日: 2025年8月11日

1. US Vice President JD Vance says a ceasefire agreement between Russia and Ukraine is unlikely to satisfy either side. Vance said that the Trump administration is “going to try to find some negotiated settlement that the Ukrainians and the Russians can live with, where they can live in relative peace, where the killing stops.”
2. Sources at the US Treasury Department have told NHK that Washington may lower the tariff on Japanese vehicles and other products in mid-September to the level earlier agreed with Japan. The sources disclosed that a reference point for the tariff’s reduction is set at 50 days after the two countries reached an agreement in late July.
3. The Japan Meteorological Agency has downgraded the heavy rain emergency warning for seven municipalities in Kumamoto Prefecture to a heavy rain warning or advisory. But it’s still urging people to beware of landslides, flooding and swollen rivers.

1. A lantern festival is illuminating summer nights at a shrine in Kamakura City, near Tokyo. The annual Bonbori Festival is underway at the Tsurugaoka Hachimangu shrine.
2. Japan’s chief trade negotiator says the US has agreed to amend an executive order on import tariffs to correctly reflect what the two sides agreed in recent talks.
3. US tech firm OpenAI has released an upgraded version of its generative artificial intelligence model ChatGPT, which it says can provide more accurate answers.

1. Pope Leo XIV has condemned what he called the “illusionary security” of the global nuclear deterrence system as he addressed crowds at the Vatican on the 80th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Speaking in Italian, the working language of the Vatican, Leo said, “Despite the passing of the years, those tragic devastation caused by wars and, in particular, by nuclear weapons.”
2. Multiple media outlets say US President Donald Trump intends to meet with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin as early as next week. The reports said Trump also seeks to hold three-way talks including Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy shortly after the meeting with Putin.
3. Paper lanterns bearing images of women and other designs are lighting up the night at a famed summer festival in Yuzawa City, Akita Prefecture, northern Japan. The Tanabata Edoro festival is said to date back around 300 years, when a daughter of a court noble from Kyoto who married into a local family wrote her nostalgic feelings for her home on paper strips and hung them on bamboo. In this year’s festival, which began on Tuesday, about 170 lanterns with drawings in a variety of styles, including ukiyo-e, were displayed along the city’s shopping streets.