Search - health

 
 
Adal’s Look into Nature brand, on show at Salon del Mobile 2024, rethinks "igusa" (Japanese rush grass), traditionally used for tatami, as a sustainable material for furniture.
LIFE / Style & Design / ON: DESIGN
Apr 13, 2024

Japan’s best and brightest designers set to shine in Milan

The Salone del Mobile trade fair and its accompanying SaloneSatellite exhibition of up-and-coming talent attracts a pool of talented Japanese designers.
Israeli tanks move toward Gaza on Wednesday. Analysts say Israel would benefit from a truce with Hamas, even if it was just a tactical move, after losing 260 soldiers in Gaza.
WORLD / Politics
Apr 12, 2024

Why Gaza truce talks are at an 'impasse'

Hamas wants a permanent ceasefire in Gaza, which is unacceptable to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Yagana Yamani, 25, one of the 276 schoolgirls kidnapped from their dormitory by Boko Haram Islamist militants in 2014, in her home in Chibok, Nigeria
WORLD / Society
Apr 12, 2024

A decade on, tragedy of Nigeria’s Chibok Girls endures outside the spotlight

Roughly 90 Chibok girls are still missing, and a third are believed to have died in captivity.
People pray in Port-au-Prince last month.
WORLD / Society
Apr 12, 2024

Waiting for change, Haitians endure hell on earth

Conditions remain horrific one month after Haiti's prime minister said he would step down.
U.S. President Joe Biden during a joint news conference with Prime Minister Fumio Kishida (not pictured) in the Rose Garden at the White House in Washington on Wednesday.
BUSINESS / Economy / FOCUS
Apr 13, 2024

It's inflation, stupid: Biden faces renewed election threat

The cost of living is rising more quickly again, just when he thought he had put the issue behind him to get a clear run at November's vote.
A protester demands the United Kingdom make reparations for slavery, outside the British High Commission, in Kingston, Jamaica, in March 2022.
WORLD / Crime & Legal / FOCUS
Apr 13, 2024

Slavery tribunal? Africa and Caribbean unite on reparations

A tribunal was proposed last year, and it has now gained traction within a broader slavery reparations movement.
Flowers outside the Westfield Bondi Junction shopping mall in Sydney on Sunday, the day after a 40-year-old man with mental illness roamed the packed shopping center killing six people and seriously wounding a dozen others
ASIA PACIFIC / Crime & Legal
Apr 14, 2024

Police identify Sydney mall attacker; no terrorism link found

Australian police have identified a 40-year-old man who suffered from mental illness as the perpetrator of a Sydney shopping center stabbing rampage.
LDP Secretary-General Toshimitsu Motegi and election strategy committee chair Yuko Obuchi speak to reporters in Tokyo on April 2.
JAPAN / Politics
Apr 15, 2024

By-elections to determine Kishida’s fate within LDP

Losing in the Shimane No. 1 district, long an LDP stronghold, would mark a major blow to the prime minister.
An exterior view of Qasr al-Basha in 2021 in Gaza City, where Napoleon Bonaparte slept for several nights during his campaign in Egypt and Palestine.
WORLD
Apr 15, 2024

Gaza's historic treasures saved by 'irony of history'

Invaluable artifacts remain intact thanks to the blockade that made life in the Gaza Strip such a struggle for the past 16 years.
South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol (right), seen here meeting with Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, has made strengthening ties with Tokyo one of his foreign policy priorities.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 15, 2024

A humbled Yoon must future-proof Seoul’s alliances

Despite Yoon Suk-yeol's weak grip on South Korea's government after his electoral defeat, he can still do a lot to ensure his foreign policy lives on.
Israeli soldiers mount an Israeli flag on a military vehicle near the Israel-Gaza border on Monday.
WORLD / Politics
Apr 16, 2024

Israel vows response to Iran attack amid growing calls for restraint

Israel's military chief of staff said Iran's direct attack "will be met with a response" as world leaders call for no further escalation.
Lung cancer causes about 76,000 deaths in Japan each year, and about 1.8 million deaths worldwide.
JAPAN / Science & Health
Apr 16, 2024

Japan study shows link between passive smoking and lung cancer

The study shows how passive smoking causes genetic mutations, providing further evidence of the harmful effects of secondhand smoke.
Ryoma Shimoseki (90) was playing at Kosei Gakuen High School in Tokyo when he was discovered by NFL Academy coaches.
MORE SPORTS / Football
Apr 17, 2024

Japanese NFL hopeful gets dream chance on football field in U.K.

Ryoma Shimoseki was recently announced as the newest addition to the NFL Academy as he bids to become the first Japanese to make an NFL roster.
Outside of some activist movements pressing governments for more climate action, global warming is not yet at the heart of the political agenda in most countries.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 17, 2024

Climate change is political and we must treat it that way

Climate action hasn't made its way onto mainstream political agendas in most countries, to the detriment of our collective ability to solve the crisis.
Children give a presentation on volcano studies during a workshop at Tairadate Elementary School in Hachimantai, Iwate Prefecture, in February.
JAPAN / Regional Voices: Tohoku
Apr 29, 2024

Raising awareness over Mount Iwate eruption urged as memories fade

Interest in preparing for possible volcanic eruptions is difficult to muster in a nation prone to other natural disasters.
An aircraft from the Thai Department of Royal Rainmaking deposits a sodium chloride-based material in an effort to produce rain.
ENVIRONMENT / Earth science
Apr 18, 2024

How cloud seeding boosts rainfall — and why that’s controversial

Developed in the 1940s, cloud seeding can boost rain and snowfall, but the World Meteorological Organization warns we don't know enough about it yet.
One of the lawyers representing a group of doctors suing Google told a news conference that the main purpose of the lawsuit is not to seek compensation but instead to raise awareness over various problems with the Google Maps system.
JAPAN / Crime & Legal
Apr 18, 2024

In a first, Japan doctors sue Google over negative reviews on firm's map app

The suit is the first in Japan — and possibly the world — to target a platform rather than the individuals who posted the reviews, lawyers said.
A reported strike against Iran by Israel on Friday came against the backdrop of Iran's support for the Palestinian Hamas militant group, whose assault into Israel on Oct. 7 triggered Israel's invasion of Gaza.
WORLD
Apr 19, 2024

Tehran signals no retaliation against Israel after drones attack Iran

Iran's response appeared to be gauged toward averting a region-wide war.
David Inoue, the executive director of the Japanese American Citizens League, in Farragut Square, near the building that used to house the War Relocation Authority, in Washington. Inoue says his group has been more divided than it has been in decades on how it should respond to the Israel-Hamas war.
WORLD / Politics
Apr 20, 2024

War in the Gaza Strip causes surprising rift within Japanese American group

A new generation is pushing one of the largest Asian American civil rights groups to sever ties with prominent Jewish American organizations.
This photo of Yuval Tapuhi was taken at the Tribe of Nova festival before it was attacked on Oct. 7 by Hamas-led terrorists.
WORLD / Science & Health
Apr 20, 2024

What a terror attack in Israel might reveal about psychedelics and trauma

Scientists are studying the ravers who were attacked to determine the effects of such drugs at a moment of extreme trauma.
The legality of products that contain cannabinoids, a group of substances derived from the cannabis plant, has been somewhat murky in Japan.
JAPAN / Science & Health
Apr 21, 2024

Japan’s cannabis market growing rapidly amid regulatory shift

Robust sales of products using CBD, a compound found in marijuana, are attributed to rising demand for products that offer relaxation and stress relief.
Toshihiro Kinjo (center), a research support technician at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology, inspects an audio recording device in Ginowan, Okinawa Prefecture, on April 3 as Masako Ogasawara, a research support specialist at OIST, looks on.
ENVIRONMENT / Wildlife / OUR PLANET
Apr 21, 2024

Hearing the impact of climate change in Okinawa, one bird call at a time

From Okinawa to Australia, “passive acoustic monitoring” projects are feeding scientists with data about changes to ecosystems and biodiversity.
Tokyo observed the first "extremely hot day" of the season on July 10, 2023, when the temperature hit 36.5 degrees. A new heatstroke alert system will be put in place on Wednesday.
JAPAN / Science & Health
Apr 23, 2024

Japan to put special alert system for heatstroke in place

The Environment Ministry will put in place a special alert system for heatstroke to protect people from unprecedented heat.
South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol
BUSINESS / Economy
Apr 25, 2024

South Korea’s economic growth beats forecast as exports rise

South Korea's gross domestic product advanced 1.3% in the three months through March, easily outpacing economists’ consensus for a 0.6% expansion.
Filipino parents and children. In public schools in Metro Manila, a survey of more than 8,000 teachers last month showed 87% of students had suffered from heat-related conditions.
ASIA PACIFIC / Society
Apr 25, 2024

First COVID, now heat: Online schooling returns to the Philippines

Pupils at 7,000 public schools in the country were sent home last week due to unusually hot weather.
An image provided by Profluent Bio shows the physical structure of OpenCRISPR-1, a gene editor created by AI technology from Profluent.
WORLD / Science & Health
Apr 25, 2024

Generative AI arrives in the gene-editing world of CRISPR

AI has arrived on the scene of gene editing with the goal of outdoing billions of years of natural evolution.
Natsumi Sakai, the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan’s candidate and one of four female candidates running in the by-election, touts her experience as a cancer survivor and midwife as having prepared her to tackle issues that women currently face.
JAPAN / Politics
Apr 25, 2024

Tokyo's Koto Ward by-election a race unlike any other

In a departure from boys' club politics, candidates including four women, a writer and an ex-martial artist are making their case for a seat in parliament.
Police have arrested a Nigerian man on suspicion of smuggling stimulant drugs from Britain and tricking his romance scam victim into picking it up.
JAPAN / Crime & Legal
Apr 26, 2024

Nigerian nabbed in Japan for drug smuggling through romance scam

Police say similar cases of romance scam victims being tricked into helping smuggle illegal drugs continue to occur.
Lebanon's Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah
WORLD / Politics
Apr 26, 2024

Israel prepares forces as conflict with Hezbollah intensifies

Israeli forces have been exchanging cross-border fire with Hezbollah almost daily since October as the potential for an all-out war only grows.
Specializing in gastronomy-themed tours, Arigato Travel, founded and directed by Anne Kyle, was once a one-woman operation. Today, it counts more than 100 employees.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / 20 QUESTIONS
Apr 26, 2024

Anne Kyle: 'People want to know what life actually is like here’

The founder and CEO of Arigato Travel grew her business from a one-woman operation to a national outfit of more than 100 employees in a matter of years.

Longform

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