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Fukushima – Gusty winds prevented the operator of the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant from starting to dismantle treated water tanks on Thursday, a crucial step towards decommissioning the entire facility. The “water tank dismantling has been postponed because of strong winds,” Tatsuya Matoba, a Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) spokesperson, said. “The process could start from tomorrow depending on weather conditions,” he added. The dismantling had been seen as a milestone in Tepco’s decades-long project to decommission the stricken plant in northern Japan, which went into meltdown after it was hit by a catastrophic tsunami in 2011. Officials were to have started the process on Thursday to get rid of some of the tanks to clear space needed to store nuclear debris to be extracted from the plant’s reactors. Tepco has stored around 1.3 million tons of water — a combination of groundwater, seawater and rainwater — at the site, along with water used for cooling the reactors, since the 2011 accident. The water has been filtered to remove various radioactive materials but remains inside more than 1,000 tanks that occupy much of the plant site. Scrapping the water tanks became possible after Tepco began releasing the stored water from the plant into the Pacific Ocean in August 2023. After removing the tanks, the utility plans to build facilities to store highly dangerous molten fuel debris to be extricated from inside the reactors. Source link

Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce will take time before deciding whether to end his glittering NFL career after enduring a heartbreaking Super Bowl loss to the Philadelphia Eagles, he said on Wednesday. Kelce, one of the greatest tight ends to play in the NFL, discussed the topic of retirement while speaking on the “New Heights” podcast he co-hosts with older brother Jason — a former Eagles lineman who retired last year. “I know everybody wants to know whether or not I’m playing next year, and right now, I’m just kicking everything down the road,” Kelce said. “I’m kicking every can I can down the road. I’m not making any crazy decisions. Source link

Sony raised its profit and revenue outlook on Thursday on expectations of sustained games and music sales, helped by its yearslong spending spree on content. The Tokyo-based entertainment and technology company lifted its annual net income forecast by 10% to ¥1.08 trillion ($7 billion), just above analyst estimates. The outlook rise came after its income rose 2.7%, while analysts on average had expected a double-digit decline due to sluggish demand for Sony’s image sensors for smartphones. Sony has prioritized acquiring more content and intellectual property rights at a time when the company’s hardware efforts are stagnating. The PlayStation 5, now in its fifth year on the market, is on the decline while Sony’s smartphone camera sensors unit is grappling with a protracted market funk. Source link

Hungarian police said Tuesday that disciplinary action has been taken against five officers for failing to respond to a Japanese woman’s reports of domestic abuse by her ex-husband. The 43-year-old woman’s body was found in a burnt-out apartment in Budapest on Jan. 29. After initially ruling out foul play, police arrested her Irish ex-husband earlier this month on suspicion of murder. An investigation revealed that on the day of the fire, the ex-husband, 43, had left the apartment with his two children and later returned to alert emergency services of a fire after allegedly killing his ex-wife. An autopsy of the woman’s body showed signs of assault. Source link

Public support for the Cabinet of Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba was almost unchanged in February from the previous month, remaining in the so-called danger zone below 30%, a Jiji Press opinion poll has shown. The Ishiba Cabinet’s approval rating was up 0.3 percentage point at 28.5%, while its disapproval rating was down 0.2 point at 40.1%. The survey found that 58.7% of respondents supported a call by Nippon Ishin no Kai (the Japan Innovation Party), an opposition party, for scrapping the income cap for free high school education, vastly outnumbering the 25.6% who opposed it. Source link

Labor unions of Hitachi and other major Japanese electronics companies on Thursday demanded a monthly pay scale hike of a record ¥17,000 in their shuntō spring labor talks. The companies are scheduled to give responses to the requests on March 12. The focus is on whether employers will agree to raise pay significantly as in recent years to ensure that wages rise faster than prices. Susumu Takimoto, a Hitachi executive in charge of domestic human resources, said the company is fully aware of the importance of sustaining large wage increases. “We will improve working conditions this year as well,” Takimoto said. This is the 12th straight year that labor unions of major electronics firms have demanded pay scale hikes. The unions customarily negotiate in a unified manner by aligning wage raise demands and their schedule for talks with management, aiming to win positive responses. But since 2020, the unions have accepted some differences in responses as long as they reach a certain level, as business operations and financial performances differ for each company. In last year’s shuntō talks, responses from 11 of 12 firms except Sharp in the industry fully met their labor unions’ requests for a pay scale hike of ¥13,000. Source link

Nariaki Obukuro wanted to make his fourth full-length a dance music album. The world had other plans. “Crazy things were happening — war, inflation. I couldn’t dance,” he tells The Japan Times. “I’d go out and all I could think about was war.” So instead of club beats, he turned inward. “Zatto,” released in January, marks a considerable shift for a rising J-pop insider under Sony Music Japan turned independent artist in London. Backed by musicians he met during his time in England, this latest release features raw grooves inspired by American soul, reggae and flamenco. Empathy ties it all together. Source link

London – Locked up day and night, alone and suffocating from the fumes in a British cannabis factory, Vietnamese migrant Xuan was threatened with death by his traffickers if the harvest was poor. The number of Vietnamese crossing the Channel on small boats jumped in 2024, according to figures from the U.K. interior ministry. They recorded some 3,307 Vietnamese irregular migrants from January to September, up 177% from the previous year, exceeded only by Afghans, Iranians and Syrians. They are also among the most exposed to modern slavery, with more than 1,000 presumed victims reported to the British authorities in 2023. Source link

The megamerger between Honda and Nissan is now officially off following weeks of talks, the two automakers confirmed on Thursday in a statement. The automakers failed to find the common ground needed to achieve an agreement, which was being explored to reverse the declining fortunes of the companies and would have created the world’s third-largest vehicle producer. Nissan and Honda still intend to work together in areas including software and electric vehicle-related technologies. Source link

Oil refiners in India — eager to keep importing cheap crude from Russia — are working with merchants, shippers and other middlemen to rebuild supply chains as tougher U.S. sanctions come into effect. Speaking on the sidelines of India’s flagship energy gathering in Delhi, executives said the existing networks were being reconfigured with selling entities, tankers and insurance providers that are not on Washington’s blacklist. Some are existing outfits that have not been impacted by the punitive measures, while others are newly created, replacing those now off-limits, they said. The executives, all directly involved in the trade, asked not to be named as they are not allowed to speak publicly. Source link