Japan

[ad_1] In January, the Spanish startup TravelPerk closed a funding round suited to today’s austere times. It raised less than it did two years prior, landing on only a slightly higher valuation of $1.4 billion.The surprising part was that TravelPerk’s lead backer was SoftBank, a Japanese investor whose Vision Fund was famous for giving startups outrageous price tags until it racked up immense losses in an investing spree under founder […]

[ad_1] LJUBLJANA, Slovenia – It is now a century since Vladimir Lenin’s death and more than three decades since his Bolshevik project collapsed. But while much of his political life was highly problematic from today’s perspective, his remorseless pragmatism, as one might call it, still has purchase.Recall Lenin’s well-known commitment to “concrete analysis of the concrete situation.” One must avoid both dogmatic fidelity to the cause and unprincipled opportunism. Under […]

[ad_1] North Korea’s destabilizing behavior should be a major concern for Beijing, a senior U.S. State Department official said Tuesday.China should be condemning North Korea’s "deepening cooperation” with Russia, including shipping ballistic missiles to President Vladimir Putin’s forces in Ukraine, said Jung Pak, the U.S. senior official for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, as North Korea is officially known."The DPRK issue is China’s problem, as well,” Pak said in […]

[ad_1] Prime Minister Fumio Kishida told parliament Wednesday that he was open to establishing a new law tightening restrictions on funding for political organizations. But he declined to voice support for a political ethics committee investigation into Liberal Democratic Party members caught up in a slush-fund scandal, saying it was a matter for parliament to decide.Asked about the possibility of a new law that would require external audits of political […]

[ad_1] A Japan Airlines passenger plane erroneously went beyond a stop line leading to a runway at a U.S. airport Feb. 6, causing another aircraft to reattempt its landing, it was learned Wednesday. According to Japan's transport ministry, the JAL plane heading to Narita Airport in Chiba Prefecture crossed the stop line in front of the runway at San Diego International Airport just after noon on Feb. 6. The JAL […]

[ad_1] KFAR AZZA, Israel – When Ayelet Khon moved back to the Kfar Azza kibbutz with her husband two months after the brutal Hamas-led attack of Oct. 7, the first thing she did was hang a string of rainbow-colored lights on the front patio.At night, when darkness drenches this community, the twinkling colors are the only lights visible."We are going to keep these lights on and never turn them off […]

[ad_1] Kim Jong Un has sent new batches of his workers overseas since relaxing pandemic border controls and launched a fresh crackdown on his people, according to the U.S. point person for North Korean human rights."What we’ve seen is that the human rights situation in North Korea has worsened,” Julie Turner, the State Department’s special envoy on the country’s human rights issues, told reporters Wednesday during a visit to Tokyo. […]

[ad_1] Sony Group on Wednesday lifted its net profit forecast for the year ending March to ¥920 billion ($6.1 billion) from an earlier estimate of ¥880 billion thanks to its robust finance business and a weak yen, while announcing that a planned spinoff and the listing of its financial unit is scheduled for 2025.The sales projection for fiscal 2023, however, was lowered to ¥12.3 trillion from its November forecast of […]

[ad_1] Kagoshima – A volcano on Sakurajima in Kagoshima Prefecture erupted Wednesday, with plumes rising to 5,000 meters above the summit crater for the first time since 2020, a local weather observatory said. There were no immediate reports of injuries and damage to buildings, the prefectural government said, while the Kagoshima Meteorological Office maintained the volcanic activity alert level at three, urging people not to approach the volcano. The Japan […]