Search - 2018

 
 
Yuji Iwasawa is the second Japanese to assume the ICJ's presidency, behind Hisashi Owada, the father of Empress Masako.
JAPAN / Crime & Legal
Mar 4, 2025

Japan's Iwasawa elected as head of International Court of Justice

He is the second Japanese to assume the ICJ's presidency, behind Hisashi Owada, the father of Empress Masako.
A Prada sign sits at an entrance to one of its stores in central Milan, Italy, in 2017. Prada and Capri could finalize a deal for Versace this month.
BUSINESS / Companies
Mar 4, 2025

Versace owner Capri jumps on Prada moving closer to purchase

A purchase would run counter to a decadeslong trend of Italian fashion groups being taken over by foreign firms.
Keiko Honda (center) poses with her teammates before an NFL game in London in October 2023.
SPORTS
Mar 4, 2025

In battling cancer, Keiko Honda channeled her cheerleading strength

The former NFL cheerleader is now making a return to professional cheerleading after overcoming breast cancer.
Netflix reality show “K-foodie meets J-foodie” follows South Korean YouTuber Sung Si-kyung and Japanese actor Yutaka Matsushige as they share meals in their respective countries.
CULTURE / TV & Streaming
Mar 6, 2025

Can a meal make you besties? ‘K-foodie meets J-foodie’ says yes.

The new Netflix show pairs a Korean crooner and a Japanese food icon for a cross-cultural food rally.
A group of talentless noiseniks are sent away on a year-long retreat to the countryside to write a hit song in “The Gesuidouz.”
CULTURE / Film
Mar 6, 2025

‘The Gesuidouz’ flips the bird at viewers

Kenichi Ugana’s horror-fixated punk-rock slacker comedy is one of the director’s laziest films to date.
Maki Kanazawa (left) and Misaki Soejima repair a net in Owase, Mie Prefecture, on Jan. 27.
JAPAN
Mar 6, 2025

Fisherwomen shining in male-dominant industry in Japan

In Owase, women had been banned from boarding fishing boats because a deity of ships was believed to be a jealous goddess.
Hiroko Nagano, a former member of the assembly of Tokyo's Toshima Ward, speaks during an interview in Tokyo in January.
JAPAN / Politics
Mar 7, 2025

Female assembly members with children seeing better work conditions

As of July 2024, there were 5,187 female municipal assembly members in the country, or only 17.9% of the total, however.
Balboa Port, operated by Panama Ports Company, at the Panama Canal. Conglomerate CK Hutchison, controlled by Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing, has agreed to sell its ports network, including assets along the Panama Canal, to a U.S. consortium led by BlackRock.
ASIA PACIFIC / Politics / ANALYSIS
Mar 7, 2025

As Trump hails taking back of Panama Canal, Hong Kong Inc. walks tightrope

Firms in the former British colony are increasingly under pressure to shake off any connection with China amid tensions between Beijing and Washington.
Chinese teacher Shuaib Ma (right) gives a Mandarin language lesson at a school in Riyadh.
WORLD
Mar 7, 2025

Mandarin lessons in Saudi schools show growing ties with China

Mandarin's entry into public schools is the latest sign of growing ties between Saudi Arabia and China.
Ai Narabayashi, a member of the editorial department of Iwanami Shoten, the publisher of dictionary "Kojien," speaks during an interview in Tokyo in February.  Narabayashi said the dictionary has the duty to record the Japanese language without hiding anything and accurately explain the meaning behind words and phrases.
JAPAN / Society
Mar 7, 2025

Why an iconic Japanese dictionary chooses to retain misogynistic words

Publisher Iwanami Shoten considers it a duty for its "Kojien" dictionary to record and accurately explain the meaning and background of words and phrases.
Iran's Russian-built Bushehr nuclear power plant in the south of the country
WORLD
Mar 9, 2025

Trump administration ends Iraq's waiver to buy Iranian electricity

Trump restored "maximum pressure" on Iran in one of his first acts after returning to office in January.
Jewish settlers pray in the Evyatar settler outpost in the northern West Bank last July
WORLD / Politics
Mar 10, 2025

Christians press Trump to clear path for Israel to annex West Bank

Some 80% of white, evangelical Christians voted for President Trump. Now, some want a policy change that could undermine a future Palestinian state.
A worker collects palm oil fruit in Sepang, outside Kuala Lumpur, in 2014.
BUSINESS / Markets
Mar 10, 2025

The end of cheap palm oil? Output stalls as biodiesel demand surges

Aging plantations and slow replanting have led to lower yields even as demand for palm oil rises from various sectors.
The government's stockpile of rice in Saitama Prefecture in February
JAPAN
Mar 10, 2025

For first time ever, government begins auction of rice stockpile

Rice from the stockpile is expected to hit shelves from around the end of the month.
Concept art for the renewed National Museum of Territory and Sovereignty
JAPAN
Mar 10, 2025

Japan's territory museum to reopen in April following renovations

The museum in Tokyo's Chiyoda Ward is designed to publicize Japan's position on disputed territories.
Minnesota Vikings quarterback Sam Darnold against the Los Angeles Rams during an NFC wild card game at State Farm Stadium on Jan. 13. Darnold reportedly plans to sign with the Seahawks.
MORE SPORTS / Football
Mar 11, 2025

QB Sam Darnold to sign $100 million contract with Seahawks: reports

Darnold parlayed a career season with the Minnesota Vikings into the largest contract of his career.
Bookshelves storing disaster-related documents at the Sendai City Archives in Sendai in February
JAPAN
Mar 12, 2025

Local governments struggle to preserve records of March 2011 disaster

Fourteen years later, securing storage space has become a growing obstacle as the volume of records continues to increase.
A worker adjusts an anti-smog dust suppression sprayer installed at a construction site in Lahore on Feb. 17. Tens of millions of Pakistanis spent at least four months breathing toxic air pollution 20 times above safe levels, in the worst winter smog season for several years.
ASIA PACIFIC / Science & Health
Mar 12, 2025

'Really suffocating': Pakistan emerges from record smog season

Pakistan regularly ranks among the world's most polluted countries, with Lahore often the most polluted megacity between November and February.
A worker inspects a steel coil on the factory floor before Canada's Prime Minister-designate Mark Carney visits the ArcelorMittal Dofasco steel mill in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, on Wednesday.
BUSINESS / Economy
Mar 13, 2025

Trump threatens further tariffs as EU and Canada retaliate against U.S. levies

The U.S. tariffs have rattled investor, consumer and business confidence and raised recession fears.
The Marugame Genichiro-Inokuma Museum of Contemporary Art is just one of many hidden art and architectural gems across the Kagawa coast.
LIFE / Travel
Mar 15, 2025

‘Resorts for the spirit’: Touring Kagawa’s art and architecture

The seaside cities of Takamatsu and Marugame are home to a heritage of beauty, from the monolithic to the modern.
Artist Adrian Steckeweh 3-D prints otherworldly clothes and accessories for himself, in a way augmenting his reality with tangible objects.
CULTURE / Art
Mar 16, 2025

Augmented reality artist Omega C navigates a precarious scene for XR art

Just this year, XR art featured heavily in the digital art festival Dig Shibuya and is the focus of the ongoing “Machine Love” exhibition at Mori Art Museum.
The gloom is a sign of just how much U.S. President Donald Trump’s policies, particularly around trade, have rattled Wall Street nerves.
BUSINESS / Markets
Mar 14, 2025

Stocks tumble into correction as Trump policies roil sentiment

The gloom is a sign of just how much U.S. President Donald Trump’s policies, particularly around trade, have rattled Wall Street nerves.
A woman clutches an urn containing the ashes of a loved one during a funeral ceremony for victims of former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte's war on drugs, at a cemetery in Manila on Wednesday, the day after his arrest.
EDITORIALS
Mar 14, 2025

Duterte may yet pay for his lawless war on drugs

According to the Philippine government, at least 6,252 people died “during anti-drug operations” since July 2016.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer greets Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as he arrives to attend a summit held at Lancaster House in central London on March 2.
WORLD / Politics / ANALYSIS
Mar 15, 2025

As Trump thaws ties, Russia has a new public enemy No. 1: Britain

For most of the war, Russia lambasted Washington for its role in supplying aid to Kyiv. With Donald Trump in office, that has changed.
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington on March 3.
WORLD / Politics
Mar 15, 2025

Trump administration weighs travel ban on dozens of countries, memo says

The move harkens back to Trump's first term ban on travelers from seven majority-Muslim nations.
While climate demonstrations around the world often draw thousands of participants, in Japan such demonstrations rarely break the 100-person barrier.
ENVIRONMENT / Climate change
Mar 16, 2025

Japan’s youth climate activists still searching for a breakthrough

With Japan endorsing climate targets criticized as unambitious, activists are looking to education and more tailored strategies to make an impact.
Passengers that were on a morning train attacked by members of the Aum Shinrikyo group wait for medical assistance outside Kasumigaseki Station on March 20,1995.
JAPAN / Society / Longform
Mar 17, 2025

The day a religious cult brought terror to Tokyo

Thirty years after Aum Shinrikyo attacked Tokyo’s subways, the nation continues to prepare for the unthinkable.
The Lakhta Center business tower, which serves as the headquarters of Russia's largest gas producer Gazprom, in St. Petersburg on March 7
BUSINESS / Companies
Mar 17, 2025

Gazprom's grandeur fades as Europe abandons Russian gas

Gazprom is arguably the Russian business hardest hit by the international sanctions imposed after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine three years ago.
A MI-8 helicopter from the Belarus army carries the Belarusian national flag in Minsk in 2017.
JAPAN / Politics
Mar 18, 2025

Belarus sentences Japanese man to seven years for spying

The man allegedly took photos of military facilities as well as railway infrastructure, and had traveled to the Ukrainian border.
Yuki Niimi, the widow of Tomomitsu Niimi, who was executed in 2018 along with other former members of the doomsday cult Aum Shinrikyo for their roles in the 1995 sarin gas attacks on the Tokyo subway system, poses with a photo of her husband (front) with cult leader Shoko Asahara, in Osaka in February.
JAPAN / Crime & Legal
Mar 18, 2025

'Until the very end, he gave no apology': Widow of Aum killer speaks out

Tomomitsu Niimi was behind bars when he met Yuki Niimi, and when they married in 2011.

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?