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Fans watch Game 5 of the World Series at Fields, a sports bar in Tokyo’s Shibuya Ward, on Thursday morning.
BASEBALL
Oct 31, 2024

Fans gather early at Shibuya bar to watch Shohei Ohtani's big night

Game 5 of the World Series started at around 9 a.m. on Thursday for fans in Japan.
Officials gather at the BRICS summit in Russia on Oct. 24. It it estimated that by 2040-2050, the gross domestic product of the Group of Seven countries will be surpassed by that of emerging economies, raising questions as to whether the U.S. is prepared for this shift.
COMMENTARY / World / Geoeconomic Briefing
Nov 1, 2024

The U.S. is unprepared for a multipolar world

There is little acknowledgement in the U.S. that the world it now made up of multiple centers of power, which risks making Washington's foreign policy ineffective.
Suzumi Suzuki’s “Gifted,” translated by Allison Markin Powell, centers on a hostess working in Kabukicho. Rather than focusing on the protagonist’s occupation, the story plunges the reader into her strained relationship with her dying mother.  
CULTURE / Books
Nov 3, 2024

A nuanced glimpse into the cloistered world of Kabukicho

Drawing on her own experience working in adult entertainment, Suzumi Suzuki crafts a fresh, visceral work for her debut novel, "Gifted"
Smoke billows from a chimney at a combined-cycle gas turbine power plant in Drogenbos, Belgium, on Dec. 6, 2023.
ENVIRONMENT / Climate change
Nov 4, 2024

The world promised to tame methane, but emissions are still rising

World leaders and fossil fuel executives have declared tackling methane — and doing so quickly — a crucial priority.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy attends a press conference at the NATO headquarters in Brussels on Oct. 17.
WORLD / Politics
Nov 6, 2024

Clashes with North Korean troops create 'instability,' Zelenskyy says

More than 10,000 North Korean troops have arrived in Russia, South Korea's Defense Ministry said.
The Japan Pavilion at the Venice Biennale is located in the Giardini, a historic park in the Italian city.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Nov 6, 2024

Venice Biennale: 70 years of bringing Japanese art to the world

The Venice Biennale has been an international showcase for Japanese art for over seven decades. This year, Yuko Mohri is representing Japan at the prestigious event.
Then-U.S. President Donald Trump and Russia leader Vladimir Putin talk during a meeting at the Presidential Palace in Helsinki in July 2018.
WORLD / Politics / ANALYSIS
Nov 9, 2024

The long global trail of resentment behind Trump’s resurrection

Disillusionment with the world that emerged from the Cold War has fueled a long-gathering revolt against the established order.
Former President Donald Trump with Elon Musk during a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania on Oct. 5. The Tesla billionaire is a key figure in the president-elect's orbit. One question is whether his views on climate and clean energy will have any sway.
WORLD
Nov 9, 2024

Musk believes in global warming. Trump doesn’t. Will that change?

The Tesla billionaire is a key figure in the president-elect's orbit. One question is whether his views on climate and clean energy will have any sway.
Donald Trump arrives for an election night event at the Palm Beach Convention Center in West Palm Beach, Florida, on Wednesday.
BUSINESS / Economy
Nov 10, 2024

Charting the global economy: Trump win reverberates around the world

Fed Chair Jerome Powell said Trump’s re-election will have 'no effect' on the central bank’s policy decisions in the near-term.
President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev speaks at the Opening Ceremony of the United Nations climate change conference COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan, on Tuesday.
WORLD / Politics
Nov 13, 2024

COP29 host Azerbaijan hits out at West in defense of using oil and gas

Some observers of the COP29 negotiations said the president of Azerbaijan's remarks did not bode well for a strong result from the two-week summit.
Rory McIlroy deemed 2024 as a success despite missing out on winning his fifth major.
MORE SPORTS
Nov 14, 2024

Rory McIlroy motivated to keep up with Scottie Scheffler and Xander Schauffele

McIlroy said will be more selective about the events he plays in the United States next year.
U.S. President Joe Biden waves as he walks with Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit, in Woodside, California, on Nov. 15, 2023.
WORLD / Politics
Nov 14, 2024

Biden and Xi to have face-to-face at Asia-Pacific summit in Peru

It will likely be the last meeting between the sitting leaders of the world's largest economies before Joe Biden hands the reins back to Donald Trump.
Demonstrators hold a giant picture of Brazilian environmental activist Txai Surui, to urge world leaders to protect the environment and defend the Amazon rainforest, at Botafogo beach in Rio de Janeiro on Sunday.
WORLD / Politics
Nov 18, 2024

G20 talks in Rio reach breakthrough on climate finance, sources say

The ongoing U.N. climate talks have thrown a spotlight on the G20's efforts to tackle global warming.
Argentina's President Javier Milei waves from a car in Buenos Aires on Saturday.
WORLD / Politics
Nov 18, 2024

Argentina’s Milei seen playing the role of spoiler at Lula’s G20

Argentina's leader appears to have little regard for multilateral institutions like the G20 and few qualms about irking world leaders with whom he disagrees.
Leaders attending the launch of the Global Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty pose for a group photo after the first session of the G20 Leaders' Meeting in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on Monday.
WORLD / Politics
Nov 20, 2024

Brazil urges G20 leaders to move faster on net zero climate targets

Brazil's leader noted this is likely the world's warmest year on record as climate disasters such as flooding and droughts become more frequent and intense.
American skier Mikaela Shiffrin celebrates on the podium after securing her 99th career World Cup win on Saturday in Gurgl, Austria.
MORE SPORTS / Alpine skiing
Nov 24, 2024

Mikaela Shiffrin takes 99th World Cup win, putting her on course for 100 on home snow

Shiffrin won the slalom in the resort of Gurgl by a comfortable 0.55 of a second from Italian-born Lara Colturi, who skis for Albania, in second place.
Afghan women sew clothes at a handicraft workshop in Kabul on Nov. 10. Many women have launched small businesses in the past three years to meet their own needs and support other Afghan women, whose employment sharply declined after the Taliban authorities took power in 2021, imposing rules that squeezed women from many areas of work and public life.
WORLD / Society
Nov 25, 2024

Afghan women turn to entrepreneurship under Taliban

Though some businesses are a lifeline, salaries cannot cover all costs and many women are still stalked by economic hardship.
An employee of Trex stands with bales of used plastic, which the company recycles into decking material.
ENVIRONMENT / Sustainability
Nov 25, 2024

Can the world unite to end the plastic pollution crisis?

The rising toll of plastic in the environment is impossible to ignore.
At the United Nations climate conference in Baku, rich nations found that efforts to reduce their own emissions and fund climate programs elsewhere in the world bought them little favor with developing countries most at risk of global warming.
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 26, 2024

Clean power must offer more hope to beat fossil fuels

Wealthy nations must treat climate change as a genuine crisis, advocating for bold financing programs to enable poor nations to industrialize with clean energy.
Taiwan's Lin Yu-ting battles Julia Szeremeta of Poland in the final of the women's 57-kilogram division at the Paris Olympics in August.
MORE SPORTS / Boxing
Nov 28, 2024

Taiwan Olympic boxing champion quits event after gender questions

Lin, who was embroiled in a gender row at the Paris Olympics, was due to compete in the World Boxing Cup Finals in Sheffield starting Wednesday.
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.
The United Nations once projected the world’s population would peak at 10.3 billion in the 2080s, but now expects 700 million fewer inhabitants by 2100.
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 4, 2024

Why falling fertility is not a crisis

The current population decline mirrors past transitions like the industrial revolution, where smaller families fueled economic growth and innovation.
One of the representatives of 2024 Nobel Peace Prize winner Nihon Hidankyo, Terumi Tanaka, speaks during the Nobel Peace Prize awarding ceremony in Oslo City Hall on Tuesday.
JAPAN
Dec 10, 2024

Nobel Peace Prize winner Nihon Hidankyo calls for a world without nukes

The atomic bomb survivors urged countries to abolish the weapons resurging as a threat 80 years after the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings.
Numbered evidence markers indicate where bullet casings were located at the crime scene outside the New York Hilton Midtown, where Brian Thompson, the chief executive of UnitedHealthcare, was fatally shot, Dec. 4.
WORLD / Crime & Legal
Dec 13, 2024

Suspect in UnitedHealthcare shooting visited Japan, then vanished

New details are emerging about Luigi Mangione’s growing impatience with "a capitalist society” and his search for refuge in the mountains of Japan.
People wave the flag of the Syrian National Coalition as they celebrate the fall of the Assad regime in Aleppo, Syria, on Wednesday.
EDITORIALS
Dec 13, 2024

The Syrians have a chance to be free. They need our help.

The future of Syria, and the wider Middle East, remains uncertain, however, and the ultimate outcome could be more threatening than that of the Assad era.
World chess champion Gukesh Dommaraju became the youngest undisputed world chess champion on Thursday, beating China's Ding Liren in the final match of their series in Singapore.
MORE SPORTS / Chess
Dec 14, 2024

Gukesh Dommaraju's championship win fuels chess dreams in India

Gukesh stunned China's Ding Liren on Thursday when he seized upon an unfortunate blunder to win the last game of the World Chess Championship.
Corn crops affected by a long drought, near Buenos Aires in January 2022
ENVIRONMENT / Sustainability
Dec 15, 2024

World falls short of drought deal at Saudi-hosted talks

The Riyadh talks came after a lack of progress on in other international summits regarding biodiversity, plastics pollution and climate finance in recent months.
People holding K-pop idol sticks attend a rally to protest South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, in Seoul on Dec. 8.
CULTURE / Entertainment news
Dec 15, 2024

'Into the New World': the K-pop song that became South Korea's protest anthem

The Girls' Generation track has a history of being used to give young South Koreans a voice in politics.
Jay Rubin’s new translation of Haruki Murakami’s “End of the World and Hard-Boiled Wonderland,” in part set in a walled city where inhabitants’ shadows are forcibly removed, speaks to the author’s quirky, exhaustive attention to detail when rendering his imaginative world on the page.
CULTURE / Books
Dec 16, 2024

Jay Rubin takes us back to Haruki Murakami's world

A new translation of “End of the World and Hard-Boiled Wonderland” brings the fan favorite closer to the original Japanese text.
Nils Nielsen coaches Switzerland during the a match in September 2022. On Wednesday, the Dane was introduced as the next coach of Nadeshiko Japan.
SOCCER
Dec 18, 2024

New Nadeshiko Japan coach Nils Nielsen targets World Cup glory

The 53-year-old Dane becomes Japan's first foreign-born women's coach and succeeds Futoshi Ikeda, who left at the end of his contract in August.

Longform

Rock group The Yellow Monkey played K-Arena Yokohama in June as part of a nationwide tour. Concerts are increasingly popular in the age of social media as users value in-person experiences.
Inside Japan’s arena boom: Sports, sound and city-building