JIJI English News-時事通信英語ニュース-

Five Japanese mobile phone carriers said Wednesday that they will postpone offering mobile phone numbers with the new prefix of 060, initially slated to be introduced in July or later.

Representatives from 127 countries and regions plus the European Union are expected to attend this year's Aug. 6 ceremony in Hiroshima to honor the victims of the 1945 U.S. atomic bombing of the western Japan city, the municipal government said Wednesday.

Los Angeles Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani hit his 300th career home run in U.S. Major League Baseball on Tuesday, becoming the first Japanese MLB player to achieve the milestone.

Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi paid tribute to her late predecessor, Shinzo Abe, whom she sees as her mentor, on Wednesday, exactly four years after his assassination.

Regional banks across Japan are facing risks of their loans to credit card payment processing service firm Zentoshin, which has gone bust, becoming irrecoverable.

Japan logged a current account surplus of 3,968.3 billion yen for May, supported by robust export growth, the Finance Ministry said Wednesday.

Asahi Group Holdings Ltd. said Wednesday that it expects to post record consolidated sales and net profit for this year after a recovery from the fallout of last year's system failure.

Japanese companies operating in China have been urged to exercise caution over exports of dual-use goods to Japan, after Chinese authorities arrested two Japanese nationals for suspected export control violations.

The number of corporate bankruptcies in Japan with debts of at least 10 million yen in January-June surpassed 5,000 for the first time in 12 years on a first-half basis, reflecting labor shortages and inflation, Tokyo Shoko Research Ltd. said Wednesday.

Japan received reports of 19,417 personal data breach cases in fiscal 2025, the second-highest annual total on record, only eclipsed by the previous year's 21,007 cases, according to a report by a government commission.

As Wednesday marked four years since the fatal shooting of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in the western Japan city of Nara, visitors paid their respects to him at a floral tribute stand at the shooting site.

U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday credited his high-tariff policy with prompting Toyota Motor Corp. to decide to move production of its Tacoma pickup truck from Mexico to the United States.

NATO and its Indo-Pacific Four partners agreed in a meeting on Tuesday to strengthen their coordination in areas such as defense industry cooperation and cybersecurity.

The foreign ministers of Japan, the United States and South Korea shared concern over the recent launch of a ballistic missile by a nuclear-powered Chinese navy submarine at a meeting in Ankara, Turkey, on Tuesday.

A closely watched high-speed magnetic levitation train line project in Japan still faces many challenges, including huge construction costs seen totaling 11 trillion yen, although it has cleared a major hurdle with much-awaited consent from a prefectural governor.

The Philippines has reached a broad agreement with Japan on the transfer of five Abukuma-class destroyers from Japan's Maritime Self-Defense Force after their retirement, Philippine National Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro said Tuesday.

The leaders of Japan's two ruling parties on Tuesday confirmed plans to give up on enacting a bill to cut the number of House of Representatives seats during the current parliamentary session, which is slated to end in less than two weeks.

Japanese police arrested three people Tuesday, including a former executive of a now-defunct nonprofit organization that supported patients of incurable diseases, on suspicion of illegally brokering an overseas organ transplant case for fees.

The Japanese government is considering establishing a new bureau at the Defense Ministry in charge of dealing with international policies, including the promotion of cooperation with like-minded countries, government and ruling bloc sources said Tuesday.

Tokyo police last month sent to prosecutors papers on Fujipassc Co. and three men linked to the Japanese construction company for allegedly bribing a Cambodian government employee.

A local court on Tuesday sentenced a former worker at an elderly care home in the city of Koga, Ibaraki Prefecture, east of Tokyo, to 20 years in prison for murdering a resident of the facility in 2020.

Japan's composite index of coincident economic indicators rose 0.4 point from the previous month in May, marking the third consecutive month of growth, according to preliminary data released by the Cabinet Office on Tuesday.

A celebration ceremony for an airport named after blockbuster Japanese animation series Pocket Monster, or Pokemon, was held in the city of Wajima in the central Japan prefecture of Ishikawa on Tuesday.

The Los Angeles Clippers of the U.S. National Basketball Association said Monday that they have signed star Japanese player Rui Hachimura.

Yasutomo Suzuki, governor of the central Japan prefecture of Shizuoka, on Tuesday approved construction of the Shizuoka section of the Chuo Shinkansen high-speed magnetic levitation train line, effectively ending a nearly nine-year impasse that had delayed the rail project.