An earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 6.7 hit extensive areas centering on the Kanto region including Tokyo in the early hours of Thursday injuring six people, with an early warning failing to be issued in time. The six people in Tokyo, Ibaraki, Saitama and Chiba prefectures sustained minor injuries due to the 1:45 a.m. quake, according to the government's Fire and Disaster Management Agency. Smaller quakes were observed before and after that quake.
The Environment Ministry and the Japan Meteorological Agency have opened a new website to jointly publicize yellow sand information. The ministry and the agency had previously posted yellow sand information on separate websites, making data access by Web visitors less user friendly.
At least 351 people were killed and nearly 100,000 left homeless when tropical cyclone Nargis tore through Myanmar, razing thousands of buildings and knocking out power lines, state media said Sunday. Residents awoke Sunday to scenes of devastation after the cyclone bore through swathes of southern Myanmar late Friday and Saturday, uprooting trees, cutting phone lines and water pipes, and clogging streets with debris.
The number of children aged 14 or younger is estimated to have totaled 17.25 million in Japan as of April 1, marking a record low for the 27th straight year, according to a government report released one day ahead of the Children's Day holiday on Monday. Children formed 13.5% of the aggregate population, making Japan the country with the lowest percentage of children among 31 major countries. Their proportion of the total population fell from 13.6% last year, registering a drop for the 34th year in a row, the report showed.
The Environment Ministry began testing wild swans, geese and ducks against bird flu virus Thursday in Akita, Aomori and Hokkaido prefectures on the heels of the recent finding of the deadly H5N1 strain of virus in swans in Akita, ministry officials said.
The world faces a "silent tsunami' of soaring food prices and more must be done to help secure future supply, the U.N. food agency said Tuesday as experts gathered in London for a special summit on the problem. The United Nations World Food Program (WFP) said an extra 100 million people who previously did not require help could now not afford to buy food. It said the soaring prices threatened anti-poverty and health improvement initiatives in the world's poorest nations and left a $755-million hole in the organization's $2.9-billion budget.
Hokkaido Gov Harumi Takahashi issued an environmental appeal Monday ahead of July's Group of Eight summit at the Lake Toya hot spa resort, calling on each of Hokkaido's 5.6 million residents to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from homes by 10%, or 1.1 kilograms a day, from current levels. The targeted figure is bigger than the 1-kg-a-day proposal by the Environment Ministry.
A warning from U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on the possible consequences of the rise in global food prices, together with the plight of the world's poorest nations, dominated the start of a major U.N. trade conference Sunday in Ghana's capital. "If not handled properly, this food crisis could trigger a cascade of others and develop into a multiple crisis, becoming a multi-dimensional problem affecting economic growth, social progress and even political security around the world,' Ban warned delegates.
The men's marathon gold medalist at the 2004 Olympics in Athens said Thursday he is worried more about heat and humidity than air pollution during the upcoming Games in Beijing, which he will take part in. Stefano Baldini also told reporters that the recent debate over China's treatment of Tibet and other issues surrounding the Olympics has put him in an awkward position being asked to make political comments at a time when he wants to focus on his training.
