月: 2023年8月

1. Hawaii Governor Josh Green says the death toll from the Maui wildfires has risen to 110. Green said search teams have so far scoured 38 percent of the affected areas. He said authorities have added more people and search dogs to the effort, and enlisted additional experts to help assess DNA in a bid to identify the dead.
2. The Japanese government and the United Nations Development Programme have agreed to build facilities to recycle rubble left by Turkey’s major earthquakes in February in a Japan-funded project. The disaster killed 50,783 people and destroyed more than 310,000 buildings in southern Turkey. Workers still continue to demolish and remove damaged buildings.
3. Japanese Prime Minister Kishida Fumio is scheduled to leave for the United States on Thursday afternoon for a trilateral summit with US and South Korean leaders. Kishida will hold talks with US President Joe Biden and South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol at the Camp David presidential retreat near Washington the next day.

1. A trail of destruction has been left by Tropical Storm Lan as it plows through central and western Japan. Weather officials say heavy rain is likely again on Wednesday in different parts of the country. They say rain clouds brought by the storm are hovering over the Tokai and Hokuriku regions. 2. The operator of the Tokaido-Sanyo Shinkansen line says services fully resumed ass of 2:10 p.m. on Wednesday. The Shinkansen bullet train had halted operations between Tokyo and Hakata due to heavy rain in Shizuoka Prefecture, central Japan.
3. Rescue crews in Hawaii have found the bodies of at least 101 victims of the wildfires on Maui over the past week. It is the deadliest natural disaster in state history. The crews fear that they will find many more bodies because they have managed to search only about one-quarter of the disaster zone. Flames and toxic fumes have prevented them from entering some buildings.

1. The fighting stopped long ago, but the millions killed continue to be remembered. Japan is marking 78 years since World War Two. It regards August 15, 1945, as the end of the conflict. That’s the day the public learned that Japan had surrendered.
2. South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol has called Japan “a partner sharing universal values,” and stressed his intention to step up the two countries’ cooperation in security and the economy. Yoon spoke Tuesday at a ceremony in Seoul marking the anniversary of the Korean Peninsula’s liberation from Japanese colonial rule.
3. Tens of thousands of homes are without power as Severe Tropical Storm Lan slams into Japan’s main island. Many residents have been forced to flee.

1. Churchgoers in Maui have been praying for the victims of the wildfires that devastated parts of the Hawaiian island. The death toll has reached 93 in the deadliest wildfires in the United States in more than a century.
2. Scorching heat continues across wide regions of Japan, with the mercury topping 38 degrees Celsius in Niigata Prefecture along the Sea of Japan coast on Monday morning. 3. Sources say Japanese police are planning to investigate two members of a suspected fraud group of Japanese nationals based in Cambodia after bringing them back to Japan.

1. Russia has launched its first lunar probe in nearly half a century, with the aim of becoming the first country to make a landing on the Moon’s south pole. Russia’s space agency Roscosmos said the Luna-25 lifted off on Friday from the Vostochny cosmodrome in the Far East. It said the unmanned spacecraft entered its scheduled flight path. 2. The number of people in Japan heading off to their hometowns, vacation spots and other destinations for the “Bon” holiday period appeared to have peaked on Friday. This is the first summer holiday in Japan since the government lifted all coronavirus pandemic restrictions. 3. The operator of the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant has found leaks in a hose used to transfer treated water. Tokyo Electric Power Company conducted a probe after higher-than-usual levels of radioactive material were detected in rainwater in the dike around a storage tank.

1. The Chinese government has allowed the resumption of group tours by its citizens to 78 more countries and regions. The destinations include Japan, South Korea, India, the United States, Australia, Britain and Germany. China announced the lifting of the ban on Thursday. It had been imposed from January 2020 to counter the COVID-19 pandemic. 2. A brother of a Japanese abductee to North Korea has called on junior high school students to gain a better understanding of the abduction issue and to support efforts to bring his sister home for a reunion with their elderly mother. Yokota Takuya, a younger brother of abductee Yokota Megumi, gave a speech at a gathering of junior high school students in Tokyo on Thursday. He heads a group of the abductees’ families.
3. Japanese Prime Minister Kishida Fumio is considering a reshuffle of his Cabinet and executives of his main ruling Liberal Democratic Party as early as mid-September. The information comes from several government and party officials, who say Kishida, who is also LDP President, is looking to bolster his leadership amid flagging public support. Thursday marks exactly one year since Kishida last reshuffled his Cabinet and party executives.

1. US space agency NASA has unveiled the Orion spacecraft being developed for a manned flight around the moon, planned for next year.
2. The United Nations says it has secured approval from the Syrian government to continue using a Turkish border crossing to deliver aid to people in the country’s northwest, an area controlled by anti-government forces.
3. People in Japan have marked 78 years since the US military dropped an atomic bomb on Nagasaki. The city remains the last place to suffer a nuclear attack.

1. Weather officials in Japan are warning people to be on alert ahead of the arrival of Severe Tropical Storm Khanun. The storm is expected to approach the country’s southwestern region of Kyushu on Wednesday. Bands of active rain clouds are expected to develop in the Amami region and in southern and northern Kyushu through Wednesday night.
2. Former Japanese Prime Minister Aso Taro has said in a speech in Taiwan that “a readiness to fight” serves as a deterrence in the region. Referring to China’s growing military pressure on Taiwan, Aso said peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait are very important for the stability of Japan and the international community. He said countries around the world are starting to recognize this. 3. Japan’s current account surplus rose in the first half of 2023 from the same period last year, mainly due to a fall in the price of energy imports. The Finance Ministry said on Tuesday that the surplus for the six months through June stood at 8.1 trillion yen, or about 56 billion dollars. That’s up about 5.6 billion dollars from the same period last year.

1. Former Japanese Prime Minister Aso Taro has laid flowers at the grave of the former Taiwan President Lee Teng-hui, who fostered close ties with Japan. Lee died in 2020 at the age of 97. He had contributed to Taiwan’s democratization by allowing voters to directly cast ballots in a presidential race for the first time.
2. Severe Tropical Storm Khanun is on track to approach southwestern Japan by Wednesday. It is moving north with winds expected to reach 90 kilometers per hour. The Japan Meteorological Agency says Khanun is moving slowly over waters off the Amami region in Kagoshima Prefecture. Bands of active rain clouds could develop in the region and in southern Kyushu through Tuesday morning. Record-breaking precipitation could hit the Pacific side of western and eastern Japan through Thursday.
3. Tensions continue to rise in the West African nation of Niger, after military leaders who staged a coup rejected a regional bloc’s request to reinstate the president by a Sunday deadline. The coup leaders announced on Sunday that they closed the country’s airspace, citing the possibility of military intervention by the Economic Community of West African States, or ECOWAS.

1. Japan’s weather officials continue to urge people in Okinawa Prefecture to be on high alert as Typhoon Khanun nears the region’s Miyakojima Island. The typhoon has left two people dead and more than 60 others injured in the prefecture. Officials are calling for caution against high waves and storm surges.
2. The European Union, Norway and Iceland on Thursday lifted all import restrictions on Japanese food products that had been implemented following the 2011 accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Japan’s Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries says it welcomes the removal of the restrictions as it will boost reconstruction efforts in the areas affected by the nuclear disaster. 3. A variety of colorful fireworks lit the night sky over Nagaoka City in central Japan as one of the country’s most popular fireworks festivals opened on Wednesday. The two-day Nagaoka Fireworks Festival started at 7:20 p.m. with the release of three white fireworks, carrying with them a wish for peace. The long-standing event honors those who died in an air raid in 1945 and prays for recovery from a major earthquake that struck the area in 2004.