A focused recap of international news stories by Newsendip: The vacant homes in Japan, disputes between Indigenous communities and farmers in Brazil, the Russian “digital border,” and more.
- Japan’s vacant homes and the opportunity for foreign investors
- Death of an Indigenous leader in Brazil
- Knowing Latvian for Russian residents
- A database to store the location of Russian Internet users?
- An “absurd” pyramid renovation in Egypt
- The fraud of the century in Mexico?
- A 4‑day workweek test in Germany
Vacant homes in Japan, an opportunity for foreigners?
“Akiya” in Japanese means “empty home.” And nearly one in seven homes, 8.5 million, are vacant in Japan. That’s 50% more than in 1998, which will continue to increase due to its aging population. The Japanese tend to look for newer homes to buy, don’t want to sell old properties out of nostalgia or because of taxes from the inheritance system. Meanwhile, Japanese authorities try to make band-aid laws to encourage people to maintain houses or leave overcrowded districts for rural areas.
While foreigners living in Japan are at an all-time high, foreign investors look at Japanese real estate as an opportunity, helped by a weak yen. Although real estate prices are increasing in the most sought-after areas, which causes cascading issues for locals, housing in Japan remains relatively affordable compared to neighboring countries. The price of homes in cities like Tokyo, Yokohama, Osaka, and Fukuoka ranges from 180,000 to 630,000 dollars, whereas they can nearly double that in several other comparable cities in Asia.
“One of the common reasons Hong Kong buyers purchase abandoned homes is to operate them as vacation properties for Airbnb,” said Kazuaki Nebu, country head of real estate company IQI Japan. A Swedish influencer bought and renovated a 90-square-meter home in Tokyo for 10 million yen (69,000 dollars) that was vacant for so long that the owners were even surprised he would buy it.
The death of a Brazilian Indigenous leader amid disputes with farmers about land
The death of an Indigenous leader on January 21st in the State of Bahia in eastern Brazil highlights the tensions between Indigenous communities and farmers over land areas. An estimated 200 farmers from the Invasão Zero (Zero Invasion) group arrived in vehicles after people of the Pataxó Hã Hã Hãe, a local Indigenous community, raided and reclaimed a local farm. During the ensuing dispute, believed to be in the presence of military police, Maria de Fatima Muniz, known as Nega Petaxo, was shot and killed, and several others were injured.
The dispute follows continued tensions that took place last year regarding a controversial demarcation bill, which would limit Indigenous occupational claim rights to before 1988 when Brazil’s current constitution was enacted.
A report released last year by the Indigenous Missionary Council (CIMI) showed that 800 Brazilian Indigenous people were murdered during Jair Bolsonaro’s time as the president of Brazil from 2019 to 2022. Brazil has more than 700 recognized Indigenous lands and the State of Bahia reported 211 land conflicts last year, making it only the third-highest conflict zone in the country.
Russian residents to know Latvian in Latvia
Since the start of 2024, all resident permits for Russians have been invalid if they can’t confirm knowledge of the Latvian language as stipulated in a September 2022 immigration law. Two weeks ago, the migration authority announced that almost 1,000 Russian citizens who had not met the new conditions and not submitted the necessary documents to apply for a residence permit to live in the country received a notification letter and are bound to leave Latvia.
After Russia launched its offensive in Ukraine in February 2022, the Baltic states tightened the rules on residence for Russians.
Vladimir Putin accuses the government in Riga of politically exploiting the hostile attitude towards Russia due to its war against Ukraine to act against a minority. At the end of January, he deplored that “in the Baltic States, tens of thousands of people are declared ‘subhuman’ and denied their most basic rights.” Meanwhile, Latvian President Edgars Rinkēvičs rejected Putin’s claims: “We all know very well that Russians living in Latvia are not discriminated against. But there are completely legitimate requirements: knowledge of the national language, and this is the basis of any country.” Over 25,000 Russian residents currently live in Latvia, a country of nearly 2 million people.
The Russian “digital border” and the location of Internet users
In mid-January, the Russian government drafted an amendment to a 2019 law, which would allow authorities to collect the geographical location data of Russian Internet users from September 2024 to September 2028. The amendment still needs to be discussed and approved by the ministry of Justice, but telecommunications operators in Russia could be obligated to share the location of users in the form of a postal address or geographic coordinates.
The government said that this would serve to bring a “digital border” around Russia by identifying hackers targeting Russia or denial-of-service attacks against the Russian government from abroad.
However, this database would more probably allow the Russian Federation to keep track of its citizens and their usual IP addresses more easily. Indeed, Sarkis Darbinyan, head of the legal practice of Roskomsvoboda, a Russian NGO advocating for the freedom and digital rights of Internet users, said that this would only really help in finding cyber criminals who are “not very good at masking their traffic.”
An “absurd” pyramid renovation in Egypt
The pyramid of Menkaure, the smallest of the three pyramids on the Giza plateau, was initially covered with a layer of granite, which the monument has lost over time. The secretary general of the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities announced its restoration would last for three years, referring to it as the “project of the century,” on a video surrounded by a team covering the outer walls of the pyramid with granite blocks. Egyptologist Monica Hanna, who considered the project to be pointless from an archaeological point of view, called it an “absurdity” and against “all international principles in terms of renovation.”
The fraud of the century in Mexico?
The office of the attorney general of the State of San Luís Potosí in Mexico announced the arrest of seven people, including three officials for a fraud that could amount to 700 million pesos, nearly 41 million dollars, affecting State pension funds. Pension fund management staff and employees from a banking institution siphoned off pension funds, making the pension director himself believe that he had a balance of over 700 million pesos in the accounts when, in reality, there were only 6 million pesos. The governor of the State called the embezzlement the “fraud of the century.”
Well, a few months ago, Mexican authorities arrested a former top security official for embezzling nearly 750 million dollars from government technology contracts.
A 4‑day workweek test in Germany
As of February 1, 45 companies in Germany have started testing the 4‑day workweek for six months. Read our story already mentioning it last September.
