Aug 10. Japanese investment giant SoftBank Group said on Tuesday net profit plunged 39 percent in the first quarter, following big gains in the same period last year related to the US merger of T-Mobile and Sprint.

The corporate behemoth has poured money into some of Silicon Valley’s biggest names and hottest new ventures, from AI to biotech, through its $100-billion Vision Fund.

It reported Japan’s biggest ever annual net profit in 2020-21, driven by tech share rallies as people moved their lives online during the coronavirus pandemic.

The merger of US telecoms operators Sprint — which was controlled by SoftBank Group — and T-Mobile was completed in April 2020, releasing more than 700 billion yen ($6.3 billion) in net income, the conglomerate said Tuesday.

Net profit in the three months to June 2021 was 761.5 billion yen, compared with 1.26 trillion yen in the first quarter of last year.

SoftBank’s investment approach means large transactions can cause unpredictable fluctuations in its results, said Mariko Semetko, senior credit officer at Moody’s Japan.

“Last year’s record high follows the previous year’s record loss, and signifies the highly volatile nature of the company’s business,” she told AFP.

“The company has a very fluid and complex capital structure, and unlisted investments and private financings that have limited transparency and are frequently collateralised. Its investment approach results in high governance risks.”
In 2019-20, SoftBank reported a net loss of 961.6 billion yen — its worst ever — as the start of the pandemic compounded woes caused by its investment in troubled office-sharing start-up WeWork.

But it quickly returned to profit as the impact of Covid-19 lockdowns worked largely in its favour.In the first quarter of the current fiscal year, the telecoms firm-turned-investment giant’s total gain on investments came to 1.26 trillion yen, a year-on-year increase of around 28 percent.

Gains were led by rises in the share prices of Chinese ride-sharing giant Didi Chuxing and US food delivery app DoorDash, and partially offset by losses including of South Korean e-commerce giant Coupang.

Analysts said before the earnings release that it was too early for Tuesday’s results to reflect the impact of a recent crackdown on Didi and other US-listed tech firms by Chinese authorities.

In early July, after Didi went ahead with a contentious New York IPO, Beijing announced a probe into the company citing cybersecurity concerns, and ordered its app be removed from stores.

Unlike in the previous quarter, SoftBank Group did not list big names Facebook, Microsoft, Alphabet or Netflix in its portfolio of holdings, although it did list Amazon.

This does not necessarily mean the company has sold off its holdings in the US firms, although it could signal a potential reduction in the number of shares held, despite recent record highs in tech stock prices.

As usual, SoftBank did not issue an annual forecast, with its business model increasingly dependent on often volatile stock market activity. AFP

KATHMANDU, Feb 2: The Japanese government has signed a grant contract to provide medical equipment worth Rs 8.5 million to the Laborer Women and Child Welfare Council (LWCWC).

The grant agreement was signed between Charge d’Affaires of Japan to Nepal Shinya Machida and Chairperson of the LWCWC Ranju Napit amid a program held in Japanese Embassy in the capital city on Friday.

The equipment that includes an ECG machine, hematology analyzer, a mobile X-ray machine and ultrasound machine will be installed in the Valley Health Centre at Byasi of Bhaktapur. The project is funded under the Grant Assistance for Grassroots Human Security Projects of the Japanese government.

Meanwhile, the Japanese Embassy expressed hope that the assistance would strengthen the bilateral relationship between Japan and Nepal. RSS\

KATHMANDU, Jan 25: The Government of Japan has agreed to extend Rs 324.8 million in grant to Nepal for the implementation of Food Assistance Program.

Secretary at the Ministry of Finance Shankar Prasad Adhikari and Ambassador of Japan to Nepal Masashi Ogawa signed the Exchange of Notes today in the Ministry of Finance on behalf of the respective governments.

The fund is aimed at supporting Food Security Program in Nepal and shall be used for the purchase of the products and services necessary for the implementation of the program.

According to a press note issued by the Ministry of Finance, the grant shall also be used for purchase of rice and its transportation. It is said that the Ministry of Supplies will be the executing agency while the Nepal Food Corporation (NFC) will be responsible for the implementation of the project. RSS

FUSSA, Nov 5: President Donald Trump praised Japan as a “crucial ally” and warned adversaries not to test America’s resolve Sunday as he opened a grueling and consequential first trip to Asia.

Trump landed at Yokota Air Base on the outskirts of Tokyo and was greeted by cheering service members. Trump then donned a bomber jacket for a speech in which he touted American firepower and the U.S. alliance with Japan.

“Japan is a treasured partner and crucial ally of the United States and today we thank them for welcoming us and for decades of wonderful friendship between our two nations,” he said, speaking in front of an American flag inside an airplane hangar.

Trump was expected to spend much of his 12-day, five-country Asian tour exhorting allies and rivals to step up efforts to counter the dangers posed by North Korea, which continues to move forward with its nuclear weapons program. Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un have been engaged in an escalating war of words, with Trump repeatedly referring to Un as “Little Rocket Man” and threatening in a recent speech to “totally destroy” the nation, if necessary.

Even before he landed, Trump used the first moments of the trip to denounce the North as “a big problem” that must “be solved.”

“There’s been 25 years of total weakness, so we are taking a very much different approach” toward the North, he told reporters traveling with him.

During the speech, Trump did not mention North Korea by name, but warned of the consequences of crossing what he called the “most fearsome fighting force in the history of our world.”

“Together with our allies, America’s warriors are prepared to defend our nation using the full range of our unmatched capabilities. No one — no dictator, no regime and no nation — should underestimate, ever, American resolve,” Trump told the troops.

Some regional analysts have speculated that Trump’s presence in Asia may prompt North Korea to take provocative action, like another missile test. Trump, when asked about that possibility aboard Air Force One, said “we’ll soon find out.”

After the speech, Trump flew by helicopter to the Kasumigaseki Country Club about 20 miles outside of Tokyo for lunch and a round of golf with Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Japanese golfer Hideki Matsuyama. An avid golfer, Trump said Matsuyama is “probably the greatest player in the history of Japan.”

Trump and Abe have struck up a personal friendship, forged through multiple meetings and telephone conversations, as well as on the greens of one of Trump’s Florida golf clubs and over intimate dinners at Trump’s Florida estate.

At the club, the leaders signed white caps inscribed with the phrase, “Donald and Shinzo: Make Alliance Even Greater,” a tribute to the U.S.-Japan friendship and a play on Trump’s campaign slogan. On the menu: a hamburger made from U.S. beef.

The trip, which marks the longest Far East itinerary for a president in a generation, comes at a precarious moment for Trump. Days ago, his former campaign chairman was indicted and another adviser pleaded guilty as part of an investigation into possible collusion between Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russian officials.

The journey will also test Trump’s stamina. But the 71-year-old president assured reporters that he was up for the task. “It’s grueling, they tell me, but fortunately that’s historically not been a problem for me. One thing you people will say, that’s not been a problem,” he said.

The visit will be closely watched by Asian allies worried that Trump’s inward-looking “America First” agenda could cede power in the region to China. They also are rattled by his bellicose rhetoric toward North Korea. The North’s growing missile arsenal threatens several of the capitals Trump will visit.

The trip will also put Trump in face-to-face meetings with authoritarian leaders for whom he has expressed admiration. They include China’s Xi Jinping, whom Trump has likened to “a king,” and the Philippines’ Rodrigo Duterte, who has sanctioned the extrajudicial killings of drug dealers.

Trump is also expected to have a second private audience with Russian President Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of a summit in Vietnam. Trump told reporters he “will want Putin’s help” in dealing with North Korea. They previously met during a summit in Europe this summer.

The White House has signaled that Trump will push American economic interests in the region, but the North Korea issue is expected to dominate the trip. One of Trump’s two major speeches will come before the National Assembly in Seoul. But fiery threats against the North could resonate differently than they do from the distance of Washington.

Trump will forgo a trip to the Demilitarized Zone, the stark border between North and South Korea. All U.S. presidents except one since Ronald Reagan have visited the DMZ in a sign of solidarity with Seoul. The White House contends that Trump’s commitment to South Korea is already crystal clear, as evidenced by his war of words with Kim and his threats to deliver “fire and fury” to North Korea if it does not stop threatening American allies.

The escalation of rhetoric, a departure from the conduct of past presidents, has undermined confidence in the U.S. as a stabilizing presence in Asia.

“There’s a danger if there is a lot of muscle flexing,” said Mike Chinoy, a senior fellow at the U.S.-China Institute at the University of Southern California. “Trump has been going right up to the edge and I wouldn’t rule out some sort of forceful North Korean reaction to Trump’s presence in the region,” he said.

The White House said Trump would be undeterred.

“The president will use whatever language he wants to use, obviously,” White House national security adviser H.R. McMaster told reporters before Trump departed Washington. “I don’t think the president really modulates his language, have you noticed?”AP

SEOUL, Aug 29: In a first, North Korea on Tuesday fired a midrange ballistic missile designed to carry a nuclear payload that flew over Japan and splashed into the northern Pacific Ocean, officials said. The aggressive missile launch — likely the longest ever from the North — over the territory of a close U.S. ally sends a clear message of defiance as Washington and Seoul conduct war games nearby.

South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said the missile traveled around 2,700 kilometers (1,677 miles) and reached a maximum height of 550 kilometers (341 miles) as it traveled over the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido. The distance and type of missile test seemed designed to show that North Korea can back up a threat to target the U.S. territory of Guam, if it chooses to do so, while also establishing a potentially dangerous precedent that could see future missiles flying over Japan.

Any new test worries Washington and its allies because it presumably puts the North a step closer toward its goal of an arsenal of nuclear missiles that can reliably target the United States. Tuesday’s test, however, looks especially aggressive to Washington, Seoul and Tokyo.

The North has conducted launches at an unusually fast pace this year — 13 times, Seoul says — and some analysts believe Pyongyang could have viable long-range nuclear missiles before the end of President Donald Trump’s first term in early 2021.

Seoul says that while the North has twice before fired rockets it said were carrying satellites over Japan — in 1998 and 2009 — it has never before used a ballistic missile, which is unambiguously designed for military strikes. The North also chose not to fire its most recent missile at a lofted angle, as it did in previous launches to avoid other countries. The South Korean military was analyzing whether the North had launched the Hwasong-12, a new intermediate-range missile that Pyongyang recently threatened to fire into waters near Guam, which hosts a major U.S. military base that the North considers a threat.

Tuesday’s missile landed nowhere near Guam, but firing a Hwasong-12 (Hwasong is Korean for Mars, or Fire Star) so soon after the Guam threat may be a way for the North to show it could follow through if it chose to do so. Guam is 3,500 kilometers (2,200 miles) away from North Korea, but South Korea’s military said the North may have fired the most recent missile at a shorter range.

Another interesting aspect of this launch is that it was the first-ever reported from Sunan, which is home to Pyongyang’s international airport. Some outside observers wondered if North Korea had launched a road-mobile missile from an airport runway — something South Korea’s military couldn’t immediately determine.

The airport’s runways could provide the ideal space to launch a road-mobile missile like the Hwasong-12, while also demonstrating that the North can launch its missiles from anywhere, according to Moon Seong Mook, a former South Korean military official and current analyst for the Seoul-based Korea Research Institute for National Strategy.

North Korea will no doubt be watching the world’s reaction to see if it can use Tuesday’s flight over Japan as a precedent for future launches. Japanese officials made the usual strongly worded condemnations of the launch. There were no immediate tweets from Trump.

“We will do our utmost to protect people’s lives,” Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said. “This reckless act of launching a missile that flies over our country is an unprecedented, serious and important threat.”

Tokyo said there was no reported damage from the missile, which Japan’s NHK TV said separated into three parts. Residents on Hokkaido were warned of a North Korean missile launch by a “J-Alert” on their cellphones, with loud alarms and an email that told people to stay indoors. A radio speaker broadcast an alert saying “missile is passing, missile is passing.”

A U.S. congressman visiting Seoul said Washington is now pressuring North Korea to abandon its nuclear ambitions by shutting down the impoverished country’s access to hard currency, the lifeblood of its expensive weapons program.

The goal is to offer international banks that do business with Pyongyang a choice between bankruptcy and freezing North Korean accounts, U.S. Rep. Ed Royce, the Republican chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said in an interview after meeting with South Korea’s leaders.

Tuesday’s launch comes days after the North fired what was assessed as three short-range ballistic missiles into the sea and a month after its second test of an intercontinental ballistic missile, which analysts say could reach deep into the U.S. mainland when perfected.

South Korea’s Foreign Ministry warned that the North will face a strong response from the U.S.-South Korean alliance if what it called nuclear and missile provocations continue. The ministry also urged Pyongyang to accept talks over its nuclear program and acknowledge that abandoning its nuclear ambitions is the only way to guarantee its security and economic development.

In an unusual move, South Korea’s military released footage of its own missile tests it says were conducted last week. The videos showed two types of new missiles with ranges of 800 kilometers (497 miles) and 500 kilometers (310 miles) being fired from truck-mounted launchers during three tests conducted on Aug. 24.

South Korea’s Agency for Defense Development said the launches represented the last flight test for the longer-range missile before it is operationally deployed. Such missiles, which would be the latest additions to South Korea’s Hyumoo family of missiles, are considered key components of the so-called “kill chain” pre-emptive strike capability that the South is pursuing to counter the North’s nuclear and missile threat.

South Korea also said its air force conducted a live-fire drill involving four F-15 fighters dropping eight MK-84 bombs that accurately hit targets at a military field near the country’s eastern coast. Park Su-hyun, spokesman of South Korean President Moon Jae-in, said the exercise was conducted after Moon directed the military to “display a strong capability to punish” the North if need be.

The North’s launch over Japan shouldn’t be a total surprise. Earlier this month, when threatening to lob four Hwasong-12s into the waters near Guam, North Korea specifically said they would fly over Japanese territory. North Korea in June also angrily reacted to the launch of a Japanese satellite it said was aimed at spying on the North and said Tokyo was no longer entitled to fault Pyongyang “no matter what it launches or whether that crosses the sky above Japan.”

North Korea typically reacts with anger to U.S.-South Korean military drills, which are happening now, often testing weapons and threatening Seoul and Washington in its state-controlled media. But animosity is higher than usual following threats by Trump to unleash “fire and fury” on the North, and Pyongyang’s Guam threat.

Kim Dong-yub, a former South Korean military official who is now an analyst at Seoul’s Institute for Far Eastern Studies, said the early flight data suggests the North Korean missile was likely a Hwasong-12. Other possibilities, he said, include a midrange Musudan, a missile with a potential 3,500-kilometer (2,180-mile) range that puts much of the Asia-Pacific region within reach, or a Pukguksong-2, a solid-fuel missile that can be fired faster and more secretly than weapons using liquid fuel.

North Korea first fired over Japanese territory in August of 1998 when a multistage rocket that outside experts called “Taepodong-1” flew about 1,500 kilometers (932 miles) before landing in the Pacific Ocean. The North later said it had launched a satellite, something Seoul confirmed years later.

North Korea flew another rocket over Japan again in April 2009 and said that, too, was carrying a satellite. The North claimed success, but the U.S. North American Aerospace Defense Command says no satellite reached orbit. Some parts of a space launch vehicle reportedly flew over Okinawa last year after separating from the rocket.

Pyongyang regularly claims the U.S.-South Korean military exercises are an invasion rehearsal, although analysts say the North’s anger is partly because the impoverished country must react with its own expensive drills and weapons tests. The allies say the war games are defensive and meant to counter North Korean aggression.

North Korea’s U.N. ambassador, Ja Song Nam, wrote recently that the exercises are “provocative and aggressive” at a time when the Korean Peninsula is “like a time bomb.”AP

KATHMANDU, July 5: The Government of Japan has provided eight ambulances for the use in remote areas of Nepal.

Japan’s Ambassador for Nepal, Mr Masashi Ogawa today visited the Nepal Red Cross Society, National HQ to attend a ceremony for the handover of ambulances to the NRCS. The Japanese ambassador then handed the keys to the ambulances to organisation chair Sanjeev Thapa.

Out of the eight ambulances, four were sent to Pyuthan, Gulmi, Udaypur and Morang in last November while the three new will be sent to Jajarkot, Rautahat and Dhankuta soon and Khotang will get the remaining one after the monsoon. The total amount funded for the ambulances and managed through Grant Assistance for Grassroots Human Security Project (GGP), is 9.8 million.

The ambulances are four-by-four vehicles (4WD), providing safe and reliable service even under the challenging road conditions in Nepal.

On the occasion, the Japanese Ambassador said Japan hoped that its assistance would contribute to health improvement efforts in Nepal’s rural areas, pledging additional assistance to the NRCS in its life-saving and humanitarian works. RSS