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Another round of global climate strikes began on Friday ahead of the 12-day UN climate conference. Representatives from 200 countries are meeting in Madrid to finalize the "rulebook" for the 2015 Paris agreement.
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Spraying chemicals on rice crop in Japan. Stockbyte / Getty Images
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Damage in Ichihara, Chiba prefecture, Japan following Typhoon Hagibis. STR / JIJI PRESS / AFP via Getty Images
At least 42 people have died and 15 are missing after Typhoon Hagibis swamped Japan Saturday, bringing record rainfall that flooded more than 1,000 homes, The Washington Post reported.
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Rugby World Cup tournament chiefs demonstrate to the media the potential impact of typhoon Hagibis as they announce match cancellations at a press conference held on Oct. 10 in Tokyo. David Rogers / Getty Images Sport
Japan has suffered a brutal stretch this summer — deadly heat waves and downpours and a typhoon that blew through Tokyo leaving travelers stranded. Now the worst seems to approaching this weekend as a super typhoon is on track to batter the country's main island on Saturday, potentially causing grave damage, as the New York Times reported.
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Japan's New Environmental Minister Calls for Closing Down All Nuclear Reactors to Prevent Another Disaster Like Fukushima
13 September 2019
Energy
Japan's newly-appointed Environment and Nuclear Disaster Minister Shinjiro Koizumi enters the prime minister's official residence in Tokyo on Sept. 11. TOSHIFUMI KITAMURA / AFP / Getty Images
Japan's new environmental minister, Shinjiro Koizumi, called Wednesday for permanently shutting down the nation's nuclear reactors to prevent a repeat of the 2011 Fukushima disaster, comments that came just a day after Koizumi's predecessor recommended dumping more than one million tons of radioactive wastewater from the power plant into the Pacific Ocean.
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Japan May Dump Radioactive Fukushima Water Into the Pacific in 'Only Option' of Disposal
10 September 2019
Oceans
This picture taken on Jan. 31, 2018 from an observatory room shows storage tanks for contaminated water at the Tokyo Electric Power Company, Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant in Okuma, Fukushima prefecture. BEHROUZ MEHRI / AFP / Getty Images
The operator of the ruined Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant may have to dump huge amounts of contaminated water into the Pacific Ocean. The company no longer has room to store it, said Yoshiaki Harada, Japan's environment minister, today, as Japan Today reported.
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Medical personnel ride an inflatable boat over floodwaters to reach a hospital following heavy rains in Omachi, Saga prefecture on Aug. 29. JIJI PRESS / AFP / Getty Images
Tuna auctions are a tourist spectacle in Tokyo. Outside the city's most famous fish market, long queues of visitors hoping for a glimpse of the action begin to form at 5 a.m. The attraction is so popular that last October the Tsukiji fish market, in operation since 1935, moved out from the city center to the district of Toyosu to cope with the crowds.
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People walk in the street during a hot day in Tokyo's district of Ueno on August 7. CHARLY TRIBALLEAU / AFP / Getty Images
While the worst of this summer's heat seems to have passed in the U.S. and Europe, Japan is in the throes of a dangerous heat wave.
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A woman feeds deer in Nara, Japan. Drazen_ / iStock / Getty Images Plus
The global plastic crisis has invaded a sacred sanctuary in Japan. Nine deer in Nara Park that have died since March were revealed to have massive amounts of plastic bags and food wrappers in their digestive tract.
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An extended version of the Fuxing bullet train at the China National Railway Test Center on Oct. 15, 2018 in Beijing, China. VCG / VCG via Getty Images
By Jeff Turrentine
Is it just us?
Other countries don't seem to have a problem getting their high-speed rail systems on track. This superfast, fuel-efficient form of mass transit is wildly popular throughout Asia and the European Union. Japan's sleek Shinkansen line, the busiest high-speed rail system in the world, carries an estimated 420,000 riders every weekday. In China, the new Fuxing Hao bullet train now hurries more than 100 million passengers a year between Beijing and Shanghai at a top speed of 218 miles an hour, allowing its riders to make the trip of 775 miles — roughly the distance from New York City to Chicago — in about four and a half hours. Spain, Germany and France together have more than 4,500 miles of track dedicated to high-speed rail, over which more than 150 million passengers travel annually.
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