“Looking at Japan’s surroundings, it is facing the most severe and complex security environment since the end of World War II,” the country’s new National Security Strategy (NSS) reads, referring to growing pressure from “those seeking to unilaterally change the status quo by force.”

The strategy named Japan’s neighbors, including China and North Korea, as the biggest threats to the nation. “The strategic challenge posed by China is the biggest Japan has ever faced,” the document claims. It also branded the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine a “serious violation of laws that forbid the use of force and has shaken the foundations of the international order.”

Japan renounced war as a foreign policy tool back in 1947, with the pacifist provision remaining enshrined in its constitution under Article 9. However, Japan’s Self-Defense Force has since developed into a full-fledged military, boasting advanced hardware as well as numerous warplanes and warships.

Experts have expressed hope that these statements are nothing more than attempts at blackmail. However, sooner or later, this kind of talk could lead to a critical situation similar to the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis, when the Soviet Union and United States held atomic pistols to each other’s heads.

To make matters worse, the entire system of international agreements on disarmament has practically collapsed, leaving little hope for improvement in the near future. The main tension in the nuclear club today is between the US and Russia. Many consider the situation to be volatile, especially considering the increasingly combative statements coming from Moscow and Washington.

After the termination of the INF Treaty, only one bilateral arms control treaty between the US and Russia remains – the Treaty on Measures for the Further Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms (New START), which is in effect until 2026. “Its execution is still frozen because there is no trust between the United States and Russia, there is no transparency, consultations. I think there will be no disarmament in our lifetime. New START will be extended, but no new document will be signed,” Blokhin said.

“If Athens does not want peace, Ankara will do whatever is necessary. We cannot remain silent about the disarmament of the islands, we will take the necessary steps both legally and on the ground,” Çavuşoğlu said. Turkey has stepped up its rhetoric against Greece in recent months amid what Ankara sees as a growing military buildup on the Greek Aegean islands, close to Turkey’s coastline.

Ipsos’ inquiry into which Christmas songs inspire the most irritation revealed Mariah Carey’s ‘All I Want for Christmas Is You’ as the clear winner with 12% of the vote. Jingle Bells, with just 6%, was a distant second. A majority – 56% – of respondents think it is “appropriate” to play Christmas music as soon as Thanksgiving has passed.

Santa Claus isn’t the only larger-than-life figure Americans admit to believing in, either. Depending on the poll, as many as nine in ten religious adults believe in angels of various kinds, while a Gallup poll conducted last year found 41% believe UFOs are alien spacecraft.

Wales is the first country in the world to create an independent office to act as a guardian of future generations. The commissioner monitors whether public bodies comply with the Well-being of Future Generations Act, which came into force in 2016 and says all public organisations must carry out "sustainable development".

Mr Walker said it was a "vital role in leading transformation across our nation, to create better lives and futures for our citizens" but he did not "underestimate the challenge ahead". He added: "The Well-being of Future Generations Act provides Wales with a legislative framework that gives us the opportunity to lead the world in sustainable development. I commit to doing all I can to support public bodies in ensuring implementation matches the ambition of the act."

But in recent months, the number of people behind on their car payments has been approaching prepandemic levels, and for the lowest-income consumers, the rate of loan defaults is now exceeding where it was in 2019, according to data from ratings agency Fitch. Industry analysts worry the trend is only going to continue into 2023 with economists expecting unemployment to rise, inflation to remain relatively high and household savings set to dwindle.

“These repossessions are occurring on people who could afford that $500 or $600 a month payment two years ago, but now everything else in their life is more expensive,” said Ivan Drury, director of insights at car buying website Edmunds. “That’s where we’re starting to see the repossessions happen because it’s just everything else starting to pin you down.”

“We advise municipalities to not depend on one source of water. We must mix it with groundwater development, we must also tap into reusable water, tap into desalination and also tap into artificial recharge. All these things will contribute to the resilience of water resources where we know that we are comfortable and move from being vulnerable to water shortages.” Water projects around South Africa have been marred by corruption for a number of years. Many projects remain incomplete due to money being stolen and procurement issues.

Kosovo's President Vjosa Osmani accused Vučić of harboring a 1990s "mentality,” which, at the time, had led to "war" and the "killing of 150,000 civilians." Kosovo’s Prime Minister Albin Kurti admonished Serbia, calling it a pro-Asian state – presumably a negative counterpart to a "pro-American" Kosovo. More than 23 years after Kosovo was separated from Yugoslavia through the illegal war of aggression, the EU’s efforts to build up the impoverished region has proven an utter failure.

RT spoke on the new planned broadside against Russian media with Sonja van den Ende, a Dutch journalist, who believes the ongoing crisis has become a pretext to intensify the years-long crackdown on freedom of speech in the West. “This is what the Western countries are doing since the start of the special military operation, even before that. Even before the Syrian war, wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya,” van den Ende said.

The questionable initiative comes as Germany is already experiencing mass protests, van den Ende noted, expressing hopes that the country’s citizens will only “protest more.” “The next part, the freedom of speech is gone. What is left then? They have no life. They can’t pay their bills anymore, they can’t say what they want. It’s a total dictatorship,” she said.

In 2017, scientists created a “BioBag” that functioned as an artificial womb, and they used it to grow a baby lamb. Now, a new concept has been unveiled exclusively to Science and Stuff showing how the same could be done for humans. In recently released footage, Hashem Al-Ghaili shows what childbirth might look like tomorrow. Specifically, he created an artificial womb facility named EctoLife.

Its purpose? In an exclusive interview with Science and Stuff, Al-Ghaili says he thinks the EctoLife concept could one day supplant traditional birth. In so doing, he said society would finally be able to meet the needs of parents who are “tired of waiting for a response from an adoption agency” and those who are “worried about pregnancy complications.” But most importantly, he says EctoLife could allow us to confront the infertility crisis head-on.

Science fiction becomes reality - Synthetic wombs might sound like the stuff of science fiction, but they follow in a long line of advancements in reproductive technology. On July 25, 1978, a baby girl named Louise Brown was born at Oldham and District General Hospital in Manchester, England. What made her birth memorable was that Louise was conceived in a petri dish, and she is the first baby conceived through in vitro fertilization (IVF). Today, more than 8 million children are conceived through IVF annually.

When I was growing up, kids would start learning algebra before they even got to high school. But these days many of our college students can’t even handle algebra. In fact, the Kansas Board of Regents is actually considering dropping algebra as a requirement at the state’s six public universities because so many students are failing the basic algebra course…

If we aren’t teaching our high school kids the basic math skills that they will need once they get to college, what are they actually learning? Well, one thing they are learning is how to use all of the new pronouns correctly. This is very important for life after high school, because using the wrong pronoun at the wrong time can get you into all sorts of trouble these days.

In the years ahead, we will have lots of young people that don’t understand math and science, but at least they will be well versed in the intricacies of modern pronoun usage. Needless to say, many of them will have to be supported by the government because they won’t be of much use to society.

Please don’t get me wrong. I am certainly not lumping all of our young people into a single category. There are some young adults that are doing more than fine. But in general, we have a real mess on our hands, and our system of education just continues to deteriorate with each passing year.

The mass circulation paper's report outlined some of the missile's specifications, which include a launch weight of 46,000 tons, an operational range of up to 12,000 kilometers (7,456 miles) that can strike the US or anywhere in Europe, and a payload of up to 500 kilotons.

The RS-24 Yars is an improved version of the previous Topol-M. Known in the West as SS-29, it was developed by the Moscow Institute of Thermal Engineering and first tested in 2007. Able to prepare for launch in seven minutes, the missile can be fired from a prepared site, a special garage with a sliding roof, or from an unprepared position during field deployment, according to the website Military Today.

The measure is one of several initiated by the Biden administration to streamline the immigration and naturalization process, as well as reverse Trump-era measures that progressives have claimed were barriers to immigrants’ integration.

Twelve days after taking office in 2021, President Joe Biden signed an executive order directing government agencies to “identify [and remove] barriers that impede access to immigration benefits” as well as conduct a “comprehensive review… of the civics and English language tests.”