TOKYO: Japan’s new Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba warned in his first policy speech Friday that “today’s Ukraine could be tomorrow’s East Asia” while also dubbing the country’s low birth rate a “quiet emergency.”
“Many fear that today’s Ukraine could be tomorrow’s East Asia. Why did deterrence not work in Ukraine?” Ishiba told parliament.
“Combined with the situation in the Middle East, the international community is becoming increasingly divided and confrontational,” the 67-year-old former defense minister said.
Japan’s relations with China have deteriorated in recent years as Beijing asserts its military presence around disputed territories in the region and Tokyo boosts security ties with the United States and its allies.
In August, a Chinese military aircraft staged the first confirmed incursion by China into Japanese airspace, followed weeks later by a Japanese warship sailing through the Taiwan Strait for the first time.
Ishiba backs the creation of a regional military alliance along the lines of NATO, saying on Tuesday that the security environment in Asia was “the most severe since the end of World War II.”
Japan, like many developed countries, is facing a looming demographic crisis as its population ages and the birth rate stays stubbornly low.
The country has the world’s oldest population after tiny Monaco, according to the World Bank.
Last year its birth rate — the average number of children a woman is expected to have in her life — stood at 1.2, well below the 2.1 children needed to maintain the population.
On Friday, Ishiba called the birth rate situation a “quiet emergency,” adding that the government will promote measures to support families such as flexible working hours.
Kishida was unpopular with voters because of a string of scandals and inflation squeezing earnings in the world’s fourth-biggest economy.
Ishiba wants to boost incomes through a new monetary stimulus package as well as support for regional governments and low-income households.
Within this decade, he said Friday he wants to hike the average national minimum wage to 1,500 yen ($10.20) per hour, up nearly 43 percent from the current 1,050 yen.
The yen surged last Friday after the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) voted Ishiba leader, because he had broadly backed the Bank of Japan’s exit from its ultra-loose policies.
But Ishiba told reporters late Wednesday that he did not think the environment was right for further interest rate hikes, sending the Japanese currency south again.
On Friday morning, one dollar bought 146.42 yen, having slightly recovered from levels past 147 earlier this week.
Japan PM warns ‘today’s Ukraine could be tomorrow’s East Asia’
https://arab.news/2sde6
Japan PM warns ‘today’s Ukraine could be tomorrow’s East Asia’
- Japan’s relations with China have deteriorated in recent years as Beijing asserts its military presence around disputed territories in the region and Tokyo boosts security ties with the United States
Epstein scandal deals new blow to Norway crown princess
- Her name appears at least 1,000 times in the millions of new Epstein documents
- Mette-Marit had ceased contact with late US sex offender in 2014
OSLO: Norway’s crown princess, whose son goes on trial Tuesday on rape charges, found herself embroiled in another scandal this weekend after newly unsealed files revealed her unexpected friendship with late US sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
The latest scandal has even raised questions about whether Mette-Marit, a commoner who married Crown Prince Haakon in 2001, could still become queen one day.
Her name appears at least 1,000 times in the millions of new Epstein documents released by the US Department of Justice on Friday, according to Norwegian daily VG.
Messages between the two published in Norwegian media date from 2011 to 2014.
In one email, Mette-Marit asked Epstein if it was “inappropriate for a mother to suggest two naked women carrying a surfboard for my 15 yr old son’s wallpaper.”
In another, she told him he was “very charming.”
When Epstein told her he was in Paris “on (a) wife hunt” in 2012, she replied saying the French capital is “good for adultery” and “Scandis (are) better wife material.”
Epstein had at that point already pleaded guilty in 2008 to soliciting a minor for prostitution.
The files show she also stayed at his house in Florida for four days in 2013.
On Saturday, Mette-Marit addressed her “embarrassing” friendship with the disgraced financier, who died in 2019 by suicide in jail as he awaited trial for sex crimes against minors.
“I showed poor judgment and I deeply regret having had any contact with Epstein. It is simply embarrassing,” she said in a statement sent to AFP by the royal palace.
The 52-year-old said she was responsible “for not having checked Epstein’s background more closely and not understanding quickly enough what kind of person he was.”
Yet in 2011, Mette-Marit wrote to Epstein that she had “googled” him, adding “it didn’t look too good” and ending the sentence with a smiling emoji.
She did not specify exactly what she was referring to.
According to the palace, Mette-Marit had ceased contact with Epstein in 2014 because she felt he was “trying to use his relationship with the crown princess as leverage with other people.”
- Terrible timing -
“It almost gives the impression that they were close friends,” historian and royal expert Ole-Jorgen Schulsrud-Hansen said.
He noted however the broader context of the messages was unknown.
“A crown princess is never a private person,” he noted.
“This shows in any case a lack of judgment and that all the ‘safety catches’ around her also failed.”
On Sunday, Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store said he “agreed” that Mette-Marit had made an error in judgment.
“Can Mette-Marit become queen after this?” Kjetil Alstadheim, chief political editor of Norway’s paper of reference Aftenposten, asked in an op-ed piece, leaving the question unanswered.
The timing could not be worse for Mette-Marit.
On Tuesday, her 29-year-old son Marius Borg Hoiby, born from a relationship before her marriage to Crown Prince Haakon, goes on trial at Oslo’s district court.
He is accused of allegedly committing 38 crimes, including the rape of four women as well as assault and drug offenses. He could face up to 16 years in jail if found guilty.
Hoiby denies the most serious charges.
The royal couple will not attend the seven-week trial, and Crown Prince Haakon told reporters that Mette-Marit would be away on a private trip during that period.
These woes come on top of her own health issues.
She suffers from an incurable lung illness, a rare form of pulmonary fibrosis that makes it difficult for her to breathe.
In December, the palace announced that she would likely have to undergo a lung transplant, a risky operation generally considered a last resort.
“She is someone who is under much pressure. But that should not stop any criticism, if it is factual,” said Schulsrud-Hansen.
