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A photograph of Akiko Kirkham and her husband, Glenn Kirkham, in their younger days
JAPAN
Aug 20, 2025

Japanese woman faced hardships in Australia after World War II

Memories of the war, such as the Imperial Japanese Army's bombing of Darwin, remained vivid for many Australians, and marriages between Australians and Japanese often faced unease.
The My Number health insurance card enables online verification of a patient's eligibility via card readers installed at medical institutions.
JAPAN / Science & Health / FOCUS
Aug 20, 2025

My Number health insurance card uptake remains persistently low

Confusion and doubts over the new system have stalled the government's push to digitalize medical records and services.
Students visit the Atomic Bomb Dome in Hiroshima’s Peace Memorial Park in late April. Attitudes in Japan are shifting away from the traditional pacifist views that have held sway since the end of World War II.
JAPAN / FOCUS
Aug 20, 2025

Trump shock spurs Japan to think about the unthinkable: nuclear arms

There is a growing willingness to loosen the country’s decades-old pledge not to produce, possess or host nuclear weapons in its territory.
National Guard troops keep watch outside Washington's Union Station on Tuesday. U.S. President Donald Trump has deployed the National Guard and ordered an increased federal law enforcement presence in the capital, which he has characterized as overrun with violence and homelessness.
WORLD / Politics
Aug 20, 2025

More Republican governors send National Guard to Washington, backing Trump

The U.S. president has characterized Washington as overrun with violence and homelessness, accusing the city of using fake data to "create a false illusion of safety."
Muddied prospectors pan for gold in Manica province, Mozambique, near the Zimbabwe border, in 2010.
ENVIRONMENT / Sustainability
Aug 20, 2025

Mozambique's illegal miners reap risky rewards but land suffers

Rivers around mining sites are polluted, and mercury has seeped into the soil, creating a nightmare for farmers.
A training session at Shikoroyama stable in June 2016. Sumo training sessions are increasingly simulated or the preserve of group tours.
SUMO / Inside Sumo
Aug 20, 2025

Is sumo becoming a victim of its own popularity?

In 2025, fans and tourists alike are all too often getting an experience that pales in comparison to what was previously possible.
People wade through a flooded street after heavy rainfall in Karachi on Tuesday.
ASIA PACIFIC
Aug 21, 2025

Pakistan's financial capital Karachi hit by torrential rain and flooding

The monsoon has brought havoc across Pakistan in recent days with the death toll from floods that hit the mountainous northwest on Friday rising to 385.
An Israeli tank on the Israeli side of the border with Gaza on Wednesday.
WORLD / Politics
Aug 21, 2025

With moves on West Bank and Gaza City, Israel defies global outcry

The developments raised questions about whether the new ceasefire proposal could move forward.
Seri Yanai and Daniel Wishes founded the shadow puppetry company Mochinosha in 2012 when they were students at the London School of Puppetry.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / 20 QUESTIONS
Aug 22, 2025

Seri Yanai: ‘We mix modern and analog to create something new’

The co-founder of Mochinosha, a shadow puppetry company based in Saitama Prefecture, talks about her journey to the stage and her artistic inspirations.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy (left) and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni shake hands during a joint news conference following their meeting at the Chigi Palace in Rome on May 13.
WORLD / Politics
Aug 21, 2025

Meloni offers plan to aid Ukraine in a day if Russia resumes war

The Italian prime minister is pushing for a proposal that amounts to a NATO-like collective defense clause, but doesn’t come with actual membership in the alliance.
Six-year-old Pooja shows her indigenous face tattoos at the Jogi Colony in Umerkot, a Hindu-majority district of Pakistan.
ASIA PACIFIC / Society
Aug 21, 2025

City girls snub traditional Hindu face tattoos in Pakistan

The practice stretches back centuries in the Hindu villages that dot Pakistan's southern border with India.
A damaged car in the Liuli River in the Huairou district of Beijing on Aug. 13. Flooding exposed weaknesses in the rural emergency response infrastructure for Beijing, whose urban core is surrounded by several rural districts like Huairou.
ENVIRONMENT / Climate change
Aug 21, 2025

Is historically arid Beijing ready for a wetter future?

Recent floods revealed how historically dry Beijing, home to 22 million people, remains insufficiently prepared for what experts say will be an increasingly wet future.
Jimmy Lai at the Next Digital offices in Hong Kong in 2020. The national security trial of the Hong Kong media mogul, which began in late 2023, entered its final stages on Aug. 14, as lawyers present closing arguments.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 21, 2025

Why Jimmy Lai’s persecution should worry Japan

The trial of 77-year-old publisher is showing how Beijing uses Hong Kong as a laboratory for silencing critics worldwide, from students to exiles.
A commuter uses a portable fan on an underground train at rush hour during a heat wave in the City of London financial district.
ENVIRONMENT / Climate change
Aug 21, 2025

As temperatures soar in London, regulations, not costs, put cooling beyond reach

The British capital has seen a surge in demand for air-conditioning units in high-end homes as climate change raises summer temperatures.
Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba meets with Central African Republic President Faustin-Archange Touadera on the sidelines of the TICAD meeting in Yokohama on Thursday.
JAPAN
Aug 21, 2025

Japan calls for private investments in Africa at TICAD

Tokyo is offering itself as an alternative to China as African nations reel from a debt crisis made worse by Western aid cuts, conflict and climate change.
Kazuhiro Nomura, president of BK Japan Holdings, which operates Burger King in Japan
BUSINESS / Companies
Aug 21, 2025

Big burgers and bigger ambitions for Japan's Burger King

The fast-food chain has grown fourfold in just six years.
Chatbots are pivoting to the ad model and optimizing for eyeballs, just like social media did. And AI knows more about us than Google or Facebook ever did.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 21, 2025

Ads ruined social media. Now they’re coming to AI.

Imagine a person telling their AI they’re feeling depressed, and the system recommending some affordable holiday destinations or medication to address the problem.
Cindy McCain, the executive director of the U.N. World Food Programme, speaks during an interview in Yokohama on Wednesday.
JAPAN
Aug 21, 2025

WFP chief wants world to pay attention to Africa

The continent, whose countries suffer from famine, refugee and other humanitarian crises, is sometimes forgotten, Cindy McCain, the executive director of the U.N. body, says.
The entrance of Nissan's global headquarters, in Yokohama
BUSINESS
Aug 21, 2025

KKR is a front-runner in Nissan’s $610 million HQ sale

KJR Management, a Japanese real estate unit of KKR, offered around ¥90 billion ($610 million) for the 22-story office building.
A Ukrainian service member throws a grenade during training in the Donbas region, Ukraine, in April. Russia controls about 88% of the Donbas region, according to U.S. estimates and open-source data.
WORLD / Politics
Aug 22, 2025

Putin demands Ukraine give up Donbas, not join NATO and no Western troops: sources

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has repeatedly dismissed the idea of withdrawing from internationally recognized Ukrainian land as part of a deal.
Displaced Palestinian women fleeing the northern Gaza Strip ride with their belongings as they head south, in Gaza City, on Thursday.
WORLD / Politics
Aug 22, 2025

Netanyahu says Israel to resume Gaza negotiations to end war and free hostages

The statement is the Israeli prime minister's first response to a temporary ceasefire proposal put forward by Egypt and Qatar that Hamas has accepted.
Democratic Texas Rep. Gene Wu speaks at the Texas State Capitol in Austin, Texas, on Wednesday. State officials are redrawing congressional maps to benefit Republicans.
WORLD / Politics
Aug 22, 2025

Americans worry democracy is in danger amid gerrymandering fights, poll finds

As Texas Republicans redraw the state's congressional maps to benefit their party, California Democrats threaten to respond in kind.
Tetsuzo Shiraishi, speaking at The Center of the Tokyo Raids and War Damage, uses a thermos to explain how he experienced the U.S. firebombing of March 1945, when he was just 7 years old.
JAPAN / History / Longform
Aug 22, 2025

From ashes to high-rises: A survivor’s account of Tokyo’s postwar past

One man’s experience traces the capital's arc from wartime devastation to modern megacity in a story of resilience and reinvention.
Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba and South Korean President Lee Jae Myung meet ahead of a summit in Kananaskis, Canada, in June. The two leaders will meet again on Saturday.
JAPAN
Aug 22, 2025

Japan and South Korea to expand working holiday program

Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba and South Korean President Lee Jae Myung are expected to agree on the matter when they meet in Tokyo on Saturday.
A fan of Universidad de Chile throws a stone during the Copa Sudamericana match against Independiente at the Libertadores de America stadium in Avellaneda, Buenos Aires, Argentina on Wednesday.
SOCCER
Aug 22, 2025

Chile and Argentina soccer fans trade blame over stadium violence

More than 100 people were arrested over some of the worst sporting violence South America has seen in years.
Police have issued a warning over the existence of online message boards promoting extreme sexual role play that are, in reality, serving as hubs for actual crimes involving sexual violence.
JAPAN / Crime & Legal
Aug 22, 2025

Police warn of internet forums soliciting sexual violence

A woman was attacked in her apartment in Tokyo after an acquaintance of hers found a man via an internet board willing to commit sexual assault.
Members of the student club Neo at Shuri High School receive words of gratitude from Haebaru Junior High School students after their workshop on June 6. They are Mei Nakazato (far left), Nanoka Hirata (second left), Yuzuyu Oyakawa (center), Hinano Yagi (second right) and Honomi Taira.
JAPAN / Regional Voices: Okinawa
Aug 25, 2025

Okinawa high school students bring new approach to peace education

A high school group that held a workshop for junior high school students aims to bring a new approach to peace education by turning “passive learning” into something more personal.
A-Style President Kenichiro Kawakami applies a heat-shielding film to a window.
JAPAN / Regional Voices: Kyushu
Aug 25, 2025

For this Fukuoka company president, preventing heatstroke is personal

Kenichiro Kawakami lost his mother to heatstroke in 2017, inspiring him to launch the service of applying heat-shielding films to windows.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang during an event in Washington, in July. Huang says Nvidia is currently in talks with the U.S. over the potential offering of a more powerful chip for sale in China.
BUSINESS / Tech
Aug 22, 2025

Nvidia CEO says in talks with U.S. over new China chip

The tech giant is reportedly working on a new chip based on its latest Blackwell architecture that will be more powerful than a model currently greenlit for sale to China.
In what is billed as the first major production in English of Hisashi Inoue's "The Face of Jizo,” the Japanese play will have performances at the Seymour Centre in Sydney both in English and in Japanese.
CULTURE / Stage
Aug 22, 2025

'The Face of Jizo': Hisashi Inoue's play staged in Sydney commemorates WWII victims

Billed as the first major English-language production of the play, "The Face of Jizo" also increases the variety of roles for Japanese actors in Australia.

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