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Noe Ito (third from right) was editor-in-chief of feminist magazine Seito and her partner Sakae Osugi (second from right) was a prominent anarchist of the Taisho Era. Both were murdered by military police in 1923.
JAPAN / History / The Living Past
Aug 16, 2025

Taisho Democracy: A turbulent, tenuous era of conflicting ideals

The resilience of Japanese politics, culture and society were tested during the 14 years of the Taisho Era (1912-26).
Smoke rises after an Israeli airstrike in north Gaza on Tuesday
WORLD
Aug 14, 2025

Israel pounds Gaza City, with 123 dead in last 24 hours

The 24-hour death toll was the worst in a week and added to the massive fatalities from the nearly two-year war.
Humanitarian aid waits to be delivered to Gaza, at a logistics site run by the Egyptian Red Crescent outside Arish, Egypt, on Monday.
WORLD
Aug 14, 2025

Turned back from Gaza, aid shipments languish in warehouses and on roadsides

Shipments are rejected for a host of reasons, ranging from minor paperwork issues to concerns over possible dual military use for some of the goods.
T-shirts with images of Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump are displayed for sale at a gift shop in central Moscow, Russia on Tuesday.
WORLD / Politics
Aug 14, 2025

Trump and Putin: A strained relationship

The upcoming meeting between the two leaders in Alaska comes amid tensions over the Russian invasion of Ukraine and fruitless talks to end the conflict.
Rescued migrants rest aboard the migrant search and rescue ship Sea-Watch 5, operated by German NGO Sea-Watch, as it makes its way towards the designated port of Salerno, Italy, on Wednesday.
WORLD / Society
Aug 14, 2025

EU security measures cut illegal arrivals, but migrants take riskier routes

Experts say migrants are adapting to stricter borders controls and becoming more reliant on smugglers and newer, often more dangerous paths.
Setsuko Kawai, who lost her mother and two younger brothers in the March 1945 bombing, has fought for recognition of the victims.
JAPAN / History / FOCUS
Aug 14, 2025

Civilian air raid survivors fight for recognition 80 years after war's end

After drafting a bill to provide concrete relief to survivors this spring, a bipartisan group of lawmakers failed to submit it to parliament days before the session’s closure.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang speaks during the China International Supply Chain Expo in Beijing. Nvidia, along with Advanced Micro Devices, has agreed to pay 15% of revenues from Chinese artificial intelligence chip sales to the U.S. government.
BUSINESS / Tech
Aug 14, 2025

Trump’s deal with Nvidia offers path forward in global trade war

The deal provides U.S. firms a path to enter the Chinese market despite various trade barriers.
Tsukiko Ito shares her experience of the World War II air raid on Akita's Tsuchizaki district, during an interview on July 15 in the prefecture.
JAPAN
Aug 14, 2025

Akita woman recounts one of the last air raids of WWII

Tsukiko Ito, 84, was 4 years old when Akita's Tsuchizaki district was battered by around 130 bombers from the United States and its allies on the night of Aug. 14, 1945.
The Parque da Cidade, the main venue for the COP30 summit, under construction in Belem, Brazil, on May 5.
WORLD / Politics
Aug 14, 2025

Lula’s plan for COP30 in Amazon risks becoming a logistical mess

With fewer than 100 days to go, Brazil is under fire from countries concerned about a shortage of hotel rooms and soaring accommodation costs.
The streets of Tokyo's Ginza district in April. The number of foreign residents in Japan hit a record high at 3.76 million as of the end of last year, comprising just over 3% of the population.
BUSINESS
Aug 14, 2025

Welcoming foreign residents benefits Japan, three quarters of economists say

Some highlighted the need to avoid conflating foreign nationals who may be in Japan temporarily with long-term foreign residents.
A miner holds a sack of ore as it comes out a the mine shaft at the Rubaya coltan mine, near the town of Rubaya, which is controlled by M23 rebels, in eastern Congo on March 24.
WORLD
Aug 14, 2025

Inside the mine that feeds the tech world — and funds Congo’s rebels

The Congolese town of Rubaya produces around 15% of the world’s coltan, which is shipped thousands of kilometers away to Asia where it’s processed into tantalum.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg makes a keynote speech at the company's headquarters in Menlo Park, California, in September last year.
BUSINESS / Companies
Aug 15, 2025

Meta AI rules let bots hold ‘sensual’ chats with kids and offer false info

Meta's standards don’t necessarily reflect "ideal or even preferable” generative AI outputs, an internal document states. But they have permitted provocative behavior by the bots.
Beniya Mukayu, a traditional "ryokan" inn located in Ishikawa Prefecture, considers itself at "the heart of onsen towns, local residents, farmers, fishermen, sake brewers and artisans" — all of which need new, sustainable methods of serving visitors to survive into the future.
LIFE / Travel
Aug 16, 2025

In preserving Japanese hospitality, ‘details are everything’

As part of a new UNESCO initiative, the elite Relais & Chateau hospitality group will empower its Japan-based members to preserve the country’s “omotenashi” culture.
Hiromi Kishi of the Japan Society on the History of Blind Education holds a vinyl record containing recordings of U.S. military aircraft sounds, which was used during World War II to train students of the school for the blind to recognize the approach of enemy planes, during an interview in Uji, Kyoto Prefecture, in June.
JAPAN
Aug 15, 2025

For the disabled, WWII was a terror of another level

Individuals with disabilities, many of whom struggled to escape from attacks, were also expected to contribute to the war effort.
Members of the nonprofit group Japan Youth Memorial Association search for the remains of dead soldiers in a cave in Okinawa Prefecture in February.
JAPAN / History / Longform
Aug 15, 2025

The long search for Japan’s lost soldiers

An decades-long effort to recover the remains of those who died during World War II, most of them abroad, may be entering its final phase.
Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba lays a flower during the memorial service at the Nippon Budokan on Friday.
JAPAN / Politics
Aug 15, 2025

As Japan marks 80 years since WWII surrender, Ishiba expresses remorse

The prime minister’s reflections about the war stood in contrast to those of his recent predecessors.
Chef Kei Kobayashi is France's only Japanese chef with three Michelin stars.
LIFE / Food & Drink
Aug 15, 2025

In Paris, chefs Chizuko Kimura and Kei Kobayashi make their mark

One is the world’s first Michelin-starred female sushi chef, while the other is France’s only three-Michelin-starred Japanese chef.
Jose Takei, an 82-year-old man of Japanese descent in the Philippines, speaks during an interview on Aug. 8 at the Foreign Ministry.
JAPAN
Aug 15, 2025

Stateless man of Japanese descent in Philippines eager for Japan citizenship

The son of a Japanese man and Filipino woman, Jose Takei never met his father, who left before he was born to join the Japanese military during World War II.
U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., speaks during a news conference at the Department of Health and Human Services in Washington on July 29.
WORLD / Politics
Aug 16, 2025

Draft of Trump’s health blueprint avoids industry crackdown

The draft was dated Aug. 11, but could still see changes before it’s finalized, according to people familiar with the discussions.
An Israeli tank maneuvers near Gaza City as seen from Israeli side of the border on Saturday.
WORLD
Aug 17, 2025

Israeli military prepares to relocate residents to southern Gaza

Gaza residents will be provided with tents and other gear as they are moved from combat zones to the south of the enclave "to ensure their safety," the Israeli military said.
U.S. President Donald Trump greets Russian leader Vladimir Putin on the tarmac after they arrived for a meeting on Ukraine at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage, Alaska, on Friday.
WORLD / Politics
Aug 17, 2025

European leaders to join Zelenskyy for key meeting with Trump

The move comes as European nations shift their focus toward providing Ukraine with robust security guarantees as Trump pushes for a quick peace deal between Moscow and Kyiv.
Protesters shout slogans and hold photos of hostages during a demonstration calling for a hostages deal on Sunday in Tel Aviv.
WORLD
Aug 18, 2025

Anti-war protests erupt in Israel ahead of Gaza City operation

Organizers said that as many as half a million people attended the main rally at Tel Aviv’s "hostage square” in the evening, a massive turnout by Israeli standards.
An aerial view shows houses partially submerged in sludge along a riverbed in the aftermath of flash floods at the Buner district of mountainous Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province on Sunday.
ASIA PACIFIC
Aug 18, 2025

Flash floods kill hundreds in northwest Pakistan district after rare cloudburst

Officials say global warming has changed the pattern of the annual monsoon, pushing it around 100 kilometers west of its normal path.
The area around Shibuya Station in Tokyo. After the end of World War II, population concentration in the capital accelerated while other parts of Japan continue to see population declines.
JAPAN / FOCUS
Aug 18, 2025

80 years on: Tokyo prospers while local revitalization still insufficient

Experts stress the importance of setting up a system in which industrial resources are circulated locally in order to create a sustainable society.
Damaged buildings on the burnt-down Asaichi-dori street in Wajima, Ishikawa Prefecture, after the Jan. 1, 2024, earthquake
JAPAN
Aug 18, 2025

Japan eyeing measure to speed up disaster damage recognition

The new system is designed to dispatch personnel with damage assessment experience to affected areas promptly once a disaster occurs.
A pyrocumulus cloud forms as smoke rises from a wildfire as seen from a cemetery in the village of Vilarmel, Lugo area, Galicia region, Spain, on Saturday.
WORLD
Aug 19, 2025

Spain and Portugal continue to battle deadly wildfires

Two firefighters were killed on Sunday — one in each country, both in road accidents — taking the death toll to two in Portugal and four in Spain.
Mark Hancock, national president of the Canadian Union of Public Employees, joins a picket line with striking Air Canada flight attendants at Toronto Pearson International Airport in Mississauga, Ontario, on Monday.
BUSINESS / Companies
Aug 19, 2025

Air Canada strike talks resume as flight attendants defy back-to-work order

Canada's national carrier, which flies directly to 180 cities domestically and abroad, said the strike had forced cancellations impacting 500,000 people.
Hajime Sakata, 88, talks about his war experience in the Korean Peninsula at his home in Fuefuki, Yamanashi Prefecture, in June.
JAPAN
Aug 19, 2025

Japanese man recalls 500-km journey home along Korean Peninsula after WWII

Hajime Sakata traveled with his family from what is now North Korea, where they lived, to get to Busan's port so they could return to Japan.
Two boys pose with Pocari Sweat and Aquarius sports drinks in a park near Tokyo.
SPORTS
Aug 19, 2025

The great sports drink debate: What’s best for athletes?

When it comes to the classic debate of Pocari versus Aquari, fans on both sides have strong opinions about which sports drink reigns supreme.
Onlookers at the site of a rescue operation after flooding in Beshonai, Pakistan, a village that sits near the border with Afghanistan, on Monday
ASIA PACIFIC
Aug 19, 2025

Survivors claw through rubble after deadly Pakistan cloudburst

"A huge bang came from the top of the mountain, and then dark smoke billowed into the sky," a 46-year-old local laborer said.

Longform

Sumadori Bar on Shibuya Ward's main Center Gai street targets young customers who prefer low-alcohol drinks or abstain altogether.
Rethinking that second drink: Japan’s Gen Z gets ‘sober curious’