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Defense Minister Gen Nakatani (left) and U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth review an honor guard during a welcome ceremony at the Defense Ministry in Tokyo ahead of their talks Sunday.
JAPAN / Politics
Mar 30, 2025
In Tokyo, Pentagon chief provides assurances that Japan-U.S. alliance remains robust
U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth described Japan as an “indispensable partner” in confronting China and sought to dispel lingering unease in Tokyo.
Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore speaks during a news conference in Paris on Saturday.
ENVIRONMENT / Sustainability
Mar 30, 2025
Trump can't stop 'sustainability revolution': Al Gore
Gore also condemned the administration's treatment of universities and student activists, but said the tide is turning.
Conservative Party of Canada leader Pierre Poilievre speaks at a rally in Surrey, British Columbia, on Thursday.
WORLD / Politics
Mar 30, 2025
Trump drama drowns out Canadian Conservatives’ election message
Trump has drowned out the debate on domestic issues with his barrage of tariffs and proclamations that the country should be the 51st U.S. state.
The World Health Organization's headquarters in Geneva. The WHO is facing an income gap of nearly $600 million in 2025 and has "no choice" but to start making cutbacks, the organization's chief wrote in an internal email.
WORLD / Science & Health
Mar 30, 2025
WHO must cut budget by a fifth after U.S. pullout
The WHO is facing an income gap of nearly $600 million in 2025 and has "no choice" but to start making cutbacks.
U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Defense Minister Gen Nakatani pose for a photo on Ioto, the far-flung Japanese island known widely as Iwo Jima, on Saturday for an event honoring those who died in bloody fighting there 80 years ago during World War II.
JAPAN / Politics
Mar 29, 2025
Pentagon chief joins war memorial ceremony on first visit to Japan
U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth called the alliance with Japan key to peace in the region, a view he said “will continue.”
A Chinese H-6 bomber flies east of the disputed Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea on Monday.
ASIA PACIFIC
Mar 29, 2025
Satellite images show fresh Chinese bomber deployment in South China Sea
The move was Beijing's latest to assert sovereignty over the hotly disputed atoll in the South China Sea.
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to the press aboard Air Force One before arriving at Palm Beach International Airport in Palm Beach, Florida, on Friday.
WORLD / Politics / FOCUS
Mar 29, 2025
Trump prompts U.S. allies to reopen nuclear weapons debate
Donald Trump's attacks on NATO and the established world order are undermining the confidence of its allies under the U.S. security umbrella.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy speaks at a news conference in Kyiv on Friday.
WORLD / Politics
Mar 29, 2025
Zelenskyy cautious on dramatically expanded U.S. minerals deal
The U.S. proposal would require Kyiv to send Washington all profit from a fund controlling Ukrainian resources until Ukraine had repaid all U.S. wartime aid, plus interest.
Oil pipelines in Alaska. U.S. President Donald Trump wants Japan, South Korea and Taiwan to join a $44 billion natural gas export project.
BUSINESS
Mar 29, 2025
Alaska governor to brief Trump on Asia gas push as tariffs bite
Gov. Mike Dunleavy is winding up a trip through Asia where he has been seeking investors and long-term buyers.
U.S. President Donald Trump’s actions are rekindling long-simmering discussions about whether overseas governments will accelerate efforts to rely less on the dollar.
BUSINESS / Economy / FOCUS
Mar 29, 2025
Trump is eroding the dollar’s dominance in world markets
The U.S. president's escalating fusillade of tariffs and bid to roll back decades of globalization is shaking confidence in the U.S. currency.
U.S. Vice President JD Vance tours the U.S. military's Pituffik Space Base in Greenland on Friday.
WORLD / Politics
Mar 29, 2025
Vance accuses Denmark of not keeping Greenland safe from Russia and China
He suggested the territory would come to see the benefit of partnering with the U.S., in remarks the Danish prime minister called unfair.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney greets colleagues after at a news conference at the Port of Montreal in Montreal on Friday.
WORLD
Mar 29, 2025
Trump and Carney talk about new deal and plan meeting after Canada election
The Canadian election campaign has turned into a contest in which U.S. threats against Canada’s economy and sovereignty have become the dominant issue.
Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba speaks during an Upper House Budget Committee meeting on Friday.
JAPAN / History
Mar 28, 2025
Ishiba to visit Iwo Jima to honor soldiers who died in fierce WWII battle
He will be the first sitting prime minister to visit the island since April 2013, when then-Prime Minister Shinzo Abe made a stopover.
Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. (left) meets with U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth at the Malacanang palace in Manila on Friday.
ASIA PACIFIC / Politics
Mar 28, 2025
U.S. to deploy more advanced defense capabilities to Philippines
The move comes as Washington seeks to reassure its oldest treaty ally in Asia of its “ironclad” defense commitment amid heightened tensions with China.
Brooklyn Kura's Catskills, a "junmai daiginjō" (sake with rice polished down to at least 50%), is made with water from the New York region of the same name.
LIFE / Food & Drink
Mar 28, 2025
New York's Brooklyn Kura becomes first U.S. sake exporter to Japan
The brewer’s initial exports are “relatively small,” but it hopes drinkers in Japan are "open to trying" American-made sake.
Rohingya refugees hold up signs at a camp in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, on March 14.
ASIA PACIFIC / Politics
Mar 28, 2025
Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh fear U.S. aid cuts will deepen crisis
The U.S. had been the largest provider of aid to the Rohingya refugees, contributing nearly $2.4 billion since 2017, according to a State Department website.
Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba emphasizes the need to consider measures to help Japanese companies with financing while the government tries to grasp the entire scope of the impact on the nation’s key industry.
BUSINESS / Economy
Mar 28, 2025
Ishiba pledges measures to protect jobs from Trump’s car tariffs
Ishiba emphasized the need to consider measures to help Japanese companies with financing while the government tries to grasp the entire scope of the tariffs' impact.
U.S. President Donald Trump's deal-focused approach to diplomacy may prevent a hostile China-Russia-North Korea-Iran alliance, but weakens U.S. global leadership.
COMMENTARY
Mar 27, 2025
The art of the deal meets a four-power axis
Trump's deal-focused approach may prevent a hostile China-Russia-North Korea-Iran alliance but weakens U.S. global leadership.
Both houses of the U.S. Congress have effectively become a subordinate branch of government, ceding power to the executive, especially when the president's party also controls Capitol Hill.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 27, 2025
U.S. Congress began ceding power to presidents long before Trump
Since the turn of the century, Congress has increasingly functioned as a quasi-parliament rather than as an independent branch of government
A guard tower at Manzanar Internment Camp in Independence, California, in July 2013. Nearly 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry were removed from their homes on the West Coast by the U.S. Army and sent to Manzanar and nine other internment camps between March 1942 and November 1945.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Mar 26, 2025
Use of wartime powers revives internment camp memories
It took more than 40 years for the U.S. government to officially set the record straight that abusing the Alien Enemies Act during World War II was both illegal and immoral.

Longform

Professional cleaner Hirofumi Sakurai takes a moment to appreciate some photographs in a Gotanda apartment whose occupant died alone.
The last cleanup: Life and death in a lonely Japan