Japan earthquake – live updates

The Weekly Filet usually is not about breaking news, but about making sense of the bigger picture. But today, it would just feel wrong not to highlight what’s happening in Japan. As you will know by now, early this morning, at 2:46 pm local time, a massive earthquake has hit Japan, triggering a 10 metre tsunami. It measured 8.9 magnitude on the Richter scale, which is almost 80 times bigger than the one that devastated Haiti last year (the Richter scale is logarithmic). The news is breaking as I write this, and the Guardian – as so often the case – proves to be an excellent source of information. Not only do they have precise live coverage, but thanks to their excellent data team, they have a seismic monitor recording all earthquakes around the world, giving some perspective on just how extraordinary this earthquake is.