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Japan PM facing lukewarm approval ahead of election

Japan PM facing lukewarm approval ahead of election
Japan's Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba (2nd L) is seen during an election campaign speech in support of the Liberal Democratic Party candidate in Sakai city of Osaka Prefecture. (File/AFP)
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Updated 6 min 35 sec ago
AFP
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Japan PM facing lukewarm approval ahead of election

Japan PM facing lukewarm approval ahead of election
  • Former defense minister Ishiba took office this month after being voted leader of the Liberal Democratic Party
Updated 6 min 35 sec ago
AFP
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TOKYO: Approval ratings for Japan’s new Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba have fallen ahead of an October 27 general election, one weekend poll showed, with another survey suggesting the ruling coalition could struggle to secure a majority.
Former defense minister Ishiba took office this month after being voted leader of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which has been in power for most of Japan’s post-war history.
Scandals over funding and LDP lawmakers’ ties to the Unification Church, compounded by voter discontent over rising prices, caused the party’s ratings to plummet during the tenure of Ishiba’s predecessor Fumio Kishida.
A Kyodo News survey on Saturday and Sunday put the current approval rating for Ishiba’s cabinet at 41.4 percent, down from 42.0 percent a week earlier.
The disapproval rating was 40.4 percent in the most recent survey of some 1,260 voters, Kyodo said Sunday. Disapproval in the October 12-13 poll was 36.7 percent.
A separate weekend survey by the liberal-leaning Asahi Shimbun newspaper found public support for Ishiba’s cabinet at 33 percent, below 39 percent who disapproved.
Those results are worse than Kishida faced in 2021 ahead of his first general election as premier: 42 percent approval against 31 percent disapproval, the Asahi said.
The daily said its polls indicated that the LDP and its junior coalition partner Komeito ran the risk of losing a majority in the upcoming vote.
Jiji Press said its polls and reporting showed the coalition was likely to retain its majority, although the LDP may not pass the threshold on its own — a possibility reflected in several previous polls by other outlets.
The conservative LDP and Komeito, a moderate party backed by a Buddhist-linked group, have been in power since 2012 when late former premier Shinzo Abe won a landslide victory.
“Regardless of whether or not we lose our majority, we should hold positive talks with parties that are trying to develop the country with the same policies,” the LDP’s secretary general Hiroshi Moriyama said in a political debate program aired by public broadcaster NHK on Sunday.

Topics: Japan Shigeru Ishiba

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IMF, World Bank meetings clouded by wars, slow economic growth, US election

IMF, World Bank meetings clouded by wars, slow economic growth, US election
Updated 2 min 21 sec ago
Reuters
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IMF, World Bank meetings clouded by wars, slow economic growth, US election

IMF, World Bank meetings clouded by wars, slow economic growth, US election
  • US election could reshape trade, climate policies
  • Anti-China trade sentiment is key topic at meetings
Updated 2 min 21 sec ago
Reuters
WASHINGTON: Global finance chiefs will gather in Washington this week amid intense uncertainty over wars in the Middle East and Europe, a flagging Chinese economy and worries that a coin-toss US presidential election could ignite new trade battles and erode multilateral cooperation.
The International Monetary Fund and World Bank annual meetings are scheduled to draw more than 10,000 people from finance ministries, central banks and civil society groups to discuss efforts to boost patchy global growth, deal with debt distress and finance the green energy transition.
But the elephant in the meeting rooms will be the potential for a Nov. 5 election victory by US Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump to upend the international economic system with massive new US tariffs and borrowing and a shift away from climate cooperation.
“Arguably the most important issue for the global economy — the outcome of the US election — is not on the official agenda this week, but it’s on everyone’s mind,” said Josh Lipsky, a former IMF official who now heads the Atlantic Council’s GeoEconomics Center.
The election “has huge implications on trade policy, on the future of the dollar, on who the next Federal Reserve chair is going to be, and all of those impact every country in the world,” he added.
US Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential candidate, is largely expected to continue the Biden administration’s resumption of multilateral cooperation on climate, tax and debt relief issues if she wins next month’s vote.
The meetings, which start on Monday and get into full swing later in the week, will likely be the last for US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, who spearheaded much of the Biden administration’s multilateral economic and climate efforts. Yellen has said she is “probably done” with public service at the end of President Joe Biden’s term in office in January.
But growing anti-China trade sentiment and industrial policy plans from wealthy countries, punctuated by the Biden administration’s steep tariff increases on Chinese electric vehicles, semiconductors and solar products, is expected to be a key discussion topic at the meetings.
Lackluster growth
The IMF will update its global growth forecasts on Tuesday. IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva last week flagged a lackluster outlook, saying the world, saddled by high debts, was headed for slow medium-term growth, and pointing to a “difficult future.”
Still, Georgieva said she was “not super-pessimistic” about the outlook, given pockets of resilience, notably in the US and India that are offsetting continued weakness in China and Europe.
While debt defaults among poor countries may have peaked, participants at the annual meetings are expected to discuss the growing problem of scarce liquidity that is forcing some emerging markets saddled with high debt service costs to delay development investments as overseas aid shrinks.
Last year’s IMF and World Bank annual meetings got underway in Morocco as the Palestinian militant group Hamas attacked Israel, killing more than 1,200 people and unleashing conflicts with a death toll of more than 40,000 Gazans, according to Palestinian health authorities.
The economic damage has been largely limited to economies in or adjacent to the conflict: Gaza, the West Bank, Israel, Lebanon, Egypt and Jordan.
“If there was to be an escalation that puts at risk oil and gas delivery, that could have much more significant spillover for the world economy,” Georgieva told Reuters in an interview.
Support for Ukraine also will be a major topic at the meetings, as the G7 wealthy democracies aim to reach a political agreement by the end of October for a $50 billion loan for the Eastern European country backed by frozen Russian sovereign assets. The loan in part is seen as a financial bulwark against a Trump victory next month, as the former US president has threatened to “get out of Ukraine.”
Despite the wall of worry, World Bank and IMF officials intend to spend the week concentrating on the work at hand at the meetings, which coincide with the 80th anniversary of the institutions’ founding in 1944 at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire.
For World Bank President Ajay Banga, that means finding ways to speed up the preparations of projects to use the bank’s expanded lending capacity and refining a new scorecard aimed at improving development outcomes.
“The world is the world right now. And rather than use the meetings to go over what we already seem to know — which is to admire the problem — I’d like to take the annual meetings to doing something about what we can do as institutions,” Banga told reporters last week.

King Charles says signs of climate change in Australia ‘unmistakable’

King Charles says signs of climate change in Australia ‘unmistakable’
Updated 5 min 9 sec ago
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King Charles says signs of climate change in Australia ‘unmistakable’

King Charles says signs of climate change in Australia ‘unmistakable’
  • “It’s in all our interests to be good stewards of the world,” he said in his first speech inside Australia’s parliament as head of state
Updated 5 min 9 sec ago
AFP
CANBERRA: King Charles warned of “overwhelming” climate dangers in an address at Australia’s parliament on Monday, saying the growing ferocity of bushfires and floods were an “unmistakable sign” of a sweltering planet.
The monarch urged Australia — a longtime climate laggard with an economy geared around mining and coal — to assume the mantle of global leadership in the race to slash emissions.
“It’s in all our interests to be good stewards of the world,” he said in his first speech inside Australia’s parliament as head of state.
The 75-year-old sovereign is on a nine-day jaunt through Australia and Samoa, the first major foreign tour since his life-changing cancer diagnosis earlier this year.
His environmental advocacy — which has seen him dubbed the “climate king” — is sure to resonate in a country scarred by fires and floods.
The “magnitude and ferocity” of these natural disasters was accelerating, said Charles, who described the “roll of unprecedented events” as “an unmistakable sign of climate change.”
“This is why Australia’s international leadership on global initiatives to protect our climate and biodiversity is of such absolute and critical importance.”
Charles paid particular tribute to Indigenous “traditional owners of the lands” who had “loved and cared for this continent for 65,000 years.”
At the end of his speech, as the hearty applause receded, an Indigenous lawmaker shocked the audience with her own interjection.
“Give us our land back!” screamed independent senator Lidia Thorpe, who had earlier turned her back on the king as the crowd stood for the national anthem.
“This is not your land, you are not my king” the lawmaker added, decrying what she described as a “genocide” of Indigenous Australians by European settlers.


Charles will later visit a purpose-built lab at Australia’s public science agency, which is used to study the bushfires that routinely ravage swathes of the country.
He will then stroll through plots of native flowers at Australia’s national botanic garden, discussing how a heating planet imperils the country’s many unique species.
A lifelong greenie, Charles’ passion for conservation once saw him painted as a bit of an oddball.
He famously converted an Aston Martin DB6 to run on ethanol from leftover cheese and white wine, and once confessed that he talked to plants to help them grow.
In a brief moment of levity during an otherwise weighty address, Charles spoke fondly of his teenage experiences as a student in rural Victoria.
This included “being given unmentionable parts of a bull calf to eat from a branding fire in outback Queensland.”


Bearing a swag of new military honors bestowed over the weekend, Charles had earlier laid a wreath in the Hall of Memory at Australia’s imposing national war memorial.
Robert Fletcher and his suit-wearing alpaca “Hephner” were among the polite crowd of royal super fans and young families queuing outside to catch a glimpse.
“Hopefully we’ll get in today to see the king and queen. And hopefully a selfie or something,” Fletcher told AFP while holding his nine-year-old alpaca on a short leash.
Chloe Pailthorpe and her children traveled to Canberra from a small rural town nearby.
“I’ve been writing to the royals since I’ve been about 10,” she told AFP.
“My kids have been writing to the royals. We just love what the royals do.”
Many of Australia’s state premiers will miss a reception for the king hosted in the parliament’s “great hall.”
Tied up with overseas travel, elections, and other pressing government business — their absence suggests the throne does not have the pulling power it once did.
Australians, while marginally in favor of the monarchy, are far from the enthusiastic loyalists they once were.
Visiting British royals have typically carried out weeks-long visits to stoke support, parading through streets packed with thrilled, flag-waving subjects.
But the king’s fragile health this time around has seen much of the typical grandeur scaled back.
Aside from a community barbecue in Sydney and an event at the city’s famed opera house, there will be few mass public gatherings.

Toll from attack in India-controlled Kashmir rises to seven – reports

Toll from attack in India-controlled Kashmir rises to seven – reports
Updated 51 min 17 sec ago
AFP
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Toll from attack in India-controlled Kashmir rises to seven – reports

Toll from attack in India-controlled Kashmir rises to seven – reports
  • Muslim-majority Kashmir, home to long-running insurgency, has been divided between rivals India and Pakistan since 1947
  • India regularly accuses nuclear-armed Pakistan of supporting and arming rebels in Kashmir, a charge Islamabad denies
Updated 51 min 17 sec ago
AFP

Gunmen in Indian-administered Kashmir raked a construction site work camp with bullets, killing seven people and wounding several others, Indian media reported Monday, updating an earlier toll.

The attack on Sunday is one of the worst this year targeting civilians.

The contested territory’s chief minister, Omar Abdullah, called the attack late Sunday “dastardly and cowardly,” while India’s interior minister Amit Shah vowed those responsible would face the “harshest” response.

Muslim-majority Kashmir has been divided between rivals India and Pakistan since their independence from British rule in 1947, and is home to a long-running insurgency.

Attackers targeted workers from outside the Himalayan region, who were reported to be building a tunnel connecting Kashmir with the far northern Ladakh region.

Among the seven killed was a doctor, the Press Trust of India (PTI) news agency reported on Monday, adding several others were wounded.

Abdullah, who was sworn in as the region’s chief minister on Wednesday after its first local elections for a decade, said he strongly condemned the attack on “non-local laborers.”

Soon after the attack, Abdullah confirmed two people had been killed but had warned there were also “a number of injured laborers, both local and non-local.”

At least 500,000 Indian troops are deployed in Kashmir, battling an insurgency with tens of thousands of civilians, soldiers and rebels killed since 1989.

India’s home minister Amit Shah called the killings “a despicable act of cowardice,” in a statement.

“Those involved in this heinous act will not be spared, and will face the harshest response from our security forces,” Shah said.

The attack took place Gagangir in Sonamarg region, where Nitin Gadkari, India’s minister of roads said the “innocent laborers” had been working on a “vital infrastructure project.”

Gunmen fired automatic weapons at the camp from forested hills around, Indian newspapers reported.

India regularly accuses Pakistan of supporting and arming the rebels, a charge Islamabad denies.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government canceled Kashmir’s limited autonomy in 2019, accompanied by mass arrests and a months-long communications blackout.

His administration says the decision has allowed it to stem the insurgency, but critics have accused it of suppressing political freedoms.

Nine Indian Hindu pilgrims were killed and dozens more wounded in June when a gunman opened fire on a bus carrying them from a shrine in Reasi district.

Topics: Kashmir India

US, Canada warships pass through Taiwan Strait

US, Canada warships pass through Taiwan Strait
Updated 53 min 35 sec ago
AFP
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US, Canada warships pass through Taiwan Strait

US, Canada warships pass through Taiwan Strait
  • US and its allies regularly cross through the 180-kilometer (112-mile) Taiwan Strait to reinforce its status
Updated 53 min 35 sec ago
AFP

TAIPEI: A US and a Canadian warship have passed through waters separating Taiwan and China, a week after Beijing held large-scale military drills in the sensitive passage.
The United States and its allies regularly cross through the 180-kilometer (112-mile) Taiwan Strait to reinforce its status as an international waterway, angering Beijing.
China’s Communist Party has never ruled Taiwan, but it claims the island as part of its territory and has said it will not renounce the use of force to bring it under its control.
“The Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Higgins (DDG 76) and Royal Canadian Navy Halifax-class frigate HMCS Vancouver (FFH 331) conducted a routine Taiwan Strait transit on Oct. 20,” the US Navy’s 7th Fleet said in a statement.
“Higgins and Vancouver’s transit through the Taiwan Strait demonstrated the United States’ and Canada’s commitment to upholding freedom of navigation for all nations as a principle.”
China said Monday that the US and Canadian actions had disrupted “peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait.”
“The PLA Eastern Theater Command organized naval and air forces to monitor and remain on alert throughout the transit, handling the situation according to laws and regulations,” military spokesperson Captain Li Xi said in a statement.
Taiwan’s defense ministry said Monday the US and Canadian ships traveled “from south to north” of the strait and the situation in the surrounding sea and airspace “remained normal.”
Beijing sent a record number of military aircraft as well as warships and coast guard vessels to encircle Taiwan on October 14 in the fourth round of major drills in just over two years.
Taiwan deployed “appropriate forces” and put outlying islands on heightened alert in response to the exercises, which Beijing said were a “stern warning to the separatist acts of ‘Taiwan Independence’ forces.”
Beijing has ramped up military pressure on Taipei in recent years, deploying on a near-daily basis warplanes and other military aircraft as well as ships around the island.
Taiwan’s defense ministry said Monday it had detected 14 Chinese military aircraft and 12 navy vessels in the 24 hours to 6:00 am.

Topics: Canada United States of America (USA) Taiwan Strait

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King Charles heckled by lawmaker at Australian parliament

King Charles heckled by lawmaker at Australian parliament
Updated 21 October 2024
AFP
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King Charles heckled by lawmaker at Australian parliament

King Charles heckled by lawmaker at Australian parliament
  • “Give us our land back! Give us what you stole from us!” Thorpe screamed in an almost minute-long diatribe
Updated 21 October 2024
AFP

CANBERRA: Indigenous senator Lidia Thorpe shouted anti-colonial slogans at King Charles during his visit to the Australian parliament on Monday, shocking assembled lawmakers and other dignitaries.
“Give us our land back! Give us what you stole from us!” Thorpe screamed in an almost minute-long diatribe, after the 75-year-old king’s speech.
“This is not your land, you are not my king,” the independent lawmaker said, decrying what she described as a “genocide” of Indigenous Australians by European settlers.
Australia was a British colony for more than 100 years, during which time thousands of Aboriginal Australians were killed and entire communities displaced.
The country gained de facto independence in 1901, but has never become a fully fledged republic. King Charles is the current head of state.
Charles is on a nine-day jaunt through Australia and Samoa, the first major foreign tour since his life-changing cancer diagnosis earlier this year.
Thorpe is known for her attention-grabbing political stunts and fierce opposition to the monarchy.
When she was sworn into office in 2022, Thorpe raised her right fist as she begrudgingly swore to serve Queen Elisabeth II, who was then Australia’s head of state.
“I sovereign, Lidia Thorpe, do solemnly and sincerely swear that I will be faithful and I bear true allegiance to the colonizing Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II,” she said before being rebuked by a Senate official.
“Senator Thorpe, Senator Thorpe, you are required to recite the oath as printed on the card,” said the chamber’s president Sue Lines.
In 1999, Australians narrowly voted against removing the queen, amid a row over whether her replacement would be chosen by members of parliament, not the public.
In 2023 Australians overwhelmingly rejected measures to recognize Indigenous Australians in the constitution at to create an Indigenous consultative assembly.

Topics: King Charles Australia

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