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August 24, 2025
 

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MIDDLE EAST

The suffering of people with disabilities has been compounded by steep shortages in devices to aid them, including wheelchairs and hearing aids, and in damage to roads, sidewalks and homes with accessible features.
WORLD / Society
Dec 9, 2024
Gaza's disabled people face ‘impossible times’ of chaos and war
The war has forced most of Gaza’s roughly 2 million residents from their homes and has been particularly punishing for people with disabilities and their families.
A woman waves a Syrian opposition flag as she celebrates at Umayyad Square in Damascus on Sunday as celebrations erupted around Syria after Islamist-led rebels swept into Damascus and declared President Bashar Assad had fled the country.
WORLD / Politics / FOCUS
Dec 9, 2024
Assad’s fall in Syria puts world on watch for more Middle East chaos
Multiple Arab and U.S. officials said that a power vacuum could now be dangerous, with memories of Moammar Gadhafi in Libya and Saddam Hussein in Iraq still fresh.
Syrian rebel fighters celebrate near the Clock Tower in Homs on Sunday after rebel forces entered Syria's third city overnight.
WORLD
Dec 9, 2024
Stunned, elated prisoners pour out as Syria's jails are flung open
Throughout the civil war that began in 2011 in Syria, security forces have held hundreds of thousands of people in detention camps known for torture.
A Syrian rebel fighter kisses a child as they gather in Homs after Syria's army command notified officers on Sunday that President Bashar Assad's 24-year authoritarian rule had ended on Sunday.
WORLD / FOCUS
Dec 9, 2024
How Syrian rebels' stars aligned for Assad's ouster
Opposition militias sensed an opportunity to loosen the president grip on power when, about six months ago, they received Turkey's tacit blessing for a major offensive.
People gather at Umayyad Square in Damascus on Sunday. The Islamist-led rebels declared that they have taken the city.
WORLD
Dec 8, 2024
Syrian rebels topple President Assad; prime minister calls for free elections
Syrian rebels seized Damascus, ending President Bashar Assad's 13-year rule and raising uncertainty over a transition led by Islamist group HTS in a war-torn nation.
Rebel fighters hold weapons in front of the Hama governor's building after capturing the city during their advance across northern Syria on Thursday.
WORLD / Politics
Dec 6, 2024
Syria rebels capture another key city in fresh blow to Assad
Hama lies about halfway between Aleppo, which opposition fighters captured in a shock attack on government-held territory last week, and Damascus.
Displaced Palestinians arrive in the northern Gaza Strip on Wednesday.
WORLD / Politics
Dec 5, 2024
Trump's Mideast envoy in push to reach Gaza ceasefire before inauguration
Steve Witkoff met the prime ministers of Israel and Qatar separately in late November.
Members of a Lebanese NGO clear debris from their office that was damaged in an Israeli strike on a nearby building, in Beirut's southern suburbs on Monday.
WORLD / Society
Dec 4, 2024
In Lebanon, people with disabilities isolated and abandoned by war
More than 900,000 people in Lebanon are classified as living with disabilities, according to the United Nations Development Program.
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman meets with French President Emmanuel Macron in Riyadh on Tuesday.
WORLD / Politics
Dec 4, 2024
France and Saudi Arabia planning a conference about Palestinian state
The French president said he would recognize a Palestinian state "at the right moment" and at a time "when it triggers reciprocal movements of recognition."
Anti-government fighters move past abandoned Syrian army military equipment and vehicles southeast of Aleppo on Tuesday.
WORLD / Politics
Dec 4, 2024
Syria rebels 'at gates' of central city Hama
The advance on Syria's fourth-largest city is buoyed by the group's lightning capture of swaths of the north in an offensive that ended four years of relative calm.
Saudi Arabia has executed 303 people this year according to a tally based on official figures.
WORLD / Crime & Legal
Dec 4, 2024
Saudi Arabia surpasses 300 executions in 2024
Saudi Arabia executed the third highest number of prisoners in the world in 2023 after China and Iran, according to Amnesty International.
An anti-regime fighter tears off a poster depicting Syrian President Bashar Assad (left) and his brother Maher at the airport in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo on Monday.
WORLD / Politics
Dec 3, 2024
Syria flare-up jolts U.S. and offers chance for Trump
The Biden administration has committed more than $1 billion over the past year in humanitarian aid for Syria's displaced.
Members of the Amel Association, a Lebanese non-governmental organization, look out from their damaged branch at buildings destroyed or damaged in an Israeli strike, in Beirut's southern suburbs Hay el-Sellom neighborhood on Monday.
WORLD / Politics
Dec 3, 2024
Israel and Hezbollah exchange strikes as ceasefire violations mount
The exchanges of fire put a U.S.-brokered ceasefire between the two in an increasingly fragile position less than a week after it took effect.
An anti-regime fighter operates a truck-mounted gun as displaced Syrian Kurds drive vehicles loaded with their belongings along the Aleppo-Raqqa highway.
WORLD / FOCUS
Dec 3, 2024
Who are the former jihadis now holding Syria's Aleppo?
Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) says it no longer has any links to al-Qaida, but it remains blacklisted by the United States and the European Union.
Iraqi military equipment is transported towards the border with Syria on Monday.
WORLD
Dec 3, 2024
Iraqi fighters head to Syria to battle rebels but Lebanon's Hezbollah stays out, sources say
Syria's civil war had been frozen since 2020, with Assad in control of most territory and all major cities.
A displaced woman packs up her family's belongings at a school turned into a shelter in Beirut on Nov. 27.
WORLD / Society
Dec 2, 2024
'We have a lost generation': Lebanon's education crisis
At least 500 public schools in Lebanon, roughly one in two in what is a badly underfunded sector, were converted into shelters in recent months to house people.
A tank, left behind by Syrian regime forces, is seen on the road leading to the town of Khan Sheikhun, in Idlib province, on Sunday.
WORLD / Politics
Dec 2, 2024
Syria's embattled Assad seeks to shore up support after Aleppo loss
For the first time since the civil war started more than a decade ago, the country's second city is out of control of Syrian regime forces, observers said.
A resident walks past destruction caused by Israeli bombardment in a neighborhood of Beirut's southern suburbs on Thursday, a day after a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah took effect.
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 1, 2024
The Lebanon ceasefire can be leveraged for a broader deal
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has already said he sees the ceasefire as a pause in which to increase pressure on Hamas in Gaza and to rearm.
Sauber's Valtteri Bottas during a practice session for the Qatar Grand Prix. Audi will take over the Sauber team when it enters Formula One in 2026.
MORE SPORTS / Auto Racing
Nov 30, 2024
Audi's deal with Qatar deepens Formula One's Gulf ties
Four of the current 24 races are in the Middle East — more than the number held in the United States.
U.S. President Joe Biden with the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, in July 2022.
WORLD / Politics / FOCUS
Nov 30, 2024
Saudi Arabia abandons pursuit of U.S. defense treaty over Israel stalemate
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has again made recognition of Israel conditional on it taking concrete steps to create a Palestinian state.
Japan to revise romanization rules for first time in 70 years
The Agency for Cultural Affairs is recommending replacing the government’s long-standing Kunrei system with more widely used Hepburn-style spellings.
Women-only communities flourish in China
Chen Yani (right), nicknamed "Keke," eats lunch with friends and guests in a female co-living space she founded called "Keke's Imaginative Space" in Hangzhou, in eastern China's Zhejiang province, on July 14.
JR East cancels luxury train run over crew's boozing
East Japan Railway said Thursday that it will cancel one trip of a luxury overnight sleeper service, which was originally scheduled to depart from Ueno Station in Tokyo on Aug. 30, after crew members were found to have been drinking alcohol on duty.
Man arrested over deadly stabbing of woman in Kobe
Masashi Tanimoto, 35, the suspect in the deadly stabbing a 24-year-old woman, is taken into custody in Kobe on Friday night.
Japanese city proposes two-hour daily limit for smartphone use
The Toyoake Municipal Government in Aichi Prefecture is planning to enact an ordinance to urge all smartphone users in the city to limit screen time to two hours a day outside work or school.
Alicia Keys closed Summer Sonic, but J-pop owned it
Summer Sonic’s 2025 lineup demonstrated its strength, showcasing the latest in J-pop, including “new kawaii” act Fruits Zipper.
Is the LDP’s catch-all approach to politics still effective?
Former economic security minister Sanae Takaichi visits Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo on Aug. 15. Political commentator Toru Hashimoto has suggested that Takaichi ought to lead a group of like-minded hawkish politicians out of the Liberal Democratic Party and form their own party.
Fingers sore from too much phone time? You might have ‘sumaho yubi.’
A catch-all term for tendonitis and arthritis caused by excessive smartphone use, 'sumaho yubi' may be difficult to treat for gadget-crazy Japan.
As farm minister, Koizumi is held ‘hostage’ by Ishiba
Farm minister Shinjiro Koizumi (center) attends a Lower House session on Aug. 1. Locking Koizumi into the Cabinet is Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba’s way of turning a potential rival into a team player, according to one expert.
Big burgers and bigger ambitions for Japan's Burger King
Kazuhiro Nomura, president of BK Japan Holdings, which operates Burger King in Japan

Podcast

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

Longform

Tetsuzo Shiraishi, speaking at The Center of the Tokyo Raids and War Damage, uses a thermos to explain how he experienced the U.S. firebombing of March 1945, when he was just 7 years old.
From ashes to high-rises: A survivor’s account of Tokyo’s postwar past
By Alex K.T. Martin

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