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A statue of Konosuke Matsushita in the grounds of the Konosuke Matsushita Museum in Kadoma, Osaka Prefecture
BUSINESS / Companies
Nov 28, 2024

‘God of management’ comes back to life as an AI model

Panasonic icon Konosuke Matsushita is one of the most respected by the Japanese business community.
Former Olympus Chief Executive Stefan Kaufmann was indicted over alleged violations of law concerning controlled substances.
JAPAN / Crime & Legal
Nov 28, 2024

Former Olympus CEO indicted on suspected violation of drug laws

Stefan Kaufmann was forced to resign last month after the allegation surfaced that he bought illegal drugs.
A police officer directs traffic in front of a court in Hanoi.
ASIA PACIFIC / Crime & Legal
Nov 28, 2024

Rights group says Vietnam's imprisonment of Khmer monks violated religious freedom

A court in the southern province of Long An condemned the men to prison terms between two and six years.
A stone pillar at Tokyo's Yasukuni Shrine, on which the word "toilet" was spray-painted in May
JAPAN / Crime & Legal
Nov 29, 2024

Chinese man pleads guilty to role in vandalizing Yasukuni Shrine

Jiang Zhuojun said he assisted with the vandalizing to protest against Japan's discharging of treated radioactive water from the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant.
Tokyo police have arrested six Chinese nationals on suspicion of unlawful confinement and attempted extortion involving a 23-year-old exchange student who had become involved in a financial dispute over a yami baito, or a “dark” part-time job.
JAPAN / Crime & Legal
Nov 29, 2024

Tokyo police arrest six Chinese nationals over yami baito scheme

The six people are being held on suspicion of unlawful confinement and attempted extortion involving a 23-year-old exchange student.
Drag queen Becca D’Bus plays Dido, the forlorn queen of Carthage, in a drag version of “Dido and Aeneas."
CULTURE / Stage
Nov 30, 2024

Divas and diversity: Opera meets drag in ‘Dido and Aeneas’

Becca D’Bus, one of Singapore’s most popular drag queens, and Tokyo’s voguers and queens team up for a grand show at the Yokohama International Performing Arts Meeting.
Workers building a railway in front of Lusail Stadium in Doha in 2018
SOCCER
Nov 30, 2024

FIFA should pay workers injured building Qatar World Cup, internal report says

The report offered no specific dollar amount of compensation.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum delivers a speech during the inauguration of a family medicine unit in San Nicolas de los Garza, Nuevo Leon State, Mexico, on Saturday.
WORLD / Politics / FOCUS
Dec 1, 2024

Trump’s demand that Mexico stop migrants and drugs may never be met

Mexico's new leader must find ways to appease Trump while avoiding the perception that she easily bends to U.S. demands.
Timeleft uses an algorithm to match its users with five or six strangers in an effort to prompt “human connection” over dinner at a restaurant. It determines the attendees with the help of a simple personality quiz available when you sign up for the service.
COMMUNITY / Issues / The Foreign Element
Dec 2, 2024

Seven strangers and an algorithm: Can this new dinner app help you make friends?

An app called Timeleft hopes to combat big-city alienation through a simple meal with a diverse group of people.
A displaced woman packs up her family's belongings at a school turned into a shelter in Beirut on Nov. 27.
WORLD / Society
Dec 2, 2024

'We have a lost generation': Lebanon's education crisis

At least 500 public schools in Lebanon, roughly one in two in what is a badly underfunded sector, were converted into shelters in recent months to house people.
Jean-Pierre Charriton
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / The Big Questions
Dec 2, 2024

President of L’Oreal Japan leverages innovation

Entered L’Oreal in 1991, in charge of the Biotherme products. After a career path in many countries, he arrived in Japan in 2021.
A supporter of Donald Trump holds a limited edition beer with an image of Trump and the words "Conservative Dad's Revenge," as he attends the New York Young Republican Club watch party on Nov. 6.
WORLD / Politics / FOCUS
Dec 3, 2024

After Trump's win, his election denial movement marches on

Since winning the 2024 election, President-elect Donald Trump has gone quiet on his false claims of voter fraud. But the election denial movement he spawned isn’t going away — and appears to be strengthening in some areas of the country.
The challenge for African governments and communities is how to harness this wave of youthful talent — with all their innovation, resilience and determination — rather than lose them to developed economies.
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 29, 2024

Africa must act to stem its youth brain drain

African governments must harness youthful talent or risk losing it to developed economies.
Trees in a forest in Nyanga, Gabon
ENVIRONMENT / Climate change
Dec 3, 2024

Scientists behind ‘net zero’ concept say nations are getting it wrong

Countries may be claiming carbon credits for work already being done by land and oceans — and the accounting mismatch has consequences.
Anti-government fighters move past abandoned Syrian army military equipment and vehicles southeast of Aleppo on Tuesday.
WORLD / Politics
Dec 4, 2024

Syria rebels 'at gates' of central city Hama

The advance on Syria's fourth-largest city is buoyed by the group's lightning capture of swaths of the north in an offensive that ended four years of relative calm.
Tsutomu Hotta
JAPAN
Dec 4, 2024

Ex-prosecutor Hotta, who probed Lockheed scandal, dies at 90

He also helped decide how to distribute donations made to the Japanese Red Cross Society and the Central Community Chest of Japan after the Great East Japan Earthquake.
Naomi Watanabe, a comedian known for challenging gender and beauty norms in Japan's male-dominated comedy scene
JAPAN
Dec 4, 2024

BBC honors two Japanese in annual list of inspiring women

The theme this year was resilience, celebrating women who "are pushing for change and improving lives at community or global level."
If the deal goes through, the Japanese steelmaker has promised not to transfer any U.S. Steel production capacity or jobs outside the United States.
BUSINESS / Companies
Dec 5, 2024

Nippon Steel committed to U.S. Steel takeover, executive says

"There is no global strategy without the U.S.," Takahiro Mori, the Japanese company's vice chairman, said this week.
This threat of H5N1 avian flu has been exacerbated by inadequate testing, delayed genetic data and insufficient containment measures, with powerful agricultural interests influencing the response.
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 4, 2024

A bird flu pandemic would be one of the most foreseeable catastrophes in history

The threat of H5N1 avian flu has been exacerbated by inadequate testing, delayed genetic data, and insufficient containment measures.
Protesters angry over President Yoon Suk Yeol’s declarations of martial law call on him to step down at a rally at the national assembly in Seoul on Wednesday. REUTERS
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 5, 2024

Where does South Korea's democracy go from here?

Why did he dig himself such a deep political hole? The answer to that is Yoon is not really a “politician” either.
The skeleton of a mammoth, one of the large mammals that roamed North America during the last Ice Age, is displayed at the Mammoth Site where numerous mammoth fossils have been excavated, in Hot Springs, South Dakota, on Aug. 31, 2018.
WORLD
Dec 5, 2024

Mammoths topped the menu for North American Ice Age people

Scientists discovered that the woman's diet was mostly meat from megafauna — the largest animals in an ecosystem — with an emphasis on mammoths.
While FromSoftware's Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree is a strong contender for game of the year, Black Myth: Wukong, the first AAA game made by a Chinese developer, offers some stiff competition.
LIFE / Digital / 2024 in Review
Dec 6, 2024

It’s Japan versus China for 2024’s game of the year

Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree and Black Myth: Wukong both have a claim to the best game of 2024, a year marked by cultural scandals and lawsuits.
Video game music has come a long way from its humble origins.
LIFE / Digital / ON: GAMES
Dec 7, 2024

Beyond beeps and boops: Video game music has grown up

Video game music has gone from 8-bit chiptunes to fully realized productions that bring the gamer’s experience to life.
Many of the investors who stuck with cryptocurrency through its ups and downs, its scandals and scams, are now basking in an I-told-you-so glow.
BUSINESS / Markets
Dec 6, 2024

Bitcoin's true believers bask in I-told-you-so glow at $100,000

The milestone marks a spectacular comeback from a “crypto winter” two years ago in the wake of the collapse of the FTX exchange in a pile of fraud.
Newly arrived asylum-seekers take advantage of phone chargers and free Wi-Fi to connect with family back home at an immigrant service center in Oceanside, California, in October 2023.
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 26, 2024

Sanctuary cities may be having an identity crisis

So far, the mayors and governors of these sanctuary cities and states have remained largely undeterred, even defiant in the face of such threats.
A man wearing a mask depicting South Korea President Yoon Suk Yeol dances on a street as people gather for a protest calling for the ouster of Yoon outside the National Assembly in Seoul on Saturday.
ASIA PACIFIC / Society
Dec 7, 2024

K-pop, carols and guillotines at South Korea impeachment protests

Protesters massed outside the National Assembly, many wearing the elaborate outfits, carrying home-made flags or blasting the K-pop tunes.
A low pressure storm system known as a "bomb cyclone" moves off the coast of the U.S. Pacific Northwest and western Canada in a composite satellite image on Nov. 20.
WORLD / Science & Health
Dec 7, 2024

Google introduces AI agent that aces 15-day weather forecasts

They report that their new model can, among other things, outperform the world’s best forecasts meant to track deadly storms and save lives.
Lawmaker Ahn Cheol-soo sits alone as the only People Power Party lawmaker to remain in the voting chamber during the plenary session for the impeachment vote of President Yoon Suk Yeol at the National Assembly in Seoul on Saturday.
ASIA PACIFIC / Politics
Dec 7, 2024

South Korea's Yoon survives impeachment after his party boycotts vote

Yoon's party claimed after the vote that it had blocked the impeachment to avoid "severe division and chaos."
Since Oct. 24, there have been 406 cases of an unidentified illness in Congo’s southwest.
WORLD / Science & Health
Dec 9, 2024

‘Disease X’ outbreak widens as U.N. sends health team to Congo

The unidentified illness is marked by fever, headache, cough, runny nose, and body aches, with 31 deaths currently on record.
Destruction left in the wake of Russia's military invasion of Ukraine in the city of Hulyaipole, in the country's Zaporizhzhia region, in September 2022
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 9, 2024

Does a savage war of partition await Ukraine?

Donald Trump appears bent on striking a “peace” deal with Russia that involves Ukraine’s dismemberment.

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