World News
Japanese rocket engine explodes during ground test
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Steph Deschamps / July 16, 2023
The engine of a Japanese rocket exploded spectacularly on Friday during a ground test in northern Japan, in yet another setback for Jaxa, the country’s space agency.
The engine of Epsilon S, an upgraded version of the smaller Epsilon-6 launcher whose mission failed shortly after liftoff last October, exploded “about 50 seconds after ignition”, according to a Japanese Ministry of Science and Technology official interviewed by AFP.
Images from Japanese public broadcaster NHK showed a loud explosion in a metal shelter, followed by flames and thick grayish smoke billowing into the air at the test site in the northern prefecture of Akita.
Jaxa has not yet reported any injuries, the ministry official said.
Japan’s space agency is currently experiencing an embarrassing series of failures, despite its reputation for highly reliable rockets.
After the failure of Epsilon-6 shortly after lift-off in October 2022 due to a trajectory problem, Jaxa has suffered two further setbacks this year with its new-generation H3 launcher.
This imposing model was unable to lift off the first time in February, and on a second attempt the following month the rocket was ordered to self-destruct shortly after lift-off due to a fault that made it impossible for the mission to succeed.
Jaxa is planning a first launch of Epsilon S next year, while the timetable for a new attempt at H3 has not yet been set.
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Sylvie Claire / September 23, 2023
At least 25 people, including two children, died when a bus crashed into a ravine in the Andean region of Huancavelica, in southern Peru, the authorities announced in a revised death toll on Monday evening.
An initial police report put the death toll at 20, with a further 35 injured. A statement from the Ministry of Health later that morning put the death toll at 24. Finally, at the end of the day on Monday, the death toll stood at “25 dead and 34 wounded”, according to the Ministry of Defense.
The accident occurred on Sunday night, when the bus carrying over 50 passengers from Huanta in Ayacucho to Huancayo in the Junin region ran off the road.
Images show the damaged bus lying on its side near a river below the ravine, debris and personal belongings strewn all around.
Peruvian President Dina Boluarte expressed her “condolences to the families” from New York, where she will be attending the 78th General Assembly of the United Nations. The Peruvian Episcopal Conference, for its part, urged the government to “carry out a serious investigation” to prevent such accidents from happening again.
On August 13, another accident in the same region left 13 people dead and 5 seriously injured.
Road accidents are frequent in Peru, mainly due to speeding and poor road maintenance, especially in mountainous areas.
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Sylvie Claire / September 17, 2023
In Japan, the number of people aged 100 has reached a record level: the world’s third-largest economy now has 92,139 people aged 100 or over. That’s 1,613 more than a year ago, reported the Ministry of Health in Tokyo on Friday.
For over half a century, the number of people aged 100 has been rising every year. Due to a low birth rate and almost non-existent immigration, no other industrial state is aging as fast as this East Asian country.
Japan’s population is also shrinking at a record pace. Last year, the number of Japanese fell by 801,000, the biggest drop since comparable data have been recorded. There are now 122.4 million.
When the Japanese Ministry of Health began compiling statistics in 1963, there were 153 centenarians. Twenty-five years later, there were over 10,000. According to the latest figures, around 88% of centenarians are women. Japan has the longest life expectancy in the world. Life expectancy for women is around 87 years, and 81 for men.
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Steph Deschamps / September 17, 2023
The death toll from the earthquake in Morocco has risen to 2,946, the Moroccan Ministry of the Interior announced on Wednesday evening. A further 5,674 people were injured.
The previous death toll was 2,901. The death toll is expected to rise further. Hopes of finding survivors are now very slim. Rescue workers have not yet been able to reach all the villages affected in the Atlas Mountains.
A magnitude 6.8 earthquake struck the country on Friday night. The epicenter was located some 80 kilometers southwest of Marrakech. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), over 300,000 people in and around Marrakech were affected by the disaster.
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