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A revised bill to abolish specific political funds allocated to lawmakers for their political activities — criticized for their lack of transparency — cleared the Lower House on Tuesday, with the ongoing parliamentary session expected to be extended for three days to ensure its passage in the Upper House. The Lower House passage of the bill, along with two other related bills, came after the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and opposition Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan struck an agreement Monday to pass the legislation in the lower chamber. But the CDP failed to convince the LDP to include a ban on corporate donations in the bill. They will discuss the issue further over the next few months. Source link

Port Vila, Vanuatu – A powerful earthquake hit the Pacific island of Vanuatu on Tuesday, smashing buildings in the capital Port Vila including one used by foreign embassies, with a witness telling of bodies lying in the city. The 7.3 magnitude quake struck at a depth of 57 kilometers, some 30 kilometers off the coast of Efate, Vanuatu’s main island, at 12:47 pm, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. A 5.5 magnitude aftershock struck minutes later, followed by a string of lesser tremors over the following hours. Source link

Three Cambodian women in their 20s have filed a lawsuit against their former employer over allegations he raped one of the women over a five-month period, with local media reporting the other two women said the man also touched their breasts and other parts of their bodies. The suit against the strawberry farmer in Tochigi Prefecture, filed on Monday at the Tokyo District Court, also accuses him of not paying them overtime wages. The women are seeking compensation for damages and unpaid overtime wages, saying that the employer not paying overtime became a regular practice at the farm, according to a statement from their lawyer. The statement said the employer “exploited their vulnerable position” in repeatedly threatening to “send them back to their home country” or “fire them.” Source link

For the first time in seven years Japan has a new college football champion. In a thrilling back-and-forth shootout at Koshien Stadium on Sunday, Ritsumeikan University Panthers finally overcame dogged resistance from Hosei University Orange to claim the school’s ninth overall national championship, and its first since 2015. With both teams combining for 941 yards of offense and 80 points (Panthers won 45-35), fans at Japan’s most venerated ballpark certainly got their money’s worth. Source link

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s administration was thrown into crisis when his trusted deputy, Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland, published a withering resignation letter on Monday that left him weakened at the worst possible time. Trudeau and his cabinet have been struggling for weeks to show a united front against U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s threat to slap 25% tariffs on Canadian goods. The prime minister’s popularity, ebbing for years, is near its lowest point ever. Provincial premiers are sniping at him. Calls for his resignation — common from rivals — are getting louder from members of his own Liberal Party. All of that was trouble enough for Trudeau. Freeland’s parting shots, though, have pushed his government as close as it’s ever been to collapse, nine years after he swept into office promising “sunny ways.” Source link

The New York Times – After seven years of medical school in Myanmar, May finally achieved her goal of becoming a doctor. But a month after she graduated and found a job, her dreams started unraveling. In February 2021, Myanmar’s military seized power in a coup, and the country’s economy, already hammered by the COVID-19 pandemic, started to buckle. Prices soared, and May’s paycheck, the equivalent of $415 a month, evaporated even faster. With her father suffering from kidney disease, she grew more and more desperate. Then, she met “date girls,” who were making twice as much as her. The money was enticing — even if it involved sex with men. Source link

Families, loved ones and those affected gathered Tuesday to offer prayers in front of a mental health clinic in Osaka’s Kita Ward, where an arson attack three years ago claimed 26 lives. The incident occurred at 10:15 a.m. on Dec. 17, 2021, when Morio Tanimoto, a 61-year-old former patient, allegedly set fire to the clinic, killing its director, Kotaro Nishizawa, then 49, along with 25 patients and staff. Tanimoto also died several days after the incident from injuries sustained during the arson attack. Osaka Prefectural Police referred Tanimoto on suspicion of murder in March 2022. However, as he was dead, Osaka prosecutors dropped the charges. Source link

Former England assistant coach Steve Holland has been named the new manager of Yokohama F. Marinos, the J. League side said on Tuesday. Holland takes over from John Hutchinson, who stepped in as interim coach when Harry Kewell left the club due to a run of poor results in July. “Our challenge is to win the title again,” Holland told the club’s official website. “We will play aggressive attacking football. “We want to build a team that can compete for the title with consistency and high competitiveness.” Marinos finished ninth in the recently completed J. League season, 20 points adrift of champions Vissel Kobe. The club last won the title in 2022 under Australian coach Kevin Muscat. The role is Holland’s first as a manager since a one-season spell in charge of Crewe Alexandra in the 2007-08 campaign, with the 54-year-old spending much of his subsequent career as an assistant. After a spell at Chelsea, Holland linked up with Gareth Southgate to work with England’s under 21s before the pair took over the senior national team in 2016. Alongside Southgate, he helped England to the final of the Euros in both 2021 and 2024 as well as to the World Cup semifinals in Russia in 2018. Source link

Kioxia Holdings was supposed to be an irresistible debutant in a hot Japanese market, heralding the rise of a homegrown chipmaker with big backers and a storied pedigree. It may get a cooler reception than anticipated. The pioneer in NAND flash memory — chips that store information in smartphones and data-center servers — is listing Wednesday after years of complex and wide-ranging negotiations that involved Bain Capital, SK, Western Digital and the Japanese government. Its initial public offering has been touted as the start of a comeback for a company born out of Toshiba, which invented the component in the 1980s and helped spearhead the Japanese economic miracle. Yet Kioxia — whose name combines the Japanese word for memory and the Greek one for value — is a shadow of its former self. Investment faltered as parent Toshiba wrestled with years of scandals and crippling losses at nuclear giant Westinghouse, stalling its technological advance. That, in turn, helped the ascent of South Korean rivals Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, which Seoul heavily supported. And finally, the global post-COVID-19 smartphone slump wiped out growth. Source link

COX’S BAZAR, Bangladesh – Myanmar’s ruling junta has suppressed information about a severe food crisis gripping the country by pressuring researchers not to collect data about hunger and aid workers not to publish it, it has been found. In conversations over the past two years, junta representatives have warned senior aid workers against releasing data and analysis that indicate millions of people in Myanmar are experiencing serious hunger, according to people familiar with the matter. In a sign of the sensitivity around this data, the world’s leading hunger watchdog — the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) — in recent weeks removed its color-coded assessment of Myanmar from the global map on its website where it displays the levels of hunger afflicting dozens of countries. The reason: fears for the safety of the researchers. Source link