Search - information

 
 
A conceptual image of a jacket that can automatically adjust the temperature inside it to a level that is the most comfortable for the wearer, to be showcased by Tohan Denshi Kiki and others at the Osaka Expo
BUSINESS / Companies
Mar 17, 2025

Local manufacturers to show futuristic products at Osaka Expo

Products to be showcased at the Expo include a jacket that can automatically adjust the temperature inside it.
Alimentation Couche-Tard founder Alain Bouchard (center), CEO Alex Miller (left) and CFO Filipe Da Silva attend a photo session after a news conference on their bid for Seven & I Holdings in Tokyo on Thursday.
BUSINESS / Companies / EXPLAINER
Mar 17, 2025

Why Couche-Tard's deal with Seven & I isn't going anywhere

The buyout bid has seen a mixed response in Japan, with some expressing concerns over the convenience store chain being taken over by a foreign company.
A MI-8 helicopter from the Belarus army carries the Belarusian national flag in Minsk in 2017.
JAPAN / Politics
Mar 18, 2025

Belarus sentences Japanese man to seven years for spying

The man allegedly took photos of military facilities as well as railway infrastructure, and had traveled to the Ukrainian border.
Emergency medical workers treat victims of the sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway system at a makeshift shelter before they are transported to hospitals on March 20, 1995.
JAPAN
Mar 18, 2025

Japan to preserve medical records from 1995 sarin attack

The health ministry will also interview medical professionals who treated the victims and compile oral records.
On Jan. 22 last year, the education ministry called on prefectural boards of education across the country to instruct schools to conduct annual checkups by, in principle, having students wear gym clothes or underwear during examinations and holding them separately for boys and girls under the supervision of teachers of the same gender.
JAPAN
Mar 18, 2025

School doctors still risk complaints from parents over health checkups

A survey shows many physicians do not want to be involved in schools' annual checkups out of concern that parents do not want their children's bodies to be shown to doctors.
Researchers from Anicom Specialty Medical Institute, the National Institute of Genetics and Kazusa DNA Research Institute decoded the genome of American Shorthair cats and published the results in an article last October.
JAPAN / Science & Health
Mar 18, 2025

Japanese researchers set Guinness record for cat genome

Researchers decoded the genome of American shorthair cats and published the results.
Despite recent market volatility and trade tariff concerns, Japan continues to see fund launches as global investors are drawn to its stock market.
BUSINESS / Companies
Mar 18, 2025

Hong Kong hedge fund Polymer joins rush to debut pure Japan funds, sources say

The move will see the heavyweight joining a wave of fund launches in Japan.
Locals fill up bottles from a communal water tank in Suzu, Ishikawa Prefecture, on Jan. 30, 2024, following the Noto Peninsula earthquake on New Year's Day.
JAPAN / Politics
Mar 18, 2025

Lower House passes bill on peninsular disaster prevention

The bill is centered around advancing disaster prevention efforts that take into consideration the unique geographic features of such regions.
Shipping containers at a port in Long Beach, California. Higher tariffs will raise the cost of doing business in the U.S., raising the bar for Japanese companies to invest in America.
BUSINESS / Economy
Mar 18, 2025

Trump tariffs to raise bar to invest in the U.S., JETRO says

Higher tariffs will raise the cost of doing business in the U.S. with more expensive materials and products, said JETRO’s chair, Norihiko Ishiguro.
Megan Garcia
WORLD / Crime & Legal
Mar 18, 2025

Teen’s suicide turns mother against Google and AI chatbot startup

Megan Garcia says her son would still be alive today if it weren’t for a chatbot urging the 14-year-old to take his own life.
Minoru Kariya, who lost his father, Kiyoshi, in 1995 in an abduction case involving the Aum Shinrikyo doomsday cult, speaks during an interview in Tokyo in February.
JAPAN
Mar 19, 2025

Aum Shinrikyo victim's son wants continued remorse

Minoru Kariya's father, Kiyoshi, then 68, was killed in an abduction case involving the doomsday cult in 1995.
Gonzalo Gallegos, director of communications for the U.S. Institute of Peace, carries a box out of the building in Washington on Monday.
WORLD / Politics
Mar 19, 2025

Elon Musk’s team evicts officials at the U.S. Institute of Peace

Officials say that as the institute is a congressionally chartered nonprofit, not part of the executive branch, Trump and Musk do not have authority to gut its operations.
Alex Miller, CEO of Alimentation Couche-Tard, speaks during a news conference in Tokyo last week.
BUSINESS / Companies
Mar 20, 2025

Couche-Tard seeks to reassure investors on Seven & I approach

The parent company of the Circle K chain has been pursuing Seven & I for months, bidding almost $50 billion for it, but has been rebuffed.
An example of a Russian disinformation poster that was spread via Telegram. Some analysts said that reducing work to counter Moscow's hybrid war tactics would prove dangerous for the U.S.
WORLD / Politics
Mar 20, 2025

U.S. suspends some efforts to counter Russian sabotage

Since U.S. President Donald Trump took office, much of the work on monitoring and countering Russia's hybrid warfare campaign has come to a standstill.
Saffron was found without food or water in a home where his owner had passed away.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / ADOPT ME!
Mar 21, 2025

A shy cat looking for a new start

After being rescued from tough circumstances, Saffron is gradually coming out of his shell again.
Sachiko Asakawa (left) and her brother Kazuo Asakawa at a news conference in Tokyo in November 2009
JAPAN
Mar 21, 2025

Man recalls effects of Tokyo subway sarin attack on sister

Kazuo Asakawa's sister, Sachiko Asakawa, died in 2020 at the age of 56 after suffering severe aftereffects from the attack.
Eddie Jordan sits on the pitwall of the Montmelo circuit near Barcelona, Spain, during a practice on April 26, 2002.
MORE SPORTS / Auto Racing
Mar 21, 2025

Eddie Jordan was Formula One's 'rock 'n' roll' extrovert

The charismatic boss died of cancer on Thursday at the age of 76
The Pentagon's disbandment of the Office of Net Assessment ends a key institution that provided long-term strategic analysis, leaving the U.S. vulnerable to future geopolitical challenges.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Mar 20, 2025

A sad day for U.S. strategic analysis as the Office of Net Assessment is disbanded

While most focused on the military, ONA was the only group to conclude that winning the Cold War relied on economic means, not troop numbers.
Firefighters douse the flames of a fire that broke out at a substation supplying power to Heathrow Airport in Hayes, England, on Friday.
WORLD
Mar 21, 2025

Heathrow closed after huge fire at power station, disrupting global flights

Travel experts say the disruption would extend far beyond Heathrow, the world's fifth-busiest airport.
A sign at Tokyo's Haneda Airport shows users the way to the monorail in four different languages.
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Mar 22, 2025

Can we make it official? Language in the age of Trump.

The United States made English its main language, but in Japan things seem to be heading in a different way.
U.S. President Donald Trump takes questions from reporters in the White House on Friday.
WORLD / Politics
Mar 23, 2025

How Elon Musk’s DOGE cuts leave a vacuum that China can fill

When President Donald Trump announced Friday that the United States would move ahead with a long-debated project to build a stealthy next-generation fighter jet, the message to China was clear: The United States plans to spend tens of billions of dollars over the next decade, probably far longer, to...
U.S. Sen. Steve Daines meets with Chinese Premier Li Qiang at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Sunday.
WORLD / Politics
Mar 24, 2025

Xi must stop fentanyl flow before tariff talks, Trump ally says

Steve Daines laid out the condition in meetings with Chinese officials in Beijing over the weekend.
Now-U.S. President Donald Trump during a interview at his private club Mar-a-Lago, in Palm Beach, Florida, on March, 4, 2024. Trump’s first four years in the White House were filled with falsehoods, and now he and those around him are using false claims to justify their policy changes.
WORLD / Politics
Mar 25, 2025

In his second term, Trump fuels a ‘machinery’ of misinformation

The president and his advisers have ushered the United States into a new era of post-truth politics, where facts are contested and fictions used to pursue policy goals.
Futures markets for computing power, driven by increasing demand from AI and other sectors, could help stabilize price volatility and create new investment opportunities, similar to how oil futures manage fluctuations in the energy market.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 25, 2025

Computing power is going the way of oil in markets

One of the purposes of futures markets is to draw financial investors into the production process of commodities.
Students attend a job fair at Makuhari Messe in the city of Chiba on March 1.
BUSINESS / Companies
Mar 26, 2025

About 30% of major Japanese companies using AI for recruiting, poll says

The results show that companies are looking to AI to increase the efficiency of recruitment efforts as competition for human resources heats up.
Textbooks carrying QR codes that link to websites with video and audio learning aid materials
JAPAN
Mar 26, 2025

Most Japanese high school textbooks to include QR codes

In response to the rapid progress of digitalization, many of the textbooks include descriptions on information ethics and generative AI.
Potential buyers for a package of 7-Eleven and other convenience stores have until the end of March to express their interest, Alimentation Couche-Tard Chief Financial Officer Filipe Da Silva said.
BUSINESS / Companies
Mar 26, 2025

Couche-Tard sees strong interest in U.S. stores for Seven & I deal

The Canadian company has agreed with Seven & I to seek a buyer for overlapping retail outlets as a prerequisite for takeover talks to sidestep U.S. antitrust concerns.
Rengo President Tomoko Yoshino speaks at a Democratic Party for the People convention in Sumida Ward, Tokyo, on Feb. 11.
BUSINESS / WOMEN AT WORK
Apr 6, 2025

Breaking with tradition: From the shop floor to fighting for millions

Tomoko Yoshino has rubbed shoulders with political heavyweights and business leaders as the first female leader of Rengo.
The Gateway Park at Takanawa Gateway City on Tuesday
BUSINESS
Mar 26, 2025

JR's 'futuristic' Takanawa Gateway complex set to open in Tokyo

Takanawa Gateway City is a long-planned redevelopment project from JR East that integrates residential, commercial and cultural facilities.
OpenAI is close to finalizing a $40 billion funding round led by SoftBank Group, sources say.
BUSINESS / Companies
Mar 27, 2025

OpenAI close to finalizing $40 billion SoftBank-led funding

The artificial intelligence developer’s funding round would be the largest of all time, according to data compiled by research firm PitchBook.

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’