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A Japanese village struggling with a low population created life-sized dolls to mimic the feeling of a bustling society. The hamlet of Ichinono, which has less than 60 residents and only one child, is trying to fill the void with stuffed mannequins, which they dress up and place around the community — and even pose on swings and bicycles. “We’re probably outnumbered by puppets,” 88-year-old resident Hisayo Yamazak ... The hamlet of Ichinono, which has less than 60 residents and only one child, is trying to fill the void with stuffed mannequins, which they dress up and place around the...

It’s been obvious for years that China has a Potemkin economy, kept alive by slave labor, market bubbles, and government underwriting. it can’t last forever. The latest grim forecast about the economy comes from Peter St Onge, an economist with a much deeper fund of knowledge about and understanding of the Chinese economy than I could have in a thousand lifetimes.The biggest hint that the Chinese economy was in trouble was the demise of Evergrande, a massive property developer in China. The bankruptcy was huge, with the company’s assets valued at a probably inflated $245 billion and debts of $300...

Japan's government admitted Monday manipulating an official photo of the new cabinet to make its members look less unkempt, after online mockery of their sagging trousers. Images taken by local media showed what appeared to be an untidy patch of white shirt under the morning suits of Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba and Defense Minister Gen Nakatani. In the official photo issued by Ishiba's office, these blemishes had mysteriously disappeared, but not quickly enough to stop a barrage of mockery of the "untidy cabinet" on social media. "This is more hideous than a group picture of some kind of a seniors'...

Toyota announced Thursday it will no longer sponsor LGBTQ parades and events and will no longer make efforts to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). Toyota told employees it will no longer participate in the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index and other corporate surveys. Instead, it will “narrow our community activities to align with STEM education and workforce readiness,” the automaker explained in a memo to its 50,000 employees and 1,500 dealers. The change follows after conservative activist Robby Starbuck started a social media campaign highlighting the company’s prior support for LGBTQ events and other woke policies.

A shrinking and rapidly aging population has forced Japan, which for centuries was mostly closed off to immigrants, to allow foreign workers to enter the country and potentially stay for good. Most come from other parts of Asia, including China, Vietnam and the Philippines. ... These are areas of the country where few speak languages other than Japanese, and communities tend to be more wary of integrating newcomers. Whether companies can persuade foreigners to stay may dictate their survival. For small and medium-size businesses, the backbone of Japan’s regional economies, “foreign workers are indispensable,” said Yuki Hashimoto, a senior fellow...

China's military was on "high alert" on Thursday (Sep 26) and Beijing said it had lodged a complaint with Tokyo after a Japanese warship sailed through the Taiwan Strait for the first time. Japan's top government spokesman Yoshimasa Hayashi declined to comment on the reports at a regular briefing because they concerned military operations. But Beijing confirmed its military had responded to "the activities of a Japanese Self-Defence Force ship entering the Taiwan Strait". "China is highly vigilant about the political intentions of Japan's actions and has lodged stern representations with Japan," foreign ministry spokesman Lin Jian said.

Kamala Harris was greeted on the tarmac outside Pittsburgh Wednesday not by executives of U.S. Steel but by union leaders. "It’s most important that we maintain America’s ability to have American manufacturing of steel by American workers,” she told MSNBC host Stephanie Ruhle. Ms. Ruhle had compared U.S. Steel leaving Pittsburgh to Philadelphia losing the Liberty Bell to Newark. The iconic Pittsburgh steelmaker has been trying to finalize a sale to Japan’s Nippon Steel for nearly a year, including a robust public relations campaign to convince politicians and workers that the $14.9 billion transaction is the best path forward. Vice...

Japan said its warplanes used flares to warn a Russian reconnaissance aircraft to leave northern Japanese airspace on Monday. Japanese Defense Minister Minoru Kihara told reporters that the Russian Il-38 plane breached Japan's airspace above Rebun Island, just off the coast of the country's northernmost main island of Hokkaido, for up to a minute in three instances, during its five-hour flight in the area. It came a day after a joint fleet of Chinese and Russian warships sailed around Japanese northern coasts. Kihara said the airspace violation could be related to a joint military exercise that Russia and China announced...

Bernard Stein never talked about his combat experiences in Southeast Asia during World War II, but he’d brought the flag home as a war trophy after fighting with the U.S. Army’s 38th Infantry Division in the Philippines, said Scott Stein.

Renowned Japanese brand Panasonic has announced today that it is returning with immediate effect to the U.S. TV marketplace after a near decade-long absence. The brand has confirmed, too, that its return won’t be some half-hearted toe-dipping exercise; in fact it’s going to be giving U.S. AV fans the opportunity to get their hands on its most premium OLED models—models deemed so good by the home entertainment world that they’re sometimes used as reference monitors in professional mastering suites. It came as a shock to many, including me, when Panasonic announced in 2016 that it was no longer going to...

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a large floating accumulation of debris in the Pacific Ocean, can be cleaned up within 10 years at a cost of $7.5 billion — or within five years with a more aggressive strategy costing $4 billion. That’s according to the Ocean Cleanup, a non-profit organization that has led the fight to remove the dangerous plastic from the Pacific — most of which, it says, consists of discarded fishing equipment from Japan and China. The patch is one of the world’s most pressing environmental problems — one that Vice President Kamala Harris said, incorrectly, can be...

Sharing important post by Daniel Berke, (from Manchester, he’s part of UKLFI) sent today 0900 in Gaza/Israel: Shared with his permission. ==== I've been in Gaza with Natasha Hausdorff, Richard Kemp and our group of 5 Eyes senior military veterans. Other than Douglas Murray and Richard Kemp we were the first allowed in The photos need to approved by the IDF. However: We travelled with the Deputy Commander imof the 162nd Southern Command with an armoured infantry unit along the full length of the Philadelphi Corridor, along the Egyptian border to the Sea. The claim that Israel does not allow...

He states that there will be “Rapid Approvals” for the following: —— new drillings, new pipelines, new refineries, new power and electric plants, and new reactors of all types (nuclear) —— “This will quickly reduce the prices of everything almost immediately.”

US Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris visited Pittsburgh for the Labor Day holiday with President Biden. There, she declared that United States Steel should remain domestically owned and operated, yet another high-profile critic of US Steel’s proposed sale to Japan’s Nippon Steel. “US Steel is a historic American company, and it is vital for our nation to maintain strong American steel companies,” Harris told the audience at Union Hall in Pittsburgh, where US Steel is headquartered. She said, “I couldn’t agree more with President Biden — US Steel should remain American-owned, and American-operated. And I will always...

Almost 40,000 people died alone in their homes in Japan during the first half of 2024, a report by the country’s police shows. Of that number, nearly 4,000 people were discovered more than a month after they died, and 130 bodies went unmissed for a year before they were found, according to the National Police Agency. Accounting for 7,498 of the bodies found, the dataset’s largest group belonged to 85-year-olds and above, followed by 75-79-year-olds at 5,920. People aged between 70 and 74 accounted for 5,635 of the bodies found.

Aug. 26 (UPI) -- Japan scrambled fighter jets after a Chinese military plane, for the first time, violated the island nation's airspace, the Japanese government confirmed Monday. According to Japan's Defense Ministry, a Y-9 intelligence-gathering plane at about 11:29 a.m. local time flew over the East China Sea near the Danjo Islands off the southwestern prefecture Nagasaki for roughly two minutes. The incursion prompted the Air Self-Defense Force to scramble its fighter jets, defense ministry officials said. The Y-9 reportedly circled above the water southeast of the islands multiple times before it entered Japanese airspace and before flying back toward...

If ever there were an economic example of the dog that caught the car and has no idea what to do now—it’s Japan, circa 2024. For 25 years now, a succession of leaders tried—and largely failed—to defeat deflation and produce sustained inflation. As many Americans not feeling the economic boom in the globe’s biggest economy will tell you, inflation has a way of clouding all else. Here in Japan, it’s rising faster than wages. In 1999, the BOJ became the first major central bank to slash rates to zero. Two years later, it pioneered quantitative easing. All that free money...

BREAKING: 7.2-magnitude earthquake strikes off Russian coast - tsunami warning issued

The warning of a tremor that could kill more than 320,000 people is forcing Japan to think of the abstract danger of disaster in more concrete terms, says Gearoid Reidy for Bloomberg Opinion.To live in Japan is to live with the risk of a devastating earthquake at any time. Usually, however, people tend to view that threat in the abstract. It’s kind of like thinking about death - I know I’ll die someday, but I hope it won’t be today. And so far, at least, I keep getting lucky. Until we don’t. Thursday’s announcement from Japanese authorities, warning of an...

TOKYO — Japan issued a tsunami advisory Thursday after a 7.1-magnitude earthquake struck off the southern island of Kyushu. The temblor occurred off the coast of Miyazaki Prefecture at 4:42 p.m. local time (3:42 a.m. ET), at a depth of about 18 miles, according to Japan’s meteorological agency. Japanese officials issued a tsunami advisory and warned residents to immediately leave coastal areas of Kochi and Miyazaki prefectures until it had been lifted. Advisories are issued when the waves are not expected to exceed 1 meter (3.3 feet).