Abortions resume in six Texas clinics Powerful quake in Japan injures 32 people Typhoon Lionrock to hit China's Hainan

AUSTON: Abortions quickly resumed in at least six Texas clinics after a federal judge halted the most restrictive abortion law in the U.S., but other physicians remained hesitant, afraid the court order would not stand for long and thrust them back into legal jeopardy. It was unclear how many abortions Texas clinics rushed to perform Thursday after U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman suspended the law known as Senate Bill 8, which since early September had banned abortions once cardiac activity is detected, usually around six weeks.

TOKYO: Authorities in Japan said on Friday that a powerful earthquake which jolted the country the previous day left 32 people injured, while also disrupting train services in the Tokyo area, affecting around 368,000 passengers in total. The earthquake that struck the capital region at 10.41 p.m. on Thursday night reached upper 5 on the Japanese seismic intensity scale of 7 in parts of Tokyo and Saitama prefecture, reports Xinhua news agency. The last time that people in central Tokyo faced such an intense jolt was during the massive quake of March 11, 2011, which devastated northeastern Japan and triggered a tsunami and nuclear disaster.

BEIJING: Lionrock, the 17th typhoon to affect China this year, is heading toward the island province of Hainan, local meteorological authorities said on Friday. The typhoon, escalated from a tropical depression early Friday morning in the South China Sea, was observed on waters 150 km southeast of Wanning City in Hainan at 8 a.m., Xinhua news agency quoted the provincial meteorological department as saying. The department has issued a level III alert for the approaching typhoon. Lionrock is expected to bring abundant rainfall to alleviate drought in Hainan, where the water storage capacity in reservoirs is only 40.8 per cent of the normal capacity.