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U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian leader Vladimir Putin hold a news conference following their meeting to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine, at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage, Alaska, on Friday.
WORLD / Politics / ANALYSIS
Aug 17, 2025

Putin wins Ukraine concessions in Alaska but did not get all he wanted

U.S. President Donald Trump did not give Putin the economic reset he wanted as the Russian economy shows signs of strain amid the grinding war and tough sanctions.
Russian leader Vladimir Putin listens as U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a joint news conference at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage, Alaska, on Friday.
WORLD / Politics
Aug 17, 2025

Outline emerges of Putin's offer to end his war in Ukraine

It was not immediately clear if the proposals by Putin were an opening gambit to serve as a starting point for negotiations or more like a final offer.
One of Swiss startup Enerdrape’s energy-harvesting panels is seen in this screenshot taken from video posted to the firm's YouTube account.
ENVIRONMENT / Energy
Aug 17, 2025

A startup is tapping underground parking garages for clean energy

Globally, heating accounts for nearly half of all energy consumption. That could make decarbonizing it a half-trillion-dollar market.
Tesla Megapack batteries at the Victorian Big Battery site operated by Neoen in Moorabool, Victoria, Australia, on Feb. 3, 2023
BUSINESS / Tech
Aug 18, 2025

Wild power-price swings are driving an Australian battery boom

A rooftop solar boom has aided the shift but also created midday power gluts, giving big batteries the chance to buy electricity cheaply and sell it back when prices rebound.
Scottie Scheffler poses with the J. K. Wadley Trophy (left) and The Keeper after winning the BMW Championship in Baltimore on Sunday.
MORE SPORTS / Golf
Aug 18, 2025

Scottie Scheffler hits amazing shot to hold off Robert MacIntyre at BMW Championship

Scheffler, this year's British Open and PGA Championship winner, became the first player since Tiger Woods in 2006-07 to win five or more times in back-to-back seasons.
U.S. President Donald Trump greets Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the White House, amid negotiations to end Russia's war in Ukraine, in Washington on Monday.
WORLD / Politics
Aug 19, 2025

Trump pushes Putin-Zelenskyy meeting after talks with both

The move suggested that the leaders of Ukraine and top European nations had succeeded in convincing Trump to maintain their approach to possible talks with the Russian president.
Omar Garcia Harfuch has earned respect from rank-and-file military and security forces by showing up, gun-in-hand, on the front lines, one source said.
WORLD / Crime & Legal
Aug 19, 2025

Battle-tested cop is Mexico's hope to tame cartels and placate Trump

Garcia Harfuch has earned praise for helping deliver on Sheinbaum's vision of increased cooperation with the U.S.
U.S. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick on June 5. Soruces say Lutnick has been pushing the idea of the federal government taking equity stakes in computer chip manufacturers that receive CHIPS Act funding, and that Trump likes the idea.
BUSINESS / Tech
Aug 20, 2025

Washington eyeing government stakes in chipmakers given CHIPS Act funds: sources

U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick is said to be exploring how the U.S. can receive equity stakes in firms such as Micron, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. and Samsung.
The U.S. dollar's dominance is threatened as digital currencies' security and data integrity become key factors in the global monetary system, challenging America's economic privilege.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 20, 2025

Currency dominance in the digital age

As digital technologies power money via stablecoins and CBDCs, currency networks depend on both macroeconomics and infrastructure security.
Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba shakes hands with South Korean President Lee Jae Myung on the sidelines of the Group of Seven leaders' summit in Kananaskis in Alberta, Canada, on June 17.
JAPAN / Politics / FOCUS
Aug 21, 2025

Can Ishiba and South Korea’s Lee keep the hatchet buried?

The South Korean leader's unprecedented visit Saturday will highlight to what extent he has put his hard-line Japan views in the rearview mirror.
A pop-up advertisement for the newly opened Chiikawa Park in Tokyo's Ikebukuro neighborhood demonstrates how the country is chockful of cute characters — to the detriment of trends like Labubu.
LIFE / Lifestyle
Aug 23, 2025

Character-crazed Japan has little appetite for Labubu

The monster dolls may be driving fans wild elsewhere, but Japan has long had plenty of its own domestically produced characters that know exactly what consumers want.
U.S. President Donald Trump greets Russian President Vladimir Putin as they meet in Anchorage, Alaska, on Aug. 15.
EDITORIALS
Aug 22, 2025

Peace in Ukraine is within reach — if the world holds firm

Peace prospects swing with Trump’s erratic diplomacy. Allies, including Japan, need to stress unity and rule of law as they prepare to fill gaps and stabilize support for Ukraine.
Director of the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency Lt. Jeffrey Kruse (left) testifies during a Senate Select Committee on Intelligence hearing in the Hart Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill in Washington in March 2024.
WORLD / Politics
Aug 23, 2025

In latest purge, Hegseth removes head of Pentagon intel agency and others

The move appeared to be the latest attempt to penalize current and former military, intelligence and law enforcement officials whose views have been seen as at odds with Trump.
U.S. President Donald Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Vice President JD Vance meet Democratic Republic of the Congo Foreign Minister Therese Kayikwamba Wagner  (far right) and Rwanda Foreign Minister Olivier Nduhungirehe (far left) in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington on June 27.
WORLD / Politics / ANALYSIS
Aug 24, 2025

Trump’s count of wars he’s ‘settled’ remains a matter of dispute

Looking to bolster his legacy as a global peacemaker, Donald Trump has boasted often in recent days that he’s ended at least six wars.
Brazilian lawmaker Eduardo Bolsonaro discusses his efforts to put U.S. pressure on Brazil to halt the trial of his father, right-wing former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, in Washington, on Aug. 14.
WORLD / Politics / FOCUS
Aug 24, 2025

Bolsonaro’s family dynasty creaks under pressure of Brazil coup trial

The tariff fight has also given Lula a shot in the arm, allowing the leftist to seize a nationalistic mantle and paint himself as a defender of Brazil.
Filipino soldiers take part in a flag-raising ceremony on Mavulis Island during a visit by the Philippines' Armed Forces chief of staff, in Batanes, the Philippines, in June 2023. Batanes, a group of idyllic islands at the country’s northernmost tip, sits about 160 kilometers from Taiwan.
ASIA PACIFIC
Aug 25, 2025

Philippines quietly deepening ‘unofficial’ defense ties with Taiwan

The moves come as Manila settles into a view that alliances, geography and economic interests would inevitably pull it into any U.S. conflict with China over the island.
To critics, the White House move to invest in chipmaker Intel threatens the U.S. business world's nimbleness.
BUSINESS / Markets
Aug 26, 2025

Trump wants more deals such as Intel's, worrying business community

The approach upends a decades-old view of the U.S. economy, in which the government only took corporate stakes in rare emergencies.
U.S. President Donald Trump holds up an executive order after signing it in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington on Monday.
WORLD / Politics
Aug 26, 2025

Trump suggests many Americans 'like a dictator'

Democrats have repeatedly accused Trump of pushing presidential power way past its constitutional limits.
Federal Reserve Gov. Lisa Cook attends the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City's 2025 Jackson Hole economic symposium, in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, on Saturday.
BUSINESS / Economy
Aug 26, 2025

Trump to fire Fed board's first African-American woman over mortgage allegations

The unprecedented step could test the boundaries of presidential power over the independent monetary policy body should it be challenged in court.
A worker operates machinery at a sawmill in Sundsvall, Sweden
BUSINESS / Companies
Aug 26, 2025

Tariff uncertainty leaves European companies with tough decisions

There are difficult conversations with American customers about pricing and hard choices to be made about where to invest in.
An ICE agent speaks to people lined up to enter the U.S. Immigration Court, in Manhattan, New York City, in June.
WORLD / Crime & Legal
Aug 26, 2025

Inside ICE, Trump's migrant crackdown is taking a toll on officers

Some current and former ICE officials say the agency is grappling with burnout as staff try to keep pace with the aggressive enforcement agenda.
Containers at a dock at the Port of Cape Town in Cape Town in 2024. China’s exports to Africa so far in 2025 are more than in the whole of 2020 and on track to exceed $200 billion for the first time.
BUSINESS / Markets
Aug 27, 2025

China is pouring exports into Africa faster than anywhere else

China’s exports to Africa so far in 2025 are more than in the whole of 2020 and on track to exceed $200 billion for the first time.
Tattoos have a complex history in Japan, but new types of temporary ink are letting locals curious about body art experiment without the commitment.
LIFE / Style & Design
Aug 30, 2025

Japan is warming up to tattoos — just not permanent ones

Tokyo’s tattoo artists say natural dyes and ‘made-to-fade’ inks are helping to push back on the long-held stigma against body art.
Hawaii kicker Kansei Matsuzawa celebrates after making the game-winning field goal against Stanford in Honolulu on Saturday.
MORE SPORTS / Football
Aug 29, 2025

Hawaii kicker Kansei Matsuzawa walks unique path in college football

The Chiba native picked up the sport just over five years ago as a 20-year-old, learning to kick through YouTube.
U.S. President Donald Trump and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi greet one another at the start of a joint news conference in the East Room of the White House in Washington in February.
ASIA PACIFIC / Politics
Aug 31, 2025

The Nobel Prize and a testy phone call: How the Trump-Modi relationship unraveled

The fallout of a disputed between the two leaders risks pushing India closer to American adversaries in Beijing and Moscow.
Naomi Osaka in action against Coco Gauff in the fourth round of the women’s singles at the U.S. Open at Arthur Ashe Stadium in New York on Monday
TENNIS
Sep 2, 2025

Osaka crushes Gauff as Sinner and Swiatek roll into quarters

The Japanese star powered past third seed Gauff 6-3, 6-2 in a highly-anticipated but lopsided fourth-round showdown of former U.S. Open champions.
Structural issues — including population decline, job shortages and an insufficient social-safety net — are hampering China's consumption and demand.
COMMENTARY / World / Geoeconomic Briefing
Sep 3, 2025

The fissures beneath China’s positive GDP numbers

Despite positive Chinese growth, the world’s second largest economy is plagued by a prolonged real-estate crisis and persistently high unemployment rates.
A partly-used, 10 gram bag of semaglutide powder made by China-based Sinopep-Allsino Biopharmaceutical, at a compounding pharmacy in Arlington, Virginia, in December 2024.
BUSINESS / Companies
Sep 3, 2025

Chinese companies turn to generics as patents expire on weight-loss drugs

U.S. regulators have restricted the sale of cheap copies of the drugs, slowing demand for raw ingredients Chinese firms supplied over the past two years.
U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Ryosei Akazawa, Japan’s chief tariff negotiator, sign trade agreements on Thursday in Washington.
BUSINESS / Economy
Sep 5, 2025

Japan's $550 billion investment pledge outlined in MOU

U.S. President Donald Trump will direct the investments and the projects funded by Japan will be controlled by the United States.
Lakers forward LeBron James brings the ball up court against the Minnesota Timberwolves during Game 5 of the first round of the NBA Playoffs at Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles on April 30.
BASKETBALL
Sep 9, 2025

LeBron James pens essay in Chinese state newspaper in sign of NBA revival

The People's Daily publication of James' essay highlights how the NBA's relationship with its most important market outside North America is close to being fully repaired.

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