TOKYO: Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida on Friday canceled a trip to Central Asia after earthquake scientists warned the country should prepare for a possible “megaquake.”
The Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) issued the advisory on Thursday after eight people were on injured by a tremor of magnitude 7.1 in the south.
Kishida was due Friday to travel to Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Mongolia and had planned to attend a regional summit.
“As the prime minister with the highest responsibility for crisis management, I decided I should stay in Japan for at least a week,” he told reporters.
Kishida added that the public must be feeling “very anxious” after the JMA issued its first advisory under a new system drawn up following a major magnitude 9.0 earthquake in 2011 which triggered a deadly tsunami and nuclear disaster.
“The likelihood of a new major earthquake is higher than normal, but this is not an indication that a major earthquake will definitely occur,” the JMA said.
Traffic lights and cars shook and dishes fell off shelves during Thursday’s earthquake off the southern island of Kyushu, but no serious damage was reported.
The Fire and Disaster Management Agency said eight people were hurt — including several hit by falling objects.
Sitting on top of four major tectonic plates, the Japanese archipelago of 125 million people sees some 1,500 quakes every year, most of them minor.
Even with larger tremors the impact is generally contained thanks to advanced building techniques and well-practiced emergency procedures.
The government has previously said a megaquake has a roughly 70 percent probability of striking within the next 30 years.
It could affect a large swath of the Pacific coastline of Japan and threaten an estimated 300,000 lives in the worst-case scenario, experts say.
“While earthquake prediction is impossible, the occurrence of one earthquake usually does raise the likelihood of another,” experts from Earthquake Insights said.
But they added that even when the risk of a second earthquake is elevated, it is “still always low.”
On January 1, a 7.6-sized jolt and powerful aftershocks hit the Noto Peninsula on the Sea of Japan coast, killing at least 318 people, toppling buildings and knocking out roads.
In 2011, a mammoth 9.0-magnitude undersea quake off northeastern Japan triggered a tsunami that left around 18,500 people dead or missing.
It sent three reactors into meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear plant, causing Japan’s worst post-war disaster and the most serious nuclear accident since Chernobyl.
A future megaquake could emanate from the vast Nankai Trough off eastern Japan that in the past has seen major jolts, often in pairs, with magnitudes of eight and even nine.
This included one in 1707 — until 2011 the largest recorded — when Mount Fuji last erupted, in 1854, and then a pair in 1944 and 1946.
Japan PM scraps overseas trip after ‘megaquake’ advisory
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Japan PM scraps overseas trip after ‘megaquake’ advisory
- Sitting on top of four major tectonic plates, the Japanese archipelago of 125 million people sees some 1,500 quakes every year, most of them minor
Rival protests in Seoul over South Korea’s impeached President Yoon Suk Yeol
- Yoon Suk Yeol’s presidential powers are suspended but he remains in office
- He has not complied with various summonses by authorities investigating whether martial law
Yoon’s presidential powers are suspended but he remains in office. He has not complied with various summonses by authorities investigating whether martial law, which he declared late on Dec. 3 and rescinded hours later, constituted insurrection.
He has also not responded to attempts to contact him by the Constitutional Court, which decides whether to remove him from office or restore his presidential powers. The court plans to hold its first preparatory hearing on Friday.
Saturday’s pro- and anti-Yoon protests were held in Gwanghwamun in the heart of the capital. There were no clashes as of 4 p.m. (0700 GMT).
Tens of thousands of anti-Yoon protesters, dominated by people in their 20s and 30s, gathered around 3 p.m., waving K-Pop light sticks and signs with sayings such as “Arrest! Imprison! Insurrection chief Yoon Suk Yeol” to catchy K-pop tunes.
“I wanted to ask Yoon how he could do this to a democracy in the 21st century, and I think if he really has a conscience, he should step down,” said 27-year-old Cho Sung-hyo.
Several thousand pro-Yoon protesters, chiefly older and more conservative people opposing Yoon’s removal and supporting the restoration of his powers, had gathered since around midday.
“These rigged (parliamentary) elections eat away at this country, and at the core are socialist communist powers, so about 10 of us came together and said the same thing — we absolutely oppose impeachment,” said Lee Young-su, a 62-year-old businessman.
Yoon had cited claims of election hacking and “anti-state” pro-North Korean sympathizers as justification for imposing the martial law, which the National Election Commission has denied.
Pakistan militant raid kills 16 soldiers: intelligence officials
- Pakistani Taliban claim responsibility for the attack, saying in a statement it was staged ‘in retaliation for the martyrdom of our senior commanders’
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan militants launched a brazen overnight raid on an army post near the Afghan border, two intelligence officials said Saturday, killing 16 soldiers and critically wounding five more.
“Over 30 militants attacked an army post” in the Makeen area of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, one senior intelligence official said on condition of anonymity. “Sixteen soldiers were martyred and five were critically injured in the assault.”
“The militants set fire to the wireless communication equipment, documents and other items present at the checkpoint,” he said, before retreating from the two-hour assault which took place 40 kilometers (24 miles) from the Afghan border.
A second intelligence official also anonymously confirmed the same toll of dead and wounded.
The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, saying in a statement it was staged “in retaliation for the martyrdom of our senior commanders.”
Myanmar ethnic rebels say captured junta western command
- Ann would be the second regional military command to fall to ethnic rebels in five months
- Fighting has rocked Rakhine state since the Arakan Army attacked security forces in November last year
BANGKOK: A Myanmar ethnic rebel group has captured a military regional command in Rakhine state, it said, in what would be a major blow to the junta.
The Arakan Army (AA) had “completely captured” the western regional command at Ann on Friday after weeks of fighting, the group said in a statement on its Telegram channel.
Ann would be the second regional military command to fall to ethnic rebels in five months, and a huge blow to the military.
Myanmar’s military has 14 regional commands across the country with many of them currently fighting established ethnic rebel groups or newer “People’s Defense Forces” that have sprung up to battle the military’s 2021 coup.
Fighting has rocked Rakhine state since the AA attacked security forces in November last year, ending a ceasefire that had largely held since the putsch.
AA fighters have seized swathes of territory in the state that is home to China and India-backed port projects and all but cut off state capital Sittwe.
The AA posted photos of a man whom it said was the Ann deputy regional commander, in the custody of its fighters.
AFP was unable to confirm that information and has contacted the AA’s spokesman for comment.
AFP was unable to reach people on the ground around Ann where Internet and phone services are patchy.
In decades of on-off fighting since independence from Britain in 1948 the military had never lost a regional military command until last August, when the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA) captured the northeastern command in Lashio in Shan state.
Myanmar’s borderlands are home to myriad ethnic armed groups who have battled the military since independence for autonomy and control of lucrative resources.
Last month the UN warned Rakhine state was heading toward famine, as ongoing clashes squeeze commerce and agricultural production.
“Rakhine’s economy has stopped functioning,” the report from the UN Development Programme said, projecting “famine conditions by mid-2025” if current levels of food insecurity were left unaddressed.
Joe Biden approves $571 million in defense support for Taiwan
- The US is bound by law to provide Taiwan with the means to defend itself despite the lack of formal diplomatic ties between Washington and Taipei
- Taiwan went on alert last week in response to what it said was China’s largest massing of naval forces in three decades
WASHINGTON: US President Joe Biden on Friday agreed to provide $571.3 million in defense support for Taiwan, the White House said, while the State Department approved the potential sale to the island of $265 million worth of military equipment.
The United States is bound by law to provide Chinese-claimed Taiwan with the means to defend itself despite the lack of formal diplomatic ties between Washington and Taipei, to the constant anger of Beijing.
Democratically governed Taiwan rejects China’s claims of sovereignty.
China has stepped up military pressure against Taiwan, including daily military activities near the island and two rounds of war games this year.
Taiwan went on alert last week in response to what it said was China’s largest massing of naval forces in three decades around Taiwan and in the East and South China Seas.
Biden had delegated to the secretary of state the authority “to direct the drawdown of up to $571.3 million in defense articles and services of the Department of Defense, and military education and training, to provide assistance to Taiwan,” the White House said in a statement without providing details.
Taiwan’s defense ministry thanked the United States for its “firm security guarantee,” saying in a statement the two sides would continue to work closely on security issues to ensure peace in the Taiwan Strait.
The Pentagon said the State Department had approved the potential sale to Taiwan of about $265 million worth of command, control, communications, and computer modernization equipment.
Taiwan’s defense ministry said the equipment sale would help upgrade its command-and-control systems.
Taiwan’s defense ministry also said on Saturday that the US government had approved $30 million of parts for 76 mm autocannon, which it said would boost the island’s capacity to counter China’s “grey-zone” warfare.
US Senate approves Social Security change despite fiscal concerns
- The Senate in a 76-20 bipartisan vote shortly after midnight approved the Social Security Fairness Act
- The House of Representatives last month approved the bill in a 327-75 vote
WASHINGTON: The US Congress early on Saturday passed a measure to boost Social Security retirement payments to some retirees who draw public pensions — such as former police and firefighters — which critics warned will further weaken the program’s finances.
The Senate in a 76-20 bipartisan vote shortly after midnight approved the Social Security Fairness Act, which would repeal two-decades-old provisions that can reduce benefits for people who also receive a pension.
The House of Representatives last month approved the bill in a 327-75 vote, which means that Senate approval sends it to Democratic President Joe Biden to sign into law. The White House did not immediately respond to a question about whether Biden intended to do so.
The bill will overturn a decades-old change to the program that had been made to limit federal benefits to some higher-earning workers with pensions. Over time, growing numbers of municipal employees such as firefighters and postal workers also saw their payments capped.
Most Americans do not participate in pension plans, which pay a defined benefit, and instead are dependent on what money they can save and Social Security. Just one in ten US private sector workers have pension plans, according to Labor Department data.
The new provisions impact about 3 percent of Social Security beneficiaries — totaling a little more than 2.5 million Americans — and the workers and retirees affected by these provisions are key constituencies for lawmakers and their powerful advocacy groups have pushed for a legislative fix.
Some of them could receive hundreds of dollars more a month in federal benefits as a result of the bill, retirement experts said.
Some federal budget experts warned the change could hurt the program’s already shaky finances as the bill’s price tag is approximately $196 billion over the next decade, according to an analysis by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office.
Emerson Sprick, associate director of economic policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center, said in an interview, “the fact that there is such overwhelming support in Congress for exactly the opposite of what policy researchers agree on is pretty frustrating.”
Instead of scrapping the current formulas for determining retirement benefits for these workers, revisions have been floated, as well as more accurate communication from the Social Security Administration on how much money these public sector employees should expect.
The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a nonpartisan fiscal think tank, is also warning the extra cost will affect the program’s future.
“We are racing to our own fiscal demise,” the group’s president, Maya MacGuineas, said in a statement.
“It is truly astonishing that at a time when we are just nine years away from the trust fund for the nation’s largest program being completely exhausted, lawmakers are about to consider speeding that up by six months.”
Republican Senator Ted Cruz on the Senate floor on Wednesday said the bill as written will “throw granny over the cliff.”
“Every senator who votes to impose $200 billion dollars of cost on the Social Security Trust Fund, you are choosing to sacrifice the interest of seniors who paid into Social Security and who earned those benefits,” he said.
Bill supporters said Social Security’s future can be addressed at a later time.
Asked about the solvency implications pf this legislation, Senator Michael Bennet, a supporter of the bill, said: “Those are much longer term issues that we have to find a way to address together.”
