Author name: admin

London – Tottenham Hotspur manager Ange Postecoglou fired back at his critics as his side recovered from consecutive cup exits to beat Manchester United 1-0 in the Premier League on Sunday. The Australian has been under intense pressure with his injury-hit team languishing in the lower reaches of the league table and bowing out of both domestic cups last week. A prematch protest by fans frustrated by chairman Daniel Levy’s running of the club underlined the malaise at Tottenham, but James Maddison’s winner lightened the mood as Spurs did the league double over United for the first time since 1989-90. Source link

Seoul – Chinese artificial intelligence chatbot DeepSeek upended the global industry and wiped billions off U.S. tech stocks when it unveiled its R1 program, which it claims was built on cheap, less sophisticated Nvidia semiconductors. But governments from Rome to Seoul are cracking down on the user-friendly Chinese app, saying they need to prevent potential leaks of sensitive information through generative AI services. Here is a look at what’s going on: Source link

Akihiro Arimoto, whose daughter Keiko was spirited away to North Korea more than four decades ago and remains unaccounted for, died late Friday at the age of 96, an abductees group said Monday. His death is a sign of how long the issue has dragged on for, with most parents of abductees having now died without finding out what happened to their loved ones. Sakie Yokota, 89, is now the last remaining parent of 12 Japanese nationals abducted by North Korea who have yet to be accounted for despite efforts by Tokyo, with support from Washington, to pressure Pyongyang into returning them to Japan. Source link

Addis Ababa – U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to suspend U.S. overseas funding could result in millions more deaths from AIDS, the head of the U.N.’s program for the illness warned Sunday. The United States is the world’s largest provider of official development assistance, with most funds directed through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). Trump ordered the bulk of U.S. foreign assistance to be frozen for three months on returning to office in January, leaving global humanitarians scrambling to deal with the fallout. Source link

Japan’s economy expanded an annualized 2.8% in the October-December quarter, government data showed on Monday, backed by strong business spending and beating analyst forecasts. Strong domestic demand is helping support a recovery in the world’s fourth-largest economy, even as U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariff threats fuel concerns about the export outlook. The positive figures will also likely support the Bank of Japan’s plan to keep hiking interest rates and normalize monetary policy. The increase in gross domestic product compared with a median market estimate of a 1.0% gain, and followed a revised 1.7% growth in the previous quarter. The reading translates into a quarterly rise of 0.7%, better than the median estimate for a 0.3% uptick. Private consumption, which accounts for more than half of economic output, rose 0.1%, compared with a market estimate of a 0.3% fall. It cooled down from a 0.7% rise in the previous quarter, indicating that rising food costs kept households reluctant about spending. Consumption and wage trends are key factors the BOJ is watching to gauge economic strength and determine the need for additional rate hikes. While the latest wage and household spending indicators showed encouraging signs, analysts have been wary of price pressures hindering a full-fledged recovery in personal consumption. Capital spending, a key driver of private demand-led growth, rose 0.5% in the fourth quarter, versus a market estimate of a rise of 1.0%. Net external demand, or exports minus imports, contributed 0.7 of a point to growth, reversing a negative contribution in the July-September period. Source link

Istra, Russia – On a small stage in a school outside Moscow, a masked soldier presented Ivan with an army flag, a thank you gift signed by Russian troops fighting in Ukraine to the 7-year-old who has sent dozens of letters and gifts to them. Encouraged by his mother, Ivan has offered words of support and praise for those taking part in what the Kremlin calls its “special military operation.” Such events have become common as the Kremlin rallies its youngest citizens to support the initiative and embeds its narratives on the conflict into the curriculum. Source link

Japan plans to establish a system allowing the central government to promptly repair locally managed airports damaged by disasters, in place of local governments. The system, expected to cover about 60 airports, is based on lessons from the delayed resumption of an airport on the Noto Peninsula in Ishikawa Prefecture, which was struck by a powerful earthquake on Jan. 1, 2024. The transport ministry plans to introduce a revision to the airport law to create the system during the current session of parliament, which ends in June, informed sources said. Noto Airport in Wajima, an area severely damaged by the quake, reopened for commercial flights on Jan. 27, 2024, after emergency repairs by the prefectural government. Under the law for recovery from large-scale disasters, Japan has a system allowing the central government to repair locally managed airports on behalf of local governments if disasters that damaged them are officially designated as extraordinary. But it was only a month after the earthquake that the central government was able to start full-fledged repairs of Noto Airport under that system. The new system would allow the central government to repair disaster-affected airports before or without such a disaster designation if requested by local governments, helping early reopenings. The ministry will also strengthen aircraft safety measures, following a collision of planes on a runway at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport in January last year. Airport managers will be obliged to take measures to prevent planes from entering runways by mistake and will be subject to regular inspections by the central government. All pilots will be asked to receive training on communication between pilots. The measures will be included in a bill to revise the civil aeronautics law to be submitted to parliament. Source link

Naturalized Japanese citizens who are originally from Taiwan will be able to list Taiwan instead of China as their place of origin in their family register from May 26, following a revision to a Justice Ministry ordinance allowing people to list regions, not just countries. Since only Japanese citizens have family registrations, the change will mainly apply to naturalized citizens. But it will also impact foreign spouses and foreign children adopted by Japanese nationals, as their nationality and relationship are reflected in their Japanese spouse’s or adoptive parent’s register. Currently, family registers include a nationality field for those with foreign origins. As Japan does not officially recognize Taiwan as a country, those from the self-ruled island had been required to list China as their original nationality. Source link

The European Union is planning to pursue new restrictions on imported food products treated by toxic pesticides banned in the bloc to address farmers’ complaints about the stricter standards they face in an increasingly competitive global market. The European Commission, the bloc’s executive arm, “will establish a principle that the most hazardous pesticides banned in the EU for health and environmental reasons are not allowed back to the EU through imported products,” according to a draft document to be published Wednesday. EU farmers have been protesting across Europe over the past year about the increasing burdens of the bloc’s climate and environmental rules. As a result, they have been fighting a trade deal concluded with the Mercosur bloc of Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and Paraguay because of the lower requirements in those nations. Source link

Bain Capital said it will give up its pursuit of Fuji Soft, ending a monthslong bidding war with KKR to take the Japanese software company private. The Boston-based private equity firm said in a statement on Monday that it won’t implement a tender offer for Fuji Soft after deciding not to increase the price. The move came after KKR raised its bid to ¥9,850 ($65) per share in early February. Shares of Fuji Soft, which had traded above KKR’s latest offer, dropped 0.3% to ¥9,843 at 1:13 p.m. in Tokyo. The Yokohama-based tech firm has a market capitalization of about $4.4 billion. Source link