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Astros left fielder Jose Altuve makes a throw home during a game against the Nationals in West Palm Beach, Florida, on Sunday.
BASEBALL / MLB
Mar 3, 2025

Jose Altuve takes on challenge of learning to play left field for Astros

Jose Altuve is moving to left field after 14 seasons in MLB.
Female crew members chat in the women-only rest area aboard the Maritime Self-Defense Force destroyer Shiranui in November 2022.
JAPAN
Mar 4, 2025

Women in SDF see their roles expand — but challenges remain

Issues such as harassment prevention and a lack of promotion to senior positions remain significant hurdles for women wanting to join.
Lithuania will become the first country in the EU to leave a multilateral arms regulation agreement when it withdraws on March 6.
WORLD / Politics
Mar 4, 2025

Lithuania to walk out on global disarmament treaty

Lithuania's controversial move comes at a time of heightened tensions in international relations over its neighbor Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
A herd of sheep move across a solar farm in Haskell, Texas, on Dec. 2, 2024.
ENVIRONMENT
Mar 4, 2025

Sheep grazing under solar panels help U.S. farmers to survive crop-price slump

Instead of plowing fields, Raines spent the year ferrying his flock of sheep to solar farms, to munch on the grass that grows around the gleaming panels.
Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group has decided to withdraw from the Net-Zero Banking Alliance, a spokesperson said.
BUSINESS / Companies
Mar 4, 2025

Japan’s SMFG joins Wall Street in exiting net zero banking group

Japan’s second-largest bank has decided to withdraw from the Net-Zero Banking Alliance.
Japan aims to more than triple domestic cybersecurity industry sales in the next decade, from the current ¥900 billion ($6 billion) to ¥3 trillion.
BUSINESS / Tech
Mar 5, 2025

Japan aims to triple domestic cybersecurity industry sales in next decade

Japan-made cybersecurity products currently occupy less than half of the nation's domestic market share.
Poles and members of the Ukrainian diaspora take part in a rally in front of the U.S. Embassy in Warsaw on Monday to protest after U.S. President Doland Trump clashed with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy during their meeting in the Oval Office.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 5, 2025

The Oval Office blowup: What went wrong and how to fix it

The world may have underestimated this incident's significance due to media spin and partisan bias by those more focused on political allegiances.
Mendoza, Argentina, offers a combination of natural beauty, a thriving wine industry, political conservatism and valuable resources, making it an attractive potential safe haven amid global instability.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 12, 2025

I just found my nuclear war hideaway

This question is less and less theoretical: The world seems to be living on the edge, with growing tensions between great powers.
Japan Times
PRESS
Mar 7, 2025

The Japan Times Boarding & International School Day 2025

The Japan Times is excited to announce the second Boarding & International School Day, on Sunday, April 20, 2025. Boarding and international schools in Japan have been carving out new educational paths for students in recent years. They can provide an internationally enriched environment from an early...
A dry rice field in Subang, West Java, Indonesia, on July 29, 2023
ENVIRONMENT / Climate change
Mar 6, 2025

Europe’s defense budget rips through its climate-crisis buffer

Spending cuts here and now mean future climate costs may rise, said the head of a climate nonprofit.
Kesa Hatamoto, a 102-year-old Japanese woman who is recognized by Guinness World Records as the world's oldest pharmacist, speaks during an interview on Jan. 28 in Tokyo's Meguro Ward.
JAPAN
Mar 6, 2025

At 102, world's oldest pharmacist celebrates her calling

"There's nothing happier than having a job for a lifetime. I want to continue my career forever," says Kesa Hatamoto.
President Donald Trump delivers an address to a joint session of Congress in Washington on Tuesday. Some critics are questioning if the U.S. is shifting away from global leadership under his stewardship.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Mar 6, 2025

Trump's speech was more campaign rhetoric than leadership

Trump's speech to Congress, like the one eight years ago, was little more than domestic political propaganda.
U.S. President Donald Trump is exempting automakers from newly imposed tariffs on Mexico and Canada for one month, the White House said Wednesday, as a temporary reprieve following pleas from industry leaders.
BUSINESS / Economy
Mar 6, 2025

Trump’s tariff pause cheered globally and watched closely in Tokyo

The U.S. president is delaying 25% tariffs on cars from Mexico and Canada and might consider carve-outs for agricultural imports from those countries.
A monarch butterfly is seen at an enclosure at Boone Hall Plantation and Gardens in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, in August 2019.
ENVIRONMENT / Wildlife
Mar 7, 2025

Butterfly populations plummet by 22% in U.S. since turn of century

Studies in some other countries have documented declines at roughly the same rate as in the U.S. data.
Bar Bota, the 37th-floor watering hole at the Four Seasons Osaka, looks out on a glittering cityscape better known for its cheap eats and drinks.
LIFE / Food & Drink
Mar 9, 2025

Slowly but surely, Osaka emerges from Kyoto’s fine-dining shadow

The majority of tourists go to Osaka with street food on their minds, but the city is rapidly improve its elevated dining options as well.
Forbidden from seeing friends and forced to devote herself to housework, Reina (whose name has been changed), a 37-year-old Filipino national living in the city of Nagoya, became socially isolated.
JAPAN
Mar 7, 2025

Foreign single mothers struggle with language barriers and visas

Experts are urging the government to create a safer environment where these women can continue living in Japan without fear.
Globally, women are severely underrepresented among leading roles in cinema, with female directors accounting for just over 10% of the industry in Japan. Achieving gender equality on-set would have far-reaching consequences for the whole of society.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Mar 7, 2025

Without women behind the camera, equality stays out of the frame

Cinema isn't only about what stories are told, but who tells them. Overcoming severe underrepresentation, women are reshaping the film industry and cultural narratives.
Actress Mana Ashida during a news conference in Tokyo on Thursday. The U.N. Development Program has picked Ashida as domestic goodwill ambassador for Japan.
ENVIRONMENT / Climate change
Mar 7, 2025

Japan actress Mana Ashida named UNDP goodwill ambassador

Ashida will be in charge of promotional activities in Japan mainly related to the fight against climate change and other environmental challenges.
U.S. President Donald Trump gestures as he walks to board Marine One, while departing the White House en route to Florida, in Washington, on Friday.
JAPAN
Mar 8, 2025

Majority in Japan expect stronger economic ties under Trump

Also in the survey, 81.5% said they strongly or somewhat agree that the security environment in East Asia is becoming more severe.
Trade tensions between the U.S. and China are set to escalate Monday as Beijing imposes tariffs on U.S. agricultural goods in response to President Trump's latest tariff hike.
WORLD
Mar 9, 2025

China-U.S. trade war heats up with Beijing's tariffs to take effect

Analysts say Beijing's retaliatory tariffs are designed to hurt Trump's voter base while remaining restrained enough to allow room to hash out a trade deal.
Aizawa Concrete employees work in the Namie factory in Fukushima Prefecture in January.
BUSINESS / FOCUS
Mar 11, 2025

14 years after 3/11 disasters, Fukushima vies to become a startup hub

Part of the goal is to attract a more permanent workforce to Fukushima to support the development of the prefecture as a whole.
Excavators to be used by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to remove debris from homes destroyed by the Eaton Fire in Altadena, California
ENVIRONMENT / Climate change / FOCUS
Mar 10, 2025

Cascading extreme weather events unleash billions in damages globally

Compound weather, when two or more concurrent events that collectively yield a result worse than if each had occurred on its own, are occurring more frequently.
Concept art for the renewed National Museum of Territory and Sovereignty
JAPAN
Mar 10, 2025

Japan's territory museum to reopen in April following renovations

The museum in Tokyo's Chiyoda Ward is designed to publicize Japan's position on disputed territories.
Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba speaks at an Upper House Budget Committee session in Tokyo on Monday. The opposition's slamming of the Liberal Democratic Party over its position on corporate and group donations, as well as their own divisions over whether to restrict or ban such contributions, cast uncertainty over Ishiba’s hopes of reaching a consensus within the month.
JAPAN / Politics
Mar 10, 2025

Opposition parties split on whether to restrict or ban corporate donations

Their division casts uncertainty over Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba’s hopes of reaching a consensus on the matter within the month ahead of a summer election.
India, the world’s third-biggest emitter, wants to more than double clean-power capacity to 500 gigawatts by 2030. That won't be easy.
ENVIRONMENT / Energy
Mar 10, 2025

Eyeing short-term savings, India’s utilities put green energy boom at risk

A federal auction model that helped the country add more than 130 gigawatts of renewables projects over the past decade is under threat of circumvention.
Oto, Japan's oldest lion, died Monday at Toyohashi Zoo & Botanical Park in Toyohashi, Aichi Prefecture.
JAPAN / Science & Health
Mar 10, 2025

Oto, Japan’s oldest lion, dies at 25 — equivalent to 100 human years

Born in 1999 at Asahiyama Zoo in the city of Asahikawa, Hokkaido, Oto had been at Aichi Prefecture's Toyohashi Zoo & Botanical Park since 2001.
Smoke and flames rise from a collision between an oil tanker carrying fuel for the U.S. military and a cargo ship off the northeastern coast of England on Monday.
WORLD
Mar 11, 2025

Tanker hired by U.S. military ablaze off U.K. after hit by container ship

There has been no indication of any malicious activity or other actors involved in the incident, security sources say.
Fukushima Gov. Masao Uchibori says he wants the central government to clarify and accelerate the plan for disposing of soil from radiation decontamination work.
JAPAN
Mar 11, 2025

Governor urges contaminated soil be disposed of outside Fukushima by 2045

A law states all contaminated soil must be disposed of outside Fukushima by March 2045.
Tetsuya Tadano gazes at the school building from the hillside behind Okawa Elementary School on Feb. 7 in Ishinomaki, Miyagi Prefecture.
JAPAN
Mar 11, 2025

Former students work to turn tsunami-hit elementary school into social hub

One former student felt the school has become increasingly defined solely by the tragedy.
Trade minister Yoji Muto says his talks in Washington with U.S. officials didn’t result in any confirmation to exclude Tokyo from upcoming tariff measures.
BUSINESS / Economy
Mar 11, 2025

Japan's trade minister fails to win tariff exemption assurance from U.S.

New duties on car imports would deal a direct blow to the economy of Japan, which is already bracing for an indirect impact from tariffs the U.S. is imposing on other nations.

Longform

Visitors walk past Sou Fujimoto's Grand Ring, which has been recognized as the largest wooden structure in the world.
Can a World Expo still matter? Japan is about to find out.