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A DJI drone emerges from the casing on top of a BYD Yangwang U8 vehicle.
BUSINESS / Companies
Mar 11, 2024

China EV makers woo buyers with in-car beds, kitchens and drones

Top EV makers are facing a slowdown in demand at home as consumers curb spending.
Former Brazilian driver Felipe Massa during the first day of the Formula One Brazil Grand Prix in Sao Paulo in November 2022. Massa filed a lawsuit against Formula One in London's High Court on March 11, seeking damages for missing out on the 2008 world championship title.
MORE SPORTS / Auto Racing
Mar 12, 2024

Massa takes action against F1, FIA and Ecclestone in High Court

A court document from Massa's representatives said his estimated alleged losses were £64 million ($82 million) plus interest.
Left: A man protesting the Tokyo 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games clashes with police on Aug. 8, 2021. Right: An AI-generated version of the photo to the left is included to show the difference between real and fake images in news reporting.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 11, 2024

Stranger than fiction: How AI threatens photojournalism

AI images will increasingly replace photos of real events in news reporting, posing an existential threat to photojournalism's accuracy and integrity.
Alexei Navalny looks out of the window of his cell in a detention center in Moscow on Dec. 8, 2011.
WORLD / Politics
Mar 12, 2024

Putin's opposition: Dead, jailed or exiled

Putin's staunchest critic of the last decade, Alexei Navalny, died last month in a prison colony. Dozens of others remain behind bars.
Mitsuya Kishida, incoming CEO of Nidec (left), and Shigenobu Nagamori, chairman and CEO, during a news conference at the company's headquarters in Kyoto on Feb. 14.
BUSINESS / Companies
Mar 12, 2024

Japan's Nidec, U.S. private equity firm KPS vie for Siemens’ motors unit

The Innomotics unit makes heavy-duty electric motors used in ships and mining equipment, and could fetch about ¥483.6 billion in a sale.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, whose company launched a pair of smart glasses, on stage at the company's headquarters in Menlo Park, California, in September.
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 22, 2023

Do you want Meta snooping in your closet with AI wearables?

AI wearable devices represent yet another intrusion into our privacy, allowing tech companies to learn even more about who we are — and what we might buy.
Shi Pong Hsu, 75, makes coffee in a Singapore coffee shop. The city-state's government projects that almost a quarter of its population will be 65 or over by 2030.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 10, 2024

Singapore is bracing for a super-aging society

Japan and South Korea may be the poster children for low birthrates, but Singapore is confronting its own decline. Its solution? Bonuses for nurses.
Some 38% of Bank of Japan watchers in a survey believe the central bank will end its negative rates next week.
BUSINESS / Economy
Mar 12, 2024

Half of BOJ watchers still see April rate hike while bets on March move jump

The proportion of 50 economists forecasting an end to the world’s last negative rate in April slipped to 54% in the latest survey from 59% in January.
Since the Ukraine war, South Korea has had a special travel advisory urging its citizens not to travel to Russia.
ASIA PACIFIC / Politics
Mar 12, 2024

South Korean held in Russia for spying was missionary, reports say

The incident marks the first time a South Korean has been detained in Russia for alleged espionage, according to Russian news agencies.
Samsung Electronics plans to use a technology championed by its rival SK Hynix, as the world's top memory chipmaker seeks to catch up in the race to produce high-end chips used to power artificial intelligence.
BUSINESS / Companies
Mar 13, 2024

Samsung to adopt chipmaking tech used by rival amid AI chip supply race

Samsung's decision to stick with a chipmaking technology called nonconductive film is one of the reasons it has fallen behind.
Yusuke Yamazaki, former president of Nishiyama Farm, arrives at Narita Airport in Chiba Prefecture on Wednesday.
JAPAN / Crime & Legal
Mar 13, 2024

Ex-Nishiyama Farm president arrested after deportation from Indonesia

Yusuke Yamazaki had been on the international wanted list for his alleged involvement in investment fraud involving overseas fruit sales.
Several U.S. lawmakers along with TikTok creators hold a news conference to voice their opposition to the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act in Washington on Tuesday.
COMMENTARY
Mar 13, 2024

America’s TikTok addiction isn’t just China’s fault

If you’ve spent time on the platform, you will know how addictive TikTok is. With 170 million users, at least one in three Americans have accessed it.
Results of spring wage negotiations are written on a board at an office of the Japan Council of Metalworkers' Unions in Tokyo's Chuo Ward on Wednesday.
BUSINESS / Economy
Mar 13, 2024

Major Japanese firms offering solid pay hikes for second year running

Several companies met or even exceeded labor union demands, raising the possibility the Bank of Japan will adjust monetary policy soon.
JAPAN / Politics
Mar 14, 2024

U.S. military resumes Osprey flights in Japan

The resumption came after Washington last week lifted a worldwide flight ban on the aircraft following a deadly crash last year.
Supporters of TikTok watch a feed of the U.S. House vote as they gather outside the Capitol in Washington on Wednesday.
WORLD
Mar 14, 2024

TikTok devotees say platform unfairly targeted for U.S. ban

The U.S. House of Representatives has approved a bill that would force TikTok to divest from its Chinese owner or be banned nationally.
NEC computers at an electronics store in Tokyo. Founded in 1899, NEC focuses on information technology and network communications, biometric recognition, the internet of things and artificial intelligence technologies, according to its website.
BUSINESS / Companies
Mar 14, 2024

Japan’s NEC weighing $500 million data center sale, sources say

The Tokyo-traded company is looking to hire financial advisers to help prepare a potential sale of the business.
Pickleball courts in New York's famed Central Park
MORE SPORTS
Mar 15, 2024

Amid boom overseas, when will pickleball land in Japan?

Over the past few years, pickleball has emerged as the fastest-growing sport in the U.S., but it has yet to take off in Japan.
JAPAN / Society
Mar 15, 2024

Ai Fukuhara reaches custody settlement after abduction accusation

Although the physical custody of their son as well as their daughter will be with her ex-husband, the couple will continue to have joint custody over them.
A closed McDonald's in Tokyo on Friday after a tech issue forced outlets of the burger chain to shut around the world.
BUSINESS
Mar 16, 2024

Big Mac goes Big Tech — with a few hiccups

McDonald's reliance on tech backfired on Friday when an outage forced it to shut stores around the world.
Supporters of South Korean plaintiffs in wartime labor lawsuits hold a rally in Seoul on March 6.
JAPAN
Mar 17, 2024

Wartime labor issue still overshadowing Japan-South Korea ties

Last month, a South Korean plaintiff received compensation deposited by Hitachi Zosen with a South Korean court handling the wartime labor suit.
This screen grab from a video purportedly shows an explosion at the Slavyansk oil refinery in Russia's Krasnodar region on Sunday.
WORLD
Mar 17, 2024

Ukraine drones attack refinery, target Moscow and disrupt power, Russia says

Moscow accuses Kyiv of election sabotage with its days of strikes on Russian infrastructure, one of the most sweeping air operations on Russian territory.
U.S. lawmakers last week overwhelmingly backed a bill to ban TikTok unless Chinese parent company ByteDance divested itself within six months.
BUSINESS / Tech
Mar 18, 2024

Monsters, asteroids, vampires: AI conspiracies flood TikTok

YouTube tutorials show users how to create "viral conspiracy theory videos" and profit off TikTok's Creativity Program.
Mamiko Tanaka (right), wife of Los Angeles Dodgers Shohei Ohtani, arrives at Incheon International Airport on Friday ahead of the 2024 MLB Seoul Series baseball games.
JAPAN / Society
Mar 18, 2024

A mystery no more: What we know about Ohtani’s wife

No one in the sports world is receiving as much attention right now as baseball superstar Shohei Ohtani — that is, besides his wife, Mamiko Tanaka.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.'s (TSMC) new plant in Kikuyo, Kumamoto Prefecture
BUSINESS / Companies
Mar 18, 2024

TSMC eyes advanced chip packaging capacity in Japan, sources say

Bringing its chip-on-wafer-on-substrate packaging technology — currently all in Taiwan — to Japan is one of the options the chipmaker is considering.
Nvidia's CEO Jensen Huang displays products onstage during the annual Nvidia GTC Artificial Intelligence Conference at SAP Center in San Jose, California, on Monday.
BUSINESS / Tech
Mar 19, 2024

Nvidia unveils 'superchip' successor to all-conquering AI processor

The new chip, multiple times faster at handling AI models, will be the basis of new computers being deployed by the world’s largest data center operators.
JAPAN / Crime & Legal / FOCUS
Mar 19, 2024

Japan's 'hostage justice system' faces renewed scrutiny

The long-criticized system has come under the spotlight as executives wrongly accused of a crime continue their legal battle.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Philippine Secretary of Foreign Affairs Enrique Manalo attend a working luncheon at the Sofitel Hotel in Manila on Tuesday. Blinken’s trip, which also touched upon economic cooperation, followed a trade mission visit by U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo a week earlier.
ASIA PACIFIC / Politics
Mar 19, 2024

Blinken pledges closer U.S.-Philippine security ties ahead of trilateral summit with Japan

The top U.S. diplomat and his Philippine counterpart also signaled the allies were eyeing ways to "operationalize" security cooperation with Tokyo.
Russian President Vladimir Putin shakes hands with Chinese President Xi Jinping during a meeting at the Belt and Road Forum in Beijing in October last year.
WORLD / Politics
Mar 19, 2024

Putin to travel to China in May for talks with Xi, sources say

The visit could be the Kremlin chief's first overseas trip of his new presidential term.
Denys Kostev, a Ukrainian teen who lived in an orphanage in southern Ukraine and ended up in Russian-controlled territory following Moscow's full-scale invasion
WORLD / Politics
Mar 20, 2024

Poster child for Russia's removal of Ukraine orphans says he was coached, threatened

Kyiv says many Ukrainian orphans taken to Russian-controlled territory have been subjected to an orchestrated program to make them accept Kremlin ideology.
Security personnel guard trucks carrying aid as they arrive in the southern Gaza Strip on Jan. 17.
WORLD
Mar 20, 2024

Palestinian clans and factions step in to protect Gaza aid

Numerous clans, civil society groups and factions — including Hamas' secular political rival Fatah — have stepped in to help provide security.

Longform

Atsuyoshi Koike, the president and CEO of Rapidus, says there is a “sense of urgency” when it comes to Japan’s efforts in manufacturing semiconductors. “We have to make sure we are successful,” he says.
Atsuyoshi Koike’s big game: Fourth down and 2 nanometers to go