Germany: Socialist Left Party elects new leaders

Journalist Ines Schwerdtner and former lawmaker Jan van Aken were picked to lead the party into next year's election. The Left Party has been rocked by the departure of a key figurehead and plummeting voter support.

Ines Schwerdtner and Jan van Aken were picked by Left members at a party conference in Halle

Hendrik Schmidt/dpa/picture alliance

Germany's troubled Left Party announced two new leaders on Saturday — journalist Ines Schwerdtner and former parliamentary lawmaker Jan van Aken.

The pair were elected by members of the post-communist party at a national conference in the eastern city of Halle.

Schwerdtner received 79.8% of the votes, while van Aken won 88%, local media reported.
Why is this important?

The socialist Left Party has struggled for survival in recent years over the rise of the far-right in its traditional heartland of eastern German states. The far-right AfD has perhaps overshadowed the Left Party due to its strict anti-migration stance, with the Left Party also dealing with internal divisions.

One of the Left's most prominent members, Sahra Wagenknecht, quit last year to form a new populist anti-immigration party in her name: the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW). The BSW also has far-left economic principles, but a more conservative approach on migration in comparison to the Left Party.

Wagenknecht took a large proportion of the parliamentary party with her, which caused the Left to lose its official status in the German lower house, the Bundestag.

Sahra Wagenknecht has become a thorn in the side of Germany's socialist Left PartyImage: Christian Mang/REUTERS

Those misfortunes prompted outgoing leaders Janine Wissler and Martin Schirdewan to step down in August.

The Left also suffered heavy defeats in regional elections in Germany's eastern states last month.

What do we know about the new leaders?

Schwerdtner was born in Werdau, Saxony, in 1989 — the year the Berlin Wall fell.

She worked as a journalist and was co-founder and editor-in-chief of the socialist magazine "Jacobin."

Until 2022, Schwerdtner was involved in a group that campaigned to reform rent laws in Germany's capital, Berlin.

She only joined the Left in summer 2023 and ran for the party in the European elections in June but failed to secure enough support.

In her application speech on Saturday, Schwerdtner insisted the Left was still "the force of solidarity" in Germany.

She called for a party "that can change life for the better" and that represents "ordinary people."

Schwerdtner also singled out the Left as "the voice of the East," referring to eastern German states.

Jan van Aken (R) joined the party in 2006, while Ines Schwerdtner signed up last yearImage: Hendrik Schmidt/dpa/picture alliance

Van Aken, meanwhile, sat as a lawmaker in the Bundestag for the Left Party from 2009 to 2017.

Before that, he was a biological weapons inspector at the United Nations and a genetic engineering expert at Greenpeace.

In his application speech, Van Aken insisted the Left Party's public support was "much livelier than the elections show," noting how there was "so much energy, so much fire" at the grassroots level.

Calling for a fairer distribution of wealth and more solidarity in society, the 63-year-old told members: "I think there should be no billionaires."

He also called for unity within the party after months of disquiet, adding "From now on, there's no more fighting."


What is the Left Party?

The Left Party (known as Die Linke in Germany) was founded out of a merger in 2007 of two left-wing parties.

Through one of its predecessors, the party is the direct descendant of the Marxist-Leninist ruling party of former East Germany.

The Left campaigns for democratic socialism as an alternative to capitalism, and has 28 seats in the 736-seat Bundestag, but their parliamentary faction was dissolved last year as a result of the party split.

This meant a severe loss of influence in the Bundestag, although its members still sit in parliament, some as non-aligned.

The declared goal of the Left Party is a full return to the Bundestag after Germany's 2025 federal election.

To do so, it would need to secure 5% of the national vote in the next election, scheduled for September 28.

In 2021, it achieved 4.9% support but was allowed to continue sitting in the Bundestag, thanks to a little-known rule.

Nationally, the Left is currently polling at 3-4%.

mm/wd (dpa, AFP)

Mozambique: Opposition figures killed amid election protests14 hours ago14 hours ago

A lawyer and a candidate associated with Mozambican opposition figure Venancio Mondlane were gunned down in downtown Maputo. It comes after Mondlane accused the ruling party of fraud in the October 9 election.

Two people associated with Mozambique's opposition were gunned down in downtown Maputo

Image: ALFREDO ZUNIGA/AFP

Two associates of leading Mozambican opposition candidate Venancio Mondlane were gunned down in Mozambique's capital, Maputo, on Saturday.

It comes after an October 9 election after which the opposition accused the ruling Frelimo party of electoral fraud.

What do we know about the killings?

Lawyer Elvino Dias and candidate Paulo Guambe were in a car in downtown Maputo when they were surrounded by other vehicles and shot at, according to witnesses.

Witnesses said that two gunmen fired 20 bullets in the attack.

Guambe was a candidate for the Podemos party that backed Mondlane for president in the October 9 election.

Podemos head Albino Forquilha confirmed the killings to AFP news agency.

Police said an investigation had begun but did not immediately confirm the identity of the two men killed.

They said that a woman was also in the car and that she had been taken to hospital.

Police spokesperson Leonel Muchina said the victims had earlier been at a local bar, after which they were followed. He said that the killings might have been related to interactions with other patrons at the bar.

On Saturday evening, Mondlane joined around 100 supporters who held a vigil in Maputo.

Mondlane attended a vigil for the slain lawyer and candidate alongside dozens of supportersImage: ALFREDO ZUNIGA/AFP

Mozambique awaits election results amid fraud allegations

The results for Mozambique's general election are due to be published on October 24.

The ruling Frelimo party, which has governed Mozambique since its independence from Portugal in 1975, claimed victory shortly after polling day.

Mondlane has alleged fraud and called for Mozambicans to take to the streets on Monday.

Last year, Dias accused authorities of fraud in municipal elections that were won by Frelimo.

A civil society observer group, Mais Integridade, said that Dias had expressed fears over a plan to assassinate him.

Reactions to the killings

Mais Integridade called the attack "repugnant," describing it as an "act of intimidation" that undermined democracy.

The Frelimo party said that it rejected "vehemently this macabre act" and called on "all authorities to do everything in their powers to shed light on this affair."

Podemos said that the killings were "further clear evidence of the lack of justice that we are all subjected to."

The European Union issued a statement condemning the murders and called for the perpetrators to be brought to justice.

"In a democracy, there is no place for politically motivated killings," it said.

Meanwhile, Portugal's parliament said that it "vehemently" condemned the killings and urged Mozambican authorities to safeguard "social peace and democracy."

sdi/rm (AFP, Lusa, Reuters, AP)

US investigates leak of classified documents on Israel's plans to strike Iran

The US is investigating the recent leak of classified documents pertaining to Israel’s plans to attack Iran, the Associated Press reported Sunday. The documents, which are marked top secret, note that Israel was still moving military assets in place to conduct a military strike in response to Iran's ballistic missile attack on Oct. 1.

Issued on: 20/10/2024 

The United States is investigating an unauthorized release of classified documents that assess Israel's plans to attack Iran, three US officials told The Associated Press. A fourth US official said the documents appear to be legitimate.

The documents are attributed to the US Geospatial Intelligence Agency and National Security Agency, and note that Israel was still moving military assets in place to conduct a military strike in response to Iran's blistering ballistic missile attack on Oct. 1. They were sharable within the “Five Eyes,” which are the US, Great Britain, Canada, New Zealand and Australia.

The documents, which are marked top secret, were posted to the Telegram messaging app and first reported by CNN and Axios. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

The investigation is also examining how the documents were obtained – including whether it was an intentional leak by a member of the US intelligence community or obtained by another method, like a hack – and whether any other intelligence information was compromised, one of the officials said. As part of that investigation, officials are working to determine who had access to the documents before they were posted, the official said.


07:55

The US has urged Israel to take advantage of its elimination of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar and press for a cease-fire in Gaza, and has likewise urgently cautioned Israel not to further expand military operations in the north in Lebanon and risk a wider regional war. However, Israel's leadership has repeatedly stressed it will not let Iran's missile attack go unanswered.

In a statement, the Pentagon said it was aware of the reports of the documents but did not have further comment.

The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment over the leak of the two documents.

The documents first appeared online Friday via a channel on Telegram, claiming they had been leaked by someone in the US intelligence community, then later the US Defense Department. The information appeared entirely gathered through the use of satellite image analysis.

One of the two documents resembled the style of other material from the US National Geospatial Intelligence Agency leaked by Jack Teixeira, an Air National Guardsman who pleaded guilty in March to leaking highly classified military documents about Russia’s war on Ukraine and other national security secrets.

The Telegram channel involved in the leak identifies itself as being based in Tehran, Iran's capital. It previously published memes featuring Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and material in support of Tehran’s self-described “Axis of Resistance,” which includes Middle East militant groups armed by the Islamic Republic.

(AP)

Demonstrators rally across France in support for mass rape victim Gisèle Pelicot
Europe

Demonstrators gathered across France on Saturday to show their support for mass rape victim Gisèle Pelicot whose ongoing trial saw her ex-husband as well as some 50 defendants – aged from 26 to 74 – take the stand. The 72-year-old has been widely praised for her bravery in facing her alleged rapists and for making the hearings public to highlight the persistent scourge of violence against women in France.


Issued on: 20/10/2024 - 

People gather to take part in a protest against sexual violence, in Paris, France on October 19, 2024. © Christophe Ena, AP

Women and men demonstrated together Saturday in Paris and other French cities in support of Gisèle Pelicot and against sexual violence highlighted by the harrowing trial of her ex-husband and dozens of other men being prosecuted for rapes while she was drugged and unconscious.

The demonstrations outside Paris' criminal court, in the southeastern city of Lyon and elsewhere underscored how Pelicot's courage in speaking out about her ordeal is inspiring people in France and beyond, even as they've been horrified by the scale and brutality of the abuse she suffered over the course of a decade.

Since the Sept. 2 beginning of the extraordinary trial, during which Pelicot has faced 51 of her alleged rapists, she has been praised for her composure and decision to keep the hearings public — after the court initially suggested that they be held behind closed doors.

“She has decided to make this an emblematic trial,” said Elsa Labouret, one of the Paris demonstrators and a spokesperson for the women’s group “Osez le féminisme!” (Dare to be feminist!)

Read morePelicot trial: French court hears how mass rape went undetected for years

"Victims don’t have to do what she did. They have a right to have their anonymity protected. It’s not necessarily a duty of any victim. But what she decided to do is very, very important because now we cannot ignore the violence that some men can resort to,” she said.

Demonstrators denounced what they said is laxity from the French justice system toward sexual violence and fears of being raped and assaulted that they said stalk women day-in, day-out.

Placards they held up read: “Shame must change sides,” “Stop the denial,” “Not your punching ball” and “We are all Gisele. Are you all Dominique???”

Dominique Pelicot admitted during the trial that for nearly a decade, he repeatedly drugged his unwitting wife and invited dozens of men to rape her while she lay unconscious in their bed.

He told the court that he also raped Gisèle and that the 50 other men also standing trial understood exactly what they were doing. She has divorced him since his arrest. The trial is expected to run until December.

The defendants range in age from 26 to 74. Many of them deny having raped Gisèle Pelicot, saying her then-husband manipulated them or that they believed she was consenting.

Read more French mass rape trial shocks the nation: Pelicot and the banality of evil

“You can never know who is a rapist or who is a monster. Like, it could be your neighbor, it could be anyone," said Paris demonstrator Khalil Ndiaye, a student.

“It’s really disgusting somehow to think that it could be people that you know, people that you hang out with every day and, like, they could do things like that.”

He said he regards Gisèle Pelicot as an icon.

“Because in her pain, she decided not to give up and not to just lie down,” he said. “She decided to fight. And we’re all here today because she’s fighting and she’s inspiring us to fight, too.”

(AP)

Anti-whaling activist Paul Watson asks France's Macron for political asylum

Sea Shepherd founder Paul Watson has asked the French president to grant him asylum as he fights a Japanese attempt to have him extradited from Greenland, where the prominent anti-whaling activist was arrested in July, his advocacy group told a press conference in Paris on Wednesday.


Issued on: 16/10/2024 

Protesters gather at Place de la République in Paris to demand the release of activist Paul Watson on September 4, 2024. © Aurelien Morissard, AP

Anti-whaling activist Paul Watson, who is wanted in Japan, has asked French President Emmanuel Macron to grant him "political asylum", Watson's group, Sea Shepherd, said on Wednesday.

The request was made in a letter to the French head of state several days ago, Lamya Essemlali, head of Sea Shepherd France, told a press conference in Paris.

The 73-year-old US-Canadian campaigner was arrested in July in Nuuk, the capital of the Danish autonomous territory of Greenland.

From prison, Watson "wrote a letter to Emmanuel Macron", Essemlali told reporters, adding that "Paul is asking for political asylum in France".


Watson was arrested when his ship, the John Paul DeJoria, docked to refuel in Nuuk on its way to intercept a new Japanese whaling factory vessel in the North Pacific, according to the Captain Paul Watson Foundation (CPWF).

He was detained on a 2012 Japanese arrest warrant, which accuses him of causing damage to a whaling ship in 2010 and injuring a Japanese crew member with a stink bomb intended to disrupt the whalers' activities.

France, where Watson lived until his arrest, has urged Copenhagen not to extradite him.

Read morePaul Watson’s detention extended: Ruling judge ‘refuses to look at evidence’, NGO says

At the press conference, a member of Watson's defence team, French lawyer Francois Zimeray, said the activist had only "denounced the illegal nature" of Japanese whaling.

Watson "will never get a fair trial" if he is extradited, the lawyer said, adding that "if he is imprisoned in Japan, he will never get out alive".

In mid-September, Watson's lawyers contacted the UN special rapporteur on environmental defenders, claiming that he risked "being subjected to inhumane treatment" in Japanese prisons.

(AFP)

‘Timebomb’ ship highlights hazard of dangerous cargoes


By AFP
October 18, 2024

An explosion of ammonium nitrate devastated the port of Beirut 

- Copyright GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/AFP MARIO TAMA

Antoine GUY

A damaged ship, spurned by European ports because of its potentially explosive cargo, has been stranded in the North Sea for weeks while authorities work out what to do with it.

The Maltese-flagged Ruby is the latest example of an unwanted vessel left in limbo because no-one dares to handle it. Such vessels, sometimes nicknamed “timebombs”, remain stuck for weeks, even months.

Ruby, a Handymax bulk carrier, has 20,000 tonnes of ammonium nitrate on board. That is more than seven times the amount of ammonium nitrate -– used in fertilisers as well as in explosives — that detonated in Lebanon in 2020, devastating the port of Beirut.

After the vessel set off from the Russian port of Kandalaksha on August 22, it ran into a storm in the Barents Sea and limped, damaged, into the Norwegian port of Tromso for damage inspection.

It was subsequently ordered to leave and proceed with the aid of a tug to another port elsewhere for repairs.

It was turned away by Lithuania, which insisted the ship must offload its volatile cargo first, and continued southwards.

Since September 25, it has been anchored off southeastern England near the Dover Strait, which is one of world’s busiest shipping lanes.

– Combustion agent –

British coastguards said the Ruby was seaworthy, stressing: “The vessel has appropriate safety certificates approved by the vessel’s flag state and is able to make its own way.”

But it has remained stuck in mooring since September, with its mainly Syrian crew still on board.

The Ruby’s Dubai-based managers said they hoped to offload the cargo in a UK port so the vessel could be put in dry dock for repairs.

“It has been logistically challenging to find an adequate solution, which partly explains the delay,” the managing company told AFP.

Ports willing to accept a potentially hazardous load are few and far between.

“People associate it (the Ruby) with Beirut but I think it’s entirely possible to manage this situation,” said Eric Slominski, an expert in shipping dangerous goods.

The Ruby’s cargo was destined to make fertiliser while the ammonium nitrate in Beirut had been specifically intended to manufacture explosives, he pointed out.

“It’s not a product you can mess around with but it isn’t explosive,” Nicolas Tanic, from French marine pollution organisation Cedre, said of the Ruby’s cargo.

“It’s a combustion agent for fuelling fires,” said Tanic, whose organisation has analysed the ship’s load.

– Erika disaster –

He said the chemical compound’s Russian origins and haunting memories of the Beirut port disaster had triggered alarm and a media frenzy.

But the French shipowners’ body said ports could have other reasons too for spurning the Ruby.

“If a vessel gets grounded in your channel, it shuts your port. If it grounds at one of your docks, the dock’s unusable for a couple of months. It’s a big risk to accept a vessel in difficulty,” said managing director Laurent Martens.

In addition, unloading a cargo like the Ruby’s is a lengthy operation that “costs hundreds of thousands of euros”, Martens explained.

In the wake of the Erika disaster in 1999 — when an oil tanker of that name broke apart off the western coast of France — the European Union tightened its laws on maritime safety.

The Erika spilled around 20,000 tonnes of heavy fuel oil into the sea, polluting 400 kilometres (250 miles) of coastline and killing between 150,000 and 300,000 seabirds.

EU states are now required to provide places of refuge for ships in distress to avoid environmental pollution.

But the rules are subject to interpretation.

In 2012, France denied access to the MSC Flaminia for a month while it drifted, crewless, off the coast of Brittany after a fire on board the ship, which was carrying 151 containers labelled “dangerous” goods.

The stricken vessel was ultimately towed to the Germany port of Wilhelmshaven.

In 2015, the same North Sea port provided haven to the Purple Beach, which had burst into flames with 5,000 tonnes of fertiliser on board.

The Purple Beach spent nearly two years in Germany while it was inspected and the authorities cast around for somewhere to send the fertiliser.

Global coral bleaching event biggest on record: US agency

By AFP
October 18, 2024


Coral bleaching -- such as that seen here around Lizard Island on Australia's Great Barrier Reef -- happens when the water is too warm - Copyright AFP/File DAVID GRAY

A global episode of heat-related coral bleaching has grown to the largest on record, US authorities said Friday, sparking worry for the health of key marine ecosystems.

From the beginning of 2023 through October 10, 2024, “roughly 77 percent of the world’s reef area has experienced bleaching-level heat stress,” Derek Manzello of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) told AFP.

When ocean water is too warm — such as during heat waves which have hit areas from Florida to Australia in the past year — coral expel their algae and turn white, an effect called “bleaching” that leaves them exposed to disease and at risk of dying off.

The algae provide coral with food and nutrients, as well as their their captivating colors.

Manzello said the ongoing bleaching event — the fourth since 1998 — had surpassed the previous record of 65.7 percent in half the time, and “is still increasing in size.”

The consequences of coral bleaching are far-reaching, affecting not only the health of oceans but also the livelihoods of people, food security and local economies.

Severe or prolonged heat stress leads to corals dying off, but there is hope for recovery if temperatures drop and other stressors such as overfishing and pollution are reduced.

The last record had been set during the third global bleaching event, which lasted from 2014 to 2017, Manzello said, and followed previous events in 1998 and 2010.

– Climate change –

NOAA’s heat-stress monitoring is based on satellite measurements from 1985 to the present day. It declared the latest mass bleaching event in April 2024.

Pepe Clarke, with the environmental nonprofit WWF, said at the time that the “scale and severity of the mass coral bleaching is clear evidence of the harm climate change is having right now.”

Manzello on Friday said NOAA had confirmed reports of mass coral bleaching from 74 countries or territories since February 2023.

“This includes locations in the northern and southern hemisphere of the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans,” he told AFP by email.

Australian authorities announced in March that the famed Great Barrier Reef was experiencing its fifth mass bleaching event in eight years.

“Corals can recover if the marine heat stress is not too severe, or too prolonged,” Manzello and colleague Jacqueline De La Cour told AFP in April.

But there are “lasting physiological impacts for the survivors” and recovery “becomes increasingly challenging as bleaching events become more frequent and more severe,” the pair added.

Coral are marine invertebrates made up of individual animals called polyps which have a symbiotic relationship with the algae that live inside their tissue.

The EU’s Copernicus climate monitor reported last month that more than 20 percent of the world’s oceans experienced at least one severe to extreme marine heatwave in 2023.

The average annual maximum duration of such a heat event has doubled since 2008 from 20 to 40 days, its “Ocean State Report” said.

More broadly, it also warned that the pace of ocean warming has almost doubled since 2005, as global temperatures rise because of human-caused climate change.

The confirmation of the new record comes just ahead of a major UN biodiversity summit in Colombia, where an emergency special session has been called on the sidelines to discuss the mass bleaching event.

Global stakeholders will present up-to-date scientific analysis at the event and discuss efforts at “thwarting functional extinction” of reefs, according to an invitation.

New rules drive Japanese trucking sector to the brink


By AFP
October 19, 2024

In Japan, 90 percent of goods are transported by road - Copyright AFP Richard A. Brooks
Hiroshi HIYAMA

Fujio Uemura has to rest after driving fish all night to Tokyo, under new rules that trucking firms and experts say are crippling Japan’s logistics sector and risk pushing up prices for consumers.

The regulations are aimed at easing the stress of the badly paid hard slog of trucking, and making it more attractive to young people in ageing Japan, where some 90 percent of goods are transported by road.

“Before, I’d drive as long as I could before taking a break,” said Uemura after his 1,000-kilometre (620-mile) journey from Oita in southern Japan with his load of fresh fillets.

“Long hours don’t bother me. It’s my job,” the slim 59-year-old told AFP after leaping athletically down from the cab of his refrigerated 10-tonne vehicle.

Since April, truck drivers’ annual overtime has been capped at 960 hours, or 80 hours per month on average, alongside new rules including on break stops.

Previously, there was no effective limit and many drivers worked around the clock to expand their meagre take-home pay.

But it can be a lonely and unhealthy life, with long, irregular hours on the road contributing to high rates of heart disease and strokes.

Despite its importance to the world’s fourth-biggest economy, the trucking industry occupies a weak position in Japan’s economic hierarchy.

Truck drivers generally work 20 percent longer than the average worker but earn around 10 percent less, or around 4.5 million yen ($30,000) per year. Almost one in five works 60 hours a week or more.



– ‘Urgent issue’ –



Most of Japan’s roughly 63,000 trucking businesses are small players with 10 or fewer vehicles, and even before the new rules most struggled.

They survived by cutting prices or offering free loading and unloading, often by hand. Drivers frequently wait for hours at no extra cost to customers.

But the new rules are the final straw, said Haruhiko Hoshino, a senior official at the Japan Trucking Association.

“Reducing drivers’ work hours means turning down jobs. Turning down jobs means that items will not be delivered,” Hoshino told AFP.

Without meaningful reforms Japan by 2030 will lack the capacity to move as much as 34 percent of its domestic cargo, according to a study often cited by the government.

“The government is tackling this issue with all of its strength,” transport minister Tetsuo Saito said last month, calling it an “urgent issue”.

The effects were already visible with reports of airports struggling to secure enough aviation fuel earlier this year and fruit and vegetables arriving late.

Firms have teamed up to share lorries, an unthinkable step before the new rules, while dairy companies are looking at standardising containers.

The government’s answer to what has been dubbed the “2024 Problem” is for companies to cut trucking firms some slack and not to insist on discounts and freebies.



– ‘We are the victims’ –



But ultimately the answer is for users and ordinary consumers to pay higher prices, said Hiroaki Oshima, professor at Ryutsu Keizai University.

This could be a headache for Japan’s new Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba after elections on October 27.

His predecessor Fumio Kishida suffered from poor popularity in part because of inflation squeezing incomes.

“In the end, who, right now, should pay for their fair share? I believe it’s the society, it’s those who send and receive cargos, it’s consumers,” said Oshima, who is also a senior advisor at NX Logistics Research Institute and Consulting.

Uemura used to spend mornings collecting fish products at various places in his home region and brought them to Tokyo on his own.

Now his employer Portline Service sends separate drivers for the pick-ups before Uemura drives off for Tokyo in the afternoon.

Portline’s boss Katsuya Doi said this costs him an additional 1.3 million yen ($8,750) or more every month.

“We are the victims. It should not be just us or our clients who have to bear the cost,” he told AFP.

Doi is working with rival firms to share assignments, negotiate fee increases and host public seminars to encourage consumer awareness.

Nonetheless, Uemura’s 35-year-old son is taking to the wheel after quitting shipbuilding.

“I told him that this is not a job that lets you sleep a lot,” Uemura said with a chuckle.

“You earn more with your hard work.”

Japan shifting back to nuclear to ditch coal, power AI


By AFP
October 18, 2024

The Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear plant, one of 54 shuttered in Japan after the Fukushima disaster, is preparing to restart - Copyright AFP Yuichi YAMAZAKI
Simon STURDEE

Glinting in the sun by the world’s biggest nuclear plant, the Sea of Japan is calm now. But as the huge facility gears up to restart, Kashiwazaki-Kariwa has a new tsunami wall, just in case.

Japan pulled the plug on nuclear power after the 2011 Fukushima disaster, but with the G7’s dirtiest energy mix, it is seeking to cut emissions, and atomic energy is making a steady comeback, in part because of AI.

At the 400-hectare (1,000-acre) KK plant, shown to AFP in an exclusive tour, the 15-metre (50-foot) wall is just one measure to prevent another catastrophe and reassure the public and Japan’s jittery neighbours.

“We believe that (a similar accident to Fukushima) could be largely avoided,” Masaki Daito, KK deputy superintendent, told AFP. Japan now has “the strictest (regulatory) standards in the world”.

The facility in central Japan — like the nation as a whole — is no stranger to earthquakes, having been shut down for two years for “upgrades” after a big jolt in 2007.

At Fukushima, a 15-metre tsunami cut power lines and flooded backup generators, disabling water pumps needed to keep nuclear fuel cool.

In this century’s worst nuclear accident, three reactors went into meltdown and hydrogen explosions blew off roofs and released radioactivity into the air.

To keep the power running in the event of a quake, KK has new backup power supply vehicles on higher ground, plus “blow-out” panels and a new vent meant to filter out 99.9 percent of any radioactive particles.

In addition to the recently built sea wall, an embankment has been enlarged and reinforced. In corridors deep inside the reactor building, luminous stickers mark pipes and faucets.

“The lights all went out at Fukushima and no one could see,” Daito said.



– Climate goals –



Before the 2011 quake and tsunami, which killed around 18,000 people, nuclear power generated about a third of Japan’s electricity, with fossil fuels contributing most of the rest.

All of Japan’s 54 reactors were shut down afterwards, including those at KK. To keep the lights on, resource-poor Japan has hiked imports of natural gas, coal and oil while increasing solar power.

But fossil fuels are expensive, with imports last year costing Japan about $510 million a day.

It is also not helping Japan achieve its climate pledges.

The E3G think-tank ranks Japan in last place — by some distance — among G7 nations on decarbonising their power systems.

Britain recently closed its last coal power station. Italy, France and Germany plan to follow suit. Japan and the United States, however, have no such target.

The government is striving for “carbon neutrality” by 2050 and to cut emissions by 46 percent by 2030 from 2013 levels.

It wants to increase the share of renewables to 36-38 percent from around 20 percent and cut fossil fuels to 41 percent from around two-thirds now.

Hanna Hakko, a Japan-based energy expert at E3G, thinks Japan could aim higher and have renewables generate 70-80 percent of its power by 2035.

“This would allow Japan to phase out coal, as it has committed to doing together with its G7 peers,” Hakko told AFP.



– Nuclear resurgence –



Yet even under this scenario, the remainder would need to be covered by gas and nuclear energy.

Under its current plan, Japan aims for nuclear power to account for 20-22 percent of its electricity by 2030, up from well under 10 percent now.

Japan in late 2022 decided to accelerate reactor restarts and to extend operating time for nuclear reactors to 60 years from 40.

Nine of Japan’s 33 still-operable reactors are currently online. At KK, unit seven is ready to join them once the local governor approves, with others set to follow.

Because of tougher safety rules since Fukushima, getting approval is a slow process. One restart was recently blocked because of earthquake risk.

Business groups remain worried about power shortages, particularly as Japan seeks to go big in energy-hungry data centres for artificial intelligence (AI).

“Japan has large untapped potential for renewable energy development,” new Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba told local media last week ahead of elections on October 27.

But he added: “Obviously, nuclear energy needs to be utilised.”



– Megaquake –



The meltdown at Fukushima still looms large for people in Japan and elsewhere.

Japan is hit by hundreds of earthquakes per year — mostly minor — and in August, it issued a first “megaquake advisory” for its Pacific coast.

The alert was lifted after a week, but the government still sees a roughly 70 percent chance of a monster tremor within 30 years.

Making Fukushima fully safe, meanwhile, has also barely begun.

Japan last year started to release into the Pacific Ocean some of the 540 Olympic pools’ worth of treated cooling water amassed since 2011. China banned Japanese seafood imports in response.

Engineers still have not worked out what to do with 800 tons of highly radioactive fuel and rubble. Humans still cannot enter the wrecked facility.

Mototsugu Oki, picnicking with his family at the beach by KK, said that like many Japanese, the Fukushima accident turned him off nuclear power for good.

“It is operated by human beings, and human beings naturally make mistakes,” he told AFP.

As Robert Roberson’s execution neared, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott stuck to silence

Terri Langford, Texas Tribune
October 20, 2024 

Texas Governor Greg Abbott holding a press conference in 2018. (Shutterstock.com)

In a state where the death penalty is as ingrained as cowboy boots and conservative politics, news of Robert Roberson’s death sentence broke through in Texas after the rarest of phenoms: a noisy, bipartisan effort that bypassed the governor’s office to save a man from lethal injection.

For years, the appeals of Roberson’s capital murder conviction for the 2002 death of his chronically ill, 2-year-old daughter had lumbered through the courts, tracing a byzantine process that often fails to register with residents of the nation’s execution capital, where 591 inmates have been put to death in the state since capital punishment was reinstated in 1976.

But while lawmakers were making historic interventions, many Texans took note of the silence by the person traditionally empowered to step in at the last minute: Gov. Greg Abbott.

“Abbott’s silence is deafening,” said Brandon Rottinghaus, a professor of political science at the University of Houston.

After all, Abbott had at his disposal the power to grant a 30-day reprieve for Roberson, whose lawyers claim was wrongfully convicted based on junk science. A U.S. Supreme Court Justice urged him to take that step. If Abbott had, there would have been no frantic and unprecedented rush by lawmakers to issue a subpoena of Roberson and then go to court to block the execution — first to a Travis County judge, then to Texas’ two high courts before Roberson’s execution was finally called off.

There’s been no public statement from Abbott about Roberson’s case before or since. If the execution had gone forward, Roberson would have been the first person in the nation to be put to death in a shaken baby syndrome case, a diagnosis that has come into question in recent years. Multiple requests for comment to the governor’s office by The Texas Tribune went unanswered.

The silence “certainly signals his willingness to go his own way against the Legislature and also reflects that, like Gov. Perry before him, the realization that being tough on crime is an essential element of muscularity for national Republicans,” Rottinghaus said.
Silence on executions, not unusual

Unlike the Hollywood image of a governor making a frantic phone call to stop an execution, the reality, especially in Texas, is far less dramatic. Texas governors can only act on a recommendation of clemency from their own appointees to the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles. Or they can opt for the 30-day reprieve.

According to the Associated Press, the Texas parole board has recommended clemency in a death row case only six times since the state resumed executions in 1982. In three of those cases, death row inmates had their sentences commuted to life in prison. In two of the cases, Perry rejected the parole board's recommendation to commute a death sentence to life in prison, and the two prisoners were executed.

But despite that limited power, Abbott may have inadvertently raised the Texas public’s expectations of intervention last year. That’s when he was quick to jump in publicly after a jury convicted an Austin man of fatally shooting a Black Lives Matter protester. Abbott posted on social media that he would quickly seek a pardon. The parole board did recommend a pardon a year later, and Abbott made good on his promise.

But veteran court watchers say Abbott’s silence on even a high profile death penalty case is not out of the ordinary.

“It’s typical,” said Elsa Alcala, who served for seven years as a judge on the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, the state’s highest criminal court, before stepping down in 2018. “Usually, the governor doesn’t get involved.”

So far, more than 60 executions have been carried out while Abbott has been governor, a fraction of the more than 200 that occurred when former Gov. Rick Perry was in office. That’s the result of increased judicial scrutiny on death row cases and more prosecutors seeking life in prison instead of the death penalty.

Abbott has only commuted one death sentence. In 2018, he spared the life of Thomas “Bart” Whitaker, who masterminded a murder-for-hire scheme that resulted in the death of his mother and younger brother and injured his construction company executive father, who ultimately forgave his son. Whitaker’s case was reduced to a life sentence.

“Even going back to Ann Richards, I don’t think there’s a history of Texas governors in capital cases giving reprieves,” said Kenneth Williams, the Fred Gray Endowed Chair for Civil Rights and Constitutional Law at Texas Tech University. “They rarely do in capital cases.”

Longtime Texas political observer Cal Jillson agreed.

“Governors at least going back to George W. Bush, in the case of a mentally challenged inmate named Oliver Cruz, and Rick Perry, in the case of Cameron Todd Willingham, have been reluctant to intervene in death penalty cases for fear of appearing ‘soft on crime,’” said Jillson, a political science professor at Southern Methodist University.

The added fact that Abbott, before he was first elected governor in 2014, was the state’s longest-serving attorney general, whose office is charged with ensuring a trial court’s death sentence is carried out, could help explain why Texans don’t hear much from him regarding an individual’s case.

“He defended these cases, so that may weigh on him as governor,” said Williams, the Texas Tech University law professor, adding that Abbott’s lack of intervention in this or any other case is not out of step with governors in other states.

“Most governors are reluctant to grant any kind of clemency after there’s been conviction,” he said. “I don’t think they want the blowback in that.”.

How the case unfolded

Roberson, 57, of Palestine, was convicted of his daughter’s death in 2003 after an autopsy determined his daughter, Nikki, who had been ill with a fever, had died of shaking and blows. Investigators believed that Roberson’s emotionless demeanor was further evidence of his guilt. Roberson has since been diagnosed as having autism, which could explain Roberson’s behavior at the time. A police detective whose investigation sent the East Texas man to death row, now supports Roberson’s claims of innocence.

On Wednesday, as both the Texas parole board and the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals rejected Roberson’s last-minute appeals, the House committee members issued their subpoena, arguing that only Roberson could provide unique testimony on Texas’ pioneering 2013 junk science law — which Roberson had tried, and failed, to use to prove his innocence. Last month, 80 Texas lawmakers, including supporters of the death penalty, wrote Texas parole board members in support of Roberson’s request for clemency.

The law is designed to allow defendants an avenue to prove their innocence if they were convicted based on science that is later shown to be faulty. In fact, no Texas death row inmate has successfully used the law to obtain a new trial, leading the Texas Defender Service to conclude that the statute “is not operating as the Texas Legislature intended.”

The steps legislators took to halt the execution were unprecedented, and drew some complaints of overstepping their authority.

“I will absolutely defend what we did,” state Rep. Brian Harrison, R-Midlothian, a member of the House jurisprudence committee who began looking into Roberson’s cases a few months ago on the recommendation of a colleague. “We have to protect the integrity of the criminal justice system.”

Harrison confirmed that lawmakers contacted Abbott after their subpoena was issued but did not want to discuss specifics of those conversations, describing them only as “professional and productive.”

Many of those who tracked the Roberson saga this week were struck more by the actions of the Legislature than the inaction of Abbott.

“What is unusual in the case of Robert Roberson is not so much Abbott’s silence, as the bipartisan effort to slow this execution at least long enough to take a closer look,” Jillson said.

But Amanda Marzullo, the former executive director of the Texas Defender Service, said it was necessary for the Legislature to step in, given that the use of clemency by American governors has waned.

“We have seen a massive atrophy in the clemency power,” she said. “It was something governors did all the time.”

She pointed to how more than 200 years ago, a governor’s pardon power was used more often because death was often the punishment for far lesser crimes.

"This is how this system was designed,” Marzullo said. “So no one branch is doing all of the work in a particular sector.”

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2024/10/19/greg-abbott-robert-roberson-death-penalty/.

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