Tokyo, 15 February, /AJMEDIA/
Japan suspects China flew 3 spy balloons over territory in 2019-2021
TOKYO – Japan’s government said Tuesday that three unidentified flying objects spotted over the nation’s territory in three years from 2019 are “strongly suspected” to have been Chinese spy balloons.
It is the first time Japan has made such an announcement since the United States shot down a similar Chinese spy balloon earlier this month after its incursion into U.S. airspace, according to a Defense Ministry official.
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Hiroshima, Nagasaki urge G-7 engagement to understand nuclear war
The mayors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki requested Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida on Tuesday create occasions for world leaders visiting Hiroshima for the Group of Seven summit in May to engage with both cities’ local communities to understand the reality of nuclear war.
In response to the request by Hiroshima Mayor Kazumi Matsui and Nagasaki Mayor Tomihisa Taue to realize the leaders’ dialogue with atomic-bomb survivors and visits to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, Kishida acknowledged that “trends worldwide are moving against the abolition of nuclear weapons,” but added that he hopes to “create an opportunity to reverse them.”
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Features of Pacific seabed formation named after Godzilla body parts
Topographic features within a seafloor formation in the Pacific Ocean named after Godzilla will now also bear the names of the fictional monster’s body parts, the Japan Coast Guard said Tuesday.
Following the approval by the Sub-Committee on Undersea Features Names on Monday, the names of 14 individual topographic features within the Godzilla Megamullion Province including Hat Ridge, West Hipbone Rise and Neck Peak, will be officially used in nautical charts and papers.
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Tokyo to host 1st World Cup for “SpoGOMI” litter-picking sport
The first World Cup of a Japanese-invented sport in which participants compete over the types and amount of litter they can pick up will be staged in Tokyo this November, the Nippon Foundation said Tuesday.
Qualifying events are scheduled in about 20 countries for the sport launched in 2008, called “SpoGOMI,” which combines words meaning “sport” and “trash” in Japanese.
Gov’t nominates academic Kazuo Ueda as next Bank of Japan governor
TOKYO – The Japanese government on Tuesday presented Kazuo Ueda to parliament as its nominee for the next Bank of Japan governor, putting the academic and former member of the BOJ’s decision-making body forward to replace Haruhiko Kuroda in its first leadership change in a decade.
The new leadership is seen as attuned to the daunting challenges facing the central bank, from addressing the side effects of years of monetary easing under Kuroda that has distorted bond markets and expanded the BOJ’s balance sheet to paving the way for future policy normalization.
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Japan GDP up 0.6% in Oct.-Dec. on pent-up demand but inflation bites
TOKYO – Japan’s economy grew at an annualized real 0.6 percent in October-December, helped by a sustained recovery in private consumption in the aftermath of antivirus curbs, but the first expansion in two quarters was far weaker than expected, government data showed Tuesday.
Adjusted for inflation, real gross domestic product increased 0.2 percent from the previous quarter, according to the Cabinet Office’s preliminary data.
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Shoichiro Toyoda, who turned Toyota into global automaker, dies at 97
NAGOYA – Shoichiro Toyoda, the honorary chairman of Toyota Motor Corp. who transformed the Japanese automaker into a leading global brand, died of heart failure on Tuesday, the company said. He was 97.
Toyoda, a third-generation scion of the founding family who inherited its stake in the business, is credited with establishing a culture of quality control that helped Toyota evolve into a world-leading automaker. He was also responsible for pushing Toyota, which had started life as a loom manufacturer, to produce vehicles overseas.
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China urges U.S. to thoroughly probe alleged illegal balloon flights
BEIJING – China repeated its claim on Tuesday that U.S. high-altitude balloons have illegally flown over its airspace more than 10 times since last year, urging Washington to thoroughly investigate the matter and provide an explanation.
The United States on Monday flatly denied the Chinese claim, with White House national security spokesman John Kirby saying it is “just absolutely not true.”
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Japan to buy Tomahawks in one go from U.S. in FY 2023
TOKYO – Defense Minister Yasukazu Hamada said Tuesday Japan plans to buy all the Tomahawk cruise missiles it is seeking from the United States in one go in fiscal 2023 rather than over several years as initially planned.
Hamada, speaking at a press conference, did not give a reason for the change of plan or say how many of the U.S.-developed long-range missiles the government would buy, saying only that it is eyeing procuring “all of the required quantity” in the year starting April.
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JOC head Yamashita downbeat after latest Tokyo Olympics arrests
TOKYO – Japanese Olympic Committee President Yasuhiro Yamashita stated Tuesday that the latest arrests of a former Tokyo Olympic organizing committee executive and others over bid-rigging allegations dealt a further blow to the images of sports and the Olympics.
“It’s true that the images of sports and the Olympics were marred again,” Yamashita said after the organizing committee’s former operations executive, Yasuo Mori, and three others were arrested on Feb. 8.
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G-7 foreign ministerial talks eyed on fringes of Munich conference
TOKYO – Japan is arranging a meeting of the foreign ministers of the Group of Seven industrialized nations on the sidelines of an upcoming international security conference in Germany, Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi said as he announced his plan to visit Munich from Friday.
The gathering of the top diplomats, the first since Japan assumed the G-7 presidency this year, is expected to take place on Saturday, according to a government source, about a week before the first anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
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Japan delays launch of new H3 rocket to Fri. due to bad weather
TOKYO – Japan’s space agency on Tuesday delayed the maiden launch of its new H3 rocket to later in the week due to unfavorable weather conditions, the latest in a string of postponements.
The H2A rocket’s successor, which was scheduled to be launched on Wednesday, is now slated to take off on Friday between 10:37 a.m. and 10:44 a.m. from the Tanegashima Space Center on Tanegashima Island in the southwestern prefecture of Kagoshima, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency said.
