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Former U.S. President and 2024 Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks to his vice presidential pick, Sen. J.D. Vance, during the second day of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on Tuesday.
WORLD / Politics / FOCUS
Jul 17, 2024

Trump's VP pick signals stronger focus on China

J.D. Vance represents a hardening of Trump’s “America First” stance, but could also help push a tougher line on China and support for democratic Taiwan.
Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and the Cook Islands' Prime Minister Mark Brown shake hands during 10th Pacific Islands Leaders Meeting on Thursday in Tokyo.
JAPAN / Politics / ANALYSIS
Jul 18, 2024

With eye on China, Japan deepens ties with Pacific islands at Tokyo summit

Collaborations have been agreed in seven fields, including technology and connectivity, climate change, people-centered development and security.
Beijing's push to integrate core socialist values into its chatbots highlights a significant challenge in China's bid to compete with the U.S. in AI development.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 26, 2024

What's wrong about ‘Chat XiPT’ is bigger than China

The difficulty of creating AI models infused with specific values will likely hurt China’s efforts to create chatbots as sophisticated as those in the U.S.
A Google logo at the company's campus in Mountain View, California, on May 2. Google acted illegally to maintain a monopoly in online search, a federal judge ruled on Monday.
BUSINESS / Companies
Aug 6, 2024

Google illegally monopolized search options, judge rules

The judge's decision will "lay the blueprint for other tech cases going forward,” an antitrust professor said.
The protagonist of “The Colors Within” is Totsuko (voiced by Sayu Suzukawa), a cheerful young woman who views the world in a unique way: Everyone she sees gives off their own distinct color that represents their personality.
CULTURE / Film
Aug 30, 2024

'The Colors Within' tunes into everyday moments of love

Director Naoko Yamada's new anime film, which explores themes of acceptance and communication without words, was born from a creative relationship of complete trust.
One survey revealed that 68% of recruiters admit to appearance-based hiring and 96% say interviews are influenced by visual impressions, which is why many employment experts advise job hunters to invest significantly in their appearance.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Sep 4, 2024

Why do I need a photo on my resume to apply for a job in Japan?

It is time to build a recruitment system in Japan that rewards people’s talents, irrespective of their looks
A small fire department vehicle makes its way to a disaster site during rescue operations following the Noto Peninsula earthquake.
JAPAN
Sep 8, 2024

Japan to deploy smaller rescue vehicles after lessons learned from Noto quake

Based on the experience, the agency plans to provide disaster response teams with smaller rescue vehicles capable of operating over rough and narrow roads.
Apple CEO Tim Cook unveils the iPhone 16 at the Steve Jobs Theater on the company's campus in Cupertino, California, on Monday.
BUSINESS / Companies
Sep 10, 2024

iPhone 16 to land in Japan without Apple Intelligence 

The new feature, which uses generative artificial intelligence to analyze text and photos, will only be activated in 2025 in several markets, including Japan.
U.S. Ambassador to Hungary David Pressman attends the annual Pride march in Budapest on June 22.
COMMENTARY
Sep 20, 2024

What does America stand for? The world no longer knows.

Pressman argues that Orban is miscalculating by betting on Trump’s return to power and warns of a shift in U.S.-Hungary relations if Kamala Harris becomes president.
Inger Andersen, executive director of the United Nations Environment Program, speaks at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Jan. 18.
ENVIRONMENT / Sustainability
Sep 23, 2024

'Convergence' growing on global plastics treaty: U.N. environment chief

At negotiations in November in South Korea's Busan, countries are hoping to seal a potentially groundbreaking deal to tackle the problem of plastic pollution.
Former Liberal Democratic Party Secretary-General Toshihiro Nikai (left) meets with with Zhao Leji, chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, in Beijing, on Aug. 28.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Sep 24, 2024

Form over substance: The contradictions in Japan-China relations

How Japan and other countries in Beijing’s periphery navigate the many incongruities in bilateral relations offers lessons for the U.S. and other Western nations.
Prosecutors and child safety advocates say generative AI systems can allow offenders to morph and sexualize ordinary photos of children.
WORLD / Crime & Legal
Oct 20, 2024

U.S. prosecutors see rising threat of AI-generated child sex abuse imagery

Cases involving AI-generated sex abuse imagery are likely to tread new legal ground, particularly when an identifiable child is not depicted.
Suchir Balaji, a former OpenAI employee, in San Francisco on Oct. 3. Balaji helped gather and organize the enormous amounts of internet data used to train the startup’s ChatGPT chatbot.
BUSINESS / Tech
Oct 24, 2024

Former OpenAI researcher says the company broke copyright law

Suchi Balaji is among the first employees to leave a major AI company and speak out against the way these companies use copyrighted data to create their technologies.
Security forces members detain a demonstrator as people protest against the management of the emergency response to the deadly floods in eastern Spain, in Valencia, Spain, on Saturday.
WORLD
Nov 10, 2024

Spain's flood disaster was its worst in recent history. Here's what went wrong.

By the time many received the government's flood alert, water was already surrounding cars, submerging streets and pouring into their homes.
Dating apps like Bumble and Hinge, with their reliance on basic algorithms, often lead to superficial connections, but AI could improve this by analyzing deeper data for more meaningful matches.
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 11, 2024

AI dating might actually not be so bad

While still in development, these AI-driven match-making tools aim to reduce the fatigue of online dating and foster more genuine connections.
Taiwanese writer Yang Shuang-zi’s novel “Taiwan Travelogue” provides a portal to the past and allows the reader to explore a bygone world with their eyes, ears and stomach.
CULTURE / Books
Nov 15, 2024

The sentimental gastronomies of ‘Taiwan Travelogue’

Yang Shuang-zi’s layered tale of female companionship takes readers on an epicurean frolic through Taiwan's colonial era.
The National Consumer Affairs Center reported 1,997 consultations about water dispensers nationwide last fiscal year — an increase 1.4 times that of the previous year.
JAPAN
Nov 20, 2024

Misleading water dispenser contracts in Japan lead to surge in inquiries

The National Consumer Affairs Center reported 1,997 consultations nationwide last fiscal year — an increase 1.4 times that of the previous year.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Donald Trump greet each other at a campaign event in Duluth, Georgia, in October.
WORLD / Politics / ANALYSIS
Nov 23, 2024

Gaetz exit puts spotlight on other Trump nominees accused of sexual misconduct

Trump’s willingness to choose cabinet members with histories of alleged sexual misconduct threw his transition plans off course this week.
China’s recent breach of the innermost workings of the U.S. telecommunications system reached far deeper than the White House has described, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee said on Thursday.
WORLD
Nov 23, 2024

China’s hacking reached deep into U.S. telecoms

Chinese activity in the past year has taken intrusions to a new level, the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee said Thursday.
Plastic production is on track to triple by 2050, and microplastics have been found in air, fresh produce and even human breast milk.
ENVIRONMENT / Sustainability
Dec 1, 2024

Battle over curbing plastic output jeopardizes U.N. treaty hopes

The hoped-for treaty could be the most significant environmental protection deal since the 2015 Paris Agreement.
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.
Jay Rubin’s new translation of Haruki Murakami’s “End of the World and Hard-Boiled Wonderland,” in part set in a walled city where inhabitants’ shadows are forcibly removed, speaks to the author’s quirky, exhaustive attention to detail when rendering his imaginative world on the page.
CULTURE / Books
Dec 16, 2024

Jay Rubin takes us back to Haruki Murakami's world

A new translation of “End of the World and Hard-Boiled Wonderland” brings the fan favorite closer to the original Japanese text.
By selling video content to AI companies, YouTubers have a way to diversify their income beyond advertising deals with brands.
BUSINESS / Tech
Jan 13, 2025

YouTubers are selling their unused video footage to AI companies

Unused video created for networks like YouTube, Instagram and TikTok, is selling for somewhere between $1 and $2 per minute.
From the mid-2000s onward, Ryuichi Sakamoto created a number of installation works, often in collaboration with Shiro Takatani, of multimedia art collective Dumb Type.
CULTURE / Art
Jan 17, 2025

A slow dive into ‘a moment and an eternity’ with Ryuichi Sakamoto

New exhibition “Seeing Sound, Hearing Time” is the first comprehensive overview of the musician’s installation work presented in Japan.
Phishing and its social-engineering cousin "pretexting" together accounted for more than 20% of almost 10,000 data breaches worldwide last year.
WORLD / Society
Jan 30, 2025

Age of deepfakes means internet users must be more alert than ever

AI chatbots powered by large language models save attackers time and allow for more elaborate fake messages.
The concept of diversity isn't foreign to Japanese people, but new ways of referring to the practice in society might be.
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Feb 9, 2025

DEI, woke and 'forest bathing': When a direct translation just won't cut it

Take a three-step approach that includes context and nuance when describing buzzwords and complicated terminology.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio speaks with reporters following the Group of Seven foreign ministers meeting in La Malbaie, Quebec, on Friday.
WORLD / Politics
Mar 15, 2025

U.S. aligns with G7, urging Russia to accept Ukraine ceasefire

In a joint statement, the U.S. backed Ukraine's territorial integrity and warned Russia to follow Kyiv in accepting a ceasefire or face possible further sanctions.
While AI-generated simulations of deceased loved ones may offer comfort, they raise ethical concerns about consent, reality distortion and the human experience of grief.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 9, 2025

AI resurrecting the dead threatens our grasp on reality

Experts warn that AI-driven digital immortality could distort reality and emotional well-being, requiring safeguards against unhealthy dependence.
John Phelan at a Senate confirmation hearing for U.S. secretary of the navy in Washington in February
JAPAN / Politics
Apr 28, 2025

U.S. secretary of the navy weighs ‘dual-use’ shipbuilding with Japan

Washington’s idea appears to be aimed at attracting investment from allies to strengthen the U.S. shipbuilding industry and start closing the gap with Beijing.
After last year’s controversy over using AI to write about 5% of her novel, Rie Qudan was asked by an advertising magazine to write a short story where she uses AI for 95% of it. The resulting short story, “Kage no ame” (“Rain Shadow”), was published March 25.  
CULTURE / Books
May 24, 2025

AI fiction is already here. Are humans ready?

Last year, Rie Qudan faced controversy after admitting that chatGPT wrote 5% of her novel. Now she’s published a story she only wrote 5% herself, leaving 95% to AI.

Longform

Tetsuzo Shiraishi, speaking at The Center of the Tokyo Raids and War Damage, uses a thermos to explain how he experienced the U.S. firebombing of March 1945, when he was just 7 years old.
From ashes to high-rises: A survivor’s account of Tokyo’s postwar past