Fukushima nuclear disaster: Worker sues Tepco over cancer

A Japanese court has begun hearing the case of a man who developed leukaemia after working as a welder at the damaged Fukushima nuclear site.
The plaintiff, 42, is the first person to be recognised by labour authorities as having an illness linked to clean-up work at the plant.
He is suing Tokyo Electric Power Company, which operates the complex.
The nuclear site was hit by the earthquake and tsunami in 2011, causing a triple meltdown.
It was the world's worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl in 1986. An exclusion zone remains in place around the site as thousands of workers continue clean-up efforts.
'Expendable labourer'
The man, from Japan's Fukuoka prefecture, was a welder for a sub-contractor.
He spent six months working at Genkai and Fukushima No 2 nuclear plants before moving to the quake-hit Fukushima No 1 plant, where he build scaffolding for repair work at the No 4 reactor building. His cumulative radiation exposure was 19.78 millisieverts.
This is lower than official limits - Japan currently allows workers at the damaged plant to accumulate a maximum of 100 millisieverts over five years. A dose of 100 millisieverts over a year is seen as enough to raise the risk of cancer.
But in October 2015, a health ministry panel ruled that the man's illness was workplace-related and that he was eligible for compensation.
"While the causal link between his exposure to radiation and his illness is unclear, we certified him from the standpoint of worker compensation," a health ministry official said at the time.
The man is now suing Tepco and the Kyushu Electric Power Company (Kepco), which operated the Genkai plant, for JPY59m ($526,000, £417,000).
"I worked there [Fukushima No 1 plant] because of my ardent desire to help bring the disaster under control but I was treated as if I was a mere expendable labourer," Kyodo news agency quoted him as saying.
"I want Tokyo Electric to thoroughly face up to its responsibility."

Media captionFrom tsunami to nuclear meltdown, how the disaster unfolded
When he filed the suit late last year, his lawyers said he had been "forced to undergo unnecessary radiation exposure because of the utilities' slipshod on-site radiation management".
Tepco and Kepco have asked the court to reject the suit, questioning the link between his radiation exposure and leukaemia, Kyodo reported.
Tens of thousands of workers have been employed at the Fukushima site since the disaster in March 2011. Late last year the government said estimates of clean-up costs had doubled to JPY21.5 trillion ($188bn, £150bn).

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Fillon payment scandal: What you need to know

France's centre-right presidential candidate is fighting for his political life, weeks before voters decide who will run their country.
Francois Fillon's Welsh-born wife, Penelope, has become caught up in a scandal surrounding a parliamentary assistant job for which she was paid hundreds of thousands of euros.
What did Penelope do wrong?
Nothing, says Francois Fillon, who insists everything was above board. But the clouds are gathering around the couple and the question is: did she do the work she was paid for? Satirical weekly Le Canard Enchaine says she did not - and got €831,400 (£710,000; $900,000) for her trouble.
She was employed as her husband's parliamentary assistant from 1988-90 and again in 1998-2002 and then by his successor, Marc Jouland, from 2002-2007. She worked again for Mr Fillon from 2012-13. That is all very well if she actually did the work, but one report suggests she did not have a parliamentary pass or a work email.
Police have begun a preliminary inquiry.
For the past two weeks, Le Canard Enchaine has carried revelations about the Fillon family's earnings
According to Le Canard, she also pocketed €100,000 for writing just a handful of articles for a literary review La Revue des Deux Mondes, owned by a billionaire friend of the family, Marc Ladreit de Lacharriere.
And then there are the children too. Marie and Charles Fillon were paid by their father's office for legal work, but were not yet qualified lawyers, says the weekly. Investigators are also looking into this.
Is it curtains for Francois Fillon?
The general rule of thumb is the longer a political scandal stays on the front pages, the more likely a resignation becomes. And this began on 25 January and is not going away.
Mr Fillon was previously favourite to win the presidential race, but his support is ebbing away among voters and within his own party. One opinion poll said 76% of voters were unimpressed with his claims of innocence, casting doubt over whether he would reach the second-round run-off.
Mr Fillon, 62, says he will not resign unless he is placed under formal investigation. And he has asked his colleagues to wait a fortnight for a decision.
But Republican MP Georges Fenech has said Mr Fillon's victory in party primaries in November is "obsolete", and colleague Henri Guaino believes his position is untenable. It really is not looking good and "Penelope-gate" could bring him down.
The candidate's rivals are scenting blood, and yet he still has high-profile support. Seventeen centre-right heavyweights have signed a letter deploring the campaign against him and offering total support. They include three rivals defeated by him in the primaries.
The runner-up in that vote, Alain Juppe, has insisted he isn't a "Plan B" - but his supporters may have other ideas.

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US-Australia refugee deal: Trump in 'worst call' with Turnbull

A phone call between US President Donald Trump and Australian PM Malcolm Turnbull has called into question a refugee resettlement deal.
The Washington Post reported Mr Trump called the conversation "the worst by far" of his calls with world leaders that day, and cut it short.
Mr Trump later tweeted that he would "study this dumb deal".
Struck with the Obama administration, it would see up to 1,250 asylum seekers to Australia resettled in the US.
Australia has controversially refused to accept the refugees - most of whom are men from Iran, Afghanistan and Iraq - and instead holds them in offshore detention centers on the Pacific nations of Nauru and Papua New Guinea.
Prime Minister Turnbull had been seeking clarification on the future of the deal after Mr Trump last Friday signed an executive order temporarily barring the entry into the US of refugees and people from seven Muslim-majority countries.
Later on Thursday, Mr Trump seemed to brush off the reports, saying it was only right that he would need to have tough conversations with other world leaders.
What do we know about the phone call?
The phone call between Mr Trump and Mr Turnbull took place on Saturday, and was one of four the US president had with world leaders, including Russia's Vladimir Putin.
The Washington Post quotes senior US officials, briefed on the call, as saying that the conversation should have lasted an hour but was abruptly ended after 25 minutes by Mr Trump.

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Democrats in dilemma over Supreme Court

In a season of Democratic Party frustration and anger, Donald Trump's nomination of Neil Gorsuch to the US Supreme Court Tuesday night is a particularly bitter pill to swallow.
When the seat opened nearly a year ago following the death of Justice Antonin Scalia, Democrats imagined a durable liberal majority on the court for the first time since the 1960s.
Even as the Republican Senate majority broke with longstanding tradition and blocked any consideration of President Barack Obama's nominee, Merrick Garland, Democrats comforted themselves with the prospect of Hillary Clinton's likely victory in November's presidential election. They entertained the possibility that she would instead pick someone younger and even more progressive than the decidedly moderate Mr Garland.
Then the election happened - setting up the inevitability of Tuesday night's prime-time announcement. President Trump, standing in the East Room of the White House, sprayed lemon on their open wounds, noting that the next Supreme Court justice would follow in Scalia's conservative footsteps.
Republicans, across the board, are thrilled with the pick. Mr Gorsuch has a sterling legal reputation and indisputable right-wing pedigree. While Mr Trump has proven an uncertain quantity when it comes to fealty to other party orthodoxies, they view his court pick as their trust rewarded.
"President Trump won 81% of the evangelical vote in no small measure because he made an ironclad pledge that if elected he would fill the vacancy on the US Supreme Court with a strict constructionist who would respect the Constitution and the rule of law, not legislate from the bench," Faith and Freedom Coalition Chair Ralph Reed said in a press release. "We never doubted then-candidate Trump's sincerity or commitment, and by nominating Judge Gorsuch, he has now kept that promise."
As great as was conservative joy, so were the depths of liberal anger - likely only stoked by calls by Republicans, from Mr Trump on down, to give their nominee a fair shake.
"The default is if you are generally qualified and not extreme you are confirmed," White House press spokesman Sean Spicer said on Tuesday afternoon.
It's a sentiment that has not been welcomed by those on the left.
"The Democrats should treat Trump's [Supreme Court] pick with the exact same courtesy the GOP showed Merrick Garland," tweeted Dan Pfeifer, a former senior adviser to President Barack Obama. "Don't flinch, don't back down."

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The vet who 'euthanised' herself in Taiwan

A new law banning animal euthanasia is set to take force in Taiwan. It comes almost a year after the shocking suicide of a vet overwhelmed by grief at the plight of stray animals. The BBC's Cindy Sui explores this tragedy.
Perhaps veterinarian and animal lover Chien Chih-cheng was in the wrong job at the wrong time.
"She often worked overtime, rarely took a proper lunch break, and sacrificed her holidays to give the dogs more attention and make their lives better," Winnie Lai, her colleague at a shelter for abandoned dogs in Taoyuan City, remembers.
As a graduate of Taiwan's top university with the highest score in a civil service examination, Ms Chien could have chosen a desk job at head office, but opted to personally care for the many pets abandoned each year in Taiwan.
The shelter's lobby was decorated with pictures of animals drawn by Ms Chien to encourage adoptions, but many of them were destined to be put down.
On 5 May last year, Ms Chien took her own life, using the same drug she used to put down animals. She said she wanted to help people understand what happens to strays in Taiwan.
Taiwan was gripped by anger and soul-searching in the weeks that followed, most of it focused on a life tragically cut short.
But people also asked why frontline workers in Taiwan's battle against pet abandonment were being put under so much pressure.

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Fake news: Czechs try to tackle spread of false stories

The video is shocking. CCTV footage shows a group of youths surrounding a teenage girl. A tussle ensues, and at one point one of the youths appears to stamp on the girl's head.
It was widely shared. In December, it was posted on a Facebook page called "Never Again Canada", with the caption: "Islamic migrants try and grab a girl and attempt to rape her somewhere in Europe".
At the Czech interior ministry, Director of Security Policy David Chovanec recognised the footage instantly. It came from a security camera outside police headquarters.
"It did happen 'somewhere in Europe' - right here in Prague. The footage was all over the local news when the incident happened last spring," he told the BBC.
"But they weren't 'Islamic migrants'. They were Czech citizens connected to the local drug scene. They were settling scores," he continued.
The story was demonstrably false. It soon came to the attention of the interior ministry's newly-founded Centre Against Terrorism and Hybrid Threats, of which Mr Chovanec is formally in charge.
The new unit was set up last month to counter disinformation, much of which Czech officials believe is being created by the Kremlin to undermine democracy ahead of parliamentary and presidential elections.
In this instance there is no suggestion the story was spread by pro-Kremlin trolls; Never Again Canada is a pro-Israel website with a strongly Islamophobic tint.
Mr Chovanec says the source is largely irrelevant; the unit's 15 specialists make decisions on the threat posed by the material itself, not its presumed creator.
Main aims of fake sites
Jakub Janda is no stranger to online trolling, and worse. The deputy director of Prague-based think tank European Values, he says his organisation's headquarters have recently moved, for security reasons, into the basement of a villa near Prague Castle.
He says there are around four dozen Czech-language sites peddling fake or exaggerated news - much of which can be traced to Russia.

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Grandfather's plea for 'fishing mate' charms Australia

A 75-year-old grandfather has been offered free holidays around Australia after his online advert to find a new "fishing mate" went viral.
Ray Johnstone found casting lines off South Australia's Yorke Peninsula without company had turned his lifelong passion into a solitary affair.
His online ad on a popular Australian classifieds site, in which he jokingly described his condition as "used", was posted on 19 January.
"I'm a widowed pensioner who is looking for a fishing mate," Mr Johnstone wrote. "My previous mate is now deceased."
"I am willing to share all costs, e.g. petrol, bait and should you happen to own a boat [I am] willing to pay all ramp fees, but happy if you are also a land-based fisherman."
Days of attention
Propelled by a social media campaign using the hashtag #IllFishWithRay, Mr Johnstone's plea rapidly spread beyond his small town of Lewiston.

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