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SAN FRANCISCO – After joining Chinese leader Xi Jinping for dinner last year, San Francisco Mayor London Breed accompanied him to the airport to bid him farewell. There, on the tarmac, she made her request: pandas. Her city’s zoo was faltering. Tourism was suffering and she faced a tough re-election campaign. A pair of pandas from China would be a political and public relations win. What ensued were months of informal negotiations, with Breed — a politician with no foreign affairs or security experience — becoming a diplomat of sorts. She went to China, where she met the vice president and a deputy foreign minister, her calendars and emails show. She traveled with the editor of Sing Tao U.S., a pro-China newspaper that registers as a foreign agent in the United States, according to other records and photographs from the trip. Source link

Patrick Mahomes threw for one touchdown and ran for another as the Kansas City Chiefs improved to an NFL-best 14-1 on Saturday, while the Baltimore Ravens beat Pittsburgh to secure a playoff berth. The two-time reigning Super Bowl champion Chiefs defeated Houston 27-19 and need only another win or loss by the Buffalo Bills (11-3) to clinch the top seed and home-field advantage throughout the AFC playoffs. Mahomes completed 28-of-41 passes for 260 yards and a touchdown and ran five times for 33 yards and a touchdown, quickly serving notice he had recovered from a high left ankle sprain suffered in a victory over Cleveland last weekend. Source link

PARIS – Animal rights activist Paul Watson, freed this week from detention in Denmark, vowed on Saturday to end whale hunting worldwide and to stop Japan if it tried to resume whaling in the Southern Ocean. Watson, a 74-year-old Canadian American, returned to France on Friday after spending five months in detention in the Danish autonomous territory of Greenland due to an extradition demand from Japan. “One way or the other we are going to end whaling worldwide,” Watson told reporters in central Paris where several hundred supporters had gathered to greet him. Source link

By providing thousands of troops to Russia — as well as a steady supply of weapons and munitions — North Korea is assisting Moscow in its war in Ukraine in the areas it needs most, according to a top Canadian general. “North Koreans are not only replacing some Russian personnel but they are also making up for the lack of munitions and other assets that Russia either can’t produce on its own or can’t replace as fast as needed to sustain a war of attrition like this one,” Maj. Gen. Greg Smith, director-general of international security policy with Canada’s Department of National Defence told The Japan Times. While this help may not be a game-changer, it marks an “important contribution” that also comes with a symbolic element. Source link

The Japanese Ground Self-Defense Force will resume flights for its Osprey transport aircraft after completing required safety procedures, the Defense Ministry said Saturday. The ministry announced the decision after officials from the U.S. military said Friday that its own Ospreys will resume flights after undergoing an additional safety inspection. The U.S. military had grounded the aircraft since a near-crash involving an Osprey in New Mexico in November. The U.S. Naval Air Systems Command said Friday that it has ordered the inspection of the Osprey to verify the flight hours on each proprotor gearbox prior to an aircraft’s next flight. The GSDF’s Ospreys, which have been grounded since Dec. 10, will resume flights after undergoing a similar safety inspection, the ministry said. Source link

Since the end of martial law in 1987, there have been eight democratically elected presidents — and all but two of those have either been impeached or imprisoned. Source link

The contrast couldn’t have been more striking. On Dec. 9, while the West was still shell shocked from the fall of the Bashar Assad regime in Syria the day before, the Japanese prime minister was busy with the celebration of the empress’ birthday and parliamentary deliberations on the supplementary budget. For sure, there was some discussion in Tokyo about humanitarian and reconstruction assistance following the upheaval in Syria. The collapse of the Syrian regime is truly a major event that could lead to a tectonic shift across the Middle East if handled poorly. And yet, unfortunately (and unsurprisingly), the reaction of the Japanese government and the media was slow and tone-deaf. The Assad regime was virtually the last of the old “Arab socialist” states in the Middle East. Now, many of the key players in the region — such as Hamas, Hezbollah and countries like Syria, Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Israel — have mostly become political forces influenced by strong religious ideologies. Source link

Japan’s Fair Trade Commission plans to issue a cease-and-desist order against Google for violating the anti-monopoly law, sources said Sunday. The Japanese antitrust watchdog found that the U.S. company has forced smartphone makers to install its search app, the people said. Google will be the first U.S. technology giant to receive a cease-and-desist order from the FTC. The FTC has notified Google of the plan and will make a final decision after hearing opinions from the company, the people said. Google has signed contracts with makers of smartphones that run its Android operating system to have them install its Google Search and Google Chrome apps on home screens in exchange for allowing them to install their own app stores, the people said. The company has also signed contracts with the smartphone makers to allow Google to pay a portion of the revenue from its paid search ads service to them on condition that they do not install rival search apps, the people said. Source link

Okinawa – Over 2,500 people staged a rally in the city of Okinawa on Sunday to protest sexual assaults on local girls by U.S. servicemen stationed in the prefecture of Okinawa. They adopted a resolution demanding that the Japanese and U.S. governments apologize and compensate the victims, provide information promptly when such incidents occur, and revise the Japan-U.S. status of forces agreement, which governs U.S. troops stationed in Japan. “Sexual violence that tramples on the dignity of women and children should never occur,” said Junko Iraha, chief of a local citizens’ group and a member of the rally’s organizing committee. Okinawa Gov. Denny Tamaki said, “I feel keenly that we need to be stricter and speak louder about the situation in which many residents of the prefecture are forced to co-exist with U.S. military bases amid anxiety.” Sorane Sakihama, a 22-year-old college student who spoke as a representative of young people, asked, “Do we have to be deprived of our youth because we were born in Okinawa and there are bases?” The rally was broadcast live to other venues in Okinawa including Ishigaki and Miyakojima, and also distributed online. Participants wore yellow clothes and ribbons in honor of the mimosa flower, which symbolizes International Women’s Day. It came to light in June this year that an Okinawa prosecutors’ office had indicted Brennon Washington, who belongs to the U.S. Air Force’s Kadena base in the prefecture, on charges of a sexual assault on a girl. Authorities did not make the indictment public immediately. A series of sexual assaults by U.S. military personnel in Okinawa have since been revealed, sparking anger among residents of the prefecture. Source link

BEIJING – China said Sunday it was taking countermeasures against two Canadian institutions and 20 people involved in human issues concerning the Uyghurs and Tibet. The measures, which took effect on Saturday, include asset freezes and bans on entry and the targets include Canada’s Uyghur Rights Advocacy Project and the Canada-Tibet Committee, China’s foreign ministry announces on its website. Rights groups accuse Beijing of widespread abuses of Uyghurs, a mainly Muslim ethnic minority that numbers around 10 million in the western region of Xinjiang, including the mass use of forced labor in camps. Beijing denies any abuses. China seized control of Tibet in 1950 in what it describes as a “peaceful liberation” from feudalistic serfdom. International human rights groups and exiles, however, have routinely condemned what they call China’s oppressive rule in Tibetan areas. For the two institutions, China said it is freezing their “movable property, immovable property and other types of property within the territory of China.” It is freezing the property in China of 15 people in the Uyghur institution and five on the Tibet committee, banning them from entering China, including Hong Kong and Macau. Source link