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Protesters gather in front of the venue of an annual meeting of the National Rifle Association in Houston, Texas, on May 27, 2022. Earlier in the week, an 18-year-old gunman opened fire at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, killing more than 20 people, most of them children. (Kyodo) ==Kyodo
The following is the latest list of selected news summaries by Kyodo News.
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Japan, U.S., South Korea “strongly condemn” North’s missile launches
TOKYO – Top diplomats from Japan, the United States and South Korea said they “strongly condemn” North Korea’s recent ballistic missile launches, while vowing to work together to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula.
In a joint statement issued Friday, Japanese Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and South Korean Foreign Minister Park Jin vowed to “strengthen trilateral cooperation towards the complete denuclearization” of the peninsula and said they remain open to hold dialogue with the North “without preconditions.”
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Japanese Red Army militant leader released after 20-yr prison stint
TOKYO – Fusako Shigenobu, the founder of the now-disbanded Japanese Red Army militant organization that committed a string of terrorist attacks around the world in the 1970s and 1980s, was released from prison on Saturday after serving a 20-year sentence.
Shigenobu, 76, was incarcerated for masterminding the 1974 seizure of the French Embassy in The Hague, Netherlands, by the leftist revolutionary group that she founded three years earlier in Lebanon.
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Tokyo Olympics legacy venue proving a chronic headache
TOKYO – Although billed as an important material legacy of the Tokyo Olympics, Japan’s National Stadium has become a taxpayer burden with its future in limbo.
Originally supposed to be privatized after the Olympics to reduce the cost to taxpayers, that project has fallen far behind schedule, and is showing no sign of getting back on track.
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Former Ukraine leader Poroshenko says “maniac” Putin cannot be trusted
KYIV, Ukraine – Former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko learned during Vladimir Putin’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and conflict in his nation’s east that the Russian leader is unreliable and interested only in wielding power.
“Putin is a dangerous negotiator. But he understands only strength…Don’t trust Putin,” he said in a recent interview with Kyodo News conducted as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine passed the three-month mark.
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26 missing in central Indonesia as boat with 43 on board sinks
JAKARTA – A passenger motorboat with 43 people on board sunk in central Indonesia and rescuers were searching for 26 of them still missing, the local rescuer office said Saturday.
Seventeen people had been rescued after the motorboat on the way from Makassar’s Paotere Harbor to Kalmas Island, about 45 kilometers away, sank around 3:30 a.m. on Thursday in Straits Makassar, according to the regional office of the Search and Rescue Agency.
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Volcano erupts in Russian Far East, no tsunami threat to Japan
TOKYO – A large-scale volcanic eruption occurred Saturday in the Russia’s far eastern Kamchatka Peninsula, but the Japanese weather agency said no tsunami was observed to have hit Japan.
The Japan Meteorological Agency said that following the eruption at around 5:10 p.m., smoke plumes spewed from Bezymianny and extended over 15 kilometers high.
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Italy’s Mermec wins over 20 mil. euro deals for rail safety in Japan
TOKYO – Mermec S.p.A., an Italian company specializing in technology for railway safety and maintenance, said Friday it has won contracts with Japanese entities worth more than 20 million euros ($21.5 million) as part of efforts to expand its businesses in Japan and into other markets in Asia.
Mermec, which became the first foreign firm in Japan in 2015 to engage in rail inspection and diagnostics, remains a rare example of a company having cleared the stringent process of selection in cooperation with Japanese partners.
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