U.S. sailors citing ills get Japan boost
TOKYO — Several hundred U.S. service personnel who say they became sick from radiation after participating in relief operations for the 2011 tsunami that set off the Fukushima nuclear disaster are now getting high-profile support in Japan.
Junichiro Koizumi, prime minister from 2001 to 2006, told reporters Wednesday he has set up a special fund to collect private donations for the former service members, with the goal of collecting $1 million by the end of next March, mainly to help with medical bills.
“I felt I had to do something to help those who worked so hard for Japan,” he said at the Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan. “Maybe this isn’t enough, but it will express our gratitude, that Japan is thankful.”
Koizumi, 74, was in San Diego in May to meet with 10 of the former service members, who have joined a class-action lawsuit against Tokyo Electric Power Co., the utility that operates the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.
The lawsuit, filed in 2012, is ongoing.
More Navy personnel and Marines are joining the suit, now numbering about 400, Koizumi said. Some 70,000 Americans took part in Operation Tomodachi, or Friend, flying in aid from an aircraft carrier and other warships off the coast of northeastern Japan.
The ships to which they were assigned were in an area of the ocean in the direction of the radioactive plumes that spewed from the Fukushima plant.
2 held over gas canisters found in Paris
PARIS — A criminal terrorist investigation was opened in Paris after the discovery regarding the discovery Sunday of a car parked near Notre Dame Cathedral with seven gas canisters and pages written in Arabic inside, prosecutors said.
The Paris prosecutor’s office said Wednesday that a couple — a 34-year-old man and a 29-year-old woman — were arrested Tuesday in a highway rest area near the southern town of Orange and transferred to Paris to be questioned in the case.
The car found Sunday morning near the cathedral had its license plates removed and hazard lights on. That evening, its owner went to the police to report that his radicalized daughter was missing, but didn’t mention that his car also had disappeared, the prosecutor’s office said.
Police briefly detained and questioned the car owner before letting him go, the prosecutor’s office said. His daughter still is being sought, the office said.
The man and woman arrested Tuesday already were known by French security services for their alleged links with “radical Islamism,” prosecutors said.
Crash kills 5 on Mexican police copter
MEXICO CITY — Mexican authorities say a police helicopter crashed in western Mexico, killing the pilot and four detectives.
The five were on patrol Tuesday in a rural area where criminals had tried to kidnap a farmer, according to the governor of the western state of Michoacan. Gov. Silvano Aureoles said Wednesday that the mission was aimed at capturing leaders of criminal gangs near the Michoacan city of Apatzingan.
The area has been a hotbed of drug cartel activity and was the scene of fights between the gangs and armed vigilante groups.
Aureoles initially said Tuesday that the helicopter was shot down, but later said the cause was under investigation.
Ex-U.S. detainee’s prospects brighten
MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay — Uruguay’s government said Wednesday that it is searching for another country to take a former Guantanamo detainee who is threatening to die on a hunger strike if he is not allowed to reunite with his family abroad.
Syrian native Abu Wa’el Dhiab repeatedly has said he is unhappy in Uruguay and is demanding to be allowed to leave the South American country, which took him in with five other former Guantanamo prisoners in 2014.
“For several days now, the Uruguayan government has been making arrangements with different states, especially in the Arab world, so they can take in Dhiab and he can fulfill his wish and reunite with his family,” Dhiab’s government liaison, Christian Mirza, told Sarandi radio.
Dhiab was briefly hospitalized Monday night in Montevideo after he became weak from a hunger strike.
At Guantanamo Bay, Dhiab carried out repeated hunger strikes to protest his indefinite detainment. He currently suffers from health problems related to the hunger strikes and forced feedings while in U.S. custody.