TOKYO: Japan deployed an upgraded Earth observation satellite for disaster response and security after it was launched on a new flagship H3 rocket Monday.
The H3 No. 3 rocket lifted off from the Tanegashima Space Center on a southwestern Japanese island and released its payload about 16 minutes later as planned, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, or JAXA, said during a livestream.
The Advanced Land Observation Satellite, or ALOS-4, is tasked primarily with Earth observation and data collection for disaster response and mapmaking. It’s also capable of monitoring military activity, such as missile launches, with an infrared sensor developed by the Defense Ministry.
The rocket appeared to fly as planned, and JAXA is expected to give further details at a news conference later Monday. The launch was initially planned for Sunday but was delayed due to bad weather at the launch site.
The ALOS-4 is a successor to the current ALOS-2 and can observe a much wider area. Japan will operate both for the time being.
The launch was the third of the H3 system, after the successful one on Feb 17. and the shocking failed debut flight a year earlier when the rocket had to be destroyed with its payload — a satellite that was supposed to be the ALOS-3.
Japan sees a stable, commercially competitive space transport capability as key to its space program and national security.
JAXA and its main contractor Mitsubishi Heavy Industries have been developing the H3 launch system as a successor to its current mainstay, H-2A, which is set to retire after two more flights. MHI will eventually take over H3 production and launches from JAXA and hopes to make it commercially viable by cutting the launch cost to about half of the H-2A.
Japan launches advanced Earth observation satellite on its new flagship H3 rocket
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Japan launches advanced Earth observation satellite on its new flagship H3 rocket
- ALOS-4 is capable of monitoring military activity, such as missile launches, with an infrared sensor developed by Japan’s defense ministry
- Japan sees a stable, commercially competitive space transport capability as key to its space program and national security
Hurricane Beryl kills seven as it churns toward Jamaica
- Beryl is the first storm since US National Hurricane Center records began to reach the Category 4 level in June
- Beryl had maximum sustained winds of 240 kilometers per hour as it headed toward Jamaica and the Cayman Islands on Tuesday
The powerful hurricane, which is rare so early in the Atlantic season, weakened Tuesday but was still an “extremely dangerous” Category 4 storm, and is expected to pass “near or over” Jamaica on Wednesday, meteorologists said.
Beryl is the first storm since US National Hurricane Center records began to reach the Category 4 level in June, and the earliest to reach Category 5 in July.
A hurricane warning was in place for the island nation, according to the NHC, which said rain and flash flooding was to be expected in addition to the life-threatening wind and high water levels.
Across Jamaica, emergency response preparations were underway, with shelters stocking up on provisions, people safeguarding their homes and boats being pulled from the water.
“I urge all Jamaicans to stock up on food, batteries, candles, and water. Secure your critical documents and remove any trees or items that could endanger your property,” Prime Minister Andrew Holness said on X.
Hurricane warnings were also issued in the Cayman Islands, which Beryl is “expected to pass near or over” on Wednesday night or early Thursday, according to the NHC.
In the Dominican Republic, massive waves were seen crashing into the shore along Santo Domingo as the storm passed to the country’s south, AFP photographers reported.
Beryl has already left a trail of death in its wake with at least three people killed in Grenada, where Beryl made landfall Monday, as well as one in St. Vincent and the Grenadines and three in Venezuela, officials said.
Grenada’s Prime Minister Dickon Mitchell said the island of Carriacou, which was struck by the eye of the storm, has been all but cut off, with houses, telecommunications and fuel facilities there flattened.
“We’ve had virtually no communication with Carriacou in the last 12 hours except briefly this morning by satellite phone,” Mitchell told a news conference.
The 35-square kilometer island is home to around 9,000 people. At least two people there died, Mitchell said, with a third killed on the country’s main island of Grenada when a tree fell on a house.
In St. Vincent and the Grenadines, one person on the island of Bequia was reported dead from the storm, and a man died in Venezuela’s northeastern coastal state of Sucre when he was swept away by a flooded river, officials there said.
World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus expressed concern about the region, saying on X that his organization “stands ready to support the national authorities with any health needs.”
Experts say it is extremely rare for such a powerful storm to form this early in the Atlantic hurricane season, which runs from early June to late November.
Warm ocean temperatures are key for hurricanes, and North Atlantic waters are currently between two and five degrees Fahrenheit (1-3 degrees Celsius) warmer than normal, according to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said Beryl “sets an alarming precedent for what is expected to be a very active hurricane season.”
NOAA said in late May that it expects this year to be an “extraordinary” hurricane season, with up to seven storms of Category 3 or above.
UN climate chief Simon Stiell, who has family on the island of Carriacou, said climate change was “pushing disasters to record-breaking new levels of destruction.”
“Disasters on a scale that used to be the stuff of science fiction are becoming meteorological facts, and the climate crisis is the chief culprit,” he said Monday, reporting that his parents’ property was damaged.
As of 2300 GMT, Beryl had maximum sustained winds of 240 kilometers per hour as it headed toward Jamaica and the Cayman Islands on Tuesday, according to the NHC.
A hurricane watch and tropical storm warnings have also been issued for parts of Haiti.
UN experts say Russia violated international law by imprisoning Wall Street Journal reporter
- Russia should provide Evan Gershkovich ‘proper reparations’ for holding him for over a year in detention without a legitimate basis
- Wall Street Journal reporter went on trial behind closed doors in Yekaterinburg, where he was arrested on March 29, 2023
GENEVA: United Nations human rights experts say Russia violated international law by imprisoning Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and should release him “immediately.”
The Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, made up of independent experts convened by the UN’s top human rights body, said there was a “striking lack of any factual or legal substantiation” for spying charges leveled against Gershkovich, 32.
The five-member group said Gershkovich’s United States nationality has been a factor in his detention, and as a result the case against him was discriminatory.
Matthew Gillett, the working group’s chair, said its opinion was grounded in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which was adopted in 1966 and nearly all UN member countries have ratified.
“The covenant is something that Russia has freely signed up to and accepted the obligations under, and therefore as a matter of international law, it is obliged to implement the provisions of the covenant,” he said in an interview.
Gillett said Russia should provide Gershkovich “proper reparations” for holding him for over a year in detention without a legitimate basis.
Gershkovich went on trial behind closed doors on Wednesday in the Russian city Yekaterinburg, where he was arrested on March 29, 2023, while on a reporting trip on espionage charges that he, his employer and the US government vehemently deny.
The UN group said in its findings that because the detention of Gershkovich was arbitrary, no trial should take place. The group cannot compel any response from Russia, and is mandated to look into cases in which countries violate international commitments that they make.
“Taking into account all the circumstances of the case, the appropriate remedy would be to release Mr. Gershkovich immediately and accord him an enforceable right to compensation and other reparations, in accordance with international law,” the United Nations group said.
Almar Latour, the publisher of the Wall Street Journal, commended the UN panel and said: “Evan’s wrongful detention is a flagrant violation of his fundamental human rights.”
“As the UN working group recognizes, Russia is violating international law by imprisoning Evan for his journalism, silencing critical reporting, and depriving him of due process and other rights,” Latour said, calling on the US and world leaders “to do everything they can to bring Evan home now.”
Gershkovich, the US-born son of immigrants from the USSR, is the first Western journalist arrested on espionage charges in post-Soviet Russia. Russian authorities, without presenting evidence, claimed he was gathering secret information for the United States.
He faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted, which is almost a certainty since Russian courts convict more than 99 percent of the defendants who come before them.
The State Department has declared Gershkovich “wrongfully detained,” thereby committing the government to assertively seek his release.
Russia has signaled the possibility of a prisoner swap involving Gershkovich, but it says a verdict — which could take months — would have to come first.
Leaders of Russia and China to meet in Central Asian summit in a show of deepening cooperation
- Putin and Xi last got together in May when the Kremlin leader visited Beijing to underscore their close partnership
- Putin wants to show that Russia is not isolated over Western sanctions from the invasion of Ukraine in 2022
Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping will meet Thursday for the second time in as many months as they travel to Kazakhstan for a session of an international group founded to counter Western alliances.
Putin and Xi last got together in May when the Kremlin leader visited Beijing to underscore their close partnership that opposes the US-led democratic order and seeks to promote a more “multipolar” world.
Now they’ll be attending a session of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in the Kazakh capital of Astana. A look at the summit:
What is the Shanghai Cooperation Organization?
The Shanghai Cooperation Organization was established in 2001 by China and Russia to discuss security concerns in Central Asia and the wider region, Other members are Iran, India, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Observer states and dialogue partners include Turkiye, Saudi Arabia and Egypt.
Who’s attending this year?
Besides Putin and Xi, and summit host President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, other leaders there will be Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif of Pakistan, President Shavkat Mirziyoyev of Uzbekistan, President Emomali Rakhmon of Tajikistan, and President Sadyr Zhaparov of Kyrgyzstan. President Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus will attend because his nation is becoming a full member.
Iran is still choosing a successor to President Ebrahim Raisi, killed in a helicopter crash in May, with a runoff election Friday, so acting President Mohammad Mokhbar will attend.
Other guests of the SCO include President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkiye and President Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan.
Also present will be UN Secretary-General António Guterres, who is visiting Central Asia. Guterres wants “to position the UN as an inclusive organization that’s talking to all the big clubs,” said Alexander Gabuev, director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center.
What SCO leaders won’t be there?
Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India is sending his foreign minister. Indian media reports speculated the recently reelected Modi was busy with the parliament session that began last week. He attended the recent Group of Seven summit in Italy, and some reports also speculated he wants to balance India’s relationship with Russia and the West.
What are their goals?
Putin wants to show that Russia is not isolated over Western sanctions from the invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
An arrest warrant has been issued for him by the International Criminal Court for war crimes, accusing him of personal responsibility for abductions of children from Ukraine. Kazakhstan is not party to the Rome Statute and thus is not obliged to arrest him.
For Putin, the meeting is about “prestige and the symbolic optics that he’s not alone,” Gabuev said.
The meeting is another chance for Putin and Xi to demonstrate the strong personal ties in their “strategic partnership” as they both face soaring tensions with the West. They have met more than 40 times.
Putin’s meeting with Xi in May showed how China has offered diplomatic support to Moscow and is a top market for its oil and gas. Russia has relied on Beijing as a main source of high-tech imports to keep its military machine running.
The SCO helps China project its influence, especially across Central Asia and the Global South. Xi called for “bridges of communication” between countries last week and wants to further promote China as an alternative to the US and its allies.
Erdogan could use the meeting to hold talks with Putin, who has postponed several visits to Turkiye. The leader of the NATO member has balanced relations with both Russia and Ukraine since the war began, frequently offering to serve as a mediator.
For host Kazakhstan and the other Central Asian nations, the meeting is a way to further their cooperation with bigger, more powerful neighbors. Kazakhstan, for instance, frequently engages with both neighboring Russia and China, while also pursuing links with the West, with visits this year from US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and British Foreign Secretary David Cameron.
What will be discussed?
Countering terrorism is a key focus. Russia had what it has called two terrorist attacks this year, with more 145 people killed by gunmen at a Moscow concert hall in March, and at least 21 people were killed in attacks on police and houses of worship in the southern republic of Dagestan in June. In the March violence, the US warned Russian officials about the possibility of an attack — information that was dismissed by Moscow.
The SCO is not a collective security or economic alliance, and there are “significant security differences between its members,” said Nigel Gould-Davies, a senior fellow for Russia and Eurasia with the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London and a former British ambassador to Belarus. The “principal value” of the organization lies in the optics of non-Western countries gathering together, he added.
Gabuev agreed, saying the SCO is a place for conversation rather than a platform where “collective decisions are made, implemented and have an impact.”
This year, close Moscow ally Belarus will become a full member of the organization, and its admission indicates how Russia wants to bolster blocs of non-Western countries. Gould-Davies said the SCO is raising its profile “by growing its membership rather than by deepening its cooperation.”
Are there tensions within the SCO?
Political differences among some of SCO members — such as India and Pakistan over disputed Kashmir — also make it difficult to reach collective agreement on some issues.
China has backed Moscow amid the fighting in Ukraine, but at a meeting of the SCO in 2022, Putin referred to Beijing’s unspecified “concerns” over the conflict. India’s Modi then called for an end to the fighting without voicing explicit disapproval of Moscow’s action.
The Central Asian countries balance relations with Russia and China while also remaining on good terms with Western nations. None of the five former Soviet republics in Central Asia have publicly backed the war, although all abstained on a UN vote condemning it.
Guterres may use the meeting to talk to Putin about how Russia is “disrupting the coherence of the UN,” Gabuev said. Russia has vetoed UN Security Council sanctions on monitoring North Korea and a vote on stopping an arms race in outer space.
With Guterres unlikely to visit Moscow, the Astana meeting is likely his best chance to speak to Putin, Gabuev added.
Will Ukraine be discussed?
Neither Ukraine nor any of its Western backers are attending, and major talks — or breakthroughs — on the war are not expected.
But because it’s rare these days for any meeting to include the heads of Russia, China, Turkiye and the UN, the possibility of talks about the war might be raised, at least on the peripheries of the summit, probably behind closed doors.
There could be “a lot of sideline discussions on Ukraine, as it is a big issue which concerns all of us,” a senior Kazakh official told The Associated Press. The official was not authorized to talk publicly, and thus spoke on condition of anonymity.
Gabuev said Putin will try to show there’s a “big club of countries” that are “ambivalent” toward the war in Ukraine.
Japan’s top court to rule on forced sterilizations
- Regional courts have mostly agreed in recent years that the eugenics law constituted a violation of Japan’s constitution
TOKYO: Japan’s top court will issue a ruling Wednesday on a defunct eugenics law under which the government forcibly sterilized around 16,500 people, causing decades of suffering for the victims.
The Supreme Court is hearing five appeal cases from victims seeking compensation and an apology after the government sought a single ruling on different decisions made by lower courts.
Japan’s government acknowledges that around 16,500 people were forcibly sterilized under a eugenics law in place between 1948 and 1996.
The law allowed doctors to sterilize people with inheritable intellectual disabilities to “prevent the generation of poor quality descendants.”
Another 8,500 people were sterilized with their consent, according to authorities, although lawyers say even those cases were likely “de facto forced” because of the pressure individuals faced.
A 1953 government notice said physical restraint, anaesthesia and even “deception” could be used for the operations.
“I’ve spent an agonizing 66 years because of the government surgery. I want my life back that I was robbed of,” said Saburo Kita, who uses a pseudonym.
Kita was convinced to undergo a vasectomy when he was 14 at a facility housing troubled children.
He couldn’t bring himself to tell his wife when he was married years later, only confiding in her shortly before she died in 2013.
“Only when the government faces up to what it did and takes responsibility will I be able to accept my life, even just a little,” Kita, now 81, told a news conference last year.
Although the operations were still carried out, the number slowed to a trickle in the 1980s and 1990s before the law was scrapped in 1996.
That dark history was thrust back under the spotlight when a woman in her 60s sued the government in 2018 over a procedure she had undergone at age 15, opening the floodgates for similar lawsuits.
The government, for its part, “wholeheartedly” apologized after legislation was passed in 2019 stipulating a lump-sum payment of 3.2 million yen (around $20,000 today) per victim.
However, survivors say that is too little to match the severity of their suffering and have taken their fight to court.
Apart from Wednesday’s Supreme Court ruling, several other cases are at different stages in lower courts.
Regional courts have mostly agreed in recent years that the eugenics law constituted a violation of Japan’s constitution.
However, judges have been divided on whether claims are valid beyond a 20-year statute of limitations.
Some have said that applying such limitations is extremely cruel and unfair, ordering the state to pay damages. But others have dismissed cases, saying the window for pursuing damages had closed.
“If the Supreme Court decides that the statute of limitations isn’t applicable at all, then basically all plaintiffs in subsequent cases, and victims who haven’t sued yet or aren’t even aware of damage they had suffered, can benefit,” Kita’s lawyer, Naoto Sekiya, told AFP.
Critics say the eugenics law laid the foundation for discriminatory attitudes against people with disabilities that linger still.
“The ruling will hopefully pave the way for active steps to be taken by the government to eliminate the kind of eugenic mentality that it created,” Sekiya said.
New Cuban radar site near US military base could aid China spying, think tank says
WASHINGTON: Cuba is building a new radar site likely to be capable of spying on the United States’ nearby Guantanamo Bay naval base, a Washington think tank found using satellite images, the latest upgrade to the country’s surveillance capabilities long thought to be linked to China.
The base, under construction since 2021 but previously not publicly reported, is east of the city of Santiago de Cuba near the El Salao neighborhood, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) said in a report published on Monday and later referenced by the Wall Street Journal.
Cuban Vice Foreign Minister Carlos Fernandez de Cossio denied that Cuba was harboring Chinese military interests on the island.
“(The) Wall Street Journal persists in launching an intimidation campaign related to #Cuba. Without citing a verifiable source or showing evidence, it seeks to scare the public with tales about Chinese military bases that do not exist and no one has seen, including the US embassy in Cuba,” de Cossio said on social media.
Cuba’s proximity to the US and its southern military bases makes it a good location for China, Washington’s top strategic rival, to seek to collect signals intelligence. CSIS called the new site a “powerful tool” that once operational will be able to monitor air and maritime activity of the US military.
The facility, known as a circularly disposed antenna array with a diameter of approximately 130 to 200 meters could be able to track signals as far as 3,000-8,000 nautical miles (3,452 – 9,206 miles) away, CSIS said.
“Access to such an outpost would provide China with a highly strategic vantage point near Naval Station Guantanamo Bay,” it said, referring to the key US military base 45 miles (73 km) east of Santiago, Cuba`s second largest city.
Such arrays were used heavily during the Cold War, but Russia and the US have since decommissioned most of their sites in favor of more advanced technology, CSIS said. However, the think tank said China has been actively building new such arrays, including on reef outposts in the South China Sea.
Last year, Biden administration officials said Beijing has been spying from Cuba for years and made a push to upgrade its intelligence collection capabilities there beginning in 2019, allegations that both Beijing and Havana have denied.
State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel declined to comment on the report, but told a briefing on Tuesday that the US was “closely monitoring” China’s presence in Cuba.
“We know that the PRC (People’s Republic of China) is going to keep trying to enhance its presence in Cuba and the United States is going to keep working to disrupt it,” Patel said without giving details.
The White House National Security Council and the US Defense Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
China’s embassy in Washington said the US had repeatedly “hyped up” the idea of China’s spying and surveillance from Cuba.
“Such claims are nothing but slander,” embassy spokesperson Liu Pengyu said.
CSIS also said satellite images from March 2024 show Cuba’s largest active signals intelligence site at Bejucal, located in the hills near Havana and linked to suspected Chinese intelligence activity for years, has undergone “major updates” in the past decade, calling it a “clear indication of an evolving mission set.”
“Collecting data on activities like military exercises, missile tests, rocket launches, and submarine maneuvers would allow China to develop a more sophisticated picture of US military practices,” CSIS said.
It said certain radar systems installed in Cuba in recent years are in range to monitor rocket launches from Cape Canaveral and NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, a likely interest for China as it seeks to catch up to US space launch technology.
