SMEs are crucial to the UK’s economic well-being.
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SMEs make up 99.9% of all businesses in the UK – boosting their productivity could add billions to the post-Brexit economy.
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The Japanese sex-toy market for men includes a curious category of objects: pillows. These “bodies” create a paradoxal link between desire and sleep.
Protests at the Brandenburg Gate, in Berlin, against the US withdrawal from the Paris climate change deal.
Fabrizio Bensch/Reuters
An expert report shows that the G20 countries are using their energy more efficiently. But there is still a long way to go.
On the left, Katsushika Hokusai’s ‘The Manifestation of the Peak’ (1834); on the right, Wright’s rendering of the Huntington Hartford Resort project (1947)
© The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, Taliesin West, Scottsdale, AZ
When the young Wright moved to Chicago to work for the architect Joseph Silsbee, he was introduced to Japanese prints. It changed his career, and very possibly the course of American architecture.
One of Japan’s biggest food trends right now is Bulgarian yoghurt.
City foodsters/Kakigōri Kanna/Flickr
How a simple bacterium traveled across time and space to become Japan’s latest food fad.
The helicopter carrier Izumo sails out of Yokosuka.
Reuters/Kyodo Kyodo
In many respects, Japan’s constitutional debate is a microcosm of Asia’s international order, relfecting a basic mode of operation now past it use-by date.
Shinzo Abe has made his clearest statement yet on his ambition to alter the pacifist Article 9 of Japan’s Constitution.
Reuters/Peter Nicholls
Shinzo Abe may have kickstarted the debate on constitutional change with high hopes for success. But the outcome in 2020 is anything but certain.
Women are increasingly the breadwinners of their families, a shift in domestic roles that has upsides and challenges.
UNwomen/flickr
Here’s how we can make families work better for women in the 21st century.
Supporters of presidential candidate Moon Jae-in.
REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon
North and South Korea explained in four questions and answers.
Likoper/Shutterstock
Fingers on buzzers.
EPA/Javier Lizon
There’s nowhere quite like Japan – or at least, that’s how the Japanese government tells it.
The demilitarised zone between North and South Korea is one of the last bastions of the Cold War.
Kim Hong-Ji/Reuters
South Korea must seek to strike a balance in its respective strategic and economic relationships.
Ahn Young-Joon/Reuters
Beyond her own personal humiliation, the ramifications of Park’s fall are already reverberating from domestic South Korean politics into the fraught geopolitics of Northeast Asia.
Chinese President Xi Jinping and US President Donald Trump will meet next month in Florida.
Reuters
US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s recent trip to Asia offers some insights into how the Trump administration might deal with China.
US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson meets with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in Tokyo.
Reuters/pool
Uncertainty persists about what “America First” will mean for US-Asia policy, and the Secretary of State’s recent tour of the region leaves us none the wiser.
A North Korean ballistic rocket launching drill, undated photo.
REUTERS/ North Korea's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA)
Tensions in Asia may soon boil over. If U.S. leaders fail to seek pathways to peace, the consequences may be grim, warns former National Security Council member.
EPA/Hitoshi Maeshiro
Hosting a military base is difficult in the best of circumstances, but some bases are more dangerous than others.
Anti-nuclear demonstration in front of the Japanese Diet, June 22, 2012.
Matthias Lambrecht/Flickr
Nuclear power was a cornerstone of Japan’s energy strategy for decades, until the Fukushima disaster. The current government wants to keep some nuclear reactors open, but has lost public support.
Christoph Rupprecht/FEAST Project
The four scenarios in the WEF’s 2017 food report paint a bleak picture. But there are better ways.
Genking, a male-born Japanese TV personality and ‘genderless’ pioneer.
_genking_/Instagram
In Japanese popular culture, new trends come and go. But the Japanese have toyed with gender norms for generations.