Japan defence ministry seeks $50 billion budget

Japan's defence ministry is seeking an annual budget increase that will add to past hikes to expand military spending over a decade by almost a sixth, as it looks to counter the growing strength of neighbouring China. Since last year, Japan has identified China as its main national security threat, pointing in a July policy paper to a "sense of crisis" over Beijing's threat to Taiwan, which lies close to Japanese islands along the edge of the East China Sea. The ministry's budget proposal, released yesterday, seeks an increase of 2.6 percent in spending, to a record 5.48 trillion yen ($49.93 billion), for the year starting April 1. However, Japan's defence spending increases are not enough to keep pace with China's expanding military budget, which increased 6.8% this year and is already about four times more than Japan's, and second only to the United States in size.

Forex crisis forces Lanka to declare food emergency

Sri Lanka yesterday declared a state of emergency over food shortages as private banks ran out of foreign exchange to finance imports. With the country suffering a hard-hitting economic crisis, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa said he ordered emergency regulations to counter the hoarding of sugar, rice and other essential foods. Rajapaksa has named a top army officer as "Commissioner General of Essential Services to coordinate the supply of paddy, rice, sugar and other consumer goods". The move followed sharp price rises for sugar, rice, onions and potatoes, while long queues have formed outside stores because of shortages of milk powder, kerosene oil and cooking gas. The economy shrank by a record 3.6 percent in 2020 because of the pandemic. Sri Lanka's foreign reserves fell to $2.8 billion at the end of July, from $7.5 billion in November 2019.

Hate crimes rose against Black, Asian Americans in 2020: FBI

Reported hate crimes in the US, in particular targeting African Americans and Asian Americans, surged in 2020, according to statistics released Monday by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. In a year that saw huge Black Lives Matter protests which helped force a reckoning on racism, reports of hate crimes against Black Americans rose 40 percent, from 1,972 to 2,755, the data showed. Meanwhile, attacks against Americans of Asian heritage surged 70 percent with 274 incidents in 2020 against 161 in 2019, seemingly confirming a trend reported by the community since the start of the Covid pandemic.  The statistics spotlight the urgent need for a comprehensive response, Attorney General Merrick Garland said. In the United States, "hate-motivated crime" usually refers to an act directed against a person because of certain characteristics of their identity.