pump the remaining 13,000 cubic meters of water into other tanks within the next two weeks.
Japan’s government believes a full cleanup of the Fukushima site will take some 40 years, and the cleanup of contaminated areas will cost at least $13 billion. -www.shafaqna.com/English

Source:RT

SHAFAQNA (Shia International News Association) –A glitch at the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant caused its cooling system for spent fuel to go offline. Technicians worked quickly to restore systems amid fears of a potential meltdown.

It is the latest in a series of glitches to hit the nuclear site following the multiple meltdowns caused by the tsunami of 2011.

Tokyo Electric Power confirmed that the pool attached to the plant’s Number 3 reactor was no longer operational.
Technicians are now working to get the cooling system back online. TEPCO stated the pool was at a stable 15.1C, indicating the reactor poses no immediate danger.

If the temperature of spent nuclear fuel is allowed to increase unchecked it can potentially reach the point where a nuclear reaction begins, leading to a meltdown.

Two weeks ago a massive power outage at the facility caused cooling systems to go offline. The origin of the power cut was identified as a 25cm-long “rat-like animal” that was found dead on the switchboard, a TEPCO official told Kyodo news.

The TEPCO official went on to say stronger measures would be put in place to prevent small animals from entering the switchboard.

It took 30 hours for specialists to repair the problem and bring systems back online.

The Fukushima meltdown two years ago was the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl in 1986, forcing tens of thousands from their homes and spilling radiation over the surrounding countryside.-www.shafaqna.com/English

Source:RT