Kyodo News Digest: May 15, 2025
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 Times
4 hours ago
- Japan Times
In a Trump-Putin summit, Ukraine fears losing say over its future
For nearly three years of the war in Ukraine, Washington's rallying cry in backing a fight against a Russian invasion was "no negotiations about Ukraine without Ukraine.' But when President Donald Trump meets President Vladimir Putin of Russia in Alaska on Friday, the Ukrainians will not be there, barring any last-minute invitation. And Kyiv's swift rejection of Trump's declaration that he is already negotiating with Russia over what he vaguely called "land swaps,' with no mention of security guarantees or arms for Ukraine, underscores the risks for the Ukrainians It also carries political perils for Trump. Ukraine's fear for these past six months has been that Trump's image of a "peace accord' is a deal struck directly between him and Putin — much as Franklin Roosevelt, Josef Stalin and Winston Churchill divided up Europe at the Yalta conference in 1945. That meeting has become synonymous with historical debates over what can go wrong when great powers carve up the world, smaller powers suffer the consequences and free people find themselves cast under authoritarian rule. Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, himself invited such comparisons in a speech to his people hours after Trump raised the specter of deciding Ukraine's fate in a one-on-one meeting in Alaska, territory that was once part of the Russian empire. (While Putin has made clear that he regards Ukraine as rightful Russian territory dating back to the days of Peter the Great, the Russian leader has not called for the reversal of the $7.2 million sale of Alaska to the United States in 1867, during a period of financial distress for the empire.) "Ukrainians will not give their land to the occupier,' Zelenskyy said, noting that the Ukrainian Constitution prohibits such a deal. Then, in what sounded like a direct warning to Trump, he added: "Any solutions that are against us, any solutions that are without Ukraine, are simultaneously solutions against peace. They will not bring anything. These are dead solutions.' Zelenskyy is the one with the most on the line in the summit. After his bitter Oval Office encounter with Trump in February, which ended in Trump's declaration that "you don't have the cards right now,' he has every reason to fear Trump is at best an unreliable partner. At worst, Trump is susceptible to being flattered and played by Putin, for whom he has often expressed admiration. Ukrainian civilians rush away from the scene of a drone attack in Kharkiv, Ukraine, on July 7. Since Trump retook office, many Ukrainians have worried a peace accord would be struck without them. | DAVID GUTTENFELDER / THE NEW YORK TIMES But there are also considerable political risks for Trump. Those would be especially acute if he is viewed as forcing millions of Ukrainians into territorial concessions, with few compensating guarantees that Putin would not, after taking a breather of a few years, seize the rest of the country. "President Trump still seems to be going into this conversation as if Putin is negotiating as a partner or friend,' said Tressa Guenov, director for programs and operations at the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security at the Atlantic Council. "That will continue to make these discussions difficult if Ukraine isn't involved.' Trump's personal envoy, Steve Witkoff, raised the possibility of a meeting of Trump, Zelenskyy and Putin, and in the past week, it looked like that might be a precondition for the session in Alaska. But Trump waved away the notion when asked about it by reporters Friday. A senior administration official said Saturday that the president remained open to a trilateral meeting with Putin and Zelenskyy, but that the meeting between Trump and Putin was set to go ahead as scheduled. Yet the gap in how Trump approaches these negotiations and how the United States' allies in Europe approach them became all the more vivid Saturday. After a meeting of European national security advisers and Ukrainian officials with Vice President JD Vance, who is on a visit to Britain, leaders of the European Union's executive branch and nations including France, Britain, Italy and Germany called in a statement for "active diplomacy, support to Ukraine and pressure on the Russian Federation to end their illegal war.' They added that any agreement needed to include "robust and credible security guarantees that enable Ukraine to effectively defend its sovereignty and territorial integrity,' phrases Trump has avoided. "The path to peace in Ukraine cannot be decided without Ukraine,' the leaders said. Trump has long sought a direct meeting with Putin, declaring publicly that a problem like Ukraine could only be resolved with a meeting between the two top leaders. He also said last week that he expects to see President Xi Jinping of China before the end of the year. And he seems reluctant to impose more tariffs or sanctions ahead of those meetings. In fact, his deadline for Putin to declare a ceasefire or face crushing "secondary sanctions' melted away Friday without a mention from Trump, other than that people should wait for his meeting with Putin. The fact that Trump is even meeting with Putin represents a small victory for the Russian president, Guenov said. "Trump still has given Putin the benefit of the doubt, and that dynamic is one Putin will attempt to exploit even beyond this meeting,' she added. While Trump has insisted that an understanding between himself and the Russian president is crucial to a broader peace, Putin, Guenov said, would certainly welcome any land concessions Trump is willing to grant. Already the president has signaled that is where these talks are headed. Trump on Friday suggested that a peace deal between the two countries could include "some swapping of territories,' signaling that the United States may join Russia in trying to compel Ukraine to permanently cede some of its land — the suggestion flatly rejected by Zelenskyy. Ukrainian firefighters and rescue workers lower the covered body of a person killed in a Russian strike on an apartment building in the Donetsk region of Ukraine on June 22. | DAVID GUTTENFELDER / THE NEW YORK TIMES "We're going to get some back, and we're going to get some switched,' said Trump, leaving unclear who the "we' in that statement was. "There'll be some swapping of territories to the betterment of both, but we'll be talking about that either later, or tomorrow.' Russian officials have demanded that Ukraine cede the four regions that Moscow claimed to have "annexed' from Ukraine in late 2022, even as some of that land remains under Ukrainian control. And Russia is seeking a formal declaration that the Crimean Peninsula is once again its territory. (Yalta, where the meeting of three great powers was held 80 years ago, is a resort city on the southern coast of Crimea.) Until late last week, it appeared likely that the meeting between Trump and Putin would be held on the traditional neutral grounds of the old Cold War, perhaps in Geneva or Vienna. (President Joe Biden saw Putin in Geneva in June 2021, eight months before the Ukraine invasion, for what turned out to be the only face-to-face meeting of their presidencies.) Putin's willingness to venture into American territory was striking, not least because his arrival in the United States will signal the end of his political and legal isolation from the country. In the past few months, Trump has terminated efforts at the Justice Department and the State Department to collect evidence of war crimes committed by Russia during its invasion of Ukraine. But inviting Putin to meet in the United States seemed to extinguish any threat that the United States would provide evidence to the prosecution. "It's bewildering how we could bring in somebody the International Criminal Court has classified as a war criminal,' said Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, president of the Yale Chief Executive Leadership Institute, who has tracked many of the Russian violations. But he emphasized that Putin is entering the meeting with Trump in an extraordinarily weak position economically and that it would benefit U.S. negotiators to realize how few cards Russia holds. "The mystical illusion of power that Putin creates is as real as the Wizard of Oz,' Sonnenfeld said. "The Russian economy has been imploding. Trump doesn't seem to realize that.' Sonnenfeld cautioned Trump against any deal in which Ukraine would give up rights to the Donbas region, particularly given the agreement that the Trump administration negotiated for the U.S. to share in future revenues from Ukraine's mineral reserves through a joint investment fund. "Giving up the Donbas would be disastrous,' he said. "That is where a lot of these valuable minerals are.' This article originally appeared in The New York Times © 2025 The New York Times Company
NHK
4 hours ago
- NHK
Vance: Ceasefire agreement likely to leave both sides unhappy
US Vice President JD Vance says a ceasefire agreement between Russia and Ukraine is unlikely to satisfy either side. Vance made the remarks in an interview with Fox News aired on Sunday ahead of the upcoming meeting between US President Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Friday. 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." He added: "It's not going to make anybody super happy. Both the Russians and the Ukrainians, probably, at the end of the day, are going to be unhappy with it." Vance also noted that Washington is working to schedule three-way talks between Trump, Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Asked whether he wants Putin to meet Zelenskyy before a meeting with Trump, Vance said that he did not think that would be very productive. He indicated that summit talks between Trump and Putin will take place before any other negotiations. Zelenskyy and European leaders are concerned that the US and Russian leaders may discuss territorial issues without any involvement by Ukraine.
Japan Times
5 hours ago
- Japan Times
Donald Trump praises Grant Forrest for 'brilliant' win on Trump-owned course
Donald Trump congratulated Grant Forrest on his "brilliant golf" after a four-shot win in a Scottish Championship tournament played on a course owned by the President of the United States on Sunday. It was the second time Forrest, a 32-year-old Scot, enjoyed a professional title success on home soil, with his victory on the Trump International Golf Links coming almost four years to the day since he won his maiden European Tour title at St. Andrews. Forrest held a three-shot lead heading into Sunday's final round and maintained control in windy conditions in Aberdeen. Trump, who recently spent five days in Scotland, playing golf and sealing a major trade deal with the European Union, was among the first to congratulate Forrest on his victory in a FaceTime call. "I watched it ... he's some player," Trump said in the call, which was shared on X by the European Tour. "I look forward to playing with him — in fact I will play with him tomorrow (Monday) if he could get on a plane. "What a round of golf. What three rounds of brilliant golf. It's a great honor you won, thank you very much." Forrest's advantage was briefly cut to two strokes following Todd Clements' birdie on the opening hole. But when Forrest birdied the fourth, and Clements carded a triple-bogey at the same hole, the Scot led by five shots. Forrest, the world No. 294, double-bogeyed the last hole, but by then he had added two more birdies and a dropped shot in a closing 72 to finish with an 8-under-par total. "It's amazing, just speechless," Forrest said. "I think it is the same week as I won four years ago on the calendar so just amazing, that must say something about this week and being at home. "I just can't believe it. It's been such a tough year on the golf course. It's just a crazy game that you can go and come out and do this, with what feels out of nowhere. "It's just that old chestnut that one week can turn things around and it has."
