An 8.8-magnitude earthquake hit Japan early Friday, triggering tsunami warnings and sending people fleeing out of buildings in the capital. The quake rattled buildings and toppled cars off bridges and into waters underneath. In Tokyo, crowds huddled together and tried to reach relatives via cell phone.
Its epicenter was 373 kilometers (231 miles) from Tokyo, the United States Geological Survey said.
It triggered a tsunami warning for various countries, including Japan and Russia, the National Weather Service said.
"Earthquakes of this size are known to generate tsunamis potentially dangerous to coasts outside the source region," it said.
Hours after North Korea's deadly artillery attacks on Tuesday, South Korea's president said "enormous retaliation" is needed to stop Pyongyang's incitement, but international diplomats urgently appealed for restraint. "The provocation this time can be regarded as an invasion of South Korean territory," President Lee Myung-bak said at the headquarters of the Joint Chiefs of Staff here, according to South Korea's Yonhap news agency.
The incident -- in which two South Korean marines died -- is "the first direct artillery attack on South Korean territory since the Korean War ended in an armistice, not a formal peace treaty" in the 1950s, South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported. The United States has about 28,500 troops deployed in South Korea and are warily watching the situation.
The Supreme Court upheld a ruling that long-term contracts between entertainers and their agencies are unfair and therefore invalid.The top court Friday invalidated a contract putting an entertainer under the control of his agency for as long as a decade, saying the contract restricted freedom.
This verdict is expected to put the brakes on entertainment agencies’ long-established practice of controlling its stars for as long as possible with slave-like contracts.
Woo Sung-hyun, a 20-year-old member of popular boy band U-Kiss, filed a suit in 2008 challenging his contract, calling it “unfair.”
In 2006, Woo signed with the agency, Ssing Entertainment, a 10-year contract that stipulated if his performances were suspended due to health problems or mandatory military service, the inactive period would be added to the term.
Kevin wins lawsuit against company
In the battle against his previous company concerning his exclusive contract, the court ruled in favor of the celebrity, male group U-Kiss's member Kevin (real name Woo SungHyun).
The court revealed on the 13th that the contract was "unfair, as the contract consisted of a long term for Kevin and one-sided profit for the company (Xing Entertainment)".
The exclusive contract that Kevin had signed with Xing Entertainment in 2006 stated that he would be under the company for 10 years, and that under circumstances in which he would not be able to complete his celebrity duties because of military service or health, his contract would be lengthened according to the missed time.