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Japan Times
WORLD
Nov 10, 2021

Climate change risks 'runaway' humanitarian crisis and aid system collapse, U.N. warns 

Aid workers are struggling to keep up with the rising number of disasters in poor communities, calling for a boost in funds and more support for climate change adaptation.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 3, 2021

Why the COP26 climate summit will fail

From Brazil and Australia to China and the U.S., countries are trying to game climate negotiations in order to shift the costs of adaptation onto others.
Japan Times
ASIA PACIFIC / FOCUS
Oct 13, 2021

Global energy crunch ties China's hands ahead of COP26 climate conference

Two speeches from China's top leaders, delivered days apart, have revealed that Beijing plans to continue supporting fossil fuels even as it invests in renewable energy.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World / Geoeconomic Briefing
Oct 5, 2021

The intentions behind China’s ‘friendly’ policy toward the Taliban

In the wake of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, Beijing has taken a lead in involving the region in the group's future.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 5, 2021

Biden shifts to a more conciliatory approach toward China

Biden's actions appear out of step with reality given that an ambitious China is actively working to supplant the U.S. as the world's preeminent power while waging a cold war against it.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 15, 2021

Authoritarian states' oppression reaches beyond their borders

Authoritarian powers such as China, Russia and Turkey are becoming both more autocratic at home, abroad and more influential on the world stage.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / Japan
Aug 10, 2021

New technologies demand new thinking about power and strategy

As the world enters the fourth industrial revolution and Society 5.0 emerges, we need a more fulsome understanding of technology.
Japan Times
JAPAN / FOCUS
Aug 8, 2021

Tokyo feared the Games would spread COVID-19. The numbers inside the 'bubble' suggest that didn't happen.

Japan had feared that the Games might spread COVID-19, introduce new variants and overwhelm the medical system. But the numbers from inside the Olympic 'bubble' tell a different story.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Aug 2, 2021

Belarusian Olympic sprinter receives humanitarian visa from Poland

Krystsina Tsimanouskaya sought asylum after she narrowly avoided being forced to board a plane back to her home country following her criticism of Belarus coaches.
Japan Times
BUSINESS / ANALYSIS
Jul 6, 2021

When will China rule the world? Maybe never.

A combination of reform failure, international isolation and financial crisis could halt China before it reaches the top.
Bleached corals in Koh Mak, Thailand, on May 8
ENVIRONMENT / Wildlife
Oct 28, 2024

Earth's biodiversity crisis in numbers

The COP16 biodiversity summit in Cali, Colombia, enters its second week to assess progress toward halting and reversing nature's destruction by 2030.
Key Square Group founder Scott Bessent speaks at a campaign event for Republican presidential nominee and former U.S. President Donald Trump in Asheville, North Carolina, in August.
BUSINESS / Economy
Nov 9, 2024

Scott Bessent, top candidate for Treasury Secretary, meets with Trump

The Treasury Secretary job is a key Cabinet position, with vast influence over economic, regulatory and international affairs.
Global investment firms plan to beef up hiring in Japan, as deals surge on the domestic market.
BUSINESS / Companies
Nov 12, 2024

Global investment firms hunt for talent in Japan as deals boom

The hiring spree underscores the intensity of dealmaking in Japan, which has been a rare bright spot amid a slowdown in M&A deals globally over the last couple of years.
Japan's economy expanded by an annualized 0.9% in the third quarter, data showed.
BUSINESS / Economy
Nov 15, 2024

Japan’s economy beats consensus in boost for BOJ rate hike case

Gross domestic product expanded at an annualized pace of 0.9% in the three months through September from the prior period, a tad higher than the 0.7% consensus estimate.
Nylon is wrapped around fiber-optic cables at a SubCom factory in Newington, New Hampshire, in December 2018.
WORLD
Nov 21, 2024

Strategic subsea cables: the vulnerable links that enable our digital lives

Sweden and Finland have opened investigations into potential "sabotage" against cables damaged on Sunday and Monday in the Baltic Sea.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un welcomes Russian President Vladimir Putin at a ceremony in Pyongyang in June. If North Korean troops sent to the war in Ukraine under an agreement between the two nations are used for anything other than cannon fodder, they may gain experience that could improve the communist nation's military.
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 27, 2024

Autocrats challenge traditional geopolitics and strategic boundaries

Emerging "common market of autocracies" are enabling regimes like Russia and North Korea to evade Western sanctions through unconventional networks and barter systems.
Keith Kellogg, then-national security adviser to then-U.S. Vice President Mike Pence, speaks during a press briefing on Sept. 22, 2020, in the White House in Washington.
WORLD / Politics
Nov 28, 2024

Trump picks Keith Kellogg as envoy for Ukraine and Russia

The retired general is a longtime adviser who’s supported the president-elect's aims of ending the war swiftly, including by potentially cutting off military aid to Kyiv.
A serviceman with the Ukrainian Army's 24th mechanized brigade fires a machine gun during an exercise, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in the country's Donetsk region on Friday.
WORLD / Politics / ANALYSIS
Dec 2, 2024

Europe eyes 'boots on the ground' in Ukraine as possible peace deal option

The troop presence is among security guarantees being considered as the possibility grows of a deal requiring Kyiv to cede territory to Moscow.
Kim Seongmin, president of Free North Korea Radio, edits content for the station at his home on Ganghwa Island, west of Seoul, on Nov. 21. Kim has cancer and was recently told that he has months to live.
ASIA PACIFIC / Politics
Dec 3, 2024

A North Korean voice that Kim Jong Un would like to silence

North Korean defectors have been infiltrating the North with outside media for two decades, through balloons floated across the border or radio broadcasts.
People cover themselves with umbrellas during a hot summer day in Tokyo's Ginza district in August. Temperatures shot up in early July, even before the official end of the rainy season, and the high temperatures persisted well into the fall.
ENVIRONMENT / Climate change / OUR PLANET
Dec 29, 2024

Japan’s weather in 2024: Record temperatures hurt people’s health and wallets

Average temperatures across the nation and surrounding seas exceeded last year’s record-breaking levels "by a significant margin," affecting everything from well-being to farming.
Russian soldiers at an artillery position in the Kursk region of western Russia on Dec. 2.
WORLD
Jan 7, 2025

Battle rages in western Russia as Moscow reports gains in Ukraine

Russia and Ukraine are fighting to improve their battlefield positions before U.S. President-elect Donald Trump takes office.
An apartment building burns during the Eaton fire in the Altadena area of Los Angeles county, California, on Wednesday.
WORLD
Jan 9, 2025

Los Angeles under siege as wind-driven wildfires upend city

The fires, which burned more than 26,000 acres by Wednesday afternoon, has upended life in America’s second-largest city.
Economists, legal experts and business leaders concur that incoming U.S. President Donald Trump's pledge to implement fresh tariffs — whether directly aimed at Japan or not — could hurt the country's export-reliant machinery and automobiles industries while shattering the global economy.
BUSINESS / Economy / ANALYSIS
Jan 20, 2025

Japanese firms weigh fallout from Trump tariff pledges

Additional tariffs — whether directly aimed at Japan or not — could hurt its export-reliant machinery and automobiles industries while shattering the global economy.
U.S. President Donald Trump reviews troops during his inauguration ceremony at the Capitol in Washington on Monday.
WORLD / Politics / FOCUS
Jan 21, 2025

'America first' returns as Trump ditches focus on allies and rules-based order

The U.S. under his new administration will be a dominating force that will take whatever steps necessary to advance American interests, the newly inaugurated president said.
A pipe for transporting carbon dioxide to removal equipment at a carbon capture and storage (CCS) test site in Tomakomai, Hokkaido.
ENVIRONMENT / Energy / OUR PLANET
Jan 26, 2025

How Japan is looking deep underground to solve its carbon problem

Japan is investing billions of yen to get carbon capture and storage off the ground, but the technology is dogged by high costs and uncertainty.
An attendee records a virtual address by U.S. President Donald Trump at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland, on Jan. 23.
WORLD / Politics
Jan 30, 2025

Trump threats risk stretching Europe's fragile unity to breaking point

The European Commission urged member states in a private meeting last week to remain united, with some comparing the situation to the Brexit negotiations.
Ditching the U.S.' normal trade relations designation for China could lead to an automatic jump in levies, at rates that could far exceed what Trump has so far slapped on China.
BUSINESS / Economy / ANALYSIS
Feb 6, 2025

Trump's China focus increases odds of end to special trading status

The Permanent Normal Trade Relations designation was was extended to China in 2000.
U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian leader Vladimir Putin attend a meeting on the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit in Osaka in June 2019.
WORLD / Politics
Feb 9, 2025

Trump says he has spoken to Putin about ending the Ukraine war

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told the TASS state news agency that "many different communications are emerging."
Japan's current account surplus grew 29.5% year on year in 2024, the Finance Ministry said.
BUSINESS / Economy
Feb 10, 2025

Japan's current account surplus hits record high in 2024

The surplus grew 29.5% from 2023 to ¥29.26 trillion ($193 billion) last year, the Finance Ministry said in a preliminary report.

Longform

Bear attacks have dominated Japanese news headlines in recent months, with 13 people so far having been killed by the animals.
Japan’s bears have been on their killing spree for more than 100 years