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The Saint Sophia Orthodox Church, where the Reverend Michael Trefon, who is of Yupik Eskimo descent, is the rector and conducts Russian Orthodox church services for his mainly Yupik Eskimo congregation, in Bethel, Alaska in 2019
WORLD / Politics
Aug 11, 2025

The Russian past of Alaska, where Trump and Putin will meet

Russian influence still endures in parts of the remote state on the northwest edge of the North American continent, which extends just a few miles from Russia.
Visitors have their photo taken by a portrait of President Xi Jinping at the Military Museum in Beijing on Oct. 20, 2023. The Chinese leader’s crackdown on military corruption reveals how deep his concerns run, not only about battlefield readiness, but about political survival, as well.
ASIA PACIFIC / Politics
Aug 11, 2025

Xi looks to tighten grip after scandals shake China’s military elite

Outwardly, China’s military has never been stronger. Its naval ships venture farther across the oceans. Its nuclear force grows by about 100 warheads every year. Its military flights around Taiwan are increasingly frequent and intimidating. Every few months, China unveils new weapons, like a prototype...
Andrew Bosworth, Meta’s chief technology officer; Bob McGrew, an adviser at Thinking Machines Lab and OpenAI’s former chief research officer; Shyam Sankar, Palantir’s chief technology officer; and Kevin Weil, OpenAI’s chief product officer at a military ceremony in Arlington, Va., in June 2025. The four current and former executives were pronounced lieutenant colonels in a new unit, Detachment 201, which will advise the Army on new technologies for potential combat.
BUSINESS / Tech
Aug 11, 2025

Silicon Valley is in its ‘hard tech’ era

Instead of the tap-to-pay apps of a decade ago like Clinkle and Bump, young companies are now making unmanned aerial drones stocked with AI-guided Barracuda cruise missiles.
U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin during a joint news conference in Helsinki in 2018. For Putin, the upcoming summit with Trump is an opportunity not just to end the Ukraine war on his terms, but to split apart the Western security alliance.
WORLD / Politics
Aug 11, 2025

In a Trump-Putin summit, Ukraine fears losing say over its future

Kyiv's worry for the past six months has been that U.S. President Donald Trump’s image of a "peace accord” is a deal struck directly between him and Russia.
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to the press about deploying federal law enforcement agents in Washington to bolster the local police presence, as U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth looks on, in the Press Briefing Room at the White House in Washington on Monday.
WORLD / Politics
Aug 12, 2025

Trump takes over D.C. police and deploys national guard in Washington

The move bypassed the city's elected leaders and was emblematic of a second-term that has seen him wield executive authority in ways with little precedent in modern U.S. history.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese speaks during a news conference in Canberra on Monday.
WORLD / Politics
Aug 12, 2025

Australia's Albanese says Netanyahu 'in denial' over suffering in Gaza

The Netanyahu government's reluctance to listen to its allies contributed to Australia's decision to recognize a Palestinian state, Albanese says.
Ambulances are seen outside U.S. Steel's Clairton Coke Works following explosions at the plant in Clairton, Pennsylvania, on Monday.
BUSINESS / Companies
Aug 12, 2025

Two dead, 10 hospitalized after Pennsylvania steel plant explosions

The incident at U.S. Steel's Clairton Coke Works happened at around 11 a.m. on Monday.
Ralph Edwards (far left), Capt. Robert Lewis (rear left), Bertha Starkey (rear center), Marvin Green (rear right), Kiyoshi (seated, left) and Chisa Tanimoto (seated, right), Koko Kondo (front left) and her three younger siblings, on the show “This Is Your Life,” on May 11, 1955
JAPAN / History / FOCUS
Aug 12, 2025

How an A-bomb survivor found forgiveness for Hiroshima bombers

Koko Kondo’s anger was extinguished when she saw the co-pilot of the Enola Gay bomber recall with regret what he and his crew had done on Aug. 6, 1945.
The World Energy refinery in Paramount, California
ENVIRONMENT / Energy
Aug 12, 2025

The airline industry's dirty secret: Clean jet fuel failures

An analysis has found that the airline industry's plans to go green before regulators start penalizing them are little more than a pipe dream.
Demonstrators hold a banner during a protest outside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office in Jerusalem on Aug. 7.
WORLD / Politics
Aug 12, 2025

Hamas hostage videos silenced Israeli media's talk of Gaza aid crisis

The mood in Israel hardened dramatically when Hamas released a video of a skeletal Israeli hostage followed by a video of another who said he was being forced to dig his own grave.
Military personnel in tanks participate in a parade in Naypyitaw, Myanmar, on March 27, 2021.
ASIA PACIFIC / Politics
Aug 12, 2025

Myanmar security forces involved in systematic torture, U.N. report says

Investigators said victims were subject to beatings, electric shocks, gang rape, strangulation and other forms of torture.
People with children walk in the sun as the Japanese government issued a heatstroke alert due to a heat wave, in Tokyo, on Aug. 5
JAPAN / Science & Health
Aug 12, 2025

Heat waves pose serious health risks for pregnant women, study shows

The Tokyo team found that the risk of serious complications for pregnant women increases the day after a heat wave.
Advertisements for factory rentals at Datang village in Guangzhou, Guangdong province, China
BUSINESS / Economy
Aug 12, 2025

China factories cut shifts and workers' pay as U.S. tariffs bite

The increasingly common practice has become a hidden deflationary force in the world's second-largest economy.
Myanmar's national flag flutters at half-mast outside the City Hall in Yangon on July 19.
ASIA PACIFIC
Aug 13, 2025

Myanmar region sees 'dramatic' hunger rise after aid cutbacks

The situation was exacerbated in April when the World Food Program was forced to cut aid to 1 million people nationwide.
A man stands in front of a flooded workshop in Tamana, Kumamoto Prefecture, on Monday.
JAPAN
Aug 13, 2025

Torrential rain in Kumamoto Prefecture leaves two dead

Four people remain missing in Kyushu after heavy rain lashed the region from Sunday to Tuesday.
The U.S. State Department's 2024 Human Rights Report was delayed for months as appointees of President Donald Trump altered an earlier draft dramatically to bring it in line with "America First" values, according to government officials who spoke on condition of anonymity.
WORLD / Politics
Aug 13, 2025

U.S. State Department softens criticism of some countries in human rights report

The 2024 Human Rights Report's section on Israel was much shorter than last year's edition and made no mention of the severe humanitarian crisis or death toll in the Gaza Strip.
Palestinians wait to collect food from a charity kitchen in Gaza City on Aug. 4.
WORLD / Politics
Aug 13, 2025

Palestinian mother 'destroyed' after image used to deny Gaza starvation

For Faiza Najjar, the fact that her family's reunion got caught up in a misinformation campaign was devastating.
The Maruti Suzuki India e-Vitara electric vehicle unveiled during the Bharat Mobility Global Expo in New Delhi in January
BUSINESS / Companies
Aug 13, 2025

Suzuki’s India unit doubles down on SUVs as small cars slide

The nation’s top carmaker is scrambling to counter slowing demand for its bread-and-butter small cars.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping attend the BRICS summit meeting in Johannesburg in 2018.
ASIA PACIFIC / Politics
Aug 13, 2025

India-China thaw takes shape as Modi embraces BRICS over Trump

Modi’s economic calculus was fundamentally altered this month when Trump doubled tariffs on Indian goods to 50% as a penalty for its purchases of Russian oil.
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.
Media tycoon Jimmy Lai, founder of Apple Daily
ASIA PACIFIC / Crime & Legal
Aug 14, 2025

Hong Kong court to hear closing arguments in mogul Jimmy Lai's trial

The 77-year-old founder of the Apple Daily newspaper is charged with foreign collusion under Hong Kong's national security law.
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.
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.
Participants pray during a World War II memorial ceremony held off the coast of the Philippines in June. The program facilitating the services will end due to the aging of participants.
JAPAN
Aug 14, 2025

Overseas WWII memorial services for Japanese families set to end

The program has seen dwindling participation as many bereaved families grow older.
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.

Longform

Bear attacks have dominated Japanese news headlines in recent months, with 13 people so far having been killed by the animals.
Japan’s bears have been on their killing spree for more than 100 years