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Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 5, 2022

Will the Supreme Court come to rescue of U.S. expats?

The U.S. is unique in tormenting its citizens abroad with tax obligations. But the U.S. Supreme Court could show mercy.
Japan Times
WORLD / Politics
Sep 5, 2022

Chileans reject overhaul of dictatorship-era constitution

The new constitution aimed to build a more welfare-based society, boost Indigenous rights and legalize abortion.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 4, 2022

Latest COVID-19 conundrum is when to get another shot

People's intuitions about timing their boosters don't always agree with the science. What will that mean for this fall's reformulated vaccines?
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Sep 2, 2022

Energy crunch pushes Japan into era of uncharted coal power

Electricity supply is expected to remain tight this winter and experts say extreme weather like this summer's heatwave is becoming more common.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 1, 2022

To fight monkeypox and other viruses, look harder in the sewers

Health authorities rely on a patchwork system for testing wastewater, often missing important information about virus outbreaks such as monkeypox.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 31, 2022

Forgiving student debt is a bad idea — just ask Indian farmers

Evidence from elsewhere in the world is clear: Canceling out debt incentivizes bad choices among borrowers and political leaders.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 31, 2022

Can Liz Truss exceed low expectations? Thatcher did

The odds favor an early bounce for the U.K.'s Liz Truss and a steady decline. But don't write her off yet.
Japan Times
MORE SPORTS
Aug 31, 2022

British Open champion Cameron Smith joins LIV with five others

Cameron Smith is the highest-ranked player to flee the PGA Tour for LIV, and the world No. 2 was reportedly richly rewarded for his decision.
Japan Times
ASIA PACIFIC / Politics
Aug 29, 2022

How the drama surrounding Thailand’s prime minister may unfold

The move fueled speculation that Thai royals are planning to replace him ahead of an election that must be called by March 2023.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 29, 2022

Robots are key to winning the productivity war

While machines do replace specific jobs, their adoption boosts salaries and raises living standards.
The final 10 contestants of the reality show “The Debut: Dream Academy” in November. The show aimed to select the members of a new global K-pop girl group.
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 17, 2024

K-pop without the ‘K’ just won’t pop

The BTS hiatus may have slowed K-pop down, but the answer isn't to take the Koreanness out of it. If not, all that's left is run-of-the-mill pop.
A signboard in Tokyo shows the closing numbers on the Tokyo Stock Exchange on Jan. 11. Tokyo's Nikkei index closed above 35,000 for the first time in nearly 34 years on that day.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Jan 18, 2024

Japan can guilt-trip its stocks past bubble-era highs

Tokyo’s equity market is achingly close to overcoming its bubble-era highs.
JAPAN / Society
Jan 19, 2024

Debate grows over whether expo funding should go to Ishikawa recovery

It has been suggested it would be better to postpone, or even cancel, the troubled 2025 Osaka-Kansai Expo.
The concerns over artificial intelligence have parallels with historical apocalyptic movements, which have often been exploited for political purposes.
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 19, 2024

AI apocalypse now? Only in our fevered dreams

The real question is why are cataclysmic prophets sometimes attract big followings. Understanding this can help us avoid the paths they may lead us down.
The health of China's economy will always be a factor in how other Asian economies fare, and some of those are doing OK despite their larger neighbor’s woes.
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 19, 2024

The latest indignity for China’s flawed recovery

Neighbors whose economic fortunes were supposed to be tied to the heft of China’s rebound from the pandemic seem to be doing pretty well without it.
Farmers protest against the government's planned cuts to agricultural sector subsides in Brandenburg, Germany, on Jan. 10.
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 17, 2024

Why Germany is rich but Germans are poor and angry

Germany's polarization peaks as the country's divided society faces economic turmoil.
Casey DeSantis introduces her husband, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, as he makes a campaign visit ahead of the South Carolina presidential primary in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, on Saturday.
WORLD / Politics
Jan 22, 2024

Ron DeSantis ends campaign, endorses Trump as New Hampshire vote looms

The move leaves former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley as Donald Trump's last remaining challenger for the GOP nomination.
Ahead of the 2024 Paris Olympics, resentment lingers over the handling of ticket sales last year that saw many locals priced out.
OLYMPICS
Jan 23, 2024

French gloom clouds Paris Olympics, six months from start

Several recent announcements have led to a spike in negative publicity for the sporting mega-event, which will start in just six months.
In the phone message, a voice edited to sound like Biden urged voters in New Hampshire not to cast their ballots in Tuesday’s Democratic primary. In reality, the president isn’t on the ballot in the New Hampshire race — and voting in the primary doesn’t preclude people from participating in November's election.
WORLD / Politics
Jan 23, 2024

Deepfake audio of Biden alarms experts in lead-up to U.S. elections

The ease of producing such doctored messages and the difficulty in tracing them to their source make them a very powerful weapon in the hands of bad actors.
Coming out of the pandemic, job vacancies were historically high in the U.S. because firms needed workers and could not find them.
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 23, 2024

This year will mark the end of the post-pandemic economy

The trade-off between bringing down inflation and harming growth will come back with a vengeance in the post-pandemic economy.
Supporters of former U.S. President Donald Trump react as results are announced during his New Hampshire presidential primary election night watch party in Nashua, New Hampshire, on Tuesday.
WORLD / Politics
Jan 24, 2024

Trump defeats Haley in New Hampshire, moving closer to nomination

The former president's only remaining rival, former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, remained defiant telling supporters at a primary night party: "This race is far from over."
Taiwan's roughly three decades of democracy have fostered a growing sense of self-identity, according to a long-running study by National Chengchi University.
ASIA PACIFIC / Politics
Jan 24, 2024

Taiwan’s China-backing party faces crisis after election defeat

Many voters are distrustful of the KMT's commitment to eventual unification with China, a goal shared by just a minority in the island.
Israeli soldiers fire a mortar toward Gaza on Monday.
WORLD / Politics
Jan 24, 2024

Unmoved by Gaza carnage, Israel remains committed to war at any cost

There is an intensifying sense within Israel that the world is more focused on the response to Oct. 7 than on the original act of savagery itself.
American President Joe Biden hugs Brittany Alkonis after giving a State of the Union in February. The wife of jailed U.S. sailor Lt. Ridge Alkonis ran a successful pressure campaign to get her husband released from a Japanese prison into American custody. 
COMMENTARY / Japan
Jan 24, 2024

Japan owes no apology for U.S. Navy officer’s treatment

The case of Navy Lt. Ridge Alkonis is a divisive one, which both the U.S. and Japanese governments have tried to keep quiet about.
A law making its way through the U.S. Congress would authorize the confiscation of billions of dollars in frozen assets owned by the Russian central bank, that would then be handed over to Ukraine as compensation for the war.
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 24, 2024

Seizing Russia's central bank funds is illegal and unwise

A big question about giving Ukraine seized Russian funds is would such an asset grab break international law?
Ice covers the Moskva river in downtown Moscow. The Kremlin still mostly relies on volunteers to fight its war in Ukraine, offering 210,000 rubles monthly.
BUSINESS
Jan 25, 2024

Russia’s war fuels a wage spiral that threatens army recruitment

The competition for employees has pushed wages up at a double-digit pace and made once-relatively lucrative military service less appealing.
New research estimates that nearly 65,000 pregnancies have resulted from rape in the 14 states that imposed total abortion bans after Roe v. Wade was overturned.
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 26, 2024

Post-Roe America’s national shame: 65,000 forced pregnancies

New data has been filling in the picture of what access to reproductive health care looks like in the U.S. And the image forming is increasingly grim.
Former U.S. President Donald Trump gestures to his supporters, as he departs for his second civil trial after E. Jean Carroll accused Trump of raping her decades ago, outside Trump Tower in the Manhattan borough of New York City on Friday.
WORLD / FOCUS
Jan 27, 2024

Big money fails to stop Trump, again, prompting a donor reckoning

Donors have learned a hard lesson: Big money cannot win the GOP presidential nomination, at least not against Trump.
A paper published in The Lancet in December found that plastics likely enter most of our major organs and even affect the good bacteria that makes up our microbiome.
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 14, 2024

We don't know how worried we should be about nanoplastics

Nanoparticles can slip into the bloodstream, get into organs, and sneak into cells where they may cause harm.
As a small open economy, Hong Kong is vulnerable to financial contagion and capital flights to and from China.
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 24, 2024

Hong Kong is facing a repeat of 1998 Asia financial crisis

As the Hang Seng Index selloff deepens, bankers and traders are preparing for the worst.

Longform

Bear attacks have dominated Japanese news headlines in recent months, with 13 people so far having been killed by the animals.
Japan’s bears have been on their killing spree for more than 100 years