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October 30, 2025
 

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DEMOCRACY

As Hong Kong courts prosecute pro-democracy activists and tighten Beijing’s control, Western bankers attending a financial summit there are signaling they value profits over principles.
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 28, 2025
Wall Street risks shorting freedom in Hong Kong
Western financiers seem willing to chase short-term profits even if it means funding a repressive regime that has made no secret of its animosity toward the West.
A Georgian anti-government demonstrator protests outside parliament in central Tbilisi on Oct. 15.
WORLD / Politics
Oct 22, 2025
After a year of rallies and no revolution, Georgia's protesters still defiant
Mass rallies have gripped Georgia since a disputed parliamentary election last October plunged Tbilisi into turmoil and prompted the EU to effectively freeze its accession bid.
U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi addresses the media at the White House on June 27 as President Trump listens following a Supreme Court ruling that limited federal judges' power to block presidential orders.
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 9, 2025
Global lessons from a press in peril
A democracy cannot survive without a free press. There has never been a democracy without a media that is free and independent.
Fire engulfs Nepal's main administrative building in Kathmandu on Sept. 9, following a police crackdown on protests over government corruption and social media restrictions. This violent unrest is part of a larger pattern of instability in South Asia that threatens regional security and India’s strategic interests.
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 5, 2025
India’s reckoning with its dangerous neighborhood
All these stories point to a larger worrying trend: Democracy in India’s neighborhood is in retreat.
A U.S. Marine and a member of the National Guard patrol outside a federal building in Los Angeles in June.
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 30, 2025
Resisting Trump’s show of force
In Trump’s paradigm, this is all a reality show and we are merely inconsequential extras without lines forever in the background.
Pro-democracy activist and former Hong Kong lawmaker Nathan Law
ASIA PACIFIC / Politics
Sep 29, 2025
Hong Kong activist Nathan Law says he was denied Singapore entry
Law said he’d been given a valid Singapore visa three weeks prior to his trip.
Protesters wave a Hong Kong flag and a sign during a demonstration against the city’s deteriorating freedoms outside the Chinese Embassy in London in July 2020.
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 23, 2025
Britain must keep its promise to Hong Kongers
The U.K. has a moral obligation and an economic interest in safeguarding the path to citizenship for migrants from the territory it formerly ruled.
A woman carries a portrait of a relative killed in clashes with security forces while joining a protest march moving toward the prime minister's office in Kathmandu on Sept. 13.
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 19, 2025
Nepal’s Gen Z protests and humanity’s shared future
This is not Nepal's story alone. It is a reminder that the future isn’t inherited but forged by today’s youth.
A woman passes a graffitied wall outside Nepal's torched Parliament in Kathmandu on Sunday. The country's new leader, Sushila Karki, vowed the same day to follow protesters' demands to "end corruption" as she began work as interim prime minister.
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 17, 2025
Why Nepal’s new power brokers should worry India and China
If India and China continue treating Nepal primarily as a geopolitical pawn, they risk alienating future leaders.
China’s parade marking the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II, attended by dictatorial leaders like Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un, highlights Beijing’s attempts to rewrite history and promote an alternative authoritarian order.
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 3, 2025
The disturbing message behind China’s ‘grand parade’
This international gathering in the Chinese capital's Tiananmen Square illuminated what might be termed the “Beijing Consensus” in its starkest form.
Protesters wave a pirate flag from the Japanese anime "One Piece," an internet trend used to criticize government policies, during a demonstration in front of the Bali police station in Denpasar, Indonesia, on Saturday.
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 2, 2025
Indonesia’s protests may fade. The fury won’t.
Politicians and business tycoons from the previous era still have clout, through dynastic parties, family owned businesses and patronage networks.
A correctional services van holding media tycoon Jimmy Lai arrives at the West Kowloon court for his national security trial in Hong Kong on Thursday.
ASIA PACIFIC / Crime & Legal
Aug 28, 2025
Hong Kong wraps up pro-democracy tycoon Jimmy Lai's security trial
The 156-day trial has become the most high-profile example of China's crackdown on rights and freedoms in the Asian financial hub.
Indian National Congress party leader Rahul Gandhi addresses the media in front of a screen showing India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi (center) and Home Minister Amit Shah at the party headquarters in New Delhi on Aug. 7, ahead of the upcoming assembly elections in the Indian state of Bihar.
ASIA PACIFIC / Politics
Aug 26, 2025
India's election commission faces claim of vote-rigging ahead of state poll
Opposition leader Rahul Gandhi said his party lost dozens of seats in the 2024 parliamentary elections as voter rolls were manipulated to favor the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party.
U.S. President Donald Trump holds up an executive order after signing it in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington on Monday.
WORLD / Politics
Aug 26, 2025
Trump suggests many Americans 'like a dictator'
Democrats have repeatedly accused Trump of pushing presidential power way past its constitutional limits.
Democratic Texas Rep. Gene Wu speaks at the Texas State Capitol in Austin, Texas, on Wednesday. State officials are redrawing congressional maps to benefit Republicans.
WORLD / Politics
Aug 22, 2025
Americans worry democracy is in danger amid gerrymandering fights, poll finds
As Texas Republicans redraw the state's congressional maps to benefit their party, California Democrats threaten to respond in kind.
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.
Political activist Tony Chung attends a demonstration outside the Foreign and Commonwealth Development Office in London to protest the introduction of Hong Kong's Article 23 national security law on March 23, 2024.
WORLD / Politics
Aug 19, 2025
U.K. grants asylum to Hong Kong democracy activist Chung
Tony Chung, who became the youngest person to be jailed under the city's security law in 2021 at the age of 20, vows to never give up.
A prison van believed to be carrying Jimmy Lai arrives at the West Kowloon Magistrates’ Courts building for the closing submissions in the national security collusion trial of Jimmy Lai, founder of the now-defunct pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily, in Hong Kong on Sunday.
ASIA PACIFIC / Politics
Aug 18, 2025
Hong Kong democrat Jimmy Lai given heart monitor for final stretch of marathon trial
Lai's lawyer told the court last Friday that Lai had some episodes where he felt that he was collapsing and had heart "palpitations."
U.S. President Donald Trump’s threat to punish Brazil with tariffs to protect former President Jair Bolsonaro is just one sign that the far right is shifting from rhetoric to real cross-border solidarity that undermines democratic norms.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 28, 2025
Trump is trying to build a far-right international alliance
There has been a lack of concrete solidarity among populist leaders. But Trump is changing that in his second term.
A woman casts her vote during parliamentary elections in Qom, Iran, in March 2012. Regime change in the Islamic country is harder than many think, but it has the institutions needed for democracy if it happens.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 28, 2025
Iran is more prepared for democracy than many realize
Some commentators, like the economist Nouriel Roubini and the Stanford political scientist Abbas Milani, see regime change as plausible or imminent.
Inside Tokyo's 'phantom' stations — and the stories they tell
Mamoru Iwai, stationmaster of Keisei Ueno Station, says that, other than earthquake-proofing, the former Hakubutsukan-Dobutsuen (Museum-Zoo) Station has remained untouched.
At first summit with Trump, Takaichi pledges 'new golden age' for alliance
Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi raises her fist as U.S. President Donald Trump delivers a speech in front of U.S. Navy personnel on board the U.S. Navy's USS George Washington aircraft carrier at the American naval base in Yokosuka, Kanagawa Prefecture, on Tuesday.
Abe shooting suspect Yamagami pleads guilty to murder
Members of the media gather outside the Nara District Court in the city of Nara on Tuesday hours before the start of the trial of Tetsuya Yamagami, the man accused of fatally shooting former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in July 2022.
Takaichi buys time and builds trust with ‘near-perfect’ Trump summit
U.S. President Donald Trump walks with Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi aboard the USS George Washington aircraft carrier during a visit to the U.S. Navy's Yokosuka base in Yokosuka, Kanagawa Prefecture, on Tuesday.
JPYC, world’s first yen stablecoin, is issued
Noritaka Okabe, head of Japanese startup JPYC, at a news conference for the first yen stablecoin in Tokyo on Monday
At Japan Mobility Show, BYD gears up to conquer Japan's EV market
BYD Auto Japan President Atsuki Tofukuji unveils the Racco at the Japan Mobility Show in Tokyo on Wednesday.
Oasis returns to Tokyo: Rain, rapture and rock
Fans wait to get into the Oasis show at Tokyo Dome on Saturday. While lining up in the rain, some broke into impromptu versions of the British rock group's hits.
Kyushu banzuke sets the stage to cement 2025’s sumo narratives
Onosato ahead of his bout against Aonishiki at The Grand Sumo Tournament at the Royal Albert Hall in London on Oct. 18
Tokyo Film Festival opens with global stars and a spotlight on Asian storytelling
Director Junji Sakamoto (left) walked the Tokyo International Film Festival red carpet with Sayuri Yoshinaga (center) and Non (right), who both play mountaineer Junko Tabei, the first woman to summit Mount Everest, in the biopic "Climbing for Life."
Spanish artist and Japanese writer duos diversify the manga talent pool in Japan
"Menheim” is a dark fantasy manga with a story that centers on a girl’s quest to find a cure for her ill brother.

Podcast

One of the many entrances to the Kabukicho neighborhood in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward.
Kabukicho: Tokyo’s ‘stadium of desire’

Longform

Mamoru Iwai, stationmaster of Keisei Ueno Station, says that, other than earthquake-proofing, the former Hakubutsukan-Dobutsuen (Museum-Zoo) Station has remained untouched.
Inside Tokyo's 'phantom' stations — and the stories they tell
By Alex K.T. Martin

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