Global Pulse

标签： Asia

亚洲

  • Prabowo touts Indonesia’s economic growth and investment gains in State of the Nation address

    Prabowo touts Indonesia’s economic growth and investment gains in State of the Nation address

    In a nationally televised annual State of the Nation address delivered to Indonesia’s parliament in Jakarta on Friday, President Prabowo Subianto highlighted the Southeast Asian nation’s strongest first-half economic expansion in 13 years, projecting that full-year growth could hit 6% despite persistent global economic volatility. However, his optimistic outlook has drawn pushback from economists, who argue headline growth numbers are disconnected from the everyday struggles of ordinary Indonesians.

    Prabowo outlined that Indonesia’s economy grew 5.61% in the first quarter of 2024, followed by a 5.45% expansion in the first half of the year. This marks the highest first-quarter and first-semester growth rate the country has recorded since 2011. “With the right policies, rational policies and policies based on common sense, I am confident our economic growth can reach 6% by the end of this year,” the president told the assembled lawmakers, striking a confident tone in his speech.

    Notably, Prabowo emphasized that robust GDP growth and rising investment are not ends in themselves. He stressed that the true measure of economic success lies in whether expansion translates to improved welfare for the general population, particularly low-income households. “For me, growth and investment are not the final goal. Our goal is the welfare of our people,” Prabowo said. “High growth that cannot be enjoyed by most of our people is of no benefit to us.”

    The address came ahead of Indonesia’s 81st Independence Day celebrations on Monday, with the president outlining that every rupiah of incoming investment should be directed toward creating formal employment, expanding access to critical public services, and boosting government support for vulnerable communities. He cited recent investment data to back up his administration’s track record: realized investment hit 1,931 trillion rupiah (equivalent to $108 billion) in 2023, generating more than 2.7 million new jobs, while first-half 2024 investment reached 1,010 trillion rupiah ($56.7 billion), creating an additional 1.4 million positions.

    Prabowo also highlighted several flagship social and economic policies his administration has rolled out, which he said are already delivering tangible benefits to Indonesians. These include the signature Free Nutritious Meals program, expanded social assistance schemes, and regulatory policies designed to boost downstream processing of Indonesia’s abundant natural resources, moving the country beyond exporting unprocessed raw materials. “Our promise of nutritious meals, social assistance and down-streaming is no longer merely a plan on paper,” he said. “It is already underway, and the people are feeling the benefits.”

    Launched in 2023 to address widespread malnutrition, the Free Nutritious Meals program aims to deliver free daily meals to nearly 90 million school-aged children and pregnant women across the archipelago. Beyond improving public nutrition, the government designed the initiative to stimulate demand for local agricultural goods and support employment across the domestic food supply chain. However, the program has faced growing public and regulatory scrutiny in recent weeks following a string of food poisoning incidents that have sickened thousands of students nationwide. Most recently, on Thursday, 269 students from three high schools in Karo Regency, North Sumatra, fell ill after eating meals supplied through the government program.

    Beyond concerns over the free meals initiative, some independent economists have questioned whether the government’s strong growth figures align with the economic realities facing most Indonesian households. Nailul Huda, a researcher at Jakarta-based think tank the Center of Economic and Law Studies (Celios), pointed to slowing household consumption, rising layoffs, and persistent challenges in securing stable formal work as evidence that the benefits of recent growth have not been widely shared.

    Huda noted that softening consumer confidence and ongoing labor market concerns point to a clear gap between headline GDP growth and the daily experiences of most Indonesians, especially those in lower income brackets. “The government always claims the economy is growing strongly, but lower-income communities do not feel it,” Huda said.

  • Tunnel collapses at an Indian hydropower project, killing at least 7

    Tunnel collapses at an Indian hydropower project, killing at least 7

    A catastrophic overnight collapse at an under-construction hydropower tunnel in India’s northern Himalayan state of Uttarakhand has left at least seven workers dead, with three more still unaccounted for, local officials confirmed in a press briefing Friday.

    The incident unfolded late Thursday at the Vishnugad-Pipalkoti hydroelectric project located in Uttarakhand’s Chamoli district. A sudden surge of water mixed with rocky debris breached the unfinished tunnel, trapping construction crews who were on-site when the collapse occurred, according to Gaurav Kumar, the top district administrative officer. Immediately following the disaster, a large-scale multi-agency rescue mission was deployed to reach trapped workers and clear the blocked passage.

    State Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami confirmed that out of the 22 workers who were inside the tunnel when the accident happened, 12 have been pulled out alive, with seven confirmed dead and three remaining missing as of Friday.

    Rescue teams drawn from the National Disaster Response Force, state Disaster Response Force, Indo-Tibetan Border Police, and local fire services are currently working against hazardous conditions to locate the three missing workers. Amrit Lal Meena, commander of the NDRF team deployed to the site, described the challenging operational environment. “When our team first arrived and launched operations, the tunnel was already flooded, with water actively seeping through the rock walls,” Meena explained. “Since we started, water levels have risen substantially, which is slowing our progress significantly.”

    The collapse shines a renewed spotlight on the persistent safety crisis plaguing India’s booming infrastructure sector. Fatal construction accidents are far too common across the country, as rapid development of large-scale projects often clashes with unstable geological formations, inconsistent construction oversight, extreme weather patterns, and lax enforcement of workplace safety standards.

    This risk is amplified exponentially in India’s Himalayan region, where naturally fragile mountain formations, frequent seismic activity, and unpredictable underground geological conditions make large tunneling projects inherently dangerous. The latest disaster is just one in a string of fatal infrastructure accidents in the country in recent years. In February 2024, an explosion at an underground coal mine in the northeastern state of Meghalaya claimed the lives of at least 18 workers. In 2023, another major tunnel collapse in Uttarakhand trapped 41 construction workers for 17 days before a dramatic, high-profile rescue operation successfully extracted all of them alive.

  • ‘Unprecedented’ rains in Japan kill four people

    ‘Unprecedented’ rains in Japan kill four people

    One of the most extreme rainfall events in modern Japanese history has devastated Chiba Prefecture, the populous eastern region adjacent to Tokyo, leaving at least four people dead and five others injured after days of unprecedented downpour.

    Local officials first activated Japan’s highest-level Level 5 emergency warning on Thursday as hourly rainfall topped 100mm – three times the average August precipitation for the region and the highest hourly accumulation ever recorded in the country. By Friday morning, the alert was stepped down to Level 4, but authorities continued to urge caution, warning that residual risks of landslides and flash flooding remained high across the area.

    The extreme weather has left widespread disruption in its wake: more than 20,000 households lost power, more than 100,000 households were ordered to evacuate, and roughly 7,000 air travelers were stranded overnight at Tokyo’s major Narita International Airport as transport networks collapsed. Vehicles were left abandoned on inundated streets in the city of Oamishirasato, while around 1,800 residents took shelter overnight at the Chiba Prefectural Government building. Rail lines and major highways remained out of service on Friday morning, though airport officials confirmed that regular flight operations were set to resume by the end of the day, with only minor delays expected from major carriers.

    Japan Meteorological Agency experts explained that the extreme downpour formed when warm, moisture-heavy air flowing into eastern Japan collided with upper-level cold air, creating highly unstable atmospheric conditions that prolonged the rain. Forecasters projected the rainfall would continue through late Friday.

    Chiba Governor Toshihito Kumagai described the event as an extraordinary anomaly even for a disaster-prone nation like Japan. “This case was an extremely unusual situation, even by Japan’s historical weather standards,” Kumagai told reporters Friday. “I have responded to many disasters in the past, but I have never experienced a case like this.” The governor confirmed that search and rescue operations would remain the top priority for local authorities in the coming days.

    Local resident accounts highlight the sudden and destructive nature of the flood. One small business owner in Ichikawa city told public broadcaster NHK that the storm struck with no warning, leaving her concerned about the future of her enterprise amid extended power outages.

    The deadly Chiba deluge is part of a broader pattern of extreme storm activity across East Asia this week, forecasters confirm. The region is currently experiencing what has been projected to be an unusually active Pacific typhoon season, with three back-to-back storms – Dolphin, Chan-Hom, and Peilou – having swept across Japan, the Philippines, and China earlier this week.

    Storm Dolphin previously hit Japan’s Okinawa island, cutting power to tens of thousands of structures, felling trees, and forcing hundreds of flight cancellations. When the same system made landfall in eastern China over the weekend as the year’s strongest typhoon to hit the country, Chinese authorities evacuated more than one million residents to safety. To the south, Philippine officials have suspended classes and government operations across most of the country’s northern regions amid ongoing flood threats.

  • A look at the history and beliefs behind Japan’s controversial shrine to the war dead

    A look at the history and beliefs behind Japan’s controversial shrine to the war dead

    Nestled in the heart of central Tokyo, Yasukuni Shrine is far more than a simple Shinto memorial: it is a site of profound spiritual meaning for some, and a persistent source of diplomatic friction that has strained Japan’s relations with its neighboring nations for decades. The story of this controversial shrine begins in the earliest days of the Meiji Restoration, when Japan underwent a dramatic transformation from a feudal military state to a modern imperial power.

    In 1868, after more than 250 years of rule by the Tokugawa shogunate, imperial authority was restored to the Japanese emperor. Just one year into the new Meiji era, Emperor Meiji ordered the construction of a memorial to honor those who had died fighting for the imperial cause. On an initial visit to the site in 1874, the emperor pledged that the names of all who sacrificed their lives for the nation would be commemorated there in perpetuity. The shrine was eventually renamed Yasukuni, drawn from Japanese characters meaning “peaceful country,” and today it honors more than 2.4 million people who died in service to Japan.

    The founding of Yasukuni was deeply tied to the rise of State Shinto, a state-sponsored ideological framework that blended religious tradition with nationalist fervor. Under longstanding Shinto belief, Japanese emperors are direct descendants of the sun goddess Amaterasu, but the narrative of the emperor’s divine status was amplified during the Meiji era to unify the new nation. “Yasukuni Shrine was initially conceived as a way to send a message to the Japanese people,” explained Akiko Takenaka, a history professor at the University of Kentucky. “The message was about the emperor; the message was about a new Japan.” In this new order, dying for the emperor and empire was framed as the highest honor a citizen could receive, and the emperor himself was positioned as the source of that honor.

    Under State Shinto, the Japanese government controlled the shrine’s operations and funding, and the line between religious practice and national patriotism was intentionally erased. As Susumu Shimazono, a leading scholar of religion and modern Japan, wrote in the *Japanese Journal of Religious Studies*, “The Meiji reformers believed that they were establishing an ideal nation in which the people and the sacred emperor maintained a spiritual union.” This arrangement ended abruptly after Japan’s surrender in World War II. In December 1945, occupying U.S. General Douglas MacArthur issued an order abolishing State Shinto, cutting off government funding for shrines and removing Shinto teachings from public institutions to enforce the constitutional separation of religion and state. Yasukuni was reorganized as a private religious corporation, a status that has not erased persistent questions about the meaning of official visits by sitting Japanese leaders.

    It is the enshrinement of convicted war criminals that has made Yasukuni the most divisive site in Japanese post-war memory. Unlike traditional cemeteries, Yasukuni does not hold the remains of the deceased; instead, those commemorated are enshrined as kami, or sacred spirits, in the Shinto tradition. The honorees include ordinary soldiers, female battlefield medics, student wartime workers, and even foreign nationals who died in Japanese service. But the most contentious enshrinements are 14 convicted Class-A war criminals — Japanese wartime leaders found guilty of “crimes against peace” for planning and waging aggressive war across Asia, including wartime Prime Minister Hideki Tojo, a key architect of the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor.

    These 14 war criminals were secretly enshrined at Yasukuni by the shrine’s head priest in 1978, three years after Emperor Hirohito’s last visit to the site. When Hirohito learned of the enshrinement, he never returned to Yasukuni to avoid international criticism, according to Mark R. Mullins, a professor of Japanese and religious studies at the University of Auckland. Neither of Hirohito’s successors has visited the shrine in person, though both have sent official emissaries to attend key annual rites. The controversy extends beyond war criminals: dozens of enshrinements of Buddhists, Christians, and colonial subjects from Korea and Taiwan have been contested by family members who say their relatives were added without consent. Many of these families have taken legal action to remove their relatives’ spirits, but Japanese courts have repeatedly rejected these efforts.

    For many Japanese people, particularly bereaved families of fallen soldiers, Yasukuni holds deeply personal meaning that is separate from its political baggage. Before deploying to war, Japanese soldiers were often told that if they died in service, their spirits would reside at Yasukuni. “They told their families: ‘I want you to come see me at Yasukuni Shrine,’” said Toshiei Mizuochi, president of the Japan War-Bereaved Families Association. Mizuochi’s own father, a navy officer, was killed in a bombing just six days before Japan’s surrender on August 15, 1945. Of the more than 2.4 million Japanese soldiers who died overseas in World War II, roughly 1 million still have not had their remains recovered. “For that reason, the vast majority of bereaved families who received neither remains nor personal belongings believe that the spirits of the war dead are at Yasukuni Shrine,” Mizuochi explained. Many relatives visit the shrine year-round, not just on the annual August 15 anniversary of Japan’s surrender, to mark family milestones, commemorate death anniversaries, and connect with the spirits of their loved ones. Mizuochi says he visits dozens of times a year, and every time he prays, he sees his father’s face in his mind.

    Other visitors frame their trips as a matter of spiritual reflection, not glorification of war. “I have absolutely no intention of glorifying war,” said Kana Shindo, a member of Tokyo’s Minato City Assembly, who visits to purify her mind and give thanks for the peace modern Japan enjoys. “I visit because I believe that the peaceful Japan in which we live today exists upon the lives and accumulated history of the people who lived before us,” she added.

    But for neighboring countries that endured decades of Japanese imperial occupation and aggression, including China and South Korea, Yasukuni is an unmistakeable symbol of Japanese militarism. Visits by sitting Japanese prime ministers and other government leaders regularly draw fierce diplomatic condemnation, with both nations arguing that such trips are evidence that Japan has not fully reckoned with or taken full responsibility for its wartime atrocities. Adjacent to the shrine, the private Yushukan Museum, which displays wartime artifacts, has drawn widespread criticism from scholars for its biased retelling of Japanese military history, which erases the suffering of Chinese and Korean people under imperial rule. “By eliminating the enemy, the Yushukan remembers a war that was only ever glorious,” John Breen, a professor at the International Research Center for Japanese Studies, wrote in an analysis of the shrine’s memorial practice. For nationalist groups that seek to reverse post-war reforms and restore Japan’s pre-war imperial identity, Yasukuni holds particular symbolic meaning, deepening the divides around the site.

    Today, Yasukuni remains what it has been for more than 150 years: a site that reflects competing visions of Japan’s history, identity, and place in the world, carrying meaning that shifts dramatically depending on who is asked.

  • Summer McIntosh storms to Pan Pacs 400 IM title, rebounding from 200 free runner-up finish

    Summer McIntosh storms to Pan Pacs 400 IM title, rebounding from 200 free runner-up finish

    The 2024 Pan Pacific Championships kicked off this week in Irvine, California, delivering a series of thrilling races, unexpected upsets, and record-breaking performances that kept swimming fans on the edge of their seats Thursday night. Leading the night of competition was 19-year-old Canadian swimming phenom Summer McIntosh, who claimed gold in the women’s 400-meter individual medley in dominant fashion, bouncing back quickly from a silver medal finish in the opening night’s 200-meter freestyle event.

    McIntosh held the lead from the opening stroke of the four-stroke race, and early on she even dipped briefly below her own existing world record pace, a testament to her world-class speed and conditioning. Entering the eight-woman outdoor final as the second-fastest qualifier, she crossed the touchpad in 4 minutes 28.01 seconds, setting a new Pan Pacific Championships event record. The result marked a strong redemptive performance for McIntosh, who had openly expressed disappointment with her result just one night earlier, when Australia’s Lani Pallister edged her out for gold in the 200m freestyle.

    Australia’s Jenna Forrester took silver in the 400m IM with a time of 4:31.50, while 18-year-old Argentine Agostina Hein rounded out the podium to take bronze. Hein entered the final as the top qualifier from the preliminary heats, holding onto her strong form to secure a spot on the medals stand.

    One of the night’s biggest upsets came in the women’s 100-meter freestyle, where Australia’s Meg Harris claimed an unexpected gold medal starting from the outside sixth lane. Harris touched the wall in 52.60 seconds, beating out American rising star Gretchen Walsh, who finished just 0.18 seconds behind in 52.77. Walsh had actually held a 0.01 second lead under world record pace at the 50-meter turn, but couldn’t hold off Harris’s strong finishing sprint. Australia’s Olivia Wunsch took third, while 2016 Rio Olympic gold medalist Simone Manuel of the United States finished just off the podium in fourth place.

    The U.S. men’s team claimed the top two spots on the podium in the men’s 100-meter freestyle. Jack Alexy took gold, clocking a new championship record of 47.14 seconds, shaving 0.26 seconds off the event record he had already set in the preliminary heats earlier in the day. His teammate Patrick Sammon took silver with a time of 47.62, while Brazil’s Guilherme Caribe earned bronze.

    In the women’s 100-meter breaststroke, American McKenzie Siroky claimed her first ever career international gold medal, outtouching China’s Tang Qianting in a tight final sprint. Siroky finished in 1:05.32, just 0.14 seconds ahead of Tang’s 1:05.46 to take the top spot on the podium.

    The final featured race of the night, the men’s 400-meter individual medley, delivered a historic result: Japan’s Tomoyuki Matsushita took gold in 4:06.75, erasing the 14-year-old Pan Pacific Championships record set by American swimming legend Ryan Lochte back at the 2010 Pan Pacific Championships, which were also hosted in Irvine. American Carson Foster took silver, and Matsushita expressed his joy at the historic win in post-race comments, saying through a translator, “Next time I come back to the U.S. I’m going to get gold again.”

    The four-day international swimming competition continues through the weekend, with more top swimmers from across the globe set to compete for championship titles and medals.

  • Tanzid’s 74 lifts Bangladesh to 181-2 at lunch on Day 2 of 1st cricket test against Australia

    Tanzid’s 74 lifts Bangladesh to 181-2 at lunch on Day 2 of 1st cricket test against Australia

    In the tropical heat of Australia’s far northern city of Darwin, Bangladesh’s cricket team has built a commanding position against the host nation in the opening match of their two-test ‘Top End’ series, with rising batting star Tanzid Hasan leading the charge with an unbeaten half-century at the lunch break on Day 2.

    Bangladesh, which had restricted Australia to a first-innings total of just 198 all out on opening day, resumed play on Friday morning at 96 for one wicket, still trailing the hosts by 102 runs on first innings. Over the next three hours of the morning session, Hasan and his batting partners added a steady 85 runs to the total, losing only one wicket against Australia’s full-strength, world-renowned pace attack, leaving the visitors at 181 for two at the interval.

    The standout performance of the session came from 22-year-old Tanzid, who has now faced 144 balls to notch an unbeaten 74. The innings, which includes six fours and one towering six, marked the young opener’s maiden half-century in just his second appearance in test cricket, the sport’s longest and most prestigious format. He first shared a century stand of 102 runs with veteran batsman Mominul Haque, who compiled a patient 49 from 95 deliveries, hitting eight boundaries along the way. Mominul was just one well-timed shot away from claiming his 29th test half-century when he flashed at a wide delivery from star Australian paceman Josh Hazlewood, edging the ball through to wicketkeeper Alex Carey to be caught behind, breaking the 102-run partnership.

    After the loss of Mominul at 138 for two, Bangladesh captain Najmul Hossain Shanton joined Tanzid in the middle, and the pair added an unbeaten 43 runs before lunch. Shanton has so far scored 28 runs from 40 deliveries, with three boundaries, giving the visitors a solid platform to build on when play resumes after the break.

    The solid performance from Bangladesh’s batters follows a stunning display from their bowling attack on Day 1, which overshadowed the highly anticipated reunion of Australia’s legendary ‘Big Four’ bowling unit – pace trio Pat Cummins, Josh Hazlewood and Mitchell Starc, and veteran off-spinner Nathan Lyon. This series marks Bangladesh’s first test match played on Australian soil since 2003, and pace bowler Hasan Mahmud delivered a career-best performance, taking six wickets for 55 runs to bundle Australia out for 198 in just 53 overs.

    For the hosts, the opening test of the series kicks off a grueling 12-month schedule that will see Australia play 20 test matches, including away tours to South Africa, India and England. After years of test cricket being disrupted by global events, the 20-test year underlines the heavy fixture demand facing the world’s top cricket sides in the current international calendar.

  • US says dozens of countries helped China dodge Trump’s tariffs

    US says dozens of countries helped China dodge Trump’s tariffs

    On Thursday, the White House released a contentious trade report accusing China of systematically evading hundreds of billions of dollars in U.S. tariffs through a widespread global transshipment scheme, alleging more than 40 nations — including major U.S. allies and trading partners Canada, Mexico, India, Japan and South Korea — have facilitated the practice. The document claims the alleged tariff avoidance has stripped American workers of jobs and deprived the U.S. government of billions in annual import revenue, according to White House trade adviser Peter Navarro. Transshipment, a standard logistics practice of moving cargo through an intermediate country en route to its final destination, has been exploited by China to route goods produced on its mainland through nations that face lower U.S. import duties, the White House argued. The report further alleges Chinese actors deliberately repackage shipments and falsify origin documentation to conceal a product’s actual manufacturing source, framing the practice as a “Great Transshipment Scam” and “fraud cloaked in paperwork.” “What has changed in today’s Great Transshipment Scam is not merely the speed and scale of this modern form of smuggling, but the breadth, depth, and sophistication of the global Shadow Transshipment Network through which China’s tariff evasion now moves,” the report reads. To counter the alleged scheme, the White House confirmed U.S. authorities have begun leveraging artificial intelligence tools to detect and block illicit transshipment activity. In response to inquiries from the BBC, a spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Washington pushed back against the accusations, stating that “trade wars have no winners.” The spokesperson emphasized China opposes both the United States’ unilateral tariff measures and the use of state power to target Chinese companies, adding that “any unilateral actions or agreements concerning transshipped goods must not target or harm the interests of third parties.” The BBC has reached out to U.S. embassies of all nations named in the report to request comment on the accusations, with no official responses released as of publication. The explosive report lands amid an ongoing cycle of tit-for-tat trade sanctions between Washington and Beijing, and just weeks ahead of a scheduled high-stakes meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Washington D.C. Experts widely expect the transshipment accusation to become a major new sticking point in bilateral trade talks ahead of the September summit. Current trade tensions between the two powers have persisted despite a May 2025 tariff pause that followed earlier negotiations. In the months since that agreement, both sides have rolled out new restrictive trade measures: Washington imposed new curbs on imports of Chinese humanoid robots, while Beijing tightened export controls on critical drone components. The current trade conflict traces back to April 2025, when President Trump unveiled sweeping new tariffs on dozens of U.S. trading partners, rooted in his long-standing position that import duties will strengthen American manufacturing and boost domestic job growth. While the Supreme Court later struck down those initial levies as unlawful, Trump has repeatedly enacted new tariffs using alternative legal authorities to advance his signature trade policy. The White House estimates that between $30 billion and as much as $300 billion in Chinese goods are annually routed through lower-tariff third countries to avoid U.S. duties, combining data from both government and private industry analysts.

  • Heavy rain causes flooding near Tokyo that kills 4 and disrupts train and air travel

    Heavy rain causes flooding near Tokyo that kills 4 and disrupts train and air travel

    Days after the end of Japan’s annual Bon Buddhist holiday week, devastating record-breaking downpours swept through eastern regions of Tokyo overnight, leaving a trail of destruction across Chiba prefecture that has claimed at least four lives and left one resident unaccounted for. The extreme weather triggered widespread flooding that submerged roads, damaged dozens of residential properties, cut power supplies to tens of thousands of households, and stranded thousands of travelers across the region.

    As rain levels began to subside early Friday morning, the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) announced it would downgrade its highest-level emergency heavy rain warning for more than 10 municipalities across the prefecture. Even so, forecasters warned of additional precipitation expected later in the day, keeping local disaster response teams on high alert. When dawn broke Friday, aerial footage and on-the-ground reporting revealed the full scale of the damage: muddy floodwaters engulfed ground floors of family homes, swallowed parked vehicles, and submerged sections of regional railway tracks.

    In response to the crisis, Japan’s Ground Self-Defense Force launched emergency rescue operations to evacuate stranded residents and travelers. Around 4,000 people who were forced to spend the night at Soga Train Station — a commuter hub that also serves the nearby Tokyo Disney Resort — were picked up by military-arranged buses. Officials confirmed the popular theme park suffered no structural damage or injuries from the flooding. Thousands more holiday travelers were stranded overnight at Narita International Airport, the major air hub serving the Tokyo metropolitan area, after all regional train services out of the affected area were halted. Train operations partially resumed Friday morning, though significant delays continued, while inbound and outbound flights at Narita operated on a normal schedule as travelers headed home following the end of the national holiday week. Hundreds of other residents affected by flooding took emergency shelter overnight at the Chiba prefectural government building.

    Prefectural disaster officials confirmed four fatalities linked to the flooding: a man found floating in floodwaters on a road in Ichikawa City, a woman trapped inside a submerged vehicle in Sakura City, and a third person pulled from a flooded car in Kashiwa City who was pronounced dead at the scene. As of Friday morning, one more person remained missing.

    Across Chiba, more than 80 residential properties have been fully or partially flooded, and local authorities issued evacuation advisories to nearly 230,000 residents, urging them to move to safer, higher ground. Power outages affected roughly 68,000 households at the peak of the storm, according to TEPCO Power Grid, and that number had dropped to around 23,000 by Friday morning as repair crews worked to restore service.

    Meteorological data confirmed the unprecedented intensity of the storm: Chiba City recorded 11.5 centimeters (4.5 inches) of rain in just one hour, while Sakura City hit 9.7 centimeters (3.8 inches) in the same time frame — both new all-time records for the region. “We have recorded rainfall levels that are unprecedented,” JMA forecast official Takuya Hosomi told viewers during a live televised emergency news conference Thursday night.

    AP contributes to this report, with additional coverage of Asia-Pacific events available at the AP News Asia-Pacific hub.

  • How the Mecca Agreement aims to manage US separation from Middle East

    How the Mecca Agreement aims to manage US separation from Middle East

    The signing of the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement by Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Turkey on August 7 caught many off guard, yet its emergence follows clear regional trends that make it far from unpredictable. While some outsiders have rushed to frame the pact as a sectarian Sunni alliance – pointing to Saudi Arabia’s role as custodian of Islam’s two holiest sites, Mecca and Medina, Pakistan’s status as a nuclear-armed Islamic republic in South Asia, and Turkey’s assertive brand of Europe-facing political Islam – this characterization misses the mark: the agreement has no basis in religious sectarianism.

    Rather than creating a new, unified military alliance with a centralized command structure, the Mecca pact consolidates three deep, long-standing bilateral defense and economic partnerships into a single collective framework. It builds directly on a separate mutual defense agreement signed between Pakistan and Saudi Arabia in September 2025, a deal that sparked widespread speculation that it would provide Saudi Arabia with a nuclear defense umbrella, a detail all three parties have intentionally left ambiguous. The addition of Turkey to this existing bilateral dynamic created the tripartite agreement finalized in Mecca.

    Regional analysts broadly frame the pact as a key step toward regional countries taking ownership of their own security architecture, rather than relying on outside powers. “It was about time that regional agency takes shape,” explains Bahraini analyst Abdullah Aljunaid. “Put it this way: it’s not Islamic. It’s not about containing Iran either. It is there to prove that the region can produce its own security. You have three major players within the region: Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey. What you need to look out for now is the geographical gaps between those three domains, all the way up to Syria.”

    The depth of pre-existing military and industrial ties between the three nations underpins the new framework. Pakistan and Turkey have maintained a close defense partnership for decades, and it is an open secret that Turkey’s defense industry leverages Pakistani engineering expertise for advanced research and development: roughly 200 Pakistani engineers currently work on Turkey’s Kaan fifth-generation fighter jet program. For its part, Saudi Arabia has relied on Pakistani military personnel, including soldiers and pilots, for decades, provided critical funding for Islamabad’s nuclear program, and repeatedly injected emergency financial support to shore up Pakistan’s fragile economy.

    Turkey also serves as a key arms supplier and strategic partner to Pakistan, contributing modular components to high-profile platforms such as the JF-17 Block III multirole fighter jet, which integrates Turkish ASLPOD targeting pods, MURAD AESA radars, and Bozdogan short-range air-to-air missiles. Over the past five years, Saudi Arabia and Turkey have also steadily aligned their strategic outlooks, with their cooperation in Syria earning praise from Washington as the pair built deeper strategic ties. Today, the partnership holds growing economic and strategic importance for Riyadh as it pursues its 2030 Vision goal of localizing 50% of its military spending, with a focus on armored vehicles, missiles, loitering munitions, and drones. Turkish defense firms such as Baykar and Aselsan have emerged as ideal partners, as they are far more willing than many Western suppliers to engage in technology transfer, joint production, and collaborative research.

    Despite these deep connections, merging three separate bilateral relationships into a cohesive tripartite framework poses significant challenges. Senior Ankara-based Center for Iranian Studies researcher Oral Toga notes that negotiations for the Mecca Agreement stretched over two years, meaning its scope was set long before the 2026 U.S.-Israeli war on Iran. Even so, its timing directly reflects growing regional instability around the Strait of Hormuz and the Red Sea.

    American security guarantees have lost much of their credibility in the region following the 2025 Hormuz crisis. Former U.S. ambassador to Qatar Patrick Theros argues that Washington’s strike on Iran turned the long-standing American security umbrella into a strategic liability for regional partners, as the U.S. failed to prioritize or deliver reliable air defense coverage for Gulf allies, creating a critical gap in the existing regional security order. “The Saudis have understood that the Abraham Accords have been a security guarantee for Israel, not the kingdom,” notes Dr. Yeghia Tashjian of the Issam Fares Institute at the American University of Beirut.

    This realization has pushed Gulf states to build new, regionally rooted defense architectures. Qatar moved early to deepen its strategic partnership with Turkey, well before the 2025 Israeli raid on Doha. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have taken divergent paths: the UAE has doubled down on its partnership with Israel, which has deployed outer layers of its Iron Dome defense system in the Gulf, while Saudi Arabia has turned to its long-standing historical security partner Pakistan while steadily expanding its ties with Turkey.

    The core question that remains is the ultimate purpose and end state of the new agreement. Dr. Gallia Lindenstrauss, a leading expert on Turkish-Israeli relations at Tel Aviv’s Institute for National Security Studies, argues that while the pact is explicitly framed as defensive, it sends a clear strategic signal to Iran, Israel, and even the UAE. Retired Pakistani Air Marshal Saeed Khan, a former ambassador to Syria, projects that shifting U.S. strategic priorities will reshape the regional order in the near term: “Slowly and gradually, in the next one-two-three years, we will see America reducing its presence in the Gulf, and concentrating in the South China Sea.”

    A key point of ongoing ambiguity is whether the agreement qualifies as a full military alliance. By definition, an alliance requires a shared understanding of core national security threats and a unified command structure – two elements that remain absent more than a month after the pact’s signing. While Pakistani troops and pilots have deployed repeatedly in Yemen under Saudi command, it remains unlikely that Pakistan would deploy its own armed forces directly to confront the UAE, a key economic partner. The April 2026 withdrawal of more than $3.5 billion in Emirati deposits from Pakistan’s central bank served as a clear warning that Islamabad’s alignment with Riyadh carries tangible economic costs. Islamabad will also avoid direct confrontation with Iran: the two countries share a 1,000-kilometer unstable border and face the common threat of Baloch separatist groups, giving Pakistan strong incentive to avoid tensions with Tehran.

    Similarly, Ankara is unlikely to deploy forces to Yemen and risk conflict with Iran, as both countries face shared challenges from Kurdish separatist groups. Even Saudi Arabia has repeatedly sought to avoid stoking Sunni-Shia sectarian tensions, a reluctance that has been reinforced during successive U.S.-Israeli campaigns against Iran.

    Despite these divergent national priorities, the three nations do share interests in addressing common security challenges, particularly in the Red Sea region. Turkey’s Turksom military camp in Mogadishu serves as a key hub for its power projection in the Horn of Africa, and Pakistan has complemented this presence by signing a new military cooperation agreement with Somalia that allows for the deployment of a Pakistani expeditionary force. On the opposing side of this alignment, Israel recognized Somaliland’s independence in December 2025, and the UAE uses infrastructure at Bosaso port and airport to support its operations in Sudan’s ongoing conflict, creating a clear if messy polarization between camps supporting the status quo and those seeking to revise it – a far cry from the clear alignment of Cold War-era blocs such as NATO.

    Whether shared strategic outlooks will translate to coordinated joint military action depends on a range of contextual factors, and overlapping competing interests remain. Turkish-Emirati defense industrial cooperation continues to grow, and Pakistan relies heavily on remittances from the 1.6 million Pakistanis living in the UAE. As military analyst Kamal Alam notes, no one should expect Saudi Arabia to sever ties with India over New Delhi’s arms sales to Israel should the need arise.

    Overall, the Mecca Agreement delivers an intentionally ambiguous strategic message. The three underlying bilateral partnerships remain separate and compartmentalized, even as a broader regional polarization solidifies between status quo powers and revisionist actors. Across Ankara, Manama, Riyadh, and Beirut, analysts widely view the Emirati-Israeli alliance as seeking to revise the regional security status quo, just as Iran seeks to change the status quo around the Strait of Hormuz. This polarization creates risks, particularly for Israel, which also faces uncertainty over long-term U.S. commitment to the region.

    For Israel, the agreement makes the long-sought goal of normalizing relations with Saudi Arabia even more out of reach. “From an Israeli perspective, normalisation between Israel and Saudi Arabia, if not harder, is at least a more distant reality,” notes Lindenstrauss, adding that this is a major setback for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who made expanded Abraham Accords a top policy priority.

    What unites the three Mecca signatories is a shared commitment to upholding the existing territorial status quo, in contrast to the UAE’s support for sub-state actors across the region. As Toga explains: “All three signatories have backed central state authority where the UAE has backed sub-state actors: the Sudanese army against the RSF, Yemen’s recognised government against the STC, Somalia’s territorial integrity against Somaliland’s recognition. Riyadh no longer faces that network alone, and after the Yemen confrontation of late 2025, that is a meaningful change. But I would not overstate it.”

    This consensus marks a foundational shift: the Mecca Agreement is a public statement of intent to defend the regional territorial status quo as the U.S. gradually draws down its military presence in the Gulf. Looking ahead, analysts say the next major development could be additional Chinese mediation to ease tensions between Iran and the Mecca signatories, as the U.S. is no longer seen as having the credibility or convening power to bring regional parties together.

  • Indian solar mission’s new findings throw light on enduring Sun mysteries

    Indian solar mission’s new findings throw light on enduring Sun mysteries

    For decades, astronomers and astrophysicists have grappled with one of the most counterintuitive puzzles in solar science: why does the Sun’s outermost atmospheric layer, the corona, reach temperatures of millions of degrees Celsius—far hotter than the star’s visible surface, the photosphere? This stark temperature gradient across solar layers outright defies established thermodynamic logic, and until now, scientists have never been able to definitively quantify what drives the corona’s extreme heat and ability to replenish energy after massive eruptions.

    New groundbreaking research from India, based on data collected by the country’s landmark Aditya-L1 space solar observatory, has brought the global scientific community closer than ever to solving this enduring mystery. In a new paper published in the peer-reviewed *Astrophysical Journal Letters*, a team led by leading solar astrophysicist Professor R Ramesh of the Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA) presents the first quantified breakdown of the two leading energy mechanisms thought to sustain the corona’s heat, revealing that magnetic field reconnection is responsible for nearly all of the layer’s energy replenishment.

    To put the sun’s unusual temperature structure in context: the Sun generates all of its energy via nuclear fusion in its dense, superheated core, which hits roughly 15 million degrees Celsius. Moving outward from the core to the Sun’s visible photosphere, temperatures drop dramatically to around 5,500 degrees Celsius. Intuitively, temperatures should continue to fall as one moves further from the energy-producing core—but the opposite happens in the corona, where temperatures skyrocket back to between 2 million and 40 million degrees Celsius.

    This anomaly becomes even more puzzling when accounting for the extreme energy the corona regularly sheds. The corona is the birthplace of catastrophic solar events including solar flares and coronal mass ejections (CMEs): massive expulsions of magnetized plasma and energy that the Sun launches into interplanetary space. While these ejections create striking auroras near Earth’s polar regions, they also pose serious risks to modern infrastructure, triggering geomagnetic storms that can disrupt satellite communications, interfere with GPS signals, and even bring down entire power grids.

    During quiet periods of solar activity, the Sun produces between two and three CMEs per day. At the peak of its 11-year activity cycle, that number jumps to 10 or more CMEs daily. If the corona could not replenish the energy it loses during these frequent eruptions, the Sun would quickly cool, and Earth would be plunged into an irreversible deep freeze—an outcome that has never occurred, proving a powerful energy replenishment mechanism must be at work.

    For years, scientists have hypothesized two primary processes that could supply the corona with energy. The first suggests that churning, convection-driven motions on the Sun’s surface generate energy-carrying waves that travel outward to the corona, much like ocean waves carry energy toward a shoreline. The second explanation centers on the Sun’s tangled atmospheric magnetic field lines: these lines constantly snap apart and reconnect, a process that releases massive amounts of heat energy.

    Professor Ramesh’s team was the first to quantify the exact contribution of each mechanism, using high-resolution observations of an extremely energetic CME that occurred on August 5, 2024, captured by Aditya-L1’s Visible Emission Line Coronagraph (Velc) instrument. The team tracked the corona’s recovery in the 10 hours following the eruption, observing how tangled magnetic field lines snapped during the CME, then reconnected and reverted to their original configuration to replenish the corona’s lost energy.

    Their calculations revealed a stark divide: just 7% of the corona’s total energy requirement comes from surface-generated waves, while a full 93% is supplied by the repeated snapping and reconnection of solar magnetic field lines.

    While surface motion waves do contribute some energy, the study confirms their input is far too small to sustain the corona’s extreme temperatures on their own. Professor Ramesh emphasized that magnetic reconnection occurring across the entire solar atmosphere is the undisputed primary driver of the corona’s anomalous heat.

    These new quantified findings provide a critical benchmark for future solar research, bringing scientists closer to answering a fundamental physics question that has defied explanation for generations. As India’s first dedicated solar space mission, Aditya-L1 continues to deliver groundbreaking data that advances global understanding of our host star, with implications for space weather forecasting and fundamental astrophysics research.