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Japanese household consumption rose at the fastest pace since August 2022 at the end of 2024, as strong wage gains led by bonuses helped loosen consumers’ purse strings. Outlays adjusted for inflation gained 2.7% in December from a year earlier, the internal affairs ministry reported Friday. The result is much better than the median estimate, boosting the three-month moving average to 0.5%, while nominal spending also rose 7% from a year earlier. Outlays were led by housing, which jumped 15.8%, while spending also grew for transportation and communication, as well as medicine. Friday’s slew of positive spending data raises the question of whether the gains are sustainable, given wage growth in the month was largely supported by the temporary effect of bonuses. Consumer spending, which accounts for more than half of the economy, had struggled to rise in recent months as overall inflation remains high with prices for essential items such as rice surging. Source link

The effort by U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration to slash and reshape American foreign aid is crippling the intricate global system that aims to prevent and respond to famine. Struggling to manage hunger crises sweeping the developing world even before Trump returned to the White House, the international famine monitoring and relief system has suffered multiple blows from a sudden cessation of U.S. foreign aid. The spending freeze, which Trump ordered upon taking office Jan. 20, is supposed to last 90 days while his administration reviews all foreign-aid programs. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said an exception allows emergency food assistance to continue. Source link

Apple, which counts China as its biggest manufacturing hub and the U.S. as its largest market, is now at the center of an escalating geopolitical fight that threatens to span tariffs and regulatory probes. The Trump administration’s new 10% levy on Chinese-made goods is poised to squeeze the company at an already-challenging time, when it’s suffering from sluggish iPhone sales and playing catch-up in artificial intelligence. And in China, the country’s antitrust watchdog is weighing a probe into App Store policies, though that process began months before Donald Trump took office as U.S. president. The company’s smartphone archrival, meanwhile, has one immediate advantage. Unlike Apple, Samsung Electronics makes most of its devices outside China — in places such as Vietnam and India. That means it won’t face the tariff dilemma of either raising prices or lowering its profit margins, though a broader trade war is likely to engulf countries well beyond just the two main antagonists. Source link

Ippei Mizuhara, the former interpreter for Los Angeles Dodgers player Shohei Ohtani, was sentenced to nearly five years in prison on Thursday by a federal district court in California, in case involving the illegal transfer of nearly $17 million from the star’s account to pay off gambling debts. The onetime translator and de facto manager of the power-hitting pitcher from Japan was sentenced to four years and nine months in prison, the punishment prosecutors had sought, and also ordered by U.S. District Judge John Holcomb to pay restitution of over $18 million, the City News Service reported. Mizuhara pleaded guilty last year. Mizuhara last year pleaded guilty to one count of felony bank fraud and one count of subscribing to a false tax return, according to his plea deal previously filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles. Source link

A former Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Bank division manager dismissed for insider trading is suspected of committing the illegal practice at least since he was in a deputy post in 2022, it was learned Thursday. The Securities and Exchange Surveillance Commission has raided locations related to the former employee on suspicion of violating the financial instruments and exchange law. The securities industry watchdog is apparently aiming to file a criminal complaint with the Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office. According to informed sources, the former employee in his 50s was in a managerial post at the bank’s stock transfer agency division. The person conducted insider trading while he was in a deputy post in 2022 and continued to do so after being promoted to the managerial post in 2023, the sources said. The former employee is believed to have traded in several stocks based on tender offer and other information he learned through work and have earned nearly ¥30 million in profits illegally. He admitted the allegations in the SESC’s investigations. The former employee reported the misconduct to the bank in October last year and was dismissed Nov. 1. The bank’s parent, Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Group, set up an investigation committee comprising independent outside directors and outside lawyers in November. It is investigating whether there are any similar cases. The Japanese financial world has been rocked by a series of scandals. A former judge seconded to the Financial Services Agency and a former employee of the Tokyo Stock Exchange have been recently indicted without arrest for their involvement in insider trading in violation of the financial instruments and exchange law. Source link

Anonymous author and YouTuber “Uketsu” deals in a quiet horror that has delighted millions of readers. Source link

When one of the most influential Emirati royals agreed to take over Manchester City, the Middle East made its entrance to soccer’s biggest league with a bang. Within hours of the takeover in 2008, the club paid more money for a player than any time in British soccer history. The team went on to win eight English Premier League titles and the European Champions League and until last year looked unassailable. Almost two decades later, the whole project is at risk of a spectacular comedown. After years of dominance on the pitch, this season City is regularly losing matches. Even so, it is events off the field that risk undoing one of the world’s most prominent soccer clubs — and spilling into politics. After three months or so of arguments in a drab room at the International Dispute Resolution Centre in London, a panel of three judges is deciding whether or not City broke the Premier League’s financial fair-play rules. If guilty, fines, stripping of titles and even being dumped out of England’s top competition could follow. Source link

The Tokyo High Court upheld a lower court’s decision Thursday, ordering the state to pay compensation to a former lawyer for emotional distress resulting from verbal abuse he suffered while under interrogation. Presiding Judge Hidetaka Matsui upheld the Tokyo District Court ruling that the government should pay ¥1.1 million ($7,215) in damages to the former lawyer, Yamato Eguchi. However, the judge rejected Eguchi’s claim in his appeal that it was illegal for the prosecutor conducting the interrogation to continue questioning him for about 56 hours despite the fact he had stated his intention to remain silent. The district court ruled last July that Eguchi, 38, had his personal rights violated during the interrogation, in which the prosecutor called him derogatory words such as “brat,” and ordered the government to pay compensation to him. Eguchi had sought ¥11 million in damages for emotional distress. Eguchi was arrested and taken to the Yokohama District Public Prosecutor’s Office in 2018 on charges of helping a criminal avoid arrest. He was later found guilty and given a suspended sentence. When he was interrogated after his arrest, Eguchi allegedly said, “These are groundless accusations,” before stating his intention to remain silent. In response, the prosecutor conducting the interrogation apparently said, “You’re a brat” and “You’re so simple-minded, like a little kid,” among other demeaning phrases. The latest case is one of several wherein a prosecutor was found to have acted improperly during an interrogation. The Supreme Public Prosecutors Office has acknowledged a series of interrogations conducted by prosecutors as being “inappropriate.” For example, the Osaka District Public Prosecutors Office’s special investigation department confirmed an incident in which a prosecutor in a public embezzlement case verbally abused a suspect during an interrogation with phrases such as “Don’t mess around with this investigation.” The special investigation department of the Tokyo prosecutors office has also found cases in which prosecutors used phrases such as “Going against the Public Prosecutors Office is the same as saying you’re with organized crime” to get suspects to confess to crimes during interrogations. “The problem won’t be resolved unless the Public Prosecutors Office’s approach of continuing to apply pressure on suspects who have declared their right to remain silent changes,” Eguchi’s attorney, Keita Miyamura, said. “It is not just a problem of one prosecutor, it’s widespread,” he added. Miyamura said a growing practice of recording interrogations has led to the uncovering of prosecutors’ inappropriate tactics. The discovery of a case of evidence falsification by the Osaka District Public Prosecutors Office special investigation department in 2010 led the Supreme Public Prosecutors Office to release a document titled, “The Principles of Prosecution,” which touched on paying due attention to suspects’ assertions, securing true statements on a voluntary basis, and the fairness of questioning, among others. Last year, the Supreme Public Prosecutors Office sent to prosecutors offices nationwide a second document that details what constitutes reasonable interrogation tactics. Eguchi contended that neither the documents nor the practice of recording the questioning of suspects could stop what he described as “illegal interrogations.” “Prosecutors need to stop interrogating those who have declared their right to remain silent,” he added. Translated by The Japan Times Source link

In the run-up to Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba’s first summit talks with U.S. President Donald Trump this week, the American leader has shaken the global order via a dizzying array of executive orders and policy changes. But his relative silence about Japan has been deafening in Tokyo’s corridors of power. The U.S. president, in office for less than three weeks, has unnerved Tokyo by vowing to slap onerous tariffs on allies and partners — including threats against Canada and Mexico that were later walked back — while raging against NATO nations, which he demanded pay more than double the alliance’s current spending target. Although Trump has largely telegraphed these moves, he has said next to nothing about Japan on the campaign trail or since taking office on Jan. 20. But the president’s recent moves and past tirades about defense-related spending and trade deficits have prompted officials in Tokyo to scramble for ways to placate him and head off any dust-up between the allies during Friday’s meeting with Ishiba. Source link

Lawmakers have submitted a bill to the House of Councillors to establish rules on so-called specified assisted reproductive technology, or fertility treatments that use sperm and eggs donated by third persons. The bill, jointly submitted to the Upper House Wednesday by lawmakers in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party-Komeito coalition as well as those in the opposition Nippon Ishin no Kai and the Democratic Party for the People, is aimed at guaranteeing the right of people born through the use of such technology to know their origins. Specifically, they would be allowed to know the height and blood type of the sperm or egg donors as well as their ages after reaching adulthood. Under the legislation, information including the names and My Number personal identification codes of the children, their parents and egg or sperm donors would be kept for 100 years by the National Center for Child Health and Development after it receives such data from medical institutions involved in the assisted reproduction treatments. Source link