The following is the latest list of selected news summaries by Kyodo News.
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Abe shooter's mother donated 100 mil. yen to Unification Church
NARA, Japan - The mother of the man who fatally shot former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe donated about 100 million yen ($720,000) to the Unification Church, the man's uncle said Friday.
The assailant, Tetsuya Yamagami, 41, has told investigators he believes Abe was linked to the church and he resents it because his family's finances were ruined due to the donations made by his mother.
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Japan's daily COVID-19 tally tops 100,000, 1st time since Feb.
TOKYO - Japan's daily COVID-19 cases topped 100,000 on Friday for the first time since early February, doubling from a week earlier, as the country enters a seventh wave of infections spurred by the highly transmissible BA.5 Omicron subvariant.
The government decided the same day to expand the scope of people who can receive fourth COVID-19 vaccine shots to all medical personnel and workers at elderly care facilities as the nationwide daily count climbed closer to a record high of around 104,000.
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Athletics: Tokyo named host for 2025 world championships
EUGENE, Oregon, July 14 Kyodo - Tokyo was named the host for the 2025 world athletics championships by the World Athletics Council on Thursday, beating out competition from Singapore, Nairobi and the Polish city of Silesia.
The competition will be held at the National Stadium, the main venue for last summer's Tokyo Olympics, as Japan plays host to the worlds for the third time following Tokyo in 1991 and Osaka in 2007.
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South Korean foreign minister to visit Japan from July 18: Japan gov't
TOKYO - South Korean Foreign Minister Park Jin will make a three-day visit to Japan from Monday and hold talks with his Japanese counterpart Yoshimasa Hayashi, the government said Friday.
Park's visit comes as the two countries seek to improve their ties strained by history-related disputes such as wartime labor issues.
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G-20 ministers focus on reducing inflation without harming growth
NUSA DUA, Indonesia - Finance chiefs from the Group of 20 major economies began a two-day meeting in Bali on Friday to discuss ways to curb global inflation amid Russia's war on Ukraine.
With inflation affecting more than just food and energy prices, the G-20 ministers and central bank chiefs, including Japanese Finance Minister Shunichi Suzuki, are seeking coordinated action at the gathering on the Indonesian resort island to avoid an economic downturn.
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Japan's Suzuki says currency issues touched on at G-20 meeting
NUSA DUA, Indonesia - Japanese Finance Minister Shunichi Suzuki said Friday he brought up currency issues at a meeting in Bali with his counterparts from the Group of 20 major economies, amid the yen's recent rapid fall.
"Rapid fluctuations have been seen in the foreign exchange market and it is necessary to watch the trends with a high degree of (attention)," Suzuki said he told the meeting, when he met the press.
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China's economy grows 0.4% in 2nd qtr amid "zero-COVID" policy
BEIJING - China's economy grew 0.4 percent from a year earlier during the April-June period, but the pace of expansion slowed against the backdrop of a prolonged lockdown in Shanghai, official data showed Friday.
The year-on-year gross domestic product figure underscored it will be difficult for the Communist-led government to attain its growth target of around 5 percent for this year while it continues with its radical "zero-COVID" policy to stem the novel coronavirus outbreak.
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Sri Lanka's president resigns, parliament speaker says
COLOMBO - Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa stepped down after fleeing to Singapore in the face of mass protests, the country's parliament speaker said Friday.
The speaker, Mahinda Yapa Abeywardana, said he accepted the resignation of Rajapaksa, amid the country's worst economic crisis since independence. Local media reported Thursday that Rajapaksa had tendered his resignation letter to the speaker through the Sri Lankan Embassy in Singapore.
