Search - community

 
 
Akiteru Nogawa, head of the Kagoshima Prefectural Police Department, speaks at a Kagoshima Prefectural Assembly committee in the city of Kagoshima on June 11.
JAPAN / Crime & Legal
Jun 21, 2024

Kagoshima police whistleblower charged with confidentiality breach

Kagoshima police department has been hit by a series of scandals this year, including three cases in which police officers have been arrested.
Pedestrians cross a road in Pudong's Lujiazui Financial District in Shanghai. China has long touted itself as the world’s safest nation, making rare outbursts of public violence stand out.
ASIA PACIFIC / Crime & Legal
Jun 22, 2024

China’s spate of violence prompts outburst of economic anxiety

The reaction of Chinese social media users to a spate of recent violent attacks has exposed widespread discontent about the nation’s downturn.
Seaweed in the ocean off Hayama, Kanagawa Prefecture. Local residents aim to restore seagrass and seaweed beds suffering from marine desertification, and their project has also been certified to receive "blue carbon" credits.
ENVIRONMENT / OUR PLANET
Jun 23, 2024

Japan looks to 'blue carbon' to cut emissions — and restore its coasts

The nation's net zero goal has driven interest in these ecosystems, but verifying the amount of carbon stored by seaweed presents a challenge.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un holds a reception for Russian President Vladimir Putin in Pyongyang on Wednesday. Agreements reached by the two leaders this time were tactical in nature and hardly strategic.
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 22, 2024

Putin’s Pyongyang visit, pivotal talks and a generational shift reshape regional dynamics

The move by Russia and North Korea this time is tactical in nature and hardly strategic.
An Afghan woman carries empty containers to fetch water in Balkh province, Afghanistan, in August 2023.
WORLD / Politics
Jun 24, 2024

U.N.-led Doha meeting with Taliban sparks outcry over women's rights

The U.N. has been seeking a unified, international approach to dealing with the Taliban, who have cracked down on women's rights since returning to power.
Makhachkala, the capital of Dagestan
WORLD
Jun 24, 2024

Gunmen attack church and synagogue in Russia's North Caucasus

The attacks by unidentified gunmen left an Orthodox priest and multiple police officers dead, the region's head said.
Israelis protest for the release of hostages held in Gaza and against the government in Tel Aviv on June 1.
WORLD / Politics
Jun 24, 2024

Israel tech leaders, irked by Netanyahu, eye moves into politics

The war against Hamas is straining Israel's economy, with the central bank projecting costs of around $67 billion through 2025, nearly 15% of the annual GDP.
Philippine Defense Secretary Gilbert Teodoro speaks during the opening session of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations defense ministers' meeting in Jakarta last November.
ASIA PACIFIC / Politics
Jun 24, 2024

Philippines says China deliberately used 'illegal force' disrupt resupply mission

The Philippines' defense cheif said last week's maritime incident, which injured a sailor, was neither a misunderstanding nor an accident.
Dagestan region governor Sergei Melikov (left), who on Monday visited the synagogue and church that were attacked in Derbent, said that foreign forces were involved in the planning of the attacks, but gave no details.
WORLD / Crime & Legal
Jun 25, 2024

Death toll rises to 20 after gunmen attack Russia's Dagestan

No one has claimed responsibility over the coordinated attacks on churches and synagogues, but a local leader claims foreign forces were involved in their planning.
An ingot of a rare earth metal used to make components for technology products at a factory in China. The country is the world’s top exporter of rare earth elements, but that may change if deep-sea mining gains traction in nations like Japan.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Jun 25, 2024

We’ve got to get deep-sea mining right

Seabed mining could muddy the waters of critical minerals' supply chains by tapping into new sources. But will environmental and legal concerns sink the project?
Crosses adorn a makeshift memorial for the shooting victims at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, on May 26, 2022.
WORLD / Science & Health
Jun 26, 2024

U.S. surgeon general declares gun violence a 'public health crisis'

The advisory by Vivek Murthy, who was nominated by President Joe Biden, is the first such major report on gun violence from a surgeon general.
Akimasa Nihongi, who spoke about his experience as a victim of sexual assault by Johnny Kitagawa, the late founder of the eponymous talent agency, said in a video message that victims who report their abuses are often subject to slander and harassment.
JAPAN / Crime & Legal
Jun 27, 2024

Ex-member of Johnny's calls for victim protection at U.N. panel

Akimasa Nihongi said measures ought to be put in place to protect victims from slander and harassment after they go public with abuses.
Expedition tents at Everest Base Camp, 140 kilometers northeast of Kathmandu, in May 2021
ASIA PACIFIC
Jun 27, 2024

As ice melts, Everest's 'death zone' gives up its ghosts

Among those scaling the soaring Himalayan mountain this year was a team aiming to bring corpses down.
Namgyal Phunchok, a Changpa community leader at Chushul village in Ladakh, says the area's pastoralist way of life had been undermined.
ASIA PACIFIC
Jun 27, 2024

The herders caught up in India and China's icy conflict

Swaths of grazing lands have become demilitarized "buffer zones" to keep rival forces apart.
A campaign event of reformist candidate Masoud Pezeshkian less than a week ahead of a presidential election called after Ebrahim Raisi’s death
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 27, 2024

Iran’s election could bring lasting peace

The upcoming election in Iran is more consequential than it's being given credit for. A triumph of the only reformist candidate, Masoud Pezeshkian, would be momentous.
Yuta Orisaka strips things back on his latest album, “Jumon,” though it still features a few explosive moments.
CULTURE / Music
Jun 28, 2024

Yuta Orisaka's folk style is far more than a throwback

The singer-songwriter wanted to make songs his grandmother could enjoy, but that doesn't mean he'll skimp on the electronic touches.
Bolivian President Luis Arce holds a news conference in Casa Grande del Pueblo after the country's armed forces pulled back from the presidential palace and a general was arrested following an apparent coup attempt, in La Paz, Bolivia, on Thursday.
WORLD / ANALYSIS
Jun 28, 2024

Bolivia coup fiasco lays bare a divided country in crisis

The attempt has uncovered tense political fault lines in the nation and growing anger with a flagging economy.
Civil servants listen to the national anthem before the polls open as they wait for voters at a polling station for the Mongolian parliamentary elections in Sergelen sum in Tuv province, Mongolia, on Friday.
ASIA PACIFIC
Jun 28, 2024

Mongolians vote as anger grows over corruption and economy

Analysts expect the ruling Mongolian People's Party to retain its majority.
Ryosuke Kunisawa hopes his "concept brewpub" serves as a focal point to an image change for the salaryman epicenter that is the Shimbashi neighborhood.
LIFE / Food & Drink
Jun 30, 2024

Craft beer, craftsmanship and a family of reinvention

On the first two floors of his family’s slender eight-story building, Kunisawa launched the Kunisawa Brewing Company, Shimbashi's first beer brewery, in May 2022.
If only there was that special someone who could show Cauliflower the same love he gives to everyone he meets.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives
Jul 1, 2024

Won't you find Cauliflower someone to love?

Cauliflower is good with most dogs, adores people and would probably suit just about anyone — young, old or even a family with children.
High blood pressure is the world’s single biggest indicator of death risk, yet it receives little attention and even less funding.
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 28, 2024

The world’s biggest killer that you never considered

One of the most dangerous health conditions, high blood pressure, could be tackled easily and cheaply across the globe. But it's getting less attention than other issues.
U.S. President Joe Biden meets with steelworkers at United Steel Workers headquarters in Pittsburgh in April.
BUSINESS / FOCUS
Jun 29, 2024

Biden and Trump battle for blue-collar voters as steel merger looms over vote

Just how many rank-and-file workers ignore union chiefs and vote for Donald Trump could have a decisive impact in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.
Inside the TikTok office in Singapore in 2023
BUSINESS / Tech
Jul 1, 2024

China’s AI startups head to Singapore in a bid for global growth

Singapore offers many Chinese artificial intelligence startup companies better access to global investors and customers than China does.
Hyundai Wia robotic arms on the production line at the Kia plant in Gwangmyeong, South Korea, on Jan. 3
BUSINESS
Jul 1, 2024

How one of the world's strongest car unions is dealing with EV job losses

Hyundai Motor and Kia’s moves toward electrification are provoking anxiety in South Korea’s highly active and organized labor movement.
The Spirit of Barrow statue celebrates Barrow-in-Furness’s long history of shipbuilding.
WORLD / Politics
Jul 1, 2024

Starmer pledge on nuclear stance mends hole in Labour red wall

The arrival of the railways in the mid-1800s helped transform Barrow into an industrial powerhouse. Submarines have been built in the town’s shipyard since 1886.
A Taliban spokesperson addresses a press conference in Kabul on Saturday.
WORLD / Politics
Jul 2, 2024

Taliban told to 'include women' in public life at U.N. talks

Excluding civil rights groups from the talks was the price for the Taliban government's participation in them.
Each week Neha Mankani comes by boat ambulance to Baba, an old fishing settlement near Karachi, and reportedly one of the world's most crowded islands with some 6,500 people crammed into 0.15 square kilometers.
ENVIRONMENT / Climate change
Jul 2, 2024

Midwife on the front line of climate change on Pakistan's islands

Climate change is swelling the surrounding seas off the megacity of Karachi and baking the land with rising temperatures.
"Khaing," a former teacher with the Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM), sits in a restaurant where she works after fleeing from Myanmar to Thailand to avoid conscription by Myanmar's military junta, in Bangkok on June 4.
ASIA PACIFIC
Jul 2, 2024

'Can't go back': Myanmar conscription exiles struggle in Thailand

Myanmar's junta says it wants to enlist 5,000 people a month aged between 18 and 35, but details are vague.
The focus on artificial intelligence comes as the Self-Defense Forces grapple with concerns about recruitment and its abilities to harness the power of new technologies.
JAPAN
Jul 2, 2024

Japan’s Defense Ministry unveils first basic policy on use of AI

The new policy comes as Japan looks to stave off a manpower shortage and keep pace with China and the U.S. on the technology’s military applications.
A Ukrainian serviceman waits for Russian drones next to a military vehicle with a anti-aircraft cannon at an undisclosed location in Donetsk region, Ukraine.
WORLD / Politics
Jul 3, 2024

China is making and testing lethal attack drones for Russia

Beijing may be edging closer to providing Russia with the sort of lethal aid that western officials have warned against.

Longform

Bear attacks have dominated Japanese news headlines in recent months, with 13 people so far having been killed by the animals.
Japan’s bears have been on their killing spree for more than 100 years