Texas Weekly Online

Texas-trans-white
Menu
Menu

Author:

Japan quake toll rises to 62 as rescuers struggle to reach cut-off villages

Japan quake toll rises to 62 as rescuers struggle to reach cut-off villages

Heavy rain is forecast into Thursday raising the risk of landslides and further complicating relief efforts. Japanese rescuers continue to search for survivors from Monday’s earthquake in Ishikawa prefecture as authorities warned heavy rain, landslides and repeated aftershocks could hamper relief efforts. The regional government said on Wednesday that 62 people had been confirmed dead and more than 300 injured, 20 of them seriously. It warned the death toll was likely to climb further. The magnitude-7.6 quake struck on Monday afternoon off the Noto Peninsula, flattening houses in Suzu on its northern coast and triggering fires that ravaged parts of nearby Wajima City. It also ripped up roads, adding to the challenge of search and rescue. More than 31,800 people were in shelters, the government said. “More than 40 hours have passed since the disaster. We have received a lot of information about people in need of rescue and there are people waiting for help,” Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said after an emergency task force meeting. “Rescue efforts are being made by the local authorities, police, firefighters and other operational units, while the number of personnel and rescue dogs is enhanced.” People evacuated from their homes in Wajima take shelter in a greenhouse [Kim Kyung-Hoon/Reuters] Fires swept through parts of Wajima, one of the worst-affected places in the Noto Peninsula [Kyodo via Reuters] Kishida said the central government was trying to bring help to the worst-affected parts of the Noto Peninsula by ship because roads had been left almost impassable. Japan’s Self-Defence Forces was also using helicopters to reach cut-off villages, the Kyodo news agency reported. Complicating the relief effort, the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) said heavy rain was expected, which could increase the risk of landslides. 90 percent gone In Suzu, Mayor Masuhiro Izumiya said there were “almost no houses standing”. “About 90 percent of the houses [in the town] are completely or almost completely destroyed… the situation is really catastrophic,” he said, according to broadcaster TBS. Nearly 34,000 households remained without power in Ishikawa prefecture, the local utility said. Many cities were without running water. The US Geological Survey measured the quake at a magnitude of 7.5, while the JMA put it at 7.6 and issued a major tsunami warning, which was later lifted. Monday’s quake was one of more than 400 to shake the region up until Wednesday morning, according to the JMA. Some 1,000 soldiers from the Japanese Self-Defence Force have been deployed to help in the rescue effort [Joint Staff Office of the Defence Ministry of Japan via Reuters] Four of the world’s tectonic plates meet in Japan making the country particularly prone to earthquakes. It experiences hundreds every year, but most cause little to no damage. Although casualty numbers from Monday’s quake have continued to climb, the prompt public warnings, relayed on broadcasts and phones, and the quick response from the general public and officials appeared to have limited some of the impact. Toshitaka Katada, a University of Tokyo professor specialising in disasters, said people were prepared, with evacuation plans worked out and emergency supplies in stock. “There are probably no people on Earth who are as disaster-ready as the Japanese,” he told The Associated Press news agency. The number of earthquakes in the Noto Peninsula region has been steadily increasing since 2018, a Japanese government report said last year. In 2011, Japan’s northeast was hit by one of the most powerful earthquakes ever recorded. The 9.0 magnitude undersea quake triggered a massive tsunami that wiped out entire communities and brought disaster to the Fukushima nuclear plant. At least 18,500 people were killed. Adblock test (Why?)

Photos: Aftermath of devastating earthquake in Japan

Photos: Aftermath of devastating earthquake in Japan

Japanese rescuers battled the clock and powerful aftershocks on Tuesday as they searched for survivors of a New Year’s Day earthquake that killed dozens and caused widespread destruction. The magnitude 7.5 earthquake that rattled Ishikawa prefecture on the main island of Honshu triggered tsunami waves more than a metre high, caused a major fire and tore apart roads. On the Noto peninsula, the destruction included buildings damaged by fire, houses flattened, fishing boats sunk or washed ashore, and highways hit by landslides. “I’m amazed the house is this broken and everyone in my family managed to come out of it unscathed,” said Akiko, standing outside her parents’ tilting home in the badly hit city of Wajima. The way 2024 started “will be etched into my memory forever,” she said following the “long and violent” earthquake. “It was such a powerful jolt,” Tsugumasa Mihara, 73, said as he queued with hundreds of others for water in the nearby town of Shika. Local authorities have put the death toll at 48, but the number is expected to rise as rescuers comb the rubble. “Very extensive damage has been confirmed, including numerous casualties, building collapses and fires,” Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said, after a disaster response meeting. “We have to race against time to search for and rescue victims of the disaster.” Adblock test (Why?)

China targets friendly media, diplomats to ‘tell story of Xinjiang’

China targets friendly media, diplomats to ‘tell story of Xinjiang’

Albanian-Canadian historian and journalist Olsi Jazexhi believed in early 2019 that reports about human rights violations in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region (Xinjiang) of Western China were lies. Accounts from people who had fled the area as well as reports from human rights organisations were painting a picture of human rights abuses being perpetrated on a massive scale. Muslim minorities in Xinjiang – the majority of whom are Turkic-speaking Uighurs – were reportedly being deprived of basic freedoms, their cultural and religious heritage was being destroyed and at least 1 million of them had been interned in a vast network of detention camps. The international community had taken notice and the United Nations had raised its concerns. But Jazexhi was unconvinced. “I was certain that the stories were a scheme constructed by the US and the West to discredit China and divert attention away from their own human rights records regarding Muslims,” he told Al Jazeera. The Chinese government itself vehemently rejected the allegations, acknowledging the existence of the camps but describing them as vocational skills training centres necessary to combat alleged extremism. Human Rights Watch uncovered evidence of people being detained in political education camps in Xinjiang through social media posts in 2017 by the Xinjiang Bureau of Justice [Human Rights Watch] To see the truth for himself, Jazexhi contacted the Chinese embassy in Tirana about visiting Xinjiang. He was soon invited to join a media tour for foreign journalists mostly from Muslim countries and in early August 2019, he was on a plane bound for China. “I went to defend the Chinese government,” he recalled. But he quickly found that defending the Chinese narrative was a far more difficult task than he had anticipated. In the first few days in Xinjiang, he and other foreign journalists had to sit through a series of lectures given by Chinese officials about the history of the region and its people. “They were portraying the indigenous people of Xinjiang as immigrants and Islam as a religion that was foreign to the region,” Jazexhi said. “It was incorrect.” His disillusion only continued when he and other journalists were taken by their Chinese hosts to one of the so-called vocational training centres outside the regional capital of Urumqi. “They said it was like a school but it was clearly a high-security site in the middle in the desert,” Jazexhi said. “They also told us that the people staying there were not allowed to leave so it was obviously not a school but a prison and the people there were not students but prisoners.” Once they entered the site, Jazexhi had a chance to interact with several Uighurs and it quickly became clear they were not the “terrorists” or “extremists” Beijing had claimed. Ethnic Uighurs outside China have campaigned for international action on China’s alleged abuses in Xinjiang [Leah Millis/Reuters] “I was talking to people that had been taken there for simply practising Islam by, for example, entering a religious marriage, praying in public or wearing a headscarf,” he said. “One of them told me that she was no longer Muslim and that she now believed in science and in Chinese President Xi Jinping.” Jazexhi confronted the accompanying Chinese officials. “I told them that what they were doing was very wrong,” Jazexhi said. The interactions led to a quarrel between Jazexhi and some of the Chinese hosts. When he finally left Xinjiang, he was deeply shocked. He had thought he was going to expose Western lies but he had instead witnessed oppression on a massive scale. “What I saw was an attempt to eradicate Islam from Xinjiang,” he said. ‘Agenda of the West’ Since Jazexhi’s visit, the UN Human Rights Council has found that Chinese restrictions and deprivations in Xinjiang may constitute crimes against humanity. The US government as well as lawmakers in Australia, Canada, France and the United Kingdom have labelled the Chinese treatment of Uighurs and other Turkic-speaking Muslims in the region a genocide. Meanwhile, several countries have imposed economic restrictions on goods from Xinjiang in response to evidence of forced labour in the region. Amid the criticism, Beijing has continued to arrange visits – primarily for diplomats and journalists from Muslim countries – to Xinjiang. Chinese media have reported about at least five such media tours taking place in 2023, with Xinjiang visits also arranged for foreign diplomats and Islamic scholars. Moiz Farooq, who is the executive editor of Daily Ittehad Media Group and Pakistan Economic Net, visited Xinjiang in the middle of December as part of a delegation of media representatives from Pakistan. Much like Jazexhi in 2019, Farooq went to Xinjiang with the intent to observe for himself that the stories he had heard were not true. “There is a lot of propaganda about Xinjiang out there and I wanted to witness it with my own eyes,” Farooq told Al Jazeera. Unlike Jazexhi, Farooq left Xinjiang impressed by the region’s level of development and assured that the local Muslims were largely living a free and content life. “I was able to talk to as many different people as I wanted at bazaars and restaurants about their standard of living and I, along with the rest of the delegation, were totally unrestricted,” he said. “I saw Muslims there who were free to enjoy and practise their religion.” Farooq does not believe that accounts and reports from human rights organisations and UN organs detailing human rights abuses in Xinjiang are correct. “It is the agenda of the West to show the worst of Xinjiang and I now know that the stories are not true because I have seen how happily they [Muslims in Xinjiang] are living,” he said. Naz Parveen is the director of the China Window Institute in Peshawar, Pakistan, and she was on the same tour as Farooq. She too was impressed by the prosperity she observed in Xinjiang. Echoing Beijing’s characterisation of the situation, Parveen believes that what have been termed human rights violations in Xinjiang can be

Who was Saleh al-Arouri, the Hamas leader killed in Beirut?

Who was Saleh al-Arouri, the Hamas leader killed in Beirut?

A drone strike in Beirut’s southern suburbs of Dahiyeh, a Hezbollah stronghold, killed senior Hamas official Saleh al-Arouri on Tuesday. The drone hit a Hamas office, leaving six people dead, Lebanon’s state news agency reported. Hamas confirmed the death of al-Arouri and called it a “cowardly assassination” by Israel, adding that attacks on Palestinians “inside and outside Palestine will not succeed in breaking the will and steadfastness of our people, or undermining the continuation of their valiant resistance”. “It proves once again the abject failure of this enemy to achieve any of its aggressive goals in the Gaza Strip,” the group said. Following the news of the death of al-Arouri, mosques in Arura, the occupied West Bank town of north Ramallah, are mourning his death and a general strike has been called in Ramallah for Wednesday. Here is what to know about the Hamas official killed in Lebanon. People gather near a damaged site following an explosion, in what security sources say is an Israeli drone strike, at the Beirut suburb of Dahiyeh, Lebanon [Mohamed Azakir/Reuters] Who was Saleh al-Arouri? Al-Arouri, 57, was the deputy chief of Hamas’s political bureau and one of the founders of the group’s armed wing, the Qassam Brigades. He had been living in exile in Lebanon after spending 15 years in an Israeli jail. Before the war began on October 7, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had threatened to kill him. In recent weeks, al-Arouri took on the role of spokesperson for the group and told Al Jazeera last month that Hamas would not discuss an exchange deal for the captives the group is holding before the war ends in Gaza. The United States labelled al-Arouri as a “global terrorist” in 2015 and issued a $5m reward for any information on him. What has Israel said about al-Arouri’s death? While there has been no official response from Israel about the death of the Hamas official, Mark Regev, an adviser to Netanyahu, told the US outlet MSNBC that Israel does not take responsibility for this attack. But, added, “Whoever did it, it must be clear: this was not an attack on the Lebanese state.” “Whoever did this did a surgical strike against the Hamas leadership,” he said. However, Danny Danon, a former Israeli envoy to the United Nations, hailed the attack and congratulated the Israeli army, Shin Bet, the security service and Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency, for killing al-Arouri. “Anyone who was involved in the 7/10 massacre should know that we will reach out to them and close an account with them,” he said on X in Hebrew, referring to the October 7 Hamas attack on southern Israel that killed nearly 1,200 people. Israel’s relentless bombing and artillery shelling of Gaza since then has killed more than 22,000 Palestinians, including more than 8,000 children. According to Israeli media, the government has ordered cabinet ministers not to give any interviews about al-Arouri’s death after Danon’s tweet. Palestinians take part in a protest against the killing of a senior Hamas official, Saleh al-Arouri, in Ramallah in the Israeli-occupied West Bank [Ali Sawafta/Reuters] What has been the response from Lebanon? Lebanon’s caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati condemned the attack on the Beruit suburb and said it was a “new Israeli crime” as well as an attempt to pull Lebanon into the war. Mikati also warned against the “Israeli political upper echelon resorting to exporting its failures in Gaza to the southern border to impose new facts on the ground and change the rules of engagement”. Hezbollah said that the attack on Lebanon’s capital “will not pass without punishment”. Adblock test (Why?)

Russia-Ukraine war: List of key events, day 679

Russia-Ukraine war: List of key events, day 679

As the war enters its 679th day, these are the main developments. Here is the situation on Wednesday, January 3, 2024. Fighting Russia targeted Ukraine’s biggest cities with a barrage of drones, rockets and missiles, killing at least four people in Kyiv and one in Kharkiv. The State Emergency Service said 119 people have been injured. The bombardment, which also disrupted water and power supplies, came after Russian President Vladimir Putin said he would intensify attacks on Ukraine. Valerii Zaluzhnyi, the commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian military, said air defences shot down all 10 of the Kinzhal hypersonic missiles fired at Ukraine by Russia. The consequences of the weapons hitting their targets would have been “catastrophic”, he added. Ukrainian Defence Minister Rustem Umerov accused Russia of “deliberately targeting critical infrastructure and residential neighbourhoods” in its attacks on Tuesday. The Russian defence ministry claimed the raids hit Ukrainian military-industrial facilities, as well as weapons storage facilities. “The goal of the strike has been achieved, all the targets have been hit,” it said. Poland mobilised two pairs of F-16 fighter jets and an air tanker to safeguard its airspace during Russia’s assault on Ukraine. Polish military authorities last week said a Russian missile briefly flew through the country’s airspace, prompting concern. Firefighters evacuate a disabled man from an apartment block damaged in the Russian attack. At least four people were killed in Kyiv and more than 100 injured [Anatolii Stepanov/AFP] Moscow said its air defences destroyed 17 Ukrainian Olkha rockets over Russia’s Belgorod, not far from the Ukrainian border. Vyacheslav Gladkov, the regional governor of Belgorod, said that one person was killed and five injured in the raids. Russia opened an investigation after one of its missiles accidentally hit the Russian border village of Petropavlovka, 40km (87 miles) from northeastern Ukraine, damaging several homes. No one was injured. Politics and diplomacy The Russian attacks drew condemnation from across Europe. Charles Michel, the president of the European Council, reiterated the European Union’s support for Ukraine, saying Russia’s air attacks showed Moscow was not interested in peace talks. Latvian President Edgars Rinkevics, meanwhile, said the attacks were “Russian terrorism” and called on the West to provide more help to Ukraine. Germany’s Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock promised Berlin’s continuing support, saying the latest attacks showed Moscow wanted to “annihilate” Ukraine. United Nations human rights chief Volker Turk called for the immediate de-escalation of fighting, measures to protect civilians and respect for international law following the recent “alarming escalation of hostilities”. Ukraine’s foreign minister urged Western allies to step up sanctions on Russia and deliver more advanced weaponry, including air defence systems and ammunition, combat drones and long-range missiles. In the US, a proposed $60bn aid package for Kyiv is being held up by Republicans in Congress, while Hungary has blocked $55bn in EU assistance for Ukraine. Mariana Katzarova, the UN’s special rapporteur for human rights in the Russian Federation, called on Moscow to immediately release two poets jailed for reading work criticising the war in Ukraine. A Moscow court last week sentenced Artyom Kamardin to seven years in prison and Yegor Shtovba to five-and-a-half years after they participated in a public poetry reading in Moscow in September 2022. Weapons Turkey said it would block two Royal Navy minehunter ships promised to Ukraine from travelling through its waters on their way to the Black Sea because it would breach an international pact that regulates maritime traffic through the straits that connect the Mediterranean to the Black Sea. Norway said it would allow the direct sale of weapons to Ukraine. “In the extraordinary security situation resulting from Russia’s war of aggression, it is crucial that we continue to support Ukraine,” Norway’s Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide said in a press statement. Adblock test (Why?)