Category Archives: Japan

Japan to declare state of emergency in Tokyo amid pre-Olympics Covid surge

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Fourth coronavirus wave hits densely populated parts of country as experts say mutant strains driving latest outbreak

Japan is poised to declare a state of emergency in Tokyo and two other regions amid a surge in coronavirus cases just three months before the start of the Olympic Games.

Domestic media said the government was considering tougher measures for Tokyo, Osaka prefecture and neighbouring Hyogo prefecture, as experts warned that mutant strains of the virus were driving new outbreaks and straining health services.

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Tokyo 2021: Olympic chief to visit Japan to approve safety amid Covid cases surge

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Thomas Bach expected to give Japan the all-clear to host the Games, as PM secures extra vaccine doses from Pfizer to fight new virus wave

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The head of the Olympic movement will visit Japan in May as the nation struggles to contain a surge in Covid-19 cases before the start of the Games, with Pfizer agreeing to supply extra vaccine doses to the country.

Thomas Bach, president of the International Olympic Committee, will attend a torch relay ceremony in the western city of Hiroshima on 17 May and meet prime minister Yoshihide Suga the next day, Kyodo News agency said on Saturday, citing sources close to the matter.

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US and Japan present united front against China over Asia Pacific – video

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Joe Biden and Japan’s prime minister, Yoshihide Suga, have presented a united front to counter an increasingly assertive China. The two leaders made statements at the US president’s first face-to-face White House summit since taking office. Biden said ‘we committed to working together to take on the challenges from China and on issues like the East China Sea’

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Swipes at China as Joe Biden and Japanese PM seek united front in Asia Pacific

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In his first in-person summit since taking office, the US president hosts Yoshihide Suga as part of efforts to face down Beijing

Joe Biden has sought to present a united front with Japan’s prime minister, Yoshihide Suga, to counter an increasingly assertive China as the US president held his first face-to-face White House summit since taking office.

Biden hosted Suga for talks on Friday that offered the Democratic president a chance to work further on his pledge to revitalise US alliances that frayed under his Republican predecessor, Donald Trump.

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100 days to Tokyo: Pessimism and fear remain in Japan as Games loom | Justin McCurry

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Despite feelgood golf and swimming stories the local opinion on the Covid-delayed Games is that they should not happen

When Hideki Matsuyama sank the putt that won the Masters on Sunday, he not only made history by becoming the first Japanese man to win a major golf title – he gave the organisers of the Tokyo Olympics rare cause for celebration.

Days earlier his compatriot Rikako Ikee secured a place at the rescheduled 2020 Games in the 100m butterfly less than eight months after she had recovered from leukaemia.

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Japanese regulator bans restart at nuclear plant over safety breaches

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Fukushima plant operator Tepco suffers blow to plans to resume at its only operable atomic facility

The operator of the wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant has been prevented from restarting its only operable atomic facility after a series of safety breaches, dealing a significant blow to Japanese attempts to resume nuclear power generation.

Japan’s nuclear regulator is to issue a “corrective action order” on Wednesday that would ban Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco) from transporting new uranium fuel to its Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear plant in Niigata prefecture or loading fuel rods into its reactors.

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Fukushima: Japan announces it will dump contaminated water into sea

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Environmental groups condemn plan to release more than 1m tonnes of contaminated water from the destroyed nuclear station in two years’ time

Japan is to release more than 1m tonnes of contaminated water from the wrecked Fukushima nuclear power plant into the sea, the government has said, a decision that is likely to anger neighbouring countries and local fishers.

Official confirmation of the move, which came more than a decade after the nuclear disaster, will also deal another blow to the fishing industry in Fukushima, which has opposed the measure for years.

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Coronavirus live: Malta offers tourists up to €200; EMA reviewing vaccines – as it happened

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Island to pay visitors after tourism sector hammered by pandemic; EMA looking at reports of rare bleeding condition and four cases of rare blood clots in J&J jab

That’s it from the UK blog team. Thanks for following our coverage..

People who have had the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine are seeking help at A&E in England despite having only mild side-effects such as headaches, in the wake of the controversy over whether the jab causes blood clots.

Related: A&E ‘swamped’ with patients seeking help for mild Covid jab side-effects

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Regulators around the world monitor collapse of US hedge fund

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Liquidation of Bill Hwang’s Archegos Capital Management sparked a fire sale of more than $20bn assets

Financial regulators across the world are monitoring the collapse of the New York-based billionaire Bill Hwang’s personal hedge fund.

The sudden liquidation of Hwang’s Archegos Capital Management sparked a fire sale of more than $20bn assets that has left some of the world’s biggest investment banks nursing billions of dollars of losses.

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‘I can’t go on’: women in Japan suffer isolation and despair amid Covid job losses

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Suicide rates among Japanese women rose sharply during the pandemic, prompting calls for support for low-income households

The coronavirus had barely begun its surge across the globe when Ayako Sato was told that the nursery where she worked would temporarily close as part of Japan’s efforts to curb the outbreak.

The mother of two teenage daughters expected a few weeks of belt tightening, believing it wouldn’t be long before she was working again.

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Protests at ‘inhumane’ export of live horses to Japan for food

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Activists seek ban on flying horses to Japan with thousands sent every year from Canada and France

Tens of thousands of horses are being subjected to long-haul flights, confined in crates with no food or water, to meet demand for horsemeat in Japan.

Since 2013, about 40,000 live horses have been flown to Japan from airports in western Canada. Under Canadian regulations, the journey can stretch up to 28 hours, during which the animals are allowed to go without food, water or rest.

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North Korea test fires two ballistic missiles in challenge to Biden

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Projectiles are believed to have landed in the sea outside Japan’s exclusive economic zone

North Korea test fired two ballistic missiles early on Thursday, in the biggest challenge so far to Joe Biden’s attempts to engage the regime over its nuclear weapons program.

The projectiles were launched on North Korea’s east coast and are believed to have landed in the sea outside Japan’s exclusive economic zone, officials in Tokyo said.

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Cherry blossom festivals nipped in the bud as Japan leaves lockdown

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Tree-viewing parties are banned as many coronavirus restrictions remain

Japan will emerge from 10 weeks of coronavirus restrictions on Sunday, just in time for the peak of the annual cherry blossom viewing season.

In normal years, the appearance of the delicate pink flowers is the cue for friends to spread out picnic blankets and lose their inhibitions in a ritual that often involves copious quantities of food and drink, and a nodding recognition of the floral spectacular. But the lifting of the state of emergency, announced earlier this month by the prime minister, Yoshihide Suga, will not be celebrated beneath the sakura.

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Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics organisers confirm overseas fan ban

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Overseas spectators will not be permitted to attend this summer’s rearranged Olympic and Paralympic Games in Tokyo. An announcement was made after a meeting of the International Olympic Committee, International Paralympic Committee, Tokyo metropolitan government, the Tokyo 2020 organising committee and the government of Japan on Saturday.

The decision, which was not unexpected, is due to continuing uncertainty amid the Covid-19 pandemic, with international travel restricted and variant coronavirus strains emerging. Japan is unlikely to be open to foreign tourists by the summer and it was felt some clarification over this matter should be given now.

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Tokyo Games: ceremonies chief to quit over sexist ‘Olympig’ comment

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Hiroshi Sasaki suggested a female entertainer should dress as a pig at the opening ceremony

Preparations for the Tokyo Olympics have again been thrown into turmoil after the creative director for the opening and closing ceremonies said he would resign over a sexist comment about a female entertainer, whom he likened to a pig.

Hiroshi Sasaki said he would step down after a weekly magazine revealed he had proposed to his creative team that Naomi Watanabe, a popular celebrity, should be lowered into the Olympic stadium dressed as a pig in an opening ceremony segment he called “Olympig”.

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Why Japan’s carmaking heavyweights could be facing an electric shock

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Analysis: The rapid development of battery-only cars is eclipsing petrol vehicles and even hybrids, leaving Japan’s big producers racing to catch up

Japan’s traditional carmaking giants need to raise their game in the race to develop pure, battery-driven electric vehicles or risk being left behind by Chinese, American and European producers, analysts have warned.

Despite dominating car production in Asia for decades, Japan’s big players have been slow to fully develop the battery-only technology that is now eclipsing hybrid vehicles as the most likely type of car to plug petrolheads into the automotive revolution.

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Landmark Japan court ruling says not allowing same-sex marriage is ‘unconstitutional’

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Ruling is a major symbolic victory in a country where the constitution defines marriage as being based on ‘the mutual consent of both sexes’

A Japanese district court has ruled that not allowing same-sex couples to marry is “unconstitutional“, setting a new precedent in the only G7 nation not to fully recognise same-sex partnership, though it rejected demands for damages to be paid.

The ruling, the first in Japan on the legality of same-sex marriages, is a major symbolic victory in a country where the constitution defines marriage as being based on “the mutual consent of both sexes”.

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Why Britain is tilting to the Indo-Pacific region

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Critics warn of imperial fantasy but the economic and political forces pulling the UK back to the region are real

Some will call it a tilt, others a rebalancing and yet others a pivot but, either way, the new big idea due to emerge from the government’s foreign and defence policy review on Tuesday will be the importance of the Indo-Pacific region – a British return east of Suez more than 50 years after the then defence secretary Denis Healey announced the UK’s cash-strapped retreat in 1968.

Boris Johnson and his admirals are billing the focus on a zone stretching through some of the world’s most vital seaways east from India to Japan and south from China to Australia as Britain stepping out in the world after 47 years locked in the EU’s protectionist cupboard. Others warn Johnson is indulging a hubristic and militarily dangerous imperial fantasy.

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