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Japan, China, South Korea Meet at Geopolitical ‘Turning Point in History’

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi (L) and South Korean Foreign Minister Cho Tae-yul (R) shake hands as Japanese Foreign Minister Takeshi Iwaya (C) smiles at a joint press conference during the 11th Japan-China-South Korea (Japan-China-ROK) Trilateral Foreign Ministers' Meeting in Tokyo, Japan, 22 March 2025. (EPA)
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi (L) and South Korean Foreign Minister Cho Tae-yul (R) shake hands as Japanese Foreign Minister Takeshi Iwaya (C) smiles at a joint press conference during the 11th Japan-China-South Korea (Japan-China-ROK) Trilateral Foreign Ministers' Meeting in Tokyo, Japan, 22 March 2025. (EPA)
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Japan, China, South Korea Meet at Geopolitical ‘Turning Point in History’

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi (L) and South Korean Foreign Minister Cho Tae-yul (R) shake hands as Japanese Foreign Minister Takeshi Iwaya (C) smiles at a joint press conference during the 11th Japan-China-South Korea (Japan-China-ROK) Trilateral Foreign Ministers' Meeting in Tokyo, Japan, 22 March 2025. (EPA)
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi (L) and South Korean Foreign Minister Cho Tae-yul (R) shake hands as Japanese Foreign Minister Takeshi Iwaya (C) smiles at a joint press conference during the 11th Japan-China-South Korea (Japan-China-ROK) Trilateral Foreign Ministers' Meeting in Tokyo, Japan, 22 March 2025. (EPA)

The top diplomats from Japan, China and South Korea met in Tokyo on Saturday, seeking common ground on East Asian security and economic issues amid escalating global uncertainty.

"Given the increasingly severe international situation, I believe we may truly be at a turning point in history," Japanese Foreign Minister Takeshi Iwaya said at the start of the meeting in Tokyo with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and South Korean Foreign Minister Cho Tae-yul.

The three agreed to accelerate preparations for a trilateral summit in Japan this year that would also include talks on how Tokyo, Beijing and Seoul can tackle declining birthrates and aging populations, Iwaya said in a joint announcement after the meeting.

The first gathering of the countries' foreign ministers since 2023 comes as US President Donald Trump upends decades-old alliances, potentially opening the door for China to forge closer ties to countries traditionally aligned with Washington.

"Our three nations have a combined population of nearly 1.6 billion and an economic output exceeding $24 trillion. With our vast markets and great potential, we can exert significant influence," Wang said. China, he added, wants to resume free trade talks with its neighbors and expand membership of the 15-nation Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership.

However, deep divisions remain. Beijing is at odds with Tokyo and Seoul on several key issues, including its support of North Korea, its intensifying military activity around Taiwan, and its backing of Russia in its war with Ukraine.

US allies Japan and South Korea, which each host thousands of US troops, share Washington’s view that China - the world’s second-largest economy - poses a growing threat to regional security.

Cho said he had asked China in the meeting to help persuade North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons.

"I also stressed that illegal military cooperation between Russia and North Korea should stop immediately, and that North Korea should not be rewarded for its wrongdoings in the course of bringing about the end of the war in Ukraine," he added.

Iwaya met separately with his Chinese and South Korean counterparts, including the first high-level economic dialogue with Beijing in six years.

A key issue for Tokyo in the talks with Beijing is a ban on Japanese seafood imports imposed by China after the release of wastewater from the destroyed Fukushima nuclear plant from 2023.

Iwaya said he confirmed a commitment by China made in September to allow imports of marine products and also asked about expanding imports of Japanese agricultural products, including beef and rice.

"I emphasized that it is important to prioritize resolving those issues that can be addressed early," Iwaya told reporters after the meeting.

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World

After Trump’s Outburst, Senate Republicans Reverse Course on Iran

Republican Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana (EPA)
Republican Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana (EPA)
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After Trump’s Outburst, Senate Republicans Reverse Course on Iran

Republican Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana (EPA)
Republican Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana (EPA)

Washington: Robert Jimison and Michael Gold

The confrontation came over lunch. The cleanup began after dinner.

Hours after US President Donald Trump angrily confronted Senate Republicans for joining Democrats to approve a war powers resolution rebuking his handling of the war in Iran, Republican leaders brought another, nearly identical measure to the floor.

In a 50-to-47 vote, with one senator voting “present,” they defeated the measure in a largely symbolic move that did nothing to change the resolution the Senate had narrowly approved a day earlier. Instead, it served as an unmistakable gesture to mollify a furious president who had just berated them.

Of the Republican senators who voted to adopt a resolution on Tuesday that instructed him to end the war with Iran or seek Congress’s approval to continue, two shifted their votes: Senators Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and Rand Paul of Kentucky.

Cassidy, who hours earlier angrily confronted Trump over a lack of transparency on the status of the war, said that he changed his vote after a meeting with Vice President JD Vance and Steve Witkoff, the president’s special envoy, at the White House.

“I was going to vote yes, but I had a briefing this evening, and it was complete,” he said moments after voting against the measure, adding: “I am reassured.”

Paul, who voted “present,” said that Trump’s remarks in his lunch meeting with senators had affected his vote, though not his views on the conflict and Congress’s role in declaring war.

“I did listen to the president today, and the president feels like it reduces his leverage to find a deal, and I do think it is important that we have peace negotiations,” Paul said.

Trump celebrated Wednesday’s late-night vote, thanking Republican leaders in a social media post that falsely claimed that the Senate had “changed its vote on Iran.”

Trump said that the new vote “puts Iran on notice.”

Ultimately, the maneuver did not undo Tuesday’s vote, which was the first war powers measure approved by both chambers since the war began and remains adopted. Wednesday’s vote neither rescinded nor superseded it.

Still, Republicans sought to characterize the procedural move as a chance to “re-vote,” even though the initial action cannot simply be erased through a subsequent vote on different legislation.

“That train has left the station,” said Senator Tim Kaine, Democrat of Virginia, whose resolution was called up by Republican leaders.

He noted that because of the rules surrounding the procedural tool used to call up the vote Wednesday’s vote to defeat the so-called “motion to proceed” does not prevent him from forcing another vote on the same resolution at another point, it simply prevents the chamber from taking up a final vote to consider it.

“My bill is in exactly the same position as it was before they did this vote,” he said.

The remarkable sequence underscored the lengths Republican leaders were willing to go to contain the latest clash between Senate Republicans skeptical of the war and Trump, which unfolded during a closed-door lunch earlier in the day.

The vote was the last one senators took before leaving for a planned recess that is set to last until July 13.

It capped off a turbulent day on Capitol Hill that began after Trump abruptly called off the ceremonial signing of a bipartisan housing bill that Republicans had already started championing as a major accomplishment ahead of the midterm elections.

Dismissing that legislation as “minor,” Trump instead urged Republicans to swiftly pass an elections bill that Republicans have acknowledged does not have the votes to advance.

But at his lunch meeting, Trump made clear that he was equally furious about the Senate adopting a resolution on Tuesday that instructed him to end the war with Iran or seek Congress’s approval to continue it. In that vote, four Republican senators joined Democrats, and it succeeded because two other Republican senators were absent.

According to lawmakers who attended Wednesday’s lunch, the president berated Republicans who had voted with Democrats and singled out several senators by name. The meeting then erupted into a shouting match between Trump and Cassidy, who has become an increasingly outspoken critic of the president after losing his primary race to a challenger backed by Trump.

Among Cassidy’s complaints was that senators had yet to receive a comprehensive briefing on the Iran war. Hours later, the senator went to the White House for a briefing on the Iran war with Vance and Witkoff.

In a social media post, Cassidy said that the meeting addressed “many of my concerns” on the Iran war.

Republican leaders were also helped in their effort to defeat the resolution by the presence of Senator Dave McCormick of Pennsylvania, who missed Tuesday’s vote because he was traveling with Trump at the time.

Tensions with lawmakers over the war were likely to continue, however, as Trump asked Wednesday to approve $87.6 billion in extra spending this year for the war and several unrelated programs — a request that appeared all but dead on arrival in the Senate.

The New York Times

World

Vessel Hit by 'Unknown Projectile' in Hormuz Strait

Vessels at the Strait of Hormuz, as seen from Musandam,Oman, June 25, 2026. REUTERS/Stringer
Vessels at the Strait of Hormuz, as seen from Musandam,Oman, June 25, 2026. REUTERS/Stringer
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Vessel Hit by 'Unknown Projectile' in Hormuz Strait

Vessels at the Strait of Hormuz, as seen from Musandam,Oman, June 25, 2026. REUTERS/Stringer
Vessels at the Strait of Hormuz, as seen from Musandam,Oman, June 25, 2026. REUTERS/Stringer

A cargo ship was damaged after it was struck by an unknown projectile off the Omani coast in the Strait of Hormuz on Thursday, a British maritime agency said, reporting no casualties.

The UK Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) security agency reported that the incident occurred 7.5 nautical miles (14 kilometers) southeast of Dahit, in Oman's Musandam exclave.

"A cargo vessel has been hit on the starboard side by an unknown projectile, causing damage to the bridge. Master has reported no casualties and no environmental impact," AFP quoted UKMTO as saying.

British marine security firm Vanguard Tech identified that vessel as the Singapore-flagged container ship Ever Lovely.

The incident follows more than a week of relative calm in the Strait of Hormuz after Tehran and Washington lifted competing blockades as part of a memorandum of understanding to halt the Middle East war.

World

Supreme Court Allows Trump Administration to End Legal Protections for Haitians, Syrians

The sun sets on the US Supreme Court building after a stormy day in Washington, US, November 11, 2022. REUTERS/Leah Millis
The sun sets on the US Supreme Court building after a stormy day in Washington, US, November 11, 2022. REUTERS/Leah Millis
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Supreme Court Allows Trump Administration to End Legal Protections for Haitians, Syrians

The sun sets on the US Supreme Court building after a stormy day in Washington, US, November 11, 2022. REUTERS/Leah Millis
The sun sets on the US Supreme Court building after a stormy day in Washington, US, November 11, 2022. REUTERS/Leah Millis

The Supreme Court on Thursday allowed the Trump administration to end legal protections for migrants fleeing violence and natural disaster in Haiti and Syria, exposing hundreds of thousands more people to potential deportation.

The 6-3 decision overturns lower court orders and allows the Department of Homeland Security to swiftly end temporary protected status, a program that protects a total of 1.3 million people from 17 countries.

The Trump administration argued judges that can't second-guess immigrations officials' decisions about the protections, which were intended to be temporary.

Immigration attorneys said the countries remain unsafe to return, and the administration ended them in an unlawfully hasty process tinged by racial animus. During his 2024 presidential campaign, Trump amplified false rumors that Haitian immigrants were abducting and eating dogs and cats.

The Justice Department appealed to the Supreme Court after judges postponed the end of the program for about 350,000 Haitians and 6,000 Syrians. The high court sided with the administration before and allowed the end of the program for people from Venezuela.

Federal authorities deny that racial animus played a role. They also cited a Supreme Court decision from Trump’s first term that rejected bias claims based on his social media posts and upheld a travel ban on several Muslim-majority countries.

DHS has ended the protections people from 13 countries since Trump returned to the White House in January 2025, including some that had been in place for more than a decade, The AP news reported.

The terminations were made even though countries like Haiti and Syria remain dangerous, immigration attorneys said. Four Haitian women who were deported from the United States in February were found beheaded and dumped in a river several months later, lawyers said in court documents.

The House passed legislation with a rare bipartisan vote in April that would extend protections for Haitians, though the bill has languished in the Senate.

The US first granted protections to Haitians in 2010 after a catastrophic earthquake, and extended them multiple times amid ongoing gang violence that has displaced more than a million people, according to court documents.

Syrians, meanwhile, were first granted protected status in 2012, during a civil war that lasted for more than a decade before the fall of President Bashar Assad’s government in late 2024.

TPS was created by Congress in 1990 to prevent deportations to countries suffering from natural disasters, civil strife and other instability. It allows people already in the country to stay with work permits in increments of up to 18 months, but it doesn’t provide a path to citizenship.

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