WASHINGTON — Dozens of crewmembers aboard the carrier USS George Washington were injured after the vessel — due to be stationed at the Yokosuka base in Japan in August — caught fire while navigating in the Pacific earlier this week, the U.S. Navy said.
One sailor sustained minor burns and 23 others suffered heat stress after the fire broke out at around 7:50 a.m. on Thursday, the U.S. Navy announced on Friday. There was no damage done to the vessel’s nuclear reactor.
The incident occurred as the warship was sailing off South America on its way to San Diego, California, before heading for Japan to be deployed at the U.S. Navy’s Yokosuka base in Kanagawa Prefecture in mid-August. It will be the first time that Japan will host a nuclear aircraft carrier.
According to the U.S. Navy, the fire started near an air-conditioning and refrigeration room and the auxiliary boiler room at the vessel’s stern, and spread to adjacent rooms until it was extinguished several hours later.
The fire, which occurred during a refueling operation with the frigate USS Crommelin, did not affect the nuclear vessel’s navigation system, the Navy said. The cause of the fire and the extent of the damage caused are now being investigated.
The George Washington left its home port in Norfolk, Virginia, in April and is slated to call at Hawaii for a ceremony to mark its replacement with the USS Kitty Hawk, which is currently deployed at the Yokosuka base and is due to retire, before heading to Yokosuka.
mdn.mainichi.jp
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The Third Side Also Exists:
Regarding the Likely American Attack on Iran
by Nasser Zarafshan
In the current conflict over Iran, the most important question is what America’s real goal in Iran and the Middle East is. Why? Because, as long as we don’t have a certain and reliable answer to this question, as long as we don’t know what the opponent’s hidden real purpose in this crisis is, we are incapable of figuring out what is to be done, in other words, incapable of collectively taking the correct position on this situation. The American foreign policy leaders’ claim in this situation is very simple. They say that the objective of the American interference in this region is to spread democracy and human rights. Based on this claim, the social order that is currently dominant in the world, whose hegemon is America, pretends that there is no ulterior motive or interest and that there is nothing behind its interference. Pro-Americans in Iran and the region, too, naively repeat the same claim. However, does everyone in Iran and the region share the same naive interpretation of the matter? Below — to the extent that space in this short article allows — I will try to answer this question. But there is another question, too: when rights and freedoms of a nation are negated and trampled upon and its progress and development are blocked due to the domination of reactionaries, is it the duty of a destructive foreign power to restore this nation’s rights and freedoms and open the gate of progress and development? Where in history is there an instance of a foreign power, instead of the nation in question itself, doing any such thing?
Those who encourage foreign interference do not understand its implications and have no idea about the impacts of war on people’s lives. They propagandize a vulgar formula that insinuates that anyone who opposes war and foreign interference is in support of the Islamic Republic. There is no evidence for such a claim. Those who insist on it do so in order to "terrorize" the opponents of war and foreign interference and hide their own worship of foreign powers behind it.
mrzine.monthlyreview.org
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