People whose homes or farms were hit by radiation from the stricken Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant will file class-action lawsuits next month to seek damages from the Japanese government, lawyers said yesterday.
At least 350 residents are to file a case with Fukushima District Court on March 11 this year, the second anniversary of the disaster, the lawyers said, describing it as the largest class action on the issue against the state.
The plaintiffs, who are also scheduled to sue plant operator Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO), plan to seek ¥50,000 (US$538) in compensation for every month they have been displaced by the disaster.
They also intend to ask the court to issue an order forcing both the government and TEPCO to reduce radiation levels in the area to those of before the accident.
The world’s worst nuclear crisis in a generation began when a huge tsunami, sparked by a magnitude 9 earthquake, crashed into the Fukushima Dai-ichi power station and swamped cooling systems.
Reactors went into meltdown, spewing radiation and forcing the evacuation of hundreds of thousands of people.
“The government promoted nuclear power as a national policy and has been closely involved with it,” lawyer Izutaro Managi said.
“Being fully aware of the danger of losing power due to a tsunami, the government neglected its duty of preventing such an event,” he said. “This is a suit to recover a Fukushima with neither radiation nor nuclear power.”
Several other similar class-action suits will be also filed separately on March 11 with the Tokyo District Court, against both the government and TEPCO, other lawyers said.
In July last year a parliamentary report said Fukushima was a man-made disaster caused by Japan’s culture of “reflexive obedience” and not just by the tsunami.
Japanese police have reportedly questioned a former head of the nuclear safety body and TEPCO executives regarding possible criminal charges over the Fukushima nuclear crisis.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion