The Houston Rockets are going to make the playoffs, and without trading for James Harden there basically was no chance they would. The Oklahoma City Thunder still are among the top five contenders for the NBA championship, but not likely as strong a contender ...

Americans could learn from a new prime minister's efforts to revive the flagging economy of Japan, once viewed as the next economic superpower.

A health ministry panel has proposed to more than double the number of hard-to-cure diseases for which patients may receive treatment subsidies.

The U.S. and Japan, despite domestic uncertainties, had better consider how they'll react if the Senkaku Islands start a military conflict with China.

New emergency safety standards planned for nuclear power plants from July are meeting resistance from a power industry worried about the costs.

Chuck Hagel has learned the wrong lessons from the Suez crisis. Dwight Eisenhower later regretted breaking the only immutable rule of a realist foreign policy: Support your friends and punish your enemies.

The economic policies enunciated by the Abe government may have some beneficial effects, but seem inadequate in themselves to revive the Japanese economy in the long run.

According to the United Nations, one in three women worldwide will be raped or beaten in her lifetime.

The annual number of suicides in Japan has fallen below the 30,000 level for the first time in 15 years, but suicide-prevention measures should not be slackened.

One of the most troubling outcomes of the global financial crisis has been a collapse of trust in democratic politicians. What good has transparency done?

Japan's entrance exam ritual, which is once again upon us, needs substantial changes before other parts of the education system can be reformed.

Japan's world ranking in "economic competitiveness" is slipping. The nation came in 10th in 2012, continuing its slide from the sixth spot in 2010.

Second of two parts Next month we will commemorate the second anniversary of the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami, and the ongoing nuclear calamity that ensued. But the personal tragedies it has brought about will remain on the conscience of the Japanese until ...

Fifteen of Japan's top female judo athletes, including Olympic contenders, should be praised for standing up against coaching violence and harassment.

Whether East Asia's politicians and pundits like it or not, the region's current international relations are more akin to those of Europe before World War I.

As Hillary Clinton prepares to step down as U.S. Secretary of State, millions of Americans would like to see her write another political act — as president.

As for "resuscitating" education, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe appears more interested in nurturing children who will help Japan achieve its national goals.

For Asia, it is potentially bad news that the U.S. president seems to have little room for seriously considering the delicate balances between nations.

There was a make-believe quality to U.S. President Barack Obama’s second inaugural address, as if all that’s required to solve serious problems are the intelligence to produce proper policies and the political grit to get them approved. Perish the thought that there are deep ...

If North Korea goes ahead with a threatened nuclear test in reaction to a U.N. Security Council scolding, it will the first under new leader Kim Jong Un.

The role of the U.S. dollar as international anchor is faltering as emerging markets grow increasingly frustrated by the Fed’s near-zero interest-rate policy.

More than 140 countries in Geneva agree on a treaty that marks the first step in global efforts to prevent health-environmental damage from mercury.

It would be unrealistic for the Abe administration to return to the energy polices that prevailed before the Fukushima nuclear plant disaster of 3/11.

Barack Obama's quest to achieve presidential "greatness" will probably be denied because none of America's problems rises to the level of mortal peril.

Natsuko Kuroda, 75, the oldest person yet to win the literary Akutagawa Prize, expressed appreciation that jurors discovered her "while I am alive."

A leisure fishing boat carrying Taiwanese activists, and escorted by four Taiwan Coast Guard vessels, was sailing to a cluster of Japanese-administered islands claimed by Taiwan and China on Thursday morning amid heightened tension in the region. Taiwan’s Coast Guard Administration said the fishing ...

Even during Japan's bubble economy of the late '80s, average annual inflation was 0.7 percentage point shy of the just-adopted 2 percent target.

One of the more startling forecasts is that China will become the largest economy by 2016 and that the U.S. will become an energy exporter by 2020.

The government must ensure that adjustments to the livelihood assistance program don't rip the economic safety net from out under Japan's poor.

Hugo Chavez may die in time to shift the blame for Venezuela's social and economic disasters onto his successors, and to go on haunting the country.

The desert sands of Mali and Algeria provide an unlikely arena for an existential challenge to the global alliance system the United States has managed since World War II. But the hesitant and timid U.S. and European Union responses to the crisis in northwestern ...

North Korea’s new supreme leader Kim Jong Un conducted two missile tests last year. The first, in April, failed. The second, in December, was by all accounts a huge success. But it was not just a test of North Korea’s ability to put an ...

It’s common these days for people to compare India with China and conclude that maybe democracy isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. In India, they note, power shortages force factories to rely on generators, and investors may spend years trying to gain title ...

The men who fought in Vietnam, a war that symbolizes America’s overreach and failures abroad, haven’t ascended to the presidency in the way that the World War II generation did. But now, under President Barack Obama, Vietnam veterans Chuck Hagel and John Kerry could ...

French President Francois Hollande has sent French forces to stop an Islamic insurgency from taking over the West African nation of Mali. It is a bold step for Mr. Hollande, who faces rising discontent at home as well as fear that the intervention could ...

One in four workers in Japan experienced power harassment over the past three years, according to a recent survey by the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry. The poll of 4,580 companies with 30 or more employees, conducted between July and September of 2012, also ...

What is behind the miserable social status of women in Japan? In October last year, the World Economic Forum, a prestigious independent organization based in Geneva, published a report on the gender gap in countries around the world. Japan’s overall ranking was 101, the ...

Aviation regulators on Thursday grounded most of the world’s 787 Dreamliner fleet until a fire risk linked to the plane’s batteries can be fixed, deepening a crisis for its U.S. manufacturer, Boeing Co. Regulators in Japan, India and Chile followed the lead of the ...

Moscow, they say, “wasn’t built at one go” — in contrast to St. Petersburg, which emerged laid out, as if by magic, in strict conformity to Peter the Great’s plan — and it has been growing chaotically for more than 800 years on seven ...

When China destroyed one of its own satellites in space six years ago, it alarmed many other Asia-Pacific countries that have invested heavily in orbiting satellites for telecommunications, Earth observation and scientific research. China’s action caused particular concern in the United States, Japan, Australia, ...

An unmanned U.S. aerial vehicle — or drone — reportedly killed eight people in rural Pakistan last week, bringing the estimated death toll from drone strikes in Pakistan this year to 35. As the frequency of drone strikes spikes again, there are some questions: ...

Prime Minister Abe Shinzo has appointed a Cabinet that, according to press reports, contains a number of ministers who want to rewrite the history of the 20th century. They, including the new minister of education, are reported as demanding the rescinding of the statement ...

A North Korean envoy delivers a letter from leader Kim Jong Un to China' president and tells him Pyongyang will take steps to rejoin stalled nuclear disarmament talks.

Both of the suspects accused of butchering a British soldier during broad daylight on a London street had long been on the radar of the nation’s spy agency, though investigators say it would have been nearly impossible to predict that the men were on ...