Search - 2022

 
 
Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes is 5-0 in Week 1 games.
MORE SPORTS / Football
Sep 7, 2023

Chiefs hope to continue streak of fast starts against Lions in NFL opener

Head coach Andy Reid is 9-1 in Week 1 since taking over in Kansas City.
Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen attends the launching ceremony of Narwhal, its first domestically built submarine, in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, on Sept. 28.
ASIA PACIFIC / Politics
Oct 16, 2023

Fearing China, South Korea targets Taiwan navy submarine contractors

Seoul has avoided arming the island, even as its companies ink weapons deals with other Asian neighbors.
A fishing boat patrols the sea for poaching off the port of Yomogita, Aomori Prefecture, on the night of Sept. 13.
JAPAN / Society / Regional Voices: Tohoku
Oct 30, 2023

Aomori sea cucumber fishermen hit hard by China’s seafood import ban

Twenty-seven cooperatives in the prefecture have suspended operations in October, when the fishing season for sea cucumbers starts in a normal year.
Petr Aven in Moscow to attend Russia Business week in in 2018
WORLD / Crime & Legal
Nov 1, 2023

Squeezed by sanctions, some oligarchs head home to Putin's Russia

The penalties have destroyed the standing of many wealthy Russians abroad who remained silent or avoided direct criticism of Putin over the war.
Former FTX chief executive Sam Bankman-Fried leaves Manhattan federal court in New York in January.
BUSINESS / FOCUS
Nov 4, 2023

Swift FTX case vindicates prosecution ‘need for speed’

ON Thursday, the jury took only a few hours to convict Sam Bankman-Fried of treating FTX as his personal piggy bank.
Hiromichi Kikuchi was sentenced to eight months in prison on Tuesday for mediating organ transplants overseas without government approval.
JAPAN / Crime & Legal
Nov 28, 2023

Japan NPO head sentenced for unauthorized organ transplants overseas

The Tokyo District Court handed an eight-month prison sentence to the executive for mediating organ transplants in Belarus without government approval.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Russian President Vladimir Putin attend a meeting at the Vostochny Cosmodrome in Russia's far eastern Amur region on Sept. 13.
COMMENTARY / World / Geoeconomic Briefing
Dec 5, 2023

The China-Russia-North Korea triangle looks unlikely to last

Despite a recent raft of leaders' visits and a warming of ties, the three nations still have their own agendas.
A Ukrainian serviceman fires a self-propelled howitzer toward Russian troops.
BUSINESS / Companies
Dec 4, 2023

Despite rising demand, arms sales hampered by production woes: study

COVID-derived labor and supply-chain issues had a significant impact on manufacturers, experts say.
Shipping containers at a commercial port in Vladivostok, Russia, in August
BUSINESS
Dec 9, 2023

Putin's economic challenges are numerous — but surmountable — as election looms

Russia's success in evading a Western oil price cap is helping drive a recovery in economic growth.
Naoya Maekawa, an associate professor at Fukushima University, speaks of the importance of passing on lessons from Japan's 2011 disasters.
JAPAN / Society / Regional Voices: Fukushima
Dec 18, 2023

Knowledge of 2011 disaster declining among young, survey shows

An academic behind the survey says memories of the disaster are fading.
The construction of TSMC’s new plant in Kikuyo, Kumamoto Prefecture, has seen companies anticipating expanded collaborations with the semiconductor firm grow keen to establish footholds in the area.
BUSINESS / Tech
Dec 19, 2023

Semiconductor projects in Japan whip up local optimism

Companies anticipating expanded collaborations with TSMC are keen to establish footholds in the area around its new plant in Kikuyo, Kumamoto Prefecture.
Shoppers at a market in Kyiv on Tuesday
WORLD / Politics
Dec 21, 2023

With Ukraine’s aid in doubt, companies say they’re the Plan B

Ukrainian companies making products are ensuring their survival while contributing to the war effort.
A Tokyo Public Prosecutor's Office vehicle exits the building housing the office of a political faction once led by the late former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, in Tokyo's Chiyoda Ward on Dec. 19.
JAPAN / Politics
Dec 25, 2023

LDP's top faction withdrew decision to abolish kickbacks

A special squad suspects that senior faction officials knew of the apparent mechanism of the kickbacks and attempted to correct the situation.
A wafer is pictured at Semicon Taiwan in Taipei
BUSINESS / Companies
Dec 30, 2023

This startup shows it won't be easy to contain China's chip industry

The story of Seida illustrates the challenges the West faces in thwarting Chinese development of advanced microchip technology.
Aleksandra Popova, an activist whose husband was a co-defendant in Yegor Shtovba's trial, outside Butyrka prison in Moscow on Dec. 21. Shtovba, who has spent the past 15 months in pretrial detention, married Nadezhda Shtovba last month in a short ceremony in a prison in downtown Moscow.
WORLD / Politics
Jan 2, 2024

Young love meets Russian repression. They said ‘I do’ in a Moscow prison.

Nadezhda Shtovba did not wear a white dress to her wedding. She and her husband did not exchange wedding bands either — rings are banned in Butyrka prison.
South Korea's opposition party leader Lee Jae-myung, in Busan, South Korea, on Tuesday before he was attacked
ASIA PACIFIC / Politics
Jan 2, 2024

South Korea opposition chief attacked during visit to Busan

Lee was stabbed in the neck as he spoke with reporters, and his attacker was captured at the scene.
A supporter of Donald Trump prior to a campaign event in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, last month. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak signaled that voters in the United Kingdom will go to the polls in the fall, around the time that the United States will be in the midst of its own pivotal vote.
WORLD / Politics
Jan 7, 2024

Trumpian bravado poses risk for Sunak amid dueling U.K. and U.S. votes

Polls show U.K. voters are becoming more wary of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak as an election looms.
Egypt's Hamdi Fathi chases after Senegal's Sadio Mane during the Africa Cup of Nations final in Cameroon in February 2022.
SOCCER
Jan 7, 2024

Stars of African soccer descend on Ivory Coast for Cup of Nations

Sadio Mane's Senegal team is aiming to retain their title and Mohamed Salah is chasing a first trophy with Egypt at this year's Africa Cup of Nations.
NBA players take part in a training session in Johannesburg in 2015. The Basketball Africa League, now entering its fourth season, is the NBA’s sole professional league outside the U.S., and its most ambitious international expansion since it attempted to break through in China two decades ago on the coattails of Hall of Fame center Yao Ming.
BASKETBALL
Jan 14, 2024

NBA’s Africa league struggles to find fans as it faces mounting losses

The Basketball Africa League is the NBA’s sole professional league outside the U.S., and its most ambitious international expansion in years.
A worker carries a tray containing steamed kamaboko at a factory in Ise, Mie Prefecture.
JAPAN / Society / Regional voices: Chubu
Jan 22, 2024

As costs rise, kamaboko producers struggle to stay afloat

Many have little choice but to raise the prices of their own products after having exhausted other measures.
A Ground Self-Defense Force AH-1S Cobra attack helicopter fires ammunition during a live-fire exercise in Gotemba, Shizuoka Prefecture, in May 2022.
COMMENTARY / Japan / Geoeconomic Briefing
Jan 25, 2024

Will drones replace helicopter pilots in the Self-Defense Forces?

Japan has already begun to make a major shift to transfer the functions of traditional defense aircraft to unmanned aerial vehicles.
Doubts about China’s official investment statistics — which measure spending on things like housing, factories and infrastructure — have been fueled by frequent revisions in recent years, and the latest data implies an unusually large adjustment.
BUSINESS / Economy
Jan 19, 2024

Did China’s economy really grow 5.2% in 2023? Not all agree

Doubts over Chinese data, particularly on investment, have resulted in alternative calculations that put its GDP growth last year at as low as 1.5%.
An offshore wind turbine off the coast of Naraha, Fukushima Prefecture, in 2013. Japan aims to increase its offshore wind power capacity to 10 GW by 2030.
ENVIRONMENT / OUR PLANET
Jan 21, 2024

As Japan makes major investments in wind power, some residents are pushing back

In a sense, the city of Ishikari represents the idealized, natural version of Hokkaido for many Japanese. Some residents say massive wind turbines will destroy that image.
Environment groups gather to oppose a key LNG terminal that threatened a delicate algal reef, in Taipei in December 2021. If Taipower can’t make sufficient progress on clean-energy generation, the island could potentially lose some of its allure as a destination for chip manufacturing.
BUSINESS / Tech
Jan 28, 2024

Taiwan’s troubled utility poses risk to chipmakers’ green goals

Political pressures have prevented the state-owned Taipower from passing on costs to customers, while bets on offshore wind have been marred by obstacles.
A driver for an independent contractor to FedEx delivers packages on Cyber Monday in New York on Nov. 27, 2023.
BUSINESS / Companies
Jan 31, 2024

Delivery firms struggle to adopt EVs as online sales drive up demand

Many climate pledges have been scaled back as the industry fails to keep pace with climbing emissions.
Taiwanese soldiers train at a base in Hsinchu, Taiwan, on Tuesday. The island has decided to extend compulsory military service for young males from four months to one year amid increasing threats from China.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Feb 7, 2024

Taiwan extends military conscription, a system Japan might want to consider

As Japan struggles to fill its military ranks, compulsory national service might be its only solution.
Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas and other Baltic politicians placed on Russia's wanted list risk arrest if they cross the Russian border, but otherwise declaring them as "wanted" is unlikely to have any practical consequence.
WORLD / Politics
Feb 14, 2024

Moscow puts Estonia PM on wanted list for destroying Soviet-era monuments

After Russia invaded Ukraine, Baltic governments demolished the monuments they considered their former imperial overlords' propaganda tools.
Film director Hideo Sakaki leaves the Akasaka Police Station in Tokyo on Wednesday as police take him to prosecutors.
JAPAN / Crime & Legal
Feb 21, 2024

Film director Hideo Sakaki held on suspicion of sexual assault

While allegations of sexual abuse were made against Sakaki as far back as March 2022, this is the first time that the director has been taken into custody.
Yurii, 53, and Tetiana, 51, attend a rally of families of Ukrainian prisoners of war  in Kryvyi Rih, Dnipropetrovsk region, Ukraine, on Jan. 21.
WORLD
Feb 22, 2024

How life in Ukraine has been shattered by two years of war

Even in remote villages, signs are everywhere of the two-year-old war that has irrevocably changed the face of Ukraine.
Smoke rises from the Posco steel mill in Pohang, South Korea.
BUSINESS / Companies
Feb 26, 2024

South Korea’s biggest polluters made millions from carbon sales

Seoul was one of the first in Asia to start an emissions-trading system, but it has fallen short of encouraging industrial polluters to reduce pollution.

Longform

Totopa in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward was picked by consultants TTNE as the best sauna of the year.
Japan’s sauna movement: Relax, refresh, repeat