Search - 2020

 
 
BASEBALL / Japanese Baseball / Sac Bunts
Feb 15, 2024

Giants' new Godzilla Yuto Akihiro taps into Hideki Matsui's teachings to level up

Akihiro is the latest player to try and walk in Matsui's footsteps.
An in-house design by Yamagiwa, the Sui drop-shaped light uses traditional Japanese chōchin lantern techniques and is made with Mino washi paper.
LIFE / Style & Design / ON: DESIGN
Feb 17, 2024

Japan-made standouts from one of Paris' biggest design fairs

Maison & Objet is now such a popular event that it is often nicknamed the Paris Fashion Week of the interior design industry.
Naomi Osaka hits a return against Karolina Pliskova during their quarterfinal match at the Qatar Open in Doha on Thursday.
TENNIS
Feb 16, 2024

Naomi Osaka falls against Karolina Pliskova in Qatar Open quarterfinals

Osaka went down 7-6 (8-6), 7-6 (7-5) after saving three match points.
A shooting that killed one person and wounded 22 took place near Union Station in Kansas City, Missouri, on Thursday.
MORE SPORTS / Football
Feb 16, 2024

Police say argument led to shooting after Chiefs' Super Bowl parade

Lisa Lopez-Galvan, a popular Kansas City radio personality, was the lone fatality.
Medical school students discuss striking against the government's medical policies, in Seoul in August 2020. The proposal at the time was shelved after intense opposition.
ASIA PACIFIC / Science & Health
Feb 16, 2024

South Korean trainee doctors quit to protest plan to add more physicians

Doctors throughout the country held rallies on Thursday, calling on the government to scrap the plan.
The decisions by JPMorgan and State Street to quit a global investor coalition will collectively remove trillions of dollars from efforts to coordinate Wall Street action on climate change.
BUSINESS / Companies
Feb 16, 2024

JPMorgan and State Street quit climate group as BlackRock steps back

Financial firms have faced growing pressure from Republican politicians over their membership in such groups.
The exact timing of the roll out of Rakuten Mobile's commercial satellite-to-mobile service is uncertain, but the plans for coverage encompass mountainous and remote areas across Japan.
BUSINESS / Tech
Feb 16, 2024

Rakuten plans satellite mobile service across Japan in 2026

The service, to be rolled out in partnership with AST SpaceMobile, will be directly accessible by regular smartphones and won’t require a terminal.
A new report by the McKinsey Institute for Black Economic Mobility estimates that it could take up to 320 years for Black Americans to catch up to their white counterparts in quality of life.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 8, 2024

Black Americans gain no ground on income and wealth

One study estimates that it could take up to 320 years for Black Americans to catch up to their white counterparts' in quality of life.
Demonstrators hold a rally to honor the late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny in front of the Russian Embassy in Warsaw on Friday.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 18, 2024

The lonesome death of a Russian opposition leader

The prison where Navalny died, Nicknamed “Polar Wolf,” is a freezing cold gulag for violent criminals. But Navalny — an anti-corruption lawyer and blogger.
Brig. Gen. Esmail Qaani, the head of Iran's Revolutionary Guards' Quds Force, speaks during a ceremony marking the anniversary of the death of senior Iranian military commander Mohammad Hejazi, in Tehran, on April 14, 2022.
WORLD
Feb 18, 2024

Iraqi armed groups dial down U.S. attacks on request of Iran commander

A top Iranian security official said: "Commander Qaani's visit was successful, though not entirely, as not all Iraqi groups consented to de-escalate."
South Korea has one of the lowest ratios of doctors to population in the developed world, according to data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, which shows 2.6 doctors per 1,000 people.
ASIA PACIFIC
Feb 18, 2024

South Korean doctors warn of ‘catastrophe’ if punished for strike

About 2,700 interns and residents at five major general hospital groups plan to walk off the job.
People lay flowers and candles at a memorial in front of the Russian Embassy in Berlin on Sunday, following the death of the Kremlin's most prominent critic Alexei Navalny in an Arctic prison.
WORLD / Politics
Feb 19, 2024

Russian courts hand jail terms to dozens of Navalny mourners

Anti-Kremlin demonstrations or public shows of opposition to the regime are effectively illegal in Russia.
In the U.S., proof that inflation remains sticky and the labor market sound has convinced traders to embrace the Federal Reserve’s pushback against market bets on near-term easing.
BUSINESS / Economy
Feb 19, 2024

Cracks start to emerge in global central bank synchronicity

The synchronization among central banks might be about to weaken as domestic drivers take over from global trends in determining price outlooks.
Shoppers walk past an ID Hub, a Volkswagen showroom for electric cars, at a mall in Shanghai on Dec. 3, 2023.
BUSINESS / Companies
Feb 19, 2024

Firms with deep roots in China reconsider their Xinjiang ties

Volkswagen Group is reviewing the future of its joint venture in the Xinjiang region of northwestern China
Alexei Navalny, who Russian authorities say died on Friday, attends a 2019 rally in Moscow with his wife, Yulia Navalnaya (right), in memory of murdered dissident Boris Nemtsov.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 19, 2024

Navalny was too brave to be allowed to live

Alexei Navalny never stopped speaking truth to the powers of Russian despotism. His fearlessness was simply too much for the Kremlin to bear.
Mining magnate Dan Gertler in Congo in 2012
BUSINESS / Tech
Feb 20, 2024

China's dominance of EV metals prompts U.S. to revisit stockpile 'panic button'

Budget cuts have shrunk U.S. strategic reserves to record lows, leaving it facing shortages of the raw materials needed to execute an energy transition.
A person lights a candle by a portrait of late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who died in a Russian Arctic prison last week, at the entrance of Russian Embassy in Pristina, Kosovo, on Tuesday.
WORLD / Politics
Feb 21, 2024

U.S. to impose 'major sanctions' on Russia over Navalny death

The latest sanctions on Moscow will target a range of items, including its defense and industrial bases.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange's supporters demonstrate against U.S. extradition in front of the British Consulate in Barcelona on Tuesday.
WORLD / Politics
Feb 21, 2024

Assange absent at final hearing against extradition to U.S.

The two-day session is likely the WikiLeaks founder's last chance to fight the extradition in Britain's courts after a half-decade battle.
A Rapidus factory construction site in Chitose, Hokkaido, in December
BUSINESS / Tech
Feb 21, 2024

Japan’s chip spree aims to kick economy into high gear

The government’s chip strategy aims to triple domestic chip sales to around ¥15 trillion by 2030.
Regulating online gambling in Japan can be tricky, particularly when site operators are based overseas in countries where it is legal.
JAPAN / Crime & Legal
Feb 21, 2024

Kyoto police arrest seven on suspicion of running illegal gambling site

The suspects are accused of working for the foreign company operating Dora Mahjong, a membership-based gambling site catering to a Japanese audience.
The Japan Pavillion is seen at the Singapore Airshow on Wednesday.
BUSINESS / FOCUS
Feb 21, 2024

At top airshow, Japanese firms explore defense export opportunities

They are offering a diverse and sophisticated range of products following a revision of guidelines on defense equipment and technology transfer.
JAPAN / Crime & Legal
Feb 21, 2024

Chinese 'overseas police station' in Tokyo raided over benefit fraud

According to papers submitted to prosecutors, the raids stemmed from an alleged illegal receipt of COVID-19 subsidies.
A bloody demonic outbreak strikes Japan in “Visitors: Complete Edition.”
CULTURE / Film
Feb 22, 2024

‘Visitors’ revels in all its gory glory with deadpan humor

Kenichi Ugana’s extended version of his brilliant splatter short is endearingly shaggy — and messy.
When SoftBank Group founder Masayoshi Son bought Arm in 2016 for $32 billion, he had grand plans for the company to dominate the nascent market for connected devices, also known as the Internet of Things.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Feb 21, 2024

Softbank’s Arm is not the AI play most people think it is

Today, GPUs are the gold standard for AI development and thus the equivalent of toilet paper during the pandemic.
Moody’s predicts China's potential economic growth will decline to 3.5% by 2030, with weaker demographics and a graying population being a major driver of the slowdown.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 21, 2024

China’s economic engine is running out of fuel

Moody’s now predicts that China's annual economic growth will fall to 4% in 2024 and 2025, before slowing further, to 3.8%, on average, for the rest of the decade.
Takeshi Ebisawa poses with a rocket launcher during a meeting with an informant and two undercover Danish police officers at a warehouse in Copenhagen, Denmark on Feb. 3, 2021.
JAPAN / Crime & Legal
Feb 22, 2024

U.S. charges criminal group leader over conspiring to sell nuclear material

Prosecutors allege that Takeshi Ebisawa "brazenly" moved material containing uranium and weapons-grade plutonium from Myanmar.
A general election must take place in the U.K. by late January 2025, which means plenty of time for expats abroad to register and vote.
COMMUNITY / Issues / The Foreign Element
Feb 26, 2024

As more U.K. expats get the vote, Japan’s ballot box stays closed

As of Jan. 16, Brits abroad — including the more than 17,000 in Japan — are able to register to vote regardless of how long they have lived overseas.
COP28 president Sultan Ahmed al-Jaber is seen on a screen as he speaks during a high-level round table on COP energy and climate commitments organized by the International Energy Agency (IEA) at its headquarters in Paris on Tuesday. The world needs "trillions" of dollars to spur on the green transition and tackle global warming, the head of last year's COP28 climate talks said, warning that political momentum can evaporate without clear action.
ENVIRONMENT / Climate change
Feb 22, 2024

Political momentum on climate could evaporate, warns COP28 president

COP28 president Sultan al-Jaber hailed progress made at U.N. negotiations last year in Dubai but the deal lacked important details, including on funding.
The Huawei Mate 60 Pro, launched in August 2023 and powered by a sophisticated chip, was seen as a symbol of the China's technological resurgence despite Washington's ongoing efforts to cripple its capacity to produce advanced semiconductors.
BUSINESS / Tech
Feb 22, 2024

U.S. targets China chipmaking plant after Huawei Mate 60 Pro

The Biden administration seeks to cut off China's most advanced factory from more American imports after it produced a sophisticated chip for the phone.
Specimen M831 stored at the National Museum of Nature and Science’s Tsukuba Research Departments in Ibaraki Prefecture
ENVIRONMENT / Wildlife / OUR PLANET
Feb 22, 2024

How a 13-year-old discovered a possible Japanese wolf specimen

A new paper by Hinako Komori and two academics says a specimen she found could be one of two Japanese wolves kept at Ueno Zoo in the late 19th century.

Longform

An illustration features the Japanese signs for "ganbare" (good luck) and the Deaflympics, which will be held between Nov. 15 and 26.
A century of Deaf sport finds its moment in Tokyo