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News Burst 24 August 2023

Brazilian press reports that BRICS will expand by 5 members, and most likely they will be Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iran, UAE and Argentina. Brazil and India were more reticent about expanding the bloc with more members, and the inclusion of Argentina seems to be precisely a concession to Brazil.

Japan will start releasing treated radioactive water from the tsunami-hit Fukushima nuclear plant into the Pacific Ocean on Thursday, despite opposition from its neighbours. The decision comes weeks after the UN’s nuclear watchdog approved the plan. Some 1.34 million tonnes of water – enough to fill 500 Olympic-size pools – have accumulated since the 2011 tsunami destroyed the plant. The water will be released after being filtered and diluted. Authorities will request for the plant’s operator to “promptly prepare” for the disposal to start on 24 August if weather and sea conditions are appropriate, Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said on Tuesday after a Cabinet meeting.

The power-station operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), so far has used what it describes as an advanced liquid-processing system (ALPS) to treat the water. TEPCO says the water undergoes five processing stages of co-sedimentation, adsorption and physical filtration. The plan for disposing of the radioactive waste created in the ALPS process will be “gradually revealed as the decommissioning process progresses”, according to communication the Permanent Mission of Japan to the International Organizations in Vienna sent to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The ALPS process removes enough of 62 of the 64 radionuclides to bring their concentration below Japan’s 2022 regulatory limits for water to be discharged into the environment. But that process does not remove carbon-14 and tritium, so the treated water needs to be diluted further to less than one part per 100 parts of seawater.

A private jet traveling from Moscow to St. Petersburg crashed on Wednesday in Russia’s Tver Region. The Russian Emergencies Ministry said all 10 people on board had died. Rosaviation has since said that Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner Private Military Company, was listed among the passengers. “The Embraer plane was flying out of Sheremetyevo to St. Petersburg. There were three crew and seven passengers on board. They all died.”

Former US president Donald Trump will need to post a bond in the amount of $200,000 by noon Friday if he wishes to stay out of jail, according to court documents made public on Monday by Fulton County district attorney (DA) Fani Willis. The court document lists an $80,000 bond for the alleged violation of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization (RICO) Act, and $10,000 each for 12 other counts. The remaining 28 charges against the former president do not appear to require bail.

The Foreign Minister and leader of Forza Italia, Antonio Tajani, in an interview with the “Giornale” comments on the poisonous memories of the former French president Nicolas Sarkozy, who boasted of having brought down the Berlusconi government in 2011. “It seems to me that there are two serious facts. The first: in a democracy a country cannot interfere in the life of another, mostly friend and ally, to change its government. What right did Sarkozy have to make the Italian prime minister resign? It was an incorrect and illegitimate operation. As a second consequence, bringing down an executive attributable to the Ppe meant opening the doors to opponents in Italy”.

BBC begins to talk about men flying from mobilization in Ukraine – Ukraine is struggling to meet its demand for soldiers. Volunteers aren’t enough. The country constantly needs to replace the tens of thousands who’ve been killed or injured. Many more are just exhausted, after 18 months fighting off Russia’s full-scale invasion. Some men though don’t want to fight. Thousands have left the country, sometimes after bribing officials, and others are finding ways of dodging recruitment officers, who in turn have been accused of increasingly heavy-handed tactics. “The system is very outdated,” says Yehor. He watched his father suffer from mental health issues after fighting with the Soviet Army in Afghanistan. It’s why he doesn’t want to fight. Typically, before Russia’s invasion, men who didn’t want to do military service because of their religious beliefs would be offered an alternative – like working in farming or social services. That choice disappeared with the start of martial law last year. ~ BBC

Navigation in the Suez Canal has been fully resumed in both directions after the disruption of the traffic following the collision of two tankers earlier in the day, the Suez Canal Authority said on Wednesday. Earlier on Wednesday, the Marine Traffic tracking service said, citing an eye-witness, that the BW Lesmes tanker carrying liquefied natural gas (LNG) had collided with the Burri oil products tanker in the Suez Canal. The collision occurred on the 144 kilometer mark (89 miles) of the canal due to a technical malfunction of the LNG carrier, Adm. Ossama Rabiee, Chairman and Managing Director of the Suez Canal Authority, later stated. As a result, navigation was stopped in the northern part of the canal. “Navigation through the Canal back to normal,” the authority clarified on X.

Chinese President Xi Jinping has condemned the “Cold War mentality” still “haunting our world,” while laying out his geopolitical vision to the BRICS summit in South Africa on Wednesday. “We gather at a time when the world has entered a new period of turbulence and transformation,” Xi told the leaders of Brazil, Russia, India, and South Africa, in Johannesburg. He added that the world “is undergoing major shifts, division and regrouping, leading to more uncertain, unstable and unpredictable developments.” “The Cold War mentality is still haunting our world, and the geopolitical situation is getting tense,” he continued, before restating China’s position on the Ukraine conflict: that the fighting began for “complex reasons,” and that “no one should add fuel to the fire and worsen the situation.”

Four-year-old children at an English preschool were shown a book about gay pride featuring illustrations of a surgically-disfigured transsexual and an elderly man in fetish clothing, local media has reported. At least one child has been removed by parents from the school after staff refused to apologize. Concerns were raised with Genesis Pre School in Hull when they found out that their children had been shown ‘Grandad’s Pride,’ Hull Live reported on Saturday. When one father examined the book, he was shocked to find it contained illustrations of “partially naked” men in “leather bondage gear.” “The main and most immediate concern is that children have been exposed to at least two age-inappropriate sexual or erotic images of a man in what can only be reasonably described as ‘bondage/fetish/BDSM’ gear,” Will Taylor told the newspaper. Andersen Press, the book’s publisher, responded by calling outraged parents “homophobic.”

Russian rapper and businessman Timati (Timur Yunusov), along with entrepreneur Anton Pinsky, has shown interest in acquiring Domino’s Pizza outlets in Russia. The company announced on Monday that it would file for bankruptcy for its Russian business unit and exit the sanctions-hit country. “In view of the departure from the country and the bankruptcy proceedings of Domino’s Pizza, I ask the management to contact us and discuss the possibility of buying a pizza chain with subsequent rebranding under our leadership,” Yunusov wrote on Instagram. Yunusov and Pinsky already have experience in restarting the business of a company that had pulled out of Russia due to sanctions pressure, namely Starbucks. They’ve successfully rebranded the Seattle-based company’s coffee shops in Russia into Stars Coffee.

India successfully placed a lander in the moon’s southern polar region Wednesday evening, making history as it became the first country to touch down on an uncharted part of the lunar surface. Although the United States, Russia and China have landed around the moon’s equator, no country has so far made a soft landing on the more challenging rough terrain of the south pole. Scientists clapped, cheered and waved in the mission command center of the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) after the unmanned lander called Vikram made its final descent. It was a huge moment for India’s space agency, whose mission to reach the south pole four years ago had ended in disappointment when the lander crashed. India reported success of its Chandrayaan-3 mission after Russia’s Luna-25, that was also headed to the south pole, crashed on Saturday.

News Burst 24 August 2023