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According to the ministry, Japan has about 4,500 companies with annual sales of ¥10 billion or more. But many of them are concentrated in metropolitan areas.
BUSINESS / Companies
Mar 15, 2025

Japan to invite small businesses to declare ¥10 billion sales targets

The country has about 4,500 companies with annual sales of ¥10 billion or more, but many of them are concentrated in metropolitan areas.
An early pioneer of artificial intelligence is interested in teaching AI models how to efficiently forget.
BUSINESS / Tech
Mar 15, 2025

AI pioneer wants Europe to forge its own nimbler way forward

Sepp Hochreiter, an early pioneer of the technology, is interested in teaching AI models how to efficiently forget.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy speaks during a press briefing in Kyiv on Saturday.
WORLD / Politics
Mar 16, 2025

Zelenskyy accuses Russia of trying to trap Ukraine’s forces amid ceasefire talks

Fighting is raging in and around the part of the Kursk region that Ukraine seized in a surprise offensive into Russian territory last summer.
U.S. President Donald Trump’s foreign policy, marked by betrayal and disregard for relationships, has weakened America’s global alliances, prompting countries to consider alternative allies.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 16, 2025

America is surrounded by enemies — that it created

This is not just a Trump problem; America’s whole reputation is shot.
A Russian soldier at an artillery position in the Kursk region of Russia on Dec. 2. Ukrainian forces have pulled almost entirely out of the Kursk region of Russia, ending an offensive that had stunned the Kremlin last summer with its speed and audacity.
WORLD
Mar 17, 2025

How Ukraine’s offensive in Russia’s Kursk region unraveled

At the height of the campaign, Ukrainian forces controlled some 1,300 square kilometers of Russian territory. Now they hold just a small sliver of land along the border.
U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian leader Vladimir Putin hold a bilateral meeting at the Group of 20 leaders summit in Osaka in June 2019.
WORLD / Politics / ANALYSIS
Mar 18, 2025

Trump discussion with Putin to focus on what Ukraine will lose

In an echo of the Yalta Conference in 1945, the American and Russian leaders will talk on Tuesday about who gets what in the process of ending the war in Ukraine.
A MI-8 helicopter from the Belarus army carries the Belarusian national flag in Minsk in 2017.
JAPAN / Politics
Mar 18, 2025

Belarus sentences Japanese man to seven years for spying

The man allegedly took photos of military facilities as well as railway infrastructure, and had traveled to the Ukrainian border.
Yuki Niimi, the widow of Tomomitsu Niimi, who was executed in 2018 along with other former members of the doomsday cult Aum Shinrikyo for their roles in the 1995 sarin gas attacks on the Tokyo subway system, poses with a photo of her husband (front) with cult leader Shoko Asahara, in Osaka in February.
JAPAN / Crime & Legal
Mar 18, 2025

'Until the very end, he gave no apology': Widow of Aum killer speaks out

Tomomitsu Niimi was behind bars when he met Yuki Niimi, and when they married in 2011.
The Intel headquarters in Santa Clara, California
BUSINESS / Tech
Mar 18, 2025

Intel's new CEO plots overhaul of manufacturing and AI operations

Intel reported an annual loss of $19 billion in 2024, its first since 1986.
Public Security Intelligence Agency officers enter the headquarters of Hikari no Wa, one of the three successor groups to Aum Shinrikyo, in Tokyo in July 2019.
JAPAN / Crime & Legal
Mar 19, 2025

Aum Shinrikyo successor groups still dangerous, justice minister says

The minister also expressed concern about the groups' activities in recent years to recruit young people with little knowledge of the deadly attack.
Alain Bouchard (left), chairman and founder of Alimentation Couche-Tard, speaks during a news conference in Tokyo on March 13.
BUSINESS / Companies
Mar 19, 2025

Couche-Tard meets privately with Seven & I investors, pressing case for takeover

The Canadian firm has sought to reassure the public and key stakeholders that it's not considering a hostile takeover, despite a monthslong standoff with Seven & I.
Dodgers pitcher Clayton Kershaw takes part in a sumo demonstration in Tokyo on Friday.
SUMO / INSIDE SUMO
Mar 19, 2025

Japan’s twin obsessions meet as MLB visits sumo’s heartland

Sumo is often referred to as Japan’s national sport but it’s baseball that is the country’s one true obsession. This week, those two sports are intersecting in Tokyo.
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks with C.C. Wei, chief executive of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., at a news conference in Washington on March 3.
BUSINESS / Tech
Mar 19, 2025

Tariff threats spur TSMC’s Taiwan peers to seek U.S. expansion

Taiwanese electronic firms' migration of manufacturing to the U.S. has accelerated from previous years as U.S. President Donald Trump threatens more trade barriers.
Nick Kyrgios pumps his fist after winning a point during his win over Mackenzie McDonald at the Miami Open on Wednesday.
TENNIS
Mar 20, 2025

Kyrgios gets much needed boost with first win since 2022

Kyrgios's career has been blighted by injuries in the last two years and he had to retire from his first round match at Indian Wells earlier this month.
Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a meeting in Moscow on Wednesday.
WORLD / Politics / ANALYSIS
Mar 20, 2025

Putin advances strategic aims while ceding little to Trump

The agreement to a narrow ceasefire in which Russia and Ukraine would stop attacking each other's energy facilities gives Moscow an edge against Kyiv.
A protester stands near the U.S. Department of Education headquarters in Washington on March 12.
WORLD
Mar 20, 2025

Trump will sign order to shut down Department of Education, White House says

Abolishing the Department of Education would be the first attempt by the U.S. president and his billionaire adviser Elon Musk to shut down a cabinet-level agency.
Women's March Tokyo, a demonstration march against sexual violence and discrimination against women, is held on International Women's Day in Tokyo's Shibuya Ward on March 8.
JAPAN
Mar 20, 2025

Women remain underrepresented in Japan's news industry

Correcting the gender gap is an urgent issue in the industry, with such a change expected to bring women's perspectives to newsrooms.
The Kyoto Family Court dismissed a petition a married person filed to have their gender designation changed in the family register.
JAPAN / Crime & Legal
Mar 20, 2025

Kyoto court rejects married person's petition for gender-designation change

The petitioner's side immediately appealed the ruling.
U.S. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell speaks at a news conference in Washington on Wednesday.
BUSINESS / Economy
Mar 20, 2025

Powell downplays growing risks, sees tariff impact as transitory

His use of the word "transitory” was surprising because the Fed employed the same word when inflation exploded following the onset of COVID-19.
It has become the government's urgent priority to address the issue of an acute labor shortage in the Self-Defense Forces, as recruitment has consistently fallen short of targets.
JAPAN / FOCUS
Mar 21, 2025

Higher pay and career support planned to help boost Japan's SDF ranks

Recruitment for the Self-Defense Forces has consistently fallen short of targets, with only about 10,000 personnel hired in fiscal 2023 — half of the quota of about 20,000.
Israeli soldiers work by military vehicles, amid a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, near the border with Gaza, in Israel, on Feb. 15.
WORLD / Politics / ANALYSIS
Mar 21, 2025

In Israel, reservist burnout and little public appetite for more war in Gaza

A full-scale ground war against Hamas could prove more complicated amid waning public support, exhausted military reservists and political challenges.
A protest outside the Indonesian parliament against revisions to the country's military law that will allocate more civilian posts for military officers, in Jakarta, on Thursday.
ASIA PACIFIC / Politics
Mar 21, 2025

Indonesia parliament passes changes to military law amid protest and concern

Civil society groups say the revisions could take the world's third-biggest democracy back to a draconian era when military officers dominated civilian affairs.
The Dodgers' Shohei Ohtani was the most popular player during MLB's Tokyo Series.
BASEBALL / MLB
Mar 21, 2025

Tokyo Series generates company-record $40 million in sales for Fanatics

According to the company, over 200,000 fans shopped at the official MLB stores operated by Fanatics
Hamas gunmen stand guard at a funeral for a deputy military commander in the central Gaza Strip in February.
WORLD / Politics
Mar 22, 2025

Hamas studies U.S. 'bridge' proposal for truce as Israel escalates return to war

Israel has intensified a military onslaught to press the Palestinian militant group to free the remaining Israeli hostages.
U.S. President Donald Trump takes questions from reporters in the White House on Friday.
WORLD / Politics
Mar 23, 2025

How Elon Musk’s DOGE cuts leave a vacuum that China can fill

When President Donald Trump announced Friday that the United States would move ahead with a long-debated project to build a stealthy next-generation fighter jet, the message to China was clear: The United States plans to spend tens of billions of dollars over the next decade, probably far longer, to...
Italy's Federica Brignone celebrates her overall and downhill World Cup titles after the final event of the season in Sun Valley, Idaho, was canceled on Saturday.
MORE SPORTS / Alpine skiing
Mar 23, 2025

Canceled downhills give Brignone and Odermatt World Cup titles

Last season, Brignone finished second in the overall, slalom and giant slalom standings.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer speaks to Royal Navy soldiers outside a BAE Systems factory in Barrow-in-Furness, England, on Thursday.
WORLD / Politics
Mar 23, 2025

Keir Starmer on Putin, Trump and Europe’s challenge: ‘We’ve known this moment was coming’

Behind a whirlwind of diplomacy is Starmer's true goal: Persuading Trump of the value of NATO.
A firefighter works at a site of an apartment building hit by a Russian drone strike in Kyiv on Sunday.
WORLD / Politics
Mar 24, 2025

Ukraine and U.S. teams hold talks in Saudi Arabia, with U.S. envoy hopeful on ending war

Moscow agreed to a U.S. proposal to stop attacks on energy infrastructure but both Russia and Ukraine have reportedly continued strikes.
George Foreman knocks out Michael Moorer during the 10th round of their bout in Las Vegas on Nov. 5, 1994.
MORE SPORTS / Boxing
Mar 24, 2025

WBC president Mauricio Sulaiman calls George Foreman's record unbreakable

Professional boxing is an unforgiving sport, and Sulaiman believes nobody can match or break Foreman's record of winning heavyweight titles two decades apart.
Palestinians try to put out a fire at the emergency department of the Nasser Hospital after it was hit by an Israeli airstrike, in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip on Sunday.
WORLD
Mar 24, 2025

Airstrike on Gaza hospital kills 5; Israel says target was Hamas militant

The Israeli military said its attack followed extensive intelligence and used precise munitions to minimize harm at the site.

Longform

In 2020, 38% of all households were single-person. That figure is projected to rise to 44.3% by 2050.
The rise of AI companionship in a lonely Japan