High court orders gov't, Tepco to pay damages over Fukushima crisis

The Sendai High Court on Wednesday ordered the state and the operator of the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant to pay 1 billion yen ($9.5 million) in damages to residents over the 2011 tsunami-triggered disaster.It was the first time for a high court to acknowledge the state's responsibility for the incident in about 30 similar lawsuits filed across Japan.The amount the Sendai court told the government and Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc. to pay to 3,550 plaintiffs was up from the sum of 500 million yen that a lower court ordered them to pay to some 2,900 plaintiffs in an October 2…READ FULL ARTICLE