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Yoshiaki Nakano (center), head of the Mebuki residents’ association, comprising residents of the Moniwa No. 2 municipal-run housing complex in Sendai’s Taihaku Ward, addresses a board meeting on Feb. 2.
JAPAN / Society / Regional Voices: Tohoku
Mar 10, 2025

Public housing residents' associations in Sendai struggle to find leaders

Those age 65 and older account for 43.9% of the residents in such housing, 18.7 percentage points higher than the ratio of elderly in the city.
A former employee of Mizuho Bank's Hiroo branch in Tokyo stole money from the safe deposit boxes of two clients between January 2016 and June 2019, according to the bank.
JAPAN / Crime & Legal
Feb 27, 2025

Mizuho Bank confirms ¥66 million stolen from safe deposit boxes

A former employee stole the money from two clients' safe deposit boxes between January 2016 and June 2019.
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.
Ravens kicker Justin Tucker has been accused of sexually inappropriate behavior at massage parlors and spas.
MORE SPORTS
Feb 28, 2025

Ravens' Justin Tucker issues another denial of sexual misconduct allegations

The 35-year-old Super Bowl-winner has been accused of repeatedly exposing his genitals and brushing some of the therapists' thighs with his fingers.
The roll-out of accent translation is part of a bigger push by Teleperformance to invest up to €100 million ($104 million) in AI partnerships this year.
BUSINESS / Tech
Mar 1, 2025

Teleperformance uses AI to ‘neutralize’ Indian accents among staff

The roll-out of accent translation is part of a bigger push by Teleperformance to invest up to €100 million ($104 million) in AI partnerships this year.
The website of the Qiaoxing Volunteer Group, a Chinese community organization in the Philippines, shows four men detained in late January in the Philippines on charges of espionage seen with Chinese defense attache Li Jianzhong and the governor of Cagayan province, Manuel Mamba, in this illustration picture taken Feb. 27.
ASIA PACIFIC / Politics
Mar 2, 2025

Alleged Chinese spies gave Philippine city and police cash and motorbikes

The men spied on the Philippine navy with drones, according to investigators, who also found also photos and maps of sensitive sites on their phones.
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.
Seven & I Holdings CEO Ryuichi Isaka is stepping down from his position, the Nikkei newspaper has reported.
BUSINESS / Companies
Mar 3, 2025

7-Eleven owner to appoint first foreign CEO, report says

The owner's plan to take the company private to avoid being taken over by Couche-Tard collapsed last week, piling pressure on it to reconsider the $47 billion takeover proposal.
A new study analyzing organs from deceased individuals found plastic particles accumulating primarily in the brain, with the highest concentrations in recent autopsies, raising concerns about long-term exposure despite unclear health effects.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 3, 2025

You might have plastic in your brain. Don’t panic — yet.

It’s unsettling, but the amount of plastic in your brain is probably less than the plastic spoon’s worth grabbing the headlines.
Kumi Takiuchi plays a prostitute talking about her life’s pains and pleasures in detail to a psychiatrist in “Reveal.”
CULTURE / Film
Mar 4, 2025

‘Reveal’: Kumi Takiuchi’s performance stuns in one-woman film

Kazuyoshi Okuyama’s powerful drama about a sex worker baring her soul features its lead actor emoting nearly nonstop with no cuts.
Seven & I has spent months fending off Couche-Tard’s takeover bid with complex maneuvers, but instead of chasing defensive strategies, it should focus on strengthening its core convenience-store business, which still has untapped potential.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Mar 4, 2025

7-Eleven’s time-wasting isn’t so convenient

Retail is a fast-moving industry — and months spent fending off Couche-Tard means less focus on strategy.
A herd of sheep move across a solar farm in Haskell, Texas, on Dec. 2, 2024.
ENVIRONMENT
Mar 4, 2025

Sheep grazing under solar panels help U.S. farmers to survive crop-price slump

Instead of plowing fields, Raines spent the year ferrying his flock of sheep to solar farms, to munch on the grass that grows around the gleaming panels.
Carlos Alcaraz speaks to the media during a news conference in Indian Wells, California, on Tuesday.
TENNIS
Mar 5, 2025

Alcaraz chases third straight Indian Wells title

Carlos Alcaraz, coming off a quarterfinal defeat in the Qatar Open, is seeded second behind Germany's Alexander Zverev.
Kanagawa Prefectural Police have arrested a former deputy manager at Hana Credit Union’s Yokohama branch on suspicion of stealing ¥619 million in cash from the branch's safe deposit boxes.
JAPAN / Crime & Legal
Mar 5, 2025

Hana Credit Union employee arrested on suspicion of safe deposit box theft

The suspect admitted to the allegations, telling police he used the stolen money to pay off debts and gamble.
The Robert F. Kennedy Department of Justice Building in Washington in 2024. The Justice Department unsealed charges against a dozen Chinese citizens accused of being part of a sophisticated hacking ring that steals data from American businesses and people to sell to the Chinese government and others.
WORLD / Crime & Legal
Mar 6, 2025

U.S. says China paid hackers to target critics and steal data

The Justice Department has charged 10 Chinese citizens and two government agents for hacks that targeted dissidents, news outlets and American government agencies, among others.
Firefighters battle a wildfire in Ofunato, Iwate Prefecture, on Thursday.
JAPAN
Mar 6, 2025

Wildfire slows in Iwate as government announces relief support

The city saw 26.5 millimeters of rain on Wednesday, far exceeding the 2.5mm total for the entire month of February.
Former Executive Vice President Ichiro Takekuro enters the Tokyo High Court for the appellate court ruling in January 2023 in Tokyo's Chiyoda Ward.
JAPAN / Crime & Legal
Mar 6, 2025

Acquittal of two former Tepco executives to be finalized

The Supreme Court supported the lower courts' decisions that the accident was unpredictable and decided to dismiss an appeal by lawyers acting as prosecutors.
Naomi Osaka returned to tennis in 2024 after giving birth to her daughter in July 2023.
TENNIS
Mar 7, 2025

WTA and Saudi PIF to provide paid maternity leave to tennis players

The PIF WTA Maternity Fund Program "will offer benefits to more than 320 eligible WTA players," the WTA said in a statement.
“May You Have Delicious Meals” focuses on a trio of young office workers at the same workplace who have mixed feelings for food and each other.
CULTURE / Books
Mar 8, 2025

‘May You Have Delicious Meals’: The ugly taste of office and gender politics

The English-language debut of Junko Takase’s Akutagawa Prize-winning novel serves complex prose in translation by Morgan Giles.
Former Bank of Japan Gov. Haruhiko Kuroda said Japan must fix "any misunderstanding" held by U.S. President Donald Trump that its central bank was intentionally weakening the yen with monetary policy.
BUSINESS / Economy
Mar 8, 2025

Japan must fix 'misunderstanding' it is manipulating yen, says ex-BOJ chief Kuroda

Trump said he had told Japan and China they could not continue to reduce the value of their currencies, as doing so would be unfair to the United States.
Signage at a Tesla store in Colma, California, on Monday. Tesla shares plunged to their worst day in more than four years, extending a slide in 2025 amid growing concerns on Wall Street about demand for the company's electric cars.
BUSINESS / Tech
Mar 11, 2025

Tesla’s stock defied gravity for years. Is Elon Musk’s EV party over?

The bulk of Tesla's worth rests on hopes for autonomous vehicles it hasn't yet delivered, despite Musk's continued promises.
Naohisa Hoshikawa, chief executive officer and founder of Ookuma Diamond Device, in Sapporo in February. Hoshikawa says the potential of diamond semiconductors goes beyond decommissioning work, likening them to the U.S. Apollo manned lunar landing program, which gave birth to technological innovations affecting everyday life.
JAPAN / Science & Health
Mar 12, 2025

Diamond chips could be key to decommissioning of Fukushima nuclear plant

Made with artificial diamonds, such chips are regarded as the "ultimate semiconductors" — they can withstand high levels of radiation as well as high voltages and temperatures.
Protesters demonstrating in front of the Supreme Court in Tokyo on Tuesday against court rulings acquitting two former executives of Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings over the 2011 nuclear disaster in Fukushima Prefecture.
JAPAN / Crime & Legal
Mar 12, 2025

Acquittal of two former Tepco executives finalized

Lawyers acting as prosecutors did not file an appeal against the Supreme Court's decision last week that upheld the not-guilty verdicts against the executives.
Former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte's arrest on an ICC warrant for crimes against humanity related to his brutal drug war is a victory for affected families, but it may plunge the country into political chaos.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 12, 2025

The law finally caught up with Rodrigo Duterte

A reckoning for Duterte — the man they called "The Punisher” — is long overdue. The former Philippine president’s anti-drug crusade killed thousands of people.
Supporters of former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte gather outside the The Hague Penitentiary Institution prison, which houses the International Criminal Court's (ICC) detention unit, in Scheveningen, Netherlands, on Wednesday.
ASIA PACIFIC / Crime & Legal
Mar 13, 2025

Philippines’ Duterte is bound for ICC’s Hague jail with spartan cells and spiritual advisers

He will likely be confined to a 10-square-meter cell — little larger than a sedan — with off-white walls, a bed, desk, cupboard, sink and toilet.
The Tokyo Port Brewery team in front of the brewery building. President Shunichi Saito (left) and Master Brewer Yoshimi Terasawa are the ones holding sake bottles.
BUSINESS
Mar 25, 2025

Sake brewery in central Tokyo revives Edo tradition

Although Japan had roughly 11,000 sake breweries around 1900, now only about 1,200 remain.
Noor Abdalla, 28, wife of Palestinian activist and Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil who was detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement looks at an ultrasound photograph in New York on Wednesday.
WORLD / Politics
Mar 13, 2025

Wife of student arrested in U.S. says she was naive to think he would be secure

Two days before U.S. agents came, her husband asked her if she knew what to do if immigration agents were at their door.
After nine years, the Square Enix Cafe is finally closing up shop.
LIFE / Digital
Mar 15, 2025

Square Enix Cafe had everything going for it, except the ability to adapt

On March 31, the themed cafe just steps from JR Akihabara Station will close for good.
A red panda at the central zoo in Lalitpur, on the outskirts of Kathmandu
ENVIRONMENT / Wildlife
Mar 14, 2025

Nepal community efforts revive red panda population

Conservationists say educational outreach and sustainable livelihood programs helped improve the effectiveness of Nepal's conservation efforts.
Kyoko Watanabe made a home for herself in Ishinomaki after moving there to participate in disaster relief efforts following 3/11, and now operates a business focused on the creative reuse of <i>akiya</i> (abandoned houses).
COMMUNITY / Our Lives
Mar 17, 2025

From abandoned houses to ‘creative communities’: An Ishinomaki entrepreneur's vision for rural Japan

Kyoko Watanabe moved to Miyagi Prefecture to help with disaster relief efforts following 3/11. She ended up building a company and a vision for revitalizing rural Japan.

Longform

After pandemic-era border regulations eased, Indian migrants began returning to Japan. Their population now stands at more than 50,000 across the country.
How remote work is rewriting the migrant experience in Japan