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Visitors check a Tesla Model 3 car next to a Model Y displayed at a showroom of the U.S. electric-vehicle maker in Beijing on Feb. 4.
BUSINESS / Tech
Apr 29, 2024

Tesla clears key regulatory hurdles for self-driving in China

Tesla is said to have reached an agreement with Baidu to use the Chinese tech giant's mapping license for data collection.
Japan's vice minister of finance for international affairs, Masato Kanda, poses for a photograph during an interview at the Finance Ministry in Tokyo in January 2022.
BUSINESS / Markets
Apr 30, 2024

Japan forex authorities ready '24 hours,' top currency diplomat Kanda says

Masato Kanda again declined to comment on whether the Finance Ministry had intervened to prop up the yen a day earlier.
Customers look at chocolate bars at Cacao Store, a specialist chocolate store, in Tokyo. Japan is a large market for high-value confectionery and it sources about 75% of its cocoa imports from Ghana.
BUSINESS / Markets
Apr 30, 2024

Chocoholics in Japan set for sticker shock after cocoa price surge

Crop declines in top suppliers Ivory Coast and Ghana leave buyers struggling for beans and prices more than doubling since the start of the year.
A liquefied natural gas tanker arrives at a Tokyo Gas LNG terminal in Yokohama. Despite a decline in domestic gas demand, Japanese companies are looking to maintain their stake in overseas LNG markets, especially in Asia.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Apr 29, 2024

The double standard of Japan’s energy companies abroad

In Japan, energy companies like Tokyo Gas are striving to cut emissions. But overseas, they're shoring up LNG markets, making for a very different picture.
TikTok raised eyebrows last month when it mobilized users to petition against a potential ban, demonstrating its influence on Americans.
BUSINESS / Tech
Apr 30, 2024

TikTok and Tesla just the start of U.S.-China clash over Big Data

Data security is again taking center stage in the intensifying rivalry between the U.S. and China.
This combination of photos shows the cooling tower of the Emile Huchet coal-fired power station undergoing demolition in Saint-Avold, northeastern France, in February.
ENVIRONMENT / Climate change
Apr 30, 2024

G7 reportedly agrees end date for coal-fired power plants

The meeting in Turin is the first big political session since the world pledged at the U.N.'s COP28 climate summit in December.
A man rides a scooter past apartment high rises under construction in Zhengzhou, China, in January 2019.
BUSINESS
Apr 30, 2024

Strained Chinese cities struggle to pay homebuying subsidies

Some local governments are unable to raise funds to pay promised subsidies, frustrating buyers and casting doubts over future support measures.
Peaches grown in Fukushima Prefecture. A so-called zebra firm in the prefecture is selling substandard fruits to greengrocers in urban areas, which leads to higher incomes for local farmers.
JAPAN
Apr 30, 2024

Japan eyes socially mindful startups to boost regional economies

Starting in June, the government will launch pilot projects to help such startups cooperate with local governments, banks and companies.
Krishna Srinivasan, director of Asia and Pacific at the International Monetary Fund, wrote in a blog post that global disinflation and the prospect of lower central bank interest rates had made a soft landing more likely.
BUSINESS / Economy
Apr 30, 2024

IMF boosts Asia growth forecast this year on China and India prospects

It expects Asia to grow 4.5% from the prior year — 0.3 percentage points higher than its previous forecast but still slower than last year’s 5% pace.
Japan's government debt has grown to the equivalent of more than 250% of the nation’s economy, more than any of its peers.
BUSINESS / Economy
Apr 30, 2024

Japan’s debt dilemma may doom any FX intervention, Brooks says

The consequences have been a sharply weaker yen, which has lost more than a quarter of its value against the U.S. dollar since March 2022.
Defense Minister Minoru Kihara takes part in an arrival ceremony with U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin at the Pentagon in Washington last October.
JAPAN / Politics / FOCUS
Apr 30, 2024

‘Collective capacity’ to top agenda at four-way defense talks in Hawaii

One thing will be on Defense Minister Minoru Kihara's mind: how to deepen military and security cooperation with allies to counter China.
Japan's industrial production rose 3.8% in March from February, as demand picked up after two straight months of declines.
BUSINESS / Economy
Apr 30, 2024

Japan’s factory output records weakest quarter since pandemic

The yen’s plunge to a fresh 34-year low versus the dollar could spur a resurgence of cost-push inflation via higher costs for imports of food and energy.
Prime Minister Fumio Kishida speaks to reporters in Tokyo on Tuesday.
JAPAN / Politics
Apr 30, 2024

What's next for Kishida after LDP's by-election loss?

Speculation has been rife over how he may decide to take responsibility, from dissolving parliament to making senior party leadership changes.
A man walks past an electronic board displaying the exchange rate for the yen against the U.S. dollar (right) in Tokyo on Tuesday.
BUSINESS / Markets
Apr 30, 2024

Did Japan intervene to prop up the yen? Analysts think it did.

The size and timing of the swing indicates that the government stepped in after the currency fell significantly.
The trial hearing of Masumi Hayashi, who denied killing four people and poisoning 63 at a festival by lacing a pot of curry with arsenic, was the focus of The Japan Times’ front page of May 14, 1999.
JAPAN / History / Japan Times Gone By
May 1, 2024

Japan Times 1999: Hayashi admits fraud, denies curry murders

The disturbing case of the Wakayama curry killer would continue for years, resulting in the eventual execution of the woman convicted of the crime.
The decision to cut the nearly 500-person group, including its senior director, Rebecca Tinucci, was made by CEO Elon Musk in the last week, according to a person familiar with the matter.
BUSINESS / Companies
May 1, 2024

Tesla axes most of supercharger team in blow to other automakers

The decision to cut the nearly 500-person group, including its senior director, Rebecca Tinucci, was made by CEO Elon Musk in the last week.
An analysis of the Bank of Japan's accounts suggests an intervention of about ¥5.5 trillion took place on Monday to prop up the yen.
BUSINESS / Markets
May 1, 2024

BOJ accounts suggest Japan intervened to support yen

The Bank of Japan said its current account will probably fall ¥7.56 trillion — much bigger than the drop of about ¥2.1 trillion estimated.
Former Binance CEO Changpeng "CZ" Zhao arrives at federal court in Seattle, Washington, on Tuesday. Zhao, the founder and former chief executive of Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, was sentenced today to four months in prison after he pleaded guilty to violating laws against money laundering.
BUSINESS / Companies
May 1, 2024

Binance crypto founder Zhao sentenced to four months in prison

Once considered the most powerful crypto industry figure, Zhao, known as "CZ," is the second major crypto boss to be sentenced to prison.
A Starbucks logo adorns a store in Los Angeles in 2015.
BUSINESS / Companies
May 1, 2024

Starbucks posts first sales drop since 2020 amid global pullback

Consumers growing more hesitant to spend money has given Starbucks "perhaps the worst set of results of any large company so far," an analyst said.
Nepali TikTok influencers and twin sisters Princy (left) and Prisma Khatiwada take a selfie in Kathmandu on Monday.
ASIA PACIFIC / Society
May 1, 2024

Nepalis challenge TikTok ban after losing earnings, fans and a voice

The lives of owners of popular accounts were transformed by the platform, which had about 2.2 million users in the country.
A ceremony for the Self-Defense Forces' newly created cyberdefense force at the Defense Ministry in Tokyo in March 2022
JAPAN
May 1, 2024

Japanese government skips submitting active cyberdefense bill

The government planned to set up a panel of relevant experts in May, but this plan is now uncertain.
People visit the Ameya Yokocho market in Tokyo's Ueno district during the Golden Week holiday on Tuesday.
BUSINESS
May 1, 2024

Weak yen fattens tourist wallets in Japan

Spending per head soared 52% over the first three months compared with 2019.
An electronic screen in Tokyo displays the yen exchange rate against the U.S. dollar and the graph showing its recent swings, on Thursday.
BUSINESS / Markets
May 2, 2024

Yen swings stir talk that Japan is in the FX market once again

The yen advanced more than 3% and hit ¥153.04 per dollar as more than $4 billion of yen-related futures were exchanged.
Bank of Japan Gov. Kazuo Ueda holds a news conference after a policy meeting at the BOJ's headquarters in Tokyo on March 19.
BUSINESS / Economy
May 2, 2024

BOJ saw need to let markets drive yields upon March exit: minutes

The bank ended eight years of negative interest rates and its bond yield control at its March policy meeting.
Advanced Micro Devices' processors and memory chips
BUSINESS / Tech
May 2, 2024

AI hardware stocks get pummeled even as big tech keeps spending

Hardware makers have seen their shares rally this year amid an arms race for artificial intelligence computing power that’s lifting sales and profits.
U.S. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell holds a news conference following a two-day meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee on interest rate policy in Washington on Wednesday.
BUSINESS / Markets
May 2, 2024

U.S. market swings reveal inflation uncertainty ahead of key data

Some may be less likely to take the Fed chair at his word this time around after a dovish pivot in December was followed by months of upside surprises.
Amazon’s Just Walk Out technology, which allowed customers to grab grocery items from a shelf and walk out of the store, is reportedly being phased out of its grocery stores.
COMMENTARY / World
May 2, 2024

Amazon's AI stores seemed too magical. And they were.

There are plenty more examples of companies that have failed to mention humans pulling the levers behind supposedly cutting-edge AI technology.
Attendees at the Leap technology conference in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on March 6, 202. The oil-rich country is plowing money into glitzy events, computing power and artificial intelligence research, putting it in the middle of an escalating U.S.-China struggle for technological influence.
WORLD / Politics
May 2, 2024

‘To the future’: Saudi Arabia spends big to become an AI superpower

Saudi Arabia was long a financial spigot for tech, but is now building its own industry.
Optica headquarters in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday
BUSINESS / Companies
May 3, 2024

Huawei secretly backs U.S. research, awarding millions in prizes

Huawei Technologies is the sole funder of a research competition that has awarded millions of dollars since its inception in 2022.
The U.S. Steel plant in Clairton, Pennsylvania
BUSINESS / Companies
May 3, 2024

Nippon Steel pushes back U.S. Steel acquisition until December

Nippon Steel has delayed acquiring United States Steel as the United Steelworkers union opposes the plan, along with U.S. President Joe Biden.

Longform

Construction takes place on the Takanawa Gateway Convention Center in Tokyo, slated to open in 2025.
A boom for business tourism in Japan?