JAPAN
Typhoon to hit Tokyo
The nation yesterday braced for heavy rains and high winds as a strong typhoon was forecast to make landfall near Tokyo overnight. Typhoon Shanshan was a category 2 typhoon, but was expected to weaken slightly as it moves closer to the eastern part of the main island of Honshu, drawing near to Tokyo in the early hours of today and possibly snarling the morning rush hour. Tokyo and surrounding areas could get as much as 350mm of rain in the 24 hours to noon today, with winds gusting as high as 180kph, the Meteorological Agency said. Shanshan is expected to move extremely slowly, perhaps as slow as 15kph, meaning intense rain might fall in one area for an extended period. The storm is expected to rake the northeastern part of Honshu before weakening to a tropical storm and heading out into the Pacific. The nation’s west, the site of deadly floods last month, is forecast to be spared.
ROMANIA
Ancient fortress found
Local and German archeologists have discovered a prehistoric fortress dating back as far as 3,400 years in the nation’s west. The find represented “one of the biggest prehistoric fortresses in Europe in the Bronze Age,” archeologist Florin Golgatan told reporters. The team used specialized archeological magnetic equipment to take underground measurements, said Golgatan, a researcher at the Archeology Institute in Cluj. Last week, they completed a dig uncovering 55 hectares of the 80 hectare site, built between 1,400BC and 1,200BC, near the town of Santana, and plan to continue next year. Local archeologists first began to excavate the site in 2009.
UNITED STATES
NASA to launch solar probe
NASA is poised to launch a US$1.5 billion spacecraft on a brutally hot journey toward the Sun, offering scientists the closest-ever view of the star. After the Parker Solar Probe blasts off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, tomorrow, it would become the first spacecraft ever to fly through the Sun’s scorching atmosphere, known as the corona. Understanding how the corona works would help scientists anticipate dangerous space weather storms, which can disrupt the power grid on Earth. “It’s of fundamental importance for us to be able to predict space weather much the way we predict weather on Earth,” NASA solar scientist Alex Young said.
CHINA
Airbnb axes Wall sleepover
Home rental Web site Airbnb has scrapped a contest offering a chance to spend the night at a section of the Great Wall after an online backlash from people worried it could damage the site. News of the “Night At The Great Wall” contest lit up Chinese social media, with critics calling it a publicity stunt that lacked respect for the monument. “No matter how they dress it up, this doesn’t hide the fact that this contest is by a private company that will undeniably cause damage to an ancient artifact,” one person wrote on Sina Weibo. Officials from Yanqing District — home to the section that was to host the sleepover — said in a statement that it had not been notified about the event and that no approval was given. Launched last week, the contest invited users to write about breaking down cultural barriers and building new connections. Four winners would get the chance to spent the night in a customized bedroom built in an ancient watchtower of the wall, which Airbnb said was done in consultation with conservation experts so that “not a single nail” would need to be moved.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema