Swine fever spreads in Japan, gov't warns of 'extremely serious' phase

NAGOYA - Japan's swine fever epidemic is spreading, with local authorities in five central and western prefectures saying Wednesday they are struggling to contain the highly contagious virus that was first reported in September.

"We are facing an extremely serious situation," farm minister Takamori Yoshikawa told a meeting at his ministry in Tokyo while instructing officials to take thorough countermeasures. The ministry also set up a special task force in Gifu Prefecture to step up containment efforts.

Spreading from farms in Gifu, the hog cholera virus was newly detected by prefectural and local authorities at farms in neighboring Aichi as well as in Osaka, Shiga and Nagano prefectures.

The government held a Cabinet meeting Wednesday to discuss rapid responses with officials from the prefectures.

"We must prevent the spread of the virus through tighter cooperation between the government and relevant local authorities," Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said at the meeting, asking ministries including the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries to work closely and respond to requests from the prefectures.

"We also ask relevant parties to start an information campaign so that consumers will not be worried," said Suga.

The total number of pigs to be culled at affected farms is expected to reach 15,000.

"It worries me that we don't know how the disease is spreading," said a pig farmer in Iida, Nagano Prefecture. "The only thing we can do is to thoroughly manage hygiene."

The disease does not affect humans even if meat from an infected animal is consumed, but it is fatal to pigs and boars.

Around 130 wild boars in Gifu and Aichi prefecture have tested positive for infection despite experts' initial assumption that the disease would not spread among the animals, which typically do not live in large herds.

Although there is a vaccine to counter classic swine fever, using it could prevent Japan from regaining its World Organization for Animal Health status as a CSF free country, hindering Japan's plan to expand pork exports. The organization already suspended Japan's status after the outbreak in September.

Yasuhiro Ozato, a senior vice farm minister, expressed reluctance to use the vaccine, saying, "We will seek to resolve this by sticking to hygiene control standards."

The Aichi prefectural government began culling around 6,600 pigs at a farm in the city of Toyota with the help of the Ground Self-Defense Force, while banning shipments from six other farms located within 10 kilometers.

The farm in Toyota had shipped pigs to six facilities in Nagano, Gifu, Aichi, Mie, Shiga and Osaka prefectures since January. The ministry has not detected the virus in Mie and the prefecture's government said that all of its tests on hogs from the farm in Toyota were negative.

The farm in Toyota reported to the Aichi government on Monday that pigs were showing symptoms of infection, including loss of appetite, and the prefecture detected the hog cholera virus in five pigs the following day. Detailed tests by the central government confirmed the infection on Wednesday.

The Aichi government said the farm in Toyota shipped pigs to a Nagano Prefecture farm Tuesday morning even after noticing hog cholera symptoms among them as prefectural authorities suspected another illness and did not stop shipments.

Of the 80 pigs brought to the farm in Miyada, Nagano, 79 were found to have been infected with the virus, according to the Nagano prefectural government.

Six hogs sent to a farm in Osaka Prefecture tested positive for the virus, Governor Ichiro Matsui said, adding all hogs at the farm will be culled as soon as a location is determined. There are around 700 hogs at the farm, according to the prefecture.

Matsui also said that he will discuss methods with the farm ministry.

A man involved in pig farming who lives near the Toyota farm said, "There was a vet at the company (managing the farm). I thought they were taking thorough preventive measures."

Hog cholera was detected at a farm in the city of Gifu in September, the first such discovery in Japan since 1992. The country declared the virus eradicated in 2007.

==Kyodo

Attacker in Japan stabs, kills 19 in their sleep at disabled center

SAGAMIHARA, Japan - A knife-wielding man stabbed and killed 19 people as they slept at a facility for the disabled in a town near Tokyo early on Tuesday, a senior government official said, Japan's worst mass killing in decades.

At least 25 other residents of the facility were wounded in the attack.

"This is a very heart-wrenching and shocking incident in which many innocent people became victims," Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told a scheduled news conference in Tokyo.

Police have arrested Satoshi Uematsu, 26, a former employee at the facility in Sagamihara town in Kanagawa Prefecture, about 25 miles (40 km) southwest of Tokyo, a Kanagawa official said. At least one media report said Uematsu had called for euthanasia of the severely disabled.

Uematsu had turned himself in, the Kanagawa prefecture official, identified only by his surname of Sakuma, told an earlier news conference carried on public broadcaster NHK.

Another 25 people were wounded, 20 of them seriously, Sakuma said.

Kyodo news agency said the dead ranged in age from 19 to 70 and included nine males and 10 females. Earlier media reports had said as many as 45 people had been wounded.

Staff called police at 2.30 a.m. local time (1730 GMT Monday) with reports of a man armed with a knife on the grounds of the Tsukui Yamayuri-En facility, media reported. The man wore a black T-shirt and trousers, reports said.

The 3-hectare (7.6 acre) facility, established by the local government and nestled on the wooded bank of the Sagami River, cares for people with a wide range of disabilities, NHK said, quoting an unidentified employee.

Residents of the small town of Sagamihara said the last murder in the area was 10 years ago.

A woman who said she used to work at the facility said many patients were profoundly disabled.

"They are truly innocent people. What did they do? This is shocking," she told Japanese television station TBS.

BAG OF KNIVES

Police had recovered a bag with several knives, at least one stained with blood, the Kanagawa prefecture official said.

Police said they were still investigating possible motives.

Asahi Shimbun reported that the suspect was quoted by police as saying: "I want to get rid of the disabled from this world." Other reports said he had held a grudge after being fired from his job at the facility.

Broadcaster NTV reported that the arrested man presented a letter to the speaker of the lower house of Japan's parliament in February calling for euthanasia of disabled people.

"My goal is a world in which, in cases where it is difficult for the severely disabled to live at home and be socially active, they can be euthanised with the consent of their guardians," it quoted the letter as saying.

At least 29 emergency squads responded to the attack, Kyodo reported, with those wounded taken to at least six hospitals in the western Tokyo area.

NHK reported that the facility is usually locked at night but the suspect broke into the building by smashing a window.

The facility's website said the centre had a maximum capacity of 160 people, including staff.

Such mass killings are extremely rare in Japan and typically involve stabbings. Japan has strict gun laws and possession of firearms by the public is rare.

Eight children were stabbed to death at their school in Osaka by a former janitor in 2001. Seven people died in 2008 when a man drove a truck into a crowd and began stabbing people in Tokyo's popular electronics and "anime" district of Akihabara.

A revision to Japan's Swords and Firearms Control Law was introduced in 2009 in the wake of that attack, banning the possession of double-edged knives and further tightening gun-ownership rules.

Members of a doomsday cult killed 12 people and made thousands ill in 1995 in simultaneous attacks with sarin nerve gas on five Tokyo rush-hour subway trains.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

14 dead in Japan ski bus accident

TOKYO, Japan - Fourteen people were killed and dozens injured when a bus taking them to a ski resort ran off a mountain road in central Japan early Friday, the government said.

The fully loaded bus with 41 people on board was driving from Tokyo to a ski resort in Nagano prefecture when it veered off the road in the resort town of Karuizawa in southern Nagano, according to the government.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told a news conference in Tokyo that 14 people were killed and 27 others were injured in the single vehicle crash.

Suga, the top government spokesman, said the transport ministry had launched an investigation into the accident, sending inspectors to the site.

Television footage showed the bus overturned in woods with its front window completely shattered after it broke through a crash barrier.

The bus was descending from a pass before dawn, a local police spokesman told AFP, while local media said it was carrying passengers on a tour package sold by a Tokyo travel agency.

Japan in recent years has seen several high-profile bus accidents, some blamed on drivers falling asleep at the wheel.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Magnitude 6.8 quake hits central Japan; no tsunami warning

TOKYO - An earthquake with preliminary magnitude of 6.8 jolted central Japan on Saturday evening, temporarily trapping 21 people when their homes collapsed and leaving 13 people injured, police and public broadcaster NHK said.

The Japan Meteorological Agency said no tsunami warning was issued after the quake, which was felt in the capital Tokyo 180 km (110 miles) away.

A National Police Agency official said the quake destroyed five houses in Hakuba village, host to ski jumping and other events during the 1998 Nagano Winter Olympic Games, but that the 21 villagers trapped were successfully rescued.

At least two of them were injured, although the degree of their injuries was not immediately clear, he said.

NHK reported 13 people were injured in the quake, including five who were seriously hurt.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told reporters an advanced party of Japan's military had been sent to the area, and others were on standby.

High-speed trains were halted but later resumed service, Kyodo news agency reported.

There were no signs of irregularities at Tokyo Electric Power Co's (TEPCO) Kashiwazaki Kariwa nuclear plant, a spokesman for the utility said. The plant, where all seven reactors are currently off-line, is the world's largest power station.

NHK quoted an official in the village of Ogawa near the epicentre as saying there was a long tremor and documents fell off shelves.

"On the second floor of our house, the tremor was too strong to stand," said Sakiko Hagiwara, an NHK employee in the area.

"Pictures fell off the wall," she said, adding there were no cracks in the walls.

NHK also said there was a report of a landslide blocking roads near Hakuba.

Japan, situated on the "Ring of Fire" arc of volcanoes and oceanic trenches that partly encircles the Pacific Basin, accounts for about 20 percent of the world's earthquakes of magnitude 6 or greater.

On March 11, 2011, a 9.0 magnitude earthquake struck under the ocean off the coast of the northern city of Sendai. The quake triggered a massive tsunami that devastated a wide swathe of the Pacific coastline and killed nearly 20,000. It also devastated the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, causing meltdowns in the world's worst nuclear disaster in 25 years.

(Additional reporting by Olivier Fabre, Osamu Tsukimori, Kiyoshi Takenaka; Writing by Linda Sieg; Editing by Andrew Roche and David Evans)

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com