Typhoon Jebi, packing winds of up to 216 kilometres (135 miles) per hour, made landfall around midday in western Japan near areas still recovering from deadly record rains earlier this summer.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe urged people to “evacuate early” and ordered his government to take all necessary measures to protect residents.

Japan’s weather agency has issued warnings about possible landslides, flooding and violent winds, as well as high tides, lightning and tornadoes in a swath of western Japan including the major cities of Osaka and Kyoto.

With winds of up to 162 kilometres (100 miles) per hour at its centre, Jebi is classed as a “very strong” typhoon, the weather agency’s chief forecaster Ryuta Kurora told AFP.

“This is (the strongest) since 1993.”

In the hours before the storm made landfall, Shikoku, one of four Japanese main islands, was already experiencing “violent storms and the storms will get stronger and stronger,” he added.

As the storm approached, Abe called a disaster response meeting and cancelled a trip to western Japan.

“I urge the Japanese people to take action to protect your lives, including preparing and evacuating early,” he said.

He instructed his cabinet to “take all measures possible”.

Local media warned that the wind speeds Jebi is packing are strong enough to bring down traditional-style wooden houses and power poles, and urged people in affected areas to avoid non-essential travel.

Evacuation advisories have been issued for more than 300,000 people in western Japan — including 280,000 in the port city of Kobe — with local officials setting up some 1,500 shelters, the central and local governments said in statements.

Primary and middle schools in affected areas are closed for safety reasons, while regional businesses also reacted quickly, with a major railway firm and Universal Studios Japan in Osaka shutting down for Tuesday.

Nearly 600 flights were cancelled, including several international flights departing and arriving at Nagoya and Osaka, along with ferries connecting ports in western Japan.

Jebi has a similar trajectory to Typhoon Cimaron, which made landfall on August 23, disrupting transport links but causing limited damage and few injuries.

Japan is currently in its annual typhoon season, and is regularly struck by major storm systems during the summer and autumn.

The country has been sweating through a record, deadly heatwave that was preceded by record rainfall in parts of western and central Japan that killed over 200 people.

Like most schools across China, the Xinshahui Kindergarten in the southern city of Shenzhen marks the start of the school year with a ceremony, usually consisting of performances and speeches.

But Monday’s edition, which included the risque pole dance, cost principal Lai Rong her job.

Videos circulating on social media showed a scantily-clad dancer in hot pants shimmying up and down a pole to thumping music as stunned children in marching band uniforms looked on.

Others tried to mimic the sultry moves, with several small boys gyrating their hips and dancing around each other. In the background, shocked parents could be heard commenting about the suitability of the performance.

Many took to social media to express their outrage, threatening to pull their children out of school and calling for Lai’s resignation.

“Pole dancing at a school welcome ceremony? How can I trust my children with them? I’m going to pull my kid out and ask for a refund,” one parent wrote on social media platform WeChat.

“Is the principal an idiot?” another commented on the Twitter-like site Weibo.

In a text message to parents, Lai apologised for the “horrific viewing experience” and for not checking the dancer’s performance, adding that the dance was intended to liven up the atmosphere.

Hours later, local education authorities announced they had fired the principal and put Xinshahui under investigation.

“Other schools in the district should reflect on this incident and strictly uphold education standards,” the Bao’an education bureau said in a statement.

“I may as well be dead. I already lost the hope to live,” Lai told state-run tabloid the Global Times.

This was just one of several incidents in a shaky start to the Chinese school year.

Over the weekend, parents complained that a television programme deemed mandatory viewing by state educators on Saturday night included 12 minutes of advertisements, mostly promoting online tutoring courses and stationery sales.

Earlier the same day, police arrested 46 people in central Hunan province after hundreds gathered to express dissatisfaction with the local school system.

According to posts on social media, parents were incensed when they were told they would have to move their children into dormitories at a local private school, dramatically increasing tuition fees.

Journalists Wa Lone, 32, and Kyaw Soe Oo, 28, were arrested while reporting on atrocities committed during the violent expulsion by the military of some 700,000 Rohingya Muslims last year.

A Yangon court on Monday found them guilty under the Official Secrets Act and handed them each seven years in prison, sparking outrage from the UN, EU and US — all of whom supported Myanmar’s emergence from decades of junta rule — as well as media and rights groups.

Suu Kyi, who was herself subjected to house arrest for some 15 years, relying on foreign media to highlight her plight, has been widely-condemned for her silence on the case and verdict, which has posed the sternest test in recent years to free speech in the country.

Aung Hla Tun, a former Reuters journalist who now works for the government as deputy Minister of Information, defended the Nobel Laureate’s reticence.

“Criticising the judicial system would be tantamount to contempt of court,” he told AFP, explaining her silence so far. “I don’t think she will do it.”

Lawyers for the pair will appeal the verdict while ultimately the country’s president, a close ally of Suu Kyi, can pardon prisoners.

In April the president granted 8,500 jailed people an amnesty, including 36 deemed political prisoners.

But there were still some 200 others, including the two Reuters journalists, facing trials linked to political activities, the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners said at the time.

Erstwhile Suu Kyi advocates overseas have been left dismayed by her attitude to their case so far.

Her one public reference to the Reuters journalists during the court case — telling Japanese broadcaster NHK that the pair had broken the official secrets act — was criticised by rights groups for potentially prejudicing the verdict.

Former confidant and member of her advisory board on the Rohingya crisis US diplomat Bill Richardson alleged she also denounced the two reporters as traitors during a heated exchange at the beginning of the year.

While the case has horrified the West, the response within Myanmar has been muted.

Several papers marked the jailing of the pair with ‘7 Day News’ publishing a large black rectangle on its front page and the Myanmar Times running a full front page photo of the pair calling the verdict “a blow to press freedom”.

But the case has not garnered wider public attention, despite its implications for press freedom in a country, whose emergence from junta rule has been contorted by the violence in Rakhine.

The Prime Minister said the country’s thriving rubber product industry contributed a lot, and not just to the country’s economy but to humanity as well.

“Rubber ‘gloves’ are important in stopping too many people from being born,” he said in a light-hearted moment.

“Imagine the world without condoms. If the world has a population of over seven billion now, it could soon be 10 billion because there’s no way of preventing conception.

The event, held over three days starting from Tuesday (Sept 4), is organised by the Malaysian Rubber Glove Manufacturers Association.

Exhibitors from 14 countries and 800 conference participants are taking part, and the event is expected to draw over 10,000 trade visitors.

Last year, rubber gloves made up 73.2% of all rubber goods exports for Malaysia.

Dr Mahathir said thanks to research and development, the rubber industry had continuously developed new products, ranging from rubber tyres to surgical gloves, to earthquake dampers for buildings.

“It’s not the rubber itself which is important, but its application,” he said.

Dr Mahathir said more research was needed on other plants which could either be found in Malaysia or could be grown here so that new products could be derived from them.

The Prime Minister assured the industry that his administration would be business-friendly and would help them to grow further.

“We believe in the concept of Malaysia Incorporated where we consider the country as one big corporation, and where the government and private sector work closely together to make big profits for this corporation,” he said.

This is just one of the many text messages that pop up on the phone screen of Minh Huong in Hoan Kiem district every day.

These advertisements encourage users to try multiple services, from data packages to top-up cards, and from English courses to new real estate projects in town.

“It’s totally insane,” Huong said.

“They (the network providers) promised to start blocking all spam calls and messages from 2017, but nothing seems to have changed,” she said.

Huong has two phone numbers with the biggest network providers in the country, Vinaphone and Viettel.

While spam from Viettel invite her to join Keeng, a music social network, watch movies online or use a new mobile money application, Vinaphone advertises data packages, quiz games (which promise rewards far bigger than the cost of a text message) and a variety of promotions.

“It’s funny that most of the messages are sent by the telecommunications providers themselves. If you want to stop receiving the messages, you have to send a message to unsubscribe from services you never registered for,” she said. “It’s just ridiculous.”

Spam messages, unfortunately, are not the only problem.

Thu Van in Hai Ba Trung district is pestered by many spam calls every day.

“It’s crazy how much they seem to know about their target audiences,” Van said.

“They know where I live, how old my children are, and offer exactly what a person like me will need or consider,” she added.

Van presumed that her personal information had been traded from other organisations.

“I try to be patient, but sometimes when we are busy or the calls come early in the morning, I get so annoyed. I react angrily, and they criticise me for being impolite,” Van said.

Most people interviewed said that spam calls were more irritating than messages because they don’t know where they are coming from until they answer.

“They can attack you at anytime, when you are sleeping or working,” complained Quoc Tuan from Hoan Kiem district.

Tuấn said all he could do was block the numbers or not pick up from unknown callers.

“I don’t know where they got my phone number from. It is obviously illegal for my personal information to be traded by other people. However, I have no idea how law enforcement can deal with this type of crime,” he said.

According to Vu Ngoc Sơn, deputy head of Bkav Corporation, despite blocking software, it was impossible to prevent all spam calls and messages as they did not know how many phone numbers were being used for advertising purposes.

Instead of using preactivated sim cards, companies have switched to using registered numbers for telesales, making it difficult to tell whether an incoming call is spam or not.

“Customers do care if those numbers are registered. They consider it spam and feel harassed. At present, there is no potential solution due to the conflict between providers and customers,” Son told the Thanh Nien (Young People) newspaper.

Sharing the opinion, Vo Do Thang, director of Athena Cyber Management and Security Training Centre, said that telecommunications providers had to proactively prevent spam because not many people had efficient blocking software on their phones.

“We will have to tolerate this problem until strict regulations are applied,” Thang said.

According to the Viet Nam Telecommunications Agency, in 2017, providers deactivated and withdrew 24 million pre-activated SIM cards to reduce spam calls and messages.

From May, 2017, to March, 2018, 260 million spam messages were blocked. The Computer Emergency Response Center (dial 456) is in charge of receiving and recording spam messages, but is unable to stop spam calls.

The state-run KCNA news agency said “academician and professor” Ju Kyu Chang died on Monday at the age of 89 from “pancytopenia”, a blood disease.

It said the official state obituary described Ju as “an elder revolutionary who made (a) distinguished contribution to the strengthening of the country’s defence capabilities”.

Ju was a former minister of the North’s defence ministry, which was in charge of developing the country’s nuclear weapons and missiles.

He was one of a number of individual North Koreans slapped with non-proliferation sanctions in 2013 by the US Department of Treasury for their role in the nuclear programme.

Ju oversaw the launch of North Korea’s Unha 2 long-range rocket in 2009, which he watched alongside then leader Kim Jong Il, Yonhap news agency said.

He was also deeply involved in developing the two Unha-3 long range rockets launched in 2012 before retiring in 2015, it added.

Impoverished and isolated North Korea has prioritised its nuclear weapons, achieving remarkable success in recent years.

It conducted its first successful nuclear test in 2006 followed by five more and a string of increasingly successful intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) launches.

Last year it claimed it had become a nuclear state, capable of fitting a viable nuclear weapon on an ICBM that could reach as far as the United States’ eastern seaboard.