China Retaliates Over Fukushima Water Dump: Blocks Seafood Imports As Nobody "Wants To Eat Radioactive Salmon"

In July, the UN's nuclear watchdog gave Japan the "greenlight" to dump 'treated' radioactive water from the crippled Fukushima plant into the Pacific Ocean. And now, the world braces for the first release of radioactive water on Thursday. What could possibly go wrong?

Tokyo Electric Power Company (better known as TEPCO) will begin discharging 1.34 million tons of radioactive water that has accumulated since the 2011 tsunami destroyed the Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear power plant. It's part of a $150 billion clean-up effort after the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl.

On Tuesday, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida cleared TEPCO for the Thursday release at a meeting of Cabinet ministers.

Kishida said at the meeting that the release of the water is essential for the progress of the plant decommissioning and Fukushima prefecture's recovery from the March 11, 2011, disaster.

He said the government has done everything for now to ensure the safety, combat the reputational damage for the fisheries and to provide transparent and scientific explanation to gain understanding in and outside the country. He pledged that the government will continue the effort until the end of the release and decommissioning, which will take decades. –Bloomberg

The discharge of radioactive water will be released over three decades and has been filtered and diluted. But that hasn't stopped China and Hong Kong, some of the largest buyers of Japan's seafood exports, from issuing warnings about bans on seafood imports from 10 prefectures if the dump begins.

Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee stated this week that he had "immediately instructed" trade officials to impose import control measures to "protect Hong Kong's food safety and public health."

"The Japanese government insists on discharging nuclear wastewater into the sea.

"This unprecedented decision and practice of discharging a large amount of nuclear waste over 30 years — regardless of the inextricable risks to food safety and the irreversible pollution and damage to the marine environment — is an irresponsible imposition on others," Lee wrote in a Facebook post.

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/anyone-want-eat-radioactive-salmon-japan-set-dump-toxic-fukushima-water-ocean

Hundreds of layoffs hit iconic sporting goods giant

Dick’s Sporting Goods recently unveiled a “business optimization plan,” which included a significant number of layoffs, primarily within its customer support center.

The decision, which was announced in a company press release, is set to cost the retailer $20 million in severance payments this quarter as the company steers its focus toward other investment areas.

Simultaneously, their recently released Quarter 2 earnings show a net sales increase of 3.6% year over year, despite grappling with high inventory shrink levels, which CEO Lauren Hobart quoted as affecting profitability.

The company’s net and operating income both dipped in double digits – a 23% decrease in net income to $244 million and a 32% fall in operating income to approximately $312 million. Hobart attributed the declines to “decisive action” on inventory excess and theft.

Hobart referred to theft as an “increasingly serious issue.” Echoing her sentiments, Neil Saunders, Managing Director at GlobalData, commented via email, “While the problem is not one of Dick’s making, management does not seem to have immediate solutions.”

READ MORE: Tech company lays off 15% of workforce

While the exact number of affected employees remains unannounced, insiders cited by Bloomberg estimate 250 corporate job cuts. The reductions reportedly comprise less than 1% of Dick’s total workforce. An individual close to the matter emphasized Dick’s Sporting Goods’ intention to “reinvest in critical growth drivers,” which potentially involves hiring in other divisions.

The retailer remains committed to the House of Sport store concept, with seven new locations launched in the past quarter alone. Executive Chairman Ed Stack stated that the House of Sport initiative, alongside the brand’s novel 50,000-square-foot store format, has been delivering impressive results.

“We are extremely excited about the future of our business,” Stack said. “Our newest DICK’S concepts, DICK’S House of Sport and our next generation 50,000 square foot DICK’S store, are yielding powerful results. We haven’t seen growth opportunities like these since we went public in the early 2000s.”

By 2027, Dick’s plans to operate between 75 to 100 House of Sport locations.

Amidst the internal shake-ups, the sporting goods giant, which boasted robust sales during the pandemic, was expected to discuss further investment strategies and gauge consumer demand in a Tuesday conference call, according to Market Watch.

https://americanmilitarynews.com/2023/08/hundreds-of-layoffs-hit-iconic-sporting-goods-giant/

Biden DOJ wants to use TikTok to spy on Americans

The agreement would have granted these federal agencies to search TikTok's US headquarters, files, and servers without notice.

United States government regulators attempted to reach an agreement with TikTok to avoid banning the app in the US, which would have granted the federal government extensive control over the app, according to reports.

Forbes obtained a draft of a contract between TikTok and the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) that would have granted unprecedented access to multiple US agencies to the app's records and operations.

Many of the concessions that the government demanded of TikTok resemble the surveillance techniques that critics have accused Chinese officials of exploiting. While concerns remain that the CCP uses the app as a surveillance tool, the federal government almost converted it into an American one.

According to Forbes, the draft agreement that was comprised in the Summer of 2022 would have given the Department of Justice and Department of Defense more access to TikTok than any other social media company. The agreement would have granted these federal agencies to search TikTok's US headquarters, files, and servers without notice.

It would also allow US officials to stop changes to the app's terms of service, and require TikTok to pay for all audits. The agreement also allows for government agencies to shut down TikTok in the US in certain situations, the outlet reports.

In a statement issued to Gizmodo, TikTok did not confirm nor deny the draft agreement but instead explained that the company has been working with CFIUS for quite some time.

"As has been widely reported, we’ve been working with CFIUS for well over a year to implement a national security agreement and have invested significant resources in implementing a firewall to isolate US user data," a TikTok spokesperson said. "Today, all new protected US user data is stored in the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure in the US with tightly controlled and monitored gateways. We are doing more than any peer company to safeguard US national security interests."

The draft document reportedly includes comments from ByteDance, TikTok's Chinese-owned parent business, attorneys, and CFIUS. The agreements would allow third-party auditors and source code inspectors to oversee TikTok's US activities if adopted as written, according to Gizmodo.

US politicians and whistleblowers have accused ByteDance leaders of strong ties to the Chinese Communist Party, with the FBI director asserting that TikTok poses a risk to national security.

Four years ago, during Donald Trump's administration, CFIUS began probing ByteDance because of concerns from politicians and the public that Chinese government officials could use it to spy on Americans. TikiTok announced a data routing deal with Oracle named “Project Texas” to keep new US customer data on Oracle's US cloud infrastructure after then-President Trump threatened a ban.

Over the past year, investigations and whistleblower claims have questioned the effectiveness of TikTok's data security promises. The DOJ investigated ByteDance after multiple workers were discovered snooping on users and journalists investigating the company. In December, the Senate unanimously passed a TikTok ban on all government devices.

https://thepostmillennial.com/revealed-biden-doj-wants-to-use-tiktok-to-spy-on-americans

THE FACT CHECK FILES: Inside the secretive and lucrative fact checking industry behind a foreign-funded bid to censor Voice debate

Two of Australia’s most powerful universities and a multi-billion dollar tech giant are fronting campaigns to silence news coverage of the Voice to influence the referendum, writes Jack Houghton.

Two of Australia’s most powerful universities and a multi-billion dollar tech giant are fronting campaigns to silence news coverage of the Voice to influence the referendum.

A Sky News Australia investigation has uncovered a disturbing foreign-financed attempt to block political debate and news coverage around the Voice, which exposes the global fact checking system used by tech giant Meta as non-compliant with its own rules of impartiality and transparency.

In one case, the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology has been allowed by Facebook parent company Meta to block and deplatform Australian journalism, despite the platform knowing it was a breach of the rules Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg established to distance himself from fact checking responsibilities.

Meta maintains its fact-checking operation is at arm’s length and independent, but Sky News can reveal the tech giant signed a secret commercial contract directly with RMIT which allows the fact checking unit to be paid up to $740,000 a year from an Irish Meta subsidiary.

Zuckerberg has given promises globally that Meta does not seek to be the arbiter of truth on the internet and has insisted his platform is policed by an opaque entity known as the International Fact Checking Network.

However, while RMIT was certified by the IFCN at the time the contract was signed, Sky News can reveal the certification expired in December, leaving the operation free to censor Australian journalism with no oversight at all.

It is just one of 55 fact checking operations around the world which remain signatories of the IFCN despite having expired credentials.

The commercial contract between the Melbourne university and Meta has strict clauses which allow Meta to tear up the agreement if RMIT ever loses certification, but the tech giant has not done so despite being aware that the prominent fact checker is deplatforming journalism while expired.

The university used the powers Facebook has given it to throttle Sky News Australia’s Facebook page with false fact checks multiple times this year, breaching the Meta-endorsed IFCN Code of Principles and preventing millions of Australians from reading or watching Sky News Australia’s journalism.

Fact checkers employed by RMIT have led to numerous code breaches, including one fact checker using her social media account to label Opposition Leader Peter Dutton a fear-mongering racist for his views on the Voice.

https://www.skynews.com.au/business/media/the-fact-check-files-inside-the-secretive-and-lucrative-fact-checking-industry-behind-a-foreignfunded-bid-to-censor-voice-debate/news-story/31915e1eb03b029b86a2f03aac19338b