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London – McLaren Chief Executive Officer Zak Brown expects Formula One to deliver a four-way championship battle this season and would also not be surprised if a rival team mirrors McLaren’s rapid rise to the top. The team based in Woking, England, was crowned constructors’ champion last season for the first time in 26 years and after coming back from fourth overall in 2023 and fifth in 2022. In 2017 McLaren was ninth. The 24-race campaign also saw seven different drivers, from four teams, each win at least twice. Source link

The Finance Ministry in its quarterly report released Thursday raised its economic assessment for Hokkaido, citing steady personal consumption. The ministry kept its economic views unchanged for the remaining 10 of the country’s 11 regions covered in the report. The latest report was released after the ministry’s local bureaus reported economic conditions for the past three months in their respective regions at a meeting of their chiefs held Thursday. On consumption, the ministry left its assessments unchanged for 10 regions, while upgrading its view for Hokkaido. “While demand related to the year-end and New Year’s holidays and other events was firm, consumers have become more budget-minded in response to price increases,” a supermarket operator in Fukuoka Prefecture was quoted as saying in the report. On production, the ministry raised its views for the Tohoku region, the Kanto region, which includes Tokyo, and the region centered around Fukuoka but lowered its assessments for the Hokuriku region and the Chugoku region. While the production of parts for smartphones and vehicles was sluggish, demand for semiconductors for artificial intelligence was strong. On tourism, the ministry upgraded its view for Okinawa Prefecture. It left its assessments on employment unchanged for all regions. The ministry kept its view on the overall Japanese economy intact, saying that it was gradually recovering. Source link

The Lower House Budget Committee decided by a majority vote on Thursday to summon a former accountant of the Liberal Democratic Party’s now-defunct Abe faction for parliamentary questioning — ending a stalemate between the LDP and opposition parties, the latter of which had conditioned the start of budget deliberations on the inquiry. All opposition parties voted in favor of summoning Junichiro Matsumoto, 77, who has been sentenced to three years in jail, and been suspended for five years, for his role in the LDP’s slush fund scandal. Thursday’s vote marked the first time in over half a century since the Budget Committee broke the tradition of voting unanimously to summon an unsworn witness. Source link

Emperor Naruhito and Empress Masako will likely visit Mongolia in July, the first trip to the country by a reigning imperial couple, people familiar with the matter said Thursday. This will be the couple’s third overseas goodwill trip since the emperor’s accession to the throne in 2019 following their visits to Indonesia in 2023 and Britain in 2024. The emperor and empress are expected to attend a ceremony during Mongolia’s annual Naadam festival at the invitation of the Mongolian side, the people said. The couple are also expected to visit a monument erected to remember Japanese nationals who died in Mongolia after being detained by the former Soviet Union during World War II. This year marks the 80th anniversary of Japan’s surrender in the war. Emperor Naruhito visited the monument during his trip in 2007 when he was the crown prince. After the end of the war, some 14,000 Japanese people were taken to Mongolia by the former Soviet Union for forced labor. The Japanese government built the monument near Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia, to remember the about 1,700 Japanese detainees who died there. Source link

U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday signed executive orders to promote parental choice in school selection and end federal funding for curricula that he called the “indoctrination” of students in “anti-American” ideologies on race and gender. The two directives, which come a week after Trump was sworn into his second term of office, are in keeping with his campaign promise to remake the country’s education system in line with a rigorous conservative agenda that Democrats say could undermine public schools. The first order directs the Department of Education to issue guidance on how states can use federal education funds to support “choice initiatives,” without providing further details. Source link

Top White House advisers this week expressed alarm that China’s DeepSeek may have benefited from a method that allegedly piggybacks off the advances of U.S. rivals called “distillation.” The technique, which involves one AI system learning from another AI system, may be difficult to stop, according to executive and investor sources in Silicon Valley. DeepSeek this month rocked the technology sector with a new AI model that appeared to rival the capabilities of U.S. giants like OpenAI, but at a much lower cost. And the China-based company gave away the code for free. Source link

U.S. President Donald Trump rescinded an order freezing an array of federal grants, loans and financial assistance — a dramatic reversal after days of uncertainty and anxiety rocked governments and nonprofit organizations. The abrupt move — only two days after the freeze was first announced — quickly drew parallels to the chaotic policy rollouts that regularly unfolded during Trump’s first administration and happened despite assurances from the president’s allies that they would be able to advance his agenda more effectively in a second term. The decision to reverse course also marked the most significant setback and the biggest about-face to date of the president’s 10-day-old term — a stretch that has already seen him push through a slew of sweeping executive actions in a bid to rapidly assert his control over the federal government and its workforce, reverse the policies of his predecessor Joe Biden and disorient critics. Source link

Rory McIlroy didn’t mind the quick turnaround from his debut TGL match to his first start of the 2025 PGA Tour season. McIlroy’s Boston Common GC appeared on the TGL stage for the first time Monday in West Palm Beach, Florida, where he went head-to-head with Tiger Woods. After Woods’ Jupiter Links nipped Boston in overtime, McIlroy said he left the arena about 9:30 p.m. and was in bed by 10 p.m. The early flight to California for this week’s AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am was barely a concern — at least he was flying west. Source link

Weekly magazine Shukan Bunshun issued a correction Tuesday for a December article that said a Fuji TV executive arranged a dinner between Masahiro Nakai and a woman, which allegedly was followed by sexual misconduct by the former TV celebrity. According to the correction, Nakai was the one who invited the woman to the gathering, not the Fuji TV official. In its Dec. 26 article, Shukan Bunshun reported that a Fuji TV executive arranged a dinner with Nakai, the woman and a few others. But everyone except for Nakai and the woman backed out at the last minute. Source link

Male marathon runners age 60 and above are at greater risk of suffering from cardiac arrest during the long-distance races, a survey by a Japanese research team has found. The frequency of cardiac arrests for men of that age group was six times the rate of those age 49 or younger. Female runners, on the other hand, did not tend to have an increased risk of cardiac arrest with age, according to the survey conducted by researchers at Keio University. “Unlike women, men were found to have an increased frequency of cardiac arrest during marathons with age,” said Keio University Associate Professor Tomohiro Manabe, who led the study. “We thus recommend that men age 60 or older undergo health checks for heart disease and other conditions before participating in marathons.” The survey covered 516 official marathons of the Japan Association of Athletics Federations that were held between April 2011 and March 2019. Approximately 80% of a total of some 4.1 million participants in the races were men. Of the 69 people who suffered cardiac arrest, 66 were men. Cardiac arrest occurred in 1.7 per 100,000 participants. The frequency increased with age, standing at 0.9 people for those in their 40s and younger, 2.6 for those in their 50s, and 5.5 for those age 60 or older. The increase is believed to be associated with angina and other conditions common among the elderly. Tokyo Marathon, which began in 2007, sparked the spread of citizens’ marathons throughout Japan. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, however, a number of races were forced to discontinue due to a lack of participants and financial difficulties. Still, elaborately planned races, including those providing participants with local specialties, remain popular. Source link