Japan’s farms and fisheries minister said yesterday he would skip an International Whaling Commission (IWC) meeting next week so as to fight an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease on cattle farms.
“I would like to refrain from attending because we cannot let our guard down over foot-and-mouth disease,” Masahiko Yamada told reporters, adding that he would decide on a replacement envoy later in the day.
The IWC is due to gather from June 21 in Morocco to discuss a controversial plan to legitimize whaling while reducing the overall catch.
Japan hunts whales under a loophole to a 1986 international moratorium that allows killing of the ocean giants for “scientific research,” although it does not hide the fact that the meat is sold in shops and restaurants.
Japan targets culling up to 935 whales in the Antarctic each year, although it was able to catch only about half of that number in its latest hunt because of harassment by militant anti-whaling activists.
Under the IWC draft proposal, Japan, Iceland and Norway would reduce their whale kills over the next decade, subject to tight monitoring, with Japan eventually cutting its Antarctic whale culls by three-quarters.
Japan would be allowed to catch 120 whales a year in its coastal waters.
Yamada took office last week as part of the Cabinet of Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan, replacing Hirotaka Akamatsu, who had come under fire for his slow response to the foot-and-mouth outbreak.
Cattle in Japan’s southwestern Miyazaki Prefecture have been hit by the highly contagious virus, which has halted Japanese beef and pork exports and crippled the region’s premium beef industry.
The outbreak, Japan’s first since 2000, was detected in late April and spread quickly, and local authorities have started slaughtering more than 200,000 animals in Miyazaki.
‘GREAT OPPRTUNITY’: The Paraguayan president made the remarks following Donald Trump’s tapping of several figures with deep Latin America expertise for his Cabinet Paraguay President Santiago Pena called US president-elect Donald Trump’s incoming foreign policy team a “dream come true” as his nation stands to become more relevant in the next US administration. “It’s a great opportunity for us to advance very, very fast in the bilateral agenda on trade, security, rule of law and make Paraguay a much closer ally” to the US, Pena said in an interview in Washington ahead of Trump’s inauguration today. “One of the biggest challenges for Paraguay was that image of an island surrounded by land, a country that was isolated and not many people know about it,”
‘DISCRIMINATION’: The US Office of Personnel Management ordered that public DEI-focused Web pages be taken down, while training and contracts were canceled US President Donald Trump’s administration on Tuesday moved to end affirmative action in federal contracting and directed that all federal diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) staff be put on paid leave and eventually be laid off. The moves follow an executive order Trump signed on his first day ordering a sweeping dismantling of the federal government’s diversity and inclusion programs. Trump has called the programs “discrimination” and called to restore “merit-based” hiring. The executive order on affirmative action revokes an order issued by former US president Lyndon Johnson, and curtails DEI programs by federal contractors and grant recipients. It is using one of the
‘FIGHT TO THE END’: Attacking a court is ‘unprecedented’ in South Korea and those involved would likely face jail time, a South Korean political pundit said Supporters of impeached South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol yesterday stormed a Seoul court after a judge extended the impeached leader’s detention over his ill-fated attempt to impose martial law. Tens of thousands of people had gathered outside the Seoul Western District Court on Saturday in a show of support for Yoon, who became South Korea’s first sitting head of state to be arrested in a dawn raid last week. After the court extended his detention on Saturday, the president’s supporters smashed windows and doors as they rushed inside the building. Hundreds of police officers charged into the court, arresting dozens and denouncing an
One of Japan’s biggest pop stars and best-known TV hosts, Masahiro Nakai, yesterday announced his retirement over sexual misconduct allegations, reports said, in the latest scandal to rock Japan’s entertainment industry. Nakai’s announcement came after now-defunct boy band empire Johnny & Associates admitted in 2023 that its late founder, Johnny Kitagawa, for decades sexually assaulted teenage boys and young men. Nakai was a member of the now-disbanded SMAP — part of Johnny & Associates’s lucrative stable — that swept the charts in Japan and across Asia during the band’s nearly 30 years of fame. Reports emerged last month that Nakai, 52, who since
RSS