Sokor confident water flow from Fukushima nuke plant ‘negligible’

SEOUL —Japan’s plan to release treated water from the Fukushima nuclear plant would have “negligible consequences” for South Korea, Seoul said Friday, as it tried to assuage rising public concern.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) this week gave the green light for a decades-long project to discharge accumulated water from the plant, which was devastated by an earthquake and tsunami that hit the eastern coast of Japan in 2011.

But the plan has encountered widespread public opposition and protests in South Korea, and even panic-buying of salt based on fears that the Fukushima water will pollute the ocean and the salt sourced from seawater.

South Korea conducted its own separate review of Tokyo’s plan, and found Japan would meet or exceed key international standards, policy coordination minister Bang Moon-kyu told reporters at a press conference on Friday.

The study, which focused on whether the discharge would affect South Korean waters, found it would have “negligible consequences”, the minister said.

It would take up to 10 years for the treated water released from Fukushima into the Pacific Ocean to circulate back into the seas around the Korean peninsula, Bang said.

By then, the radiation level “is projected... to be scientifically irrelevant”, he added.

Iran summons UK envoy over new sanctions

TEHRAN—Iran has called in Britain’s envoy in Tehran to protest against “destructive and interventionist actions” after London had announced new sanctions, Iranian state media said.

Foreign Secretary James Cleverly said earlier on Thursday sanctions against Iran over alleged human rights violations and hostile actions against its opponents on UK soil will expand.

“In response to the continued destructive and interventionist actions and statements of Britain, Isabelle Marsh, the charge d’affaires of the British Embassy in Tehran, was summoned to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs,” official news agency IRNA reported.

Iran’s foreign ministry “considered the statements and positions of the British authorities as well as the recent sanctions... as an illegal and interventionist action”, it added.

The new British sanctions regime will expand existing penalties imposed by creating new criteria under which individuals and entities can be hit.

They include any Iranian activities “undermining peace, stability and security in the Middle East and internationally”, and the “use and spread of weapons technologies from Iran”.

Russia has been accused of using Iranian-made attack drones in Ukraine, while Tehran is a close strategic ally of Syria, and backs Lebanon’s Hezbollah. AFP

IAEA head Rafael Grossi will visit Seoul from Friday, but the agency’s review has not alleviated strong resistance in South Korea to the discharge plan, with some opposition lawmakers even going on hunger strike in protest.

“Japan wants to release the wastewater into the sea because it’s the easiest and cheapest way to do so,” Woo Wonshik, an MP who has been on hunger strike at the parliament in Seoul since June 26, told AFP.

Decommissioning over decades

Several of the reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi plant went into meltdown after cooling systems were overwhelmed by the massive 2011 tsunami.

The resulting nuclear accident was the worst since Chernobyl, and the clean-up has lasted more than a decade, with most of the areas declared off-limits due to radiation now reopened.

Decommissioning the plant itself will take decades more, but the facility’s operator TEPCO faces the immediate problem of more than 1.33 million cubic meters of water accumulated at the site.

The water is a mixture of groundwater, rain that seeps into the area, and water used for cooling. AFP

SYMBOL OF POWER. Participants run with bulls – the symbol of fertility and power in ancient times – during the first ‘encierro’ or bull run of the San Fermin festival in Pamplona, 395 kms north of Madrid, on Friday. Thousands attend the week-long festival with six bulls released at 8:00 a.m. evey day to run from their corral to the bullring through the narrow streets of the old town over an 850-meter course while runners ahead of them try to stay close to the bulls without falling over or being gored. AFP

Zelensky meeting Turkey’s Erdogan to push goals

PRAGUE, Czech Republic – President Volodymyr Zelensky is set to hold talks with Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Friday on the latest leg of a tour to push Ukraine’s bid to join NATO and secure more weapons from allies.

The talks in Istanbul come on the eve of the 500th day since Russian’s invasion, with Zelensky admitting a widely anticipated Ukrainian counteroffensive was progressing slowly.

“But nevertheless, we are advancing, not retreating, like Russians,” Zelensky told reporters. “We now have the initiative.”

The talks with Erdogan -- an important broker in the conflict -- are to focus on an expiring deal to ship Ukrainian grain across the Black Sea as well as next week’s NATO summit.

Analysts also expect Zelensky to push Erdogan to give a green light for Sweden’s NATO membership ahead of the July 11-12 meeting of the military alliance in Lithuanian capital Vilnius.

Turkey is blocking Sweden’s candidacy because of a longstanding dispute about Stockholm’s perceived lax attitude toward alleged Kurdish militants living in the Nordic country.

Zelensky is seeking NATO accession for his own country, which has been battling a Russian invasion since February 2022, and has said he wants the summit to lead to an “invitation” to join the bloc.

Both Zelensky and Erdogan want to extend a United Nations and Turkeybrokered deal with Russia under which Ukraine has been allowed to ship grain to global markets during the war.

The deal will expire on July 17 unless Russia agrees to its renewal.

Erdogan has tried to leverage good working relations with both Zelensky and Russian President Vladimir Putin to mediate an end to the war.

Turkey staged two early rounds of peace negotiations and is pushing for more talks.

Before visiting Prague on Thursday, Zelensky traveled to Sofia to discuss weapons deliveries with Bulgaria, a major supporter and ammunition producer.

Cluster bombs

In Washington, US media reported that the Pentagon was preparing a new package of arms and ammunitions that could include controversial cluster bombs.

The weapons, rockets which disperse multiple small explosives over a wide radius, have already been used by Russian and Ukrainian forces in the war.

Ukrainian Defence Minister Oleksiy Reznikov tweeted that he had spoken by phone to US Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin. AFP

UN pleads for Haiti intervention force, warns of growing vigilantism

UNITED Nations, United States—UN representatives on Thursday (Friday in Manila) repeated their plea for an intervention force to stabilize Haiti, highlighting the growing number of extrajudicial killings of suspected gang members as a sign of the crisis-wracked nation’s insecurity.

Haiti, the Western Hemisphere’s poorest nation, has seen compounding humanitarian, political and security crises, with gangs controlling most of the capital and terrorizing the population with frequent kidnappings, rape and murder.

For months, UN chief Antonio Guterres and Haiti’s Prime Minister Ariel Henry have called for an interna- tional force to help quell the mounting violence, but there has been little action as no country has stepped up to lead the operation.

Without a sufficient security apparatus to combat the rampant gangs, Haitians in the capital Port-au-Prince have begun taking matters into their own hands, UN Haiti envoy Maria Isabel Salvador told the Security Council on Thursday.

The UN office in Haiti, known as BINUH, “has documented the killing of at least 264 alleged gang members by vigilante groups,” she said, noting the trend as adding “another layer of complexity” to the country’s security situation.AFP

Iraq group implies not involved in disappearance of hostage Palestinian gunman kills Israeli soldier

BAGHDAD, Iraq—Iraq’s pro-Iran armed faction Kataeb Hezbollah, accused by Israel of holding an IsraeliRussian academic, implied on Thursday that it was not involved in her disappearance.

The group said it was doing everything it could to uncover the fate of “Zionist hostage or hostages” in the country.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office on Wednesday accused Kataeb Hezbollah of holding Elizabeth Tsurkov, who has been missing in Iraq for months.

Kataeb Hezbollah is a powerful faction of Iraq’s Hashed al-Shaabi, Iranbacked former paramilitaries that were

Migrants forced from Tunisia port into southern desert—witnesses

SFAX, Tunisia—Hundreds of African migrants were stranded in dire conditions in a desert area of southern Tunisia on Thursday after being expelled from the port city of Sfax, witnesses told AFP.

Racial tensions flared this week into violence targeting migrants from sub-Saharan African countries, with dozens fleeing the city or being forcibly evicted.

“I came because I’d heard that human rights were respected in Tunisia, but what is happening shows that this is not the case,” said 27-year-old Issa Kone, from Mali.

The unrest erupted after the funeral of a 41-year-old Tunisian man who was stabbed to death Monday in Sfax in an altercation between locals and migrants.

Three suspects were subsequently arrested, all from Cameroon.

The stabbing lit a powder keg, with residents saying they are fed up with the presence of migrants in the city, where many gather before setting out in makeshift boats for Europe. AFP integrated into the Iraqi security forces in recent years.

In the group’s first reaction to the Israeli accusation on Thursday, its spokesman Abu Ali al-Askari issued an ambiguous press release on Telegram.

“The admission by the prime minister of the Zionist entity (Israel) concerning the presence of an Israeli security agent hostage in Iraq is a very dangerous indicator,” it said.

“The security organizations concerned should expose networks linked to this entity and bring them to justice,” it added.

“In turn, Kataeb Hezbollah will work tirelessly to find out the fate of the Zi- onist hostage or hostages in Iraq... to discover more about the intentions of the criminal gang which facilitates their movements in a country... that prohibits and criminalizes any relationship” with Israel.

The statement from Netanyahu’s office said Tsurkov had visited Iraq “on her Russian passport at her own initiative pursuant to work on her doctorate and academic research on behalf of Princeton University in the US”.

According to an Iraqi intelligence source, Tsurkov was kidnapped in Baghdad “at the beginning of Ramadan”, the Muslim fasting month which this year started on March 23. AFP

NABLUS, Palestinian Territories—A Palestinian gunman shot dead an Israeli soldier near a settlement in the occupied West Bank on Thursday, the army said, in an attack claimed by a Palestinian militant group.

Shilo Yosef Amir, 22, was the second Israeli soldier to be killed within a week as violence again surges in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

He was killed during a “routine activity” near the settlement of Kedumim, the army said in a statement.

The assailant was later “neutralized” by Israeli forces, it said. Palestinian officials were not able to immediately confirm his condition.

In an earlier statement the army said the assailant had fled after the shooting.

The incident began when Israeli forces stopped a “suspicious vehicle for inspection”, the earlier statement said.

“During the inspection, an assailant inside the vehicle opened fire toward them. The forces responded with live fire and the assailant fled,” the statement said.

“The IDF (army) soldiers and civilian security personnel pursued the assailant... and neutralised him,” it added. AFP