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Israeli women take part in a protest demanding the end of the war in the Gaza Strip near Kibbutz Nahal Oz, close to the Israeli border with Gaza, on Aug. 10.
WORLD / Politics
Aug 20, 2025

As Netanyahu expands Gaza war, some reservists grow more disillusioned

They accuse the government — the most far-right administration in Israel's history — of perpetuating the war for political reasons.
Defense Minister Gen Nakatani takes part in a welcome ceremony with his Turkish counterpart, Yasar Guler, at Turkey's Defense Ministry in Ankara on Tuesday.
JAPAN / Politics
Aug 20, 2025

Japan and Turkey defense chiefs pledge industry tie-ups as Tokyo eyes drones

While drones were not explicitly mentioned by either side in readouts of the meeting, they were believed to have featured prominently in discussions.
Muddied prospectors pan for gold in Manica province, Mozambique, near the Zimbabwe border, in 2010.
ENVIRONMENT / Sustainability
Aug 20, 2025

Mozambique's illegal miners reap risky rewards but land suffers

Rivers around mining sites are polluted, and mercury has seeped into the soil, creating a nightmare for farmers.
Chatbots are pivoting to the ad model and optimizing for eyeballs, just like social media did. And AI knows more about us than Google or Facebook ever did.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 21, 2025

Ads ruined social media. Now they’re coming to AI.

Imagine a person telling their AI they’re feeling depressed, and the system recommending some affordable holiday destinations or medication to address the problem.
A catch-all term for tendonitis and arthritis caused by excessive smartphone use, 'sumaho yubi' may be difficult to treat for gadget-crazy Japan.
LIFE / Lifestyle
Aug 22, 2025

Fingers sore from too much phone time? You might have ‘sumaho yubi.’

One doctor says the symptoms of smartphone-induced tendonitis and arthritis are on the rise for those in the 20s, 30s and 40s.
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.
Agricultural workers harvest jasmine flowers at sunrise at a field in the village of Shubra Balula in Egypt's northern Nile delta province of Gharbiya on July 7.
ENVIRONMENT / Climate change
Aug 25, 2025

Egyptian farmers behind world's perfumes face climate fight alone

Jasmine has sustained thousands of Egyptian farmers for generations, but rising temperatures, prolonged dry spells and climate-driven pests are putting that legacy at risk.
As generative AI like ChatGPT becomes more popular, evidence is growing that it may harm mental health by encouraging dependency, weakening critical thinking and even contributing to delusional episodes.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Aug 25, 2025

ChatGPT’s mental health costs are adding up

From brain rot to induced psychosis, the psychological cost of generative AI is growing and flying under the radar.
A measles alert sign is posted outside the entrance to the Cohen Children's Medical Center in New York in March.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 25, 2025

‘Alternative facts’ aren't a reason to skip vaccines

Donald Trump’s health officials have been endorsing alternative facts in science to impose policies that contradict modern medical knowledge.
Eddie Laiche (right) speaks next to Konstantine Anthony, mayor of Burbank, California, in the city in December 2023.
JAPAN
Aug 27, 2025

U.S. public growing critical of nuclear weapons 80 years after atomic bombings

A poll conducted this year showed that only 35% of adults in the U.S. viewed the atomic bombings as justified, while 31% said they were not justified.
Koryo High School players greet their cheering section after beating Hokkaido’s Asahikawa Shiho in the first round of Summer Koshien on Aug. 7. The school withdrew three days later as a bullying scandal enveloped the team.
BASEBALL / FOCUS
Aug 27, 2025

Koshien’s dark summer forces reckoning for high school baseball

A young player’s dream was to play in the National High School Baseball Championship. A series of bullying incidents this year changed all of that.
Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba's ruling Liberal Democratic Party and its coalition partner, Komeito, will screen government agencies and ministries' requests for tax reform at their respective tax panels, aiming to draw up guidelines later this year.
JAPAN / Politics
Aug 30, 2025

Government agencies draw up fiscal year 2026 tax reform requests

The ruling coalition will screen the requests, aiming to draw up late this year tax reform guidelines for the fiscal year starting next April.
People visit a beach near the Wolseong Nuclear Power Plant in Gyeongju, South Korea, in August 2022.
ASIA PACIFIC
Aug 30, 2025

South Korea and U.S. agree to discuss nuclear reprocessing, minister says

Changing an agreement on the issue would mark a major shift for the U.S., which has long sought to limit the number of countries with this capability.
Chugoku Electric Managing Executive Officer Satoshi Osedo (right) and Tetsuo Nishi, mayor of the town of Kaminoseki in Yamaguchi Prefecture on Friday. The two pose for a photo as Osedo hands Nishi a feasibility study report on an interim storage facility for spent fuel from nuclear power plants.
JAPAN
Aug 31, 2025

Yamaguchi prefecture town can store nuclear fuel: Chugoku Electric

Chugoku Electric detected no active faults announced low risk factors such as volcanic activity and tsunami.
A Kurdish member of the Dohuk Antiquities Department works on a grave unearthed along the banks of Mosul Dam on an archaeological site in the Khanke sub-district of Dohuk Governorate on Saturday.
ENVIRONMENT / Climate change
Aug 31, 2025

Ancient tombs unearthed in Iraq due to drought

The tombs, believed to be over 2,300 years old, were unearthed at the edges of the Mosul Dam reservoir in the Khanke region of Iraq's Duhok province.
People suffering from Parkinson's disease during a tango therapy session in Buenos Aires on Aug 26
WORLD / Science & Health
Aug 31, 2025

Argentinean hospital uses the tango to keep Parkinson's symptoms at bay

"We know that Parkinson's requires pharmaceutical treatments. Tango is used to rehabilitate the motor part.
Red croissants decorated with yellow stars are displayed at a bakery shop in Hanoi on Sunday. Decades after independence, French cultural influence remains strong in Vietnam.
ASIA PACIFIC / Politics
Sep 1, 2025

Baguette? No, banh mi: Vietnam celebrates independence from French rule.

Vietnam declared independence 80 years ago, but French cultural influence remains in architecture, language and especially food.
Network School’s co-working space in Johor Bahru, Malaysia
BUSINESS / Tech
Sep 1, 2025

Techno-utopia rises in Malaysia's $100 billion Forest City flop

Entrepreneurs experiment with "startup societies” defined less by historical territory than shared beliefs in technology, cryptocurrency and light regulation.
Protesters wave a pirate flag from the Japanese anime "One Piece," an internet trend used to criticize government policies, during a demonstration in front of the Bali police station in Denpasar, Indonesia, on Saturday.
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 2, 2025

Indonesia’s protests may fade. The fury won’t.

Politicians and business tycoons from the previous era still have clout, through dynastic parties, family owned businesses and patronage networks.
Harvard has been the main target of U.S. President Donald Trump’s efforts to reshape elite higher education, a campaign that started by accusing schools of fostering antisemitism.
WORLD / Crime & Legal
Sep 4, 2025

Harvard $2 billion funding freeze found illegal by U.S. judge

Although the ruling is a win for Harvard and its president Alan Garber, the school’s broader clash with the Trump administration continues.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., U.S. secretary of Health and Human Services, during a Senate Finance Committee hearing in Washington on Thursday
WORLD / Science & Health
Sep 5, 2025

U.S. senators pit Kennedy against Trump on vaccine policy

Half a dozen heated exchanges during a combative three-hour Senate hearing focused on his decision to fire Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Susan Monarez.
East Asia’s fertility plunge is driven not just by financial costs but by perfectionist cultural expectations that burden parents with intense educational and social demands.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Sep 5, 2025

‘Confugenics’ and East Asia's demographic crisis

The numbers are staggering when you dig into them. Parents in Japan covered half of higher education costs in 2024 — more than double the OECD average.
At Syn, chef Naoto Ohno's playfulness is evident in the "Apple," a replica fruit filled with applejack-flavored foie gras and served on a plate decorated with a familiar logo.
LIFE / Food & Drink
Sep 5, 2025

With a global approach, Syn gives French cuisine plenty of latitude

Up-and-coming chef Naoto Ohno draws from his rich travel experiences to redefine cooking traditions at his restaurant in Fukuoka.
Scorched land following a wildfire in the village of San Vicente de Leira, in Galicia, Spain, on Aug. 21
ENVIRONMENT / Climate change
Sep 5, 2025

How Europe lost an area the size of Cyprus to wildfires this year

Climate change is playing a major role in Europe, the world's fastest-warming continent, as searing heat and drought fueled this summer’s blazes.
U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. testifies at a Senate hearing in Washington on Thursday.
WORLD / Science & Health
Sep 7, 2025

Trump backs Kennedy on vaccines despite health and political risks

Some public health officials suggest the political alliance Trump has formed with Kennedy — and the leeway the president is giving him — is leading to dire consequences.
Japan has hired energy consultancy Wood Mackenzie to assess a proposed $44 billion Alaska gas pipeline and LNG project backed by U.S. President Donald Trump, sources say.
BUSINESS
Sep 9, 2025

Japan hires Wood Mackenzie to assess Trump-backed Alaska LNG project: sources

The scope and cost of the deal with Wood Mackenzie is unclear, as is whether any resulting report will be made public.
Twenty-nine years have passed since the murder of Junko Kobayashi, then a fourth-year student at Sophia University, and the arson of her home. On Tuesday, her father, Kenji Kobayashi, called for information at the site of her former residence in Tokyo's Katsushika Ward.
JAPAN / Crime & Legal
Sep 9, 2025

29 years on, family still seeking clues in female student's murder

Junko Kobayashi, then a fourth-year university student, was days away from leaving to study in the United States when her body was found in the burned remains of her family home.
Kansas City Chiefs' Travis Kelce kisses partner — now finacee — Taylor Swift as they celebrate after his team won Super Bowl LVIII in 2024.
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Sep 10, 2025

Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s announcement hits all the right notes in Japan

Japanese culture is in the depths of a nostalgia wave, and the engagement announcement for Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce fits in with it nicely.
Auckland City players take a drink break during a Club World Cup match against Boca Juniors in Nashville in June.
SOCCER
Sep 10, 2025

Extreme heat a rising threat to 2026 World Cup venues, report says

By 2050, nearly 90% of North America's host stadiums will require adaptation to extreme heat while one-third will face water demand equaling or exceeding supply.
Chinese DF-61 intercontinental ballistic nuclear missiles are displayed during a military parade in Beijing, marking the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II on Sept. 3. 
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 10, 2025

The global nuclear picture grows darker and darker

It’s hard, if not impossible, to escape the conclusion that the world is in a grim place when measured by nuclear metrics.

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