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Kanazawa, Ishikawa – After losing his wife and three children in a massive earthquake that struck central Japan a year ago, Keisuke Oma is desperately trying to move forward. “My wife and children fell victim (to the disaster), but (they) kept me alive,” said Oma, 42, an officer of the Ishikawa prefectural police department. “I’m not only living my life, but also living my family’s lives,” added the resident of Kanazawa, the prefectural capital. His wife, Haruka, then 38, the couple’s daughter, Yuka, then 11, their first son, Taisuke, then 9, and their second son, Sosuke, then 3, were at the home of Haruka’s parents in the city of Suzu when the 7.6 magnitude jolt hit the Noto Peninsula on Jan. 1 this year. Source link

Washington – Donald Trump has yet to move back into the White House and already fissures are opening in his coalition, amid squabbling between Elon Musk and his Silicon Valley “tech bros” and his hardcore Republican backers. At the heart of the internecine sniping is Trump’s central election issue — immigration — and the H1-B visas that allow companies to bring foreigners with specific qualifications to the United States. The permits are widely used in Silicon Valley, and Musk — who himself came to the United States from South Africa on an H1-B — is a fervent advocate. Source link

Japan’s record deal-making activity this year isn’t giving foreign firms much holiday cheer: For now, the field remains mostly dominated by the local megabanks and law firms with deep ties to the corporate world. At roughly $200 billion, the volume of transactions including mergers and acquisitions in the country is up 48% this year, data compiled by Bloomberg show. That compares with a 17% increase across Asia Pacific and a 19% slump for China, which remains the biggest market in the region with $271 billion in volume. The sheer amount of activity is reshaping the battleground for investment bankers seeking to earn the often lucrative fees that come with these transactions. Just as the year winds down, one deal has left bankers scrambling to take part in: Honda’s acquisition talks with Nissan. Source link

The year 2024 will likely be remembered as a hot one (at least, until next summer). It was a hot year for Japanese culture overseas, too, and heated debates were had over a huge influx of tourists. Through it all, the people we spoke to for 20 Questions offered us cool heads and calm words of advice, so let’s refresh our memories on what they said as we near the year’s end. What have your years of living here taught you about Japanese language and culture? The Japanese don’t always articulate their feelings — it’s a very “dot dot dot” society — and you’re often just expected to understand. You’ve really got to be here to learn it. Though being an arts lover, I do think that films and theater offer some good hints. Gary Perlman, playwright, Nov. 7 Source link

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump thrust himself into the high-stakes fight over the fate of TikTok in the United States by urging the Supreme Court to pause a law that would ban the social media platform if it isn’t sold by its Chinese parent company. Trump said the court should give him time after his Jan. 20 inauguration to “seek a negotiated resolution” of the dispute. He didn’t take a firm position on the constitutionality of the law that’s set to take effect Jan. 19, though he said it raised “sweeping and troubling” free speech concerns. Trump told the justices that only he “possesses the consummate dealmaking expertise, the electoral mandate, and the political will to negotiate a resolution to save the platform while addressing the national security concerns expressed by the government.” Source link

Blurry images of two seemingly new Chinese military aircraft with stealthy characteristics appeared online on Friday, with defense experts saying they were clearly advanced designs, but there was not enough detail for definitive conclusions. Both designs are tailless, meaning they do not have vertical stabilizers to help maintain control. Such aircraft are typically kept stable by computers that interpret the pilot’s control inputs. The larger of the two designs is roughly diamond-shaped, with three air intakes for its engines — two alongside the fuselage and one on top — an extremely unusual configuration. The smaller one has a more conventional layout, but no tail. Source link

Delivering the first cuts in interest rates since the early days of the pandemic was the easy part. The coming year is likely to be rich in nuance: Inflation won’t scale the heights of 2022, but officials are skeptical it will return to the ultralow levels that prevailed before the pandemic. That means borrowing costs will retreat in most economies, though not aggressively, and without many declarations of victory. For the authorities that have yet to trim, such as the reserve banks in Australia and India, watch for a reduction in the next few months. They can still keep policy restrictive — an ill-defined region that holds the economy back — and bring rates down a little. China, wrestling with a dour outlook and the specter of deflation, has been cautiously easing for a while. The risk is that Beijing does too little rather than too much. Here are some things to consider: Source link

The U.N.’s Global Digital Compact is the first universal agreement on the international governance of AI. It seeks to ensure an open and equitable digital future for all. Source link

Osamu Suzuki, who ran Suzuki Motor — known for its minicars and motorcycles — across several decades and drove the company’s global expansion, has died. He was 94. Suzuki died of lymphoma on Wednesday, the company said in a statement. Born Osamu Matsuda, Suzuki married into the family that gave the automaker in Hamamatsu, Shizuoka Prefecture, its name. During his long tenure, he formed partnerships with General Motors and Volkswagen to sell vehicles in North America and Europe and leveraged Suzuki Motor’s expertise in small cars to build a dominant market share in India. Source link

Drunk people sleeping on the sidewalks of central Tokyo on a Friday night may be a common sight, but when pedestrians fall asleep in the middle of the road, the consequences can be catastrophic. The number of cases in which cars run over people asleep on the road rises in December, when more people get drunk at New Year’s gatherings with colleagues and relatives, posing a significant risk to both pedestrians and drivers. According to the National Police Agency, there were 300 such cases in 2023, in which 107 people died. Of the fatalities, 77 victims were drunk. Source link