Tokyo, 29 July, /AJMEDIA/
Biden, Xi square off over Taiwan, but to explore face-to-face talks
WASHINGTON/BEIJING – U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping on Thursday warned each other over what they view as destabilizing acts regarding Taiwan, as a possible visit to the island by the U.S. House of Representatives speaker has increased bilateral tensions.
In what was their fifth call since Biden took office in January last year, the two leaders also discussed the value of meeting face to face and agreed to have their teams follow up to find “a mutually agreeable time to do so,” a senior U.S. administration official said.
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Japan’s daily COVID-19 cases top 230,000, record for 2nd straight day
TOKYO – Japan reported 233,100 daily coronavirus cases on Thursday, hitting a new record for the second consecutive day, raising concern about the strain on the medical system as the number of available designated hospital beds continues to decline.
Tokyo reported a record 40,406 infections, surpassing 40,000 for the first time as the country battles its seventh wave of the coronavirus pandemic driven by the highly transmissible BA.5 Omicron subvariant.
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U.S. economy contracts for 2nd straight quarter amid inflation
WASHINGTON – The U.S. economy shrank an annualized real 0.9 percent in the April to June period, government data showed Thursday, marking two straight quarters of negative growth amid high inflation and fueling fears that the world’s largest economy may be nearing a recession.
The latest data on the gross domestic product, which fell below the average market forecast of 0.5 percent growth, followed a 1.6 percent contraction in the January-March period.
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China to maintain “zero-COVID” policy in 2nd half of 2022
BEIJING – China decided Thursday to maintain its strict “zero-COVID” policy for the second half of 2022 as leaders pledged efforts to achieve the best possible results for the world’s second-largest economy, state-run media reported.
The decision on the radical policy to stem the novel coronavirus outbreak was made at a meeting of the Political Bureau of the ruling Communist Party’s Central Committee chaired by President Xi Jinping, who is the party’s general secretary.
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Japan’s June jobless rate unchanged at 2.6%
TOKYO – Japan’s unemployment rate was unchanged at 2.6 percent in June from May, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications said Friday.
The job availability ratio rose 0.03 point to 1.27 from the previous month, the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare said separately. The ratio means there were 127 job openings for every 100 job seekers.
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Ski jumping: Sara Takanashi eager for strong Olympic return in 2026
TOKYO – Ski jumper Sara Takanashi vowed Thursday to return to the Winter Olympics strongly in Italy in 2026 after she and four other jumpers were controversially disqualified for suit violations during the mixed team event at February’s Beijing Games.
Takanashi, the holder of a record 63 World Cup wins and the 2018 Pyeongchang Olympics individual bronze medalist, announced in June she will continue her career in the sport.
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Parliament speech to remember Abe may be postponed due to opposition
TOKYO – Japan’s ruling party is considering putting off a memorial speech in parliament for slain Prime Minister Shinzo Abe until this fall, after its plan for his close aide to deliver it in August met resistance both from within and opposition parties, lawmakers said Thursday.
Akira Amari, who was an economy minister in the Abe administration and was personally close to him, was floated as a candidate to speak in parliament during an extraordinary session starting next week.
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KDDI network outage affects record 30.91 million users
TOKYO – A major service disruption at telecom company KDDI Corp. earlier this month affected at least 30.91 million people, becoming one of the worst such incidents in Japan, according to an accident report submitted to the communications ministry Thursday.
The disruption, which spanned several days, exceeded the magnitude of a 2018 service outage at SoftBank Corp. in which a record 30.60 million mobile connections had been affected.
