Search - 2023

 
 
Aoi Ito returns the ball against Jasmine Paolini at IGA Stadium in Montreal on Monday.
TENNIS
Jul 30, 2025

Japanese qualifier Aoi Ito ousts seventh seed Paolini in Montreal

Ito reached the semifinals last October at Osaka in her WTA debut, but until this week had not won a tour-level match.
China players pose for a photo before a World Cup qualifying match against Thailand at Rajamangala National Stadium in Bangkok on Nov. 16, 2023. President Xi Jinping's anti-corruption drive has ensnared several high-profile figures involved in the country's struggle to build a successful men's national soccer team.
SOCCER
Jul 30, 2025

Two former China soccer officials sentenced for corruption

President Xi Jinping's anti-corruption drive has ensnared several high-profile figures involved in China's struggle to build a successful men's national soccer team.
Fuji TV headquarters in Tokyo's Minato Ward.  Fuji TV came under fire over the manner in which it handled a case of “sexual trouble” involving former boy band member Masahiro Nakai and a female announcer.
JAPAN / Media / FOCUS
Jul 30, 2025

How the Japanese TV industry is changing

After a series of major scandals in recent years, Japan’s TV industry appears to be growing more sensitive to issues of harassment and misconduct.
Foreign Minister Takeshi Iwaya and Indian External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar meet with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong in Washington in January.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Jul 30, 2025

As China advances and the U.S. retreats, Japan-India ties grow stronger

Located on two ends of the Indo-Pacific region, India and Japan anchor a stable counterweight to China and a mercurial Trump.
Lazizbek Mullojonov of Uzbekistan poses with his heavyweight boxing medal at the Roland-Garros Stadium during the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris on Aug. 9, 2024.
OLYMPICS / Boxing
Jul 30, 2025

Olympic champion Mullojonov provisionally suspended for banned substance

The 26-year-old Uzbek boxer tested positive for methasterone, a synthetic anabolic-androgenic steroid associated with the promotion of rapid muscle growth and increased strength.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney speaks about recognizing Palestinian statehood at a news conference in Ottawa on Wednesday.
WORLD / Politics
Jul 31, 2025

Canada plans to recognize Palestinian state, raising allies' pressure on Israel

"Canada condemns the fact that the Israeli government has allowed a catastrophe to unfold in Gaza," said Prime Minister Mark Carney.
Liverpool's Wataru Endo controls the ball during a preseason friendly against Yokohama F. Marinos in Yokohama on Wednesday.
SOCCER
Jul 31, 2025

Liverpool's Wataru Endo looks back on unsuccessful attempt to join Marinos

It was the first time Endo played in the Liverpool shirt in his own country.
Palestinians carry aid supplies that entered Gaza through Israel, in Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip on Wednesday.
WORLD / Politics
Jul 31, 2025

Israeli rights groups break taboo with accusations of genocide

The charge of genocide is deeply sensitive in Israel because of its origins in the work of Jewish legal scholars in the wake of the Nazi Holocaust.
Justice Minister Keisuke Suzuki attends a news conference at the Japan National Press Club in Tokyo on Wednesday.
JAPAN / Society
Jul 31, 2025

Japan's foreign population could top 10% in 2040, says justice minister

A 2023 estimate had projected that Japan's foreign population would exceed 10% in the 2070s.
The Maritime Self-Defense Force's chief of staff, Adm. Akira Saito, speaks at a news conference at the Defense Ministry on Wednesday in Tokyo.
JAPAN
Jul 31, 2025

Over 90 MSDF members punished over scandal involving shipbuilders

The MSDF's chief of staff will lose 10% of his salary for a month over the scandal, in which members improperly received goods from four shipbuilders.
A nurse examines a malnourished child at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, on July 25.
WORLD / Society
Jul 31, 2025

On Gaza malnutrition ward, a child’s arm is as wide as mother’s thumb

Gaza's food stocks have been running out since Israel, at war with Hamas since October 2023, cut off all supplies to the territory in March.
Hun Sen speaks at a press conference at the National Assembly after a vote to confirm his son, Hun Manet, as Cambodia's prime minister in Phnom Penh on August 22, 2023.
ASIA PACIFIC / Politics
Jul 31, 2025

Cambodia's Hun Sen at the helm in border conflict with Thailand

The former leader played an outsized role in events leading up to the deadliest fighting between Thailand and Cambodia in over a decade.
The Angels David MacKinnon runs to first after recording an RBI single for his first MLB hit on June 22, 2022.
BASEBALL / Sac Bunts
Jul 31, 2025

Former Seibu player David MacKinnon hopes to connect baseball world with new podcast

MacKinnon decided to retire earlier this year after playing in MLB, NPB and KBO during his career.
The average correct answer rate for description-type questions in the Japanese-language section of the fiscal 2025 national achievement test for third-year junior high school students was as low as 25.6%, according to the education ministry.
JAPAN
Aug 1, 2025

Japanese students struggle with description-type tests

Students seemed to struggle especially with questions asking them to write their thoughts in a way others can understand.
A fireworks display in Imabari, Ehime Prefecture, on Aug. 4 last year. The show has been one of the return gifts for hometown tax donations to the city.
JAPAN
Aug 1, 2025

Furusato nо̄zei hometown tax donations hit record ¥1.3 trillion in 2024

Of Japan's 47 prefectures, only Fukuoka, Saga and Kagoshima received lower donations than in fiscal 2023.
Emissions rise from a smokestack at the Conesville Power Plant in Conesville, Ohio.
ENVIRONMENT / Climate change
Aug 1, 2025

How Trump-vetted scientists are trying to shred the climate consensus

A new report is part of an effort by the Trump administration to try to end the U.S. government’s authority to regulate greenhouse gases.
A shipwreck of a boat, used by refugees in the past, is stranded at a shore in the northern part of Lesbos island, Greece
WORLD
Aug 1, 2025

On Europe's hardened frontier, Greek island keeps migrants at bay

Ten years after it was a hot spot for migrants, Lesbos shows how far government responses have hardened against people seeking refuge in Europe.
A synchronous speaker stands in a dubbing studio in Munich. The rise of AI raises the question of whether voice dubbing actors will be needed in the future.
BUSINESS / Tech
Aug 1, 2025

Voice actors push back as AI threatens dubbing industry

As AI-generated voices become more sophisticated and cost-effective, voice actor industry associations are calling for tighter regulations.
U.S. President Donald Trump celebrates after signing executive orders on artificial intelligence at the “Winning the AI Race” Summit in Washington on July 23.
COMMENTARY / World / Geoeconomic Briefing
Aug 1, 2025

Will Trump’s tech policies propel U.S. success against China?

As China mobilizes all its resources for an all-out contest for technological supremacy, the U.S. cannot afford economic inefficiencies and to push its closest partners away.
U.S. President Donald Trump takes questions from reporters at the White House in Washington on Wednesday.
BUSINESS / Economy
Aug 2, 2025

Trump fires data chief on bad job news and gets chance to tilt Fed

Trump fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, hours after it sent markets tumbling with a report that showed a dramatic slowdown in U.S. hiring.
Israeli soldiers drive a tank in southern Israel, on the border with the Gaza Strip, earlier this year.
WORLD
Aug 2, 2025

Israeli military intelligence goes back to basics with focus on spies, not tech

The agency is reviving an Arabic-language recruitment program for high school students and training all troops in Arabic and Islam.
Sha'Carri Richardson after crossing the finish line to win the women's 4x100-meter relay final for the U.S. at the Paris Olympics in August last year.
MORE SPORTS / Athletics
Aug 2, 2025

Track star Sha'Carri Richardson arrested for suspected domestic violence in Seattle

Richardson withdrew from the 100-meter semifinals at the U.S. track championships in Eugene, Oregon, after participating in Thursday's heats.
Lakers star Luka Doncic speaks during an interview on Saturday in El Segundo, California, after his contract extension was announced.
BASKETBALL / NBA
Aug 3, 2025

Doncic embraces championship hopes after inking $165 million contract extension

Doncic, 26, arrived in Los Angeles in a stunning February trade that sent Anthony Davis to the Dallas Mavericks.
Radwimps lead singer Yojiro Noda threw himself into the rock band’s Green Stage performance ahead of headliner Vampire Weekend.
CULTURE / Music
Aug 4, 2025

Fuji Rock's weekend of surprises was one of its best yet

Thousands braved crowds and slow-moving lines, but unexpected guest appearances by Mariya Takeuchi and Atarashii Gakko! made this year’s event one of the all-time greats.
Troops from the Ground Self-Defense Force launch a Type 12 surface-to-ship missile at Beecroft Weapons Range in Australia's New South Wales state during Exercise Talisman Sabre on July 14.
ASIA PACIFIC / FOCUS
Aug 3, 2025

'Firsts’ abound in latest Talisman Sabre joint military drills

The multinational military drills saw over 80 "firsts" in which participants either tested new systems or performed certain combined activities for the first time.
Isao Taniguchi (center), chief of the National Institute of Technology, and Yuto Kashihara (left), who founded D-yorozu, promote a tie-up with BizReach in Tokyo last week.
BUSINESS
Aug 3, 2025

'Kōsen' tech colleges and HR firm tie up for student entrepreneurs

The National Institute of Technology, which oversees the 51 national kōsen across Japan, signed a partnership agreement with BizReach last month.
A three-generation family, Susumu Sato (center), his daughter Akiyo Nishida (left) and his granddaughter Nanako Nishida, is working to pass on to future generations the memory of a massive air raid in the city of Toyama that occurred 80 years ago.
JAPAN
Aug 3, 2025

80 years on: Three generations pass on memory of Toyama air raid

In the air raid, which occurred shortly before the end of World War II, U.S. B-29 bombers destroyed 99.5% of Toyama's urban area.
Vladimir Putin has been rehabilitating Josef Stalin for more than two decades — and reviving some of the worst elements of the Soviet era in the process.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 3, 2025

Glory to Stalin and the whitewashing of history

Russia’s Communist Party recently asserted that, in Stalin’s “deeds and works,” Russians can seek “answers to the fateful challenges of our time.”
Miyu Yamashita poses with the trophy after winning the Women's British Open in Porthcawl, Wales, on Sunday.
MORE SPORTS / Golf
Aug 4, 2025

Miyu Yamashita shows nerves of steel to win Women's British Open

Yamashita's previous best performance in a major was a tie for second place at last year's Women's PGA Championship.
Palestinians leave a food distribution point run by the U.S.- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) group with bags and wooden pallets, near the Netsarim corridor in the central Gaza Strip on Sunday. Aid agencies have warned that Gaza's population is facing a catastrophic famine, triggered by Israeli restrictions on aid.
WORLD / FOCUS
Aug 4, 2025

Chaos, gangs, gunfire: Gaza aid fails to reach most in need

After images of malnourished children drew international outcry, aid has started to be delivered to the territory again, but international organizations say it's not enough.

Longform

The byzantine process for converting a foreign driver’s license into a Japanese one entails mountains of paperwork and significant stamina — unless you're a lucky license holder from a country or region where these requirements are waived.
Driving in Japan isn’t hard. Getting the license is.