日: 2024年2月15日

1. The unseasonably warm winter in Japan this years has put a damper on a traditional snow festival in a city in the country’s northeast. An annual festival featuring “Kamakura,” or igloo-like snow huts, kicked off in the city of Yokote in Akita Prefecture on Thursday, despite the absence of accumulated snow on the ground.
2. Japan has lost its place as the world’s third-largest economy to Germany. The Japanese economy was the world’s second largest for decades from 1968. But China surged past in 2010, leaving Japan third until 2022. Germany’s population is about two-thirds the size of Japan’s.
3. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has pushed back against former US President Donald Trump. He took aim at comments suggesting member nations would not defend one another.

1. Temperatures across Japan are expected to remain unseasonably high on Wednesday and Thursday, due to a warm air mass flowing over the archipelago. Daytime highs will reach 18 degrees Celsius in central Tokyo and Osaka City, and 10 degrees in northern Japan’s Sapporo City.
2. Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal and delegates from about 50 Ukrainian organizations are expected to attend a Tokyo conference on how to rebuild infrastructure destroyed by Russia’s invasion. Sources say arrangements are being made for nearly 100 officials to take part from Ukrainian businesses, research institutes and other organizations.
3. The US Senate has approved a foreign aid package worth 95 billion dollars. It includes money for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan. Senate Majority Leader chuck Schumer said, “It’s certainly been years, perhaps decades, since the Senate passed a bill that so greatly impacts not just our national security, not just the security of our allies, but the security of Western democracy.”