An avalanche of snow buried an outdoor hot spring in northern Japan yesterday, leaving one person dead and 10 injured, a news agency reported.
A 20-year-old man pulled from the snow almost six hours after the avalanche struck has died, Kyodo News said.
Masakatsu Ito, an official at nearby Omagari Fire Station, said the man was being taken to a hospital, but could not confirm his death.
Eight women and two men were rescued earlier yesterday and taken to nearby hospitals, none in critical condition, Ito said.
The avalanche hit an outdoor bath at a traditional Japanese inn in Akita, 450km north of Tokyo, apparently burying bathers and staff who were cleaning the pool, officials said.
Rescuers were still digging through snow in search of at least two missing people, believed to be hotel maintenance workers, said area police official Kazutami Ogasawara.
A separate snow avalanche earlier yesterday also buried a 65-year-old employee at an inn about 2km away, Ogasawara said. Rescue efforts were under way, he said.
The area has seven inns -- some so popular that rooms are booked at least a year in advance, said Akita Prefecture official Yoshiyuki Maekawa.
Also in Akita, a separate snow avalanche covered a railway track, forcing a high-speed "bullet train" to make an emergency stop after its first few cars smashed into the mound of snow, police said.
The train did not derail, and none of its 300-odd passengers were injured.
Four people jailed in the landmark Hong Kong national security trial of "47 democrats" accused of conspiracy to commit subversion were freed today after more than four years behind bars, the second group to be released in a month. Among those freed was long-time political and LGBTQ activist Jimmy Sham (岑子杰), who also led one of Hong Kong’s largest pro-democracy groups, the Civil Human Rights Front, which disbanded in 2021. "Let me spend some time with my family," Sham said after arriving at his home in the Kowloon district of Jordan. "I don’t know how to plan ahead because, to me, it feels
Poland is set to hold a presidential runoff election today between two candidates offering starkly different visions for the country’s future. The winner would succeed Polish President Andrzej Duda, a conservative who is finishing his second and final term. The outcome would determine whether Poland embraces a nationalist populist trajectory or pivots more fully toward liberal, pro-European policies. An exit poll by Ipsos would be released when polls close today at 9pm local time, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points. Final results are expected tomorrow. Whoever wins can be expected to either help or hinder the
North Korea has detained another official over last week’s failed launch of a warship, which damaged the naval destroyer, state media reported yesterday. Pyongyang announced “a serious accident” at Wednesday last week’s launch ceremony, which crushed sections of the bottom of the new destroyer. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un called the mishap a “criminal act caused by absolute carelessness.” Ri Hyong-son, vice department director of the Munitions Industry Department of the Party Central Committee, was summoned and detained on Sunday, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported. He was “greatly responsible for the occurrence of the serious accident,” it said. Ri is the fourth person
The collapse of the Swiss Birch glacier serves as a chilling warning of the escalating dangers faced by communities worldwide living under the shadow of fragile ice, particularly in Asia, experts said. Footage of the collapse on Wednesday showed a huge cloud of ice and rubble hurtling down the mountainside into the hamlet of Blatten. Swiss Development Cooperation disaster risk reduction adviser Ali Neumann said that while the role of climate change in the case of Blatten “still needs to be investigated,” the wider impacts were clear on the cryosphere — the part of the world covered by frozen water. “Climate change and
RSS