A truck driver died and hundreds of people were injured yesterday as a record snowfall hit western and central Japan that also left hundreds of thousands of homes without power, suspended train services and shut down an international airport, officials said.
A 31-year-old driver was killed as he crashed into another truck on a snow-covered road in western Shiga prefecture, police said, adding they were investigating if the accident was caused by negligence or snow.
At least 532 people were injured across the nation, mostly minor injuries from tripping on snow-covered ground, public broadcaster NHK said.
In Hirakata, near Osaka, five passengers suffered bruises and cuts when a bus skidded on a road, smashing into a utility pole, police spokesman Tomonori Ikezoe said.
As of yesterday, 231cm of snow had fallen in the town of Tsunan in Niigata and 216cm has fallen on Shirakawa Town in central Gifu prefecture, said Kenji Kobayashi, a researcher for the Meteorological Agency.
Train services in Niigata, about 250km northwest of Tokyo, were suspended due to power outages, according to Junpei Yamauchi, a JR East Japan spokesman.
All local and express services as well as some bullet train services in the area were halted, while some night trains linking cities on the west coast were to be canceled, Yamauchi said.
Central Japan International Airport in Aichi prefecture closed its only runway until yesterday afternoon because of the snow, airport spokesman Mitsuoki Hikota said.
More than 1.3 million households had power outages in the north-central prefecture of Niigata and in western Japan. The latter area was without power for 40 minutes yesterday morning after two generators at a nuclear power station shut down.
‘UNFRIENDLY’: Changing the nationality listing of Taiwanese residents to ‘China’ goes against EU foreign policy as well as democratic and human rights principles, MOFA said Taiwan yesterday called on Denmark to correct its designation of the nationality of Taiwanese residents as “China” or face retaliatory measures. The Danish government in 2024 changed the nationality of Taiwanese citizens on their residence permits from “Taiwan” to “China.” The decision goes against EU foreign policy and contravenes democratic and human rights principles, Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) spokesman Hsiao Kuang-wei (蕭光偉) said. Denmark should present a solution acceptable to Taiwan as soon as possible and correct the erroneous designation to preserve the longstanding friendship between the two nations, Hsiao said. The issue could damage Denmark’s image and business reputation in Taiwan,
The nation’s fastest supercomputer, Nano 4 (晶創26), is scheduled to be launched in the third quarter, and would be used to train large language models in finance and national defense sectors, the National Center for High-Performance Computing (NCHC) said. The supercomputer, which would operate at about 86.05 petaflops, is being tested at a new cloud computing center in the Southern Taiwan Science Park in Tainan. The exterior of the server cabinet features chip circuitry patterns overlaid with a map of Taiwan, highlighting the nation’s central position in the semiconductor industry. The center also houses Taiwania 2, Taiwania 3, Forerunner 1 and
Taiwan climbed to its highest position in global export rankings in more than three decades last year, buoyed by demand linked to artificial intelligence (AI) that lifted shipments of semiconductors and technology products, Ministry of Finance data released yesterday showed. Taiwan accounted for 2.4 percent of global exports last year, or about US$640 billion, ranking 12th worldwide, the data showed. That was up four places from a year earlier and marked the nation’s best ranking since 1994, the ministry said. Taiwan’s share of global exports rose by 0.5 percentage points from the previous year, the largest increase among major economies, reflecting the nation’s
FIRST TRIAL: Ko’s lawyers sought reduced bail and other concessions, as did other defendants, but the bail judge denied their requests, citing the severity of the sentences Former Taipei mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) was yesterday sentenced to 17 years in prison and had his civil rights suspended for six years over corruption, embezzlement and other charges. Taipei prosecutors in December last year asked the Taipei District Court for a combined 28-year, six-month sentence for the four cases against Ko, who founded the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP). The cases were linked to the Core Pacific City (京華城購物中心) redevelopment project and the mismanagement of political donations. Other defendants convicted on separate charges included Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Taipei City Councilor Angela Ying (應曉薇), who was handed a 15-year, six-month sentence; Core Pacific
RSS