News Headlines - 28 August 2018
▽Mattis says no more halt to U.S.-South Korea joint military exercises - CBS News
There are no future plans to halt joint U.S.-South Korea military exercises in the Korean Peninsula, Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis said Tuesday. This is a departure from the announcement in June that he had "indefinitely suspended" military exercises with South Korea after President Trump said at his summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un that the U.S. would stop its "war games" with South Korea.
Facing a standstill in diplomatic efforts with the North Koreans, this is the latest indication that the Trump administration is not willing to give concessions to Kim without tangible steps on denuclearization.
Trump then launched into a blistering critique of Japan’s economic policies, according to people familiar with the conversation. He railed against the U.S. trade deficit with Japan and urged Abe to negotiate a bilateral trade deal that is more favorable to U.S. exporters of beef and automobiles.
The meeting, which left Abe exasperated, epitomized the paradoxical nature of Trump’s closest relationship with a foreign leader.
The Japanese government has been found to have inflated the number of disabled people under its employment by 3,460 to meet a legal quota, in a damning probe released Tuesday (Aug 28) that has stoked domestic furor.
The data padding had been done at 27 out of 33 government entities, the labour ministry said.
It added that the government’s employment ratio of those with disabilities stood at 1.19 per cent in June last year – way below the earlier reported 2.49 per cent, and under the legal threshold at the time of 2.3 per cent.
▽French Bonds Feel the Blues on Fear of Japanese Bidding Sayonara - Bloomberg
French bond investors are now more fixated on what their counterparts from Japan are up to than developments in their own region, and for a good reason. France ranks No. 2 among the $2.4 trillion of global debt owned by buyers from the Asian nation, and that makes the securities particularly vulnerable to the risk that rising yields in Tokyo could lure some of that money back home.
The yield premium on French 10-year bonds over German equivalents has climbed from a three-year low in April amid concern Japanese investors will pull funds to invest more in their own country.
▽Sexually frustrated dolphin named Zafar terrorises tourists on French beach
A seaside village in Brittany has banned swimming on its beach because a dolphin in heat has been scaring tourists and locals by approaching them and trying to rub up against them.
The dolphin has even tried to prevent several swimmers from getting back to the beach at Landévennec, using its nose to push one woman out of the water and up into the air.
