Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe took US Ambassador to Japan Caroline Kennedy on a test ride on Japan’s super-fast magnetic train on Saturday, showcasing the magnetic levitation technology Tokyo hopes to sell to its ally.
“I hope ambassador Kennedy will enjoy the full package of Japan — the blizzard of cherry blossoms, Mount Fuji and the state-of-the-art technology,” a relaxed-looking Abe said ahead of the ride.
As the distinctive white and pink petals of the blossom swirled in the breeze, the pair boarded at the Yamanashi Maglev Test Line near Mount Fuji.
The smiling Japanese prime minister showed off the SCMaglev system with ease, with the train hitting speeds of 505kph at some points during the journey.
Magnetic levitation, or maglev, uses magnets in place of traditional wheels and axles to propel a vehicle forward and is a contender for US President Barack Obama’s multibillion-dollar US national high-speed rail project.
Japan’s Nikkei Shimbun on Saturday reported that SCMaglev operator Central Japan Railway does not plan to charge licensing fees in the US for its super-speedy train, providing a strong incentive for Washington to select the system for a proposed high-speed rail line linking Washington to Baltimore.
The proposed 60km link would be the first phase in the US government’s plan to connect the capital to Boston, Massachusetts.
To help alleviate the franchise’s estimated ￥1 trillion (US$9.75 billion) pricetag, Japan intends to finance half of the cost through the Japan Bank for International Cooperation, the Nikkei said.
Japan is battling Canada, France, Germany and others as it seeks to sell its Shinkansen bullet and magnetic train systems overseas.
After Saturday’s ride, Abe said: “Since I was able to share this experience with ambassador Kennedy today, I hope she would share her story with the White House as well.”
Kennedy said she thought the technology was “something that will bring great benefits to Japan and hopefully to the United States.”
The magnetic train hovers 10cm above the tracks and reached a world record speed of 581kph in 2003, according to the operator.
Central Japan Railway hopes to launch the service billed as faster, smoother and quieter than conventional trains between Tokyo and Nagoya by 2027.
By 2045, it is expected to link Tokyo with Osaka in just 67 minutes, compared with the current time of more than two hours.
The diplomatic date shared by Abe and Kennedy, the daughter of assassinated US president John F. Kennedy, was their second over the past three days.
The pair chatted on Thursday evening via video-link with Koichi Wakata, the Japanese commander of the International Space Station, as he circled the Earth hundreds of kilometers up in the atmosphere.
NEW STORM: investigators dubbed the attacks on US telecoms ‘Salt Typhoon,’ after authorities earlier this year disrupted China’s ‘Flax Typhoon’ hacking group Chinese hackers accessed the networks of US broadband providers and obtained information from systems that the federal government uses for court-authorized wiretapping, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on Saturday. The networks of Verizon Communications, AT&T and Lumen Technologies, along with other telecoms, were breached by the recently discovered intrusion, the newspaper said, citing people familiar with the matter. The hackers might have held access for months to network infrastructure used by the companies to cooperate with court-authorized US requests for communications data, the report said. The hackers had also accessed other tranches of Internet traffic, it said. The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs
STICKING TO DEFENSE: Despite the screening of videos in which they appeared, one of the defendants said they had no memory of the event A court trying a Frenchman charged with drugging his wife and enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her screened videos of the abuse to the public on Friday, to challenge several codefendants who denied knowing she was unconscious during their actions. The judge in the southern city of Avignon had nine videos and several photographs of the abuse of Gisele Pelicot shown in the courtroom and an adjoining public chamber, involving seven of the 50 men accused alongside her husband. Present in the courtroom herself, Gisele Pelicot looked at her telephone during the hour and a half of screenings, while her ex-husband
EYEING THE US ELECTION: Analysts say that Pyongyang would likely leverage its enlarged nuclear arsenal for concessions after a new US administration is inaugurated North Korean leader Kim Jong-un warned again that he could use nuclear weapons in potential conflicts with South Korea and the US, as he accused them of provoking North Korea and raising animosities on the Korean Peninsula, state media reported yesterday. Kim has issued threats to use nuclear weapons pre-emptively numerous times, but his latest warning came as experts said that North Korea could ramp up hostilities ahead of next month’s US presidential election. In a Monday speech at a university named after him, the Kim Jong-un National Defense University, he said that North Korea “will without hesitation use all its attack
Scientists yesterday announced a milestone in neurobiological research with the mapping of the entire brain of an adult fruit fly, a feat that might provide insight into the brains of other organisms and even people. The research detailed more than 50 million connections between more than 139,000 neurons — brain nerve cells — in the insect, a species whose scientific name is Drosophila melanogaster and is often used in neurobiological studies. The research sought to decipher how brains are wired and the signals underlying healthy brain functions. It could also pave the way for mapping the brains of other species. “You might
RSS