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The WNBA will host its first regular-season game outside the United States next year, with the Atlanta Dream and Seattle Storm set to play in August at Rogers Arena in Vancouver, the league said on Monday. The announcement comes amid rapid expansion for the top-flight North American league, which hosted its first Canada game in May 2023, a sold-out meeting between the Chicago Sky and Minnesota Lynx in Toronto. A year later, Toronto was awarded the 14th WNBA franchise and will begin play in 2026 as the league’s first team outside the U.S. Portland is also set to launch a team in 2026. “The WNBA Canada Game has been a tremendous opportunity to grow our league’s footprint,” Commissioner Cathy Engelbert said in a statement. “As we prepare to establish permanent roots in Canada with a Toronto franchise, this game and our year-round engagement efforts are a nod to the incredible momentum around women’s basketball in Canada.” The Storm made their 19th post-season appearance this year, losing to Las Vegas Aces in the first round, while the Dream also exited in the first round to eventual champions New York Liberty. The Storm will play the Dream on Aug. 15. Source link

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump announced that SoftBank Group planned to invest $100 billion in the United States over the next four years during an event alongside Chief Executive Officer Masayoshi Son on Monday. “He’s doing this because he feels very optimistic about our country since the election,” Trump said, adding that the pledge represented a “demonstration of confidence in America’s future.” “I’m very, very excited,” Son, who met with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, told reporters. “I would really like to celebrate the great victory of President Trump and my confidence level to the economy of the United States has tremendously increased with his victory.” Source link

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump on Sunday met with Akie Abe, the widow of assassinated former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, Trump’s wife said. The Trumps are believed to have hosted a private dinner for Akie Abe at the resort in Palm Beach, Florida, with Melania Trump posting an image to her X social media account of the three standing together smiling. “It was a privilege to host Mrs. Akie Abe at Mar-a-Lago once again,” she wrote. “We fondly remembered her late husband, former Prime Minister Abe, and honored his remarkable legacy.” Source link

Beijing – Japanese movies are riding on a wave of popularity in China, despite Beijing’s restrictions on imported film. Anime director Hayao Miyazaki’s “The Boy and the Heron,” which hit theaters in China in April, became the 10th highest grossing film of 2024. Other popular Japanese movies include a Chinese remake and a past masterpiece. Source link

Nuclear power is forecast to be the cheapest baseload electricity source in Japan in 2040, highlighting the government’s desire to restart the nation’s idled reactors. The cost of constructing and operating a new nuclear power plant for 2040 is estimated at ¥12.5 ($0.08) per kilowatt-hour, according to documents released from a trade ministry panel meeting on Monday. This cost assumes reactors will be used for 40 years at a 70% operational rate. The meeting was held to discuss the so-called levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) for each power asset, the document said. A previous study published in 2021 saw LNG-fired power plants as the cheapest power source in 2030. However, the latest analysis includes a cost to reduce emissions, while fuel prices are also higher. Intermittent renewable sources, like large-scale and residential solar, were priced lower than nuclear for 2040, the most recent report showed. However, when including the total system cost, including deployment of batteries, nuclear is cheaper than solar in some scenarios. Japan is currently in the process of revising its national energy strategy, which will dictate its power mix targets beyond 2030. The government has doubled down on nuclear as a way to curb dependence on pricey fossil fuels. The analysis released Monday also estimated LCOE of ammonia and hydrogen co-fired electricity, as well as pairing carbon capture and storage (CCS) with LNG and coal power plants — technologies that the government is considering for its long-term energy transition. Co-firing with hydrogen boosted the cost of an LNG plant by about 6% for deployment in 2040, while CCS didn’t meaningfully change the price. Source link

SEOUL – When South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol cited claims of election hacking and “anti-state” pro-North Korean sympathizers as justification for imposing a short-lived martial law, right-wing YouTuber Ko Sung-kook had heard it before. In fact, Ko had made the same claims himself many times to the 1.1 million subscribers of his Kosungkook TV channel on YouTube. “If President Yoon Suk Yeol listens to the voices of YouTubers attentively, he may understand what the people really think, what the public sentiment of the president’s supporters are, that’s what I’m expecting,” Ko said. Source link

The CEO of Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group’s main banking arm, MUFG Bank, apologized Monday over the theft, allegedly by a managerial employee, of valuables worth over ¥1 billion ($6.5 million) from the safe deposit boxes of multiple clients over a span of four and a half years. The theft of valuables from the bank’s safe deposit boxes has dealt a blow to public confidence in the megabank. “We solemnly recognize this as a matter that shakes the very foundation of trust and confidence, which are the core of the banking business,” said Junichi Hanzawa, who bowed deeply at the first news conference since the crime was uncovered. Source link

NEW YORK – The U.S. fraud case against Indian billionaire Gautam Adani appears to be backed by documents that will help prosecutors make a strong case, legal experts said, but the tycoon is unlikely to be extradited to stand trial anytime soon. Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn last month unsealed an indictment accusing Adani of bribing Indian officials to convince them to buy electricity produced by Adani Green Energy, a subsidiary of his Adani Group conglomerate, and then misleading U.S. investors by providing reassuring information about the company’s anti-corruption practices. Adani, his nephew Sagar Adani, and another Adani Group executive were charged with securities fraud and conspiracy. Five people affiliated with Azure Power Global, a formerly-U.S.-listed company also allegedly involved, were charged with conspiracy to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA). Source link

With the English release of Haruki Murakami’s most recent novel, “The City and Its Uncertain Walls,” now may be a good time to revisit an old favorite set in the same fantastical world for some deep reading. Out from Everyman’s Library and heralded as an “unabridged translation” by longtime Murakami collaborator Jay Rubin, “End of the World and Hard-Boiled Wonderland” provides an immersive, rollicking read that aptly showcases Murakami’s distinctive magic. Rubin’s new edition restores over 100 pages of text excised from Alfred Birnbaum’s 1991 translation and re-establishes the same word order of the novel’s Japanese title. But existing fans of the novel needn’t worry they missed anything significant the first time around. “There was no kind of systematic attempt to reshape the novel or to suppress any particular attitude or any particular theme in Birnbaum’s translation,” Rubin explains to The Japan Times. “There were just lots of little cuts that added up to a lot of pages. One or two of the cuts were maybe three or four pages long, but most cuts were really just a few sentences at a time.” Source link

Tokyo Police have arrested a 44-year-old Finance Ministry official for alleged “upskirting” photography at a train station in Tokyo. The ministry official, Yasutaka Yoneta, who is also a temporary associate professor at Tokyo Metropolitan University, denies the allegation, according to police sources. A photo of Yasutaka Yoneda from the website of the Japan Science and Technology Agency | Jiji Yoneta is suspected of approaching a woman in her 20s from behind, slipping a smartphone under her skirt and filming her underwear on an escalator at Minamiosawa Station in the city of Hachioji at around 10 a.m. on Oct. 23. A photo was found when police officers checked his smartphone in relation to a separate case in Tokyo’s Suginami Ward in late October. After graduating from Tokyo Metropolitan University, Yoneta joined the Tokyo Regional Taxation Bureau in 2005. He took up his current post at the university in April this year. Source link