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Kodai Furutani, the assistant chief priest at Ryugasan Unmon Temple in Annaka, Gunma Prefecture, is working to become an interfaith chaplain.
JAPAN
Feb 18, 2025

Monk in chaplain training urges people to face death and live life

There is a deep-seated idea in Japan that a monk being seen at a hospital is a bad omen, as their presence reminds patients and medical staff of death.
The Grok-3 artificial intelligence chatbot has "more than 10 times” the computing power of its predecessor, billionaire Elon Musk said in a presentation alongside three engineers from xAI, his AI startup, on Monday.
BUSINESS / Tech
Feb 18, 2025

Musk debuts Grok-3 AI chatbot to rival OpenAI and DeepSeek

Grok-3 beats its rivals across math, science and coding benchmarks, the chatbot's developer says.
Canada faces a tough decision on how to respond to U.S. President Donald Trump's economic threats, particularly regarding energy exports, with options ranging from strategic energy cuts to export taxes.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 18, 2025

Weaponizing Canadian oil would rattle Trump

Reducing crude output has the potential to inflict real pain on U.S. refiners and consumers.
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off carrying 53 Starlink internet satellites, in Cape Canaveral, Florida, on May 18, 2022.
BUSINESS / Tech
Feb 18, 2025

Vietnam paves way for Musk's Starlink amid U.S. tariff threats

A regulatory change can be seen as "an olive branch" to SpaceX amid nervousness in Vietnam about tariff threats from U.S. President Donald Trump.
Director Park Chan-wook (center) and his cast hit commercial gold with “Joint Security Area,” a film about North and South Korean friendship.
CULTURE / Film
Feb 18, 2025

South Korean blockbuster 'Joint Security Area' strikes a chord 25 years on

Park Chan-wook's tale of inter-Korean friendship was a risky undertaking at the time of filming, but it has since become a celebrated cinematic masterpiece.
Norinchukin Bank Chief Executive Officer Kazuto Oku
BUSINESS / Companies
Feb 19, 2025

Norinchukin CEO plans to resign after massive bond losses

Norinchukin reported wider losses this month as it boosted investments in riskier leveraged loans and sought additional capital.
Real Madrid's Kylian Mbappe (left) celebrates with Jude Bellingham after completing a hat trick against Manchester City during their Champions League match in Madrid on Wednesday.
SOCCER
Feb 20, 2025

Kylian Mbappe wants to make history with Madrid after Champions League hat trick

Kylian Mbappe's hat trick against Manchester City propelled Real Madrid into the Champions League last 16 on Wednesday and saw the French superstar reach a new personal high with Los Blancos.
Tokoro Ruins Museum Director Yuuki Nakamura says that 'most Japanese people don’t know' the history of the Okhotsk culture, but he and others are betting that travelers might be intrigued enough to visit and find out more.
LIFE / Travel
Feb 22, 2025

Bear skulls and pit dwellings: Hokkaido aims to sell ancient history

The Okhostk culture thrived in northern Hokkaido from the fifth to ninth centuries and may have provided the Ainu with some of their best-known rituals.
Ahead of the 30th anniversary of the 1995 sarin nerve gas attack on the Tokyo subway system by Aum Shinrikyo, the Public Security Intelligence Agency launched a special website Friday.
JAPAN
Feb 21, 2025

Special website created 30 years after Tokyo subway sarin attack

The Aum Shinrikyo digital archive covers not only the Tokyo subway system attack, but also other crimes by the cult, including a 1994 sarin gas attack in Matsumoto.
Luka Doncic was traded from the Mavericks to the Lakers on Feb. 2.
BASKETBALL / NBA
Feb 23, 2025

Dirk Nowitzki felt 'disappointed and sad' for Luka Doncic after trade

Nowitzki said he was shocked when he learned about the trade.
Shohei Ohtani hits during live batting practice in Glendale, Arizona, on Feb. 23.
BASEBALL / MLB
Feb 24, 2025

Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani faces live pitching for first time since surgery

According to multiple reports, Ohtani saw 32 pitches Sunday from Dodgers pitchers and put three in play. He did not hit any home runs.
People ride in cable cars over the Chandragiri hilltop on the outskirts of Kathmandu on Feb. 3.
ASIA PACIFIC
Feb 24, 2025

Nepal community fights to save sacred forests from cable cars

Five cable car projects have opened in the past two years — and 10 more are under development, according to government figures.
U.S. government scientists participating in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change were issued a stop-work order from the Trump administration, according to media reports.
ENVIRONMENT / Climate change
Feb 24, 2025

Trump creates uncertainty for world’s most cited climate report

The U.S. absence comes amid broader cuts to research funding and a retreat from climate diplomacy under the Trump administration.
Lt. Gen. Dan Caine (right) with an Iraqi general in Mosul, Iraq, in 2018
WORLD / Politics
Feb 24, 2025

Trump’s frustration with generals resulted in an unconventional pick

Lt. Gen. Dan Caine, a retired three-star Air Force officer, quickly moved up the list of candidates to be the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
In all, global investors plowed around $315 million into eFishery’s preferred shares over five funding rounds.
BUSINESS / Companies
Feb 24, 2025

SoftBank among eFishery investors facing near wipeout

Investors in the startup, which deploys feeders to fish and shrimp farmers in Indonesia, are likely to get back less than 10 cents for every dollar they invested.
Hong Kong's policymakers are nearing a crossroads amid dwindling avenues for generating revenue and an economy that’s expected to remain under pressure this year.
BUSINESS / Economy
Feb 25, 2025

Hong Kong to tackle deficit and slower economic growth in budget

There may be limited options for generating the kind of revenue needed to plug an expected shortfall of 100 billion Hong Kong dollars.
U.S. President Donald Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron look at each other during a press conference at the White House in Washington on Monday.
WORLD / Politics
Feb 25, 2025

Macron and Trump rekindle Le Bromance with a touch of tension

Strains over Trump's sudden pivot to Russia over the Ukraine war bubbled up to the surface, even if Macron softened the blow with yet another physical gesture.
The weak yen is often cited as one reason why many Japanese don't go abroad.
JAPAN / Society
Feb 25, 2025

Only 17% of Japanese people own passports, Foreign Ministry says

Around 3.7 million passports were issued domestically in 2024, a 8.8% increase from the year before but down 15.2% from prepandemic numbers in 2019.
Hidehiro Asada, the director of Woodcore, shows the firm's laminated wood at its plant in the town of Namie, Fukushima Prefecture, in December.
JAPAN / Society
Feb 26, 2025

Osaka Expo centerpiece a ‘symbol of Fukushima's reconstruction’

Materials for the expo's Grand Ring are being supplied by a wood-processing company in the prefecture, which bore the brunt of the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami.
Passengers at a train station in Tokyo. Railway operators plan to expand the scope of chemicals and materials passengers will be banned from bringing onto trains starting in April.
JAPAN
Feb 26, 2025

Railway companies to tighten restrictions on hazardous materials

The move comes as part of a push to bolster security ahead of the 2025 Osaka Expo.
Kwek Leng Beng, chairman of City Developments Ltd., attends a news conference in Singapore in 2019.
BUSINESS
Feb 27, 2025

Father-son feud plunges Singapore’s richest clan into crisis

At stake in the feud is control of a major slice of an $18 billion family empire spanning property development to hospitality and finance.
Lower House Budget Committee Chairman Jun Azumi (third from left) and other members of the panel wait for Junichiro Matsumoto to turn up for his testimony in Tokyo on Thursday.
JAPAN / Politics
Feb 27, 2025

LDP accountant's testimony on slush funds scandal leaves much in the dark

Junichiro Matsumoto, the ex-accountant of a faction previously led by Shinzo Abe, did not name the person who reinstated the kickback scheme.
The Shiga Prefecture police station where suspect Tomoyoshi Yuzuriha was transferred to
JAPAN
Feb 27, 2025

Imprisoned man arrested over dismembered body in Shiga Prefecture

Tomoyoshi Yuzuriha was a colleague of the victim at the same construction company, according to the prefectural police.
A screen shows news footage of plane debris at the site where a China Eastern Airlines Boeing 737-800 plane crashed in the Chinese city of Wuzhou, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, in March 2022.
WORLD / ANALYSIS
Feb 28, 2025

Air safety reporting under scrutiny as crashes lie unresolved

Almost half of 268 accidents involving fatalities or major damage between 2018 and the end of 2023 lack a final report.
Chef Kentaro Mura’s favorite way of serving snow crab is as shabu-shabu: The legs are lightly blanched in dashi, then the meat is removed and served with a generous scoop of crab tomalley.
LIFE / Food & Drink / Destination Restaurants
Mar 2, 2025

Toyama’s finest seafood underpins Ebitei Bekkan’s return to greatness

This "kaiseki" restaurant has been making up for lost time with a culinary flair that presents Toyama’s seafood tradition in a contemporary guise.
Taiwanese comic artist Rishiazao and interpreter Yun-wen Huang greet an attendee at the 2025 Angouleme International Comics Festival in France.
CULTURE / Books
Mar 1, 2025

Taiwan comics on the rise: Local storytellers, global aspirations

A supportive ecosystem and eager audiences — both domestic and global — are boosting the soft power of illustrated narratives from Taiwan.
The logo of Deepseek is seen during the Global Developer Conference, organized by the Shanghai AI Industry Association on Feb. 21. A simple handshake between President Xi Jinping and once-shunned entrepreneur Jack Ma sent Chinese tech stocks booming in recent weeks as it was interpreted as the latest sign the sector is being brought in from the cold — though experts advise caution.
BUSINESS / Tech
Mar 2, 2025

China signals renewed tech sector support, but concerns linger

Analysts increasingly see signs that Beijing is warming to its tech sector again, as domestic economic woes and a trade war with the U.S. loom larger.
A woman checks her phone at Incheon International Airport in Incheon, South Korea, in 2020. Passengers on South Korean airlines must now keep power banks and e-cigarettes on their person and not in overhead cabin bins.
BUSINESS / Tech
Mar 3, 2025

Seoul's lithium battery rules on planes highlight growing risk for aviation

Passengers on South Korean airlines must now keep power banks and e-cigarettes on their person and not in overhead cabin compartments.
Ukrainian servicewomen Natalia (right), 53, and her daughter Veronika, 26, from the 100th mechanized brigade, pose for a photo at an undisclosed location in the Donetsk region in Ukraine on Feb. 15.
WORLD / Society
Mar 3, 2025

'Under my wing': Mothers and daughters serving together in Ukraine

Ukrainian servicewomen Natalia, 53, and her daughter Veronika, 26, serve in the 100th mechanized brigade.
JX Advanced Metals' shares will be offered at ¥810 to ¥820 each after feedback from investors, the firm said in a filing in Tokyo on Monday.
BUSINESS / Companies
Mar 3, 2025

JX Metals cuts price of Japan’s biggest IPO since SoftBank

The shares will be offered at ¥810 to ¥820 each after feedback from investors, JX Metals said in a filing in Tokyo on Monday.

Longform

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?