Latest from Asahi Shimbun
Asahi Shimbun
4 hours ago
- Business
- Asahi Shimbun
Japan scraps U.S. meeting after Washington demands more defense spending--FT
Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba gives his opening speech at the beginning of the meeting with U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth at his office in Tokyo on March 30. (Pool via REUTERS/ File Photo) WASHINGTON--Japan has canceled a regular high-level meeting with its key ally the United States after the Trump administration demanded it spend more on defense, the Financial Times reported on Friday. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had been expected to meet their Japanese counterparts in Washington on July 1 for annual 2+2 security talks. But Tokyo scrapped the meeting after the U.S. side asked Japan to boost defense spending to 3.5 percent of GDP, higher than an earlier request of 3 percent, the paper cited unnamed sources familiar with the matter, including two officials in Tokyo, as saying. A U.S. official who did not want to be identified confirmed Japan had "postponed" the talks but said the decision was made several weeks ago. The source did not cite a reason. A non-government source familiar with the issue said he had also heard Japan had pulled out of the meeting, but not the reason for it doing so. U.S. State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said she had no comment on the FT report when asked about it at regular briefing, and the Pentagon also had no immediate comment. Japan's embassy in Washington did not respond to a request for comment. The Financial Times said the new higher spending demand was made in recent weeks by Elbridge Colby, the third-most senior Pentagon official, who has also recently upset another key U.S. ally in the Indo-Pacific by launching a review of a project to provide Australia with nuclear-powered submarines. In March, Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba said that other nations do not decide Japan's defense budget after Colby called in his nomination hearing to be under secretary of defense for policy for Tokyo to spend more to counter China. Japan and other U.S. allies have been engaged in difficult trade talks with the United States over U.S. President Donald Trump's worldwide tariff offensive. The FT said the decision to cancel the July 1 meeting was also related to Japan's July 20 Upper House elections, at which the ruling Liberal Democratic Party is expected to suffer a loss of seats. It comes ahead of a meeting of the U.S.-led NATO alliance in Europe next week, at which Trump is expected to press his demand that European allies boost their defense spending to 5 percent of GDP.
Asahi Shimbun
5 hours ago
- Politics
- Asahi Shimbun
Japan hosts coast guard drills with U.S. and Philippines as sea tensions rise
In this photo provided by Japan Coast Guard, patrol vessels of U.S. Coast Guard, left, Japan Coast Guard, center, and Philippine Coast Guard, participate in a joint training off Kagoshima Prefecture, southern Japan, on June 20. (Japan Coast Guard via AP) Japan's coast guard on Friday held a joint exercise with counterparts from the United States and the Philippines, as the three Pacific nations beef up defense cooperation in the face of China's expanding maritime activities. The exercise came after Japan confirmed that two Chinese aircraft carriers had operated together for the first time in the Pacific in June. Japan and China had blamed each other after Tokyo complained that a Chinese fighter jet from one of the carriers flew dangerously close to Japanese reconnaissance aircraft. Friday's coast guard exercise just off Japan's southern prefecture of Kagoshima involved 350 personnel from the three countries, and was based on a scenario of a collision between vessels at high seas, a fire and crew members falling overboard. The three nation's leaders last year agreed to bolster maritime cooperation, as they expressed concern over Beijing's military maneuvers in the region. Their first joint drills were held in the Philippines in 2023. The coast guard cooperation is part of an effort to secure a 'free and open' Indo-Pacific by promoting mutual understanding and trust, Japan coast guard commander Adm. Yoshio Seguchi told a news conference Wednesday. China routinely sends coast guard vessels, warships and warplanes around disputed East China Sea islands, and recently as far as Guam, a U.S. Pacific territory with military bases. Beijing also sends coast guard vessels in the South China Sea, which it claims virtually in its entirety, clashing frequently with Philippine vessels.
Asahi Shimbun
5 hours ago
- Politics
- Asahi Shimbun
Countries evacuating citizens from Iran and Israel
Foreign Minister Takeshi Iwaya meets reporters at the Foreign Ministry in Tokyo on June 20. (The Asah Shimbun) Countries around the world are taking measures to evacuate their citizens from Israel and Iran as the two nations enter the seventh day of their air war and airspace in the region remains closed. A week of Israeli air and missile strikes against its major rival has wiped out the top echelon of Iran's military command, damaged its nuclear capabilities and killed hundreds of people, while Iranian retaliatory strikes have killed at least two dozen civilians in Israel. Here are some of the countries whose citizens have left: JAPAN 87 Japanese nationals and their family members have evacuated by land to neighboring countries from Israel and Iran, Japan's Foreign Minister Takeshi Iwaya said on Friday. Japan plans to conduct a second evacuation by bus from Iran as early as June 21. AUSTRALIA The Australian government evacuated by land a small group of the 1,200 Australians seeking to leave Israel on Wednesday, Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong said on Thursday. Around 2,000 Australians in Iran have registered for assistance. AUSTRIA 48 Austrians have left Israel or neighbouring Jordan, out of the 200 who reported to the Tel Aviv embassy, the Foreign Ministry said. Around 100 Austrians have requested to leave Iran. 44 Austrian and EU citizens have been evacuated towards Turkey and Armenia, it added. BULGARIA Bulgaria has closed its embassy in Tehran and evacuated diplomatic staff and their families to neighboring Azerbaijan, Prime Minister Rosen Zhelyazkov told local media on Friday, adding that the embassy would continue to operate from Baku. CHINA China has evacuated more than 1,600 citizens from Iran and hundreds more from Israel, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson said on Thursday. Several thousand Chinese nationals are thought to reside in Iran, according to state media reports. CZECH REPUBLIC A flight with 66 people evacuated from Israel had landed near Prague, Czech Defence Minister Jana Cernochova said. FRANCE France will arrange a convoy by the end of the week from Iran to the Turkish or Armenian borders, French foreign minister Jean-Noel Barrot said on Thursday. French citizens in Israel can board buses starting Friday morning from the Jordanian border and a flight has been chartered from Amman, Barrot said. GERMANY 345 German citizens have left the Middle East region, the foreign ministry said, after the country provided charter flights to Germany. GREECE Greece has evacuated 16 nationals and their families by land from Iran to Azerbaijan and is now working on their repatriation to Greece, the foreign ministry said on Thursday. INDIA India said on Wednesday that it had launched "Operation Sindhu" to evacuate Indian nationals from Iran. 110 Indian students have been evacuated from northern Iran into Armenia on June 17, India's foreign ministry said. ITALY Italy is organizing a charter flight from Egypt on June 22 to allow its citizens to leave Israel. The country is facilitating road convoys from Teheran to countries neighbouring Iran, the foreign ministry said on Friday. NEW ZEALAND New Zealand temporarily closed its Tehran embassy and evacuated two staff and their families by land to Azerbaijan. POLAND Poland ended an evacuation from Iran on Thursday, the Foreign Ministry said. A flight with about 40 people from Israel is expected to arrive on Sunday after two others already landed on Wednesday and Thursday. PORTUGAL Portugal has temporarily shut its embassy in Iran and evacuated four of its citizens via Azerbaijan. It has received 130 repatriation requests from citizens in Israel and is organising a repatriation flight, expected to land in Portugal later on Thursday, the foreign ministry said. SERBIA A group of 100 Serbs have fled Israel via Egypt, ambassador Miroljub Petrovic said on Thursday. SIERRA LEONE 36 citizens were evacuated to Armenia, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said. SLOVAKIA The first evacuation flight with 73 people, tourists and family members of diplomats from Israel arrived in Bratislava on Monday, Slovak authorities said. The foreign ministry added on Friday it would temporarily close its embassy in Tehran and was fully evacuating staff from the country. SOUTH KOREA South Korea has supported the evacuation of 32 of its citizens from Iran to Turkmenistan, and 25 from Israel to Jordan, the foreign ministry said. TAIWAN 36 Taiwanese have been evacuated from Israel via the land crossing with Jordan, while three Taiwanese have left Iran via the land border with Turkey, Taiwan's foreign ministry said. UGANDA Two diplomats and 42 Ugandan students have been evacuated from Iran to Turkey, Uganda's foreign ministry told Reuters. UNITED STATES The United States is working to evacuate U.S. citizens wishing to leave Israel by arranging flights and cruise ship departures, U.S. ambassador Mike Huckabee said in a post on X on Wednesday. VIETNAM Vietnam's foreign ministry told its citizens in Israel and Iran to get ready for evacuation and 18 Vietnamese citizens have already been evacuated from Iran.
Asahi Shimbun
5 hours ago
- Asahi Shimbun
Yamanashi picks magnetic-marker transit system for ‘Fuji Tram'
An artist's rendition of the 'Fuji Tram' (Provided by Yamanashi Prefecture) KOFU--A rubber-tired tramway guided by magnetic markers embedded in the road has emerged as the likely new transit system for climbers and visitors on Mount Fuji, the Yamanashi prefectural government here said. The prefecture said June 5 that it had comprehensively evaluated multiple options based on safety, cost, emergency response capabilities and visitor management potential for the tentatively named 'Fuji Tram.' It concluded the magnetic guidance system offers the greatest advantages in managing visitor flow and addressing overtourism concerns at Mount Fuji, a UNESCO World Heritage site. The proposed Fuji Tram will connect the base of Mount Fuji with the 5th Station, a key waypoint for climbers and tourists located at an elevation of 2,300 meters on the 3,776-meter mountain. This transit service will operate on the Fuji Subaru Line, a scenic 30-kilometer toll road ascending the mountain's northern slopes from Lake Kawaguchiko to the 5th Station. Once the Fuji Tram is operational, general vehicles will, in principle, be banned from using the Fuji Subaru Line. This measure aims to manage visitor numbers on Japan's highest peak, which has been overwhelmed by crowds in recent years. To safeguard Mount Fuji's environment and scenic landscape, the prefectural government set four key criteria for the transit system: (1) the ability to navigate sharp curves and steep gradients; (2) access for emergency vehicles; (3) absence of overhead wires to preserve the natural scenery; and (4) zero exhaust emissions. The administration evaluated five candidate transportation systems: a magnetic guidance system for rubber-tired tram-like vehicles; an optical guidance system that follows painted white lines on the road; a next-generation light rail transit (LRT) system; Translohr, a rubber-tired tram guided by a single central steel rail embedded in the road; and conventional buses. The magnetic guidance tram was judged the superior option. The white-line guidance system was rejected due to its vulnerability to adverse weather and snowy conditions in Mount Fuji's environment. Because the magnetic guidance system does not require conventional railroad tracks, its estimated implementation cost is 61.8 billion yen ($430 million), less than half the 134 billion yen projected for the LRT system. The prefecture abandoned the LRT option last fall The Fuji Tram is also envisioned to function as a secondary transit link connecting a planned new station in Kofu for the Linear Chuo Shinkansen, a high-speed magnetic levitation railway currently under construction, with Mount Fuji and other locations throughout Yamanashi Prefecture. 'We want to advance the plan as swiftly as possible,' Yamanashi Governor Kotaro Nagasaki said at a news conference on June 5. 'We will promptly clarify the type of business entity and business model to pursue.'
Asahi Shimbun
5 hours ago
- Business
- Asahi Shimbun
Fast fashion clothes from Zara, Shein rot in Chilean desert
An illegal dump site full of denim bleached by the harsh sun in the Atacama Desert on the outskirts of Alto Hospicio in northern Chile in May (Yuko Kawasaki) ALTO HOSPICIO, Chile—An eerie site awaits those driving past this northern city toward a sprawl of the Atacama Desert. There, a 'graveyard' of discarded clothing, shoes, bags and other unwanted items sit layered on a barren expanse of red-orange dunes. A closer look at this manmade ecosystem reveals tags from well-known fast fashion and drop-shipping brands—Spain's Zara and China's exclusively online Shein. Some garments have been torched, the wind kicking up dark ash. An odor similar to scorched plastic rises from the burn site. 'We have many places like this in the desert,' said Jean Karla Zambrana, a co-founder of the desert dressed in clothes, a private Alto Hospicio-based group that promotes recycling clothing. 'It is estimated that 40,000 tons had been dumped in the desert by 2022. It came from all around the world.' A DUTY-FREE PORT A 30-minute drive from the site is the duty-free Iquique Port, acting as the Pacific gateway to one of the world's largest dumping grounds for the global fashion industry's castoffs. The Chilean government designated the port in the city of Iquique and the surrounding area as a free trade zone in the 1970s to stimulate the lackluster economy. While other countries ban imports on used garments out of concerns for hygiene and environmental impact, Chilean importers embrace them, making the used apparel trade a roaring business. Shipments of unsold and older clothing continue to arrive at Iquique Port from the United States, Europe and many other parts of the world, with the cargo weighing in at 40,000-60,000 tons annually. A large chunk of what arrives is worn out, unwearable trash, however. Zambrana, 31, said illegally dumping huge amounts of discarded clothing items in the Atacama Desert has become routine for importers and retailers to skip the cost of contracting with a dealer for proper disposal. She added that the geography adds to the temptation as a nearby road puts the sands within easy access of Iquique and Alto Hospicio. Some importers and retailers set fire to the clothes after unloading them, afraid of being caught. 'Toxic gases from burn sites reach the neighborhood, contaminating the air,' Zambrana said of the chemicals used to make and dye fabrics. 'Locals are suffering.' Satellite images from Google Earth confirm that parts of the Atacama, which stretches more than 1,000 kilometers from north to south along the Andes, have transformed into impromptu waste sites. Images from 2007, meanwhile, show no discernable mounds of offloaded clothing in the desert. Dark spots believed to be where used garments were burned begin appearing in images from the 2010s. The size of these dark spots and dump spots has only expanded based on images from this year. SOLD BY THE KILO Chile's thriving secondhand clothing trade is on full display at a huge open-air market near Alto Hospicio. The market is lined with a seemingly endless number of stalls selling all sorts of garments from about 70 yen (50 cents), with labels ranging from Lacoste and Ivanka Trump to Forever 21 and Gap. Jery Managuel, a Bolivian vendor, said he has seen Japanese brands being sold. Managuel, 38, purchases clothes to sell at his stall from importers near Iquique Port, paying $150 (about 20,000 yen) for 45 kilograms of garments. The purchases are separated into three categories: new clothing with tags, used clothes in good condition and garbage. 'I take items that did not sell to the desert each month to incinerate them,' Managuel said. Illegal offloading is an ongoing headache for Alto Hospicio authorities. Edgar Ortega, who heads the environmental department, said the city, which has a population of about 200,000, has installed 220 surveillance cameras near the dump sites to prevent would-be perpetrators. It exposed more than 400 violations in 2024, slapping a fine on transgressors. Alto Hospicio officials are preparing to add 200 more cameras and assign an additional 20 individuals to patrols as part of its crackdown. But Ortega, 36, admitted that what the municipality can do is limited because the city lacks ample financial resources. While he credits the duty-free port for reinvigorating the regional economy and creating jobs, Ortega also pointed out that the arrival of staggering amounts of textile waste from around the world has spiraled into a problem the city is not equipped to handle. 'Twenty to 30 percent of the garments shipped to Iquique wind up in the desert as waste,' he said. 'I suspect that the clothing was exported to Chile for the purpose of disposing it in this country. We have been forced to get rid of worthless clothing.' QUANTITY SANS QUALITY One clothing store near the port sells Zara pieces from last season, but these items being new and with tags do not excuse the company in Paulin Silva's eyes. A lawyer specializing in environmental issues, Silva blames fast fashion entities such as Zara for exponentially increasing textile waste by relying on a business model that dramatically cuts the lead time of a product advancing from the design phase to store shelves. 'Mass production of inexpensive apparel has been accelerated globally to quickly catch up with the latest trends, ending up with huge amounts of inventory and used clothes,' she said. 'Unwanted clothing from other countries arrives here to sort out sellable items. The rest goes to the dump sites.' Silva, 37, said there was a true balance in supply and demand regarding the clothing market when she was a child. 'I remember that good-quality attire was sold in reasonable quantities and things sold out just past noon,' she said. 'But today, garments of shoddy quality arrive in this country in volumes 10 to 30 times greater than before.' A TRUCK EVERY SECOND A World Economic Forum report and other data noted that global clothing production doubled between 2000 and 2014, resulting in more than 100 billion pieces of apparel annually. In contrast, consumers wear new purchases for half as long as they previously did. A fiscal 2022 report by Japan's Environment Ministry found that Japanese buy 18 items and discard 15 per capita each year. An average Japanese owns 35 articles of clothing that they do not wear, according to the report. Throwing away clothes has a considerable impact on the environment due to the presence of various chemicals used in clothing production. U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres declared 'Earth is a fashion victim' when he called for urgent action to reduce textile waste on the International Day of Zero Waste observed on March 30. A U.N. estimate showed 'every second, the equivalent of a garbage truck full of clothing is incinerated or sent to a landfill.' Chile is not alone in its plight. Ghana and India are also grappling with their own mountains of trashed clothes from foreign shores. 'The world has been flooded with an amount of clothing that exceeds individual needs because of the rise of fast fashion, which is prospering under capitalism,' Silva said.
