Welcome again to World Temporary, the place we’re taking a look at how the Japan-China rift is impacting South Korea, potential U.S. intervention over Iran’s rising demise toll, and continued Russian assaults on Ukrainian vitality infrastructure.
Not Taking Sides
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi welcomed South Korean President Lee Jae-myung to her residence prefecture of Nara on Tuesday, marking the second time that the 2 leaders have met since Takaichi took energy final October. Tokyo hopes the two-day summit will bolster bilateral ties amid Japan’s deepening rift with China. However Seoul’s unwillingness to take a aspect might deny Takaichi the win she’s hoping for.
Welcome again to World Temporary, the place we’re taking a look at how the Japan-China rift is impacting South Korea, potential U.S. intervention over Iran’s rising demise toll, and continued Russian assaults on Ukrainian vitality infrastructure.
Not Taking Sides
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi welcomed South Korean President Lee Jae-myung to her residence prefecture of Nara on Tuesday, marking the second time that the 2 leaders have met since Takaichi took energy final October. Tokyo hopes the two-day summit will bolster bilateral ties amid Japan’s deepening rift with China. However Seoul’s unwillingness to take a aspect might deny Takaichi the win she’s hoping for.
Japan’s relationship with China started to deteriorate in November, when Takaichi—only one month after taking workplace—characterised a potential future Chinese language assault on Taiwan as a “survival-threatening scenario” that would allow Japan to take navy motion. The assertion sparked a slew of retaliatory measures from Beijing, together with journey bans, export restrictions, and the summoning of Japan’s ambassador.
Takaichi has not backed down within the face of Chinese language threats and has as an alternative appeared to South Korea for assist. Nonetheless, Seoul stays hesitant to surrender its ties with Beijing, notably as South Korea seeks China’s help in pursuing denuclearization on the Korean Peninsula; final week, Lee grew to become the primary South Korean president to go to China since 2019, throughout which he requested Chinese language President Xi Jinping to stress North Korea to de-escalate.
“Chinese language President Xi Jinping evidently holds a really unfavorable view of Japan’s place on the Taiwan challenge,” Lee informed native media on Monday. “For my part, that’s a matter for China and Japan to handle and never one thing we have to become involved in.” Beforehand, Lee had stated that “when the time and circumstances are proper, we are going to search for an acceptable position to play.”
In the meantime, Beijing is keen to sidle nearer to Seoul, in what consultants counsel may very well be a method to additional isolate Tokyo. China has repeatedly pointed to its shared historical past with South Korea to perform this; throughout World Warfare II, Japan occupied Korea whereas waging a brutal warfare towards China.
That argument, although, might not be as efficient as Beijing hopes. “Though we’ve painful previous experiences, it has been 60 years because the normalization of diplomatic relations between Korea and Japan, and we’re beginning a brand new 60 years,” Lee informed Takaichi on Tuesday. “Within the present complicated and turbulent worldwide order, cooperation between South Korea and Japan is extra necessary than ever.”
Nonetheless, efforts to foster nearer Japan-South Korea relations could also be hindered by the 2 nations’ inside politics. On Tuesday, Japanese shares hit an all-time excessive and the nation’s forex tumbled amid hypothesis that Takaichi is seeking to dissolve parliament later this month in a bid to revive her Liberal Democratic Occasion’s majority.
On the similar time, South Korean prosecutors requested on Tuesday that former President Yoon Suk-yeol obtain the demise penalty if he’s discovered responsible of orchestrating an tried rebel in December 2024. South Korea has not carried out a demise sentence in practically 30 years. The court docket is anticipated to rule on the case in February.
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What We’re Following
Mounting demise toll. Iranian officers informed the New York Instances on Tuesday that round 3,000 individuals had been killed since mass anti-government protests first erupted on Dec. 28, although some reviews counsel the quantity could also be far increased. What began as demonstrations towards excessive inflation and a plummeting forex have snowballed into a bigger motion calling for the downfall of the Iranian regime. Consultants have characterised the current protests as one of many staunchest challenges to Tehran’s management in years.
U.S. President Donald Trump has repeatedly threatened U.S. navy intervention if Iranian authorities proceed their lethal assault on protesters. Late Monday, the White Home introduced 25 % tariffs on items from any nation that conducts enterprise with Iran, drawing fierce criticism from China, which purchases Iranian crude.
Trump on Sunday stated he’d spoken to the “leaders of Iran” the day earlier than to debate potential negotiations, and Iranian International Minister Abbas Araghchi stated on Monday that Tehran was open to negotiations. However on Tuesday, Trump wrote on Fact Social that he had “cancelled all conferences with Iranian Officers till the mindless killing of protesters STOPS.”
“HELP IS ON ITS WAY,” the U.S. president added, with out offering additional particulars.
Kyiv’s harsh winter. Russian forces launched in a single day missile and drone assaults throughout Ukraine on Tuesday in one in every of Moscow’s greatest operations because the begin of the yr. In accordance with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, the assault primarily focused energy-generation services and substations, together with a thermal energy plant—killing not less than 4 individuals and knocking out warmth for a whole bunch of hundreds of residents amid the nation’s grueling winter.
“Russia is intentionally attempting to inflict circumstances of life calculated to result in bodily destruction of the Ukrainian individuals,” Ukrainian International Minister Andrii Sybiha wrote on X, including that such focusing on of civilian infrastructure violates Article 2 of the Genocide Conference. Moscow denies focusing on these websites.
Russia’s continued assault on important infrastructure has compelled Ukraine’s Vitality Ministry to introduce emergency energy cuts to the areas of Kyiv, Chernihiv, Donetsk, Dnipropetrovsk, Kharkiv, Odesa, and Zaporizhzhia. Areas of Ukraine recorded temperatures as little as minus 15 levels Celsius (or 5 levels Fahrenheit) on Tuesday.
Rising CO2 emissions. U.S. greenhouse fuel emissions elevated by 2.4 % in 2025, in response to new estimates revealed by the Rhodium Group analysis agency on Tuesday, marking a major pivot after two years of declining emissions. Analysts pointed largely to chilly winter temperatures and rising electrical energy demand as the first causes. Electrical utilities, for example, burned round 13 % extra coal final yr than they did in 2024.
Though consultants urged that federal local weather actions didn’t have a direct impression on 2025 figures, Rhodium Group concluded that the Trump administration’s push for fossil fuels and coverage of local weather change denialism would doubtless contribute to the USA’ dramatic slowdown in emissions reductions going ahead.
America is the second-largest greenhouse fuel emitter on this planet. China, the USA, India, the European Union, Russia, and Indonesia collectively accounted for 64.2 % of world fossil gas consumption and 61.8 % of world greenhouse fuel emissions in 2024.
Odds and Ends
Pray by day, get together by night time. Guilherme Peixoto, higher referred to as Padre Guilherme, is a Portuguese Catholic priest who has embraced DJ music to unfold a message of peace and coexistence to younger individuals. “The Psalm asks us to reward the Lord with all devices, so now you may have this new instrument that got here that’s digital music,” Guilherme stated on Saturday, earlier than performing a sold-out present in Beirut, throughout which photos of the late Pope Francis and late Pope John Paul II in addition to white doves had been projected onto screens.
