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Kevin He became the first Chinese-born player to sign a professional deal with an NHL team on Tuesday after agreeing to a three-year, entry-level contract with the Winnipeg Jets. The 18-year-old forward’s deal comes with an average annual value in the NHL of $975,000. The Jets selected the Beijing-born player in the fourth round, 109th overall, of the 2024 NHL Draft. “If it can turn out to be a great story, that’s secondary. It is always nice to see the diversity in the game and help maybe grow the game more,” Jets general manager Kevin Cheveldayoff said in a statement. He started playing organized hockey after moving to Montreal at age 6. In October, He was named captain of the Niagara IceDogs in the Ontario Hockey League, where he has scored 23 goals and registered 20 assists in 29 games this season. Source link

Global warming caused Hokkaido to receive up to 20% more snow than average in December 2021, according to a team of Japanese scientists. A study led by Tomonori Sato of Hokkaido University’s Faculty of Environmental Earth Science found that while climate change is generally expected to reduce the amount and duration of snowfall in the long run, it can result in sporadic snow events that are more intense in some areas. Its findings were published Monday in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres. The team analyzed snowfall that occurred in Hokkaido over Dec. 17 and 18 in 2021, which resulted in a 24-hour snow accumulation of over 50 centimeters in the cities of Sapporo and Otaru — a record at the time. Several snow events that followed in the region, continuing through February 2022, caused massive road congestion and the suspension of railway services for several days between Sapporo and Shin-Chitose Airport. The scientists concluded that the heavy snow of that period was caused in two stages, and both were made stronger by climate change. In the first stage, the passing of a low-pressure system accompanying the south wind brought large volumes of warm air and vapor, which resulted in large parts of eastern Hokkaido experiencing 20% more snow than usual. In the second stage, as the weather transitioned into a typical winter atmospheric pattern marked by high pressure in the west and low pressure in the east, a band of strong updraft clouds emerged, which resulted in 10% more snowfall on the Sea of Japan coast. The researchers first identified days in the past with similar weather patterns by using a machine-learning method called Self-Organizing Maps, which automatically classifies maps of daily weather. The weather pattern of Dec. 17 to 18 that year resulted in a low-pressure system developing in the Sea of Japan that traveled through the south of Hokkaido to reach the Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia. The scientists then used a large climate database called d4PDF (or database for Policy Decision making for Future climate change), which simulates both present-day weather conditions and hypothetical scenarios not affected by global warming, to estimate how much climate change had affected the temperature and moisture levels on those selected days. They also conducted high-resolution simulations by inputting air temperature, vapor amount and ocean temperature data into a 2-kilometer-grid weather model. These simulations reproduced snowfall patterns under current conditions and compared them to patterns that excluded the effects of global warming. The research — part of a growing field of climate science called event attribution — revealed that the December 2021 snowfall was 10% to 20% higher than usual as a result of a warming of the atmosphere and the ocean. “The methods developed in this study can be applied to analyze all extreme weather events around the world,” the researchers wrote in a statement. “In the future, we hope to expand the scope of our research to heavy rainfall in the warm seasons and improve ways to search past days with similar weather patterns.” Source link

The Supreme Court has rejected an appeal by former House of Representatives lawmaker Tsukasa Akimoto, 53, against his guilty sentence in a high-profile corruption case linked to a casino-featuring integrated resort, or IR, project. The sentence of four years in prison and a fine of about ¥7.6 million will now become final. In the decision dated Tuesday, the top court’s First Petty Bench, presided over by Justice Masaaki Oka, also rejected an appeal by Akihiro Toyoshima, 46, a former policy secretary to Akimoto, against his sentence of two years in prison, suspended for four years, in the same case. According to rulings by Tokyo District Court and Tokyo High Court, Akimoto, then state minister in charge of IR-related affairs, conspired with Toyoshima to receive bribes totaling ¥7.6 million, including cash and travel expenses, between 2017 and 2018 from a Chinese company seeking to operate an IR facility in Japan. In addition, Akimoto, while on bail in 2020, offered rewards to two former advisers of the Chinese company in exchange for false testimony in court that would be helpful to him. Source link

Japan set a new annual record for visitor arrivals with one month to spare, official data showed on Wednesday, as the weak yen helped propel the nation’s tourism boom. November saw 3.19 million foreign visitors for business and leisure, data from the Japan National Tourism Organization showed, bringing the total for 2024 so far to 33.4 million. That eclipsed the previous annual record of 31.9 million set in 2019 before the COVID-19 pandemic shut global borders. Last month’s arrivals edged down from 3.31 million visitors in October, the most for any month on record. Source link

Osaka – The Osaka High Court ruled Wednesday that the government is not liable to pay compensation over evacuations following the March 2011 accident at Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings’ (Tepco) tsunami-stricken Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant. Revising a March 2018 ruling by the Kyoto District Court that ordered the government and Tepco to jointly pay a total of about ¥110 million ($717,000) in compensation to 110 plaintiffs, the high court ordered only Tepco to pay about ¥110 million to 92 plaintiffs. The lawsuit was filed by a total of 166 people from 55 households who evacuated to Kyoto Prefecture from Fukushima and other prefectures following the nuclear disaster. They demanded a total of about ¥800 million in compensation. In a series of similar lawsuits, the Supreme Court ruled in June 2022 that the government is not liable for compensation. In Wednesday’s ruling, the high court suggested that it had been possible to predict a 15.7-meter tsunami based on data such as a long-term seismic risk assessment released in 2002 by the government’s Headquarters for Earthquake Research Promotion. Still, presiding Judge Kenji Maki noted that the magnitude 9.0 earthquake that occurred off the Pacific coast of northeastern Japan on March 11, 2011, had been “much larger” than predicted in the seismic assessment. Even if the government had required Tepco to implement adequate measures and the power company had complied, a large amount of seawater would have likely entered the nuclear plant, the judge said. Meanwhile, the high court recognized that Tepco is responsible for compensation under the nuclear damage compensation law. Source link

Hiroshima – Members of Nihon Hidankyo, a group of hibakusha, made a visit Wednesday to a cenotaph for deceased victims in Hiroshima to mark its receipt of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize. Toshiyuki Mimaki, 82, co-chair of Nihon Hidankyo, or the Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organizations, Satoshi Tanaka, 80, executive of the group, and Natsuki Kai, 17, a high school student serving as a Hiroshima and Nagasaki Peace Messenger, laid bouquets at the cenotaph to report the receipt of the prize to deceased victims. In the monument in Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park, a list of dead victims is enshrined. It had the names of 344,306 people as of Aug. 6, the anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombing of the city in 1945. Source link

New coach Nils Nielsen declared Wednesday that Japan can win the Women’s World Cup for a second time and vowed to restore the 2011 champion to its former glory. The 53-year-old Dane becomes Japan’s first foreign-born women’s coach and succeeds Futoshi Ikeda, who left at the end of his contract in August. Nielsen led Denmark to the 2017 European Championship final and takes over a Japan team that has not reached a World Cup or Olympic semifinal since 2015. Source link

Japan’s draft proposal for a carbon emission reduction target sparked calls for deeper cuts from experts as well as from within the ruling coalition, as the world’s fifth-biggest carbon emitter struggles to reduce its dependence on fossil fuels. The government last month presented a draft plan to aim for a 60% cut in greenhouse gas emissions by 2035 from 2013 levels, a commitment that would align with Japan’s future energy mix currently under consideration and other energy policies. As Japan is the world’s second-largest importer of liquefied natural gas and a major consumer of Middle Eastern oil, its energy strategies are closely followed by oil, gas and coal producers. The draft assumes a linear trajectory between Japan’s existing 46% reduction target by 2030 and net zero by 2050, as the government emphasizes the importance of balancing economic growth and energy security with decarbonization efforts. Climate activists have branded the proposed target as insufficient, saying that it falls short of a target set by the United Nations’ main scientific body as necessary to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the world needs to cut its emissions from 2019 levels by 60% by 2035 to safeguard the 1.5 C goal, which translates to a 66% cut from 2013 levels for Japan. A push for deeper cuts also comes from within Japan’s ruling camp, as Komeito, the Liberal Democratic Party’s junior coalition partner, calls for a 66% cut to align with the IPCC target, adding to pressure on the government. “We believe that Japan should set a target based on a scientific approach, meaning that it should be equivalent to the target suggested by IPCC,” said Masaaki Taniai, the lawmaker in charge of climate issues at Komeito. Signatories of the Paris Agreement, a key global treaty on climate change, are required to update self-defined national climate pledges, called the nationally determined contribution (NDC), every five years. The next round of NDC updates are due in February 2025. Some countries have announced stronger commitments, with Britain pledging an 81% reduction by 2035 from 1990 levels. Japan hopes to finalize the target by the year-end after further discussions at a government panel, although some panel members have questioned the target-setting process as too hasty. Separately this week, the industry ministry released a draft of its revised basic energy policy, aiming to roughly double the share of renewable energy in its electricity mix to up to 50% by fiscal year 2040. Advocates for renewable energy have criticized the draft as lacking a roadmap for phasing out coal-fired power. Source link

Honda and Nissan may merge to form the world’s No. 3 auto group, achieving the scale needed to go up against foreign competition and make massive investments into advanced electric vehicle technologies. “I think this move reflects the current industry trend where automakers need to scale up to prepare for competition that involves autonomous driving and EVs,” said Atsushi Osanai, a professor at Waseda Business School. According to press reports Wednesday morning, the two Japanese carmakers are in discussions to consolidate under a holding company. The reports also said that Mitsubishi Motors, which has been working closely with Nissan since 2016, might join the grouping. Source link

Russian authorities detained an Uzbekistan national on suspicion of killing a top general in a Moscow bomb attack, and said he’d been recruited by Ukrainian security services to carry out the assassination. The detainee was promised $100,000 and safe passage to a European country if he helped plant the explosive device that killed Lt. Gen. Igor Kirillov, the head of Russia’s radiological, chemical and biological defense forces, the Investigative Committee in Moscow said in a statement Wednesday on Telegram. Kirillov and his assistant were killed when the bomb planted on a scooter detonated near the entrance to an apartment building in Moscow on Tuesday. He is the most senior Russian commander to be assassinated deep inside Russia since the Kremlin began its February 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Source link