A powerful magnitude-7.2 earthquake struck northeastern Japan yesterday, triggering a small tsunami and shaking skyscrapers as far away as Tokyo, 300km to the south. At least 59 people were reportedly injured.
The roof of an indoor pool in the coastal city of Sendai collapsed, injuring 17 people, Miyagi prefectural police spokesman Kazunori Abe said, lowering an earlier estimate of 19. Elsewhere, others were hurt by falling rocks and tumbling roof tiles.
TV news footage showed a collapsed house outside Tokyo and landslides in the quake-hit area. A Chiba police spokesman said an 80-year-old woman was trapped but later rescued.
National broadcaster NHK said there were preliminary reports of 59 people injured. Officials were still tallying figures, but police in Miyagi prefecture, which suffered the brunt of the quake, could only confirm 26 injuries, while neighboring Fukushima prefecture had four.
"The horizontal shaking was very strong, so much so that I almost couldn't remain standing," said Masami Oshima, an official with Miyagi prefecture, which includes Sendai.
The quake knocked out power to about 17,000 households, while high-speed train services in northern Japan were suspended and flights were temporarily grounded at Haneda airport. Nippon Oil shut a refinery in Sendai.
The quake struck at around 11:46am and was centered 20km below the ocean floor about 80km off the coast of Miyagi, the Meteorological Agency said. Two 10cm tsunami waves hit the nearby coast shortly after noon, and officials expected little damage from the waves.
The quake was followed by at least four aftershocks and additional quakes of up to magnitude 6 could follow, the agency said.
In 1995, a magnitude-7.3 quake in the western port city of Kobe killed 6,400 people. The depth and offshore location of yesterday's quake helped limit the damage that might have occurred had it been centered under a city.
Authorities in Miyagi were still assessing damage in the area.
South Korea has adjusted its electronic arrival card system to no longer list Taiwan as a part of China, a move that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said would help facilitate exchanges between the two sides. South Korea previously listed “Taiwan” as “Taiwan (China)” in the drop-down menus of its online arrival card system, where people had to fill out where they came from and their next destination. The ministry had requested South Korea make a revision and said it would change South Korea’s name on Taiwan’s online immigration system from “Republic of Korea” to “Korea (South),” should the issue not be
The Legislative Yuan’s Finance Committee yesterday approved proposed amendments to the Amusement Tax Act (娛樂稅法) that would abolish taxes on films, cultural activities and competitive sporting events, retaining the fee only for dance halls and golf courses. The proposed changes would set the maximum tax rate for dance halls and golf courses at 50 and 20 percent respectively, with local governments authorized to suspend the levies. Article 2 of the act says that “amusement tax shall be levied on tickets sold or fees charged by amusement places, facilities or activities” in six categories: “Cinema; professional singing, story-telling, dancing, circus, magic show, acrobatics
Tainan, Taipei and New Taipei City recorded the highest fines nationwide for illegal accommodations in the first quarter of this year, with fines issued in the three cities each exceeding NT$7 million (US$220,639), Tourism Administration data showed. Among them, Taipei had the highest number of illegal short-term rental units, with 410. There were 3,280 legally registered hotels nationwide in the first quarter, down by 14 properties, or 0.43 percent, from a year earlier, likely indicating operators exiting the market, the agency said. However, the number of unregistered properties rose to 1,174, including 314 illegal hotels and 860 illegal short-term rental
INFLATION UP? The IMF said CPI would increase to 1.5 percent this year, while the DGBAS projected it would rise to 1.68 percent, with GDP per capita of US$44,181 The IMF projected Taiwan’s real GDP would grow 5.2 percent this year, up from its 2.1 percent outlook in January, despite fears of global economic disruptions sparked by the US-Iran conflict. Taiwan’s consumer price index (CPI) is projected to increase to 1.5 percent, while unemployment would be 3.4 percent, roughly in line with estimates for Asia as a whole, the international body wrote in its Global Economic Outlook Report published in the US on Monday. The figures are comparatively better than the IMF outlook for the rest of the world, which pegged real GDP growth at 3.1 percent, down from 3.3 percent
RSS