Around the World briefs
By Associated Press
Congo faces unprecedented crisis as violence displaces 250,000 in last month
GOMA, Congo | Escalating violence in Congo’s eastern region has displaced at least 250,000 people in the last month, a senior United Nations official said Wednesday, describing the situation as an unprecedented humanitarian crisis.
Far from the nation’s capital, Kinshasa, eastern Congo has long been overrun by more than 120 armed groups seeking a share of the region’s gold and other resources as they carry out mass killings. The result is one of the world’s largest humanitarian crises, with about 7 million people displaced, many of them beyond the reach of aid.
“It’s really heartbreaking (and) what I saw is truly a horrible situation,” Ramesh Rajasingham, director of coordination in the U.N. humanitarian office, told The Associated Press.
Rajasingham visited the city of Goma, where many are taking refuge. “Such a large number of displaced persons in such a short time is unprecedented,” he said.
Amid intensified fighting with security forces, the M23 rebel group — the most dominant in the region with alleged links to neighboring Rwanda — has continued to attack villages, forcing many to flee to Goma, the region’s largest city whose estimated population of 2 million people is already overstretched with inadequate resources.
While M23 has said it is targeting security forces and not civilians, it has laid siege to several communities, with about half of North Kivu province under its control, according to Richard Moncrieff, the Crisis Group’s Great Lakes region director, leaving many trapped and out of the reach of humanitarian aid.
“We fled insecurity, but here too, we live in constant fear,” Chance Wabiwa, 20, said in Goma where she is taking refuge. “Finding a peaceful place has become a utopia for us. Perhaps we will never have it again,” said Wabiwa.
Reelected to a second five-year term in December, Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi has blamed neighboring Rwanda for providing military support to the rebels. Rwanda denies the claim but U.N. experts have said there is substantial evidence of their forces in Congo.
Both regional and U.N. peacekeepers have been asked to leave Congo after the government accused them of failing to resolve the conflict.
Rajasingham said humanitarian agencies are doing their best to reach those affected by the conflict but warned that “an enormous influx of people is putting challenges beyond what we can meet right now.”
“There has to be a solution to the suffering, to the displacement, to the loss of livelihoods, the loss of education,” he said.
The treated discharge from Japan’s ruined Fukushima nuclear plant is safe
FUTABA, Japan | The head of the U.N. atomic agency observed firsthand the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant’s ongoing radioactive wastewater discharges for the first time since the contentious program began months ago and called it an “encouraging start.”
International Atomic Energy Agency Director-General Rafael Grossi watched treated radioactive water being mixed with massive amounts of seawater and examined a water sampling station. He was escorted by utility Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings president Tomoaki Kobayakawa.
The discharges have been opposed by fishing groups and neighboring countries including China, which banned all imports of Japanese seafood immediately after the release began.
An 2011 earthquake and tsunami damaged the Fukushima plant’s power supply and reactor cooling functions, triggering meltdowns of three reactors and causing large amounts of radioactive wastewater to accumulate. After more than a decade of cleanup work, the plant began discharging the water after treating it and diluting it with seawater on Aug. 24, starting a process that’s expected to take decades.
Grossi last visited the plant in July after issuing an IAEA review predicting only negligible impact from the discharges. An IAEA comprehensive report later concluded that the discharges meet international safety standards.
Grossi said an IAEA office and a laboratory at the plant have been carrying out their own, independent evaluations of the discharges, and results had been in line with what they expected.
“We never say ‘this is done’ or ‘this is okay’ because there is a long way to go,” he said. “I would say it’s a very positive and encouraging start.”
Grossi also met with local officials and representatives from fishing and business groups and reassured them that the discharges are being carried out “with no impact to the environment, water, fish and sediment.”
“There is no scientific reason to impose any restriction on products coming from us,” Grossi said.
He later told reporters that he is aware of “observations made by China” and noted that “I have an ongoing and very constructive dialogue with China regarding the operation here.”
He asserted that “the authority and the impartiality of what the IAEA does cannot be put into question,” adding that he was “very confident that the dialogue with China and with other countries will be constructive and we will be able to provide all the assurances as required.”
China’s ban on Japanese seafood mostly hit scallop exporters in Hokkaido. Tokyo has earmarked a fund of more than 100 billion yen ($680 million) that includes compensation and other support, including measures to help find other export destinations.
Despite earlier fears that the water discharge would further hurt Fukushima’s hard-hit fishing industry, it has not damaged its reputation domestically.
Grossi stressed the importance of “transparency, technical accuracy and wide open, honest dialogue and consultation.”
Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s government has reversed earlier plans for a nuclear phaseout and is accelerating the use of nuclear power in response to rising fuel costs related to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and pressure to meet decarbonization goals.
On Thursday, Grossi will hold talks with Japanese Foreign Minister Yoko Kamikawa and is expected to discuss further cooperation between the IAEA and Japan in non-proliferation, use of nuclear energy and support to protect Ukraine’s nuclear power plant seized by Russian military.
Germany launches bidding for carbon contracts to support climate-friendly industrial production
BERLIN | Germany’s vice chancellor on Tuesday launched a program initially worth up to $4.4 billion to help heavy industry shift to more climate-friendly production over a 15-year period.
Germany, which is home to many energy-intensive industries as Europe’s biggest economy, aims to cut its greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2045. The government, which says industry accounts for about one-fifth of the country’s emissions, says Germany is the first in the European Union to launch the so-called “carbon contracts for difference.”
Companies in areas such as paper, glass, steel and chemical production have four months to bid for support under the contracts, which are supposed to compensate for the extra costs of climate-friendly production processes where they otherwise would not be competitive. Support will be capped at 1 billion euros per bidder in an effort to accommodate medium-sized companies.
The government says that switching to new production methods is essential but currently comes with high costs and risks that put companies off investing in them — for example, uncertainty over future hydrogen prices.
Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck, who is also Germany’s economy and climate minister, said the contract system compares with a cumbersome existing application process for support that can take three years to complete.
He said it is “super cost-efficient” because companies will be bidding to make carbon-neutral production as economically as possible.
“For the companies, there is the advantage of being able to plan and calculate with a fixed, green energy price over 15 years,” he added.
Bidding for the first round of support is limited to firms that went through a preparatory procedure last summer. Companies must state how many euros it will take them to avoid a ton of CO2 emissions with new technology.
Habeck’s Economy Ministry hopes that a second round of bidding for support totaling up to 19 billion euros will take place at the end of the year.
The Federation of German Industries welcomed the launch. It said that “extensive state support is necessary if the politically desired transformation to climate neutrality is to succeed in a short time.”
The head of Greenpeace Germany, Martin Kaiser, said that the new contracts could only help modernize industry if they support companies that emit no CO2 by using modern technology and clean energy.
But if “designed wrong, carbon contracts for difference stand completely in the way of this transition” by chaining the country to old, climate-damaging technology, he argued in a statement.
The group has criticized plans Habeck, a member of the environmentalist Green party, announced last month to enable underground carbon storage at offshore sites.
South Korea criticizes senior doctors for threatening to resign to support their juniors’ walkouts
SEOUL, South Korea | South Korea’s government criticized senior doctors at a major hospital Tuesday for threatening to resign in support of the weekslong walkouts by thousands of medical interns and residents that have disrupted hospital operations.
About 12,000 junior doctors in South Korea have been off the job for a month to protest a government plan to sharply increase medical school admissions. Officials say the plan is meant to add more doctors to deal with the country’s rapidly aging society, but doctors say universities can’t handle an abrupt, steep increase in the number of students, and that would eventually hurt the quality of South Korea’s medical services.
The government began steps a week ago to suspend the licenses of the striking doctors, after they missed a government-set Feb. 29 deadline for their return.
The walkouts now threaten to enter a critical phase as senior doctors at the Seoul National University Hospital and its affiliated hospitals decided Monday to resign en mass if the government doesn’t come up with measures that can address the dispute by early next week. Senior doctors at other major university hospitals could take similar steps.
“If the government doesn’t take steps toward sincere, reasonable measures to resolve the issue, we decided to submit resignations, starting from March 18,” Bang JaeSeung, leader of the Seoul hospital’s emergency committee, told reporters Monday.
But the committee’s decision doesn’t make participation mandatory, so it’s unclear how many doctors could turn in resignations. There are a total of about 1,480 medical professors at the Seoul National University Hospital and its three affiliated hospitals, most of whom concurrently work as doctors there.
Most doctors who submit resignations will likely continue to work to prevent a medical crisis, unless hospital authorities accept their resignations immediately, emergency committee officials said. But by law, they said the doctors’ resignations will be automatically processed a month after their submissions.
Last week, the University of Ulsan College of Medicine in the southeast also decided to let its senior doctors submit resignations on a voluntary basis, according to Kim Mi-na, head of the university’s emergency committee.
In a briefing Tuesday, Vice Health Minister Park Min-soo called the Seoul National University Hospital doctor’s decision “very regrettable.” He said they should work with the government to persuade the junior doctors to return to work.
“The people would find it difficult to understand another collective resignation that would put the lives of patients at risk,” Park said.
He said that Health Minister Cho KyooHong met some of the striking junior doctors on Monday, but he refused to provide details of the meeting. There were no immediate reports of a breakthrough.
It was the first meeting between the government and the strikers since authorities began taking a series of administrative steps on March 4 to suspend the strikers’ licenses. The steps include dispatching officials to confirm the absences of the strikers, sending notices about the planned suspensions, and giving them opportunities to respond before the license suspensions take effect.
Officials have said the striking doctors would face minimum three-month license suspensions and prosecutions. No suspensions have been reported completed yet.
The striking junior doctors represent less than 10% of the country’s 140,000 doctors. But in some major hospitals like the Seoul National University Hospital, they account for about 30%-40% of the total doctors, assisting senior doctors during surgeries and dealing with inpatients while training. Their walkouts have subsequently caused numerous canceled surgeries and other treatments at their hospitals and burdened South Korea’s medical service.
In early February, South Korea’s government said it would increase the country’s medical school enrollment quota by 2,000 starting next year, from the current cap of 3,058 that has been unchanged since 2006.
Officials say South Korea’s doctor-to-population ratio is one of the lowest in the developed world, and that more doctors are required to address a long-standing shortage of physicians in rural areas and in essential yet low-paying specialties.
But doctors say newly recruited students would also try to work in the capital region and in high-paying fields like plastic surgery and dermatology. They say the government plan would also result in doctors performing unnecessary treatment due to increased competition.
The doctors’ protests have failed to win public support. Critics say doctors — one of the best-paid professions in South Korea — are only worrying about the possibility of a lower income in the future.
—From AP reports
