The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Government of Japan is now asking each responsible ministry of target country to submit a list of JICA training courses that each country would like to send trainees in 2012 and the next years (deadline of submission is mid-September 2011). It will be very much appreciated if you or your organization could inform corresponding ministry of your country to select "Seismology, Earthquake Engineering (and Recovery)" course and "Tsunami Disaster Mitigation" course as selected courses of your country.

New staff members have joined IISEE in April 2011. Dr. Koichi Morita joined as the course leader in earthquake engineering as Dr. Koyama has moved to structural research group of BRI. Dr. Tadashi Ishihara also joined from April and Dr. Mukai has left to study abroad. Both new staffs involve in

earthquake engineering. Since both have provided lectures at IISEE, they started to guide individual studies (master degree paper of GHRIPS) for participants from developing countries.

The 4th meeting of the “International Platform for Reducing Earthquake Disasters" (IPRED) of UNESCO has been held during 26 and 28 of July, 2011 in Chile. The meeting in Chile is introduced in the following UNESCO's web-site:

http://portal.unesco.org/geography/en/ev.php-URL_ID=14506&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html

http://www.unesco.org/new/en/natural-sciences/special-themes/disaster-preparedness-and-mitigation/natural-hazards/earthquakes/ipred/

IISEE revised the following web-site to include new data and so on;

http://iisee.kenken.go.jp/special2/20110311tohoku.htm

Please also visit the following web-site on the past News Letter that includes useful English information on the Great East Japan Earthquake.

https://iisee.kenken.go.jp/en/newsletter

A summary report on "The 2011 off the Pacific coast of Tohoku Earthquake (The Great East Japan Earthquake)" that was issued in Japanese will be opened to the public in the very near future. An additional News Letter will be sent when it is up.