Powerful winds and towering waves pummeled southern Japan yesterday as typhoon Dianmu headed north toward the country's more densely populated main islands. Officials said three people had died from accidents in stormy seas.
The typhoon had gusts of up to 162km per hour and sustained winds of more than 90km per hour, Japan's Meteorological Agency said.
PHOTO: REUTERS
On Sunday afternoon, it was centered about 1,300km southwest of Tokyo.
The agency classified Dianmu -- "Mother of Lightning" in Mandarin -- as "large and very powerful," and said it could hit Japan's southernmost main island of Kyushu by this morning.
The typhoon had so far caused three deaths, and one person was reported missing near Tokyo.
Police in Shizuoka city, 150km west of Tokyo, found the bodies of two men washed up near the shore early yesterday.
Katsuhisa Kai, 20, and Shintaro Minato, 21 -- both students at the University of Shizuoka -- were believed to have been swept out by rough seas while having a barbecue on the beach Saturday afternoon, a Shizuoka prefectural police spokesman said on condition of anonymity.
Earlier, Japan Coast Guard officials said Noriyuki Shintani, 32, died Saturday while sailboarding in high waves off southern Okinawa island.
Tokyo resident Seiji Ikeda, 73, was missing since late Friday after he went fishing near Kozu island, about 120km south of Tokyo.
Overnight, Dianmu had passed through Okinawa's main island and stormy weather continued to disrupt dozens of flights and some ferry services in the area yesterday.
More than 75 flights in southern Japan had been canceled as well as most ferry services, public broadcaster NHK reported. The Meteorological Agency recorded waves as high as 12m in some areas.
The agency predicted up to 400mm of rain in parts of Kyushu. The typhoon was expected to head farther north in coming days.
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
Asian perspectives of the US have shifted from a country once perceived as a force of “moral legitimacy” to something akin to “a landlord seeking rent,” Singaporean Minister for Defence Ng Eng Hen (黃永宏) said on the sidelines of an international security meeting. Ng said in a round-table discussion at the Munich Security Conference in Germany that assumptions undertaken in the years after the end of World War II have fundamentally changed. One example is that from the time of former US president John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address more than 60 years ago, the image of the US was of a country
DEFENSE UPHEAVAL: Trump was also to remove the first woman to lead a military service, as well as the judge advocates general for the army, navy and air force US President Donald Trump on Friday fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, and pushed out five other admirals and generals in an unprecedented shake-up of US military leadership. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that he would nominate former lieutenant general Dan “Razin” Caine to succeed Brown, breaking with tradition by pulling someone out of retirement for the first time to become the top military officer. The president would also replace the head of the US Navy, a position held by Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead a military service,
BLIND COST CUTTING: A DOGE push to lay off 2,000 energy department workers resulted in hundreds of staff at a nuclear security agency being fired — then ‘unfired’ US President Donald Trump’s administration has halted the firings of hundreds of federal employees who were tasked with working on the nation’s nuclear weapons programs, in an about-face that has left workers confused and experts cautioning that the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE’s) blind cost cutting would put communities at risk. Three US officials who spoke to The Associated Press said up to 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) were abruptly laid off late on Thursday, with some losing access to e-mail before they’d learned they were fired, only to try to enter their offices on Friday morning
RSS