The coalition deal included deadlines and specific plans for policy implementation, including a 10% reduction in lawmaker numbers

International News via Reuters:

Hardline conservative Sanae Takaichi is almost certain to become Japan’s first female prime minister on Tuesday, after the right-wing opposition Japan Innovation Party, known as Ishin, said it was ready to back her premiership.

“I told Takaichi that we should move forward together,” Ishin’s leader and Osaka governor Hirofumi Yoshimura told reporters in the western Japanese city on Monday. He will meet with Takaichi at 6 p.m. (0900 GMT) to conclude the alliance, he added.

The coalition deal included deadlines and specific plans for policy implementation, including a 10% reduction in lawmaker numbers, Ishin’s other boss, Fumitake Fujita said after he and Yoshimura met with party lawmakers to outline the coalition agreement.

Investors’ anticipation of a deal that could lead to higher government spending weakened the yen and pushed stocks in Japan to a record high, with the blue-chip Nikkei share index closing 3.4% higher. 

The cooperation agreement would deliver a combined 231 seats in parliament’s dominant lower house. It would fall two short of a majority, but ensure Takaichi likely wins a vote in parliament on Tuesday to pick Japan’s next prime minister. She will only need a majority of ballots cast rather than of all members in any runoff vote.

To govern, however, she will still need to court the support of other opposition groups, including for an upcoming supplementary budget.

The expected deal with Ishin follows the collapse of the LDP’s 26-year coalition with Komeito, which ended its alliance after the ruling party picked Takaichi as its new leader. 

Komeito’s abrupt withdrawal triggered talks among opposition parties, including the second largest Ishin, that could have derailed her premiership ambitions and thrown her party out of power for the first time in more than a decade. Ishin’s decision to side with the LDP ends that possibility. 

FISCAL DOVE, SECURITY HAWK

Takaichi, a fiscal dove, has called for higher spending and tax cuts to cushion consumers from rising inflation and has criticised the Bank of Japan’s decision to raise interest rates.

“Expectations for Takaichi’s economic policies, which include fiscal expansion and monetary easing, appear to be facilitating rising share prices and a weaker yen,” said Nomura Securities strategist Fumika Shimizu.

Some analysts say Ishin, which advocates for small government and spending cuts, could restrain some of Takaichi’s spending ambitions.

Takaichi wants to revise Japan’s pacifist postwar constitution to recognise the role of its military. A regular visitor to the Yasukuni war shrine in Tokyo, viewed by some Asian neighbours as a symbol of wartime aggression, she wants higher defence spending to deter neighbouring China.

She has also called for stricter immigration rules and opposes social policies, such as allowing women to retain their surnames after marriage, which she says undermine traditional values. 

For now, Ishin will not take up a post in Takaichi’s government, at least until it is clear that the partnership with the LDP is working, Yoshimura said later in a television interview.

“Right now, we’re still a group of lawmakers with no experience in government. So rather than asking for a ministerial post, we want to first focus on realising our policies as part of the ruling coalition,” he said.

Reporting by Tim Kelly, Rocky Swift, Makiko Yamazaki, Mariko Katsumura, Satoshi Sugiyama, Makiko Yamazaki and Anton Bridges

The Boeing 747 involved in the deadliest airport incident in the financial hub in more than 25 years also fell into the water and was partially submerged

International News via Reuters:

Two Hong Kong airport security staff were killed early on Monday after a cargo plane from Dubai skidded off the runway on landing, collided with their security patrol vehicle and pushed it into the sea, the city’s airport operator said.

The Boeing 747 involved in the deadliest airport incident in the financial hub in more than 25 years also fell into the water and was partially submerged, but all four crew members on board escaped.

The airport security staff were not breathing when rescued from the water, with one confirmed dead at the scene and another later at hospital, said Steven Yiu, executive director of airport operations at Airport Authority Hong Kong.

The accident at the world’s busiest cargo airport involved a plane operated by Turkish freight carrier ACT Airlines on behalf of Emirates, the Dubai-based airline said in a statement.

Authorities are still investigating the exact cause of the crash, with weather, runway conditions, the aircraft and aircrew part of the investigation, Yiu said.

The accident occurred around 3:50 a.m. Hong Kong time on Monday (1950 GMT on Sunday).

An air traffic control recording available on LiveATC.net reviewed by Reuters indicated the cargo plane’s pilot confirmed plans to land on runway 07L where the crash occurred, but he did not report any technical issues on the recording.

“An incident happened at the airfield just now,” a female controller said minutes later.

Man Ka-chai, chief accident and safety investigator for Hong Kong’s Air Accident Investigation Authority, confirmed air traffic control had directed the flight to land at the north runway, but added: “We didn’t receive any message requesting help from the pilot.”

Yiu said the security patrol car was in charge of patrolling the north runway along a road that was outside the runway fence. It was operating in its usual area and “definitely didn’t rush onto the runway,” he said.

The airplane suddenly veered left after landing on the runway before hitting the car, which “wasn’t a normal path”, he said.

AIRPORT FLIGHTS NOT AFFECTED

Flights at Hong Kong’s airport have not been affected, Yiu said, adding that the northern runway at the world’s busiest cargo airport, where the incident occurred, would reopen after safety inspections were complete.

The south and central runways are operating as normal, the authority said.

Photos taken after the accident showed a cargo aircraft with AirACT livery partially submerged in water near the airport’s sea wall with an escape slide deployed and the nose and tail sections separated.

Hong Kong’s Civil Aviation Department said in a statement on Monday that the aircraft had “deviated from the north runway after landing and ditched into the sea.”

Emirates said flight EK9788 sustained damage on landing in Hong Kong on Monday and was a Boeing 747 cargo aircraft wet-leased from and operated by ACT Airlines.

“Crew are confirmed to be safe and there was no cargo onboard,” Emirates said.

Boeing did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

ACT Airlines is a Turkish carrier that provides extra cargo capacity to major airlines. It did not respond immediately to a request for comment outside normal business hours.

Flight tracking service FlightRadar24 said the aircraft involved in the accident was 32 years old and had served as a passenger plane before being converted into a freighter.

Yiu said the airport authority would provide all necessary assistance and support to the family, adding the two staff who died had worked at the airport for seven and 12 years respectively.

It was the deadliest airport accident in Hong Kong since a China Airlines flight crashed on landing in 1999, killing three of the 315 people on board, according to an Aviation Safety Network database.

Reporting by James Pomfret and Farah Master in Hong Kong; Additional reporitng by Tyrone Siu, Jessie Pang, Anne Marie Roantree, Donny Kwok in Hong Kong and Rishav Chatterjee in Bengaluru; Writing by Farah Master; Editing by Sam Holmes and Jamie Freed

The EU wants to phase out Russian oil and gas imports in a bid to deprive the Kremlin of revenues to fund its war in Ukraine

International News via Reuters:

The European Union ‘s energy ministers on Monday backed the bloc’s proposals to phase out Russian oil and gas imports by January 2028, the Council of the European Union said on Monday.

In a meeting in Luxembourg, EU energy ministers approved the plans, which would also phase out Russian gas imports under new contracts from January 2026, then existing short-term contracts from June 2026, and long-term contracts in January 2028.

The EU wants to phase out Russian oil and gas imports in a bid to deprive the Kremlin of revenues to fund its war in Ukraine.

Reporting by Bart Meijer, Kate Abnett and Inti Landauro; Editing by GV De Clercq

AWS said it was seeing increased “error rates and latencies” for multiple services

International News via Reuters:

Amazon’s cloud services unit AWS was hit by an outage on Monday that took down several popular apps including Fortnite and Snapchat and caused connectivity issues for many companies around the world.

AWS said it was seeing increased “error rates and latencies” for multiple services. “We are working on multiple parallel paths to accelerate recovery,” it said in its latest update.

The AWS outage is the first major internet disruption since last year’s CrowdStrike malfunction that hobbled technology systems in hospitals, banks and airports globally.

AWS provides on-demand computing power, data storage and other digital services to companies, governments and individuals. Disruptions to its servers can cause outages across websites and platforms that rely on its cloud infrastructure. AWS competes with Google’s and Microsoft’s cloud services.

AWS directed Reuters to its status page when requested for a comment. Amazon did not respond to a request for comment.

PERPLEXITY, COINBASE, PRIME VIDEO DOWN

AI startup Perplexity, cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase and trading app Robinhood attributed the outages to AWS.

“Perplexity is down right now. The root cause is an AWS issue. We’re working on resolving it,” Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas said in a post on X.

Amazon’s shopping website, PrimeVideo and Alexa were all facing issues, according to Downdetector.

Fortnite, owned by Epic Games, Roblox, Clash Royale and Clash of Clans were among the gaming platforms that were down, while Paypal’s Venmo and Chime were some of the financial platforms that faced issues, the outage tracking website said.

Uber rival Lyft’s app was also down for thousands of users in the U.S.

Messaging app Signal’s President Meredith Whittaker confirmed on X that the company’s platform was hit by the AWS outage as well.

BRITISH FIRMS AFFECTED

Britain’s Lloyd Bank, Bank of Scotland and telecom service providers Vodafone and BT were also facing issues, according to DownDetecor’s UK website. The country’s tax, payments and customs authority HMRC’s website too was hit by the outage.

However, billionaire Elon Musk, the owner of social media company X, said that his platform continued to work. “X works,” he said, without commenting further.

Reporting by Shubham Kalia, Devika Nair and Ananya Palyekar in Bengaluru; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty

Brent crude futures were down 18 cents, or 0.3%, at $61.11 a barrel as of 0938 GMT, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate futures fell 17 cents, or 0.3%, to $57.37

International News via Reuters:

Oil prices dipped on Monday, pressured by worries over a global glut as U.S.-China trade tensions added to concerns about an economic slowdown and weaker energy demand.

Brent crude futures were down 18 cents, or 0.3%, at $61.11 a barrel as of 0938 GMT, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate futures fell 17 cents, or 0.3%, to $57.37.

Oil traders’ concerns have shifted from under-supply to over-supply, the futures contract structure of the global benchmark Brent showed.

The six-month spread for Brent shows contracts for earlier loading are trading below those for later loading, a structure known as contango, which encourages traders to pay for storing oil so it can be sold at higher prices when supplies are expected to have shrunk.

Contango, which emerged on Thursday for the first time since a brief appearance in May, has deepened to around minus 30 cents, a level last seen in late 2023.

Narrowing backwardation, the market term for immediate deliveries fetching a premium over later deliveries, suggests investors are making less money selling their oil in the spot market because near-term supply is perceived to be ample.

Both benchmarks declined more than 2% last week, marking their third consecutive weekly decline, partly due to the International Energy Agency’s outlook for a growing supply glut in 2026.

Last week, the head of the World Trade Organization said she had urged the United States and China to de-escalate trade tensions, warning that a decoupling by the world’s two largest economies could reduce global economic output by 7% over the longer term.

The two top oil consumers have recently renewed their trade war, imposing additional port fees on ships carrying cargo between them – tit-for-tat moves that could disrupt global freight flows.

Uncertainty remains over what may happen with Russian oil supply, with U.S. President Donald Trump warning again on Sunday that Washington would maintain “massive” tariffs on India unless it stopped buying Russian oil.

On the supply side, U.S. energy firms last week added rigs for the first time in three weeks, energy services firm Baker Hughes said.

Additional reporting by Yuka Obayashi in Tokyo and Colleen Howe in Beijing; Editing by Emelia Sithole-Matarise

Convening a special meeting in Geneva, the WMO said that in the past five decades, weather, water and climate-related hazards have killed more than 2 million people

International News via Reuters:

The World Meteorological Organization urged action to close gaps in a global system of surveillance meant to protect people from extreme weather, saying on Monday that such early warnings were particularly needed in developing countries.

Convening a special meeting in Geneva, the WMO said that in the past five decades, weather, water and climate-related hazards have killed more than 2 million people, with 90% of those deaths occurring in developing countries.

WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo has made boosting early-warning systems a priority but still only 55% of countries have built up the surveillance capacity, data from the U.N. weather agency shows.

“Many millions of people lack protection against dangerous weather which is inflicting an increasing toll on economic assets and vital infrastructure,” the WMO said in a statement.

The number of countries using early-warning systems has doubled in three years to 119. But a WMO assessment of 62 countries showed half of them possess only basic capacity and 16% have less than basic capacity.

However, the WMO is seeing progress in Africa, including Mozambique and Ethiopia, with more countries having functioning websites and issuing standardized alerts.

“Early warning means early action. Our goal is to not only warn the world it is to empower it,” Saulo said in a opening speech to the conference in Geneva.

Deaths from disasters are six times higher and the number of people affected is four times higher in countries with limited multi-hazard early warning systems, the WMO has found.

The head of Switzerland’s Federal Department of Home Affairs, Elisabeth Baume-Schneider, told delegates at the conference that no country or region was spared from the impact of climate change and extreme weather.

She pointed to the example of how the regular monitoring of a mountain glacier allowed scientists to warn about its imminent collapse in May 2025, allowing for the evacuation of the Swiss village of Blatten.

“Permafrost melt will inevitably lead to more glacier collapses and rockfalls,” making early warning systems vital, she said.

Reporting by Olivia Le Poidevin and Emma FargeEditing by Frances Kerry