Victims of a powerful weekend earthquake in central Japan that killed one person, injured around 200, and damaged or destroyed more than 700 buildings, faced an uncertain future yesterday, as many victims remained in shelters, with few signs of when life would return to normal.
About 1,900 people spent a second night in evacuation centers as hundreds of aftershocks jolted the area following Sunday's 6.9 magnitude quake -- including two 5.3 magnitude jolts -- leaving residents stuck in shelters and hampering recovery work.
The quake struck the Noto peninsula in Ishikawa Prefecture, about 300km west of Tokyo.
The tremor demolished 57 houses. Many of the damaged or razed houses were old wooden structures with heavy tile roofs.
Electric power has been fully restored. However, some 8,700 homes still lacked running water, and troops and aid workers were distributing emergency supplies.
"My husband and I have spent two nights in an emergency shelter," said Kiyomi Tanabe, 66, whose home in the rural city of Wajima was almost completely destroyed.
"We are very tired," she said. "We could not sleep well because we are afraid of aftershocks. We don't have any gas supply, and we don't have enough water at the shelter."
Some people were taking shelter in their cars, domestic media reports said, something medical experts advise against because the cramped conditions can cause health problems including blood clots.
Rain was forecast for the region in the evening, prompting fears of landslides.
Television showed elderly people being carried to shelters by rescue workers. More than a third of Wajima's 35,000 population is aged over 65.
Past severe earthquakes in Kobe and Niigata have proven particularly traumatic for the elderly, many of whom suffered from depression when they were forced to move into temporary housing because they were cut off from their local communities.
The peninsula's centuries-old lacquerware industry, on which much of the population relies for a living, was surveying the damage to its 600 ateliers and shops.
"Ever since Japan's economic bubble burst in the 1990s, the lacquerware industry has been on the decline," said Dai Keizuka, who owns a family-run lacquerware studio established 90 years ago.
"Then this earthquake dealt us another severe blow. Nonetheless, we'll try to keep alive the traditional industry started by our ancestors," Keizuka said.
Far from the violence ravaging Haiti, a market on the border with the Dominican Republic has maintained a welcome degree of normal everyday life. At the Dajabon border gate, a wave of Haitians press forward, eager to shop at the twice-weekly market about 200km from Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince. They are drawn by the market’s offerings — food, clothing, toys and even used appliances — items not always readily available in Haiti. However, with gang violence bad and growing ever worse in Haiti, the Dominican government has reinforced the usual military presence at the border and placed soldiers on alert. While the market continues to
An image of a dancer balancing on the words “China Before Communism” looms over Parisian commuters catching the morning metro, signaling the annual return of Shen Yun, a controversial spectacle of traditional Chinese dance mixed with vehement criticism of Beijing and conservative rhetoric. The Shen Yun Performing Arts company has slipped the beliefs of a spiritual movement called Falun Gong in between its technicolored visuals and leaping dancers since 2006, with advertising for the show so ubiquitous that it has become an Internet meme. Founded in 1992, Falun Gong claims nearly 100 million followers and has been subject to “persistent persecution” in
ONLINE VITRIOL: While Mo Yan faces a lawsuit, bottled water company Nongfu Spring and Tsinghua University are being attacked amid a rise in nationalist fervor At first glance, a Nobel prize winning author, a bottle of green tea and Beijing’s Tsinghua University have little in common, but in recent weeks they have been dubbed by China’s nationalist netizens as the “three new evils” in the fight to defend the country’s valor in cyberspace. Last month, a patriotic blogger called Wu Wanzheng filed a lawsuit against China’s only Nobel prize-winning author, Mo Yan (莫言), accusing him of discrediting the Communist army and glorifying Japanese soldiers in his fictional works set during the Japanese invasion of China. Wu, who posts online under the pseudonym “Truth-Telling Mao Xinghuo,” is seeking
‘SURPRISES’: The militants claim to have successfully tested a missile capable of reaching Mach 8 and vowed to strike ships heading toward the Cape of Good Hope Yemen’s Houthi rebels claim to have a new, hypersonic missile in their arsenal, Russia’s state media reported on Thursday, potentially raising the stakes in their attacks on shipping in the Red Sea and surrounding waterways against the backdrop of Israel’s war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The report by the state-run RIA Novosti news agency cited an unidentified official, but provided no evidence for the claim. It comes as Moscow maintains an aggressively counter-Western foreign policy amid its grinding war on Ukraine. However, the Houthis have for weeks hinted about “surprises” they plan for the battles at sea to counter the