Month: July 2023

Kishida’s visit to the United Arab Emirates, which will host COP28 in November-December, is part of the first Gulf tour by a Japanese premier since the late Shinzo Abe in 2020.

Japan relies almost entirely on imports for its crude oil, with Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar accounting for the bulk of its supplies.

As the Asian country increases the role of renewables in its energy mix, the Gulf states, too, are moving more towards cleaner energy sources.

Kishida flew in from Saudi Arabia, where he met de facto leader Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on Sunday. After talks with UAE President Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan in Abu Dhabi, he will head to Qatar on Tuesday.

The Japanese PM plans to offer Japan’s “cutting-edge decarbonisation technologies” as part of a green energy initiative for the Middle East, he said in an open letter carried by the UAE’s official WAM news agency.

Tokyo’s embassy confirmed the comments.

Under the initiative, the UAE and Japan “will be well placed to collaborate in the related fields of hydrogen and ammonia production and utilisation as well as carbon recycling”, Kishida added.

As the oil-rich UAE gears up to host the COP28 United Nations climate talks, many countries remain far apart on ways to reduce fossil fuels and the global warming they cause.

“Japan will work closely with the UAE towards the success of COP28,” Kishida said.

On Monday, Sheikh Mohammed said he held “fruitful and constructive discussions” with Kishida in Abu Dhabi on “developing bilateral relations and advancing the comprehensive strategic partnership between our two countries”.

‘Clean energy cooperation’

On Sunday, Kishida discussed energy security and decarbonisation with senior Saudi officials including Prince Mohammed in the Red Sea city of Jeddah, official Saudi statements said.

During the meeting with Prince Mohammed, Tokyo and Saudi Arabia agreed to launch the “Lighthouse Initiative for Clean Energy Cooperation,” according to the official Saudi Press Agency.

“The initiative will support the ongoing efforts that Saudi Arabia is undertaking to become a hub for clean energy,” said a joint statement carried by SPA on Monday.

It will focus on areas including hydrogen, ammonia, recycled carbon fuels and carbon capture technology, the statement said.

Saudi Arabia is the biggest oil exporter to Japan, fulfilling 40 percent of its total needs, the kingdom’s Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman said on Sunday.

“The Kingdom, based on its commitment to the strategic relationship with Japan in the field of energy, will continue to ensure the security of oil supplies to Japan,” he said, in comments published on his ministry’s website.

During Kishida’s visit, Saudi Arabia and Tokyo signed 26 cooperation agreements, including in the fields of energy and green energy, according to the state-run Al Ekhbariya TV.

The six-member Gulf Cooperation Council and Japan on Sunday also announced the resumption of Free Trade Agreement (FTA) negotiations, according to a GCC statement.

The GCC-Japan FTA negotiations began in Tokyo in September 2006 but talks were suspended in 2009.

“Japan is considered as one of the priorities of the Council,” GCC Secretary General Jasem Mohamed AlBudaiwi said, hailing “a new era of partnership”.

The prime minister was due to visit Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar in August last year, but he postponed the trip after contracting the coronavirus.

His visit comes at a time of deepening engagement between the region and China which brokered a shock detente between Gulf rivals Saudi Arabia and Iran in March.

A statement from the public prosecution said the building in the city’s Hadayek al-Qubba district “completely collapsed”, killing eight people.

“Civil defence workers pulled out nine people, among them an injured woman, while the eight others were deceased”, the statement added, adding that “another five were able to leave the property before it fell down”.

It said the woman and two residents gave testimony “suggesting that the collapse was caused by a resident who recently knocked down walls in his first-floor flat”, despite neighbours asking him not to do so.

The prosecution ordered the arrest of the building’s owner, the contractor in charge of the works and one of his employees for questioning.

Government newspaper Al-Ahram, quoting a resident of the area, reported that seven members of one family had been killed.

Egypt has seen a number of deadly building collapses in recent years, both because of the poor state of some and also because of non-compliance with building and town-planning regulations

The announcement came hours after Russian officials said traffic along the bridge had been halted and media in Ukraine reported explosions along the overpass.

“This morning, we all started with information about the emergency that happened on the Crimean bridge. What information is available at the moment: a girl was moderately injured … The hardest thing is that her parents died, dad and mom,” Belgorod Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said in a statement on Telegram.

Gladkov added that the girl is under the supervision of doctors and will be immediately transported to the Belgorod region once doctors permit it.

In earlier statements, Sergey Aksyonov, the Russian-installed head of Crimea, announced on Telegram that traffic at the Kerch Bridge had stopped and that an “emergency” had occurred.

In a separate statement, Vladimir Konstantinov, the head of the pro-Russian State Council of Crimea, claimed on Telegram that there was an attack on the bridge and blamed it on Ukraine.

“I have been concerned for some time that North Korea would conduct what would be its seventh nuclear test going back multiple administrations. And I remain concerned about that,” National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan told CBS talk show “Face the Nation” in an interview

“I don’t see any immediate indications that that’s going to happen,” he added.

“But it would not come as a surprise if North Korea moved forward with another nuclear test with respect to its intercontinental ballistic missile capability.”

Sullivan stressed that Pyongyang had begun testing its nuclear capacity several years ago and “they have continued to test it.”

North Korea said Thursday it successfully test-fired the reclusive country’s newest ICBM, with leader Kim Jong Un personally overseeing the launch.

The missile, a solid-fuel Hwasong-18 that had reportedly been test-fired only once before, flew 1,001 kilometres (622 miles) at a maximum altitude of 6,648 kilometres before splashing into the East Sea, also known as the Sea of Japan, the official Korean Central News Agency reported.

Relations between North and South Korea are at a low point. Last year, Kim declared his country an “irreversible” nuclear power, and has called for ramped-up weapons production, including of tactical nukes.

The United Nations, the United States and its allies including France strongly condemned Wednesday’s launch, which violated multiple UN Security Council resolutions.

Sullivan nevertheless reiterated Washington’s offer of negotiations with Pyongyang, saying President Joe Biden’s administration is “prepared to sit down and talk without preconditions about their nuclear program.”

Rescue workers waded through thick mud as they drained a flooded underpass in central Cheongju, searching for more victims after vehicles were trapped in the tunnel by flash floods, the interior ministry said, with nine people still missing nationwide.

South Korea is at the peak of its summer monsoon season and days of torrential rain have caused widespread flooding and landslides, with rivers bursting their banks and reservoirs and dams overflowing — and there is more rain forecast this week.

“This kind of extreme weather event will become commonplace — we must accept climate change is happening, and deal with it,” President Yoon Suk Yeol said on Monday, ahead of a visit to flood-hit North Gyeongsang province.

The idea that extreme weather linked to climate change “is an anomaly and can’t be helped needs to be completely overhauled”, he said, calling for “extraordinary determination” to improve the country’s preparedness and response.

South Korea will “mobilise all available resources” including the military and police to help with rescue efforts, he said.

“The rainy season is not over yet, and the forecast is now that there will be torrential rain again tomorrow,” he added.

The majority of the casualties — including 19 of the dead and eight of the missing — were from North Gyeongsang province and were largely due to massive landslides in the mountainous area that engulfed houses with people inside.

Some of the people who have been reported missing were swept away when a river overflowed in the province, the interior ministry said.

Stay inside

South Korean police said they would launch an investigation into the fatal flooding of the underpass in Cheongju, some 112km south of Seoul, Yonhap reported.

The underpass flooded early on Saturday when a nearby river overflowed and an embankment collapsed, leaving 16 vehicles, including a bus, trapped inside, with at least 12 people killed and rescue workers warning the toll could rise as they searched the area.

The Korea Meteorological Administration forecast more heavy rain through Wednesday and urged the public to “refrain from going outside”.

South Korea is regularly hit by flooding during the summer monsoon period, but the country is typically well-prepared and the death toll is usually relatively low.

Scientists say climate change has made weather events around the world more extreme and more frequent.

South Korea endured record-breaking rains and flooding last year, which left more than 11 people dead.

They included three people who died trapped in a Seoul basement apartment of the kind that became internationally known because of the Oscar-winning Korean film “Parasite”.

The government said at the time that the 2022 flooding was the heaviest rainfall since Seoul weather records began 115 years ago, blaming climate change for the extreme weather.