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Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 4, 2022

Mass surveillance in schools won’t prevent mass shootings

Growing use of weapons scanners and cameras might ease parents' worries, but they risk creating dystopian institutions for kids.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 3, 2022

Should Scotland be an independent country?

At least for now, a replay of Scotland's 2014 independence vote is the last thing the country needs.
Japan Times
WORLD
Jul 3, 2022

In city where ‘Europe starts,’ ethnic Russians begin questioning Putin’s war

Narva, Estonia, is the EU's most ethnically Russian city, with a population supportive of Vladimir Putin. But the conflict in Ukraine has set off a “mental war” between old and young.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 1, 2022

The West must move east for NATO to survive

No matter what happens in the Ukraine war, the U.S. must persuade allies to move more troops and equipment permanently into states on Russia's borders.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY
Jun 30, 2022

Trump has steered himself into a legal morass

Cassidy Hutchinson's testimony describing an attempt by Donald Trump to grab the wheel of his car on Jan. 6 revealed a lack of control in more ways than one.
Japan Times
ASIA PACIFIC
Jun 30, 2022

25 years after its handover, Hong Kong reflects on promises made

Critics such as Chris Patten, the last British governor, accuse the Chinese Communist Party of betraying its promises to Hong Kong.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 29, 2022

Abortion and democracy in America

After the Roe v. Wade decision, many are speculating about which rights the Supreme Court will take away next.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 29, 2022

The death of the WTO has only been delayed

For the organization to recover its relevance, China and the U.S. both need to make more serious compromises.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 29, 2022

AI’s next big thing is ‘fake’ data

Strange as it may sound, the growth of fake data is a step in the right direction, and not just because it avoids using people's personal data.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / Japan
Jun 29, 2022

The eternal optimism of Masayoshi Son

The SoftBank founder sees an upside to almost every trouble the conglomerate has faced over the past year, from slumping share prices to failed mergers.
WORLD
Jun 29, 2022

Embrace of NATO in China’s backyard stokes Xi’s worst fears

For the first time, the leaders of Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand are all attending a NATO summit.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 28, 2022

How to keep the peace in the Indo-Pacific

The central question is: What is the organizing principle for collective action to maintain the peace in the Indo-Pacific?
Japan Times
ASIA PACIFIC / Politics
Jun 28, 2022

Philippines' Rodrigo Duterte, infamous for deadly drug war, to end term as president

His daughter Sara's victory in the vice presidential race on May 9 showed his popularity remains sky-high, six years after being swept to power on a promise to rid the country of drugs.
Japan Times
MORE SPORTS
Jun 27, 2022

Wimbledon marks end of era free from bans and boycotts in sports

'We will continue to see increased use of sports for cultural change, for value change, for policy change. It's only going to happen more and more.”
China’s greenhouse footprint can be boiled down to three factors: its economic growth, the energy intensity of that growth and the carbon intensity of that energy.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 7, 2024

China’s growth ambitions will erase the world’s climate gains

Global greenhouse pollution hit a record and increased 1.1% last year, the International Energy Agency reported. That was almost entirely a China story.
U.S. President Joe Biden, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and British leader Rishi Sunak deliver remarks on the AUKUS partnership, after a trilateral meeting, at Naval Base Point Loma in San Diego in March last year.
ASIA PACIFIC / Politics
Apr 7, 2024

AUKUS weighs expanding security pact to deter China, report says

Rahm Emanuel, the outspoken U.S. ambassador in Tokyo, wrote in a recent commentary that Japan was "about to become the first additional Pillar II partner."
Taiwan Air Force members at the Pingtung air base in Pingtung, Taiwan, on Jan. 30. Taiwan's president has promised to stick to the status quo concerning the island’s relations with China.
COMMENTARY / World / Geoeconomic Briefing
Apr 9, 2024

How to stop the dominoes of war from falling in East Asia

Conflicts elsewhere have implications for East Asia's powder kegs — the Taiwan Strait and the Korean Peninsula.
Red Bull Racing's Max Verstappen celebrates winning the Formula One Japanese Grand Prix race at the Suzuka circuit in Suzuka, Mie Prefecture, on Sunday.
MORE SPORTS / Auto Racing
Apr 8, 2024

Verstappen questions wisdom of sprint race on China return

The Chinese Grand Prix will include the first of six sprint rounds this season.
With the resignation of Shizuoka Gov. Heita Kawakatsu, a major hurdle may have been removed in the construction of the maglev high-speed train, which is expected to connect Tokyo to Osaka in just over 60 minutes.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Apr 5, 2024

Maglev train is back on track after Shizuoka governor's derailing

Shizuoka's governor was blocking the construction of Japan's maglev bullet train. Now that he has resigned, the project can finally move at full speed.
Miyagi Gov. Yoshihiro Murai speaks at a a news conference in Sendai on Monday.
JAPAN
Apr 9, 2024

Miyagi governor suggests scrapping national sports event

The annual event is hosted in rotation by the 47 prefectures.
Vladimir Putin knows that if NATO member states are dragged back into policing a restive Balkans, they will be distracted from their focus on supporting Ukraine.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 2, 2024

Putin’s new front in the Ukraine war is in the Balkans

The Russian leader is pushing propaganda and religious strife in Kosovo and Bosnia to distract NATO from his illegal invasion.
Protesters take part in a small rally led by Women's March Tucson after Arizona's Supreme Court revived a law dating to 1864 that bans abortion in virtually all instances, in Tucson, Arizona, on Monday.
WORLD / Politics
Apr 10, 2024

Arizona's top court revives 19th century abortion ban

States were given the go-ahead to adopt such bans after the conservative-majority U.S. Supreme Court overturned its landmark Roe v. Wade ruling.
U.K. Foreign Secretary David Cameron
WORLD / Politics
Apr 10, 2024

Cameron lobbies old adversary Trump to unlock Ukraine aid

Despite sparring in the past, the U.K.'s foreign secretary sees the former U.S. president as key to giving Ukraine more funding.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi greets supporters during his roadshow ahead of the general elections, in Ghaziabad, India, on April 6.
WORLD / Politics
Apr 11, 2024

He once sold tea, but now India's Modi seeks his own 'tryst with destiny'

Modi has lofty ambitions for what could be his third and final term in office.
A Wisconsin resident prepares to vote in the presidential primary election in Superior, Wisconsin, on April 2.
COMMENTARY / World / Geoeconomic Briefing
Apr 16, 2024

Can we trust the polls? How emerging technologies affect democracy

In a global election year, all eyes are on the ties between emerging technologies and democracy.
U.S. President Joe Biden welcomes Prime Minister Fumio Kishida during an arrival ceremony at the White House on Wednesday. The two leaders are also meeting with Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos, where defense ties between the three nations were set to be high on the agenda. 
COMMENTARY / Japan
Apr 11, 2024

Hail to the minilateral chiefs: Biden, Kishida and Marcos

This week the U.S. keeps building NATO 2.0 in the Indo-Pacific, even as it prepares to improve NATO 1.0 in July.
This video screen grab shows a refinery in Ryazan, Russia, that Ukraine attacked in a drone strike last month.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 12, 2024

Ukraine’s drone attacks light a fuse under global oil supplies

At least 10 refineries have been hit so far. About 13% of Russia’s capacity has been knocked offline, analysts at RBC Capital Markets estimate.
A protester demands the United Kingdom make reparations for slavery, outside the British High Commission, in Kingston, Jamaica, in March 2022.
WORLD / Crime & Legal / FOCUS
Apr 13, 2024

Slavery tribunal? Africa and Caribbean unite on reparations

A tribunal was proposed last year, and it has now gained traction within a broader slavery reparations movement.
A mob of supporters of President Donald Trump outside the Capitol building in Washington, Jan. 6, 2021. Former President Donald Trump has recently taken to publicly celebrating the riot and those who took part in it, putting a revisionist history of the attack at the heart of his campaign.
WORLD
Apr 14, 2024

Inside Donald Trump’s embrace of the Jan. 6 rioters

The former president initially disavowed the attack on the Capitol, but he is now making it a centerpiece of his general election campaign.

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