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A firefighter walks among papers and broken glass Sunday outside a damaged office block of the Moscow International Business Center following a reported drone attack.
WORLD
Jul 30, 2023

Three Ukrainian drones downed over Moscow, Russia says

While one of the drones was shot down, two others were "suppressed by electronic warfare" and smashed into an office complex. No one was injured.
Military personnel patrol a street outside a branch of Ukraine's Sense Bank in central Kyiv in June.
WORLD
Jul 30, 2023

Banks are untold story of Ukraine’s survival, even state banks

Oschadbank CEO says Ukrainian state should keep control of some banks after the war because they’ll be helpful if Russia attacks again
Officials closed the gates of the Forbidden City due to heavy rain in Beijing on Sunday.
WORLD
Jul 30, 2023

China upgrades flood alert for Beijing, other northern areas

China’s central government warned areas around Beijing and the north to be prepared to deal with floods brought on by remnants of Typhoon Doksuri.
As artificial intelligence grows more sophisticated, transparency has taken a back seat and could harm its quality and safety.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 30, 2023

Secretive chatbot developers are making a big mistake

Before we can ponder existential threats of the new technology, Silicon Valley must be forced to disclose more about how their tools are created.
An injured person is transported after a blast in Bajaur district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, at the Lady Reading Hospital in Peshawar, Pakistan, on Sunday.
WORLD
Jul 31, 2023

Suicide bomb at political rally in Pakistan kills more than 40

Pakistan has seen a resurgence of attacks by militants since last year when a ceasefire between the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan and Islamabad broke down.
Demonstrators gather in the capita Niamey, Niger, on Sunday. Signs read "long live CNSP," "down with France, ECOWAS."
WORLD
Jul 31, 2023

West Africa threatens force against Niger coup leaders

The response came as crowds in Niger's capital Niamey burned French flags and stoned the former colonial power's mission, drawing tear gas from police.
JAPAN
Aug 6, 2023

Tokyo trials ferries to ease congestion on roads and rail

After conducting two pilot programs in recent years, the city's government aims to launch commuter ferry operations in the current fiscal year.
Pedestrians outside a Seibu department store in Tokyo's Ikebukuro district in April
BUSINESS / Companies
Jul 31, 2023

Seven & I struggles to sell slumping Sogo & Seibu department stores

The holdup is centered around the flagship Seibu department store in Tokyo's Ikebukuro district, with the local government expressing rare opposition.
Residents walk through misters during a heat wave in Phoenix, Arizona, on July 20.
ENVIRONMENT / Climate change
Aug 1, 2023

How urban heat islands add to the misery of heat waves

While grass or soil absorb less heat, asphalt and concrete can absorb as much as 95% of the sun's energy then send it back into the atmosphere.
Then-Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang attends a news conference in Beijing on May 23.
ASIA PACIFIC / Politics / ANALYSIS
Aug 1, 2023

China's ex-foreign minister is gone but wait for explanation goes on

A Foreign Ministry spokeswoman on Thursday said Beijing will release information in a timely matter regarding Qin Gang and opposes "malicious hype."
An inside page of The Japan Times from 1973 carried a story about the discovery of some old Japanese chess pieces.
JAPAN / History / Japan Times Gone By
Aug 1, 2023

Japan Times 1973: 8 'oldest' shogi pieces found in castle's ruins

An ancient discovery and moments that mark the atomic bombings fill past August pages of Japan Times.
Ukrainian Olga Kharlan (left) and Russian Anna Smirnova compete during the women's sabre senior individual qualifiers at the FIE Fencing World Championships in Milan on Thursday.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 30, 2023

Don't ask Ukrainian athletes to shake hands with Russians

In fencing and tennis as in life, responsibility is individual, not collective. All the more reason why Olga Kharlan did the right thing.
JAPAN
Aug 2, 2023

Typhoon Khanun kills one, cuts power to a third of Okinawa homes

High winds hit power lines in Okinawa Prefecture and knocked out electricity to more than 200,000 households on Wednesday morning.
Facebook owner Meta Platforms has started the process of ending news availability in Canada.
BUSINESS / Tech
Aug 2, 2023

Meta starts blocking news in Canada

Google has said it is considering a similar move amid an ongoing global debate as more governments try to make tech firms pay for news content.
Masae Yamanaka joins colleagues from Panasonic Connect to take part in the Tokyo Rainbow Pride parade in April.
BUSINESS / WOMEN AT WORK
Aug 3, 2023

How one woman's career in sales flourished across four companies

As she rose through sales in various companies, Masae Yamanaka stuck to her mother’s teachings: keep working, commit to actions.
China and India both began liberalizing their economies around the same time in the 1980s. But China invested more in human-capital and is now benefiting from that decision.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 1, 2023

Unlike China, India cannot be an economic superpower

In the 1980s, the belief among observers was that an authoritarian Chinese regime would mismanage its economy while a democratic India would thrive.
JAPAN / FOCUS
Aug 3, 2023

Japan's vision of nuke-free world in focus ahead of anniversaries

The tension between Tokyo's lofty goals and realpolitik necessities has made any move toward nuclear disarmament largely elusive.
JAPAN
Aug 3, 2023

Three bodies identified 12 years after March 11 disaster

The identities were confirmed in June this year through mitochondrial DNA testing.
You may hear words like "kanshin" used when talking about baseball player Shohei Ohtani, but are people talking about "interest" or "admiration"?
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Aug 3, 2023

Step on a rhyme to better understand Japanese homophones

Spending time to learn the Japanese language's many homophones can result in a better understanding of definitions — and it's fun.
Migrants sit onboard an inflatable boat before attempting to illegally cross the English Channel to reach Britain, off the coast of Sangatte, northern France, on July 18.
WORLD
Aug 4, 2023

Migrant boat rescue missions do not encourage crossings, study shows

The finding contradicts claims that ships that save migrants in the Mediterranean incentivize people to risk their lives trying to get to the EU.
JAPAN
Aug 4, 2023

Seiichi Morimura, 90, who exposed Japan's wartime atrocities, dies

In a book, he detailed gruesome biological experiments on people at a secret Imperial Army site in occupied China before and during World War II.
Hitachi CEO Keiji Kojima. The company’s metamorphosis belies the argument that the bastions of Japan Inc. are set forever in their ways.
BUSINESS / Companies
Aug 4, 2023

Hitachi reinvents itself in sign of hope for Japan

The old-school conglomerate revamped its governance, shrank its empire to focus on growth and evolved into a more global enterprise.
Visitors to the "Henri Matisse: The Path to Color" exhibition at Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum face tough decisions in the gift shop.
CULTURE / Art
Aug 5, 2023

Matisse gachapon, Hockney parfaits: Japan’s next-level art merch

A Tokyo art exhibit doesn’t feel complete without a room filled wall-to-wall with custom trinkets.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Aug 4, 2023

'Barbenheimer' highlights U.S. ignorance of nuclear reality

The “Barbenheimer” craze shows the U.S. education system needs work and Americans need lessons on nuclear weapons.
The protagonist of Yu Miri’s “The End of August” is a fictionalized version of the author’s maternal grandfather, a long-distance runner who lived in Japanese-occupied Korea.
CULTURE / Books
Aug 6, 2023

Yu Miri’s new book is a bleak, dizzying epic in colonized Korea

In “The End of August,” the Akutagawa Prize-winning author excavates her own family history and traces multiple generations living under Japanese rule.
Demonstrators hold a rally in Washington on Thursday, the day former U.S. President Donald Trump, who is facing federal charges related to attempts to overturn his 2020 election, appeared in a U.S. district court in the nation's capital.
EDITORIALS
Aug 4, 2023

The United States of America vs. Donald J. Trump

The outcome of the trial against former U.S. President Donald Trump will test the rule of law and U.S. democracy.
Already imprisoned Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny (second left) listens to his verdict over a series of extremism charges at the IK-6 penal colony, a maximum-security prison some 250 kilometers (155 miles) east of Moscow, on Friday.
WORLD / Crime & Legal
Aug 5, 2023

Putin critic Alexei Navalny has 19 years added to prison term

The jailed opposition figure said after said the sentence was designed to cow the Russian people into political submission.
People use umbrellas and parasols to seek relief from soaring temperatures while waiting to cross a street outside Tokyo's Shinjuku Station last week.
JAPAN / Science & Health
Aug 5, 2023

Japan marks hottest day of year as mercury hits 40 C

The record temperature was marked in Date, Fukushima Prefecture, as a heat wave continues to scorch much of the country.
Junon used to be too timid to come out from his blanket. Now he loves to get a little attention.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / ADOPT ME!
Aug 7, 2023

A dog, two cats and more are looking for new places to chill

A dog named Loquat and two cats named Junon and Whiskey are hoping to find new human friends to get to know.
Hiroshi Mikitani, co-chief executive officer of Rakuten Medical, speaks at the American Society of Clinical Oncology's meeting in Yokohama on Thursday.
BUSINESS
Aug 7, 2023

Rakuten’s Mikitani spends a fifth of his time on biotech startup

Rakuten Medical, based in San Diego, employs about 200 people and specializes in a therapy that uses light and immunotherapy drugs to fight cancer.

Longform

After pandemic-era border regulations eased, Indian migrants began returning to Japan. Their population now stands at more than 50,000 across the country.
How remote work is rewriting the migrant experience in Japan