TOKYO: A Japanese court ruled Friday that the plant operator not the government was responsible for the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster, ordering the former to pay damages.
The district court in Chiba near Tokyo said the government “was able to foresee” but “may not have been able to avoid the accident” caused by the tsunami that smashed into the Fukushima Daiichi power plant.
Triggered by a 9.0-magnitude earthquake, the water overwhelmed reactor cooling systems, sending three into meltdown at the plant in eastern Japan.
Radiation was spewed over a wide area, leaving vast swathes of land uninhabitable in Japan’s worst postwar disaster and the world’s most serious nuclear accident since Chernobyl in 1986.
Chiba court judge Masaru Sakamoto turned down the demand of 42 plaintiffs for the government to pay compensation.
However, the court ordered operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) to pay a total of 376 million yen ($3.3 million), much less than the the 2.8 billion yen plaintiffs had sought.
Around 12,000 people who fled over radiation fears have filed various group lawsuits against the government and TEPCO.
Cases have revolved around whether the government and TEPCO, both responsible for disaster prevention measures, could have foreseen the scale of the tsunami.
Plaintiffs’ lawyers have argued they could have anticipated the size of the wave, citing a 2002 government report on long-term seismic activity on the Japanese archipelago.
Dozens of class-action lawsuits have been filed seeking compensation from the government over the disaster, and the latest ruling is only the second verdict.
In a verdict made in March by the Maebashi District Court, north of Tokyo, the judge ordered both the government and the plant operator to pay compensation, though the figure was far below plaintiffs’ demands.
In June, three former TEPCO executives went on trial, the only people ever to face a criminal court in connection with the disaster.
Prosecutors had twice refused to press charges against the men, citing insufficient evidence and little chance of conviction.
But a judicial review panel composed of ordinary citizens ruled in 2015 that the trio should be put on trial, which compelled prosecutors to press on with the case under Japanese law.
Japan government not responsible for Fukushima: court
Japan government not responsible for Fukushima: court
French publisher recalls dictionary over ‘Jewish settler’ reference
- The entry in French reads: “In October 2023, following the death of more than 1,200 Jewish settlers in a series of Hamas attacks”
- The four books are subject to a recall procedure and will be destroyed, Hachette said
PARSI: French publisher Hachette on Friday said it had recalled a dictionary that described the Israeli victims of the October 7, 2023 attacks as “Jewish settlers” and promised to review all its textbooks and educational materials.
The Larousse dictionary for 11- to 15-year-old students contained the same phrase as that discovered by an anti-racism body in three revision books, the company told AFP.
The entry in French reads: “In October 2023, following the death of more than 1,200 Jewish settlers in a series of Hamas attacks, Israel decided to tighten its economic blockade and invade a large part of the Gaza Strip, triggering a major humanitarian crisis in the region.”
The worst attack in Israeli history saw militants from the Palestinian Islamist group kill around 1,200 people in settlements close to the Gaza Strip and at a music festival.
“Jewish settlers” is a term used to describe Israelis living on illegally occupied Palestinian land.
The four books, which were immediately withdrawn from sale, are subject to a recall procedure and will be destroyed, Hachette said, promising a “thorough review of its textbooks, educational materials and dictionaries.”
France’s leading publishing group, which came under the control of the ultra-conservative Vincent Bollore at the end of 2023, has begun an internal inquiry “to determine how such an error was made.”
It promised to put in place “a new, strengthened verification process for all its future publications” in these series.
President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday said that it was “intolerable” that the revision books for the French school leavers’ exam, the baccalaureat, “falsify the facts” about the “terrorist and antisemitic attacks by Hamas.”
“Revisionism has no place in the Republic,” he wrote on X.
Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,221 people, with 251 people taken hostage, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
Authorities in Gaza estimate that more than 70,000 people have been killed by Israeli forces during their bombardment of the territory since, while nearly 80 percent of buildings have been destroyed or damaged, according to UN data.
Israeli forces have killed at least 447 Palestinians in Gaza since a ceasefire took effect in October, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.
