Author name: admin

Shanghai – A Chinese district court is set to sentence a man next week over a knife attack in June last year, in which a Japanese woman and her child, and a Chinese woman were attacked, sources at Japan’s Consulate-General in Shanghai said Saturday. In the sentencing hearing, attention will likely be paid to how the court will mention the attacker’s motive as well as the severity of the sentence. In the June 24 attack, a Japanese woman and her child were injured by a man in his 50s with a knife while they were waiting for a Japanese school bus at a bus stop in Suzhou, Jiangsu Province. The Chinese woman who was a guide on the bus was killed in the attack. Chinese authorities indicted the suspect in November. The first hearing in the man’s trial was held on Jan. 9, with Japanese Consul-General in Shanghai Masaru Okada and others allowed to attend it. The Chinese side has said that the incident occurred accidentally, and has not mentioned the man’s motive for or background on the attack, including whether he targeted the Japanese. The Japanese side has stopped short of disclosing details of the first court hearing while planning to give an explanation after the sentence is issued. In China, a Japanese boy on his way to school was stabbed to death by a man in Shenzhen in the southern province of Guangdong last September. The first court hearing in the case is scheduled for Friday. China is apparently hoping to close these cases early as the country aims to improve its relations with Japan. Source link

Melbourne – Iga Swiatek said Saturday her best was yet to come and the ball was “listening” to her as she sounded an ominous warning to her Australian Open rivals with a third-round rout of Emma Raducanu. The five-time Grand Slam champion has only once reached the semifinal in Melbourne but signaled she is ready to go all the way with a 6-1, 6-0, destruction of the 2021 U.S. Open winner. World No. 2 Swiatek sailed into the second week after losing only 10 games in three matches and warned she would only get better. Source link

Senior Defense Ministry and Self-Defense Forces officials have conveyed their serious concerns to a delegation from China’s military over its increasing activities near Japan, Defense Minister Gen Nakatani has said. The move came at Tuesday’s meeting between Japanese defense officials, including Taro Yamato, director-general of the ministry’s Defense Policy Bureau, and the delegation from the Eastern Theater Command of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, which covers Taiwan and other areas in the East China Sea, Nakatani said Friday. The delegation visited Japan for five days through Friday, during which it inspected the SDF Central Hospital in Tokyo and the Maritime SDF base in Maizuru, Kyoto Prefecture. It was the first such visit in five years. “It is very meaningful to have frank talks and communication at the commander level,” Nakatani told a news conference, suggesting that his ministry will also consider a visit to China by senior SDF officials. Nakatani and his Chinese counterpart agreed at a meeting last November on the significance of dialogue and exchanges between the two countries’ defense authorities. Source link

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump has picked Brandon Williams, a former Navy officer and one-term member of Congress, to become the keeper of the nation’s arsenal of thousands of nuclear bombs and warheads. Trump’s selection is a shift from a tradition in which the people who served as administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration typically had deep technical roots or experience in the nation’s atomic complex. What’s unknown publicly is the extent of Williams’ experience in the knotty intricacies of how the weapons work and how they are kept reliable for decades without ever being ignited. Terry C. Wallace Jr., a former director of the Los Alamos weapons laboratory in New Mexico, expressed surprise at Trump’s pick. Source link

WASHINGTON – A unanimous Supreme Court on Friday upheld a law that effectively bans the wildly popular app TikTok in the United States starting on Sunday. The ruling ended, at least for now, a legal battle involving national security, free speech and a cultural phenomenon that had millions of Americans deliriously swiping their phone screens at any given moment. The ruling, which forces the app to go dark if it remains under Chinese control, could be a death blow to TikTok’s U.S. operations. President-elect Donald Trump, who is to be inaugurated the following day, has vowed to “save” the app though his mechanisms for doing so remain unclear. In ruling against TikTok, the court acknowledged the wide-ranging cultural impact of the app while siding with the government’s concerns that China’s role posed national security concerns. Source link

Washington – The International Monetary Fund on Friday kept its economic growth outlook for Japan for 2025 and 2026 unchanged from its previous October projection at 1.1% and 0.8%, respectively. Global growth, meanwhile, is expected to increase slightly this year while remaining stuck below its pre-pandemic average, the IMF said, flagging the growing economic divide between the United States and European countries. In an update to its flagship World Economic Outlook report, the IMF said it expects global growth to hit 3.3% this year, up 0.1 percentage point from its previous forecast in October, and to remain at 3.3% in 2026. Source link

WASHINGTON – Donald Trump confirmed that his inauguration as U.S. president on Monday will move indoors due to expected freezing weather, undercutting the Republican’s hopes for a grandiose spectacle to kick off his second term. “There is an Arctic blast sweeping the Country,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social feed on Friday. “Therefore, I have ordered the Inauguration Address, in addition to prayers and other speeches, to be delivered in the United States Capitol Rotunda.” The change of plan means Trump will not stand on the Capitol steps overlooking the National Mall, which traditionally hosts a large crowd to welcome new presidents. The Rotunda, an ornate, round hall under the dome of Congress, can typically only hold a few hundred people. Source link

Suspended 15 meters above the ground from a launch point just below the 482-meter summit of Mount Jyubuichi in Yamagata Prefecture, I am standing huddled in a basket beneath the bright geometric patterns of a hot air balloon. Small towns, rice fields and the last vestiges of autumn foliage blanket the Earth below. Even on an overcast and chilly morning such as this, it’s a refreshing sight. With little melded metal and glass jutting out into the sky, I’ll admit this is not the scenery I’ve come to associate with Japan. Despite having lived in Ibaraki Prefecture for six years before moving to Tokyo, the longer I live in the latter, the more it begins to feel like the center of the world (don’t tell any New Yorkers that). Source link

Foreign Minister Takeshi Iwaya said on Friday he would highlight the economic and national security value that the United States’ key Asian ally offers during his visit to Washington for President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration on Monday. During his four-day stay beginning Sunday, Iwaya will be the first senior Japanese official to meet members of the incoming president’s governing team. Iwaya said he was likely to meet with Trump’s pick for secretary of state, Senator Marco Rubio, who is expected to be confirmed on Monday. Iwaya said Japan’s commitment to allocating 2% of gross domestic product to defense by 2027, in line with its national security strategy, was steadily progressing. “Japan’s status as the leading U.S. investor over the past five years also demonstrates our contributions,” Iwaya said at a regular press briefing. “I will thoroughly explain and ensure understanding of these efforts,” he added. Despite Japan’s deep economic and security ties with the U.S., including a decadeslong military alliance that provides Washington with military bases on China’s doorstep, Tokyo is unsure whether Japanese goods, such as automobiles, will be subject to the trade tariffs that Trump has said he will impose on imports. Iwaya, who is making his first visit to the U.S. since taking up his post in October, said his trip will pave the way for a first meeting between Trump and Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, which is expected to take place next month. Source link

During the U.S. presidential campaign, President-elect Donald Trump generally took a tough line toward China. Yet at the same time, he often complained about some of the United States’ most important partners in the region — countries that have been critical in dealing with Beijing. Trump promised to impose tariffs of 60% on all Chinese exports and to boost the U.S. defense budget, focusing it more on Asia and possibly less on Europe, including Ukraine. But he also wants Taiwan to pay for U.S. protection of the island democracy and for Taipei to pay more for its defense. Trump is making these demands even though his first administration had taken some of the most assertive moves to demonstrate U.S. support for Taiwan of any administration in history. Source link