As Japan embarks on a major military build-up, it's struggling to fill its ranks with the women that its forces need and its policymakers have pledged to recruit. Following a wave of sexual harassment cases, the number of women applying to join the Self-Defence Forces (SDF) decreased by 12% in the year ending March 2023, after several years of steady growth. But nine months after the defence ministry pledged to take drastic measures, it has no plans to take action on a key recommendation issued by an independent panel of experts - implementing a national system for reviewing anti-harassment training standards - according to two ministry officials responsible for training.
An all-out Israeli offensive on the Gaza city of Rafah would provoke "anarchy" without eliminating Hamas, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Sunday, as Washington stepped up a pressure campaign against such an assault.- Death toll tops 35,000 - Blinken also spoke Sunday with Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, insisting again the United States opposed a major Israel ground operation in Rafah, the State Department said.
Savannah Guthrie is celebrating Mother's Day by honoring the generations of moms in her family.
Fires being used as a weapon in Sudan destroyed more villages and towns in the country's west in April than in any other month since the conflict began more than a year ago, an analysis by a U.K.-based rights group said Monday. Sudan Witness, an open-source project run by the nonprofit Center for Information Resilience, said 72 villages and settlements were either destroyed or damaged by fires last month, bringing the total number of settlements hit by fire in Sudan to 201 since the conflict began in mid-April of last year. “We’ve documented the patterns of numerous fires and the continuing devastation to settlements around western Sudan, large and small, since the conflict broke out last April," Anouk Theunissen, Sudan Witness project director, said in a news release Monday.
Daniel Duggan, a naturalized Australian citizen, feared requests by Western intelligence agencies for sensitive information were putting his family at risk, according to his lawyer.
Quarterly earnings reports from Chinese e-commerce giants Alibaba and JD.com this week will be closely watched as barometers for the mood of consumers in the world's second-largest economy. Both firms, which combined account for about 69% of China's e-commerce market revenue, according to DBS estimates, have faced increasing competition in recent years from low-cost platforms, such as PDD Holding's Pinduoduo and ByteDance-owned Douyin. Chinese consumers are seeking discounts and lower-cost shopping because of their cautious attitude toward spending after the COVID-19 pandemic amid lower economic growth and the slowdown in the property sector.
Due to a severe solar storm, the northern lights became visible across the United States. Here's everything to know about the solar storm and where the northern lights could be visible.
Nobody has anything nice to say about Michael Cohen.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has replaced his defense minister Sergei Shoigu with a civilian, Andrey Belousov, citing the country’s rising defense budget and the need for “innovation.”
Succes Masra, who came second in Chad's presidential election, announced Sunday he had lodged a request with the Constitutional Council to have the vote annulled."Our request is for the annulment, pure and simple, of this electoral farce," Sitack Yombatina, vice president of Masra's Transformers Party, told AFP. "All the evidence is in the USB keys," attached to the request lodged with the Constitutional Council, he added.
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Sunday moved to replace defence minister Sergei Shoigu in a major shake-up to Russia's military leadership more than two years into its Ukraine offensive.The move comes at a key time in the conflict with Russian troops advancing in eastern Ukraine and having just launched a major new ground operation against the northeastern Kharkiv region.
Microsoft on Sunday announced four billion euros in investment for developing data centres in France, joining fellow US giant Amazon in committing to the country's tech infrastructure.As Choose France prepared to get under way, several pharmaceutical groups, including US group Pfizer and Britain's AstraZeneca, announced on Sunday commitments to invest more than a billion euros more in France's health sector.
Lawmakers in Washington, DC, on Sunday weighed in on President Joe Biden’s ultimatum last week on CNN that an Israeli invasion of Rafah would cause him to pause certain weapons transfers.
The ongoing solar storm provided a celestial spectacle and enthusiastic viewers took to social media and elsewhere to share photos.
India's six-week election is set to resume Monday including in Kashmir, where voters are expected to show their discontent with dramatic changes in the disputed territory under Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government.- Nearly one billion voters - India's election is conducted in seven phases over six weeks to ease the immense logistical burden of staging the democratic exercise in the world's most populous country.
Rachel Goldberg-Polin also said she doesn't know what could end the brutal war.
River levels rose again Sunday as strong rains lashed waterlogged southern Brazil, where flooding has killed more than 140 people and forced hundreds of thousands from their homes.The new threat comes as rescue operations are still underway, with some 130 people missing, while more than 619,000 were forced to leave their homes.
Workers at the first Apple Store to unionize have now also authorized a first strike against the tech giant’s retail operations. Apple Store workers in Towson, Maryland, voted late Saturday to authorize a strike, according to a statement from the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers’ Coalition of Organized Retail Employees, which represents the workers. The vote followed what the union called “over a year of negotiations with Apple management that yielded unsatisfactory outcomes.”
The Punxsutawney Groundhog Club Inner Circle announced on Facebook that two names had finally been chosen for Phil and his wife Phyllis' new babies, who were born in March.
Several thousand Georgians gathered outside parliament in Tbilisi Sunday night in a fresh protest against a Russian-styled "foreign agent" bill, despite government officials warning of arrests.The authorities warned that they would arrest those who try to block parliament and many expected the protest to be dispersed should people stay all night.