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Two Dead, Five Missing As Powerful Typhoon Slams Into Japan

Two Dead, Five Missing As Powerful Typhoon Slams Into Japan

TOKYO — A powerful typhoon battered many parts of Japan Monday, including Tokyo, disrupting transport and leaving at least two people dead and five missing, local media reported.
Typhoon Phanfone made landfall at the city of Hamamatsu, central Japan, shortly after 8 a.m. (2300 GMT Sunday), the Japan Meteorological Agency said.
About 2.7 million people had been advised to evacuate their homes, but most of the advisories were lifted, the Kyodo News agency reported.
The weather agency was still warning of mudslides, swollen rivers and strong winds in some areas of the country.
Tens of thousands of households lost electricity in eastern and central Japan, while rainfall reached 87 millimetres per hour in the city of Shizuoka.
Two people were missing in Yokohama, near Tokyo, after two separate mudslides struck a temple and an apartment building Monday morning.
On Sunday, a 58-year-old woman was found dead after falling from a cliff in strong winds on the island of Okinawa, the Okinawa Times reported.
Three U.S. airmen were swamped by high waves on the island. One of the three was recovered and later pronounced dead at a local hospital while the other two remained missing, U.S. Kadena Air Base said.
Authorities were searching for a university student off the coast of Fujisawa city, south of Tokyo, who also went missing while surfing in the area, broadcaster NHK said.
Airlines cancelled more than 600 flights scheduled for Monday and many train services were temporarily suspended, including Shinkansen bullet trains, it reported.
The approach of Phanfone halted search operations for 12 people missing on Mount Ontake in central Japan after it erupted late last month and left at least 51 dead.
Authorities warned that heavy ash on the flanks of the 3,067-metre volcano posed a mudslide risk as the typhoon reached the country’s main island.
As of 3 pm, the eye of the storm was 210 kilometres off the coast of Ishinomaki city, travelling north-east at 85 kilometres per hour, the agency said.
The fast-moving typhoon carried maximum sustained winds of 126 kph and gusts of 180 kph, the agency said.
Tokyo Electric Power Co suspended all outdoor work at the ravaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in north-eastern Japan, which suffered a triple meltdown after an earthquake and tsunami in 2011.

AFP Photo/Charism Sayat

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Body Found Outside Jerusalem Probably Missing American, Say Police

Body Found Outside Jerusalem Probably Missing American, Say Police

By Batsheva Sobelman, Los Angeles Times

JERUSALEM — A man’s body was found Thursday near the area where a young American yeshiva student had disappeared while hiking six days earlier. An Israeli police spokesman said initial indications suggested it was that of the missing man, but declined to say whether there was any sign of foul play.

Searchers had scoured the area for days for after Aharon Sofer, 23, of Lakewood, New Jersey, failed to rendezvous with a friend after a hike in the woods outside Jerusalem.

Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said identification of the body, found near the village of Ein Karem, had not been finalized but that preliminary investigation suggested the remains were probably those of Sofer. Forensics teams were at the site, he said.

Word of the body’s discovery came hours before family and friends had been planning a prayer vigil and news conference Thursday evening at Jerusalem’s Western Wall. The parents of the missing student, who had come to Israel to study at an ultra-Orthodox seminary, had flown to Israel to await the result of the search.

Shlomo Sofer, a cousin reached by telephone, declined to comment on what the family had been told by police.

Sobelman is a special correspondent. Times staff writer Laura King in Tel Aviv contributed to this report.

Photo via WikiCommons

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66 Missing In Boat That Capsized Off Malaysian Coast

66 Missing In Boat That Capsized Off Malaysian Coast

By John Grafilo

KUALA LUMPUR — A boat carrying 97 people capsized Wednesday off the coast near the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur, the Malaysia Maritime Enforcement Agency said.

Thirty-one people were rescued in the incident that occurred before dawn off the coast of Kuala Langat, west of Kuala Lumpur, the agency said.

Search and rescue operations were ongoing for 66 people that remained missing.

A maritime agency official said the passengers were mostly Indonesian workers who were apparently returning to their homeland to celebrate the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

“This time of the year, we experience strong waves so accidents really happen,” said the official who asked not to be named because he was not an authorized spokesman.

“The survivors are in a state of shock but we are taking care of them.”

Multitrack via Flickr

Private Firms To Search For Malaysia Airlines Flight 370

Private Firms To Search For Malaysia Airlines Flight 370

By Julie Makinen, Los Angeles Times

BEIJING — Private companies specializing in deep ocean search will be hired to continue the quest to find Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, Australia’s prime minister said Monday, and the cost could run more than $55 million and take six to eight months.

The U.S. Navy’s robotic submarine Bluefin-21 has searched more than 150 square miles of the floor of the Indian Ocean in an area where investigators thought they had detected pings from the Boeing 777’s black box transmitters in early April. We are “baffled and disappointed” that no wreckage had been found 52 days into the search, Prime Minister Tony Abbott said at a news conference in Canberra, Australia.

Now, Abbott said, the undersea search area will be expanded from the most probable impact zone to a much wider area totaling 21,621 square miles.

Side-scan sonar devices towed behind ships will be used to traverse the expanded search area, said retired Australian Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston, who has been coordinating search efforts from Perth, Australia.

Abbott indicated that air searches for surface debris would be discontinued imminently. “It is highly unlikely we will find any debris on the ocean surface” now, he said, explaining that any material from the plane probably would have become waterlogged and sunk by this time.

“We are moving to a phase focused on searching the ocean floor over a much larger area,” Abbott said. So far, the visual search area has encompassed 334 flights totaling more than 3,000 hours and scoured 1.7 million square miles of the ocean surface.

Until the private companies can begin working, Abbott said, the Bluefin-21 as well as Australian, Malaysian and Chinese ships will continue operating in the search area. An Australian military plane will remain on standby in case suspected wreckage is identified, he added.

“I want the families to know, I want the world to know, Australia will not shirk its responsibility,” Abbott said. “We will not let people down.”

Asked about his comments several weeks ago that investigators were close to finding the wreckage, Abbott said he was “not in the business of making excuses for failure” but added that the search was perhaps the most difficult in history.

“Enormous efforts have been made,” he said, describing the jet’s disappearance as an “extraordinary mystery.”

Houston said investigators believe they are looking in the right area. “We were quietly optimistic,” he said, that the Bluefin-21 would find the jet wreckage.

But he noted that it took more than two years to find the undersea wreckage of Air France Flight 447 in the Atlantic Ocean after it crashed in 2009, and that in that case, the plane was found just 6.5 nautical miles from its last known position. Data about the last known position of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 is much less robust.

Asked about the cost of the search so far, Abbott declined to provide specifics, saying authorities had been using military assets that governments would be “paying for anyway.”

The Boeing 777 vanished March 8 en route from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing with 239 people aboard. Authorities have said they believe a deliberate act by someone aboard the aircraft led to its disappearance, but they have not offered more specifics.

AFP/Mohd Rasfan