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The Government Pension Investment Fund's holdings of government bonds increased 25% to ¥50.3 trillion in fiscal year ended in March.
BUSINESS / Markets
Jul 11, 2024

Japan’s public pension fund steps up as BOJ mulls bond cuts

The BOJ is expected to release a plan to substantially reduce its debt buying at the next policy decision later this month.
Members of Japan’s Self-Defense Forces take part in a military review at Camp Asaka in October 2018. The nation’s public is currently favorable to the SDF, but if scandals aren’t handled correctly, that opinion may change. 
EDITORIALS
Jul 12, 2024

A multitude of scandals threaten Japan’s national defense

Individually, recent scandals are troubling. Together they are reflective of a problematic culture within the defense forces and bureaucracy.
Recent events in U.S. politics, including an assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump, a favorable court ruling and his nomination at the Republican National Convention, have strengthened the perception he may be “untouchable,” yet nothing is set in stone.
EDITORIALS
Jul 19, 2024

Trump’s wild week and a changing U.S. presidential race

Recent events have reinforced the idea of the “Teflon Don,” an extraordinarily lucky man for whom the laws of politics do not apply.
Homes are surrounded by flood waters after Hurricane Beryl made landfall in Sargent, Texas, on July 8.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 22, 2024

The great climate change wealth transfer is here

Fossil fuel profits are sky-high, as are the costs of climate change. By subsidizing oil and gas while putting tariffs on green tech, governments are making things worst.
Team France celebrates after winning gold in the judo mixed team event at Nippon Budokan in Tokyo in July 2021.
OLYMPICS
Jul 25, 2024

Is it too early to celebrate gender equality at the Olympics?

In both Japan and abroad, women are far from achieving equality in the ranks of coaching and at the administrative level.
Internationally isolated North Korea has a long history of using covert hacking teams to steal sensitive military information.
ASIA PACIFIC / Politics
Jul 26, 2024

North Korea is trying to steal military secrets, U.S. and allies say

North Korea has a long history of using covert hacking teams to steal sensitive military information.
Takeshita street in Tokyo's Harajuku shopping district on Wednesday, when temperatures reached 35.6 degrees Celsius.
JAPAN / Science & Health
Aug 1, 2024

New 'most severe' category added to Japan’s heatstroke guidelines

The move is meant to stress the need for urgent medical attention in severe cases as the number of heatstroke cases soars amid record-high temperatures.
People cross a street in Tokyo's Harajuku district on Wednesday. In July, the deviation from the average temperature between 1991 and 2020 — a period when warming was already well underway — was 2.16 degrees Celsius.
JAPAN / Boiling Point
Aug 1, 2024

Japan experienced its hottest July on record

The number of “extremely hot days” — those where the highest temperature hits 35 C and above — was the largest figure for a July.
The dark side of artificial intelligence is that it could make deadly and low-cost bioweapons more accessible to nonstate actors.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 4, 2024

AI may save us, or may construct viruses to kill us

One reason biological weapons haven’t been much used is that they can boomerang. If Russia released a virus in Ukraine, it could spread to Russia.
Former Kobayashi Pharmaceutical President Akihiro Kobayashi (second from right) speaks during a news conference in Osaka on Aug. 8 along with President Satoshi Yamane (third from right).
JAPAN / Society
Aug 14, 2024

Kobayashi Pharma fails to report 11 more suspected deaths

The 11 cases had been classified into a wrong category in the process of sorting out the inquiries made to its call center.
A satellite image shows Typhoon Ampil south of Japan on Thursday afternoon.
JAPAN
Aug 15, 2024

‘Very strong’ Typhoon Ampil set to approach eastern Japan on Friday

While the storm is not likely to make landfall, the Izu Islands and the Kanto and Tohoku regions will see its impacts from Thursday to Saturday.
The Shein logo adors the company's first pop-up store in Johannesburg, South Africa, on Aug. 2.
BUSINESS / Companies
Aug 15, 2024

Seoul authorities find toxic substances in Shein and Temu products

The explosive growth has led to increased scrutiny of their business practices and safety standards, including in the EU and South Korea.
Surgeons perform the world’s first genetically modified pig kidney transplant into a living human at Massachusetts General Hospital in March.
JAPAN / Science & Health
Aug 16, 2024

Hurdles remain in Japan for transplants of pig organs into humans

Among the issues are the risk of previously unknown infectious diseases, animal welfare and the need to protect recipients from discrimination.
Even when ships are docked, members of the Japan Coast Guard work on shifts on board. As such, the JCG is considering rehiring retired servicemen to allow crews to take sufficient holidays on land.
JAPAN
Aug 22, 2024

Japan Coast Guard promoting work style reform

The move comes as the agency grapples with a declining number of applicants as well as its rising turnover rate.
Ebenezer Agyarko tends to his cocoa plantation in Kwabeng, north of Accra, the capital of Ghana.
BUSINESS / Markets
Aug 22, 2024

Chocolate prices unlikely to decline even as African cocoa harvest improves

Issues that have long hobbled the industry remain, meaning bean prices aren’t likely to fall back to previous levels.
The government is expanding subsidies for the use of robotics by nursing care facilities to reduce the burden on care staff amid a chronic labor shortage.
JAPAN / Society
Aug 25, 2024

Japan to expand nursing care robot introduction support

The government is working to reduce the burden on care staff while maintaining the quality of care services by utilizing robots.
Instead of secretly arming against the combined nuclear forces of China, Russia and North Korea, the U.S. must launch a global campaign to restart arms control.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 25, 2024

Why is the U.S. fighting nuclear threats behind closed doors?

Secret armaments or doctrinal shifts without public messaging will only make adversaries more paranoid and a full-on arms race all but inevitable.
U.S. Special Counsel Jack Smith
WORLD / Politics
Aug 28, 2024

Special counsel investigating Trump proceeds with 2020 election case

Special Counsel Jack Smith filed an updated indictment that removes several pages of allegations following a Supreme Court ruling.
Telegram CEO Pavel Durov is being held in France in a preliminary investigation into alleged offenses including fraud, drug trafficking, cyberbullying, organized crime and promotion of terrorism.
WORLD / Politics
Aug 28, 2024

Durov's Telegram: 'Weapon of war' under increased scrutiny

Both Russia and Ukraine use Telegram, known for its encryption, with Russian troops even relying on the messaging app in the battlefield.
Typhoon Shanshan as it moves closer to the Kyushu region in this satellite photo on Wednesday
JAPAN / Science & Health
Aug 28, 2024

Why Typhoon Shanshan's movements are so difficult to predict

Meteorologists are finding the path of Typhoon Shanshan, a very strong and slow-moving storm, highly unpredictable.
A satellite image from Wednesday shows Typhoon Shanshan south of Kyushu as the storm was rapidly intensifying.
JAPAN / EXPLAINER
Aug 30, 2024

From tropical storm to 'violent': Japan’s typhoon classifications

Japan's system differs from that used for hurricanes, and there also differences in how the storms are discussed in English versus Japanese.
Torrential rain in Tokyo's Setagaya Ward on Friday as Shanshan brought heavy precipitation to the capital.
ENVIRONMENT / Climate change
Aug 30, 2024

How climate change made Shanshan more likely and more devastating

The devastating winds of Shanshan were 26% more likely due to climate change, a rapid analysis has found, highlighting the impact of warming on severe storms.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz attends a wreath-laying ceremony for the victims of a knife attack that killed three people last week, in Solingen, Germany, on Sunday.
WORLD / Politics
Sep 2, 2024

Germany's Scholz alliance humbled as populists surge in regional votes

The regional election results highlight the risk Chancellor Olaf Scholz and his deeply unpopular government face ahead of the next national election.
A woman uses her mobile phone while holding a placard reading "STOP 5G" during a protest against 5G technology, in Bucharest, Romania, in 2020.
WORLD / Science & Health
Sep 4, 2024

No link between mobile phones and brain cancer, WHO-backed study says

The findings even apply to people who make long phone calls or those who have used mobile phones for more than a decade.
The closed Dinh Vu port in Hai Phong, Vietnam, as Super Typhoon Yagi approached the Southeast Asian country.
ASIA PACIFIC
Sep 6, 2024

Super Typhoon Yagi threatens southern China and Vietnam

Yagi killed at least 13 people in the Philippines earlier this week.
A Palestinian girl walks near a puddle of wastewater and piles of garbage and debris amid the spread of skin infections in the northern Gaza Strip on Aug. 5.
WORLD
Sep 11, 2024

Sickness a 'death sentence' in Gaza with a health care system in ruins

"We have no medical system," a general practitioner with the Palestine Red Crescent Society in Gaza said.
A medium-range ballistic missile target is launched from the Pacific Missile Range Facility, before being successfully intercepted by Standard Missile-6 missiles fired from the guided-missile destroyer USS John Paul Jones, in Kauai, Hawaii, in 2017.
ASIA PACIFIC / Politics
Sep 17, 2024

U.S. gathers arsenal of anti-ship weapons to counter China

China will still have a large advantage in sheer numbers of anti-ship missiles, however.
The Milky Way, known as "ama no gawa" in Japanese, is seen above Mount Fuji.
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Sep 18, 2024

Comets and constellations: The language of stargazing

Whether it's telling someone to look at a shooting star or describing the difference between stars and planets, the vocabulary of space is vast and interesting.
Economic security minister Sanae Takaichi, a candidate in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party’s presidential election, speaks during a debate in Tokyo on Sept. 14.
JAPAN / Politics / FOCUS
Sep 25, 2024

Does Sanae Takaichi have a real shot at becoming Japan's first female leader?

After failing to win the party presidency in 2021, Takaichi is trying her luck once again — and this time her chances of winning seem better than before.
Russian airstrikes on Ukrainian cities have been unsuccessful in breaking Ukraine's resolve and the strategic benefit of such attacks is questionable.
COMMENTARY / World / Geoeconomic Briefing
Sep 26, 2024

Lessons from Ukraine and Gaza on humanitarian law

The conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza challenge, if not outright violate, humanitarian law, which seeks to balance military objectives with minimizing harm to civilians.

Longform

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