Russia yesterday said that it was suspending all Japanese seafood imports, mirroring a recent move by China over Tokyo’s release of wastewater from the crippled Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant.
Rosselkhoznadzor, the Russian agency responsible for regulating agriculture products, said that it was “joining China’s provisional restrictive measures on the import of fish and seafood products from Japan as of October 16, 2023” as a “precautionary measure.”
It said the restrictions would remain in place “until the necessary exhaustive information to confirm the safety of seafood produce ... is forthcoming.”
Photo: AFP
China in late August banned all Japanese seafood imports over what it termed the “selfish” and “irresponsible” release of Fukushima wastewater.
Japan on Aug. 24 began a first discharge phase of treated contaminated water from the stricken plant into the Pacific Ocean in an operation it insists is safe.
It began the second phase on Thursday last week.
However, the move has sparked a fierce backlash from neighboring states, led by China, which imported more than US$500 million of seafood from Japan last year, customs data showed.
The release of the wastewater has been deemed safe by the International Atomic Energy Agency.
In all, Tokyo intends to discharge into the Pacific Ocean about 540 Olympic swimming pools’ worth of heavy water — about 1.3 million cubic meters — from Fukushima in a gradual process lasting into the 2050s, according to the official schedule.
The water has been treated to remove radioactive substances with the exception of tritium, then diluted with seawater prior to discharge to ensure its radioactivity level does not surpass 1,500 becquerels per liter — 40 times less than the Japanese norm for this kind of operation.
Chinese authorities said they began live-fire exercises in the Gulf of Tonkin on Monday, only days after Vietnam announced a new line marking what it considers its territory in the body of water between the nations. The Chinese Maritime Safety Administration said the exercises would be focused on the Beibu Gulf area, closer to the Chinese side of the Gulf of Tonkin, and would run until tomorrow evening. It gave no further details, but the drills follow an announcement last week by Vietnam establishing a baseline used to calculate the width of its territorial waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. State-run Vietnam News
Four decades after they were forced apart, US-raised Adamary Garcia and her birth mother on Saturday fell into each other’s arms at the airport in Santiago, Chile. Without speaking, they embraced tearfully: A rare reunification for one the thousands of Chileans taken from their mothers as babies and given up for adoption abroad. “The worst is over,” Edita Bizama, 64, said as she beheld her daughter for the first time since her birth 41 years ago. Garcia had flown to Santiago with four other women born in Chile and adopted in the US. Reports have estimated there were 20,000 such cases from 1950 to
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When Shanghai-based designer Guo Qingshan posted a vacation photo on Valentine’s Day and captioned it “Puppy Mountain,” it became a sensation in China and even created a tourist destination. Guo had gone on a hike while visiting his hometown of Yichang in central China’s Hubei Province late last month. When reviewing the photographs, he saw something he had not noticed before: A mountain shaped like a dog’s head rested on the ground next to the Yangtze River, its snout perched at the water’s edge. “It was so magical and cute. I was so excited and happy when I discovered it,” Guo said.
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