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A shipwreck of a boat, used by refugees in the past, is stranded at a shore in the northern part of Lesbos island, Greece
WORLD
Aug 1, 2025

On Europe's hardened frontier, Greek island keeps migrants at bay

Ten years after it was a hot spot for migrants, Lesbos shows how far government responses have hardened against people seeking refuge in Europe.
A surviving streetcar from the World War II atomic bombing of the city of Hiroshima runs near the Atomic Bomb Dome in Hiroshima on July 27.
JAPAN
Aug 5, 2025

Hiroshima streetcars continue to serve and educate 80 years after atomic bombing

Streetcar service in Hiroshima resumed in some sections just three days after the bombing thanks to intense repair work, becoming a symbol of the city's reconstruction.
Koichi Tagawa’s diary entry from Aug. 9, 1945, describes the day of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki.
JAPAN / History / Longform
Aug 8, 2025

The horrors of Nagasaki, in first person

At 17, Koichi Tagawa survived Nagasaki’s atomic blast and recording two months of grief, destruction and the loss of his mother in a diary he kept for life.
Hideo Shimizu, 95, says he cannot forget seeing the prisoners' bloody wills scribbled on the walls of prison cells at Unit 731 in 1945.
JAPAN / History
Aug 13, 2025

The indelible memory of being a part of Unit 731

For 95-year-old Hideo Shimizu, the 4½ months he spent with the biological and chemical warfare unit of the now-defunct Imperial Japanese Army were just like yesterday.
Osaka Asian Film Festival, which will hold its 21st edition early to draw on Expo 2025 visitors, is set to open on Aug. 29 with a restoration of “Tracing to Expo ’70.” The Taiwanese film follows a Japan-raised Taiwanese woman whose search for her long-lost benefactor takes her to the 1970 Osaka Expo.
CULTURE / Film
Aug 15, 2025

Osaka Asian Film Festival gets an expo boost

In a rare double bill, the Osaka Asian Film Festival will stage a special summer edition to make the most out of interest in the ongoing world's fair.
Members of the nonprofit group Japan Youth Memorial Association search for the remains of dead soldiers in a cave in Okinawa Prefecture in February.
JAPAN / History / Longform
Aug 15, 2025

The long search for Japan’s lost soldiers

An decades-long effort to recover the remains of those who died during World War II, most of them abroad, may be entering its final phase.
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.
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.
Koryo High School players greet their cheering section after beating Hokkaido’s Asahikawa Shiho in the first round of Summer Koshien on Aug. 7. The school withdrew three days later as a bullying scandal enveloped the team.
BASEBALL / FOCUS
Aug 27, 2025

Koshien’s dark summer forces reckoning for high school baseball

A young player’s dream was to play in the National High School Baseball Championship. A series of bullying incidents this year changed all of that.
A nation made wealthy by the discovery of diamonds in 1967, Botswana is now facing an economic crisis.
BUSINESS
Sep 4, 2025

Lab-grown gems are robbing Botswana of its diamond riches

A diamond-market crisis has turned the finding of the gems into an affliction and a cautionary tale of what can happen to an economy that becomes overly reliant on one commodity.
A woman in Vatican City on July 19 during a heat wave. Projecting temperatures is inherently imprecise because modern humans have never experienced such extremes.
ENVIRONMENT / Climate change
Jul 29, 2023

An overheating planet requires extreme climate solutions

Projections say warming will only get worse, but humans exert control over planet-warming pollution and can change these models’ trajectories.
Materials derived from cabbage (left), iyokan (center) and onion by Tokyo-based startup Fabula, which is working to develop new materials that can replace concrete.
ENVIRONMENT / Sustainability / OUR PLANET
Aug 27, 2023

Japan’s scrap-and-rebuild culture faces an environmental reckoning

The nation's tendency toward new construction — rather than renovation — is coming under renewed scrutiny amid concerns over sustainability.
Eiko Takeuchi talks about a traffic jam during last winter’s heavy snow along National Route 8 in Kashiwazaki, Niigata Prefecture, on Sept. 18.
JAPAN / Society / Regional Voices: Tohoku
Dec 11, 2023

Evacuation plans for nuclear incidents called into question

Effectiveness of preparations as a “last line of defense” to save residents in the event of a nuclear disaster are in doubt.
In writing "Climate Capitalism: Winning the Global Race to Zero Emissions," journalist Akshat Rathi said his goal was to try and determine where climate solutions are being built and uncover the challenges that they face.
ENVIRONMENT / Climate change / OUR PLANET
Dec 24, 2023

Finding crucial solutions in a time of climate crisis

Journalist Akshat Rathi explores the economic side of the emergency in his book ‘Climate Capitalism.'
Yurii, 53, and Tetiana, 51, attend a rally of families of Ukrainian prisoners of war  in Kryvyi Rih, Dnipropetrovsk region, Ukraine, on Jan. 21.
WORLD
Feb 22, 2024

How life in Ukraine has been shattered by two years of war

Even in remote villages, signs are everywhere of the two-year-old war that has irrevocably changed the face of Ukraine.
Britain's Catherine, Princess of Wales, appears in this still image taken from video released Friday in which she announced that she is undergoing preventative chemotherapy after cancer was found to have been present, following her abdominal surgery in January.
WORLD
Mar 23, 2024

Catherine’s cancer diagnosis puts U.K. royals on even more uncertain terrain

First King Charles and now Catherine, Princess of Wales, are facing grave health concerns, stretching an already slimmed-down monarchy.
Since launching in 1961, the iconic Salone del Mobile furniture fair has firmly established Milan’s status as a leading force in the global design world
LIFE / Style & Design
Apr 18, 2024

Salone del Mobile’s Maria Porro: ‘Italy and Japan share many things’

Maria Porro became the leading global design fair's first female and youngest-ever president when she was named to the position in 2021.
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.
Sudanese refugees fleeing the conflict in the country's Darfur region cross the border into Chad in August.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 23, 2024

Humanitarian catastrophes and the world's forgotten conflicts

Tragically, there are global catastrophes that, by virtue of their longevity and their distance from us, have fallen out of sight.
A truck rolls off a cargo vessel docked at Esbjerg Port in Ebjerg, Denmark. European Union food imports to the U.K. are about to get more expensive and complicated as the British government implements the Brexit deal.
BUSINESS / Companies
Apr 27, 2024

Britons finally taste full Brexit as costly border checks begin

From April 30, the U.K. will impose checks on European Union food imports — a stark reversal from the pre-Brexit era of frictionless trade.
Durian Lollobrigida and his co-hosts — actors Megumi and Chiaki Horan, singer Thelma Aoyama and former “Terrace House” panelist Yoshimi Tokui — offer in-studio commentary on the contestants’ footage in Netflix’s new reality dating show, “The Boyfriend.”
CULTURE / TV & Streaming
Jul 13, 2024

'The Boyfriend' host Durian Lollobrigida puts a face to queer joy

Involvement in Netflix's new reality dating show is just the latest success in the Japanese drag queen's rise.
Since arriving in Japan, Adrian Bianco has dedicated himself to exploring the country’s many subcultures at the website sabukaru.online.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / 20 QUESTIONS
Aug 30, 2024

Adrian Bianco: ‘Leaving your comfort zone keeps you alive’

Upon relocating in Tokyo after a stint with the Vice empire in Germany, Adrian Bianco has explored Asia's underground via his website Sabukaru Online.
The start of the 2024 Hakone Ekiden in Tokyo's Otemachi district. Every year on Jan. 2 and 3, Hakone Ekiden brings millions of fans across Japan to a standstill.
MORE SPORTS
Dec 31, 2024

A newcomer’s guide to the Hakone Ekiden experience

Every year on Jan. 2 and 3, Hakone Ekiden brings millions of fans across Japan to a standstill, even people who normally don’t care about running.
Palestinians gather to receive food cooked by a charity kitchen in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip on Dec. 4.
WORLD
Dec 31, 2024

As Gaza suffers, experts call on hunger monitor to redefine famine

Many food-security experts, aid workers and doctors say famine took hold in Gaza many months ago.
The production line at Tanmiah Food’s chicken processing plant in Shaqra, Saudi Arabia
BUSINESS
Jan 26, 2025

Chickens hatch across the Saudi desert in kingdom’s pivot from oil

The kingdom imports about 80% of what it eats, triggering worries about shortages in a time of rising geopolitical tensions.
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.

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