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Boeing 737 Max airplanes on the tarmac at the Boeing factory in Renton, Washington, in 2019
BUSINESS / Companies
Feb 10, 2024

How production pressures plunged Boeing into yet another crisis

Soul-searching about quality controls and plunged Boeing into its second safety crisis in five years.
Experimentation seemed to be a driving force throughout conductor Seiji Ozawa’s life as he pushed the boundaries of what a Japanese artist could achieve with classical music to magnificent heights.
CULTURE / Music
Feb 13, 2024

Seiji Ozawa’s boundless experiment

The influential conductor was not only a man of extraordinary talent, his warm character had the power to unite people as one.
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off from launchpad SLC-40 at the Kennedy Space Center on NASA's PACE mission in Cape Canaveral, Florida, on Feb. 8.
BUSINESS / Companies / FOCUS
Feb 13, 2024

Apollo to Artemis: Why America is betting big on private space

While it has seen some successes, the move could put the U.S. at risk of falling behind its principal space rival, China, in achieving major milestones.
Paolo Benanti, a Franciscan friar and a professor at the Gregorian, the Harvard of Rome's pontifical universities, in his office at the university in Rome on Jan. 29. Benanti advises the Vatican and the Italian government on navigating the tricky questions — moral and otherwise — raised by artificial intelligence.
WORLD / Society
Feb 14, 2024

The friar who became the Vatican’s go-to guy on AI

Father Paolo Benanti, an ethics professor and self-proclaimed geek, spends his days thinking about the Holy Ghost and the ghosts in the machines.
Children play at a park during the COVID-19 pandemic in Hong Kong, in 2022.
WORLD / Science & Health
Feb 14, 2024

New research raises concerns about long COVID in children

The new review suggested that 10% to 20% of children in the United States who had COVID-19 developed long COVID.
A Sudanese man looks out his balcony in Cairo as he waits for his displaced family to arrive from war-ridden Khartoum, in April.
WORLD / Politics
Feb 14, 2024

Unable to survive in Egypt, refugees return to war-torn Sudan

Since the fighting began in April between the Sudanese army and paramilitary forces, over 450,000 people have crossed the border into Egypt.
Former U.S. President Donald Trump holds a campaign rally ahead of the Republican caucus in Las Vegas on Jan. 27.
COMMENTARY / World / Geoeconomic Briefing
Feb 22, 2024

How East Asia should prepare for a possible Trump comeback

Questions over defense funding and military support could potentially return to the fore for U.S. allies.
JAPAN / Politics
Feb 16, 2024

LDP survey doesn't quell demand from opposition for ethics hearing

The scandal, and the demand to convene a meeting of the ethics committee, have Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in a political bind.
A new report by the McKinsey Institute for Black Economic Mobility estimates that it could take up to 320 years for Black Americans to catch up to their white counterparts in quality of life.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 8, 2024

Black Americans gain no ground on income and wealth

One study estimates that it could take up to 320 years for Black Americans to catch up to their white counterparts' in quality of life.
In Hokkaido’s Niseko ski resort area, a bowl of ramen or soba from a food truck easily goes for more than three times what it costs at a sit-down joint in Tokyo.
COMMENTARY
Feb 18, 2024

¥3,800 ski-slope ramen is a glimpse of Japan’s future

Foreign tourist spending has potential to stimulate growth but needs careful management to ensure equitable distribution of benefits for locals.
Machine learning could assist in cancer research by flagging papers likely to fail replication attempts, potentially improving the quality control process.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 21, 2024

The scandals rocking cancer science matter to your health

Trouble emerged years before the most recent scandal in which investigators found data manipulation in a slew of high-profile cancer research papers.
Laws governing global e-commerce and the growing tidal wave of data that crosses borders may soon change.
BUSINESS / Companies
Feb 22, 2024

Streaming a movie abroad may soon come with taxes at the border

It's still unclear exactly how governments would implement digital tariffs.
Yasuhiro Otomo and Miku Narisawa during one of Odyssey Nature Japan's educational fishing programs.
PODCAST / deep dive
Feb 22, 2024

A young 3/11 survivor and her vow to protect the ocean

At 12, Miku Narisawa experienced a magnitude 9 earthquake and tsunami that destroyed her home. Now she is working to protect it.
Yurii, 53, and Tetiana, 51, attend a rally of families of Ukrainian prisoners of war  in Kryvyi Rih, Dnipropetrovsk region, Ukraine, on Jan. 21.
WORLD
Feb 22, 2024

How life in Ukraine has been shattered by two years of war

Even in remote villages, signs are everywhere of the two-year-old war that has irrevocably changed the face of Ukraine.
A woman and children place flags for friends who are in the Ukrainian military at Independence Square in Kyiv on Saturday.
WORLD / Politics
Feb 25, 2024

Ukraine marks second anniversary of Russian invasion, determined despite setbacks

Western leaders gathered in Kyiv to pledge support for Ukraine amid U.S. reluctance, while its troops suffer growing losses on the battlefield.
When Fighters interpreter Shinju Sakuma set her mind on becoming a language liaison in sports, she picked a sport she enjoyed watching and an employer who thinks outside the box.
BASEBALL / Japanese Baseball
Feb 26, 2024

Rookie female interpreter provides voice for foreign baseball stars in Japan

Shinju Sakuma, who will graduate from Rikkyo University in Tokyo this spring, is believed to be the first female interpreter in NPB history.
The low proportion of women in paid employment in India is a matter of serious concern and policymakers should focus more on generating demand for female labor
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 25, 2024

Are social norms really the main cause of low female employment?

The proportion of women in paid work remains very low in India, despite the economy experiencing high rates of growth and rapid poverty reduction.
People read newspapers at a roadside tea stall in Patna, Bihar, India. Newsrooms are being reshaped, journalists say, by India’s richest press barons, many of whom are close to the ruling party and depend on millions of advertising dollars from the government.
ASIA PACIFIC / Politics
Feb 26, 2024

Billionaire press barons are squeezing media freedom in India

Many press barons are close to the ruling party and depend on millions of advertising dollars from the government.
Tech behemoths have lavished their CEOs with astronomical salaries under the guise of retaining top talent, instead of spreading the wealth.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 25, 2024

Tech CEOs need to start sharing the wealth

The time has come to curb Big Tech's market power and establish the mechanisms to prevent the benefits of technological innovation from being monopolized.
An employee organizes baby supplies at a store in Siheung, South Korea, on Tuesday. A lack of babies is speeding up the aging of South Korean society, generating concerns about the growing fiscal burden of public pensions and healthcare.
ASIA PACIFIC / Society
Feb 28, 2024

South Korea keeps shattering its own record for lowest fertility rate

The number of babies expected per woman in a lifetime fell to 0.72 last year from 0.78 in 2022.
Even if a solution for peace is found to end the conflict between Hamas and Israel, any transitional authority will need to reckon with the militant group's large footprint in Gaza.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 28, 2024

A total 'de-Hamasification' of Gaza may be a bad idea

A peace plan needs to reckon with many difficult questions: Who will rebuild Gaza; who will pay for reconstruction and who will adjudicate any war crimes.
Trucks are seen as Ukrainian hauliers take part in an round-the-clock counter-demonstration against the blockade of the border by Polish protesters on Feb. 20.
BUSINESS / Companies
Mar 1, 2024

Companies in Ukraine see problems pile up, but most tough it out

"The war has taught us to respond flexibly"
Haas' Ayao Komatsu is the first Japanese to be named team principal of a non-Japanese Formula One team.
MORE SPORTS / Auto Racing
Mar 1, 2024

Ayao Komatsu and a road less traveled to the top of a Formula One team

As the new boss at Haas, Komatsu is the first Japanese team principal for a non-Japanese F1 team.
Factions, cliques, caucuses — whatever they may be called, groupings in legislatures are not unusual in many countries.
COMMENTARY / Japan / Perspectives
Mar 2, 2024

Is the funding scandal unraveling the LDP?

The media is caught up in the money-politics scandal of the moment, framing factions as all good or all bad. Things are a lot more nuanced than that.
Migrant workers harvest and package vegetables in a greenhouse in Gasan-myeon, South Korea, in December.
ASIA PACIFIC / Society
Mar 3, 2024

South Korea needs foreign workers, but often fails to protect them

Though a shrinking population makes imported labor vital, migrant workers routinely face predatory employers, inhumane conditions and other abuse.
Broad indications are growing that Chinese President Xi Jinping is shifting away from four decades of market-oriented reforms and financial innovation. The most powerful Chinese leader since Mao Zedong has emphasized the Communist Party’s "centralized and unified leadership” of the sector, and pledged to build "a modern financial system with Chinese characteristics” that’s completely different from the West.
BUSINESS / Companies
Mar 5, 2024

China's bankers exit industry amid crackdown on ‘hedonistic’ lifestyles

Finance workers in China are rethinking their career as Chinese President Xi Jinping signals a shift away from market-oriented reform and innovation.
Randolph-Macon College students pose with a monument to Taylor Anderson in Ishinomaki, Miyagi Prefecture, on Jan. 23.
JAPAN
Mar 10, 2024

Tsunami victim's dream of becoming Japan-U.S. bridge realized

Taylor Anderson was one of the 33 foreign nationals killed in the March 2011 disaster.
Floating solar panels at the Canoe Brook water treatment plant in Short Hills, New Jersey
ENVIRONMENT / Energy
Mar 6, 2024

Pressed for space, solar farms are getting creative

There are solar arrays on top of big-box stores, solar arrays on yachts and solar farms that float.
The rat with shortened primary cilia (left) had gained weight compared to a normal rat. According to recent research from Nagoya University, rats with artificially shortened primary cilia displayed lower metabolism and increased food intake, resulting in weight gain.
JAPAN / Science & Health
Mar 7, 2024

Nagoya University finds mechanism behind middle-age weight gain

Researchers found that a region of the brain that controls metabolism and food intake becomes shorter with age in rats.
Palestinians carry bags of flour they grabbed from an aid truck in mid February near an Israeli checkpoint as Gaza residents face crisis levels of hunger amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 7, 2024

Getting more aid to Gaza shouldn’t be this difficult

Adding avoidable deaths through hunger and disease in Gaza to an already high fatality toll is good for no one but extremists.

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