#SootinClaimon.Com : ขอบคุณแหล่งข้อมูล : หนังสือพิมพ์ The Nation.

https://www.nationthailand.com/international/40014235

“I told (Prime Minister Fumio) Kishida our position to oppose the discharge remains exactly the same,” said Hiroshi Kishi, head of Japan’s national fisheries cooperatives. “We just hope people in the fisheries industry will be able to continue fishing with peace of mind.”

Japan’s fisheries federation said on Tuesday that it remained firmly opposed to the government’s plan of dumping toxic water from the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant into the Pacific.
 

“I told (Prime Minister Fumio) Kishida our position to oppose the discharge remains exactly the same,” Hiroshi Kishi, head of the national fisheries cooperatives, told reporters after his meeting with the prime minister.

Kishida, for his part, said the government will be fully responsible for the impact of the discharged treated water, Kishi said.

Earlier in the day, Kishi held talks with Industry Minister Koichi Hagiuda, during which he also expressed his ardent opposition to the plan to dump contaminated water from the crisis-hit plant into the ocean.

“We just hope people in the fisheries industry will be able to continue fishing with peace of mind,” Kishi said after meeting Hagiuda in the federation’s office in Tokyo.

Hagiuda’s visit to the organization was his first since the decision was made in April last year to release low-level radioactive water into the sea from around the spring of 2023.

File photo taken on Nov. 12, 2011 shows the exterior of Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Fukushima Prefecture, Japan. (Xinhua)

During the meeting, Hagiuda reportedly explained ways to ensure safety and measures to tackle reputational damage to food products.

The minister said the government will keep its promise to the fishermen that the crippled plant will not dump the water into the ocean without their understanding and that it will “create a very large fund to support their businesses,” Kishi said.

Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc., the operator of the crippled nuclear plant that underwent core meltdowns after being pummeled by a devastating earthquake-triggered tsunami in 2011, said that it is running out of storage tanks to hold water used to cool the melted-down cores.

The Japanese government has been looking into ways to dispose of more than 1 million tons of water used to cool the cores, with the plant struggling to store the water, the amount of which is rising by around 150 tons per day.

After cooling the melted-down cores, the radioactive water is treated before being stored in the tanks by an Advanced Liquid Processing System (ALPS). This process, however, does not remove radioactive tritium and some other radioactive materials.

Much to the chagrin of the international community, including some of Japan’s closest neighbors, Japan unilaterally decided in April last year that it plans to release radioactive water that has accumulated at the crisis-hit plant into the Pacific. The toxic water, stored in tanks at the plant in Japan’s northeast, is expected to soon reach capacity.

The tainted water contains radioactive tritium as a result of being used to cool down melted nuclear fuel at the plant in Fukushima Prefecture.

The plan is to release the water through a tunnel under the seabed into the Pacific roughly 1 km away from the stricken plant. The controversial plan is proposed to begin in the spring of 2023, much to the consternation of local fisheries and the international community.

Japan’s fisheries industry has on numerous occasions voiced its opposition to the plan, as it will almost certainly cause further damage to the industry’s reputation.

Moreover, some of Japan’s closest neighbor countries have voiced strong concerns over the plan.

Japan’s government had been considering a number of feasible alternative plans other than its unilateral proposal to just dump radioactive water into the ocean.

These options included injecting the toxic water deep into the ground, releasing it into the atmosphere after vaporizing it, or making it into a solid state and burying it underground

Published : April 06, 2022

By : Xinhua

#SootinClaimon.Com : ขอบคุณแหล่งข้อมูล : หนังสือพิมพ์ The Nation.

https://www.nationthailand.com/international/40014233

It requires a simple majority of votes from the 100-seat Senate to confirm Jackson to be the first African American female justice on the Supreme Court.

The U.S. Senate could confirm Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson for the Supreme Court as soon as Thursday, according to Majority Leader and Democrat Chuck Schumer.

“Once I file cloture, the stage will be set for the Senate to close debate on Judge Jackson’s nomination by Thursday,” Schumer said on Tuesday from the Senate floor. “A vote on final confirmation will then follow.”

Senate Republicans, most of whom have opposed Jackson’s nomination, could potentially delay a final vote until Friday.

Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said on Tuesday that he intends to use the upcoming full floor debate to discuss “why Judge Jackson’s apparent judicial philosophy is not well suited to our highest Court.”

McConnell also warned that Biden would have to tack to the center if he expects to fill another vacancy on the Supreme Court should Republicans win back control of the Senate in the midterms.

Jackson, 51, was nominated by Biden late February to succeed liberal Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, who is about to retire this summer.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters on Tuesday that Biden “is looking forward to Judge Jackson getting confirmed.”

A former public defender, Jackson currently sits on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, often referred to as the nation’s second most powerful court.

It requires a simple majority of votes from the 100-seat Senate to confirm Jackson to be the first African American female justice on the Supreme Court.

This year, the Supreme Court will rule on cases involving a series of major issues, including abortion, affirmative action, and gun control.

The Supreme Court is the final appellate court of the U.S. judicial system, with the power to review and overturn lower court decisions, and is also generally the final interpreter of federal law, including the country’s constitution.

The justices have life tenure and can serve until they die, resign, retire, or are impeached and removed from office.

Published : April 06, 2022

By : Xinhua

#SootinClaimon.Com : ขอบคุณแหล่งข้อมูล : หนังสือพิมพ์ The Nation.

https://www.nationthailand.com/international/40014230

Drone footage filmed on Tuesday (April 5) shows Mariupol residents waiting in long queues for humanitarian aid from Russia outside a former shopping centre.

The southern Ukrainian port of Mariupol, once a city of 400,000 people, has been almost completely flattened by prolonged Russian bombardment aimed at breaking the resistance of the city’s Ukrainian defenders.

Hundreds of thousands of people have been hiding in basements with no running water, food, medicine or power, unable or unwilling to leave. Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said there was “nothing left” of the city.

Russia’s Defence Ministry has blamed “Ukrainian nationalists” for what it called the “humanitarian catastrophe” in Mariupol.

The ministry said on Tuesday that its forces would “liberate” Mariupol from Ukrainian “nationalists,” the RIA news agency reported.

Another agency, Interfax, quoted the ministry as saying that the Russian side had proposed that Ukrainian forces leave the city but they refused to do so.

People are still only able to flee the besieged Ukrainian city of Mariupol on foot or by private car as efforts to organize mass evacuations by bus to safer parts of Ukraine have failed, Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said.

Buses cannot reach the first part of the evacuation route from Mariupol, which is “nearly 80 km (50 miles) – people have to either walk or find a way to make this journey in a private car,” she said on national television.

Published : April 06, 2022

By : Reuters

#SootinClaimon.Com : ขอบคุณแหล่งข้อมูล : หนังสือพิมพ์ The Nation.

https://www.nationthailand.com/international/40014229

At a Hong Kong public hospital’s mortuary, funeral director Hades Chung claimed the body of a COVID-19 victim on behalf of his family who lives in mainland China. The family could not arrive in time due to quarantine measures. 

Chan, accompanied by his colleague in full protective gear, opened the coffin and spread paper money on the body as part of a traditional ritual before sending it to a cremation site. 

“I feel heartbroken,” Chan, 31, who has been working round the clock to help bereaved families, as the global financial hub battles a surge in COVID-19 deaths that is overwhelming its funeral parlours.

Since the fifth wave of coronavirus hit the former British colony this year, it has reported more than a million infections and nearly 8,000 deaths. Scenes of bodies stacked in emergency rooms next to patients have shocked many as places in mortuaries run out.

“I’ve never seen so many bodies that they have been piled up together,” said another funeral director Lok Chung, 37, who has been organising about 40 funerals in March, up from roughly 15 in an average month.

“I’ve never seen the family members been so upset, so disappointed,” he said.

Housewife Kate, 36 said the March death of her father-in-law from COVID-19 took a huge emotional toll on the family and added that her biggest regret was being unable to visit him in hospital.

“When they (the doctors and nurses) thought my father-in-law’s situation was not ok, we rushed to the hospital, but it was too late. As he was in the isolation ward, we couldn’t see him for the last time,” she told Reuters at the funeral ceremony.

The surge in COVID-19 deaths has resulted in a long wait for documents, including death certificates, to be processed, according to Chung.

Traditional wooden coffins are running short, and also in demand are the traditional paper replicas of items, from cars to homes and other personal effects, burnt as offerings at Chinese funerals for use in the afterlife. Much of the delay is blamed on a logjam in transport from the neighbouring southern Chinese city of Shenzhen, which supplies many of the items, but is now fighting its outbreak of COVID-19.

The border with Hong Kong is largely closed due to the disease.

China supplies more than 95% of the 250 to 300 coffins Hong Kong needs each day, authorities said.

It received more than 3,570 coffins during the period from March 14 to 26, after the government of the Chinese-ruled city coordinated with mainland authorities.

The six crematoriums now run almost round the clock to get through nearly 300 cremations a day or double the usual figure. And public mortuaries have been expanded to accommodate 4,600 bodies from 1,350 earlier, authorities said.

Non-government body Forget Thee Not has partnered with an eco-friendly coffin maker LifeArt Asia, to donate 300 such coffins and 1,000 boxes of preservatives to six public hospitals. Each coffin is made of cardboard with recycled wood fibres and can take a weight up to 200 kg (441 lb).

Placed in coffins or body bags, the powder-like preservative turns to gas, to keep the body in its natural state for up to five days.

“We are in the eye of the storm,” said LifeArt Asia’s chief executive, Wilson Tong. “And amid this storm, we are trying to provide a moment of respite.”

Published : April 06, 2022

By : Reuters

#SootinClaimon.Com : ขอบคุณแหล่งข้อมูล : หนังสือพิมพ์ The Nation.

https://www.nationthailand.com/international/40014228

President of El Salvador Nayib Bukele announced his intention to build a maximum-security prison for 20,000 gang members during a graduation ceremony for army cadets on Tuesday (April 5).

Bukele warned of gangs that he will keep rationing food in jail unless the violence ends. “Let’s see how long those “home-boys” last in there. I swear to God that they won’t eat a (grain of) rice. Let’s see how long they last.” Said Bukele.

El Salvador’s Congress approved on March 27 emergency powers that temporarily suspended some constitutional protections after the Central American country recorded a sharp rise in killings attributed to criminal gangs.

In 2015, El Salvador recorded a rate of 103 homicides for every 100,000 people, one of the highest in the world. Figures show that the rate has fallen steadily since Bukele took office in 2019.

Yet, critics say Bukele’s administration has been marked by democratic backsliding, as he has sought to consolidate his control over the legislative and judicial branches.

Director at Cristosal Human Rights Organization, Abraham Abrego, says the government’s actions put the youth at risk.

“Everyone can potentially be a gang member or suspected gang member. Young people are vulnerable, and we are seeing this in buses and houses raids. Just because they are minors and because of their appearances, (the government) is prompting abuses against minors and children,” he said.

Bukele’s government has also been accused of brokering a pact with the two main gangs, offering gang members better prison conditions, money and other benefits in exchange for them reducing homicide rates and giving electoral support to Bukele’s party at legislative elections. He has repeatedly denied those accusations.

Published : April 06, 2022

#SootinClaimon.Com : ขอบคุณแหล่งข้อมูล : หนังสือพิมพ์ The Nation.

https://www.nationthailand.com/international/40014226

Hundreds of Ukrainian refugees who fled to Mexico were transferred to a sports centre that was converted into a government shelter in the northern city of Tijuana, authorities said on Monday (April 5), as they wait to be allowed to cross the border and enter the United States.

Some 400 Ukrainians, about 30% of whom are children, arrived in Tijuana on Saturday (April 2) and Sunday (April 3) after entering the country through airports in Cancun and Mexico City, said Enrique Lucero, Tijuana’s migration affairs director.

They joined a growing number of Ukrainians who have escaped war in their home country and have crammed into improvised camps near the international port of entry, which connects Tijuana with California.

As of Sunday night, Lucero said an estimated 1,700 Ukrainians have arrived in Tijuana in recent weeks.

“We are hoping the United States will increase the number of migrant affairs and border personnel so that the flow will be faster,” Lucero said. “That way in three to four weeks the situation could be neutralised.”

The increase of Ukrainians in Tijuana comes as U.S. officials are ramping up efforts to process migrants and asylum seekers, regardless of nationality, amid an expected increase in arrivals as the United States lifts a pandemic-era policy that effectively shut down asylum at the border.

In the shelter, families of migrants rested, ate, and played.

”I’m really surprised about how people have been helping us here, the conditions of the shelter are perfect,” Ukrainian citizens seeking asylum in the U.S. Yevhen Shyshkin told Reuters.

On Monday, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Commissioner Chris Magnus said in a statement that the agency is ramping up personnel and resources at the southwest border, without providing details about the number of agents being deployed or specific locations for deployments.

Lucero said he was hopeful that the U.S. officials would speed up Ukrainian migrants’ processing and that the shelter should ease housing issues until then.

In late March, U.S. President Joe Biden said that the United States would accept up to 100,000 Ukrainians to resettle in the country this year.

Published : April 06, 2022

By : Reuters