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Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba has vowed to make a success of the World Exposition to be held in Osaka for six months from mid-April. At a meeting with Dimitri Kerkentzes, visiting secretary-general of the Paris-based Bureau International des Expositions (BIE), at the prime minister’s office in Tokyo on Friday, Ishiba said: “We absolutely want the expo to be a success. We will do our best to communicate (the attractions of) not only Osaka but also Japan as a whole to the world.” The meeting was held behind closed doors except for the opening part. Source link

The U.S. Supreme Court has ended TikTok’s nine-month legal battle, forcing leaders both within the company and in Beijing to consider a dwindling set of alternatives for keeping the popular video-sharing app alive. TikTok’s China-based parent, ByteDance, can agree to sell the app’s U.S. operations — a path the company has said it has no interest in pursuing — or wait to see if President-elect Donald Trump makes good on his promise to orchestrate a solution. No matter the scenario, Trump promises to be at the center of the process, either by successfully stalling the ban set to take effect Sunday or approving a deal that addresses the U.S. government’s national security concerns. “The Supreme Court decision was expected, and everyone must respect it,” Trump wrote Friday in a social media post. “My decision on TikTok will be made in the not too distant future, but I must have time to review the situation.” Source link

beijing – A Chinese woman who made headlines two years ago by claiming on social media to have bought an island in Okinawa is planning to visit the island this summer, Chinese media have reported. The woman is reportedly preparing a trip to the island for employees of a company she runs in July or August. The island she claimed to have purchased is the uninhabited Yanaha Island in the village of Izena in Okinawa. According to the village office, a Chinese consulting company based in Tokyo has owned about half of the 740,000-square-meter island since February 2021. The woman told Chinese media that she bought the island through direct negotiations with its owner after learning by chance that it had been put up for auction. She did not disclose how much she paid for it. She said she decided on the acquisition since the island is uninhabited and close to the city of Qingdao in the Chinese province of Shandong, her birthplace. The woman said she hopes to preserve the nature of the island as it is, adding that she may help develop it if she finds the right person, but that she will otherwise pass the island on to the next generation. The woman went back to Qingdao some 10 years ago after studying in Japan and founded a dining business. Her social media video posted in January 2023 in which she claimed her purchase of the island spurred national security concerns in Japan. Then-Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno said the government would monitor further developments relating to the island. Source link

AstraZeneca and Daiichi Sankyo won U.S. approval for a novel breast cancer treatment, a milestone in the companies’ efforts to turn the medicine into a widely used blockbuster. The Food and Drug Administration approved the drug for patients with advanced breast tumors whose cells bear a certain genetic signature. The treatment, called Datroway, pairs a tumor-killing drug with an antibody designed to home in on cancerous tissue — the same technology behind another new cancer medicine co-developed by the companies, Enhertu. The approval is the first in the U.S. for Datroway, which got clearance in Japan last month. Astra and Daiichi withdrew an application in the European Union for the drug to treat a type of lung cancer in December following feedback from regulatory advisers. Mixed results from a late-stage trial last year showed that while some lung cancer patients benefited from the drug, results across all patients weren’t statistically significant. Another earlier trial in a type of breast cancer also showed disappointing results. Still, Astra and Daiichi are optimistic about the use of Datroway to treat some patients with breast and lung cancers. The drug, also called Dato-DXd, is among a group that Astra is counting on for peak annual sales of at least $5 billion to help reach $80 billion in annual revenue by the end of the decade. Source link

South Korea’s impeached President Yoon Suk Yeol appeared in court on Saturday to argue against a request for his detention to be extended after his arrest earlier this week. Yoon defended himself during the hearing at the Seoul Western District Court, his attorney Yoon Kab-keun told reporters. The president spoke before the judge for about 40 minutes in the first session and about five minutes in final remarks, according to local media. The president left the court about five hours after arriving from a detention center, and returned to the facility where he will await the result. It was the first time he had left the center near Seoul, where he has been held since his arrest on Wednesday. Source link

The Japan Coast Guard (JCG) on Saturday launched the Live 118 system, which will allow its staff to receive videos of maritime incidents and accidents taken by callers and send them footage of life-saving techniques and other emergency response measures. Under the system, after receiving an emergency report, the JCG can send a URL of a dedicated website to the caller’s smartphone via text messaging, enabling the caller to access the site to get necessary information. The JCG created nine types of videos that would be sent to callers, including those showing ways to treat burns, stop bleeding and remove foreign objects from a person’s airway. Source link

WASHINGTON – The day before he left the White House in 2021, Donald Trump vowed to remain a force in U.S. politics. “The movement we started is only just beginning,” he said in a farewell video. What might have seemed then to be wishful thinking now sounds like a prophecy. Trump left office a defeated and isolated figure, banned from social media and repudiated by fellow Republicans in his own administration. Congress, shaken by his supporters’ Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, was preparing a second impeachment trial against him. Source link

MELBOURNE – American qualifier Learner Tien became the youngest man to reach the Australian Open fourth round in 20 years as he beat an ailing Corentin Moutet 7-6 (10), 6-3, 6-3, on Saturday, continuing the teenager’s fairytale run at Melbourne Park. Less than two months after his 19th birthday, world No. 121 Tien already had the more experienced Moutet’s measure before the French world No. 69 was hit with trouble in his upper left leg in the late afternoon clash at Kia Arena. Tien’s win in the battle of left-handers came two days after he pulled off the upset of the tournament by beating former U.S. Open champion and three-time Australian Open finalist Daniil Medvedev in a five-set thriller. Source link

In a converted warehouse located in a lush mountainous area about an hour’s drive north of Tokyo — the exact location kept under wraps until your reservation is confirmed — Eugene Kangawa has created a space that challenges the conventions of the artist’s studio. At Atelier iii, visitors encounter a spacious, meticulously curated mini museum showcasing several of the 35-year-old artist’s paintings, installations and sculptures. Beyond the public eye, workshop areas are tucked away behind walls, where his ongoing creative process quietly unfolds. Atelier iii is not a workshop in the traditional sense, nor a gallery. It is a 700-square-meter archive of ideas and materials, a lens into the mind of a conceptually rigorous contemporary artist. Here, Kangawa’s work is not displayed in isolation but exists as part of a broader narrative, one that encompasses impermanence, duality and the tenuous relationship between humans and the environments they inhabit. Source link

WASHINGTON – The people closest to U.S. President Joe Biden were well aware that he had changed. He talked more slowly than he had just a few years before, needed to hoist himself out of his seat in the presidential limousine and walked with a halting gait. “Your biggest issue is the perception of age,” Mike Donilon, the president’s longtime strategist, told him in mid-2022, according to three close aides who heard it. That bit of feedback, delivered repeatedly by Donilon, was the sort of blunt talk that did not often make its way to a man who had spent a half-century in politics prizing loyalty and deference. Biden acknowledged the concerns, but the warnings only ignited his defiant, competitive streak. In April 2023, without convening his family or having long deliberations with aides, he announced he was running again. Source link