Kyodo News Digest: May 15, 2025
KYODO NEWS - 1 hour ago - 09:00 | All, World, Japan
The following is the latest list of selected news summaries by Kyodo News.
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Defense force trainer jet with 2 crew crashes in central Japan lake
TOKYO - An Air Self-Defense Force training jet with two personnel aboard crashed into a large reservoir shortly after takeoff from a base near Nagoya, central Japan, the government said Wednesday.
The ASDF said it is working to confirm the situation involving the T-4 jet, which disappeared from radar two minutes after departing Komaki Air Base, also in Aichi Prefecture, around 3:06 p.m. en route to a base in southwestern Japan.
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Japan inspects U.S. Tokyo base over suspected PFAS chemical leak
TOKYO - The Japanese government on Wednesday conducted a second on-site inspection of the U.S. Yokota Air Base in western Tokyo over a possible leak of so-called PFAS chemicals, which may pose risks to human health.
A similar action was carried out in December amid growing public concern after the United States reported a possible leakage of water containing PFAS from the firefighting training area following heavy rainfall in late August.
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Japan set to fully cover childbirth costs possibly from April 2026
TOKYO - Japan's health ministry is set to eliminate out-of-pocket payments associated with child delivery, possibly from April next year, to address the country's declining birthrate.
One proposed approach in the policy approved Wednesday by a panel of experts involves fully covering expenses for normal deliveries under the public medical insurance system.
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North Korean hacker group conducting cyberattacks via Russia: report
TOKYO - Some cyberattacks by a North Korea-linked hacker group targeting IT professionals worldwide were carried out from or via Russia's Far East, according to a recent report by a major internet security firm.
The group's use of Russia's more developed internet infrastructure comes amid growing ties between the two countries following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Trend Micro Inc. noted.
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U.S., China slash most new tariffs following high-level talks
WASHINGTON - The United States and China on Wednesday slashed most of their recent new tariffs on each other's imports and suspended part of the so-called reciprocal duties for 90 days, in line with a deal struck during high-level trade talks over the weekend in Switzerland.
Because of what U.S. President Donald Trump called a "total reset" with China, his administration cut the tariffs it had imposed on the Asian economy under his second presidency to 30 percent from 145 percent. China, meanwhile, reduced its retaliatory tariffs on the United States to 10 percent from 125 percent.
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Japan sets 5-year goal of 1% annual real wage growth via investment
TOKYO - The government on Wednesday set a five-year goal of achieving annual inflation-adjusted wage growth of 1 percent across Japan through 60 trillion yen ($408 billion) in public-private investment aimed at improving productivity.
The plan mapped out by Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba's government focuses on small and medium-sized enterprises, which account for a large share of Japan's workforce, and comes as many consumers struggle with sharp price hikes that have outpaced pay increases.
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Sony expects net profit to fall 13% in FY 2025 on U.S. tariff impact
TOKYO - Sony Group Corp. said Wednesday that its net profit in the year through next March is expected to fall 12.9 percent, hit by higher U.S. tariffs, after posting a record 1.14 trillion yen ($7.8 billion) for fiscal 2024 on the back of growth in its game and music segments.
In the current fiscal year, net profit is projected to decline to 930 billion yen, with operating profit forecast to edge up 0.3 percent to 1.28 trillion yen, after factoring in a 100 billion yen hit attributed to U.S. President Donald Trump's tariffs.
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Bag with inflammable tube falls from U.S. forces chopper in Okinawa
NAHA, Japan - A bag containing an inflammable signal flame tube fell from a U.S. military helicopter over the Motobu peninsula in northern Okinawa Prefecture in Japan on Tuesday, the local Defense Ministry bureau said.
In Tokyo, Japan's top government spokesman said Wednesday that no damage has been reported following the incident.
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Japan OKs 20 tril. yen plan for disaster resilient infrastructure
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Top US universities raced to become global campuses. Under Trump, it's becoming a liability
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Three decades ago, foreign students at Harvard University accounted for just 11% of the total student body. Today, they account for 26%. Like other prestigious U.S. universities, Harvard for years has been cashing in on its global cache to recruit the world's best students. Now, the booming international enrollment has left colleges vulnerable to a new line of attack from President Donald Trump. The president has begun to use his control over the nation's borders as leverage in his fight to reshape American higher education. Trump's latest salvo against Harvard uses a broad federal law to bar foreign students from entering the country to attend the campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His proclamation applies only to Harvard, and a federal judge late Thursday temporarily blocked it. But Trump's order poses a threat to other universities his administration has targeted as hotbeds of liberalism in need of reform. It's rattling campuses under federal scrutiny, including Columbia University, where foreign students make up 40% of the campus. As the Trump administration stepped up reviews of new student visas last week, a group of Columbia faculty and alumni raised concerns over Trump's gatekeeping powers. "Columbia's exposure to this 'stroke of pen' risk is uniquely high," the Stand Columbia Society wrote in a newsletter. Ivy League schools draw heavily on international students People from other countries made up about 6% of all college students in the U.S. in 2023, but they accounted for 27% of the eight schools in the Ivy League, according to an Associated Press analysis of Education Department data. Columbia's 40% was the largest concentration, followed by Harvard and Cornell at about 25%. Brown University had the smallest share at 20%. Other highly selective private universities have seen similar trends, including at Northeastern University and New York University, which each saw foreign enrollment double between 2013 and 2023. Growth at public universities has been more muted. Even at the 50 most selective public schools, foreign students account for about 11% of the student body. As the middle class has grown in other countries, more families have been able to afford test prep and admissions guidance to compete for spots in the Ivy League, said Rajika Bhandari, who leads a firm of higher education consultants. "The Ivy League brand is very strong overseas, especially in countries like India and China, where families are extremely brand-aware of top institutions in the U.S. and other competing countries," Bhandari said in an email. Over the last two decades, she said, U.S. universities have increasingly recognized the benefits of international exchange, seeing it as a crucial revenue source that subsidizes U.S. students and keeps enrollments up in the STEM fields of science, technology, engineering and math. America's universities have been widening their doors to foreign students for decades, but the numbers shot upward starting around 2008, as Chinese students came to U.S. universities in rising numbers. It was part of a "gold rush" in higher education, said William Brustein, who orchestrated the international expansion of several universities. "Whether you were private or you were public, you had to be out in front in terms of being able to claim you were the most global university," said Brustein, who led efforts at Ohio State University and West Virginia University. The race was driven in part by economics, he said. Foreign students typically aren't eligible for financial aid and, at some schools, they pay much higher tuition than their American counterparts. Colleges also were eyeing global rankings that gave schools a boost if they recruited larger numbers of foreign students and scholars, he said. Some wealthier universities -- including Harvard -- offer financial aid to foreign students. But students who get into those top-tier U.S. universities often have the means to pay higher tuition rates, Brustein said. That provides further incentive to enroll more foreign students, he said, saving more scholarship money for American students. Still, international enrollment didn't expand equally across all types of colleges. Public universities often face pressure from state lawmakers to limit foreign enrollment and keep more seats open for state residents. Private universities don't face that pressure, and many aggressively recruited foreign students as their enrollment of U.S. students stayed flat. The college-going rate among American students has changed little for decades, and some have been turned off on college by rising costs and student debt loads. Supporters say foreign students benefit colleges -- and the wider US economy Proponents of international exchange say foreign students pour billions of dollars into the U.S. economy, and many go on to support the nation's tech industry and other fields in need of skilled workers. Most international students study STEM fields. In the Ivy League, most international growth has been at the graduate level, while undergraduate numbers have seen more modest increases. Foreign graduate students make up more than half the students at Harvard's government and design schools, along with five of Columbia's schools. Harvard's undergraduate foreign population increased by about 100 students from 2013 to 2023, while graduate numbers increased by nearly 2,000. Part of that growth can be explained by increasing global competition at the graduate level, said William Kirby, a historian at Harvard who has written about the evolution of higher education. "If you don't recruit the very best students internationally in your most important graduate programs, particularly in science and engineering, then you will not be competitive," Kirby said. The Ivy League has been able to outpace other schools in large part because of its reputation, Brustein said. He recalls trips to China and India, where he spoke with families that could recite where each Ivy League school sat in world rankings. "That was the golden calf for these families. They really thought, 'If we could just get into these schools, the rest of our lives would be on easy street,'" he said. Last week, Trump said he thought Harvard should cap its foreign students to about 15%. "We have people who want to go to Harvard and other schools, they can't get in because we have foreign students there," Trump said at a news conference. The university called Trump's latest action banning entry into the country to attend Harvard "yet another illegal retaliatory step taken by the Administration in violation of Harvard's First Amendment rights." In a lawsuit challenging the Trump administration's previous attempt to block international students at Harvard, the university said its foreign student population was the result of "a painstaking, decades-long project" to attract the most qualified international students. Losing access to student visas would immediately harm the school's mission and reputation, it said. "In our interconnected global economy," the school said, "a university that cannot welcome students from all corners of the world is at a competitive disadvantage."
