It's news you can use from places with different views! (Don't misuse or abuse you yahoos.)
Japan asks young people why they are not marrying amid population crisis
The difference between what angry reactionary weebs in the West think Japan is, and what Japan actually is never fails to amaze.
The Japanese government has begun to consult young people about their interest in marriage – or lack thereof – as Japan continues to struggle with a demographic crisis that is expected to result in a sharp population decline over the next decades.
The Children and Families Agency, launched in April 2023, held its first working group meeting on Friday to support young people in their efforts to find partners through dating, matchmaking and other means. Attenders included those considering marriage in the future and experts versed in the challenges facing younger people.
The government recognised that ideas about marriage among young people are different from what was once considered standard, an agency official said. The government has been seeking experts’ views and now wants those of single people.
“The main premise is that marriage and child-rearing should be based on the respect for diverse values and ways of thinking of individuals,” Ayuko Kato, the minister of state for policies related to children, told the gathering. “We would be grateful if we could hear your real voices – what you are thinking, what is preventing you from making your wishes come true.”
The agency cited the results of a survey of single people, aged 25 to 34, showing 43.3% of men and 48.1% of women said they had no opportunity to meet potential partners in 2021. Many said they had not done anything to increase their chances, such as attending matchmaking events or asking friends for introductions.
Because comparatively few children are born to unmarried people in Japan, the decline of marriage has been cited as a significant reason for its low birthrate and dwindling, ageing population. In 2023, the number of marriages dropped below 500,000 for the first time since the 1930s. Meanwhile, births dropped 5.1% to 758,631, a new record low and almost reaching 755,000, a figure the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research had predicted for 2035.
Surveys have shown that many young Japanese are reluctant to marry or have families because of concerns about the high cost of living in big cities, a lack of good jobs, and a work culture that makes it difficult for both partners to have jobs, or for women to return to full-time employment after having children.
Local governments have responded with measures ranging from daycare to matchmaking. In June, the Tokyo metropolitan government said it would launch a dating app as early as this summer.
The economist Takashi Kadokura said on a Yahoo Japan news blog that local government efforts to promote marriage were not working and marriages were not increasing because of the growing number of non-regular workers who found it financially difficult to start a family.
"Living in the city is too expensive!"
"... How about a dating app?"
Considering what is happening in the world, they, like EU, definitely should prepare themselves. Even if it is late.
Surveys have shown that many young Japanese are reluctant to marry or have families because of concerns about the high cost of living in big cities, a lack of good jobs, and a work culture that makes it difficult for both partners to have jobs, or for women to return to full-time employment after having children.Local governments have responded with measures ranging from daycare to matchmaking. In June, the Tokyo metropolitan government said it would launch a dating app as early as this summer.
First part is like, doh, didn't literally everyone know that was major reasons? Not just in Japan.
Then government responds with launching a dating app. Goddammit. At least better daycare is a positive.
On the flipside, one thing this planet doesn't exactly need more of, is more humans. I wish we could stop looking at low birthrates as a crisis (and I get that it can be a demographic and economic crisis, but only because people are so afraid of importing a foreign workforce)
There is some validity to that argument but, on the other hand, countries like Japan actually have adequate or excessive, in some cases, infrastructure to support their existing populations. And a declining population and tax base is already negatively impacting that infrastructure. Houses abandoned, rural towns disappearing, schools closing, that kind of thing. If you could just pick up people from overpopulated countries and drop them off in Japan that would be one thing but it’s not practical at scale.
If you could just pick up people from overpopulated countries and drop them off in Japan that would be one thing but it’s not practical at scale.
I mean, Texas and Florida use taxpayer money to ship migrants off to places where they're not wanted all the time. Just shift their destination.
Migrants will just get the same problems as the native population. It sounds like a short term solution.
Not to mention that Japan has traditionally been somewhat less than welcoming of foreigners of any kind (read: racist as f*ck). Overcoming that mindset will take quite some time too, and it sounds like they don't really have that kind of time.
To be fair, it also isn't an issue that dropped from a coconut tree yesterday.
They had some time. If they had wanted to use it.
Demographic time bomb has been talked about in EU and Japan for as long as I can remember.
DAMMIT NHK.
Click through for a video on: "China's Xinjiang much changed since 2009 unrest"
Founder of Korean Tech Giant Arrested Over K-Pop Deal
Kim Beom-Su, the billionaire behind Kakao, was taken into custody on Tuesday on allegations of stock manipulation during a bidding war over a major K-pop agency.
Ahem.
lol
Mr GT Chris wrote:If you could just pick up people from overpopulated countries and drop them off in Japan that would be one thing but it’s not practical at scale.
I mean, Texas and Florida use taxpayer money to ship migrants off to places where they're not wanted all the time. Just shift their destination.
On the other hand, as Reuters and others are reporting, it turns out that sometimes this doesn't always work out as intended. The Times put it pretty bluntly:
Britain’s plan to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda cost $900 million and moved only four people.
Venezuela election live updates: Maduro declared winner amid opposition claims of irregularities
Elvis Amoroso, head of the National Electoral Council, said Maduro secured 51% of the vote, overcoming opposition candidate Edmundo González, who garnered 44%. He said the results were based on 80% of voting stations, marking an irreversible trend.
But the electoral authority, which is controlled by Maduro loyalists, has yet to release the official voting tallies from each of the more than 15,000 polling centers, hampering the opposition’s ability to verify the results.
The delay in announcing results — six hours after polls were supposed to close — indicated a deep debate inside the government about how to proceed after Maduro’s opponents came out early in the evening all but claiming victory.
Opposition representatives said tallies they collected from campaign representatives at 30% of voting centers showed Gonzalez trouncing Maduro.
Crowds take to Venezuelan streets to protest what they say is president's attempt to steal election
CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Thousands of demonstrators took to the streets of Venezuela on Monday to protest what they said was an attempt by President Nicolás Maduro to steal the country’s disputed election a day after the political opposition and the entrenched incumbent both claimed victory.
Shortly after the National Electoral Council, which is loyal to Maduro’s ruling party, announced that he had won a third six-year term, angry protesters began marching through the capital, Caracas, and cities across Venezuela.
In the capital, the protests were mostly peaceful, but when dozens of riot gear-clad national police officers blocked the caravan, a brawl broke. Police used tear gas to disperse the protesters, some of whom threw stones and other objects at officers who had stationed themselves on a main avenue of an upper-class district.
The demonstrations followed an election that was among the most peaceful in recent memory, reflecting hopes that Venezuela could avoid bloodshed and end 25 years of single-party rule. The winner was to take control of an economy recovering from collapse and a population desperate for change.
“We have never been moved by hatred. On the contrary, we have always been victims of the powerful,” Maduro said in a nationally televised ceremony. “An attempt is being made to impose a coup d’état in Venezuela again of a fascist and counterrevolutionary nature.”
“We already know this movie, and this time, there will be no kind of weakness,” he added, saying that Venezuela’s “law will be respected.”
There was no immediate comment from the opposition, which had vowed to defend its votes. Opposition leaders planned to hold a news conference later in the day.
In the capital’s impoverished Petare neighborhood, people started walking and shouting against Maduro, and some masked young people tore down campaign posters of him hung on lampposts. Heavily armed security forces were standing just a few blocks away from the protest.
“It’s going to fall. It’s going to fall. This government is going fall!” some of the protesters shouted as they walked.
“He has to go. One way or another,” said María Arráez, a 27-year-old hairdresser, as she joined in the demonstration.
As the crowd marched through a different neighborhood, it was cheered on by retirees and office workers who banged on pots and recorded the protest in a show of support. There were some shouts of “freedom” and expletives directed at Maduro.
Elsewhere, some protesters attempted to block freeways, including one that connects the capital with a port city where the country’s main international airport is.
Officials delayed the release of detailed vote tallies from Sunday’s election after proclaiming Maduro the winner with 51% of the vote, compared with 44% for retired diplomat Edmundo González. The competing claims set up a high-stakes standoff.
“Venezuelans and the entire world know what happened,” González said. But he and his allies asked supporters to remain calm and called on the government to avoid stoking conflict.
Several foreign governments, including the U.S. and the European Union, held off recognizing the election results.
After failing to oust Maduro during three rounds of demonstrations since 2014, the opposition put its faith in the ballot box.
The country sits atop the world’s largest oil reserves and once boasted Latin America’s most advanced economy. But after Maduro took the helm, it tumbled into a free fall marked by plummeting oil prices, widespread shortages of basic goods and hyperinflation of 130,000%.
U.S. oil sanctions sought to force Maduro from power after his 2018 reelection, which dozens of countries condemned as illegitimate. But the sanctions only accelerated the exodus of some 7.7 million Venezuelans who have fled their crisis-stricken nation.
Voters lined up as early as Saturday evening to cast ballots, boosting the opposition’s hopes it was about to break Maduro’s grip on power. The official results came as a shock to many who had celebrated, online and outside a few voting centers, what they believed was a landslide victory for González.
Gabriel Boric, the leftist leader of Chile, called the results “difficult to believe,” while U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Washington had “serious concerns” that the announced tally did not reflect the actual votes or the will of the people.
In response to criticism from other governments, Maduro’s foreign affairs ministry announced it would recall its diplomatic personnel from seven countries in the Americas, including Panama, Argentina and Chile. Foreign Minister Yvan Gil asked the governments of those countries to do the same with their personnel in Venezuela.
He did not explain what would happen to the staff members of opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, including her campaign manager, who have sheltered for months in the Argentinian embassy in Caracas after authorities issued arrest warrants against them.
Machado said the margin of González’s victory was “overwhelming,” based on tallies the campaign received from representatives stationed at about 40% of ballot boxes.
Authorities postponed releasing the results from each of the 30,000 polling booths nationwide, promising only to do so in the “coming hours.” The delay hampered attempts to verify the results.
González was the unlikeliest of opposition standard bearers. The 74-year-old was unknown until he was tapped in April as a last-minute stand-in for opposition powerhouse Machado, who was blocked by the Maduro-controlled supreme court from running for any office for 15 years.
Authorities set Sunday’s election to coincide with what would have been the 70th birthday of former President Hugo Chávez, the revered leftist firebrand who died of cancer in 2013, leaving his Bolivarian revolution in the hands of Maduro. But Maduro and his United Socialist Party of Venezuela, which controls all branches of government, are more unpopular than ever among many voters who blame his policies for crushingly low wages that spurred hunger, crippled the oil industry and separated families due to migration.
The president’s pitch this election was one of economic security, which he tried to sell with stories of entrepreneurship and references to a stable currency exchange and lower inflation rates. The International Monetary Fund forecasts the economy will grow 4% this year — one of the fastest in Latin America — after shrinking 71% from 2012 to 2020.
But most Venezuelans have not seen any improvement in their quality of life. Many earn under $200 a month, which means families struggle to afford essential items. Some work second and third jobs. A basket of food staples to feed a family of four for a month costs an estimated $385.
The opposition managed to line up behind a single candidate after years of intraparty divisions and election boycotts that torpedoed their ambitions to topple the ruling party.
A former lawmaker, Machado swept the opposition’s October primary with over 90% of the vote. After she was blocked from joining the presidential race, she chose a college professor as her substitute on the ballot, but the National Electoral Council also barred her from registering. That’s when González, a political newcomer, was chosen.
González and Machado focused much of their campaigning on Venezuela’s vast hinterland, where the kind of economic activity seen in Caracas in recent years never materialized. They promised a government that would create sufficient jobs to attract Venezuelans living abroad to return home and reunite with their families.
That dream I just had of Sam Fischer from Splinter Cell infiltrating a Wagner Group-like PMC setting off to meddle in overseas politics didn't take long to become closer to reality.
Maduro vows crackdown on Venezuela election protests after victory claim
Tens of thousands of anti-government protesters have returned to Venezuela’s streets to decry Nicolás Maduro’s alleged attempt to steal Sunday’s election, as the country’s authoritarian leader vowed to squash what he called “a violent counter-revolution” and more than 700 arrests were made.
Maduro’s disputed claim to have won the vote has plunged the South American country into another chapter of unrest and uncertainty which has spooked regional governments.
“I cannot say that I am relaxed. I’m not. I am worried. I am leaving here worried,” Celso Amorim, the envoy of Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, told the Guardian on Tuesday morning as he prepared to fly out of Caracas after meeting Maduro the previous day.
On Monday, thousands of residents of poor communities once loyal to the Chavista revolution marched through Venezuela’s capital, Caracas, in a striking demonstration of the widespread anger sparked by Maduro’s claim to have beaten his rival, the ex-diplomat Edmundo González Urrutia.
Maduro has said he won the election with more than 5.1m votes to his rival’s 4.4m. But the opposition insist they won a landslide, with 6.2m votes to Maduro’s 2.7m.
On Tuesday, the demonstrators were back after González and his key backer, the prominent opposition leader María Corina Machado, called on followers to continue their protests.
“It’s obvious that we won … We crushed them. 70% of the country is against the government,” claimed one of those to answer their call, a 35-year-old administrator called Ana Maria González.
Miss South Africa contestant faces backlash over Nigerian father
A South African beauty pageant contestant with a Nigerian father has been subjected to relentless online abuse and interrogations of her right to compete for the Miss South Africa title, as a persistent strain of xenophobia against immigrants from other African countries has resurfaced.
Since Chidimma Adetshina, a 23-year-old law student who was born in Soweto and lives in Cape Town, was announced on 1 July as one of the contestants in the running to represent South Africa at the Miss Universe pageant, there has been constant questioning of whether she is a South African citizen.
In recent days, politicians have waded into the debate, media figures have come to her defence and TV news and talk radio shows have discussed her nationality.
Adetshina said last week that, after about three weeks of the unexpected online onslaught – including questions over whether she favoured Nigeria after a video of her celebrating with Nigerian relatives went viral – she began to ask whether it had been worth entering the Miss South Africa competition.
“I accept criticism,” Adetshina told the Sowetan SMag, in an interview where she also clarified that her mother is South African with Mozambican roots.
“But it’s just a matter of you trying so hard to represent a country, and you wear it with so much pride and so much grace, and the people that you’re representing are not even in support of you.”
She added: “I’m still finding my feet as to how do I go about [it]. Not taking away from the fact that I am South African, but also understanding that I am still proudly Nigerian and I am proudly South African and just being that symbol of peace and unity.”
However, the tide of questions has continued. This includes from South Africa’s minister of sport, art and culture, Gayton McKenzie, who told a radio station on Wednesday: “I have to go and investigate.”
“It would be a travesty for this country to be represented globally by someone who identifies more with Nigeria than South Africa, but I made it clear that I hadn’t made up my mind,” said McKenzie, a self-described reformed bank robber who leads the Patriotic Alliance party, which calls for the mass deportation of illegal immigrants.
“The intense scrutiny and vitriol aimed at Adetshina reveal a continued colonised mindset among many South Africans,” the leftwing Economic Freedom Fighters party said in a statement on Wednesday.
It said that white and Asian former Miss South Africa contestants with foreign parents had not received the same “Afrophobic” scrutiny.
Chronically high rates of unemployment – more than four in 10 adults are out of work – and violent crime have fuelled anti-African immigrant sentiment in South Africa. Operation Dudula, which was founded in 2021 and takes its name from the Zulu word meaning to “push away” or “drive back”, has attacked people accused of being foreign drug dealers, as well as businesses thought to have had non-South African employees.
It's really frustrating to know just how many of the wars and disputes in Africa and the Middle East are direct consequences of the decisions made by European powers via their 18th-20th century colonial administrations of those regions, and then subsequent interference by outside powers (the US in particular) through the latter half of the 20th century.
Japan’s embattled PM had a cruel summer – it ends with his exit
It’s been a cruel summer for Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida.
A series of scandals that implicated the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), Mr Kishida’s closest allies within it and even his family had put his job on the line.
That this happened as living costs shot up and discontent simmered within the LDP did not help the embattled leader.
His approval ratings plummeted to record lows. Through it all a test loomed - the party leadership race that was slated for September.
Some observers said that he would fight for another term, but it was not particularly shocking when he announced that he was bowing out of the race for party president – it means he also won’t be prime minister come September when the LDP picks a new leader.
His diplomatic wins – an ambitious budget to expand the military, deeper ties with the US and a historic détente with South Korea – could not save him.
“The obvious first step to show that the LDP will change is for me to step aside,” the 67-year-old told a roomful of reporters on Wednesday in his usual unflappable manner.
Except for his words, everything else about him suggested it was business as usual.
Is there ever a point where the LDP might lose its stranglehold on Japanese politics?
I don't even know where to start with the shit-show in Thailand over recent months.
An entire party, a Prime Minister, all dimissed in support of some really shitty constitutional situation.
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