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Thousands of northeast Japan homes still without power after earthquake kills four

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(Last Updated On: March 17, 2022)

Tens of thousands of Japanese households remained without power on Thursday morning, more than 10 hours after a powerful earthquake that left at least four dead and more than 100 injured, and severed transport links to the country’s northeast, Reuters reported.

Companies including a giant chipmaker and Toyota Motor Corp (7203.T) raced to assess the impact of the magnitude 7.4 quake, which struck shortly before midnight on Wednesday. Supply chain disruptions could put more pressure on already strained global output of smartphones, electronics and automobiles, read the report.

The temblor revived memories of the March 11, 2011 disaster in the same area, and left Shinkansen bullet train service indefinitely suspended, with at least one major highway to the region closed for safety checks.

According to Reuters parts of building facades tumbled into streets below in some areas, and television footage showed a steep tiled roof crumpled over a parked, crushed car and workers examining cracked highways.

Areas of Tokyo lost power immediately after the quake, though most regained it within three hours.

But some 24,270 households serviced by Tohoku Electric Power Co (9506.T) in northeast Japan remained without electricity by 10:00 a.m. local time (0100 GMT) on Thursday, although the firm said it expected most will have supply restored later in the day.

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said four people had died and that the government would be on high alert for the possibility of further strong tremors over the next two to three days, Reuters reported.

According to Reuters at least 107 people were reported injured, several of them seriously, with 4,300 households still without water by mid-morning. Residents of one Fukushima city formed a long queue in a parking lot to fill up plastic tanks with water for use at home.

Renesas Electronics Corp (6723.T), the world’s biggest maker of automotive microcontroller chips, said it was checking for quake damage at three plants in Japan.

Among them is its advanced Naka plant in Ibaraki prefecture, which closed for three months following the March 2011 quake and for a shorter time after a quake in 2021. It had to halt production last year because of a fire, exacerbating a global chip shortage that is forcing auto companies to curb output.

The quake, initially measured at magnitude 7.3 but later revised up to 7.4 by the Japan Meteorological Agency, hit at 11.36 p.m. local time just off the coast of Fukushima prefecture at a depth of 60 kilometres. The 2011 quake and tsunami off Fukushima – commemorated across the country less than a week ago – left some 18,000 dead.

A tsunami warning was issued but cancelled early on Thursday morning. Some areas reported a rise in the sea level but no serious damage was immediately reported.

The 2011 disaster also set off meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. No abnormalities were reported at any nuclear power plants, although authorities had earlier said a fire alarm had been triggered at a turbine building at the crippled plant.

Manufacturers said they were trying to gauge the potential damage to their facilities in the region.

Toyota said it had cancelled the day shift at two factories in northeast Japan after workers evacuated the plants during their evening shift on Wednesday. The automaker said it will decide on the evening shift later.

Mizuho Financial Group Inc’s (8411.T) main banking arm said some of its ATMs temporarily stopped operations due to power outages, but that they had all been restored to service.

In an attempt to cover the area affected by the Shinkansen outage, All Nippon Airways (9202.T) and Japan Airlines (JAL) said they had added extra flights to northern cities. There were no forecasts of when regular rail service might be restored.

Japan’s benchmark Nikkei stock average jumped, with no impact seen from the quake

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Spain air drops 26 tonnes of humanitarian aid to Gaza

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(Last Updated On: March 28, 2024)

Spanish military planes air dropped 26 tonnes of humanitarian aid to Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip on Wednesday and Madrid called on Israel to open land border crossings to prevent a famine, the Foreign Ministry said.

The operation, carried out in coordination with Jordan and co-financed by the European Union, dropped more than 11,000 food rations to alleviate the “catastrophic levels of food insecurity” faced by up to 1.1 million people in Gaza, the ministry said in a statement.

“Spain insists on the opening of the land crossings as an indispensable measure to avoid a famine situation,” it added.

Other Western countries, including the United States, France and Germany, have also resorted to air drops to deliver aid to ease the humanitarian crisis in Gaza after nearly six months of war between Israeli forces and Hamas militants, Reuters reported.

Aid agencies say deliveries into Gaza, much of which has been laid to waste by Israeli bombardments, have been held up by bureaucratic obstacles and insecurity since the start of the war on Oct. 7, 2023.

Last week, a U.N.-backed report said a famine was imminent and likely to occur by May in northern Gaza and could spread across the enclave by July.

The Spanish foreign ministry also reaffirmed its commitment to supporting UNRWA, the United Nations humanitarian agency for Palestinians, and to its continued existence.

In January, major donors to UNRWA, including the U.S. and Germany, suspended funding following allegations that around 12 of its tens of thousands of Palestinian employees were suspected of involvement in the attacks on Israel by Hamas which triggered the war.

Israel says it puts no limit on the amount of humanitarian aid entering Gaza and blames problems in it reaching civilians there on U.N. agencies, which it says are inefficient, read the report.

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UN expert says Israel has committed genocide in Gaza, calls for arms embargo

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(Last Updated On: March 27, 2024)

A United Nations expert told the global body’s Human Rights Council on Tuesday that she believed that Israel’s military campaign in Gaza since Oct. 7 amounted to genocide and called on countries to immediately impose sanctions and an arms embargo, Reuters reported.

Israel, which did not attend the session, rejected her findings.

“It is my solemn duty to report on the worst of what humanity is capable of and to present my findings,” Francesca Albanese, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on human rights in the Occupied Territories, told the U.N. rights body in Geneva, presenting a report called “The Anatomy of a Genocide”.

“I find that there are reasonable grounds to believe that the threshold indicating the commission of the crime of genocide against Palestinians as a group in Gaza has been met,” she said, citing more than 30,000 Palestinians killed among other acts.

“I implore member states to abide by their obligations, which start with imposing an arms embargo and sanctions on Israel and so ensure that the future does not continue to repeat itself,” she said, prompting a burst of applause.

The 1948 Genocide Convention, enacted in the wake of the mass murder of Jews in the Nazi Holocaust, defines genocide as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”.

Israel’s diplomatic mission in Geneva said the use of the word genocide was “outrageous” and said the war was against Islamist group Hamas and not Palestinian civilians. It was triggered when Hamas fighters stormed into southern Israel, killing 1,200 and taking 253 hostages, by Israeli tallies, read the report.

“Instead of seeking the truth, this Special Rapporteur tries to fit weak arguments to her distorted and obscene inversion of reality,” it said.

Gulf nations such as Qatar, as well as African countries including Algeria and Mauritania, voiced support for Albanese’s findings and alarm at the humanitarian situation, Reuters reported.

The seats for Israel’s ally the United States were left empty. Washington has previously accused the council of a chronic anti-Israel bias.

Albanese, an Italian lawyer, is one of dozens of independent human rights experts mandated by the United Nations to report and advise on specific themes and crises. Her views do not reflect those of the global body as a whole.

In the past, her comments on the Israel-Hamas conflict have drawn scrutiny, including from a U.S. ambassador in Geneva who said she has a history of using “antisemitic tropes”.

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Qatar welcomes UNSC resolution calling for Ramadan ceasefire in Gaza

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(Last Updated On: March 26, 2024)

Qatar’s foreign ministry has welcomed the UN Security Council resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza during the holy month of Ramadan.

According to a statement issued by the ministry, Qatar hopes this will be a step towards a permanent cessation of hostilities in Gaza, “especially in light of the catastrophic humanitarian conditions which civilians, including children and women are suffering from.”

The ministry stressed the need to comply with the implementation of the resolution, especially stopping the hostilities, facilitating the urgent and unhindered entry of humanitarian aid to all areas of Gaza, and positively engaging in the ongoing negotiations.

“In this context, the ministry reaffirms the continuation of mediation by the State of Qatar in cooperation with its partners to stop the war on Gaza and address its humanitarian repercussions,” the statement read.

“The ministry expresses the State of Qatar’s hope that the vote of 14 countries in favor of the resolution will constitute a fundamental shift in the international community’s awareness of the seriousness of the tragic situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and Gaza Strip in particular, thereby enhancing international efforts to apply the two-state solution and resume the peace process on the basis of international resolutions and the Arab Peace Initiative,” the statement read.

The ministry also reiterated Qatar’s firm position in support of legitimate rights of the Palestinian people, including their right to establish their independent state on the 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital.

Qatar has played a key role in facilitating and mediating talks between Hamas and Israel over the past few months in the hope of reaching an agreement on a Gaza truce and hostage-prisoner swap.

On Sunday, Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman held talks in Doha with UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Martin Griffiths to discuss ways to facilitate the entry of humanitarian aid into the besieged Gaza Strip.

On Monday, the United Nations Security Council adopted a resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire between Israel and Hamas and the release of all hostages after the United States abstained from the vote.

The remaining 14 council members voted for the resolution, which was proposed by the 10 elected members of the body. There was a round of applause in the council chamber after the vote.

“The Palestinian people has suffered greatly. This bloodbath has continued for far too long. It is our obligation to put an end to this bloodbath before it is too late,” Algeria’s U.N. Ambassador Amar Bendjama told the council after the vote.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the failure of the U.S. to veto the resolution was a “clear retreat” from its previous position and would hurt Israel’s war efforts and bid to release more than 130 hostages still held by Hamas.

“Our vote does not, and I repeat that does not represent a shift in our policy,” White House spokesperson John Kirby told reporters. “Nothing has changed about our policy. Nothing.”

Israel has waged a deadly military offensive on the Gaza Strip since an Oct. 7 cross-border attack led by Hamas in which some 1,200 people were killed.

More than 32,200 Palestinians, mostly women and children, have since been killed in Gaza, and over 74,500 others injured amid mass destruction and shortages of necessities.

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