Sept 29th, 2018

台風24号、通り過ぎてよかった。次は25号か。。。。

1)   Japan’s Meteorological Agency forecasts strong winds, high waves, storm surges and heavy rain in wide areas across the country until Monday.

2)   Japanese travel agency H.I.S. has canceled wedding package tours to Hawaii for 260 couples due to delays in venue construction.

The company says the couples had made reservations for the tours up to September of next year. The tours went on sale last December.

The facility on the island of Oahu was to open on September 1st.

H.I.S. says the operator of the facility gave notice of the delay on August 15th, citing bad weather and other reasons.

3)   U.S. President Donald Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe agreed on Wednesday to start trade talks in an arrangement that, for now, protects Japanese automakers from further tariffs, seen as a major threat to the export-dependent economy.

4)   Tokyo Medical University has appointed its first woman president following a series of scandals, including the revelation that female applicants were prevented from gaining places at the school by systemically docking their entrance exam scores.

The appointment of Yukiko Hayashi, 56, chief professor of pathophysiology, was approved by the university’s board members Sept. 25. She will assume the post Oct. 1.

5)   The EU and other countries have boosted their contributions to the United Nations agency that supports Palestinian refugees after the US cut off funding.

The UN Relief and Works Agency, or UNRWA, is struggling to support more than 5 million Palestinian refugees.

6)   An Indonesian teenager has made it home safely after spending almost 50 days adrift at sea alone.

18-year-old Aldi Novel Adilang from the island of Sulawesi was fishing on a wooden raft in July when a storm hit.

His raft was swept away after its moorings snapped.

Adilang had only several days’ worth of food and water.

He burned part of his raft to cook fish.

Adilang said; “After the raft that I used snapped from the floating fish traps, I still had water to drink for about a week. Then I drank water by squeezing it from my clothes which were dipped in the sea, because it was impossible to drink sea water directly.”

On August 31st, a large ship rescued him off the western Pacific island of Guam, about 2,000 kilometers away from Sulawesi.

7)   The Tokyo Metropolitan Government will begin using paper straws on a trial basis from October to help reduce the amount of plastic waste.

The paper straws will be provided at 3 cafeterias at the Tokyo government building in the capital’s Shinjuku district.

 

Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike visited one of the cafeterias on Friday. She says she hopes the use of paper straws will encourage people to think about environmental issues.

The Tokyo government will purchase 20,000 paper straws, which are several times more expensive than plastic ones.