Typhoon forces Japan atomic bomb commemorations inside
Typhoon Khanun was on course Monday to dump prolonged, heavy rain on one of Japan’s main islands this week, forecasters said, forcing commemorations of the Nagasaki atomic bombing to be held inside. The typhoon last week reportedly killed at least two people, injured more than 100 and cut off power for several hundred thousand people in the southern Okinawa region before barrelling towards Taiwan. The weather system has since swung back to the Okinawa area and was expected to rumble northwards to the west of Kyushu on Tuesday and Wednesday before veering towards South Korea, the Japan Meteorological Agency said in a televised press briefing. The typhoon “could bring significant rainfall in wide regions,” an agency official told the briefing, adding that “heavy rainfall will increase the risk of disasters”. The storm forced Nagasaki, one of the main cities on Kyushu, to scale down its annual commemoration ceremony of the 1945 bombing scheduled for Wednesday. The ceremony is