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Japan Times
BUSINESS / Tech
Aug 24, 2022

Saudi Arabia's 'surveillance city': Would you sell your data to The Line?

The country's poor human rights record does not bode well for responsible data usage or the safeguarding of individual privacy, digital rights experts say.
Japan Times
WORLD / Politics
Aug 21, 2022

The final days of the Trump White House: chaos and scattered papers

Government documents that Trump had accumulated were with him in two dozen boxes in the White House residence. They were to go to the National Archives. Some ended up in Florida.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Regional Voices: Kyushu
Aug 15, 2022

Attack on Thai exile sheds light on transnational repression in Japan

Methods of crossborder repression are extensive and sophisticated, making them difficult to defend against and investigate.
Japan Times
Special Supplements
Aug 8, 2022

Women from ASEAN who are following their dreams in Japan

The ASEAN-Japan Centre in Tokyo, established by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations member states and Japan, produced a series of documentary videos that take a closer look at women from ASEAN countries who are active in Japan. There are about 500,000 women from ASEAN in Japan, and these videos...
It doesn't snow everywhere in Japan, but when it does, it falls in blankets that must be cleared away, sometimes through unexpected means.
COMMUNITY / Voices / FOREIGN AGENDA
Feb 4, 2024

Rural Japan’s snow removal solutions range from cute to curious

Outside of Tokyo, cities that get a significant volume of snow tend to have better ways of dealing with it than the capital.
Driveline Pacific Rim director Frank Minamino (second from right) poses with Lions pitcher Kaito Yoza (left) Hawks pitcher Shuta Ishikawa (second from left) and the Lions' Kona Takahashi.
BASEBALL
Feb 2, 2024

NPB pitchers embracing Driveline Baseball method

NPB players are working with Driveline Baseball in greater numbers.
Water jugs are filled at a United Nations Relief and Works Agency camp for displaced Palestinians in Khan Younis, Gaza Strip, on Nov. 22.
WORLD
Feb 4, 2024

The 8 days that roiled the U.N.’s top agency in Gaza

UNRWA is the largest aid agency on the ground in Gaza, providing shelter to more than half the population and coordinating aid from Egypt and Israel.
Pakistan's former Prime Minister Imran Khan during an interview at his residence in Lahore on May 18, 2023. His name may not be on the ballot, but Khan will be on the country's mind as Pakistan votes in an election on Feb. 8 that observers say is deeply flawed without his participation. The former international cricket star has been given three lengthy prison sentences in under a week and banned from politics for 10 years — officially excluding him from an election it never looked like he would allowed to contest.
WORLD / Politics
Feb 6, 2024

Days before Pakistan vote, former leader Imran Khan campaigns from jail

Khan's campaign involves use of generative AI technology to create audio footage of him reading speeches conveyed to lawyers from his prison cell.
Like for other generative AI services, the algorithm behind Rufus is a closely held secret and Amazon declined to discuss how it operates.
BUSINESS / Companies
Feb 6, 2024

Who benefits when shoppers use Amazon's new AI tool?

The tool raises several questions, as Amazon has a history of steering customers toward products that most benefit the company.
At the new teamLab Borderless museum, the crowd-favorite room of lamps from Borderless 1.0 has evolved into a room of light bubbles, which interact with each other and the bodies passing by.
CULTURE / Art
Feb 8, 2024

Have we reached teamLab saturation?

The art collective re-opens its Borderless museum in Azabudai Hills. But the experience is starting to feel stale.
The “myahk,” a community currency implemented on Okinawa Prefecture’s Miyako Island in 2018, is intimately tied to local efforts for environmental preservation.
LIFE / Lifestyle / Longform
Feb 10, 2024

Japanese communities are creating currencies to educate and empower citizens

The yen will do when paying for things throughout the country. In some places, though, you may try paying with a coin that also helps reduce plastic waste.
The Japanese government forecast that number of digital workers in 2026 will fall short of projected needs by 2.3 million.
EDITORIALS
Feb 9, 2024

Japan struggles with digital transformation

Japan's general tendency toward risk aversion reduces the readiness to adopt new policies, procedures and technologies.
A tsugumi (dusky thrush). Bird-watching increasingly plays a critical role in mapping bird behaviors and paving the way for policy and conservation initiatives.
ENVIRONMENT / Wildlife / OUR PLANET
Feb 11, 2024

How a new flock of bird-watchers is contributing to science

The hobby increasingly plays a critical role in mapping bird behaviors and paving the way for policy and conservation initiatives.
The Central Social Insurance Medical Council has adopted a proposal to increase outpatient fees in order to boost the salaries of health care workers.
JAPAN
Feb 15, 2024

Japan to raise outpatient visit fees to increase workers' pay

In order to increase pay for young doctors, nursing staff and pharmacists, basic hospitalization fees and outpatient fees will be raised.
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.
What would you do if you received a juicy piece of gossip at work, do you know the Japanese for how you'd respond?
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Feb 23, 2024

Rumor, gossip and misinformation with neither roots nor leaves

Areas hit by the New Year's Day earthquake find themselves subject to damaging misinformation as they try to focus on reconstruction.
A relative of a missing passenger on MH370, in Beijing on the one year anniversary of the aircraft's disappearance.
WORLD
Feb 23, 2024

A decade after MH370, planes still at risk of vanishing off the map

An industrywide push to eliminate the chances of a similar case has been stymied by bureaucracy and financial pressure.
People read newspapers at a roadside tea stall in Patna, Bihar, India. Newsrooms are being reshaped, journalists say, by India’s richest press barons, many of whom are close to the ruling party and depend on millions of advertising dollars from the government.
ASIA PACIFIC / Politics
Feb 26, 2024

Billionaire press barons are squeezing media freedom in India

Many press barons are close to the ruling party and depend on millions of advertising dollars from the government.
Banks can boost their productivity by as much as 30% using generative AI over the next three years, according to analysis from consultancy firm Accenture.
BUSINESS / Tech
Feb 28, 2024

Bankers will see three-quarters of the workday transformed by AI

The world’s biggest banks have been experimenting with AI, spurred on by the promise that the technology will boost productivity and cut costs.
A plan is being considered to transfer residents and tourists from the Sakishima islands via Kagoshima and Fukuoka airports in the event of a Taiwan contingency.
JAPAN
Feb 28, 2024

Japan mulls Taiwan contingency evacuation routes for remote islands

The envisioned evacuation plans will be drawn up by prefectural governments in fiscal 2024.
There is a global trend toward economic bifurcation with the U.S. and China leading the charge — and multinational solutions are needed to address the new challenges.
COMMENTARY
Feb 28, 2024

The inexorable movement toward a divided global economy

Efforts to protect national economies from threats require multinational solutions. Chains are only as strong as their weakest link.
“True View of Mount Asama” by Ike Taiga
CULTURE
Mar 1, 2024

Ike Taiga's revolutionary act of capturing natural beauty

Idemitsu Museum of Arts showcases the Edo Period painter's realistic landscapes at the first retrospective of his work in Tokyo in 13 years.
JAPAN / Society
Mar 1, 2024

More than decade after 2011 quake, Japan still slow to compile evacuation plans

The nation has failed to make progress in crafting plans to help evacuate elderly people and people with disabilities in the event of natural disasters.
Factions, cliques, caucuses — whatever they may be called, groupings in legislatures are not unusual in many countries.
COMMENTARY / Japan / Perspectives
Mar 2, 2024

Is the funding scandal unraveling the LDP?

The media is caught up in the money-politics scandal of the moment, framing factions as all good or all bad. Things are a lot more nuanced than that.
The assembly line at a production facility for Nio, a maker of electric cars, in Hefei, China, on Dec. 4. U.S. President Joe Biden has ordered an investigation into auto software that could track U.S. drivers, part of a broader effort to stop electric vehicle imports from China.
BUSINESS / Tech / ANALYSIS
Mar 2, 2024

The politics and economics behind Biden's China car espionage probe

The U.S. leader's saber-rattling as another opportunity to demonstrate he is tough on China, experts say.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, U.S. President Joe Biden and British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak deliver remarks on the AUKUS security partnership after a trilateral meeting, at Naval Base Point Loma in San Diego in March last year.
JAPAN / Politics
Mar 3, 2024

AUKUS eyes defense tech collaboration with Japan, report says

Japan’s involvement in the partnership would be limited to specific projects and would exclude nuclear-powered submarines.
Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani speaks to members of the media in Glendale, Arizona, on Thursday.
BASEBALL / MLB / Sac Bunts
Mar 4, 2024

How Shohei Ohtani mastered the media

By promising to meet with the press, the star circumvented the need for people to go digging into his marriage.
JAPAN / Crime & Legal
Mar 7, 2024

Court rejects class action suit opposing nuclear plant in Ehime

Local residents in Oita, less than 50 kilometers from the facility, had called into question the safety of the plant during natural disasters.
It turns out that the mutations that make some people vulnerable to the neurological condition once had a useful function, protecting their ancestors from pathogens.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 6, 2024

Ancient DNA could be hiding all kinds of health secrets

Ancient genomes are unlocking the past and may provide blueprint for the origin of diseases.

Longform

Once smoky, male-dominated spaces, today's net cafes, like Kaikatsu Club, are working to make their operations more attractive to women customers.
The second life of Japan's net cafes