Briefly

JAPAN

PM vows to buy 400 Tomahawk missiles

Japan will buy 400 Tomahawk missiles from the United States, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said on Monday. Earlier this month, a senior official said Japan has set aside $1.5 billion to buy the missiles in the coming fiscal year, rather than dividing the procurement over several years. Japan has a pacifist postwar Constitution, which limits its military capacity to ostensibly defensive measures. But last year it updated key security and defense policies, setting a goal of doubling defense spending to the NATO standard of two percent of GDP by 2027.

UNITED KINGDOM

Leaders set to finalize Northern Ireland deal

The UK and the European Union were poised early on Monday to end years of wrangling and seal a deal to resolve their thorny post-Brexit trade dispute over Northern Ireland. The deal is aimed at solving tensions caused by 2020 post-Brexit arrangements governing the British province and its open border with EU member Ireland. Striking an agreement at a meeting with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen would be a victory for Prime Minister Rishi Sunak — but not the end of his troubles, The Associated Press commented.

UNITED STATES

Twitter lays off 10% of workforce, media says

Twitter has laid off at least 200 employees, or about 10 percent of its workforce, The New York Times reported on Sunday, in its latest round of job cuts since Elon Musk took over the microblogging site in October. The layoffs involve product managers, data scientists and engineers who worked on machine learning and site reliability, which helps keep Twitter's various features online, the report said.

Agencies via Xinhua