Master brewer: the woman excelling in Japan’s male world of sake

Miho Imada has won international acclaim as a tôji, or master brewer of the traditional Japanese tipple

As a child, Miho Imada promised herself she would never perform “women’s work” to support her family’s sake brewery. She saw how her mother juggled looking after five children with cooking three meals a day for groups of visiting seasonal workers, and devoted what little time she had left to doing the accounts.

“I never saw my mother sleep, and she never seemed to catch a cold,” Imada said. “She was always working. I thought ‘there’s no way I’m going to do that.’”

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New Zealand jobs market bounces back close to pre-pandemic levels

Country’s biggest job advertising website reports 19% growth in jobs, after remarkable economic recovery in December

Job vacancies are booming in New Zealand since the country contained an outbreak of the coronavirus with a hard lockdown in early 2020.

The country’s biggest job advertising site, Seek, has reported a 19% national growth in jobs advertised in the final quarter of 2020, and the number of job ads on the website has bounced back to nearly pre-pandemic levels.

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North Korea set for collision course with US as Kim Jong-un solidifies one-man rule

Analysis: Congress gathering ends with Kim taking symbolic post of general secretary and a warning the US needs a fresh strategy

A rare meeting of North Korea’s ruling party has ended with a symbolically important new title for the country’s leader, Kim Jong-un, speculation about the future of his influential sister, and a shot across the bow of the incoming US president.

Less than two weeks before Joe Biden’s inauguration, much of what Kim told the first congress of the ruling Workers’ party for five years had a familiar ring to it.

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Hong Kong arrests: Carrie Lam accuses west of hypocrisy, citing US Capitol riot

City’s leader accuses foreign critics of double standards when they condemn rioters in the US but support pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong

Hong Kong’s leader has defended the unprecedented mass arrest of opposition figures last week, and accused western powers of hypocrisy for condemning the siege on the US Capitol after supporting pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong.

At a weekly press briefing in Hong Kong on Tuesday, Carrie Lam was asked about the coordinated police raids last Wednesday, when 55 opposition figures were arrested on suspicion of breaching the national security law by holding unofficial primaries ahead of the since-postponed Hong Kong election. The raids were the latest use of the national security law against the pro-democracy movement.

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How I survived a Chinese ‘re-education’ camp for Uighurs

After 10 years living in France, I returned to China to sign some papers and I was locked up. For the next two years, I was systematically dehumanised, humiliated and brainwashed

The man on the phone said he worked for the oil company, “In accounting, actually”. His voice was unfamiliar to me. At first, I couldn’t make sense of what he was calling about. It was November 2016, and I had been on unpaid leave from the company since I left China and moved to France 10 years earlier. There was static on the line; I had a hard time hearing him.

“You must come back to Karamay to sign documents concerning your forthcoming retirement, Madame Haitiwaji,” he said. Karamay was the city in the western Chinese province of Xinjiang where I’d worked for the oil company for more than 20 years.

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WHO’s Covid mission to Wuhan: ‘It’s not about finding China guilty’

Scientists express caution about what they may find and the political sensitivity around investigation

When the scientists on the World Health Organization’s mission to research the origins of Covid-19 touch down in China as expected on Thursday at the beginning of their investigation they are clear what they will – and what they will not – be doing.

They intend to visit Wuhan, the site of the first major outbreak of Covid-19, and talk to Chinese scientists who have been studying the same issue. They will want to see if there are unexamined samples from unexplained respiratory illnesses, and they will want to examine ways in which the virus might have jumped the species barrier to humans.

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Indonesia plane crash relative: ‘I said I would pray for her’

As divers search for black boxes in Java Sea, families recall last-minute messages

Rafik Yusuf Alaydrus’s wife, Panca Widia Nursanti, messaged him on WhatsApp as she sat on board the Sriwijaya Air SJ-182 flight. The weather in Jakarta was bad, she said. It was raining heavily and the flight, bound for Pontianak on Borneo island, had been delayed for an hour by the poor conditions.

As she waited for takeoff on Saturday, Panca told him she had a bad feeling, and asked him to pray for her. “I tried to calm her down, saying that I would pray for her, and asked her to pray during flight. Inshallah she would be safe,” he said.

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Divers search for black boxes in debris of Sriwijaya Air flight 182 – video

Footage released by the Indonesian Navy showed divers searching for the black boxes of Sriwijaya Air flight SJ 182 among suspected debris from the downed flight.

Authorities pinpointed the area where the black boxes may be located after they lifted chunks of the Boeing 737-500 fuselage off the sea bed. Rescuers have also found human body parts and personal effects.

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New Zealand’s ‘public secret’: house prices won’t come down until we really want them to | Iain White

Many of us express concern about the country’s soaring house prices - but we also vote for policies that let them stay that way

It was the anthropologist Michael Taussig who coined the term “public secret” – a collective social understanding, a truth generally accepted but not articulated.

Public secrets, he argued, can be important to the functioning of institutions and societies: they allow the existence of seemingly contradictory positions, help maintain current power relations, and assist in reconciling the inevitable tensions of policy or complexities of politics.

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‘Don’t look dishevelled’: anger over Seoul city’s advice to pregnant women

Government guidelines give tips on how to avoid putting on weight and how to prepare food for men who are ‘unaccustomed to cooking’

The Seoul city government has sparked anger for offering advice to pregnant women that includes ensuring their husbands have clean clothes and enough to eat while they are in hospital giving birth.

The guidelines, posted on a government-run website, included tips for expectant South Korean mothers at different stages of their pregnancy.

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Indonesia plane crash: divers to retrieve black boxes from Sriwijaya Air flight 182

Authorities located data recorders on Sunday from jet that crashed off Jakarta carrying 62 people

Indonesian divers will try to retrieve the data recorders of a Sriwijaya Air jet on Monday after it plunged into the sea two days ago with 62 people on board minutes after take off from Jakarta’s main airport.

Flight SJ182 was headed to Pontianak on Borneo island, about 740 km (460 miles) from Jakarta, on Saturday before it disappeared from radar screens four minutes after take-off and crashed into the Java sea.

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Indonesia plane crash: authorities locate black boxes among wreckage

Sriwijaya Air flight carrying 62 people crashed after taking off from Jakarta on Saturday

Indonesian authorities have located the black boxes of the Sriwijaya Air jet that crashed into the sea soon after taking off from the capital Jakarta, as human body parts and suspected pieces of the plane were retrieved.

The Boeing 737-500 with 62 passengers and crew was heading to Pontianak in West Kalimantan on Saturday when it disappeared from radar screens four minutes after takeoff.

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Hong Kong security law being used to ‘eliminate dissent’ say US, UK, Australia and Canada

Joint statement by four foreign ministers expresses ‘serious concern’ about national security law which saw dozens of activists arrested last week

The foreign ministers of Australia, the United States, Britain and Canada have issued a joint statement expressing “serious concern” about the arrest of 55 democracy activists and supporters in Hong Kong last week.

The arrests were by far the largest such action taken under a national security law (NSL) that China imposed on the semi-autonomous territory a little more than six months ago.

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Twitter removes China US embassy post saying Uighur women no longer ‘baby-making machines’

Post claimed women in Xinjiang had been ‘emancipated’ as a result of China’s claimed efforts to eradicate extremism

Twitter has removed a post by China’s US embassy claiming that Uighur women have been “emancipated” from extremism and were no longer “baby-making machines”. The post linked to an article denying allegations of forced sterilisation in Xinjiang.

Twitter said the post had “violated the Twitter rules” but did not provide further details.

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Kim Jong-un calls US ‘biggest enemy’ and says nuclear submarine plans ‘complete’

North Korea should ‘further advance nuclear technology’ and develop more flexible attack capability, leader tells party congress

North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, has called the United States his nuclear-armed nation’s “biggest enemy” and revealed that plans for a nuclear-powered submarine are complete, state media said.

Kim’s declaration on Saturday also included a call to develop smaller, more adapatable nyuclear warheads, comes less than two weeks before the inauguration of Joe Biden as US president, and after a tumultuous relationship between Kim and the outgoing Donald Trump.

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Why the delay? The nations waiting to see how Covid vaccinations unfold

Australia, New Zealand, Taiwan and Japan are among those that won’t start vaccinating for months, in part to see how other populations react to the jab

They are the nations that have been held up as shining examples of coronavirus management. In Australia, New Zealand and Taiwan, daily Covid infections are in the single digits and outbreaks are quickly suppressed.

But there is one area where these nations lag well behind the pack in vaccination. Countries with some of the most enviable healthcare systems in the world – including Australia, New Zealand, Japan and South Korea – will not begin to inoculate until the end of February or later.

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Hong Kong police release all but three of those held in crackdown

No one has yet been charged as some pro-democracy figures say they were arrested for political reasons

Hong Kong authorities have released all but three people arrested in Wednesday’s unprecedented roundup of opposition figures.

Amid heated debate about the legal premise of the accusations against the group, police are yet to lay any charges.

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Olympics official says he is not certain Tokyo Games will go ahead

IOC’s Dick Pound voices concern after host city declared state of emergency due to third wave of coronavirus

Dick Pound, a senior member of the International Olympic Committee, has said he “can’t be certain” that the delayed Tokyo 2020 Games will go ahead this summer, as a coronavirus state of emergency was declared in the host city.

Asked about the prospects that the Games will open on 23 July, the Canadian told the BBC: “I can’t be certain because the ongoing elephant in the room would be the surges in the virus.”

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Seoul court orders Japan to pay damages over wartime sexual slavery

Japan denounces ruling as ‘unacceptable’ as row over sexual enslavement of women in the second world war enters new chapter

Japan has denounced as “utterly unacceptable” a South Korean court ruling ordering it to pay damages to women who were sexually enslaved by the Japanese military before and during the second world war.

The Seoul central district court on Friday said Japan was liable to compensate 12 women who were forced to work as so-called “comfort women”, in a ruling that is expected to inflict further damage on the countries’ already fraught ties.

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