Japan sinkhole grows to almost Olympic pool length

The cavity has expanded to 40 meters across, almost the length of an Olympic swimming pool, since opening up in a city just north of Tokyo on Tuesday morning. (AFP)
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Updated 31 January 2025
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Japan sinkhole grows to almost Olympic pool length

  • The growing hole could be the result of corroded sewage pipes, according to authorities in Yashio
  • Initially, the hole was around five meters in diameter but it has since combined with a much larger cavity

YASHIO, Japan: Emergency workers in Japan began building a ramp Friday to try and reach a 74-year-old truck driver who has not been heard from since his vehicle was swallowed by a sinkhole this week.
The cavity has expanded to 40 meters (130 feet) across, almost the length of an Olympic swimming pool, since opening up in a city just north of Tokyo on Tuesday morning, officials said.
The growing hole could be the result of corroded sewage pipes, according to authorities in Yashio.
“It is an extremely dangerous condition,” local fire chief Tetsuji Sato told reporters on Thursday at the traffic intersection where dozens of rescuers have been working around the clock.
“We are planning to construct a slope (to access the hole) from a safer spot so that we will be able to send heavy equipment,” he said.
He added that groundwater was leaking inside and that the hole was “continuing to cave in.”
No communication has been had with the driver since around midday Tuesday, with soil and other debris now covering the cabin of his lorry in Yashio.
The punctured pipes “potentially allowed the surrounding soil to flow in and the space under the ground to hollow out,” Daisuke Tsutsui, a Saitama prefectural official, said on Thursday.
Authorities hoped to complete the 30-meter slope on Friday, but a local official said it may take several days.
The operation has been aggravated by the inner walls of the hole — now around 10 meters (30 feet) deep — continuing to erode, preventing rescue workers from staying inside it for long.
Initially, the hole was around five meters in diameter but it has since combined with a much larger cavity that opened during the rescue operation on Tuesday night.
As the sinkhole has expanded, heavy chunks of asphalt have occasionally fallen in, preventing rescue workers from going near the chasm.
This has also made it dangerous to place heavy machinery nearby.
The 1.2 million people living in the area have been asked to cut back on showers and laundry to prevent leaking sewage from making the operation even more difficult.
“Using toilets is difficult to refrain from, but we are asking to use less water as much as possible,” an official said.
Some sewage water in the area was collected and released to a nearby river to reduce the runoff into the hole.
“It feels rather abnormal that the search is taking this long. I wonder if he could’ve been saved much sooner,” Takuya Koroku, a local factory worker, said on Thursday.
“I’m scared to go nearby,” the 51-year-old added.


Austria is getting a new coalition government without far-right election winner

Updated 58 min 8 sec ago
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Austria is getting a new coalition government without far-right election winner

Three parties announced Thursday that they have reached a deal to form a new centrist Austrian government, five months after an election was won by a far-right party that later failed in an attempt to form an administration.
A statement from the conservative Austrian People’s Party, the center-left Social Democrats and the liberal Neos said they agreed on a program for a coalition after the longest post-election hiatus in post-World War II Austria.
The country’s politicians broke a record of 129 days to form a new government that dated back to 1962.
New People’s Party leader Christian Stocker is expected to become chancellor.


Zelensky invited to special EU summit on support for Ukraine

Updated 27 February 2025
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Zelensky invited to special EU summit on support for Ukraine

BRUSSELS: EU Council President Antonio Costa on Thursday said he had invited Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky to the special summit of EU leaders on March 6, to discuss future support to Ukraine.
“The EU and its member states are ready to take more responsibility for Europe’s security,” Costa said in invitation letter to EU leaders.
“We should therefore be prepared for a possible European contribution to the security guarantees that will be necessary to ensure a lasting peace in Ukraine.”
Costa, who chairs the EU summits, said he aimed for decisions that would make the EU “better equipped to deal with immediate and future challenges to its security.”


Russian and US diplomats meet in Turkiye for talks on repairing ties

Updated 30 min 3 sec ago
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Russian and US diplomats meet in Turkiye for talks on repairing ties

  • The delegations will also include officials from the State Department and Russian Foreign Ministry

ISTANBUL: Russian and US diplomats met in Turkiye on Thursday for talks to resolve disputes over the work of their respective embassies in Washington and Moscow, a first test of their ability to reset wider relations and work toward ending the war in Ukraine.
The Kremlin last year described relations as “below zero” under the administration of Joe Biden, who backed Ukraine with aid and weapons and imposed waves of sanctions on Russia to punish it for its 2022 invasion.
But his successor, President Donald Trump, has upended that policy and moved swiftly since taking office last month to open talks with Moscow, pledging to fulfil his repeated promise to bring a quick end to the war.
The talks in Istanbul follow a phone call between Trump and President Vladimir Putin on February 12, and a high-level diplomatic meeting in Saudi Arabia six days later.
The Russian team arrived in a black Mercedes van for the start of the meeting at the gated residence of the US consul general in Istanbul. Russian state TV said the talks were expected to last five to six hours.
Ukraine and its European allies are worried that Trump’s rapid rapprochement with Moscow could lead to a deal on ending the war that sidelines them and undermines their security. Trump says he wants to end the bloodshed with an early ceasefire.
Putin this week tempered expectations of a quick deal, saying it was essential to rebuild trust between Russia and the United States before anything could be achieved.
The two countries have expelled diplomats and limited the appointment of new staff at each other’s missions in a series of tit-for-tat measures over the past decade, leaving their embassies thinly staffed.

Narrow focus
The US State Department said Thursday’s talks would cover issues such as staffing levels, visas and diplomatic banking.
“To be clear, there are no political or security issues on the agenda. Ukraine is not on the agenda,” a State Department spokesperson said on the eve of the meeting.
“The constructiveness of these talks will become apparent very quickly; either issues will get resolved or they won’t. We will know soon if Russia is really willing to engage in good faith.”
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the outcome of the meeting “will show how quickly and effectively we can move.”
He acknowledged that Russia had “created uncomfortable conditions” for USdiplomats in Moscow, in what he said was retaliation for Washington’s treatment of their Russian counterparts.
The talks, despite their narrow focus, are an initial step in a process that could have profound implications for the whole Russia-US relationship in areas such as nuclear disarmament and economic cooperation.
Both sides have said they see potential for lucrative business ventures. Putin said this week that Moscow would be ready to invite the US to enter joint projects to tap rare earth deposits in Russia and in the parts of Ukraine that it has claimed as its own territory.
The US delegation in Istanbul was led by Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Sonata Coulter, and the Russian team by Alexander Darchiyev, head of the foreign ministry’s North America department.
Darchiyev is seen as front-runner to be Russia’s next ambassador to the US, a post that is currently vacant.


Pro-Palestinian protesters force their way into Barnard College building, injuring an employee

Updated 27 February 2025
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Pro-Palestinian protesters force their way into Barnard College building, injuring an employee

NEW YORK: Pro-Palestinian protesters wearing kaffiyeh scarves and masks pushed their way into Barnard College’s Milbank Hall, which houses the offices of the dean, and assaulted a school employee Wednesday, according to the school.
The protesters later left Milbank Hall in the night “without further incident,” Barnard President Laura Rosenbury said in a statement.
“But let us be clear: their disregard for the safety of our community remains completely unacceptable,” she said.
The school had warned that if the students were not gone by 9:30 p.m. officials could be forced to take “additional, necessary measures to protect our campus.”
The student group Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine said on the social platform X that protesters dispersed after the administration agreed to meet with them Thursday afternoon.


The demonstrators demanded amnesty for all students disciplined for pro-Palestine action; a meeting with Rosenbury and Dean Leslie Grinage; and reversal of the expulsion of two students, according to the group.
“WE WILL NOT STOP UNTIL OUR DEMANDS ARE MET. FREE PALESTINE,” it posted on X earlier in the day.
An employee was sent to the hospital after being assaulted by the protesters, Robin Levine, Barnard’s vice president for strategic communications said in a statement, without offering further details.
The protesters also encouraged other people to come on campus without identification, Levine added.
“Barnard leadership offered to meet with the protesters — just as we meet with all members of our community — on one simple condition: remove their masks,” she said earlier in the evening. “They refused. We have also offered mediation.”
Videos posted by the student group showed people wearing masks and kaffiyeh scarves chanting in a hallway. Some banged on drums, while others held megaphones.
Palestinian flags were hung on the walls and slogans such as “Barnard funds genocide” and “Free Palestine” were scrawled on the walls.


Trump administration says to cut 90% of USAID foreign aid contracts

Updated 27 February 2025
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Trump administration says to cut 90% of USAID foreign aid contracts

  • The disclosures give an idea of the scale of the administration’s retreat from US aid and development assistance overseas

WASHINGTON: The Trump administration said Wednesday it is eliminating more than 90 percent of the US Agency for International Development’s foreign aid contracts and $60 billion in overall US assistance around the world, putting numbers on its plans to eliminate the majority of US development and humanitarian help abroad.
The cuts detailed by the administration would leave few surviving USAID projects for advocates to try to save in what are ongoing court battles with the administration.
The Trump administration outlined its plans in both an internal memo obtained by The Associated Press and filings in one of those federal lawsuits Wednesday.
Wednesday’s disclosures also give an idea of the scale of the administration’s retreat from US aid and development assistance overseas, and from decades of US policy that foreign aid helps US interests by stabilizing other countries and economies and building alliances.
The memo said officials were “clearing significant waste stemming from decades of institutional drift.” More changes are planned in how USAID and the State Department deliver foreign assistance, it said.
President Donald Trump and ally Elon Musk have hit foreign aid harder and faster than almost any other target in their push to cut the size of the federal government. Both men say USAID projects advance a liberal agenda and are a waste of money.
Trump on Jan. 20 ordered what he said would be a 90-day program-by-program review of which foreign assistance programs deserved to continue, and cut off all foreign assistance funds almost overnight.
The funding freeze has stopped thousands of US-funded programs abroad, and the administration and Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency teams have pulled the majority of USAID staff off the job through forced leave and firings.
In the federal court filings Wednesday, nonprofits owed money on contracts with USAID describe both Trump political appointees and members of Musk’s teams terminating USAID’s contracts around the world at breakneck speed, without time for any meaningful review, they say.
“’There are MANY more terminations coming, so please gear up!“’ a USAID official wrote staff Monday, in an email quoted by lawyers for the nonprofits in the filings.
The nonprofits, among thousands of contractors, owed billions of dollars in payment since the freeze began, called the en masse contract terminations a maneuver to get around complying with the order to lift the funding freeze temporarily.
So did a Democratic lawmaker.
“The administration is brazenly attempting to blow through Congress and the courts by announcing the completion of their sham ‘review’ of foreign aid and the immediate termination of thousands of aid programs all over the world,” said Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
The State Department said Secretary of State Marco Rubio had reviewed the terminations.
In all, the Trump administration said it will eliminate 5,800 of 6,200 multiyear USAID contract awards, for a cut of $54 billion. Another 4,100 of 9,100 State Department grants were being eliminated, for a cut of $4.4 billion.
The State Department memo, which was first reported by the Washington Free Beacon, described the administration as spurred by a federal court order that gave officials until the end of the day Wednesday to lift the Trump administration’s monthlong block on foreign aid funding.
“In response, State and USAID moved rapidly,” targeting USAID and State Department foreign aid programs in vast numbers for contract terminations, the memo said.
The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to intervene Wednesday night as an appeals court refused to lift the midnight deadline.
Trump administration officials — after repeated warnings from the federal judge in the case — also said Wednesday they were finally beginning to send out their first or any payments after more than a month with no known spending. Officials were processing a few million dollars of back payments, officials said, of billions of dollars owed to US and international organizations and companies.