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Japan Times
BUSINESS / Companies
Aug 8, 2022

SoftBank CEO pledges sweeping cost cuts after $23.4 billion loss

Low tech valuations have been draining SoftBank's ability to turn public listings of its portfolio companies into liquidity to fuel further big bets.
JAPAN
Jul 13, 2022

Japan lawyers push back against Unification Church's donation claims

The spotlight has fallen on donations to the church following claims by suspect in the shooting of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
BUSINESS
Mar 4, 2022

Japan reinforces countermeasures against rapidly rising oil prices

To cushion the impact of soaring oil prices due to the war in Ukraine, the government said Friday that it will bolster a subsidy program for oil wholesalers.
Japan Times
WORLD / Politics
Feb 15, 2022

Canada PM Trudeau enlists banks to help stop protests in emergency move

In a bid to stop the protests, the Canadian prime minister invoked rarely used emergency powers to choke off the flow of money to demonstrators.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Dec 18, 2021

Sapporo faces uphill battle convincing public about 2030 Winter Games bid

About half of all respondents to a 2014 survey said they were worried about how much the Games would cost. A lot has changed since then.
A relative of a missing passenger on MH370, in Beijing on the one year anniversary of the aircraft's disappearance.
WORLD
Feb 23, 2024

A decade after MH370, planes still at risk of vanishing off the map

An industrywide push to eliminate the chances of a similar case has been stymied by bureaucracy and financial pressure.
Gregory May, U.S. consul general in Hong Kong, takes part in an interview in the city on Thursday.
ASIA PACIFIC / Politics
Mar 2, 2024

Top U.S. envoy in Hong Kong warns of creeping internet curbs

In his first interview since taking up the post in 2022, U.S. Consul General Gregory May said that connectivity and data security issues are growing.
Shi Pong Hsu, 75, makes coffee in a Singapore coffee shop. The city-state's government projects that almost a quarter of its population will be 65 or over by 2030.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 10, 2024

Singapore is bracing for a super-aging society

Japan and South Korea may be the poster children for low birthrates, but Singapore is confronting its own decline. Its solution? Bonuses for nurses.
Airplane fuselages outside the Boeing manufacturing facility in Washington. Boeing’s recent problems are further widening the gap between supply and demand.
BUSINESS / Companies
Mar 18, 2024

Boeing’s pain spreads to travelers as airlines cut back on plans

As a result, passengers will face fewer flight options and potentially higher prices on at least some popular short and midrange routes.
Nissan Motor will launch 30 new models over the next three years, including 16 electrified models.
BUSINESS / Companies
Mar 25, 2024

Nissan to launch 30 new models by 2027 and boost global sales volumes

Nissan was a pioneer in EVs but the carmaker has been eclipsed by the likes of U.S. rival Tesla and Chinese leader BYD.
Two people try to take a selfie under the illuminated cherry blossoms in Kyoto’s Gion district last year.
PODCAST / deep dive
Mar 25, 2024

Sakura stories revisited: Getting in the mood for hanami

We are revisiting some past content on the science, economics and culture of cherry blossom season.
Jimmy Lai leaves a police station in Hong Kong in 2020.
ASIA PACIFIC / Politics
Apr 11, 2024

Hong Kong refuses entry to Reporters Without Borders staffer

Hong Kong is currently ranked 140 out of 180 on the 2023 World Press Freedom Index.
Lee Hsien Loong might not stray far from politics, having said previously that he will remain at the "new PM’s disposal” after the handover.
ASIA PACIFIC / Politics
Apr 16, 2024

Singapore charts new path after half-century of Lee family rule

Lee Hsien Loong announced that he will step aside next month after 20 years as prime minister and hand the reins over to Lawrence Wong.
TikTok accounts for a small share of ByteDance's total revenues and daily active users, so the parent would rather have the app shut down in the U.S. in a worst-case scenario than sell it to a potential American buyer, sources said.
BUSINESS / Tech
Apr 26, 2024

ByteDance prefers TikTok shutdown in U.S. if legal options fail, sources say

A shutdown would have limited impact on its business, and it would not have to give up its "secret sauce" — the algorithm that pushes videos to users.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse in Beijing on Friday
WORLD / Politics
Apr 26, 2024

Top U.S. and China diplomats talk tough amid warnings of new ‘downward spiral’

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi did not mince words when addressing a raft of contentious topics, including trade, Ukraine and Taiwan.
China’s fading appeal to foreign firms comes despite Chinese President Xi Jinping’s pledge in November to take more "heart-warming” measures to ease access to the world’s second-largest economy.
BUSINESS / Companies
May 10, 2024

EU firms’ appetite for China investment sinks to record low

Only 13% of firms surveyed earlier this year saw the country as a top destination for investments, a survey found.
Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping shake hands at the gala event celebrating 75th anniversary of China-Russia relations in Beijing on Thursday.
WORLD / Politics
May 16, 2024

Xi and Putin hail ties as 'stabilizing' force in chaotic world

In a meeting, the Chinese leader told his "old friend" Russian President Vladimir Putin that Beijing-Moscow relations were "conducive to peace."
The U.S. flag is magnified in Federal Reserve Bank Chair Jerome Powell's glasses during a news conference on May 1 in Washington. In his first term as U.S. president, Donald Trump broke with decades of precedent by openly attacking Powell, first for raising interest rates and then for not cutting them further.
BUSINESS / Economy
Jun 3, 2024

Traders and economists see Trump win as risk to Fed autonomy, survey shows

A push to roll back the central bank’s independence would likely rock financial markets, undermine investors’ faith and expose it to political pressure to cut interest rates.
U.S President Joe Biden and Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy after a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the Group of Seven summit in Fasano, Italy, on Thursday
WORLD / Politics / ANALYSIS
Jun 14, 2024

G7 agrees on $50 billion loan to support Ukraine with Russian assets

The loan to the war-torn country will be repaid using interest generated by $300 billion worth of immobilized Russian funds, G7 leaders said.
President of the German Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Thomas Haldenwang, speaks at a presentation of the 'Constitution Protection Report 2023' in Berlin on Tuesday.
WORLD / Politics
Jun 18, 2024

Russia buying spies to make up for expelled diplomats, German agency says

Germany's domestic security service said Russia has proved adaptable in finding ways of influencing events in Germany.
Without stronger international cooperation and policies that advance shared prosperity, growth will remain too slow to support progress on development and poverty reduction.
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 16, 2024

Getting the global economy out of the slow lane

The world economy has avoided recession despite the steepest rise in global interest rates since the 1980s.
Naoto Ohtake, president-elect of the Institute of Science Tokyo, said it aims to have international students make up 30% of all undergraduate science and engineering majors by 2050.
JAPAN
Jun 24, 2024

Institute of Science Tokyo will reapply for grant from ¥10 trillion fund

Tokyo Institute of Technology and Tokyo Medical and Dental University, which will merge to form the new university, had jointly applied before but failed.
Masayoshi Son, chairman and chief executive officer of SoftBank Group, speaks during a news conference in Tokyo in June.
BUSINESS / Companies
Jul 12, 2024

SoftBank buys struggling U.K. chip startup Graphcore in AI race

The deal marks Softbank's second acquisition of a U.K. semiconductor firm, following its 2016 purchase of Cambridge-based Arm Holdings.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy (left) speaks to the press next to German Chancellor Olaf Scholz at the Ukraine Recovery Conference in Berlin on June 11.
WORLD / Politics
Jul 18, 2024

Germany says it will halve its military aid for Ukraine

German aid to Ukraine will be cut to €4 billion ($4.35 billion) in 2025 from around €8 billion in 2024.
Then-U.S. President Donald Trump meets with Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington in April 2019.
WORLD / Politics
Aug 3, 2024

Alongside the Trump-Russia inquiry, a lesser-known look at Egyptian influence

The Justice Department investigated whether a Trump adviser was part of an Egyptian plan, never proven, to funnel $10 million to the 2016 Trump campaign.
South Korean Minister of National Defense Shin Won-sik on during an interview in Seoul on Wednesday
ASIA PACIFIC / Politics
Aug 8, 2024

South Korean nuclear weapons would break U.S. ties, defense chief says

The idea of another term for former U.S. President Donald Trump, who complained about the cost of the U.S. military presence in South Korea, has fueled the debate.
Looming interest-rate cuts by the Federal Reserve and a new hawkishness on the part of the Bank of Japan can make a claim for the yens recent movements.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Sep 13, 2024

Epic yen rally is a lesson in the lost art of FX intervention

Japan's own proactive currency interventions have played a crucial role in the yen's recent recovery.
Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba speaks during a news conference at the Prime Minister's Office on Tuesday.
BUSINESS / Economy
Oct 2, 2024

Ishiba to focus on fighting inflation ahead of election

He also aims to calm financial markets by signaling a willingness to spend flexibly in the wake of a stock market plunge following his accession in the ruling party.
The Bank of Japan headquarters in Tokyo. Worries about the implications of further BOJ tightening against a global backdrop of easing were again on display this week, with new Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba saying Japan wasn’t ready for more rate hikes yet.
BUSINESS / Markets
Oct 5, 2024

Stepped-up global easing risks making it harder for BOJ to hike

Worries about the implications of further BOJ tightening against a global backdrop of easing were again on display this week.
The Bank of Japan headquarters in Tokyo
BUSINESS / Economy
Oct 16, 2024

Bank of Japan policymaker calls for 'very moderate' pace of rate hikes

There are doubts about whether Japanese firms will keep sufficiently raising wages next year due to lingering global risks.

Longform

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