"Ikea", "Fanta" and "Chanel". These names of a major furniture retailer, a soft drink and a luxury brand, respectively, have all also been given to babies in Germany.
But joining this brand line-up, names drawn from Japanese such as "Taro" and "Kasai" are also said to be proving popular overseas in recent years. In Japan, the revised Family Register Act took effect in May 2025, requiring the readings of names to be added in family registers in the phonetic katakana syllabary. For so-called "kira-kira" names, or "sparkling" names with unorthodox readings, including foreign-style names and character names assigned to kanji, the revised law set a standard that readings differing from the original readings of the kanji must be "generally recognized as readings of characters used in names".
The legal revision was reported around the world, including by The New York Times. The German magazine Der Spiegel, in an article with a headlined translating as "Japan introduces stricter rules for children's names", presented names symbolized in kanji for "Pikachu", "Nike" and "Kitty" as examples of kira-kira names.
But as the German examples above show, "eccentric" names also exist in Europe and the United States.
According to Knud Bielefeld (right), a name researcher in Ahrensburg in northern Germany, such names are rare but are sometimes chosen out of a desire to "give a child a special name". This appears to have something in common with parents in Japan who give their children kira-kira names.
As reported by Western media reports, there was a child in Britain in 2024 named "Everest", the same as the world's highest mountain. In the United States, "Kasai" is gaining popularity as a boy's name meaning fire, and several hundred children were given the name in 2025. It is also said to be derived from the Japanese word "kasai", meaning a destructive fire.
In some cases, however, courts have rejected unusual names, citing concerns including the risk that children could become targets of bullying.
In France in 2015, the court rejected the name "Nutella", the same as the popular chocolate spread, for a girl. In Sweden in 1996, there was reportedly a case in which parents tried to have a long name made up of 43 letters of the alphabet with no vowels and a number read as "Albin", but it was not approved.
At their core, both Japan's kira-kira names and the brand-inspired names of the West stem from the same place – a parent's deep wish to gift their child a special identity. However, as the legal backlash in Sweden, France, and Japan demonstrates, a name is never just a personal choice. It is a child's first introduction to the world, and striking the balance between 'memorable' and 'practical' is a global challenge that isn't going away anytime soon.
Americans are so much richer than most Europeans – and the proof is at McDonald’s.
The average American worker can buy 10,215 Big Macs a year after taxes, according to a new report released on August 25, 2026. [It was published as a specialized feature article titled "How many Big Macs does your salary buy?" under The Economist's McWages index section].
That’s more than twice as many as French and German workers – and 50% more than Brits.
All the data comes from the “Big Mac Index” – the longstanding, if slightly oddball, economic indicator created by The Economist.
The new analysis evaluates how much real work is required to afford the same standard product – which is available at 44,000 McDonald’s locations worldwide.
Big Macs are priced according to local ingredient and operating costs. A Big Mac in the US averages $6.22, while it’s $7.30 in France and Germany, and just $3.12 in Japan, according to a separate price tracker.
Dividing the cost of a Big Mac by average wages offers an easy-to-understand way to compare the wealth between the working people of different nations.
In America, it takes just 23 minutes of work to afford a Big Mac – or six burgers per hour.
American workers have the highest burger-buying power in the world, according to The Economist's McWages Index. An average US worker earns about $60,000 after taxes annually, which equals the value of 10,215 Big Macs, putting the United States at the top of the global ranking.
That figure is almost twice the roughly 5,000 Big Macs that a worker in France can afford annually, and more than double the roughly 4,000 that can be afforded by German workers.
Switzerland and Australia are in second and third place, respectively, with New Zealand fourth and Israel fifth.
But Americans also work longer hours than many of their European counterparts – and one country has the advantage on Big Macs-per-hour.
Switzerland comes out on top – with Swiss earning the equivalent of seven Big Macs an hour. Australia, with five burgers for every hour worked, comes third.
The index also tracks wealth growth and decline – because it expresses both wages and the cost of a basic food item.
Germans are not lovin’ it – becoming much poorer in the past two years, as wages have stagnated and prices soared.
However, other countries, such as Latvia, are significantly richer in Big Mac terms than they were two years ago, with the average worker now able to afford an additional burger for every two hours’ work.
When Japan rebuilt itself after World War II and became an economic powerhouse in a single generation, the world called it the "Japanese Miracle". When South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore soared from poverty to prosperity, they were celebrated as the "Four Asian Tigers".
But when China does exactly the same thing – actually, on a scale far more massive than any of them – Western media calls it the "China Shock". Same playbook. Different label.
What changed?
A Costa Rican economist named Ottón Solís had written an essay, titled "US negotiating more than trade", that was published in October 2025, on the platform Latinoamérica21 (and syndicated via China Daily). It cuts through this double standard with refreshing clarity and resounding cogency.
Let's walk through his argument, because it's definitely worth hearing.
What China Actually Did
Over the past decade, China has become a global leader in electric vehicles, AI, batteries, biotech, renewable energy, robotics, and semiconductors. It didn't just catch up – in many areas, it pulled ahead.
The Western response? "Overcapacity". "Production surplus". "State-driven distortion".
But as Solís points out, the same strategies – state-guided industrial policy, massive investment in education and infrastructure, a focus on long-term planning, and a stable political environment – were precisely what powered Japan and the Asian Tigers.
Yet when Japan did it, it was a miracle. When China does it, it's a threat.
The Real Outcomes
Here's what "overcapacity" actually means in practice:
First, millions of middle‑ and low‑income consumers around the world now have access to affordable cars, phones, solar panels, and other industrial products. This is not a bad thing.
Second, the global fight against climate change became far more effective because high‑quality renewable energy equipment is now cheap enough for developing countries to afford.
Third, Western industries that are less productive and high‑cost can't compete. And instead of asking why their own industries became uncompetitive, Western politicians are blaming China for being... too efficient.
The Factors Western Politicians Refuse to Talk About
Solís lists five factors behind China's success:
A vast domestic market that enables economies of scale.
High savings and investment rates – driven by cultural attitudes and policy choices.
Policy continuity and political stability.
Massive investment in education, infrastructure, energy, and R&D.
A coherent development strategy that includes industrial policy alongside market forces.
Now, ask yourself: which of these factors is uniquely Chinese?
None of them.
Western countries could boost their savings rates through fiscal and monetary policy – if their political systems were willing to make those choices. They could invest more in education, infrastructure, and science – if they were willing to cut military spending or raise taxes on billionaires. They could reach cross‑party agreements to ensure policy continuity – if their politicians prioritized national strategy over short‑term electoral victories.
But they don't.
And then they blame China for their own political failures.
The Uncomfortable Conclusion
Solís's argument is simple: Western politicians have a choice. They can keep blaming China, stoking anti‑China rhetoric, and risking global peace. Or they can look at what China did right, learn from it, and apply those lessons within their own political and economic systems. But that would require acknowledging that China's success is not a fluke or a cheat – it's the result of deliberate, long‑term strategies that any country could adopt, if its leaders had the will.
Instead, they double down on the narrative that China is somehow "unfair", while refusing to examine their own shortcomings.
In Indonesia, 190 people had the name "Uzumaki," apparently based on the popular anime series "Naruto," and 181 individuals were named "Nobita" from "Doraemon", according to resident registration data recently released by the country's Ministry of Home Affairs.
The data announced by the ministry shows that many Indonesians have names believed to have been inspired by Japanese anime. The popularity of anime appears to have extended even to the naming of children.
Of such names, the most common was Uzumaki, the same as the surname of the protagonist featured in "Naruto", which was followed by Nobita, the first name of the protagonist appearing in the long-running anime series "Doraemon".
"It seems the parents are anime fans. No, I'm completely serious about this. If this were a lie, I could be sued. I'm talking based on population data, and there really are quite a lot of them", stressed Teguh Setyabudi (left), director general of Population and Civil Registration at the Indonesian Ministry of Home Affairs.
He emphasized this at a meeting announcing population statistics for the first half of 2026, according to the news site Detik.com.
Other likely anime-inspired names included Sasuke, Naruto, Uchiha and Boruto, all characters from "Naruto", Luffy and Usopp, characters from the famous anime series "One Piece", Shinchan from the long-standing anime series "Crayon Shin-chan", and Inuyasha, the protagonist of the anime series "Inuyasha".
Teguh also jokingly pointed out that "there were eight people who are named after Suneo, the crybaby character" from "Doraemon".
A survey released by Hakuhodo Inc. in March this year, targeting people ages 16 to 39 in the Jakarta metropolitan area who have watched or are interested in Japanese anime, found that six of the 10 most recognized anime series had recognition rates above 50%.
"Pokemon" and "Naruto" were especially widely known.
Regarding anime and manga, the perception that they are "entertainment that can be enjoyed by everyone from children to adults" surpassed the impression that they are "for a small group of hardcore fans".
I came across the clip below on Facebook last Tuesday. Published by China Xinhua News, this AI animation shows Uncle Sam saying "Keep going" while US debt exponentially climbs.
It perfectly captures how the US government just keep kicking the fiscal can down the road.
You should already know by now that the US national debt has surpassed $40 trillion – I covered this issue in my post "The $40 Trillion Suicide Note" published August 20 – with foreign investors holding trillions of dollars in Treasury securities.
The visualization below ranks the 20 largest foreign holders of US debt based on June 2026 data from the US Treasury Department. The figures include short-term Treasury bills as well as longer-term Treasury notes and bonds.
Key takeaways:
Japan is the largest foreign holder of US Treasuries, with $1.1 trillion, having overtaken China since 2019 and has remained in the top spot since.
China now ranks third with $633 billion, roughly half its holdings at their 2013-2014 peak.
Financial hubs like Belgium and the Cayman Islands rank highly because Treasury data reflects where securities are held in custody, not necessarily their ultimate owners.
Whenever a question was asked about Japanese leaders visiting or making offerings to the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo, China’s Foreign Ministry would refer to it by its name, describe it as a place that houses World War II war criminals and mete out its criticism.
On August 17, that approach took a subtle turn. The ministry spokesperson, when replying to a question at a regularpress briefing, did not mention Yasukuni Shrine by its Chinese name, “jing guo shen she” or “peaceful country shrine”, at all. Instead, he called it “zhan fan shen she”, or “war criminals shrine” in Chinese.
The Yasukuni Shrine commemorates Japan’s 2.5 million war dead but among them are 14 World War II criminals, making any visit or offerings to the shrine by the country’s leaders anathema to China and South Korea, which grievously suffered under Japanese occupation.
The term “war criminals shrine” first surfaced during a regular media briefing of the Chinese Foreign Ministry in Beijing on April 21, after Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi made an offering to the shrine on the first day of a traditional spring festival.
A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson said then that Yasukuni was “in effect” a war criminals shrine.
At the August 17 briefing, the qualifier was dropped. The spokesman, Lin Jian, called it “war criminals shrine” outright, while replying to a question on Takaichi sending another offering on August 15, marked in Japan as the 81st anniversary of the end of World War II.
While the dispute centres on a site that has long been associated with Japan’s wartime past, the latest shift in language comes as Beijing and Tokyo are facing a broader deterioration in ties, shaped by tensions over Taiwan, Japan’s defence modernisation and the two sides’ competition for influence in South-east Asia.
Chen Yang, a research fellow at Chinese think-tank Charhar Institute, described the new phrasing as marking a shift by China from factually citing the presence of 14 convicted Class-A war criminals enshrined in Yasukuni as deities, to applying a political judgment to the shrine itself as an institution.
“‘War criminals shrine’ has formally become part of China’s diplomatic vocabulary”, he explained. “This linguistic shift signals at home and abroad that China rejects attempts to portray Yasukuni Shrine simply as an ordinary religious facility or a memorial site for those killed in war”.
Japanese officials have justified past visits to the shrine as being done in their personal capacity to honour those who died in the nation’s wars, but such visits are seen in China and South Korea as evidence of a lack of remorse on the part of the Japanese for their war atrocities.
Both China and South Korea’s governments have repeatedlycriticised the shrine visits by top Japanese leaders, and Seoul reiterated on August 15 that future relations with Japan must be built on Japan showing remorse for past wrongs.
Chen added that China’s newer term is meant to deny Japanese conservative politicians room to present the site simply as a religious facility or a memorial for the war dead.
“Japan’s right wing has long sought to present Yasukuni as a site for personal acts of mourning”, he said, but the phrase “war criminals shrine” directly binds the site to those convicted of wartime crimes.
Professor Heng Yee Kuang of the University of Tokyo’s Graduate School of Public Policy claimed that this new labeling is consistent with China's recent warnings about "neo-fascism" and "new militarism" in Japan.
He noted that the Japanese media uses similar “war criminal” language to describe those convicted at the Tokyo Trials, but not to describe the shrine as a whole. The trials took place from May 1946 to November 1948, during which high-ranking Japanese leaders were prosecuted over atrocities committed during World War II.
A brutal heatwave across East Asia has devastated agriculture, leaving one farmer Lee Sang-hyuk with an entirely spoiled potato crop in Yanggu county, 80 miles (130km) north-east of Seoul, South Korea.
The extreme ground heat effectively cooked the produce in the soil, turning a healthy-looking field into mush within a single week.
Speaking to local broadcaster SBS, Lee expressed heartbreak over the widespread damage. His ruined livelihood reflects the broader impact of record-breaking summer temperatures currently impacting South Korea, Japan, and Hong Kong. As per a news report from The Guardian published August 13, 2026.
In fact, two Sundays ago, the south-eastern city of Yangsan recorded a temperature of 42.5C, the highest registered in South Korea since modern weather observations began in 1904.
The scorching heat has since been blamed for at least 31 deaths nationwide, according to the country’s disease control agency, while more than 900,000 livestock and 1.4 million farmed fish have died.
Authorities issued a heat warning, urging people to “immediately stop all outdoor activities”.
South Korea’s president, Lee Jae Myung, told his cabinet the extreme weather was “unlike anything we have experienced before”.
“We need to make efforts for a fundamental overhaul of the national crisis system”, he said, “since this extreme weather is becoming the new normal”.
In neighbouring Japan, temperatures reached 40C or higher at multiple locations and the country recorded its first ever “kokushobi”, or “cruelly hot day”, a new category introduced this year by the country’s weather agency for temperatures above 40C. In Tokyo, three lions died of suspected heatstroke at a city zoo.
Scientists say the extremes are part of a wider pattern. Researchers working through Japan’s Weather Attribution Centre found that the country’s intense July heat would have been “virtually impossible” without global warming.
Without the warming caused by human activity, they calculated, a heatwave of this scale would occur on average once ever 10,000 years. The heat struck even as an El Niño event was under way, a natural climate pattern that has in the past been associated with a lower likelihood of extreme summer heat in Japan.
In Hong Kong, its observatory posted an official temperature of 36.9C, the highest recorded there since records began in 1884, as the outer bands of Typhoon Dolphin swept hot air over the city.
In China’s western Xinjiang region, a weather station recorded a 50C reading in July and heatwaves gripped the country’s north-east, while North Korea reported a run of tropical nights in Pyongyang, with temperatures failing to fall below 25C.
The World Meteorological Organization said in their latest State of the Climate in Asia report that the pace of Asia’s warming between 1991 and 2025 is roughly twice that of the preceding three decades.
June-Yi Lee (right), a climate scientist at Pusan National University and a coordinating lead author of the UN’s most recent climate assessment, warned that heatwaves were expected to become more frequent and intense as the climate heated up, while compound extremes, such as consecutive heatwaves and heavy rainfall, were becoming more common.
“There is an urgent need for rapid, large-scale reductions in greenhouse gas emissions to limit further global warming together with well-planned adaptation measures to address the climate change that is already occurring”, she said.
For most of the history of evolutionary biology, nobody has really known why zebras have stripes.
This is not for lack of trying. The specific pattern is one of the most obviously puzzling features of any mammal on Earth – vivid, symmetrical, apparently costly to maintain, and completely useless for the sort of things stripes usually do in nature.
Camouflage, the most intuitive explanation, doesn't work. As are the other explanations. Thermoregulation. Social recognition. Confusing predators during the chase. One by one, most of these suppositions have quietly collapsed.
But one long-standing scientific hypothesis moved closer to confirmation, thanks to a unique experiment in Japan, conducted at the Aichi Agricultural Research Center in Nagakute City, Aichi Prefecture in the Chubu region of central Japan. Published on October 03, 2019, in PLOS ONE, the study "Cows painted with zebra-like striping can avoid biting fly attack" by Tomoki Kojima, Kazato Oishi, Yasushi Matsubara, et al demonstrates that painting black-and-white stripes on cattle significantly reduces biting fly attacks.
Six Japanese Black cows* (Kuroge Washu) – a breed that is naturally uniformly dark – were assigned to three treatments using a Latin-square rotation: painted with black-and-white zebra stripes, painted with black-only stripes (to control for any effect of the paint itself), or left unpainted.
[*Fun fact: These bovines make up over 90% of all Wagyu produced in Japan].
The cows spent time in each treatment on natural pasture where biting flies were abundant. Researchers photographed the animals at regular intervals and counted the number of flies visible on their bodies in each image. The results were direct. Cows in the zebra-stripe condition attracted approximately half as many biting flies as the same animals when unpainted or when painted with black-only stripes.
The cows also showed substantially fewer fly-repelling behaviours – the head throws, ear beats, leg stamps, skin twitches, and tail flicks that cattle use to shake off biting insects. They were, measurably, being bothered less.
The specific paint pattern did the work. The stripes were doing something. The current best explanation for the effect involves the specific visual mechanics of how biting flies land.
Flies do not simply fly straight at a target. In the final approach, they rely on optical flow – the way visual patterns move across their compound eyes as they close in – to judge distance, speed, and the precise moment to slow down for landing.
Uniform surfaces produce smooth optical flow. Striped surfaces produce something the fly’s visual system cannot interpret cleanly. The alternating light and dark bands create false movement signals, disrupting the fly’s ability to gauge how close it actually is to the surface. The result is that flies approach striped surfaces at the wrong speed, often overshooting or bumping off without properly landing.
Over the course of an afternoon in a fly-heavy pasture, this small optical mismatch adds up to a substantial reduction in successful landings. None of this requires the fly to be repelled by the stripes in any active sense. It just requires the stripes to make landing physically harder.
The insect-deterrent theory has taken decades to reach its current standing, because it has spent most of that time competing with three other serious explanations that biologists once found more plausible.
Why Other Theories Failed
Camouflage against savanna vegetation fails because zebras stand out clearly to lions and hyenas at hunting distances instead of blending in.
Thermoregulation: Tests on striped metal barrels showed no cooling effect from the pattern.
Social recognition does not offer a plausible evolutionary reason for zebra stripes because other closely related, highly social African equids (like wild donkeys and horses) recognize each other perfectly well without any stripes at all.
Predator confusion: Moving stripes offer only a minor distraction to large predators during a chase.
Nature solved pest control millions of years ago, not with chemicals, but with a simple optical illusion. It turns out that fashion-forward thinking is the ultimate shield against the animal kingdom's tiniest nuisances.
A Japanese company hired full-time office cats to reduce workplace stress, and it’s working.
Tokyo-based Qnote Inc. first adopted a cat in 2004 and has since grown their feline staff to eleven permanent office residents. Employees say the cats boost morale, encourage short breaks, and create a much more relaxed and pleasant work environment.
Each cat even has an official job title, such as “office clerk”, “manager”, or “auditor”, making them fully integrated into the company culture.
The company love cats so much that “cat lover” is now listed as a requirement for human job applicants. 🐈
To accommodate their furry employees, Qnote renovated the office to incorporate cat toilets, climbing shelves, and scratch-resistant walls, allowing the cats to roam freely without causing damage. The result? Lower stress levels and stronger team bonding among staff.
Cats purr away work stress, ensuring a purr-fect workplace solution.
In Malaysia, Bersama announced on July 15 their decision to sit out the sixteenth Negeri Sembilan state polls.
This represents a calculated maneuver on their part because the state will witness an intense, localized showdown brewing between the Barisan Nasional (BN) and Pakatan Harapan (PH) camps. Moving ahead risked putting Bersama candidates in the crossfire, which will not benefit the young party.
Instead, Bersama will channel their "full focus" into preparing for the Melaka state election expected later this year.
Considering everything, methinks, it is a prudent move.
Japan began a new round of discharge of nuclear-contaminated wastewater from the crippled Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant into the sea on July 06, 2026, marking the 21st such release since the controversial operation began in 2023.
The discharge started on Monday, and according to the plant's operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings (TEPCO), the latest round, scheduled to continue through July 24, will release about 7,800 tonnes of wastewater into the ocean, containing approximately 1.3 trillion becquerels of radioactive tritium.
Struck by a 9-magnitude earthquake and the ensuing tsunami on March 11, 2011, the Fukushima nuclear plant suffered core meltdowns that released radiation, resulting in a level-7 nuclear accident, the highest on the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale.
Despite concerns and opposition from the international community, Japan unilaterally launched the discharge of nuclear-contaminated water from the Fukushima Daiichi plant into the ocean in August 2023. So far, TEPCO has completed 20 rounds of discharges, and around 157,000 tonnes of wastewater have been released into the sea.
This news flew under the radar. It may have been overlooked eight months ago, yet it still matters today.
If war breaks out, General Romeo Brawner Jr. (left), chief of staff of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) declared his country will fight alone. Tayo muna ang lalaban, he had said on November 04, 2025.
Addressing troops at the opening of the AJEX DAGIT-PA military exercises, Brawner clarified the military's strategy under the directive of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.
But there's a caveat. It's only for 20-30 days. The Philippines believes its allies – the USA under the Mutual Defense Treaty, along with Japan and Australia – will have rushed to the Perla del Mar de Oriente by then to save them! 😅😅😅
The AFP chief has been regularly talking up war with China, his country's declared threat. I prefer to call a spade a spade. China is his foe, period.
Thirteen Argentina followers are roaming the streets of Buenos Aires proudly sporting their team’s jersey – but they’re not on two legs, they’re on all fours, letting out the occasional bark.
As Argentina rides World Cup fever, a dog walker has added his pack to the local fanbase.
Thirty-three-year-old Nahuel Meneghini, walks the streets of the capital’s city center with the dogs wearing the team’s jerseys, leashes and collars in support of La Albiceleste.
“I did it out of love for them and for Argentina. And for the World Cup”, said Meneghini – known as “Nano” – while speaking to The Associated Press on Thursday during a walk with the canine group.
The dog walker, also dressed head-to-toe like a fan, skilfully managed all the leashes, guiding the dogs along the narrow sidewalks of the capital’s San Cristóbal neighborhood.
FYI, Argentina defeated Cape Verde 3-2 in extra time on Friday, in the Round of 32 clash at the 2026 FIFA World Cup.
While I'm mostly indifferent to the World Cup, I still keep an eye on the results. 😉
Even though Malaysian durian prices are said to be depressed this season, the king of fruits remains a lucrative target, proven when three robbers hauled away four baskets of premium-grade durians after threatening two teenage orchard caretakers in Melaka.
Jasin police chief Lee Robert said the robbery took place at about 11:30 AM on June 27 at a durian orchard in Anjung Gapam, Bemban, where the two teenagers, aged 17 and 18, werelooking after the durian harvest. He said the suspects, who arrived in a car, loaded four large baskets of “IOI” durians into their vehicle before one of the teenagers confronted them.
“One of the suspects became aggressive and brandished a machete to intimidate the teenager, while another made off with a motorcycle belonging to the father of one of the victims before they fled”, he said the following day.
Lee said acting on intelligence, a team from the Jasin police arrested four men, aged between 27 and 35, in separate raids between 12:30 AM and 7:30 AM on the same day in Bertam Hulu, Kampung Paya Rumput,Masjid Tanah and Jasin.
“Two of the suspects admitted their involvement in the incident, while another was positively identified by one of the victims as the person who stole the motorcycle”, he added.
He highlighted that three of the suspects tested positive for methamphetamine, while checks also revealed they had criminal records.
However, police were unable to recover the stolen durians.
I'm happy to share that Germany and the Netherlands had been eliminated in the knockout phase (Round of 32) of the 2026 FIFA World Cup on Monday, after both suffered dramatic penalty shootout defeats.
In fact, Paraguay President Santiago Peña signed a decree declaring the following day, a national holiday to commemorate the victory against Die Mannschaft (The Team).
The match had ended in a 1-1 tie after extra time, and then, La Albirroja (The White and Red) stunned the four-time world champions 4-3 on penalties.
And Oranje (The Orange) lost 2-3 on penalties to Morocco after also being tied 1-1 after extra time.
In the meantime, Brazil avoided a major upset by coming from behind to defeat Japan 2-1, also on Monday. A dramatic 95th-minute winner secured the Seleção (The Selection/Squad) a spot in the last 16. I'm glad too the Samurai Blue lost!
Like the protagonist in his taboo novel, doctor-turned-author Yo Kusakabe (久坂部羊) believes chopping off elderly patients’ useless limbs could help prevent a potential collapse of super-ageing Japan’s overstressed care industry.
Now the former doctor’s extraordinary ideas are on display on the big screen, with the book’s film adaptation attracting huge controversy since its release in Japan in May.
But Haiyoshin (廃用身, Useless Body), which sees a young doctor advocate for “A-care (Amputation Care)”, has also focused attention on the struggling care sector in a country with the world’s second-oldest population.
Kusakabe (right), a former geriatric specialist from Osaka, explained to AFP the thinking behind his shocking proposition, saying removing paralysed limbs would make patients lighter and reduce the burden on caregivers in case the care industry reaches crisis point.
He sees it as a potential game changer, provided patients in the real world give consent. He argues that patients’ immobile arms and legs are impediments to caregiving: They dangle like dumbbells, get stuck in pyjamas and require more bathing.
“If you cut them off, a female carer would have less difficulty lifting a hefty male patient or suffer less back pain”, the 70-year-old said.
Kusakabe’s 2003 novel features unstinting depictions of carer shortages, overburdened family members and abused elderly patients. The topic feels even more relevant in present-day, greyer Japan, where almost one in three people are aged 65 or older.
The government estimate a shortfall of about 570,000 carers by 2040.
“Japan’s caregiving industry isn’t collapsing yet – but with (the number of) elderly people requiring care predicted to keep increasing, it is heading towards breaking point”, Kusakabe said.
In Japan, homicides by overwhelmed, desperate carers are common enough that the term “kaigo satsujin” (caregiving murders) often makes it into the news.
One investigation by public broadcaster NHK in 2016 revealed that such a tragedy took place roughly once every two weeks.
If homicides or incidents of abuse increase, Kusakabe said, “I think it’s possible that chopping off useless limbs would emerge as an option”.
Kusakabe points out his novel was deemed “unfilmable” when it first came out more than two decades ago. Now the story is finally in cinemas, reviewers online have labelled it everything from “shocking” and the year’s “most controversial film”, to “terrifying madness”.
But other critiques were more nuanced. “Some may say (the amputation) is ruthless and unethical, but honestly, I thought it had a point”, one wrote on cinema information website eiga.com.
In “Haiyoshin”, patients are also portrayed as benefitting, at least initially, from A-care.
Kusakabe recalls that some of his patients yearned to be rid of their crippled arms and legs that did nothing but throb, hinder movement and at times convulse unexpectedly.
No longer in pain, amputees in the film are shown relishing their newfound agility, tossing balloons with what remains of their bodies and deftly manoeuvring wheelchairs.
The film poses the question: What truly constitutes end-of-life dignity?
“Is it to try to put your immobile arms through sleeves with great pain, or not to suffer pain at all?“ Kusakabe asks.
“If someone desires amputation and that makes caregiving easier for their family, and the family accepts that, then I don’t think it’s anyone’s business to interfere”.
But such a “rational” pursuit of quality of life does not necessarily guide elderly care in Japan, he adds.
Feeding tubes and intravenous drips for those aged 75 or older are heavily covered by insurance and are often used to keep alive those bedridden.
Families also “simply cannot bear the thought of doing nothing” for their dying parents or spouses, oblivious to the possible suffering such treatment is causing them, Kusakabe says.
That contrasts with Scandinavian countries like Sweden and Denmark, where palliative-care best practice often dictates elderly patients not be fed if they stop eating.
“Japan blindly believes that even those clearly better off being left to die must be kept alive and that’s the absolute right thing to do” even as the toll on caregivers continues to snowball, the doctor says.
“This inability to take a bold, rational approach probably makes something as radical as A-care a poor fit for Japan after all”.
In Haiyoshin, the initial hype about elective amputation winds up brutally deflated by a tragedy that ultimately shatters the main character’s confidence in its efficacy.
“People tend to assume medical procedures are completely safe and they demand only the positive effect”, Kusakabe says.
The novel’s shocking twist is “my way of pushing back against those excessive expectations society has for medicine”.
KPMG, one of the largest consulting firms in the world, have been accused of publishing a report on the future of AI that is riddled with hallucinations.
In one instance, uncovered by the AI detection company, GPTZero, the report claims that the Japanese East Japan Railway Company (JR East) are using agentic AI for customer service, linking to a 2019 press release, years before agentic AI became mainstream.
In another instance, the report falsely claimed that Austrian electricity provider Verbund is using AI agents in households to conduct real-time analytics as part of its “energy-as-a-service ecosystem”. Although Verbund invested in a start-up using agents for grid optimization, there was no evidence to support the claim of real-time analytics in households.
GPTZero had analyzed the report, Total Experience: Redefining Excellence in the Age of Agentic AI, which was released in October, 2025. Out of 45 total citations, they found only 5 were accurate, with many of the others being entirely fabricated or containing a mix of real authors and fake data (a phenomenon GPTZero dubbed "vibe citing"). Another 28 citations provide paraphrased titles and/or fake components for a real source. The final 12 are too vague or flawed to accurately determine if a source exists.
Additionally, the report highlighted cutting-edge "Agentic AI" case studies for several major organizations. However, companies like UBS, Swiss Federal Railways, UK's Transport for London (TfL), and NHS (Greater Manchester) formally denied these claims, calling them factually incorrect or highly misleading.
The results may have redefined excellence, but not in the way KPMG intended!
Anyway, the said report, which has now been taken down, has been referenced by multiple customer service publications and a major newspaper in the Czech Republic.
In addition, researchers noted that the paper is now being referenced as a resource on customer experience by OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google Gemini. GPTZero allege that an LLM research tool was asked to find appropriate case studies of companies using agentic AI worldwide.
“This tool seems to have conflated sources, exaggerated claims, and injected references to agentic AI that were copied into the final report without verification”, according to GPTZero, which suspect "no human at KPMG double-checked the citations, the claims, or the sources” before the report was published.
And predictably, KPMG came up with the following "generic excuse": "We expect all our people to follow our guidelines on the responsible use of AI, including human oversight to validate content and verify independent sources". 😅😅😅
Sivasangari Subramaniam was in top form to beat world No. 6 Satomi Watanabe of Japan in straight games to reach the semi-finals of the PSA Tour Finals in Paris, France on Wednesday.
The Malaysian, ranked No. 5 in the world, won the first-round encounter 3-0: 11-9, 11-6, 11-9 in 35 minutes. It was Sivasangari's eighth win over Satomi in nine meetings.
The 27-year-old Sivasangari, who won the Australian and Grasshopper Open titles this year, will face world championAmina Orfi of Egypt for a place in the final on Friday.
Orfi, who won the British Open title earlier this month, has a 7-2 winning record against the Malaysian.
In 1940, the imperial regimes of both of these two countries (as well as Italy) joined what would be known as the Axis powers, bound by a shared desire for territorial expansion and imperial supremacy.
They fought a world war, and they lost it, and their populations spent the next 85 years with shrunken militaries and a heavy reliance on their former enemy, America, for security.
Now, both countries are moving to reduce their reliance on US security guarantees and are accelerating efforts to bolster their own defense capabilities. And, once again, they are strengthening ties.
Their cooperation is expected to gather momentum at the meeting of the leaders of the Group of 7 (G7) in Évian-les-Bains, France, taking place now. It already includes sharing know-how, technology and weapons, like drones and helicopters, critical to the countries’ respective efforts to rearm.
In a few years, Germany’s military spending could be larger than that of France and Britain – combined. Japan commits half as much as Germany, but it is still one of the world’s top spenders on defense, with a budget this year of about $58 billion.
Already, Germany has forged close ties with Ukraine in developing and deploying new weapons and has asked France to help provide it with a nuclear deterrent.
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, who won office last year with nationalist calls to revive the military, has deployed long-range missiles – capable of reaching China – in southern Japan, and has reversed postwar bans on arms exports. The country recently sealed a $6.5 billion deal to supply warships to Australia, and it is in talks with the Philippines and Indonesia about exporting warships.
Make no mistake, this is an Axis redux – as both countries enthusiastically embrace the ambition to reassert their dominance. Indeed, Germany and Japan are primed and eager to unleash their military might once more.
And the US is encouraging the two countries – but they have to be stopped before they start getting ideas and threaten the world!
Methinks, Japan should confront its wartime legacy and seek genuine reconciliation with the countries it once invaded. It should also respect the postwar international framework and the spirit of its pacifist constitution instead of pursuing belligerent strategies.
