The following is the latest list of selected news summaries by Kyodo News.
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Nippon Steel CEO resolved to fight Biden's U.S. Steel intervention
TOKYO - Nippon Steel Corp. CEO Eiji Hashimoto on Tuesday denounced U.S. President Joe Biden's decision to block its $14.1 billion acquisition of United States Steel Corp., saying he believes the order was politically motivated and reiterating that the company will seek to have it annulled in court.
"A review of the deal by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States was not properly conducted due to President Biden's illegal intervention," said Hashimoto, also the Nippon Steel chairman, at a press conference in Tokyo. "We can never accept this."
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Japan to tap veteran diplomat Okano as new national security adviser
TOKYO - The Japanese government is likely to soon replace national security adviser Takeo Akiba with Vice Foreign Minister Masataka Okano, government sources said Tuesday.
Okano, 60, will coordinate the country's diplomatic and security policies, including those related to Japan's key security ally the United States, after he is formally named secretary general of the National Security Secretariat under Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba.
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Japan, Indonesia weigh naval ship joint development
JAKARTA - Japanese Defense Minister Gen Nakatani and his Indonesian counterpart Sjafrie Sjamsoeddin on Tuesday discussed the possible joint development of a naval ship as the two countries aim to strengthen their maritime security cooperation.
A new vessel could be modeled after a destroyer of Japan's Maritime Self-Defense Force, according to a Japanese government official.
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M6.8 quake rocks China's Tibet region, at least 95 dead
BEIJING - A magnitude-6.8 earthquake rocked China's Tibet autonomous region Tuesday morning, leaving at least 95 people dead and 130 injured, with President Xi Jinping ordering all-out efforts to save lives and minimize casualties, the official Xinhua News Agency said.
The 9:05 a.m. temblor struck at a depth of 10 kilometers in Tingri county in the city of Shigatse with a population of some 800,000 that borders Nepal and Bhutan, according to Chinese authorities.
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Japan braces for heavy snow with traffic disruption warning
TOKYO - Japan's weather agency warned Tuesday of possible traffic disruptions and avalanches as heavy snow is expected to fall later this week across wide areas of the country.
Areas including northern and western Japan could see heavy snow from Wednesday through Friday, with some regions expected to see extremely strong winds with snow, the Japan Meteorological Agency said. If the air is colder than expected, blizzards and especially heavy snow could occur.
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Small, midsize firms crucial for Japan's wage hikes: business chief
TOKYO - Small- and medium-sized companies hold the "key" to raising wages nationwide in the upcoming annual wage talks, the head of a leading Japanese business lobby said Tuesday, amid a trend in which major firms have been raising salaries to outpace inflation.
At a New Year event hosted by three major business groups, Takeshi Niinami, chairman of the Japan Association of Corporate Executives, expressed readiness to support these firms, which employ around 70 percent of Japan's workforce, in passing rising costs onto their clients. The firms have been reluctant to do so for fear of losing business opportunities.
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North Korea claims successful test-firing of new hypersonic missile
TOKYO - The ballistic missile launched by North Korea on Monday was a new type of intermediate-range hypersonic missile and it successfully flew 1,500 kilometers to a simulated target at sea, the country's official media reported.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, who oversaw the test together with his daughter through a monitoring system, was quoted by the Korean Central News Agency on Tuesday as saying the test-firing of the new missile was "mainly aimed to steadily put the country's nuclear war deterrent on an advanced basis."
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Japan, U.S. top diplomats condemn North Korean ballistic missile launch
TOKYO - Japanese Foreign Minister Takeshi Iwaya and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Tuesday strongly condemned North Korea's latest ballistic missile launch, while reaffirming the importance of their trilateral cooperation with South Korea.
At their meeting in Tokyo, Iwaya and Blinken also agreed the two governments will continue to work closely together to maintain and reinforce their bilateral collaboration, Japan's Foreign Ministry said, ahead of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's inauguration on Jan. 20.
Video: Traditional firefighting ladder acrobatics in Tokyo
