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The Sapporo Snow Festival offers outdoor dining, markets, sports, ice sculptures and more across three event sites.
LIFE / Travel
Jan 6, 2024

Asia's winter festivals: Snow, fire and spectacle galore

The ancient city of Nara wards off the wintertime darkness with an unusual tradition: lighting a local mountain on fire.
Humanitarian and medical aid boxes are loaded into a plane to be airdropped by the French and Jordanian air forces for a field hospital set up in Gaza's second city, Khan Younis, at Zarqa airport in Jordan on Friday.
WORLD
Jan 7, 2024

For civilians or Hamas? 'Dual use' issue complicates aid efforts

The issue of which items do or don't get through has become more urgent and contested as the war has unfolded.
Foreign Minister Yoko Kamikawa and her Ukrainian counterpart, Dmytro Kuleba, hold a news conference in a bomb shelter in Kyiv, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, on Sunday.
JAPAN / Politics
Jan 7, 2024

Japan foreign minister promises aid for Ukrainian anti-drone system

Foreign Minister Yoko Kamikawa said Tokyo to provide the war-torn country with a drone detection system via a contribution to a NATO fund.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un visits a munitions factory at an undisclosed location in this picture released Wednesday.
ASIA PACIFIC / Politics
Jan 10, 2024

North Korea's Kim calls South ‘principal enemy,’ turning up heat

Kim pledged he was ready to fight a war but had no intention of starting one. Tensions have soared after the North fired artillery near the South Korean island of Yeonpyeong.
Alex Clavel, co-CEO at SoftBank Investment Advisers, won SoftBank Group CEO Masayoshi Son's trust as a steady hand managing and fixing SoftBank's complex or troubled transactions.
BUSINESS / Companies
Jan 12, 2024

Behind SoftBank’s investing cleanup, a U.S. dealmaker who survived the turmoil

Unassuming problem solver Alex Clavel is Masayoshi Son's top lieutenant leading the investment group's attempt at a turnaround.
The Horizon IT system, built by a U.K. company Fujitsu acquired in the 1990s, resulted in hundreds of post office managers in the U.K. being wrongly convicted for theft and false accounting between 1999 and 2005.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Jan 15, 2024

Fujitsu’s silence is making a tech scandal worse

Top-level executives at Fujitsu have so far stayed mum about the firm's involvement in the U.K. Post Office scandal, letting public outrage shape the narrative, unimpeded.
While Apple has dominated the holiday quarter in recent years, its surge ahead of Samsung over a full year is unprecedented and suggests Apple is weathering an industrywide slump better than its rivals.
BUSINESS / Companies
Jan 17, 2024

Apple passed Samsung as world’s top phone-maker in 2023

Apple's surge ahead of Samsung over a full year is unprecedented and suggests Apple is weathering an industrywide slump better than its rivals.
JAPAN / Society
Jan 19, 2024

How Japan’s quake information apparatus springs into action

Lessons from 3/11 led to greater urgency in communications and centralization of information, while tech continues to shape the approach.
Apple is entering its first major new product category since the company began selling smartwatches in 2015, and the Vision Pro may take years to catch on.
BUSINESS / Tech
Jan 22, 2024

Apple Vision Pro deliveries delayed to March in sign of early demand

The device is also sold out for Day 1 in-store pickup at many locations despite preorders having just begun on Friday ahead of its Feb. 2 rollout.
To mitigate China’s growing tech influence and establish a foothold in the budding artificial intelligence ecosystem, Taiwan budgeted some 17.4 billion New Taiwan dollars ($555.6 million) through 2026 to develop expertise and tools in the industry.
BUSINESS / Tech
Jan 26, 2024

Taiwan builds own AI language model to counter China’s influence

Taiwan is spending $7.4 million for a tool free of China’s political influence
Noto Tetsudo's Anamizu Station in Anamizu, Ishikawa Prefecture, on Jan. 15. The local railway's services have been fully suspended since a powerful New Year's Day earthquake.
JAPAN
Jan 26, 2024

Quake-hit railway vows to resume services

Noto Tetsudo is hoping to bring part of its 33.1-kilometer railway back online in February.
Rescue workers look for missing people in collapsed houses in the aftermath of the  earthquake that struck Wajima, Ishikawa Prefecture, and the surrounding areas on Jan. 1.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Jan 30, 2024

No one left behind: Japan needs to work on its multicultural disaster response

The Noto earthquake has put into relief, once again, the need to cater disaster responses and preparedness to everyone, including foreigners.
Takuro Adachi’s documentary “Sono Kodo ni Mimi wo Ateyo” follows doctors working in Aichi Prefecture’s busiest ER over nine months.
CULTURE / Film
Feb 1, 2024

‘Sono Kodo ni Mimi o Ateyo’: An absorbing dive into pressures of the ER

Filmed at the height of the pandemic, Takuro Adachi’s documentary spotlights emergency room doctors who attend to patients from every strata of society.
A soldier stands in front of the grave sites of fallen soldiers in Kinmen, Taiwan, on Aug. 23, 2023. Chinese President Xi Jinping has ordered his military to be ready to take Taiwan by 2027, though many analysts see that as an attempt to galvanize his military rather than a timeline for invasion.
ASIA PACIFIC
Feb 1, 2024

How Washington is preparing for a Chinese invasion of Taiwan

It is looking at a key vulnerability — military logistics — and is setting up hubs in the Indo-Pacific region to ensure supplies are readily available.
JAPAN
Feb 1, 2024

One month after Noto quake, challenges remain in restoration effort

About 14,000 people are still living at evacuation shelters as officials race to repair infrastructure in the region.
The Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) is seen on the surface of the moon in an image released Jan. 25.
PODCAST / deep dive
Feb 2, 2024

Japan’s historic moon landing was right on target

Japan made history last month when it became the fifth nation to soft land on the moon.
Wall Street giants are endorsing India as the prime investment destination for the coming decade.
BUSINESS / Markets
Feb 6, 2024

Wall Street snubs China for India in a historic markets shift

India has vastly expanded infrastructure under Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his bid to lure global capital and supply lines away from Beijing.
Shipments from China to the U.S. are increasingly making a pit stop in third countries such as Vietnam and Mexico.
BUSINESS
Feb 6, 2024

Biden wins U.S.-China trade war by Trump’s pet metric, but does it count?

Figures due Wednesday are set to show the U.S. deficit in goods trade with China in 2023 at its lowest annual level since 2010.
While in recent years Donald Trump is better known for his trade war with China, the former president has a long history of Japan-bashing and should be taken at his word on the U.S. Steel purchase by Nippon Steel.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Feb 9, 2024

Trump is wrong to oppose Nippon Steel deal

"I would block it instantaneously. Absolutely,” Trump said of Nippon Steel’s bid, and he should be taken seriously and literally.
Supporters of Khan's Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Party block the Peshawar to Islambad highway on Sunday in protest against the alleged skewing of election results in Pakistan's national election.
WORLD / Politics
Feb 11, 2024

Pakistan police threaten crackdown after Khan party calls protests

PTI leaders claim they would have won even more seats if not for vote rigging.
An in-house design by Yamagiwa, the Sui drop-shaped light uses traditional Japanese chōchin lantern techniques and is made with Mino washi paper.
LIFE / Style & Design / ON: DESIGN
Feb 17, 2024

Japan-made standouts from one of Paris' biggest design fairs

Maison & Objet is now such a popular event that it is often nicknamed the Paris Fashion Week of the interior design industry.
Masayoshi Son, chairman and chief executive officer of SoftBank Group, speaks during the SoftBank World event in Tokyo in October.
BUSINESS / Tech
Feb 17, 2024

Masayoshi Son aims to launch a $100 billion AI chip venture

The SoftBank Group founder is looking to create a chip venture to compete with Nvidia and supply semiconductors essential for AI.
A man stands next to a model of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket, which was used to launch several Indonesian satellites into orbit, at the office of Pasifik Satelit Nusantara, an Indonesia’s satellite-based telecommunication firm, in Jakarta on Jan. 15.
BUSINESS / Companies
Feb 20, 2024

How a Chinese rocket failure boosted SpaceX's fortunes in Indonesia

Elon Musk seized on the incident to prevail over a state-owned Chinese contractor as Jakarta's company of choice for putting satellites into space.
Visa-free access for Chinese tourists to Southeast Asia countries boosted traffic and signaled a robust revival in travel since Beijing lifted strict COVID-19 restrictions in early 2023 that had all but shut China's borders for three years.
BUSINESS / Economy
Feb 21, 2024

Chinese tourists flock to Southeast Asia as travel bounces back

The increase provides welcome relief to countries that rely on the Chinese and their spending.
When SoftBank Group founder Masayoshi Son bought Arm in 2016 for $32 billion, he had grand plans for the company to dominate the nascent market for connected devices, also known as the Internet of Things.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Feb 21, 2024

Softbank’s Arm is not the AI play most people think it is

Today, GPUs are the gold standard for AI development and thus the equivalent of toilet paper during the pandemic.
Iranian ballistic missiles in Tehran. Iran's hard-line clerical rulers have steadily sought to deepen ties with Russia and China, betting that would help Tehran to resist U.S. sanctions and to end its political isolation.
WORLD / Politics
Feb 22, 2024

Iran sends Russia hundreds of ballistic missiles, sources say

An Iranian military official said there had been at least four shipments of missiles and that there would be more in the coming weeks.
Passengers line up for security at San Francisco International Airport (SFO).
BUSINESS / Tech
Feb 22, 2024

The five most exciting innovations coming to an airport near you

Updating an existing airport terminal is time-consuming, expensive work that often costs hundreds of millions of dollars — and sometimes billions.
DeNA plans to co-develop Pokemon Trading Card Game Pocket with Creatures Co. for launch on both iOS and Android devices this year.
BUSINESS / Companies
Feb 28, 2024

Shares in DeNA soar on announcement of new Pokemon trading card game

The smartphone game was one of a flurry of announcements on the 28th anniversary of the first Pokemon game release.
Documents, including forged driver's licenses, used in a fraud case are shown at Aichi Prefectural Police's Kasugai police station on Monday.
JAPAN / Crime & Legal
Mar 5, 2024

Aichi police arrest five over fraud and illicit opening of bank accounts

The monthslong racket involved the selling of such accounts to a different group for fraudulent purposes.
An event for female coders in New York in 2013. Women’s full participation is key to ensure technologies like AI help bridge the gender gap.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 7, 2024

Now is our chance to govern AI for women’s empowerment

The pace of AI development may seem relentless, but there's still time to create safeguards to ensure that innovation doesn't perpetuate gender inequality.

Longform

Visitors walk past Sou Fujimoto's Grand Ring, which has been recognized as the largest wooden structure in the world.
Can a World Expo still matter? Japan is about to find out.