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Samuel Bankman-Fried, founder and CEO of FTX, testifies during a Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington in February 2022.
BUSINESS / Companies
Oct 28, 2023

FTX founder admits 'mistakes' but testifies he didn't defraud anyone

FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried insisted he did not steal billions of dollars from customers when the cryptocurrency exchange collapsed last year.
Toyota’s gigacast rear component. The company plans to employ the gigacasting technology in making electric vehicles.
BUSINESS / Companies
Oct 30, 2023

Tesla’s latest disruption in carmaking draws followers in Japan

Carmakers in Japan are starting to embrace gigacasting as they seek to make up for lost ground in the shift to EVs.
Laborers work at a private garment factory in Hanoi in 2021.
BUSINESS / Companies
Oct 31, 2023

Clothing-makers find it hard to break with China’s supply chain

Amid economic uncertainty and weakening consumer demand, many are discovering that finding alternative production hubs comes with its own challenges.
BOJ Gov. Kazuo Ueda speaks during a news conference on Tuesday in Tokyo.
BUSINESS / Economy
Oct 31, 2023

Bank of Japan to allow 10-year yields to top 1%

The development is significant as the central bank has long maintained its strategy of buying up government bonds to control interest rates.
Suzuki President and Representative Director Toshihiro Suzuki unveils the Suzu-Ride at a press day of the Japan Mobility Show at Tokyo Big Sight in Tokyo on Oct. 25.
BUSINESS / Companies
Nov 1, 2023

New mobility concepts cater to older people's love for the road

The four-wheeled vehicles categorized as "specified small motorized bicycles" can be driven on public roads by anyone 16 or over without a license.
An employee works on the production line of the Kohara Gear Industry Co. factory in Kawaguchi, Japan, in 2019.
BUSINESS / Economy
Nov 1, 2023

Asia's factories grapple with rising costs amid Israel-Hamas war

The numbers look bad a the global economic recovery now threatened by the Israel-Hamas war and potential for wider conflict.
Prime Minister Fumio Kishida chats with Finance Minister Shunichi Suzuki (left) in a parliamentary session in October.
BUSINESS / Economy / FOCUS
Nov 2, 2023

Kishida distances himself from panel report backing tax overhaul

The advisory panel's medium-term reform proposal could mean higher taxes for salaried workers.
Former FTX chief executive Sam Bankman-Fried leaves Manhattan federal court in New York in January.
BUSINESS / FOCUS
Nov 4, 2023

Swift FTX case vindicates prosecution ‘need for speed’

ON Thursday, the jury took only a few hours to convict Sam Bankman-Fried of treating FTX as his personal piggy bank.
A WeWork co-working space in New York
BUSINESS / Companies
Nov 5, 2023

WeWork's troubles darken outlook for embattled office market

Media reports suggest the New York-listed flexible workspace provider — once valued at $47 billion — may petition for bankruptcy next week.
Rapid improvements in image generation have spurred artists to push back on generative AI startups, which ingest vast troves of internet data in order to generate content like pictures or text.
BUSINESS / Tech
Nov 6, 2023

Dall-E 3 is so good it’s stoking a revolt against AI scraping

It hasn’t helped much that OpenAI’s new process for artists who want to exclude their data from the system is time-consuming and complex.
BUSINESS
Nov 6, 2023

BOJ chief sees inflation progress but warns of uncertainty

Japan's economy is likely to continue recovering, but the outlook was "extremely uncertain," Bank of Japan Gov. Kazuo Ueda said.
Nobuhiro Torii, president of Suntory Spirits, speaks during an interview in Tokyo on Oct. 27.
BUSINESS / Companies
Nov 6, 2023

Suntory to boost output as Japanese whisky sees global boom

Suntory Spirits has begun two-year renovations at its Yamazaki distillery in Osaka Prefecture and its Hakushu distillery in Yamanashi Prefecture.
Elon Musk, chief executive officer of Tesla, discusses artificial intelligence in London on Thursday.
BUSINESS / Tech
Nov 7, 2023

Elon Musk's X curtails disinformation research, spurring legal fears

Restrictions on critical methods of gathering data on the platform have suppressed the ability to untangle the origin and spread of false information.
Japan's real wages dropped 2.4% in September from a year earlier.
BUSINESS / Economy
Nov 7, 2023

Japan's wages and spending extend declines in test for BOJ policy

Japan's real wages dropped 2.4% in September from a year earlier.
The McKinsey & Company logo at the 54th International Paris Airshow on June 21
BUSINESS / Companies
Nov 8, 2023

Top consultancy undermining climate change fight: whistleblowers

Privately, the U.S.-based firm offers energy scenarios at odds with its public climate goals to the summit's decision-makers.
Oil storage tanks at Eneos' Negishi refinery in the Keihin industrial area of Yokohama. The firm said Wednesday that its full-year profit result was expected to increase by 67% from last year.
BUSINESS / Companies
Nov 8, 2023

Eneos raises full-year profit forecast on higher oil, weaker yen

The refiner said its full-year result was expected to increase by 67% from last year.
Pedestrians and shoppers walk past a branch of fashion retailer H&M in central Stockholm on July 17.
BUSINESS / Companies
Nov 9, 2023

Sustainable cloth-maker Renewcell struggling amid slow adoption

Stock in Renewcell lost over 80% of its value in the last month and the firm has reported an operating loss of $17 million in nine months.
The Suiso Frontier hydrogen carrier, built by Kawasaki Heavy Industries, in January 2022.
BUSINESS
Nov 10, 2023

Tokyo and Seoul to set up hydrogen and ammonia supply chain: report

Japan and South Korea, both highly dependent on energy imports, plan to work together to negotiate prices and volumes.
BUSINESS
Nov 13, 2023

Japan to create ¥1 trillion fund to develop outer space industry

The ¥1 trillion fund will be allocated over a 10-year period for the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), as a new global space race heats up.
Economists estimate Japan's real gross domestic product shrank at an annualized 0.4% in the three months through September.
BUSINESS / Economy
Nov 14, 2023

Japan’s economy likely shrank in summer as recovery sputters

Economists estimate that real gross domestic product shrank at an annualized pace of 0.4% in the three months through September.
Lukasz Krupski, a service technician for Tesla in Norway who says he was fired after expressing safety concerns, in Drammen, Norway, on Nov. 6
BUSINESS / Companies
Nov 15, 2023

Man vs. Musk: A whistleblower creates headaches for Tesla

An employee who was fired after expressing safety concerns leaked personnel records and sensitive data about driver-assistance software.
Japan's exports gained 1.6% from a year earlier in October, slowing from a 4.3% increase in the previous month.
BUSINESS / Economy
Nov 16, 2023

Japan’s economy remains under pressure as export growth slows

The value of exports gained 1.6% from a year earlier, slowing from a 4.3% increase in the previous month, according to the Finance Ministry.
OpenAI said that it will form a team to explore educational applications of the ChatGPT chatbot.
BUSINESS / Tech
Nov 17, 2023

OpenAI explores how to get ChatGPT into classrooms

The company says the technology could be a tutor or it can tailor content for different learning styles for students.
Singapore national flags hang from the facade of a Housing & Development Board public housing estate in the Selegie area of Singapore, in 2021.
BUSINESS / Economy
Nov 17, 2023

China puts money behind Singapore model in major housing shift

Details are undisclosed, outlined in a classified "Document 14" last month.
Elon Musk
BUSINESS / Tech
Nov 18, 2023

Backlash spreads over Musk’s endorsement of antisemitic post

Large advertisers have pulled ads from Elon Musk's social media site X and the White House has chastised the billionaire.
Sam Altman, then CEO of OpenAI, at the company’s headquarters in San Francisco in March
BUSINESS / Tech
Nov 19, 2023

OpenAI board pressed by some investors to reinstate Sam Altman

Altman is open to returning. In one scenario under consideration, members of the current OpenAI board would step down as soon as this weekend.
A report by MSCI ESG Research showed that just one-tenth of MSCI Japan Index firms have reached the 30% female board member threshold that the government is seeking for top-listed businesses.
BUSINESS
Nov 20, 2023

Japan boards may struggle amid pressure for diversity, MSCI says

Just one-tenth of MSCI Japan Index firms have reached the 30% female board member threshold that the government is seeking for top-listed businesses.
Japan’s first trading of digital securities will begin next month in the form of security tokens issued by real estate firms.
BUSINESS
Nov 21, 2023

Japan to start digital securities trading from December

The trading of security tokens issued by real estate firms Ichigo and Kenedix will begin on the Osaka Digital Exchange.
By Monday, OpenAI's board were overseeing a company in name only, with virtually the whole staff committed to a pledge of seeing them go or quitting the firm for fired former CEO Sam Altman's project at Microsoft.
BUSINESS / Tech / FOCUS
Nov 21, 2023

AI doomsayers blamed in OpenAI's undoing

Harsh critics see a deeply troubled startup that fell victim to the pearl-clutching of an incompetent board that was divorced from reality.
Steve Jobs, Apple's former chief executive, speaks at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco on June 6, 2011. Sam Altman, the most prominent promoter of artificial intelligence, learned that it’s hard to be a visionary founder like the Apple legend.
BUSINESS / Tech
Nov 21, 2023

The long shadow of Steve Jobs looms over the turmoil at OpenAI

The sudden firing and bid to reinstate OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has deepened the parallels to Jobs, who was marginalized by the board of Apple in 1985.

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