An avalanche of snow buried an outdoor hot spring in northern Japan yesterday, leaving one person dead and 10 injured, a news agency reported.
A 20-year-old man pulled from the snow almost six hours after the avalanche struck has died, Kyodo News said.
Masakatsu Ito, an official at nearby Omagari Fire Station, said the man was being taken to a hospital, but could not confirm his death.
Eight women and two men were rescued earlier yesterday and taken to nearby hospitals, none in critical condition, Ito said.
The avalanche hit an outdoor bath at a traditional Japanese inn in Akita, 450km north of Tokyo, apparently burying bathers and staff who were cleaning the pool, officials said.
Rescuers were still digging through snow in search of at least two missing people, believed to be hotel maintenance workers, said area police official Kazutami Ogasawara.
A separate snow avalanche earlier yesterday also buried a 65-year-old employee at an inn about 2km away, Ogasawara said. Rescue efforts were under way, he said.
The area has seven inns -- some so popular that rooms are booked at least a year in advance, said Akita Prefecture official Yoshiyuki Maekawa.
Also in Akita, a separate snow avalanche covered a railway track, forcing a high-speed "bullet train" to make an emergency stop after its first few cars smashed into the mound of snow, police said.
The train did not derail, and none of its 300-odd passengers were injured.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
RSS