Japan

The phone conversation is set to take place Thursday, two days after the recalcitrant regime fired the missile over Japan to fall into the Pacific, marking its first launch of an IRBM in eight months, Yonhap news agency reported. President Yoon and PM Kishida are expected to discuss joint responses to evolving nuclear and missile threats.

The government said around 20 bills are scheduled to be submitted to the Diet during the upcoming session, including a second supplementary budget bill for the fiscal year through March 2023 to address rising food and energy prices and a revision of the infectious disease law to prepare for future pandemics, reports Xinhua news agency.

The poll conducted released on Sunday showed that the support rate of the government headed by Prime Minister Fumio Kishida stood at 29 per cent, down 7 percentage points from the 36 pe rcent in the previous survey in August, a record low since he took office in October 2021, reports Xinhua news agency.

Andersson, also leader of the ruling Social Democratic Party, conceded defeat at a press conference following the election on Sunday. She said she would hand in her resignation notice on Thursday after it emerged that the opposition blue bloc consisting of the Moderate Party, the Christian Democrats, the Liberal Party and the Sweden Democrats, had won 176 of the 349 seats in parliament.

Indian Defence Minister Rajnath Singh and External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar met their Japanese counterparts Hamada Yasukazu and Hayashi Yoshimasa during the second India-Japan 2+2 Ministerial Dialogue held in Tokyo on September 8. They held detailed discussions on all critical challenges to a rules-based global order which increasingly binds the two countries, reinforcing their special strategic and global partnership.

The blue bloc comprises the Moderate Party, the Christian Democrats, the Liberal Party and the Sweden Democrats, reports Xinhua news agency. The red bloc of the Social Democratic Party, the Left Party, the Green Party, and the Centre Party gained 48.8 per cent of the votes cast in Sunday's polling.

The Chamber of Deputies voted nearly unanimously to endorse the accession of the two Nordic countries in an overnight session that ended early Saturday, reports dpa news agency. The Senate voted in favour earlier this month. The last step for ratification in the Czech Republic is the signature of President Milos Zeman.

"As we push ahead with new security arrangements, it is natural to approach the matter with a new line-up of people," Nakamura told reporters here. The 67-year-old former leader was shot in the back at close range by an ex-military man with a home-made gun during a campaign speech in the city of Nara on July 8. The assassination shocked the country, known for its low crime rate and extremely strict gun laws.

"The issue is how we should follow up on the agreement that Turkey, Sweden and Finland reached during the NATO summit in Madrid, which was a precondition for Turkey to agree to Sweden's and Finland's requests," Linde told broadcaster SVT on Wednesday. New members must be unanimously approved but Turkey has blocked Sweden and Finland's accession to NATO.

An improved ground-launched version of the missile is expected to enter service two years earlier than originally planned, sometime in 2024, Japanese newspaper Yomiuri reported on Sunday, citing several government officials. The newspaper claimed that Tokyo eventually wants "more than 1,000" such missiles deployed across the Nansei Islands.