Japan has pledged up to 200 million dollars in additional aid to help Africa combat the coronavirus pandemic. The fund will be used to enhance the continent's capacity to locally produce pharmaceuticals and medical products, including vaccines.

Prime Minister Kishida Fumio unveiled the plan in a video message delivered on Thursday at an online summit-level conference on the coronavirus. He said the assistance will be provided through the Japan International Cooperation Agency, known as JICA.

An international group of astronomers says it has captured the first image of a supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy.

The group, called the Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration, made the announcement on Thursday. The researchers say the image is an average composition of observations from a network of radio telescopes located at six observatories around the world.

Japan's defense minister says North Korea fired three ballistic missiles on Thursday evening.

Kishi Nobuo told reporters that the missiles were launched from around the western coast of North Korea toward the Sea of Japan. He said they are estimated to have reached a maximum height of about 100 kilometers and flown around 350 kilometers before landing outside Japan's exclusive economic zone.

The European Union says it wants to take a more active role in the Indo-Pacific. That was one of the main take-aways from Thursday's meeting between Japan's prime minister and EU leaders.

European Council President Charles Michel and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen are in Tokyo. They met with Japanese Prime Minister Kishida Fumio. Russia's ongoing invasion of Ukraine was a big focus.

Japanese and European Union leaders have agreed that Russia's invasion of Ukraine is a threat to international order, and must not be tolerated.

European Council President Charles Michel and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen met with Prime Minister Kishida Fumio in Tokyo on Thursday.

Japan introduced additional sanctions on Russia on Thursday over Russia's invasion of Ukraine. They include an effective ban on new investments.

Government approval is required to obtain 10 percent or more of a Russian company's shares, or to extend new loans to Russian firms with terms lasting over a year. That means an effective ban on those activities.

Japanese lawmakers have enacted legislation aimed at strengthening the country's economic security. The law will allow for the investigation of suppliers of certain products once they are designated as vital to people's lives. Those may include semiconductors and pharmaceuticals.

The sweeping legislation also aims to prevent cyberattacks on infrastructure systems.

The number of new coronavirus infections in Japan continues to rise in some areas, after the country's spring holiday period came to an end.

Officials reported almost 46,000 new infection cases on Wednesday. That is up by over 19,000 from the same day last week. The southern prefectures of Okinawa and Miyazaki reported record high daily cases.

Japan's government is considering raising the cap on new arrivals per day from the current 10,000 to 20,000, starting next month.

Japanese Prime Minister Kishida Fumio said during a visit to Britain last week that his government will ease coronavirus restrictions so that entry into Japan will be as smooth as in other Group of Seven nations.

The Tokyo Metropolitan Government says it confirmed 4,764 new cases of coronavirus infection in the capital on Wednesday.

The city's daily count is over 1,700 higher than a week ago, and marks the fifth straight day of week-on-week increase.

The draft of Japan's annual defense white paper refers to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It stresses that similar events should never occur in the Indo-Pacific region.

The draft white paper has a new section to discuss the Russian invasion. It says unilateral attempts to forcibly change the status quo cannot be tolerated and would shake the foundation of the international order.

Japan's environment ministry plans to seek more locations to reintroduce an endangered bird species, the crested ibis, into the wild. The bird is designated as a special natural monument of Japan.

Crested ibises once lived widely in Japan, but became extinct in the country after being hunted for their feathers. A program to breed and reintroduce crested ibises into the wild is underway at a conservation center on the island of Sado, Niigata Prefecture in central Japan. The program began with birds offered by China.

The governor of the southwestern Japanese prefecture of Okinawa, Tamaki Denny, has called on Prime Minister Kishida Fumio to abandon a plan to move a US base in the prefecture.

Tamaki handed a document containing proposals from Okinawa to Kishida in Tokyo on Tuesday.

A salvage company vessel carrying deep-sea divers has left a western Japanese port to join a search for people who went missing when a tour boat sank off Hokkaido in northern Japan last month.

The KAZU I, carrying 26 people, sank off the Shiretoko Peninsula during a sightseeing cruise on April 23. Fourteen passengers have been confirmed dead. Twelve, including two crewmembers, remain unaccounted for.