Category: 2. World

TOKYO — Viral rumours of impending disaster stemming from a comic book prediction have taken the sheen off Japan’s tourism boom, with some airlines cancelling flights from Hong Kong, where passenger numbers have plunged.

Japan has seen record numbers of visitors this year, with April setting an all-time monthly high of 3.9 million travellers.

That dipped in May, however, with arrivals from Hong Kong — the superstitious Chinese-controlled city where the rumours have circulated widely — down 11% year-on-year, according to the latest data.

Steve Huen of Hong Kong-based travel agency EGL Tours blamed a flurry of social media predictions tied to a manga that depicts a dream of a massive earthquake and tsunami hitting Japan and neighbouring countries in July 2025.

“The rumours have had a significant impact,” said Huen, adding that his firm had seen its Japan-related business halve. Discounts and the introduction of earthquake insurance had “prevented Japan-bound travel from dropping to zero,” he added.

Hong Kong resident Branden Choi, 28, said he was a frequent traveller to Japan but was hesitant to visit the country during July and August due to the manga prediction.

“If possible, I might delay my trip and go after September,” he said.

Ryo Tatsuki, the artist behind the manga titled ‘The Future I Saw’, first published in 1999 and then re-released in 2021, has tried to dampen the speculation, saying in a statement issued by her publisher that she was “not a prophet.”

The first edition of the manga warned of a major natural disaster in March 2011. That was the month and year when a massive earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster struck Japan‘s northeastern coast, killing thousands.

Some have interpreted the latest edition as predicting a catastrophic event would occur specifically on July 5, 2025, although Tatsuki has denied this.

Situated within the Pacific Ocean’s ‘Ring of Fire,’ Japan is one of the most earthquake-prone countries in the world. In recent days, there have been more than 900 earthquakes, most of them small tremors, on islands off the southern tip of Kyushu.

But Robert Geller, a professor at the University of Tokyo who has studied seismology since 1971, said even scientifically-based earthquake prediction was “impossible”.

“None of the predictions I’ve experienced in my scientific career have come close at all,” he said.

Nevertheless, low-cost carrier Greater Bay Airlines became the latest Hong Kong airline on Wednesday to cancel flights to Japan due to low demand, saying it would indefinitely suspend its service to Tokushima in western Japan from September.

Serena Peng, 30, a visitor to Tokyo from Seattle, had initially tried to talk her husband out of visiting Japan after seeing the social media speculation.

“I’m not super worried right now, but I was before,” she said, speaking outside Tokyo’s bustling Senso-ji temple.

Good morning.

Donald Trump’s signature tax-and-spending bill passed a procedural step in the House of Representatives at close to 4am local time, paving the way for the possible passage of the legislation later today as lawmakers continue to debate.

The House speaker, Mike Johnson, is determined to pass the bill as soon as possible but has been frustrated by lawmakers – Democrats but also a handful of Republicans – who object to its provisions and overall cost. Overnight, they had blocked the House from approving a rule that was necessary to begin debate on the measure and set the stage for the proposed legislation’s passage.

But the procedural passage appeared to suggest that the Republican holdouts had been brought into line, and that Trump’s bill – which he has made the centerpiece of his legislative agenda – would soon pass.

The bill would add $3.3tn to the US budget deficit from 2025 to 2034, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office estimates.

• What would it mean for deportation policy? Thousands of new immigration enforcement officers; tens of thousands of extra detention beds; fees on asylum applications; and further construction on the border wall. Here’s how Trump’s bill will supercharge mass deportations by funneling $170bn to Ice.

• And social security? According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the welfare cuts will result in about 10.6 million people losing their Medicaid healthcare and 8 million people losing their Snap food stamp benefits.

• Follow our live coverage here.

Exclusive: Israeli military used US-made 500lb bomb in strike on Gaza cafe

The Israeli military used a 500lb (230kg) bomb – a powerful and indiscriminate weapon that generates a massive blast wave and scatters shrapnel over a wide area – in an attack on a target in a crowded beachfront cafe in Gaza on Monday, evidence seen by the Guardian has revealed.

Experts in international law said the use of such a munition despite the known presence of many unprotected civilians including children and elderly people was almost certainly unlawful and may constitute a war crime.

Fragments of the weapon from the ruins of al-Baqa cafe photographed by the Guardian have been identified by ordnance experts as parts of an MK-82 general purpose 230kg bomb, a US-made staple of many bombing campaigns in recent decades.

• What was the civilian death toll from Monday’s bombing? Medical and other officials said between 24 and 36 Palestinians were killed in the attack and dozens more were injured. The dead included the film-maker Ismail Abu Hatab, the artist Amna al-Salmi, and a four-year-old child. Among the injured were a 14-year-old boy and a 12-year-old girl. Read the report on the strike here.

Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs found guilty on two of five counts but acquitted of more serious charges

A jury in New York has found Sean “Diddy” Combs guilty of two counts and not guilty on three counts after a closely watched seven-week federal trial marked by emotional and graphic testimony.

In a mixed verdict, Combs was found not guilty of the biggest charge, racketeering conspiracy, as well as not guilty of the sex trafficking of Casandra Ventura or of “Jane”. He was found guilty on two counts of the transportation to engage in prostitution in relation to the two women.

• What happens next? The judge proposed a sentencing date of October 3, but said he was willing to move up the date at the defense’s request. Combs’s bail request was denied, with the judge saying he had demonstrated a “disregard for the rule of law and a propensity of violence”.

In other news …

• Kilmar Ábrego García was physically and psychologically tortured in Salvadorian custody, according to court documents of the man who was wrongfully deported to El Salvador.

• The Dalai Lama said the centuries-old spiritual institution bearing his name would continue after his death, and that only his inner circle, not Beijing, would have the authority to identify his successor.

• Thailand’s constitutional court has suspended the prime minister, Paetongtarn Shinawatra, while it investigates a leaked phone call with Cambodia’s former leader Hun Sen.

Stat of the day: Paramount settles with Trump for $16m over 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris

Donald Trump has reached a $16m settlement with Paramount, the parent of CBS News, over what he claimed was false editing of an interview with Kamala Harris, in what is likely to be seen as further media capitulation to Trump. Paramount is preparing for a $8.4bn merger that requires FCC approval.

Don’t miss this: the rise and fall of the world’s first ayahuasca multinational

Alberto Varela claimed he wanted to use sacred plant medicine to free people’s minds. But as the organisation grew, his followers discovered a darker reality. Traditional ayahuasca practitioners protested he was bringing their practice into disrepute. Accidents would happen, they said.

Climate check: droughts pushing tens of millions towards starvation

Drought is pushing tens of millions of people to the edge of starvation around the world, according to a report published by the US National Drought Mitigation Center, UN Convention to Combat Desertification and International Drought Resilience Alliance. In Somalia, a quarter of the population is edging towards starvation.

Last Thing: Colombia’s enchanted parking lot – how a ruined multistorey became a garden paradise

Once a hangout for drug users, a parking lot in Medellín, Colombia, has been reborn as a green haven for all. “You dig up the concrete, water gets into the ground, vegetation grows up, and the people come back,” said one of the social urbanists credited with reducing crime and temperatures.

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Activists, many from the Global South, attending the talks in Spain, are calling for greater leadership and commitment from wealthier nations to help address long-standing structural inequalities.

The 4^th International Conference on Financing for Development (FFD4) carries strong symbolic weight, reflected in the agreed priorities of the Sevilla Commitment.

However, organizations warn that there is still a long way to go before promises translate into tangible action.

Good timing

That is the message from Paula Sevilla, a representative of the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) – a London-based research centre – who has worked for decades on sustainability and climate justice in Latin America, Africa, and Asia.

“This summit has come at a crucial time to try to restore faith in international cooperation, especially after the pandemic, which exposed a lack of global solidarity,” she stated.

One of IIED’s main goals in Sevilla has been to ensure that the announced financial commitments actually reach local communities at the forefront of the climate crisis.

To that end, the organization emphasizes the need to address issues such as external debt – draining public budgets – and to support innovative mechanisms like blended finance to direct resources to those who need them most.

“We’re seeing countries spend more on debt payments than on healthcare or education, while inequalities are deepening,” the expert warned, speaking shortly after a respectful but forceful protest inside the conference centre.

A place to call home

Housing solutions linked to sustainable development are notably absent from the summit’s final document.

“It’s regrettable that it’s not even mentioned, at a time when we are facing a global cost-of-living crisis – not only in the Global South but also here in Spain. Housing is a source of anguish and distrust among citizens, and it has been completely ignored,” Ms. Sevilla said.

Despite this, her organization is working to leverage the Sevilla outcome to find ways to channel funding into providing more affordable homes.

Commenting on the initiative led by Spain and Brazil to work towards fair taxation and push back against tax avoidance by the world’s richest – promoting more transparency and accountability – the IIED representative said it could be a useful path toward correcting structural inequalities.

Tax for development

“We need leadership from the Global North, where many of the world’s major tax-avoiding corporations are based. Without their commitment, we won’t move forward,” she stated.

She also criticized the absence of the United States from the summit – not  only as a diplomatic setback but also as a worrying precedent following the dismantling of its international development agency, USAID.

“We’re talking about people counting their pills to figure out how many days of life they have left. This is dramatic,” she emphasised.

With just five years remaining to meet the Sustainable Development Goals, Ms. Sevilla warned that time is running out – and that the Sevilla Commitment will be meaningless without real change.

“We need political leadership, a will to cooperate, and a commitment to protect democratic space. In the end, it’s organized people who keep hope alive and hold leaders accountable,” Sevilla concluded.

The Sevilla Commitment in brief:

• The Sevilla Commitment sets out a new global roadmap to raise the trillions of dollars needed each year to achieve sustainable development, building on previous international agreements
• It calls for fairer tax systems, cracking down on tax evasion and illicit financial flows, and strengthening public development banks to support national priorities
• The agreement highlights the need for new tools to ease debt pressures on vulnerable countries, including debt-swap schemes, options to pause payments during crises, and better transparency
• Countries committed to boosting the capacity of multilateral development banks, increasing the use of special drawing rights, and attracting more private investment to support development
• It also aims to make the global financial system more inclusive and accountable, with improved coordination, stronger data systems, and broader participation from civil society and others

The Commitment launches the Sevilla Platform for Action, which includes over 130 initiatives already underway to turn the pledges into real-world results.

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BEIJING, Jul 3 (APP):”The theme of our conference, ‘Build a digitally friendly city’, highlights the harmonious coexistence between people and technology in the city, which is what we often call people-oriented in the digital age. We also highly agree with this in Pakistan’s national development strategy,” Aslam Chaudhary, Economic Minister, Pakistan Embassy Economic Wing, said at the ongoing Global Digital Economy Conference held in Beijing.

Addressing in his speech, the Minister pointed out that building digitally friendly cities is not just about technology, but about creating an environment where all citizens, whether urban or rural, could use safe and reliable digital technologies.

Given this, Pakistan is fulfilling its national commitment to continuously expand the scope of the digital economy services and try to cover every remotest area. Nowadays, the Pakistani government has established an inclusive service fund to strengthen the information and communication technology (ICT) infrastructure, and under the framework of the Six One One Foundation, the fund is playing its role. “Through this, we have laid optical cables in large areas of the country, connecting about 22,000 villages.”

“By building digital-friendly cities, different cities are able to recognize each other’s data standards. At the same time, cooperation agreements between countries are an indispensable boost to the digitalization of developing countries,” Chaudhary stressed.

In April, the Secretary-General of the Riyadh-based Digital Cooperation Organization (DCO), Deemah AlYahya, noted Pakistan’s forthcoming presidency of the multilateral body is part of ongoing efforts to position the country as a regional and global digital leader. Pakistan is scheduled to assume the DCO presidency in 2026, following Kuwait’s term in 2025, CEN reported.

“The 2026 presidency will see Pakistan hosting the Digital Future Development Initiative (DFDI) forum in Islamabad, marking a significant step in Pakistan’s digital transformation journey.”

“On this occasion, I am going to have three major initiatives,” the Minister appealed. “First, strengthen cross-border data flows and interoperability. We are establishing a cross-border data flow norm under the South-South cooperation framework. Second, inclusive digital technology development is essential, including in the fields of agriculture, medical and health industries. Third, we need to conduct joint training of digital talents. Through the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor framework, the two countries have signed a talent training agreement. Pakistan’s need for digital talent training is of high urgency.”

Chaudhary listed cloud computing, flood warning, climate change, smart cities and other areas where China and Pakistan can achieve in-depth cooperation, and suggested establishing a Digital Friendly City Innovation Center with branches in Beijing, Islamabad and Karachi so that different branches can carry out a series of joint pilot projects.

“We’re seeing that Beijing is accelerating the construction of a global digital economy benchmark city and exploring the construction of a Digital Silk Road pilot zone. Pakistan is willing to work with China and all other partners around the globe to turn vision into a tangible digital reality,”  he added.

An 80-year-old US novelist and her husband are among several people facing a possible trial in France over the illegal sale of gold bars plundered from an 18th-century shipwreck after French prosecutors requested that the case go to court.

Eleonor “Gay” Courter and her husband, Philip, 82, have been accused of helping to sell the bullion online for a French diver who stole it decades ago. They have denied knowledge of any wrongdoing.

Le Prince de Conty, a French ship trading with Asia, sank off the coast of Brittany during a stormy night in the winter of 1746. Its wreck was discovered more than two centuries later, in 1974, lying in 10 to 15 metres (32-49ft) of water near the island of Belle-Île-en-Mer.

The wreck was looted in 1975 after a gold ingot was discovered during a site survey.

In the 1980s, archaeologists discovered fine 18th-century Chinese porcelain, the remains of tea crates, and three Chinese gold bars in and around the shipwreck. But a violent storm in 1985 dispersed the ship’s remains, ending official excavations.

In 2018, the head of France’s underwater archaeology department, Michel L’Hour, spotted a suspicious sale of five gold ingots on a US auction house website. He told US authorities he believed they hailed from the Prince de Conty and they seized the treasure, returning it to France in 2022.

Investigators identified the seller as Gay Courter, an author and film producer living in Florida. Courter said she had been given the precious metal by a couple of French friends, Annette May Pesty, now 78, and her partner Gerard, now deceased.

Pesty had told the TV series Antiques Roadshow in 1999 that she discovered the gold while diving off the west African island of Cape Verde. But investigators found this to be unlikely and instead focused on her brother-in-law Yves Gladu, an underwater photographer.

A 1983 trial had found five people guilty of embezzlement and receiving stolen goods over the plundering of the Prince de Conty. Gladu was not among them.

Held in custody in 2022, Gladu confessed to having retrieved 16 gold bars from the ship during about 40 dives on the site between 1976 and 1999. He said he had sold them all in 2006 to a retired member of the military living in Switzerland. He denied ever having given any to the Courters.

He had known the author and her husband since the 1980s and they had joined him on holiday on his catamaran in Greece in 2011, in the Caribbean in 2014 and in French Polynesia in 2015, investigators found.

The Courters were detained in the UK in 2022 and then put under house arrest. French investigators concluded that they had been in possession of at least 23 gold bars in total. They found they had sold 18 ingots for more than $192,000 (£140,000), including some via eBay.

The Courters claimed the arrangement had always been for the money to go to Gladu.

A prosecutor in the western French city of Brest has requested that the Courters, Gladu, 77, and Pesty be tried, according to a document obtained by AFP on Tuesday.

An investigating magistrate still has to decide whether or not to order a trial, but prosecutors said a trial was likely in the autumn of 2026.

The US couple’s lawyer, Gregory Levy, said they had had no idea what they had been getting into. “The Courters accepted because they are profoundly nice people. They didn’t see the harm as in the United States regulations for gold are completely different from those in France,” he said, adding that the couple had not profited from the sales.

Lawyers for the other suspects did not immediately respond to an AFP request for comment.

Gay Courter has written several fiction and nonfiction books, some nautical-themed, according to her website. One is a thriller set on a cruise ship and another is her real-life account of being trapped on an ocean liner off the Japanese coast during a Covid quarantine in 2020.

The country has had three leaders in as many days, following a court’s decision to suspend Paetongtarn Shinawatra.

Thailand has ushered in the appointment of its second interim prime minister this week, following the Constitutional Court’s suspension of the country’s leader, Paetongtarn Shinawatra, fuelled by a phone call scandal with a key Cambodian political figure.

Interior Minister Phumtham Wechayachai assumed caretaker responsibilities on Thursday, two days after Paetongtarn was banned from duties, a government statement on Thursday confirmed.

In a post on social media, the Thai government said that Phumtham’s role as acting prime minister had been agreed at the first meeting of a new cabinet, which took place shortly after ministers were sworn in by King Maha Vajiralongkorn.

The 71-year-old replaces Suriya Jungrungreangkit, who only carried out the role for one day ahead of the reshuffle.

The interim appointments occurred after Paetongtarn was temporarily barred from office earlier this week over allegations that she breached ministerial ethics in a leaked phone conversation with Cambodia’s influential former leader, Hun Sen.

The call took place in mid-June with the aim of defusing recent border tensions between the two countries following an eruption of violence that killed a Cambodian soldier.

Critics in Thailand expressed anger at Paetongtarn’s decision to call Hun Sen “Uncle” and to criticise a Thai army commander.

The Constitutional Court accepted a petition from 36 senators, which claimed that the 38-year-old had violated the constitution in her conversation with Hun Sen.

It said there was “sufficient cause to suspect” Paetongtarn had breached ministerial ethics, with an investigation now under way into the incident.

Before her suspension began, Paetongtarn appointed herself as culture minister in the new cabinet. She was sworn in to the position at the Grand Palace on Thursday.

Paetongtarn’s government had struggled to revive a flagging economy, with an opinion poll in late June suggesting that her popularity had dropped to 9.2 percent from 30.9 percent in March.

Thailand’s political dynasty has been facing legal peril on two fronts, as a separate court hears a royal defamation suit against her father, former premier Thaksin Shinawatra.

Thaksin has denied the charges against him and repeatedly pledged allegiance to the crown.

Thaksin dodged jail and spent six months in hospital detention on medical grounds before being released on parole in February last year. The Supreme Court will this month scrutinise that hospital stay and could potentially send him back to jail.