内容摘要：According to the Air Force, he commanded a special operations squadron, an expeditionary squadron, an operations group and a special operations wing. He also led the task force that coordinated the repositioning of U.S. forces from Somalia and headed Special Operations Command, Africa, from 2019 to 2021.

According to the Air Force, he commanded a special operations squadron, an expeditionary squadron, an operations group and a special operations wing. He also led the task force that coordinated the repositioning of U.S. forces from Somalia and headed Special Operations Command, Africa, from 2019 to 2021.

The accompanying decline in the population of farmers and young people, along with women increasingly working outside of the home, has made it difficult to maintain the tight networks that nurtured Hidden Christianity.“In a society of growing individualism, it is difficult to keep Hidden Christianity as it is,” said Shigeo Nakazono, the head of a local folklore museum who has researched and interviewed Hidden Christians for 30 years. Hidden Christianity has a structural weakness, he said, because there are no professional religious leaders tasked with teaching doctrine and adapting the religion to environmental changes.

Nakazono has started collecting artifacts and archiving video interviews he’s done with Hidden Christians since the 1990s, seeking to preserve a record of the endangered religion.Mase-Hasegawa agreed that Hidden Christianity is on its way to extinction. “As a researcher, it will be a huge loss,” she said.Masashi Funabara, 63, a retired town hall official, said most of the nearby groups have disbanded over the last two decades. His group, which now has only two families, is the only one left, down from nine in his district. They meet only a few times a year.

Masashi Funabara, a retired city hall employee and a “hidden” Christian speaks during an interview in the Ikitsuki Island Museum “Shima no Yakata” at Ikitsuki Island in Hirado, southern Japan, Sunday, April 27, 2025. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)Masashi Funabara, a retired city hall employee and a “hidden” Christian speaks during an interview in the Ikitsuki Island Museum “Shima no Yakata” at Ikitsuki Island in Hirado, southern Japan, Sunday, April 27, 2025. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)

“The amount of time we are responsible for these holy icons is only about 20 to 30 years, compared to the long history when our ancestors kept their faith in fear of persecution. When I imagined their suffering, I felt that I should not easily give up,” Funabara said.

Just as his father did when memorizing the Orasho, Funabara has written down passages in notebooks; he hopes his son, who works for the local government, will one day agree to be his successor.began his term, vowing to restart talks with North Korea and beef up a trilateral partnership with the U.S. and Japan.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng gained 0.9% to 23,856.54, while the Shanghai Composite was little changed, inching down less than 0.1% to 3,374.30.On Wednesday, the S&P 500 finished the day virtually unchanged at 5,970.81 and remained 2.8% below its all-time high. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.2% to 42,427.74, and the Nasdaq composite added 0.3% to 19,460.49.

The action was stronger in the bond market, where Treasury yields tumbled following the weaker-than-expected economic updates.One said that activity contracted for U.S. retailers, finance companies and other businesses in the services industries last month, when economists were expecting to see growth. Businesses told the Institute for Supply Management in its survey that all the uncertainty created by tariffs is making it difficult for them to forecast and plan.