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Berlin – The share of women among Japan’s lawmakers was 15.7% as of last December, the lowest among the Group of Seven leading industrialized nations, an Inter-Parliamentary Union report said Thursday. The global average was 27.2%. “Our work is far from done as we aim for gender parity,” said an official from the Geneva-based global organization of national parliaments. The global average improved from 11.3% in 1995, but the growth has been sluggish in recent years. In the world’s 73 parliaments that held elections in 2024, the share of female lawmakers increased just 1.4 percentage points after the elections. In the rankings of the unicameral parliaments or the lower houses of bicameral assemblies, Rwanda held the top slot at 63.8%, followed by Cuba’s 55.7% and Nicaragua’s 55.0%. Six countries exceeded 50%. Many have a quota system allocating a certain percentage of parliamentary seats to women. Japan ranked 130th among 167 countries whose results can be compared with those in 1995. Its growth in the past 30 years was 13.0 points, 103rd among those surveyed. The report “shows that the gender glass ceiling in parliaments has cracked but is far from shattered,” IPU Secretary-General Martin Chungong said in a statement. “There has been progress but the backlash against women’s rights in some countries is extremely worrying.” The IPU released the report to mark the 30 years since the fourth meeting of the World Conference on Women in September 1995, which adopted the Beijing declaration, a landmark U.N. framework showing a road map for gender equality and women’s rights. The first meeting was held in 1975, the year when March 8 was designated as International Women’s Day. Source link

WASHINGTON – The population of butterflies — the beautiful insects that play a vital role in pollination and the health of ecosystems — has fallen in the United States by more than a fifth this century, according to research spanning hundreds of species from the red admiral butterfly to the American lady to the cabbage white. Data from about 76,000 butterfly surveys conducted by various groups documenting millions of the insects representing 554 species showed that their numbers dropped by 22% from 2000 to 2020 in the contiguous United States, researchers said. The scientists attributed the decrease to factors including habitat loss, pesticide use and climate change. Population declines were largest in the southwestern region spanning Arizona, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas. Among the 342 butterfly species documented in the study that had sufficient data to analyze their numerical trends, 114 of them — about a third of the total — sustained losses, including 107 down by more than 50% and 22 off by more than 90%. The numbers for four butterflies — the Florida white, Hermes copper, tailed orange and Mitchell’s satyr — plummeted by more than 99%. Nine species — about 3% of the total — showed gains. Among some common species, the red admiral declined by 58%, the cabbage white slipped by 50% and the American lady dropped by 44%. “The results of this study are pretty depressing. But butterflies have the capacity to recover if we can improve things for them,” said ecologist Collin Edwards, formerly of Washington State University and now with the Washington state Department of Fish and Wildlife, lead author of the study published on Thursday in the journal Science. “Butterflies have fast life cycles — at least one generation per year, often two or three. And each of those generations lays a ton of eggs. This means that if we make the world a more hospitable place for butterflies, butterfly species have the capacity to respond very quickly and take advantage of all our efforts,” Edwards added. The study included monarch butterflies. But because the clearest evidence on their numerical declines comes from their overwintering grounds in Mexico and the researchers used only U.S. monitoring data, the study did not identify a clear trend for these butterflies. “We’ve lost one out of every five butterflies in just 20 years. That means if you went out to watch butterflies in 2000 and you saw 100 butterflies, in 2020 you would only see 80. That’s an astounding loss over such a short time span,” said conservation biologist and study co-author Eliza Grames of Binghamton University in New York. “There are a lot of different stressors affecting butterfly populations, and it is hard to pinpoint just one. In the Southeast, for example, drought is likely a big threat. In the Midwest, insecticides are the number one driver of butterfly biodiversity loss. In other regions, the story is not so clear, and it is likely a combination of anthropogenic stressors that is leading to the drastic declines we’re seeing,” Grames said. While reliable information on global butterfly population trends is lacking, studies in some other countries have documented declines at roughly the same rate as in the U.S. data. Butterflies are the most systematically monitored insects in the United States. The researchers calculated that there are 650 butterfly species whose range intersects with the contiguous United States, with at least some monitoring data on 554 of them. The drop in butterflies, which have inhabited Earth for more than 100 million years, is one piece of the ongoing global biodiversity decline, with losses among insects particularly worrisome given their crucial roles in many ecological processes. “Ecologists use butterflies like a canary in a coal mine. The results of this study suggest that there may be declines in the many insect species for which we don’t have good data,” Edwards said. “For me, butterflies are important because they are beautiful and inspire us. They deserve to exist simply for the sake of existing,” Grames said. “In terms of ecosystem function, butterflies are really important pollinators, herbivores and also serve as prey for insectivores,” especially birds. Source link

Paris – President Emmanuel Macron has said he will launch a strategic dialogue on extending the protection offered by France’s nuclear arsenal to its European partners. Europe’s primary nuclear deterrence comes from the United States and is a decades-old symbol of trans-Atlantic solidarity. France has a much smaller nuclear arsenal than its NATO ally, but Moscow has responded to Macron’s remarks by saying his nuclear rhetoric poses a threat to Russia. Source link

WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump is expected to issue an executive order aimed at his long-held goal of abolishing the U.S. Department of Education, The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday. The order may come as soon as Thursday, the newspaper said, citing people familiar with the matter whom it did not name. The White House and the department did not immediately respond to requests for comment late on Wednesday. Trump has repeatedly called for eliminating the department, calling it a “big con job.” He proposed shuttering it in his first term as president, but Congress did not act. Source link

The asset management arm of Japan’s largest insurer will expand its team managing private equity and other alternative investments, betting on more strong growth in the market. Nissay Asset Management plans to hire five to seven people to oversee assets such as private equity and infrastructure finance, said Kaoru Onishi, head of the global product division. It has about 30 employees now in its alternative investment business. “It is an expanding field. We need more people,” said Onishi, whose firm manages more than ¥2.5 trillion ($17 billion) of clients’ funds parked in alternative assets. “But there are not so many who are experienced in the field, so we think they can build up speciality” after they are hired, she said in an interview. Source link

Indian Wells, California – Naomi Osaka was eliminated in the first round at Indian Wells on Wednesday, falling 6-4, 6-4 to Camila Osorio in her first tournament since pulling out of the Australian Open with an injury. Former world No. 1 Osaka, now ranked 56th, looked rusty against the 52nd-ranked Colombian, struggling to find the range on her powerful groundstrokes on a chilly night in the California desert. “There were certain things that felt extremely off because I could only start to practice serving after a certain amount of time and stuff like that,” Osaka said. “So I think given the situation, it wasn’t that terrible. Source link

A Saitama nursery school director was arrested Tuesday for urinating in a student’s water bottle as a form of punishment, prefectural police said. Toshifumi Miura, 24, has admitted to the charges of property destruction, saying he was “trying to scare the boy into obeying” him, NHK reported. Miura is suspected of filling the water bottle with his urine sometime between 10.15 a.m. and 2.30 p.m. on Monday at the private nursery school in the city of Soka, Saitama Prefecture. The incident came to light after the child’s mother realized what was inside the bottle and contacted the police, Kyodo reported. The nursery school serves children up to the age of 2. It is located inside a commercial building. According to the city of Soka, the nursery has suspended its operations following the arrest, with the children in its care placed in other nursery schools. Source link

Japan’s soccer chief said he was very disappointed after FIFA torpedoed the country’s hopes of hosting the 2031 Women’s World Cup. Soccer’s world governing body said Wednesday that bids for the 2031 tournament would be limited to countries from North America and Africa, with the 2035 event going to either Europe or Africa. Japan Football Association President Tsuneyasu Miyamoto said in an interview last year that Japan wanted to host the 2031 event to “raise the value of women’s football here.” Japan, which won the Women’s World Cup in 2011, must now wait until 2039 at the earliest before it can host the tournament for the first time. “For us, who were aiming to host the 2031 Women’s World Cup, this is very disappointing news,” Miyamoto said in a statement. “But this decision doesn’t change our aim to widen the spread of women’s football, increase the playing population and raise the level of the women’s game in Japan.” Miyamoto, who captained his country at the 2002 and 2006 World Cups, had said Japan wanted to use the 2031 tournament to close the gap on Europe and North America. Japan’s women have not gone beyond the World Cup quarterfinals since to the US in the 2015 final. Miyamoto said Japan would consider a bid for the 2039 tournament and beyond. “To everyone associated with the game in this country, let’s move forward together,” he said. The 2027 Women’s World Cup will be held in Brazil. Source link

Hong Kong’s top court overturned the convictions of three former members of a pro-democracy group, marking a rare victory in challenging the enforcement of the national security law imposed by Beijing. The Court of Final Appeal on Thursday unanimously quashed the convictions of three defendants, including barrister Chow Hang Tung, who were sentenced to four-and-a-half months in prison for failing to assist with a national security probe. The case centered on the government’s demand in 2021 for funding and meeting records of the Hong Kong Alliance, a now-disbanded group that organized annual vigils commemorating Beijing’s 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown. Police claimed the group was a “foreign agent” under the implementation rules of the security law, an allegation denied by the defendants. Source link

The wildfire in Iwate Prefecture has slowed down after two days of rain through Thursday, with the government announcing plans to offer financial support for disaster victims whose houses have been damaged. Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba said at a session of the Upper House Budget Committee on Thursday that victims of the forest fire in the city of Ofunato in the prefecture will be covered by an existing law aimed at helping disaster victims rebuild their lives. The law would offer up to ¥3 million ($20,000) to those whose houses were damaged by the fire. “For the cost of forest disaster recovery, we would like to provide generous financial support to local governments through government subsidies,” Ishiba said. “For this case, we will work to extinguish the fire as soon as possible and provide as much support as possible to the victims.” Source link