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Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 5, 2021

Why vaccination should be compulsory

Laws requiring people to be vaccinated may be restricting one kind of freedom, but they are doing so in order to protect the freedom of others to go about their business safely.
JAPAN
Aug 4, 2021

A hunger strike reignites conversations about parental rights in Japan

Detractors of the country's system of sole parental authority say it promotes child 'abductions,' while supporters say change could exacerbate domestic abuse.
JAPAN / FOCUS
Aug 3, 2021

Hong Kong’s fate spurs Japan to speak up about defending Taiwan

A more supportive policy toward Taipei is emblematic of a broader shift by Tokyo in response to China's crackdown on Hong Kong and increased military activities in the Taiwan Strait.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 29, 2021

Apple and Google are winning big, but one is about to pull ahead

Investors are focusing on intermediate business fundamentals, signaling that Google-parent Alphabet stands on firmer ground relative to Apple.
Japan Times
WORLD / Science & Health
Jul 26, 2021

How the delta variant upends assumptions about the coronavirus

The delta variant is the fastest, fittest and most formidable version of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 the world has encountered.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Jul 24, 2021

Earthquakes, typhoons … and now we have to worry about heat domes?

High temperatures in Japan have reached more than 41 degrees Celsius in the past, but a heat dome in Canada has the media speculating on whether higher temperatures are ahead.
Billionaire Elon Musk speaks during an election rally for then-Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, on Oct. 5.
WORLD / Politics
Jan 9, 2025

Musk takes slash-and-burn style to Europe after bolstering Trump

The billionaire has honed in on Germany and the U.K., criticizing their governments, questioning their laws and casting doubt on their economic competence.
Greenland's flag flies in Igaliku settlement, Greenland
WORLD
Jan 10, 2025

Denmark says it has neglected Greenland defense for years

Greenland is crucial for the U.S. military and its ballistic missile early-warning system, since the shortest route from Europe to North America runs via the island.
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro gestures to supporters after he was sworn in for a third six-year term, in Caracas on Friday.
WORLD / Politics
Jan 11, 2025

Venezuela's Maduro sworn in as opponents decry 'coup' and U.S. hikes bounty

The United States increased to $25 million a reward for information leading to the arrest of President Nicolas Maduro or Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello,
Olaf Scholz, Germany's chancellor, during the SPD party congress in Berlin on Saturday
WORLD / Politics
Jan 12, 2025

Scholz steps up criticism of Trump’s expansionist rhetoric

In power since 2021, Scholz’s SPD party has slumped as an early election looms for Europe’s largest economy on Feb. 23.
It's back to the classroom for some residents as municipal governments across the country conduct lessons to learn how to use new technologies.
LIFE / Lifestyle / Longform
Jan 13, 2025

Can aging Japan go digital without leaving anyone behind?

Amid a push to digitalize, some experts believe citizens should have the right to stay offline.
Foreign Minister Takeshi Iwaya (left) and his South Korean counterpart, Cho Tae-yul, shake hands during their meeting at the Foreign Ministry in Seoul on Monday.
JAPAN / Politics
Jan 13, 2025

Japan top diplomat visits South Korea amid political turmoil in Seoul

The talks on bilateral and trilateral cooperation also came just a week before U.S. President-elect Donald Trump is due to take office.
The TikTok logo is displayed outside the offices of the social media app's company offices in Culver City, California, in 2023.
BUSINESS / Tech
Jan 14, 2025

China discusses sale of TikTok U.S. to Elon Musk as possible option

Under one scenario that’s been discussed by the Chinese government, Musk’s X would take control of TikTok U.S. and run the businesses together.
U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's provocative rhetoric targeting Panama, Greenland and Canada underscores his preference for bold power plays over traditional rules-based diplomacy.
COMMENTARY
Jan 13, 2025

Trump’s trash talk revives the worst of world politics

Trump's provocative rhetoric targeting Panama, Greenland and Canada underscores his preference for bold power plays over traditional rules-based diplomacy.
U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, President-elect Donald Trump's nominee to be secretary of state, reacts as he testifies during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington on Wednesday.
JAPAN / Politics
Jan 18, 2025

'Quad' top diplomats expected to meet the day after Trump inauguration

Republican Sen. Marco Rubio appears on track for confirmation as Trump's secretary of state on Monday, clearing the way for the meeting the following day.
U.S. President Joe Biden delivers remarks at the U.S. Conference of Mayors in Washington on Friday.
BUSINESS / Economy / FOCUS
Jan 19, 2025

Democrats search for economic policy lessons as Trump takes office

Scarred by the 2007-09 recession, the Biden administration bet big on the labor market. The bet worked but not exactly as they hoped.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg
BUSINESS
Jan 20, 2025

Meta's move to halt fact-checking program in U.S. prompts concern

Instead of using trusted media organizations to fact-check, Meta plans to use "community notes" to check content.
Donald Trump speaks at a Bitcoin conference in Nashville, Tennessee, on July 27, 2024.
BUSINESS / Tech
Jan 20, 2025

Cocktails and Snoop Dogg — crypto industry celebrates Trump inauguration

The crypto gala marks a stunning turnaround for an industry that has been in the Biden administration's crosshairs.
Bank of Japan Gov. Kazuo Ueda is still signaling caution ahead of the central bank's January meeting.
BUSINESS / Economy
Jan 21, 2025

BOJ likely to raise rates this week in absence of immediate Trump tariffs

The possibility is "quite high" if markets remain calm following Trump's inauguration on Monday as the 47th president of the United States.
French workers load a replica of the Statue of Liberty, or Lady Liberty, onto a truck outside the Musee des Arts et Metiers in Paris in June 2021, before it departs for Ellis Island in New York to arrive on Independence Day.
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 19, 2025

Liberal democracy faces doubts. But collapse? Not likely.

Democracy, it is often heard these days, is in crisis.
Rep. Elise Stefanik, a Republican from New York and U.S. President Donald Trump's nominee for U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, speaks during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee confirmation hearing in Washington on Tuesday.
WORLD / Politics
Jan 22, 2025

Trump sees 'great promise' in U.N., his pick for ambassador says

Rep. Elise Stefanik pledges to ensure that the U.S. mission to the world body represents Trump's "America First peace-through-strength foreign policy."
U.S. President Donald Trump signs executive orders in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington on Monday.
WORLD / Politics
Jan 23, 2025

As Trump threatens tariffs, his orders kick off more extensive trade overhaul

The U.S. president's executive order on trade touched on sweeping changes to rules that have governed U.S. trade policy for decades.
An oil pump jack. Big U.S. oil companies believe withdrawing from the Paris Agreement only limits Washington's ability to influence an ongoing global energy transition and exposes them to an uneven regulatory environment.
BUSINESS / Companies
Jan 23, 2025

Trump's climate withdrawal creates rare discord with Big Oil

A shift in the U.S. power industry away from coal has contributed to a roughly 17% decline in U.S. carbon dioxide emissions since 2007.
The Food and Drug Administration headquarters in White Oak, Maryland
WORLD / Science & Health
Jan 24, 2025

Trump alarms scientists by muzzling U.S. health agencies

The move could delay essential information and slow funding for potentially life-saving initiatives.
Steps against diversity form part of U.S. President Donald Trump's broader campaign targeting the federal bureaucracy, which he has sometimes disparaged as the "deep state" secretly working against his agenda.
WORLD / Politics
Jan 24, 2025

Trump accelerates campaign to remake federal bureaucracy

The U.S. president says his orders ending diversity, equity and inclusion programs would make America a "merit-based country" once again.
A U.S. district judge did little to hide that he was highly skeptical of Donald Trump's executive order limiting birthright citizenship.
WORLD / Politics
Jan 27, 2025

Judge scoffs at legality of Trump’s bid to limit birthright citizenship

"This is a blatantly unconstitutional order,” the judge said of Donald Trump's executive order.
A worker assembles temporary shelters in preparation for mass deportations at the U.S.-Mexico border in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua state, Mexico, on Friday.
BUSINESS / Economy
Jan 27, 2025

Wall Street banks on Trump not following through on immigration pledges

Mass deportations would likely upend industries as varied as service-heavy hospitality and leisure, labor-intensive agriculture, food production, manufacturing and construction.
Hanna Shelest outside her apartment building in Odesa, Ukraine, on Jan. 20
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 27, 2025

I spent Trump’s inauguration in Ukraine. This is what I saw.

In nearly three years since Russia’s invasion, Odesa has moved from shock and fear to denial and, finally, adaptation.
China's DeepSeek carries far-reaching implications for the global tech industry and supply chain.
BUSINESS / Tech
Jan 27, 2025

Why is the AI world freaking out over China's DeepSeek?

DeepSeek has far-reaching implications for the global tech industry, upending the widespread belief that the future of AI will require ever-increasing amounts of power.

Longform

Figure skater Akiko Suzuki was once told her ideal weight should be 47 kilograms, a number she now admits she “naively believed.” This led to her have a relationship with food that resulted in her suffering from anorexia.
The silent battle Japanese athletes fight with weight