月: 2022年7月

1.US Commerce Department officials reported on Thursday that the economy has contracted for a second consecutive quarter. They report output from April through June fell at an annualized pace of 0.9 percent. Gross domestic product is the broadest measure of the nation’s production of goods and services. GDP in the first quarter had dropped 1.6 percent. The second quarter decline brought the economy in line with a common definition of recession.
2.The Tokyo Metropolitan Government confirmed 36,814 new cases of coronavirus infections on Friday. Five deaths were reported. The daily tally was up by 1,819 cases from the same day last week. It was the tenth consecutive day that the count was higher than the previous week.
3.Russian forces continue their attacks on Ukraine’s east and south, while the United Nations says grain exports from Ukraine will be able to resume as early as Friday.

1.Russia continues to attack infrastructure in eastern and southern Ukraine while Ukrainian forces intensify their counter-offensive in an effort to retake the southern region of Kherson. Russia is trying to seize full control of the Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine and consolidate its hold over southern regions.
2.Railway workers in Britain staged a walkout on Wednesday to demand higher wages to cope with surging inflation. A labor union says about 40,000 members across the country joined the strike that brought much of the network to a halt.
3.US President Joe Biden has emerged from isolation and resumed in-person duties after contracting COVID-19. Biden tested positive for the coronavirus on July 21. He has since been working in isolation at the White House. His doctor announced on Wednesday that Biden’s symptoms had largely disappeared and he tested negative that morning and the previous night.

1.The Ukrainian ambassador to Japan has appealed to the public to continue paying attention to “Russian war crimes and crimes against humanity” in Ukraine. Sergiy Korsunsky spoke at the Japan National Press Club in Tokyo on Tuesday. He also showed photos of what he described as victims and destruction from the past five months of Russian attacks.
2.A senior White House official says US President Joe Biden and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping are expected to discuss Taiwan and Ukraine by phone or online later this week. White House national security spokesperson John Kirby told reporters on Tuesday that the discussion will cover “everything from the tensions over Taiwan, to the war in Ukraine, as well as how we better manage competition between our two nations, certainly in the economic sphere.”
3.A magnitude 7.0 earthquake struck the northern Philippine island of Luzon on Wednesday. Local media say no major damage has been confirmed so far. The US Geological Survey says the quake was shallow but powerful. Tremors were felt hundreds of kilometers away in the capital, Manila. But officials say there is no threat of tsunami.

1.The Pope has apologized to Indigenous Canadians for decades of abuse. He asked for their forgiveness on Monday for what he called the “evil” they suffered at residential schools. Starting in the late 1800s, authorities forcibly removed at least 150 thousand First Nations, Metis, and Inuit children from their homes. They put them into state schools in what members of a national commission called “cultural genocide.”
2.Tokyo prosecutors have raided the home of a former executive of the Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic organizing committee suspected of receiving a lucrative consulting fee from a sponsor. The prosecutors searched Haruyuki’s residence, the headquarters of Tokyo-based advertising agency Dentsu, and other sites on Tuesday.
3.The Japanese government on Tuesday carried out the death sentence of a man convicted of going on a deadly stabbing rampage 14 years ago in Tokyo’s busy Akihabara shopping district. Kato Tomohiro was charged with ramming a truck into a crowd of shoppers in June 2008, and then indiscriminately stabbing passersby. Seven people were killed and 10 others were wounded.

1.Myanmar’s state media says the ruling junta has executed four people, including pro-democracy activists. According to local media, it is the first time the death penalty has been carried out in the country in over 30 years. The military announced the planned executions last month, drawing a firestorm of international criticism.
2.Russia attacked a key grain port in Ukraine Saturday, jeopardizing an agricultural export deal brokered a day earlier with the United Nations and Turkey. Ukraine said the missile attack in Odesa also caused injuries and damaged infrastructure.
3.The Japan Meteorological Agency says a volcanic eruption occurred on Sakurajima in southwestern Japan’s Kagoshima Prefecture on Sunday evening. The agency estimates that imminent massive eruptions from the volcano are unlikely.

1.Japan has stressed in its annual defense white paper that the international community should not tolerate Russia’s military invasion of Ukraine. The report says that if Russia’s invasion is tolerated, it could carry the wrong implication that a unilateral change in the status quo is allowed in other regions including Asia.
2.Civil groups in Japan have protested the government’s decision to hold a state funeral for former Prime Minister Abe Shinzo. Organizers of the rally said that about 400 people, including members of 11 organizations and individuals, took part. They gathered in front of the prime minister’s office in Tokyo on Friday.
3.Japan’s health ministry plans to offer fourth coronavirus vaccine shots to healthcare workers and staff at facilities for the elderly from Friday amid a rapid resurgence of infections. Currently, people who are eligible for a fourth shot are those aged 60 and older, those aged 18 and older with underlying diseases, and those aged at least 18 who are deemed by doctors to have a high risk of becoming seriously ill.

1.The head of the International Monetary Fund says it will lower its global economic outlook again. The IMF’s last downgrade was in April, when it projected 3.6 percent growth in 2022. The new outlook comes out next week.
2.US President Joe Biden says he expects to speak with Chinese President Xi Jinping within the next 10 days. Their discussion will likely be online or by telephone. The Biden administration has been mulling a partial lowering of tariffs on goods imported from China to help ease inflation in the US.
3.The First Lady of Ukraine has told US lawmakers that the Russians are “destroying” her people. Olena Zelenska said, “Help us to stop this terror against Ukrainians. And this will be our great joint victory in the name of life, freedom and the pursuit of happiness.”

1.Sri Lanka’s lawmakers have chosen Ranil Wickremesinghe as their new president. The political veteran has been acting in the role since Gotabaya Rajapaksa fled the country and resigned amid growing protests.
2.The Japanese government is finalizing arrangements to hold a state funeral for former Prime Minister Abe Shinzo on September 27 at Nippon Budokan in Tokyo. Abe was fatally shot in Nara City, western Japan, on July 8 while making a campaign speech for a candidate in the Upper House election.
3.A senior US official says Russia appears to be preparing to annex Ukrainian territory that it now has under its control. National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications at the White House, John Kirby said, “Russia is laying the groundwork to annex Ukrainian territory that it controls in direct violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty.”

1.Japan’s Prime Minister Kishida Fumio has asked South Korean Foreign Minister Park Jin to make efforts to resolve outstanding bilateral issues. Relations between the two countries are said to be at their lowest since the end of World War Two.
2.Ukraine’s first lady, Olena Zelenska, has appealed for US aid for her country on her visit to Washington. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken harshly condemned Russian attacks on Ukraine, which continue to wound and kill innocent civilians, and stressed the US will continue to provide assistance to Ukraine, including supporting Zelenska’s mental health initiative for citizens affected by the war.
3.In the leadership race of Britain’s ruling Conservative Party, former finance minister Rishi Sunak has won the most support in the third round of the vote. Sunak led other four contenders by securing 115 votes after finishing in top place in the first and second rounds. Junior trade minister Penny Mordaunt came in second with 82 votes, followed by Foreign Secretary Liz Truss with 71 votes.

1.Grudges against a religious group were expressed in social media posts believed to have been written by the man accused of murdering former Prime Minister Abe Shinzo. Investigators have learned that the suspect, Yamagami Tetsuya, had developed animosity toward the Family Federation of World Peace and Unification, formerly known as the Unification Church, to which his mother had donated money. The 41-year-old was arrested at the scene of the fatal shooting of Abe in Nara City on July 8.
2.A memorial service was held on Monday for people killed in an arson attack at a western Japan animation studio three years ago. The fire at Kyoto Animation on July 18 in 2019 killed 36 people and injured 32.
3.Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has fired the country’s prosecutor general and the head of the state security service. He announced the decision to remove Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova and dismiss the head of the security service, Ivan Bakanov, in a video post on Sunday.