Rescuers untangling Japan's worst train crash in decades uncovered body after body in the wreckage yesterday to put the death toll at 95, but grim work remained in accounting for the dozens still missing, including the driver at the center of the investigation into the wreck.
A probe into possible negligence by operator West Japan Railway Co (JR West) has focused on the 23-year-old driver, his lack of experience and suspicions that the train was speeding before it derailed and slammed into an apartment building on Monday. At least 456 people were injured.
Rescuers at the crash site in Amagasaki, about 410km west of Tokyo, found at least 13 bodies in the early hours yesterday, police said. They also found a body seated at the front of the train and believed to be that of the 23-year-old driver Ryujiro Takami, but that hadn't been confirmed.
The death toll was expected to rise further, with an unknown number of victims still in the wreckage. JR West said 47 people are unaccounted for. Rescue workers used power shovels to peel away the twisted metal of the two worst-damaged train cars, flattened against the apartment building.
Transportation Minister Kazuo Kitagawa indicated the government would order JR West to review the way it operates after it completes its investigation into the accident.
"The driver had only 11 months of experience and we can only say that JR West's employee training and its tests to evaluate the suitability of drivers had problems," Kitagawa said. "I would like to issue instructions to them based on the results of our investigation."
Amid rising concerns about train safety, a car in central Japan crashed into a train as it was passing through a rail crossing yesterday morning. The car's driver was seriously injured and was taken to a nearby hospital, but none of the 130 passengers on the train were hurt.
Investigators found the train's "black box," a computer chip that stores information about the time and train's speed in the final seconds before an accident. They cautioned that the contents would take some time to analyze.
Police suspected the train was going 100km when it hit the curve where it derailed -- well above the 70km speed limit.
Investigators said the driver may have been shaken after over-running the last station by 40m and falling 90 seconds behind schedule.
The driver got his train operator's license last May. One month later, he overran a station and was issued a warning for his mistake, railway officials and police said.
‘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