ONE NEWS

Tuesday, August 11, 2009 TOKYO: A strong earthquake with preliminary magnitude of 7.6, jolted eastern and central Japan on Tuesday, a government agency said, rattling houses in Tokyo. The quake, which struck at 0507 a.m. (2007 GMT, Monday), prompted a tsunami warning for waves of up to 50 cm (20 inches) for parts of the Pacific coast, the Japan Meteorological Agency said on its website. A highway was closed and a Chubu Electric Power nuclear power station at Hamaoka shut two units for safety checks. The focus of the tremor was 20 km (12 miles) deep under Shizuoka prefecture, around 150 km (90 miles) southwest of Tokyo, the agency said.

Monday, August 10, 2009 BEIJING: A powerful typhoon killed eight people, toppled houses, flooded villages and forced nearly 1 million people to flee to safety on China's eastern coast before weakening into a tropical storm Monday.Named Morakot, the storm struck after triggering the worst flooding in Taiwan in 50 years, leaving dozens missing and bringing down a six-story hotel. It earlier lashed the Philippines, killing at least 22 people.Morakot, or emerald in Thai, slammed into China's Fujian province Sunday afternoon as a typhoon carrying heavy rain and winds of 74miles (119 kilometers) per hour, according the China Meteorological Administration. At least one child died after a house collapsed in Zhejiang province. By early Monday, the storm packed winds of 52 miles per hour (83kilometers per hour) and churned at about 6 mph (10 kph), it said. Hundreds of villages and towns were flooded and more than 2,000houses collapsed, the official news agency said. About 1 million peop...

NAGASAKI, Japan, Aug. 9 (Xinhua) -- More than 5,000 people gathered Saturday in the Peace Park in Nagasaki to mark the 64th anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombing of the southwestern Japanese city. At the memorial ceremony, Nagasaki Mayor Tomihisa Taue read the Peace Declaration, calling for worldwide nuclear disarmament and enhanced measures for nuclear nonproliferation. Lauding U.S. President Barack Obama's statement on a world without nuclear weapons this April in Prague, Taue said: "...the government of Japan, a nation that has experienced nuclear devastation, must play a leading role in international society." "In a bid for thorough elimination of nuclear armaments, we urge the strongest efforts towards the Nuclear Weapons Convention, which the U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki Moon last year called on governments to negotiate actively," said the Mayor. In his speech at the ceremony, Prime Minister Taro Aso reaffirmed Japan' s three principles of not produ...

, Wednesday, July 29, 2009 TOKYO: Japan's opposition leader Yukio Hatoyama, seen as the likely next premier, said Wednesday he would early next year end a naval support mission backing US-led forces in Afghanistan, media reported."Our basic stance is not to extend it," the president of the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) was quoted as saying by Jiji Press while he was campaigning for the August 30 vote which his party is widely tipped to win.The Indian Ocean naval mission -- which began in December 2001 and has been periodically renewed since then by Japan's conservative government -- provides fuel and other logistical support to the US-led coalition.Media reports earlier Wednesday quoted an unnamed top DPJ official as saying that, if the party takes power in September, it would not renew the mandate for the mission when it expires in January.The DPJ would seek to placate Washington by instead launching new humanitarian aid projects for Afghanistan, the reports said....