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A think tank researcher said anti-government propaganda by Russian bot accounts was what has made the small far-right party Sanseito so popular leading up to the Upper House election.
JAPAN / Politics
Jul 18, 2025

Concerns grow in Japan over possible Russian interference in Sunday’s election

A blog post from a member of the Japan Institute of Law and Information Systems went viral for stating Russian bots were interfering in the upcoming Upper House election.
England's Jess Carter attends a news conference in June.
SOCCER
Jul 21, 2025

England's Jess Carter receives racist abuse during Euro 2025

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer posted his support for Carter on X.
China has strict obscenity laws and regularly scrubs content deemed pornographic from its heavily-controlled domestic internet, so the scale of the image sharing on Telegram has shocked many in China.
ASIA PACIFIC / Crime & Legal
Jul 29, 2025

Outrage in China after reports exploitative images of Chinese women shared in Telegram groups

Sexually exploitative images of women were shared with hundreds of thousands of users on Telegram, with the scale of the sharing shocking many in China.
Andrew Bosworth, Meta’s chief technology officer; Bob McGrew, an adviser at Thinking Machines Lab and OpenAI’s former chief research officer; Shyam Sankar, Palantir’s chief technology officer; and Kevin Weil, OpenAI’s chief product officer at a military ceremony in Arlington, Va., in June 2025. The four current and former executives were pronounced lieutenant colonels in a new unit, Detachment 201, which will advise the Army on new technologies for potential combat.
BUSINESS / Tech
Aug 11, 2025

Silicon Valley is in its ‘hard tech’ era

Instead of the tap-to-pay apps of a decade ago like Clinkle and Bump, young companies are now making unmanned aerial drones stocked with AI-guided Barracuda cruise missiles.
Media tycoon Jimmy Lai, founder of Apple Daily
ASIA PACIFIC / Crime & Legal
Aug 14, 2025

Hong Kong court to hear closing arguments in mogul Jimmy Lai's trial

The 77-year-old founder of the Apple Daily newspaper is charged with foreign collusion under Hong Kong's national security law.
Jimmy Lai at the Next Digital offices in Hong Kong in 2020. The national security trial of the Hong Kong media mogul, which began in late 2023, entered its final stages on Aug. 14, as lawyers present closing arguments.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 21, 2025

Why Jimmy Lai’s persecution should worry Japan

The trial of 77-year-old publisher is showing how Beijing uses Hong Kong as a laboratory for silencing critics worldwide, from students to exiles.
Police have issued a warning over the existence of online message boards promoting extreme sexual role play that are, in reality, serving as hubs for actual crimes involving sexual violence.
JAPAN / Crime & Legal
Aug 22, 2025

Police warn of internet forums soliciting sexual violence

A woman was attacked in her apartment in Tokyo after an acquaintance of hers found a man via an internet board willing to commit sexual assault.
Police have urged the public to be suspicious if an acquaintance on social media ends up asking for cash.
JAPAN / Crime & Legal
Sep 3, 2025

Over the moon: Fake astronaut scams lovestruck Japanese octogenarian

The woman in Hokkaido met the fraudster in July on social media, a local police officer said, describing the case as a "romance scam."
AI can amplify the long-known ability to implant false memories, with new MIT and University of California, Irvine, research showing that chatbots, misleading summaries and altered images or videos can distort what people recall.
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 4, 2025

AI doesn’t just lie — it can make you believe it

Memory manipulation, notes Pat Pataranutaporn, a researcher with the MIT Media Lab, is a very different process from fooling people with deep-fakes.
The Metropolitan Police Department headquarters in Tokyo's Chiyoda Ward. The MPD recently served a new warrant for the arrest of a man over unauthorized access to social media accounts of celebrities including a member of Japanese comedy duo Einstein.
JAPAN / Crime & Legal
Sep 5, 2025

Man served new arrest warrant over access to Japanese comedian's account

The suspect allegedly logged in to the Instagram accounts of Naoki Inada, a comedian, and of a professional sports player without permission between July and October 2024.
Media mogul Rupert Murdoch (left) and his son, Lachlan. The Murdoch family has reached a deal that will see Lachlan Murdoch cement control of the family media empire.
BUSINESS / Companies
Sep 9, 2025

Real-life 'Succession' ends: Lachlan Murdoch takes control, siblings take cash

A deal announced on Monday that will see Rupert Murdoch's politically conservative eldest son cement control of the family media empire.
Nepali soldiers patrol a road near the Singha Durbar complex, which houses the prime minister's office and other ministries, in Kathmandu on Wednesday.
ASIA PACIFIC / Politics
Sep 10, 2025

Soldiers guard Nepal's parliament and patrol streets after deadly protests

Burnt-out vehicles and twisted metal littered the area around parliament, where army firefighters battled to douse a blaze in the main hall.
A novel type of fraud has been reported in Osaka Prefecture in which scammers send smartphones to elderly individuals before swindling them via the devices.
JAPAN / Crime & Legal
Sep 12, 2025

Novel smartphone scam targeting elderly emerges in Osaka

Scammers would send elderly people smartphones before swindling them using the devices, according to the Osaka Prefectural Police.
Elon Musk said he was looking to change Twitter's logo, tweeting: "And soon we shall bid adieu to the twitter brand and, gradually, all the birds."
BUSINESS / Tech
Jul 24, 2023

Elon Musk says Twitter to change logo and bid adieu to 'all the birds'

In a tweet Sunday, the social media platform's billionaire owner added: "If a good enough X logo is posted tonight, we'll make go live worldwide tomorrow."
Elon Musk has changed Twitter's logo, replacing its signature blue bird with a stylized X as part of the billionaire's vision of transforming the 17-year-old service into an "everything app."
BUSINESS / Companies
Jul 25, 2023

Twitter turning into X is set to kill billions in brand value

Musk’s move wiped out anywhere between $4 billion and $20 billion in value, according to analysts and brand agencies.
A woman shops for cosmetics at a department store in Seoul in July 2020.
ASIA PACIFIC
Jul 28, 2023

Personal color analysis is fueling a global Gen Z tourism boom

The procedure aims to assign individuals flattering colors that can inform their choices around clothing, makeup and accessories.
JAPAN
Jul 31, 2023

Japan takes to anime to promote Fukushima water release safety

Four videos of one to two minutes in length have been uploaded on YouTube as the ministry is seeking to counter what it calls false information.
JAPAN
Aug 1, 2023

Kishida aide Kihara sidesteps reporters after wife in the spotlight

Weekly magazine Shukan Bunshun reported that Kihara's wife had been questioned by Tokyo Metro Police on a voluntary basis.
Facebook owner Meta Platforms has started the process of ending news availability in Canada.
BUSINESS / Tech
Aug 2, 2023

Meta starts blocking news in Canada

Google has said it is considering a similar move amid an ongoing global debate as more governments try to make tech firms pay for news content.
JAPAN
Aug 2, 2023

LDP lawmaker cautioned by party executive over France visit photo

The photo, in which Rui Matsukawa mimics the shape of the Eiffel Tower in front of the landmark, has already been deleted after drawing strong criticism.
JAPAN / Society
Aug 2, 2023

Sushi chain drops suit against teen over prank video

“The customer has admitted his responsibility and we have reached a settlement with reasonable details that are acceptable to us,” a spokesperson said.
Former U.S. President Donald Trump has been charged with conspiring to obstruct the results of the 2020 election.
WORLD / Politics
Aug 17, 2023

Musk accused of favoring Trump in battle with DOJ over tweets

The special counsel’s office argued that Twitter was asking for "special" treatment for Trump that wouldn’t be available to other users.
Elon Musk
BUSINESS / Tech
Aug 19, 2023

Elon Musk says X will strip ability to block accounts

The block function on X allows a user to restrict specific accounts from contacting them, seeing their posts or following them.
The European Union has named 19 platforms that face stricter rules on policing online content and transparency.
BUSINESS / Tech
Aug 23, 2023

Big tech to face full force of new EU law

The landmark law is part of the EU's legal arsenal deployed to bring tech companies to heel and enforce order.
X is planning to remove the headline and text while retaining just the lead image from links to news articles shared on the platform, Elon Musk has said.
BUSINESS / Tech
Aug 23, 2023

X plans to remove headlines from links to news articles

It is not immediately clear how the move will impact advertisers on the platform, which Musk claimed in July had 540 million monthly users.
Twitter's new X logo at the company's headquarters in San Francisco, California, on July 29
BUSINESS / Tech
Aug 31, 2023

Elon Musk's X to collect biometric data, work and school history

It’s unclear how X will collect the data or how it may be used.
Residents watch the McDougall Creek wildfire in West Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada, last month.
WORLD / Society / FOCUS
Sep 9, 2023

Conspiracy theories falsely link wildfires to 'smart cities'

Disinformation about deadly wildfires in the United States and Canada has run rampant across social media.
JAPAN
Sep 13, 2023

State-of-the-art quake simulation test shown to media

The institute hopes that the machine will help uncover the mechanism of earthquakes in a natural setting in order to predict large quakes.
JAPAN / Society
Sep 14, 2023

Johnny's says it will work for free as firms cut ties over scandal

The talent agency says it will not receive management fees for advertisements and television appearances by performers for a year.
JAPAN / Crime & Legal
Sep 19, 2023

In first court hearing, ex-lawmaker GaaSyy apologizes for defamation

Yoshikazu Higashitani admitted in court Tuesday to making defamatory remarks toward celebrities in videos he posted on social media.

Longform

Sumadori Bar on Shibuya Ward's main Center Gai street targets young customers who prefer low-alcohol drinks or abstain altogether.
Rethinking that second drink: Japan’s Gen Z gets ‘sober curious’