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03
April

 

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Japan's Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said on Monday the government will continue to strongly demand Beijing for an early release and consular visits for an Astellas Pharma (4503.T) employee detained in China.

The government would also provide as much support as possible, including contacting his family, Kishida told an Upper House budget committee meeting.

Kishida's comments came after the country's foreign minister Yoshimasa Hayashi met his Chinese counterpart on Sunday and urged China to promptly release the detained Japanese. (Reuters)

03
April

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Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on Monday he would not "get carried away" after his Labor party defied the odds to snatch a seat from the opposition at a by-election, a 100-year first, even as voters battled higher living costs.

Labor's Mary Doyle won the weekend by-election for the lower house federal seat of Aston in Melbourne's eastern suburbs with a swing of more than 6%, in a blow to the conservative Liberal-National opposition coalition in one of its traditional strongholds in Victoria state.

 

Albanese said the government's focus on making a practical difference in people's lives resonated with voters, who understood the spike in living costs was because of global supply chain problems linked to Russia's war in Ukraine.

But despite calling the election result "a historic win", Albanese said his government would remain grounded.

"This was a significant victory ... but we don't get carried away with this," Albanese told ABC Radio in an interview.

 

The last time the opposition lost a by-election to a government candidate was in 1920, in the Western Australia state goldfields electorate of Kalgoorlie.

The by-election in Aston was triggered after former Liberal minister Alan Tudge, who won with a slim 2.8% margin in the 2022 general election, quit politics due to personal reasons.

Albanese, who is set to finish a year in power next month, has enjoyed high approval ratings since becoming prime minister. A newspoll published by the Australian newspaper on Monday showed him stretching his lead to 58% as the preferred leader, eclipsing opposition leader Peter Dutton's 26% support.

The survey of 1,500 voters also showed Labor extending its lead on a two-party preferred basis to 55%, against the opposition's 45%.

The by-election win comes a week after Labor returned to power in New South Wales, Australia's most populous state. The win means the party now governs at state and federal levels across Australia's mainland, leaving island state Tasmania as the conservative outlier. (Reuters)

03
April

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The navies of South Korea, the U.S. and Japan will hold two days of anti-submarine exercises starting Monday to better counter North Korea's evolving nuclear and missile capabilities, South Korea's defence ministry said.

The drills will be staged in international waters off South Korea's southern island of Jeju, involving a U.S. carrier strike group led by USS Nimitz, which had arrived in the southeastern city of Busan last week. 

The trilateral drills come as North Korea unveiled last week new, smaller nuclear warheads, vowed to produce more weapons-grade nuclear materials to expand its arsenal, and boasted of what it called a nuclear-capable underwater attack drone.

This week's exercises will use a mobile anti-submarine warfare training target to improve the capabilities needed to detect, track and destroy North Korean underwater threats, the ministry said. 

The three countries last held trilateral anti-submarine drills in September - the first time in five years - amid tension over North Korea's unprecedented number of missile tests. (Reuters)

03
April

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Jakarta (voinews): Indonesia's effort to address climate change aligns with ASEAN as seen from the green taxonomy standpoint, Minister of Finance Sri Mulyani said in an official statement on Sunday.

Indonesia is well aware that every climate funding requirement requires a framework that can serve as a reference point for all parties.

Because of this, the Indonesian Financial Service Authority (OJK) has formulated a green taxonomy document as a guideline for green investment.

The green taxonomy can become a benchmark for other countries as part of concrete action to reduce emission.

Indonesia's green taxonomy also aligns with the ASEAN Taxonomy for Sustainable Finance (ATSF) Version 2 that had been unveiled in March 2023.

The ATSF Version 2 can accommodate the need for a more comprehensive assessment concerning how and where the contribution of coal retirement program should be placed as part of the decarbonization effort to support the Paris Agreement.

The Indonesian Government continues its efforts to meet the climate change action commitment. In this case, the government carries out its commitment with market and non-market mechanisms.

"Indonesia has issued fiscal policies to support the climate change action," she said.

These policies include the provision of tax incentive, tax holiday and removal of value added tax and import duty for actions related to the renewable energy sector and coal retirement.

Activities that produce emission are a cross border issue. Thus, the implementation of carbon market has its own complexity such as matters related to jurisdiction, claims and state parties entitled to revenue, Mulyani said.

Indonesia welcomes international support in the form of technical support, loan and donation in its development.

Earlier, during the “Ministerial Fireside Chat Seminar on Financing Transition in ASEAN” on Thursday, Mulyani said Indonesia's financing requirement for climate change handling has reached around US$281 billion. (Antaranews)