NEWSWORTHY
Emperor and Empress attend last national tree-planting event during visit to Tohoku
Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko attended an annual national tree-planting festival, the last such event for the couple, in the tsunami-hit city of Minamisoma, Fukushima Prefecture, on Sunday. The ceremony was held at a site in Shidoke, a coastal district where trees are being planted ...
Top court upholds tsunami death ruling against city of Higashimatsushima
The Supreme Court upheld a lower court ruling that found the city of Higashimatsushima, Miyagi Prefecture, responsible for the death of an elementary school student swept away by the March 2011 tsunami. Effective Wednesday, the Supreme Court's Second Petty Bench turned down the city's appeal ...
Aspiring brewer taps Fukushima town's hops in bid to boost sagging farming industry
"I can't wait to drink delicious beer made from homegrown hops," Makoto Honma, the president of Hop Japan Inc., told farmers with a smile in April when he visited them in Tamura, Fukushima Prefecture. While his company was originally intended to focus on the production ...
Municipality in Miyagi Prefecture to appeal ruling over students' tsunami deaths
The municipal assembly of Ishinomaki, Miyagi Prefecture, decided Tuesday to appeal a high court ruling that ordered local authorities to pay around ¥1.4 billion in damages to the families of elementary school students killed by the March 2011 tsunami. The court said the city and ...
Nearly 1,500 residents were ordered to evacuate from their volcano-side homes after Hawaii's Kilauea Volcano erupted, sending molten lava to chew its way through forest land and bubble up on paved streets. Volcano officials couldn't predict how long Thursday's eruption may last, prompting Hawaii's governor ...
Sendai court blames lack of local government plan for deaths of school children in 2011 tsunami
The ruling said that the school, sited up to 1.5 meters above sea level, should have been designated in the city’s hazard map as being vulnerable to tsunami.
After quakes, manufacturers step up business continuity planning
The March 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Tohoku and the 2016 Kumamoto quakes have prompted many domestic manufacturers to draw up plans to ensure business operations continue in the event of natural disasters. In January this year, 12 semiconductor-makers including Sony Corp. and Renesas Electronics ...
Doubts cloud Minamisoma robotics project as Fukushima attempts to revive tsunami-hit city
A coastal area in Fukushima Prefecture's Minamisoma, which seven years ago was overtaken by tsunami debris, is set to be resurrected as a major robotics research site. The Fukushima Robot Test Field, a 50-hectare site being built by the Fukushima Prefectural Government, is meant to ...
The Diet on Friday enacted special legislation to maintain the number of Fukushima Prefectural Assembly seats allotted to a region that has been depopulated due to the 2011 nuclear crisis. The Upper House unanimously approved the legislation — initiated by lawmakers at the request of ...
Four days before the Great East Japan Earthquake, nuclear regulators were stunned by an estimate that a massive tsunami could hit Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc.'s Fukushima No. 1 power plant, a Tepco employee testified Wednesday. At a meeting on March 7, 2011, the ...
Municipalities and private firms are hoping robots and drones will be able to help with future disaster recovery efforts — an initiative that incorporates lessons learned from the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake — by sending out warnings, gauging damage and accessing places were ...
Deep M6.4 temblor off eastern Indonesia triggers brief tsunami alert
A 6.4 magnitude earthquake struck off eastern Indonesia in the early hours of Monday, triggering a brief tsunami alert that was swiftly lifted, according to seismic monitoring organizations. The quake struck deep at some 171 km (106 miles) below the surface of the earth in ...
