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Yuichiro Tamaki, head of the opposition Democratic Party for the People, in Tokyo on Nov. 1, 2024
JAPAN / Politics / FOCUS
Sep 10, 2025

Who might the LDP woo once it elects its next president?

Short of a majority in both chambers of parliament, the ruling party needs an opposition party’s support to elect its leader as prime minister.
Chinese DF-61 intercontinental ballistic nuclear missiles are displayed during a military parade in Beijing, marking the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II on Sept. 3. 
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 10, 2025

The global nuclear picture grows darker and darker

It’s hard, if not impossible, to escape the conclusion that the world is in a grim place when measured by nuclear metrics.
Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba and U.S. President Donald Trump hold a news conference at the White House in Washington on Feb. 7. Ishiba's short-lived prime ministership underscores the challenges facing the Japan and U.S. alliance.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Sep 10, 2025

What Japan’s political drift means for U.S.-Japan relations

Decisive political leadership is missing. Ambitious reforms and bold initiatives require political capital.
Australian defence chief Richard Marles (second from left), Minister for Defence Industry Pat Conroy (left), and navy chief Vice Adm. Mark Hammond inspect a "Ghost Shark"-class autonomous undersea vehicle at a naval base in Sydney on Wednesday.
ASIA PACIFIC
Sep 10, 2025

Australia to field 'Ghost Shark' underwater strike drones

The $1.1 billion fleet will be designed to conduct intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and strike operations, both stealthily and at long range.
The iPhone Air may be what Apple fans have wanted for years: a device distinct from competitors and packed with feats of hardware engineering.
BUSINESS / Tech
Sep 11, 2025

Slim iPhone Air may be a design win for Apple, despite analysts' AI doubts

The new handset is the company's slimmest yet, and the biggest change to its lineup in eight years.
Japanese activist investor Yasuto Monden, who became president of one of his target companies, has launched Axium Capital, an equity fund targeting U.S. investors, including family offices.
BUSINESS / Companies
Sep 11, 2025

Activist-turned-executive seeks rich investors for Japanese fund

Yasuto Monden, who took over as president of one of his target companies, aims to increase assets of his Axium Capital fund to ¥100 billion in two years.
The Defense Ministry’s Acquisition, Technology & Logistics Agency (ATLA) conducted a ship-board railgun shooting test from June to early July this year with the support of the Maritime Self-Defense Force.
JAPAN
Sep 11, 2025

Japan's cutting-edge railgun successfully strikes target vessel

The defense ministry’s Acquisition, Technology & Logistics Agency says its test-firings marked the first time a ship-mounted railgun was successfully fired at a real vessel.
A Self-Defense Forces officer tries driving a passenger bus during an internship session in Hirosaki, Aomori Prefecture.
JAPAN / Regional Voices: Tohoku
Oct 6, 2025

Bus and taxi firms look to retiring SDF members to fill driver shortage

Many SDF officers retire in their mid-50s, and most of them hold a driver’s license for large vehicles, creating the potential for them to work as drivers.
Geopolitical shifts, technological transformation and climate change are reshaping, not reversing, globalization.
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 11, 2025

What happens next to globalization?

For starters, the rise of China and other economies is bringing an end to the postwar world order dominated by the United States.
Tokyo's National Stadium will host the World Athletics Championships from Sept. 13 to 21.
MORE SPORTS / Athletics
Sep 11, 2025

National Stadium to finally fulfill destiny years after hosting Olympics without fans

Originally built in 2019 ahead of the Tokyo Olympics, National Stadium was robbed of its original purpose when the COVID-19 pandemic turned the world upside down.
Actor and World Athletics special ambassador for the local organizing committee Yuji Oda (front, fifth from right) poses with athletes at Tokyo's National Stadium during an open practice on Sept. 4.
MORE SPORTS / Athletics
Sep 11, 2025

Broadcaster TBS taps Hello Kitty and Yuji Oda in bid to sell World Athletics

TBS has provided televised coverage of the World Athletics Championships since the 1997 event in Athens.
Super Mario soft toys in various sizes at collector Kikai's residence in Mishima, Shizuoka Prefecture, on Aug. 19
LIFE / Digital
Sep 12, 2025

'He's a regular man, not unlike us': Marking 40 years of Mario games

Super Mario Bros., released for Nintendo's home consoles in Japan on Sept. 13, 1985, was a landmark of early video gaming.
Attendees visit the BYD stand at an auto show in Munich, Germany, on Tuesday
BUSINESS / Tech
Sep 12, 2025

'Why not?' Europeans warming up to Chinese electric cars

At the IAA auto fair in Munich this week, Chinese EV makers were out in force, highlighting the determination of the fast-growing car giants to make inroads into Europe.
According to the latest survey conducted by the labor ministry, Japanese companies' employment rate of workers with disabilities was 2.4%.
BUSINESS / Companies
Sep 12, 2025

Japan firms facing challenge of employing more workers with disabilities

According to the latest survey conducted by the labor ministry, Japanese companies' employment rate of disabled people was 2.4%.
Palestinians transport their belongings as they evacuate Gaza City toward southern areas of the Gaza Strip, on Thursday.
WORLD
Sep 12, 2025

Palestinians displaced in Gaza return to a city under Israeli assault

Many are arriving to find no space for shelter, even in an area designated by Israel as a humanitarian zone.
Qatar Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani attends a funeral Thursday in Doha for Palestinians killed in an Israeli strike on Hamas members in the city days earlier.
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 12, 2025

Israel’s Doha strike has destroyed American credibility

After decades of enjoying impunity for its violations of international law and norms, Israel no longer even hesitates to do whatever it wants.
Juan Ansotegui walks on his property in Villalibado, a hamlet in the Odra-Pisuerga comarca of Burgos, Castile, Spain.
WORLD / Society
Sep 12, 2025

Spain wants to save rural areas — and it's finding creative ways to do it

Public and private actors are experimenting with ways to reverse demographic decline and save the centuries-old histories, traditions and cultures of Spain's rural communities.
Local residents walk across a bridge as smoke rises following Russian drone and missile strikes in Kyiv on Sept. 7.
WORLD / Politics
Sep 13, 2025

U.S. urges G7 and EU to impose tariffs on China and India over Russian oil

Washington is also calling for a legal pathway to seize immobilized sovereign Russian assets and using the principle of those assets to fund Ukraine’s defense.
NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe Gen. Alexus G. Grynkewich speaks during a news conference on the violation of Polish airspace by Russian drones, at the NATO headquarters in Brussels on Friday.
WORLD
Sep 13, 2025

NATO to beef up defense of Europe's eastern flank after Poland drone incursions

Poland's drone shootdown was the first known action of its kind by a NATO member during Russia's war in Ukraine.
The Audi E5 Sportback, the first model of Audi's series of electric vehicles jointly developed with SAIC, is showcased at a Volkswagen event in Shanghai in April.
BUSINESS / Tech
Sep 14, 2025

How Chinese EV tech is reshaping global auto design

Licensing deals with major automakers make up relatively small but growing revenue streams for Chinese EV-makers and offer a new quid-pro-quo.
U.S. President Donald Trump attends a news conference during a NATO summit in The Hague in June.
WORLD / Politics
Sep 14, 2025

Trump presses NATO nations to halt Russian oil purchases

In recent weeks, the U.S. has stepped up pressure on NATO countries to tighten energy sanctions on Russia in a bid to help end its war with Ukraine.
U.S. President Donald Trump’s most concrete step to rein in unprecedented budget deficits — sweeping tariff hikes — faces the danger of a legal reversal that would put the nation’s finances on an even shakier footing.
BUSINESS / Economy / FOCUS
Sep 14, 2025

Tariffs face legal threat that puts Trump’s deficit plan at risk

U.S. President Donald Trump’s most concrete step to rein in unprecedented budget deficits — sweeping tariff hikes — faces the danger of a legal reversal that would put the nation’s finances on an even shakier footing.
Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto raises his fist as he speaks during the commemoration of Pancasila Day at the Pancasila Building, a historic hall within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs compound in Jakarta, in June.
ASIA PACIFIC / Politics / ANALYSIS
Sep 14, 2025

Indonesia leader, in damage control, installs loyalists after protests

Prabowo surged to victory in last year's election and maintained a high approval ratings until recent protests turned increasingly angry against the country's political elite.
Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan chief Yoshihiko Noda speaks during a news conference in the parliament building on Friday.
JAPAN / Politics
Sep 15, 2025

Japan's opposition parties wary of snap election

The opposition remains fragmented against the ruling coalition in the event a general election is called by the Liberal Democratic Party's next leader.
Workers at a site of a new Amazon data center that is under construction in western Sydney, Australia, on Sept. 5
BUSINESS / Tech
Sep 16, 2025

In Australia, a data center boom is built on vague water plans

Concerns have emerged that the sector's rapid growth will leave residents competing for the resource.
Bedouins, many of whom were displaced by fighting in the Sweida region, receive donated bread in the village of Umm Walad, Syria, on July 28.
WORLD / Politics
Sep 16, 2025

Sectarian violence risks dividing Syria despite al-Sharaa's diplomacy

The country's Alawite, Christian and Druze minorities have voiced anger at the president's Islamist administration following outbreaks of sectarian violence.
The "Playground of Life: Jellyfish Pavilion" at the Osaka Expo on Thursday. Fukuyama in Hiroshima Prefecture aims to relocate the pavilion to a site in the city after the event ends on Oct. 13.
JAPAN
Sep 16, 2025

Reuse pavilions and equipment, Osaka Expo organizer urges

The organizer is encouraging local governments and companies to reuse buildings and equipment including air conditioners and lighting.
U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer speaks at Lancaster House in London on Monday.
WORLD / Politics
Sep 16, 2025

Lack of successor keeps U.K.'s Starmer safe as Labour mulls his ouster

Plots against British leader Keir Starmer have dominated the headlines in Britain following the messy departures of key members of his government.
Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba announces his intention to resign during a news conference at the Prime Minister’s Office in Tokyo on Sept. 7. The Japanese leader decided to step down following weeks of calls for his departure in the aftermath of a second national election setback. 
COMMENTARY / Japan
Sep 16, 2025

Can anyone save the fracturing Liberal Democratic Party?

This is shaping up to be an even less predictable race than the last one, when Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba pulled off a surprise victory.
Chinese migrants intent on reaching the United States walking in the jungle of Panama’s Darien Gap on March 3, 2023.
ASIA PACIFIC / Society
Sep 16, 2025

He risked everything to leave China for the U.S. Then he was sent back.

Tao was not a Chinese dissident, just an ordinary worker who wanted freedom. Deportation did not stop him from trying again.

Longform

Once smoky, male-dominated spaces, today's net cafes, like Kaikatsu Club, are working to make their operations more attractive to women customers.
The second life of Japan's net cafes