1. It is officially election season in Japan. More than a thousand candidates are kicking off their campaigns to win seats in the Lower House. Voters will cast ballots at the end of the month to choose their government. All 465 seats in the powerful Lower House are up for grabs. 289 will be from single-seat districts and 176 will be elected through a system of proportional representation. 233 seats are needed for a majority. Prime Minister Ishiba Shigeru says if the governing coalition can secure a majority, he would consider it a victory. 2.Former US President Barack Obama has congratulated Nihon Hidankyo for winning this year’s Nobel Peace Prize. Obama, who advocated for a nuclear-free world, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009 while he was in office. Obama said, “At a time when the threat of nuclear weapons is growing – and the taboo against threatening their use is weakening – Nihon Hidankyo’s work reminds us that these weapons have a terrible human cost, and that the pursuit of a world without nuclear weapons is an essential part of making sure we leave our children a safer, more secure world.”
3. This year’s Nobel Prize for economic sciences has been awarded to three professors based in the United States. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences praised them for helping to explain inequality around the world. Daron Acemoglu is a Turkish-American economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Simon Johnson is also at MIT. James A. Robinson works at the University of Chicago. The academy says the three laureates have pioneered new approaches to significantly advance the understanding of global inequality.
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