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Bangladeshis celebrate in Dhaka on Aug. 5, the first anniversary of student-led protests that ousted former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 3, 2025

What Western media call insurrection at home, they call revolution abroad

Western media have perfected a seductive but dangerous narrative: the romanticized tale of youth-led “revolutions” toppling supposedly repressive, graft-ridden governments abroad.
Kuwait, despite its vast oil wealth, is facing worsening power outages due to political gridlock, underinvestment and climate pressures — highlighting the unsustainability of fossil fuel dependence in a warming world.
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 3, 2025

Why the most oil-rich country can’t keep the lights on

Electricity was cut to 30 regions in April as temperatures soared and households cranked up the air conditioning.
Racehorse Oguri Cap, a superstar stallion of the late 1980s, is reimagined in anime form as a teenage schoolgirl who must perform upbeat idol-pop songs after every victory in “Umamusume: Cinderella Grey.”
CULTURE / TV & Streaming
Oct 4, 2025

‘Cinderella Grey’ gallops past the other sports documentaries

Mixing real horse-racing history with idol-pop fantasy, “Cinderella Grey” proves anime can outpace today’s flat sports shows.
Fire engulfs Nepal's main administrative building in Kathmandu on Sept. 9, following a police crackdown on protests over government corruption and social media restrictions. This violent unrest is part of a larger pattern of instability in South Asia that threatens regional security and India’s strategic interests.
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 5, 2025

India’s reckoning with its dangerous neighborhood

All these stories point to a larger worrying trend: Democracy in India’s neighborhood is in retreat.
Newly elected Liberal Democratic Party leader Sanae Takaichi is applauded after winning the party's leadership election in Tokyo on Saturday.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Oct 5, 2025

Will Sanae Takaichi be Japan’s Thatcher — or its Truss?

Takaichi is comfortably the most conservative choice the party could have made, if not the most right-leaning leader in recent history.
The Fukushima Hydrogen Energy Research Field and an adjoining solar power farm in the town of Namie, Fukushima Prefecture, in March 2021. Japan's forward-looking reforms are embedding climate risk management into the core of corporate decision-making.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Oct 6, 2025

Japan’s blueprint for climate finance sets global standard

While no country has all the answers, Japan is demonstrating what sustained, organized action on mobilizing finance for the clean energy transition looks like in practice.
Sanae Takaichi, newly elected leader of the Liberal Democratic Party, speaks during a news conference at the party's headquarters in Tokyo on Saturday.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Oct 6, 2025

Four questions that determine Takaichi’s success

From breaking with Komeito to revisiting the U.S. trade deal, new Liberal Democratic Party President Sanae Takaichi has the potential to shake up Japanese politics.
Remittance inflows to low-income countries have boosted welfare, reduced poverty and strengthened economic resilience, but the Trump administration’s 1% tax on the transactions threatens to undermine these critical benefits.
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 6, 2025

Trump’s beggar-the-poor remittance tax

America is now the world’s top remittance-sending country, with at least 134 recipient countries in 2021, the most recent year with reliable bilateral data.
Jane Goodall communicates with a chimp named Nana in June 2004 at a zoo in Magdeburg, Germany. She was the world's foremost authority on chimpanzees.
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 6, 2025

Without Jane Goodall, chimps need new champions — us

Goodall revolutionized the way we see both great apes and ourselves. We can’t let her legacy fade away.
U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s new Pentagon policy mandating pre-approval for unclassified information threatens to reverse nearly a century of First Amendment protections.
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 6, 2025

Hegseth tries turning back 94 years of press freedom

The history on his side has been discredited by the Supreme Court for a century.
Only a country with absolute indispensability in critical goods — like China — can withstand Donald Trump and America’s tariff onslaught.
COMMENTARY / Japan / Geoeconomic Briefing
Oct 7, 2025

Trump weaponizes American trade policy

The U.S. may have an indispensable domestic market for some trading partners, but China has indispensable goods and America cannot easily substitute for them.
Sanae Takaichi celebrates in Tokyo on Saturday with Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba after winning the Liberal Democratic Party leadership election.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Oct 7, 2025

From radical to Rihanna: Myths about the new LDP leader

When Shinzo Abe returned as LDP leader in 2012, there was a similar flood of coverage attempting to cast him as a radical conservative.
The oil tanker Eagle S sails alongside a Finnish border guard ship and tugboat in the Gulf of Finland on Dec. 28. The vessel was seized by Finland on suspicion of damaging underwater cables in the area at the time.
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 7, 2025

Russia’s hybrid war looks increasingly like the real thing

European officials are warning that Moscow appears to be “at war” with countries it hasn’t invaded yet.

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Growing families are being priced out of Tokyo’s condo market, forced to choose between downtown convenience and suburban space.
Is living in central Tokyo still affordable?