Tokyo

According to Transportation and Infrastructure Minister Abdulkadir Uraloğlu, the number of cruise ships and passengers that visited Türkiye has reached a record level in 2023.

Uraloğlu evaluated the statistics announced by the General Directorate of Maritime Affairs on the number of cruise ships and passengers anchored in Turkish ports.

'The Taste of Things,' which hopes to win an Oscar nod in January, is a sumptuous 19th century romance about a cook.

Controversy has simmered around France's entry for the Oscars, "The Taste of Things," a love letter to the country's culinary traditions but filmmaker Tran Anh Hung and star chef Pierre Gagnaire say the art of cooking is worth celebrating.

Paco Osuna, founder of global techno force Mindshake Records, lands in Petralona's Oddity (61 Iraklidon) for an intense club night.

In the hurly-burly outside one of Tokyo's main train stations stands a statue of a dog whose true story of loyalty has made him a beloved mascot for generations.

Hachiko, whose birth centenary is this week, belonged to university professor Hidesaburo Ueno. The faithful hound would wait at Shibuya station for his master to come home every day.

In a significant diplomatic development, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has called for the establishment of a unified Palestinian-led government in Gaza and the West Bank following the cessation of hostilities, marking a crucial step towards Palestinian statehood.

He said at a press conference after the G7 meeting in Tokyo that everyone wants "to end the conflict as soon as possible and to minimize the suffering of civilians in the meantime", reports the Guardian.

Israeli Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has announced that there will be no ceasefire or fuel delivery to the Gaza Strip until Hamas releases all Israeli prisoners.
On the other hand, U.S. President Joseph Biden asked Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for a temporary pause in Israel's military operations in the Gaza Strip.

Top diplomats from the Group of Seven leading industrial democracies announced a unified stance on the Israel-Hamas war on Wednesday after intensive meetings in Tokyo, condemning Hamas, supporting Israel's right to self-defense and calling for "humanitarian pauses" to speed aid to desperate Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip.

Japan's top currency official said yesterday that Tokyo was "on standby" to intervene after the yen fell to a new year-low against the dollar and plunged against the euro, Bloomberg reported.

The yen dropped below 151 against the dollar overnight after the Bank of Japan further loosened its control of bond yields but stuck with sub-zero short-term interest rates.

Google is introducing AI-powered upgrades to its Maps app.The new features include immersive navigation, easier-to-follow driving directions, and better organized search results, The Verge reported.Google wants Maps to be more like Search: a place where people can obviously come get directions or find coffee shops and EV chargers but also enter vague queries like "fall foliage," "latte art," or