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Japan Times
WORLD / ANALYSIS
Nov 17, 2022

Fatal blast in Poland shows heightened risk of escalation

One concern is that a long, bitter war with forces battling on the ground, and missiles and shells flying through the air, will create accidents and incidents that lead to something bigger.
Japan Times
ASIA PACIFIC
Nov 17, 2022

COVID-19 lockdown chaos sets off a rare protest in a Chinese city

A lengthy lockdown and shortages of food prompted Guangzhou residents to take to the streets, a reflection of growing public frustration with China's 'COVID zero' policy.
Japan Times
ASIA PACIFIC / ANALYSIS
Nov 17, 2022

Beijing's freeze on Taipei contact fuels concern over risk of military clash

China ended formal high-level communication with Taiwan's government in 2016 after the island's voters elected Tsai Ing-wen, whom Beijing considers a separatist, as president.
Japan Times
WORLD / Politics
Nov 17, 2022

Xi looks away from Putin toward West in return to world stage

Recent moves appear to be part of a broader return to pragmatism since Xi set himself up to rule for life by breaking succession norms at a party congress last month.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Nov 17, 2022

‘A Man’: A searing study of Japan’s prejudices

Kei Ishikawa's piercing drama unravels the mystery of a man's decisions to leave his past behind while laying out society's intolerance of “outsiders.”
Japan Times
WORLD
Nov 17, 2022

Missile blast in Poland puts focus on Ukraine’s need for stronger air defense

Kyiv's allies are facing growing pressure to deliver more aid to fend off intensifying Russian attacks.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Nov 16, 2022

COVID-19 tracker: Tokyo logs 10,114 new coronavirus cases

Hokkaido logged a fresh record high of 11,112 new cases on Wednesday, a day after its daily tally exceeded 10,000 for the first time ever.
Japan Times
BUSINESS / Companies
Nov 16, 2022

Rakuten seeks $500 million in rare Japanese junk bond deal

The bond offering is gaining attention given the fledgling junk debt market in Japan, where weaker firms aren't compelled to sell speculative-grade notes due to easy access to bank loans.
Japan Times
ASIA PACIFIC
Nov 16, 2022

Police check fears and hurdles keeping Hong Kong migrants out of U.K. professions

Some Hong Kongers fear giving their details to a police force they no longer trust, and the British consulate in Hong Kong stopped facilitating such requests in June.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Science & Health
Nov 15, 2022

Japan's Daiichi Sankyo says mRNA COVID vaccine successful in booster trial

Approval would give Japan a home-grown source for mRNA vaccines, which have made up the bulk of its COVID-19 inoculations to date.
ASIA PACIFIC / Politics / ANALYSIS
Nov 15, 2022

Biden and Xi ease Cold War fears, but fundamental frictions remain

While their “blunt” talks marked a positive — if modest — step forward, the million-dollar question is whether that momentum can be sustained, as key challenges remain.
U.S. economist Claudia Goldin is only the third woman to be awarded the Nobel economics prize.
WORLD
Oct 10, 2023

Gender gap economist Claudia Goldin wins Nobel prize

Exploring the origins of the gender gap in labor markets, Goldin is only the third woman to win the Nobel economics prize.
Ozempic is a drug for treating Type 2 diabetes that is now being used widely as an appetite-suppressing weight loss aid.
BUSINESS / Markets
Oct 9, 2023

Ozempic threat is spurring a slump in snack and beer stocks

Snack and beverage producers are most at risk, as well as purveyors of weight-management food products such as shakes and frozen meals.
A screengrab from a video posted on Telegram on Monday shows an armed Palestinian militant leading a man during the Supernova music festival, near Kibbutz Reim in southern Israel.
WORLD
Oct 10, 2023

'Butchered in cold blood': Nightmare at music festival in Israel

Most of those gunned down at the event were young people in their party clothes who had danced through the night under the stars.
People hold Israeli and U.S. flags as they take part in a demonstration in Tel Aviv on Sept. 20.
WORLD / Politics
Oct 10, 2023

Conflict forces Biden and Netanyahu into uneasy partnership

After months of strain over the path forward in the Middle East, the two leaders have been thrust into a wartime partnership.
Police officers are seen where a vehicle crashed into the the visa office of the Chinese Consulate in San Francisco on Monday. The driver was shot dead.
WORLD / Crime & Legal
Oct 10, 2023

U.S. police shoot and kill driver in Chinese Consulate incident

A witness told local media that the driver shouted "Where’s the CCP,” using the acronym of the Chinese Communist Party, before he was killed.
Minister of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism Tetsuo Saito
JAPAN / Society
Oct 10, 2023

Japan to add driving to specified foreign worker skills

"We'll make various efforts to ensure that local residents and tourists have access to necessary means of transportation," minister Tetsuo Saito said.
BUSINESS
Oct 11, 2023

Disruption of Japan's payments clearing network continues

The issue affecting 11 lenders, including MUFG Bank, has disrupted at least 1.4 million transactions.
Alma Zadic, Austria's justice minister, during an interview in Vienna on Sept. 26
WORLD / Politics
Oct 11, 2023

In Europe's politics, disinformation and hate pose growing threat

Austrian Justice Minister Alma Zadic believes public institutions simply don’t have the resources to match the output of bad actors.
Prime Minister Fumio Kishida shakes hands with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy during a high level Security Council meeting on the situation in Ukraine, on the sidelines of the 78th U.N. General Assembly at U.N. headquarters in New York on Sept. 20.
JAPAN / Politics
Oct 11, 2023

Ukraine fatigue unlikely to reach Japan anytime soon

Japan’s support for Ukraine remains steadfast at a time when popular opinion across several Western countries shows growing signs of weariness.
Most projections show the world will hit peak humanity in the 21st century as people choose to have smaller families and women gain power over their own reproduction.
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 11, 2023

Don’t worry about global population collapse

While environmentalists have long warned of a planet with too many people, now some economists are warning of a future with too few.
JAPAN
Oct 11, 2023

Sapporo officially drops bid for 2030 Winter Olympics

The city's major, however, made it clear that the Hokkaido capital is still hoping to host a future Winter Olympics, perhaps as soon as 2034.
Water treated through the Advanced Liquid Processing System and diluted with seawater flows from the upstream water tank to the downstream water tank at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant during its second release in Okuma, Fukushima Prefecture.
JAPAN
Oct 11, 2023

Chinese scientists join Fukushima water review

Experts from China will join those from Canada, South Korea and the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency in collecting samples and marine creatures.
A struggling novelist (Rie Miyazawa) wrestles with life’s bigger questions after taking a job at a care facility for people with severe disabilities in “The Moon.”
CULTURE / Film
Oct 12, 2023

‘The Moon’: Provocative drama bites off more than it can chew

Yuya Ishii’s film courts controversy with a fictionalized retelling of a real-life knife attack at a care facility for people with mental disabilities.
A view of the outside of the OSIRIS-REx sample collector, with sample material from the asteroid Bennu seen on the middle right at Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, in a recent undated photograph.
WORLD / Science & Health
Oct 12, 2023

NASA unveils newly returned carbon-rich asteroid sample

A small quantity of the material collected by the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft from the near-Earth asteroid Bennu was unveiled at NASA's Johnson Space Center.
Toyota Motor and Idemitsu Kosan are teaming up to develop and mass-produce all-solid-state batteries for electric vehicles, the companies said on Thursday.
BUSINESS / Companies
Oct 12, 2023

Toyota and Idemitsu to mass-produce all-solid-state batteries

Idemitsu and Toyota said in a statement they would aim to commercialize the next-generation batteries in 2027-28, followed by full-scale mass production.
Smoke fills the sky after a strike on the port of Gaza City on Tuesday.
WORLD / Politics
Oct 12, 2023

Israel-Hamas conflict offers boon to Russia in Ukraine

Israel’s requests for U.S. military aid risk diverting weapons and focus from Ukraine while the rising price of oil bolsters Moscow’s economy.

Longform

Construction equipment sits idle in a park near Shiba Toshogu shrine in Tokyo's Minato Ward. While Japan has a history of treating its trees with reverence, green coverage is said to be lacking in most of the major cities.
Do Japan's trees no longer occupy the sacred space they used to?