1. Monday is Disaster Prevention Day in Japan. The government staged an anti-disaster drill based on the scenario of a massive earthquake striking the Nankai Trough off Japan’s Pacific coast. September 1 commemorates the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake, which left more than 100,000 people dead and missing in and around Tokyo. This year’s drill assumed a magnitude 9,1 quake had occurred off Wakayama Prefecture, western Japan. It supposed that violent jolts had struck many regions in western and eastern Japan with a major tsunami warning issued mainly for areas along the Pacific.
2. Weather officials in Japan are forecasting another sweltering day in much of the country in much of the country on Monday, with temperatures expected to soar to dangerous levels in the regions of Kanto-Koshin, Tokai, Hokuriku, and Kinki. The mercury rose to 40 degrees Celsius in Nagoya on Sunday. It was the ninth day this year that highs in the country have hit 40 degrees or more, and marks a new annual record.
3. Russia’s attacks on towns and cities across Ukraine have neighborhoods into rubble and left behind millions of tons of debris. One Japanese company sees reconstruction hopes in the devastation and has started a project to turn the war waste into materials to help rebuild Ukraine. Tagawa Sangyo in Fukuoka Prefecture specializes in making plaster and has teamed up with the UN Development Programme and a Turkish construction company.