WEC Articles

An owner’s struggle in Japan’s northern dairy region illuminates one of the potentially devastating economic impacts of an aging society. Hidekazu Yokoyama has spent three decades building a thriving logistics business on Japan’s snowy northern island of Hokkaido, an area that provides much of the country’s milk. Last year, he decided to give it all away. It was a radical solution for a problem that has become increasingly common in Japan, the world’s grayest society. As the country’s birthrate has plummeted and its population has grown older, the average age of business owners has risen to around 62. Nearly 60 percent of the country’s businesses report that they have no plan for what comes next. While Mr. Yokoyama, 73, felt too old to carry on much longer, quitting wasn’t an option: Too many farmers had come to depend on his company. “I definitely couldn’t abandon the business,” he said. But his children weren’t interested in running it. Neither were his employees. And few potential o...

Artificial intelligence is confronting white-collar professionals more directly than ever. It could make them more productive — or obsolete. In December, the staff of the American Writers and Artists Institute — a 26-year-old membership organization for copywriters — realized that something big was happening. The newest edition of ChatGPT, a “large language model” that mines the internet to answer questions and perform tasks on command, had just been released. Its abilities were astonishing — and squarely in the bailiwick of people who generate content, such as advertising copy and blog posts, for a living. “They’re horrified,” said Rebecca Matter, the institute’s president. Over the holidays, she scrambled to organize a webinar on the pitfalls and potential of the new artificial-intelligence technology. More than 3,000 people signed up, she said, and the overall message was cautionary but reassuring: Writers could use ChatGPT to complete assignments more quickly, and move into higher-...

The Central American country changed diplomatic recognition to Beijing, leaving 12 nations and the Vatican still recognizing Taiwan as a sovereign state. Taiwan’s Embassy in Tegucigalpa on Thursday. Taiwan recalled its ambassador to Honduras on Thursday over a visit by Tegucigalpa’s foreign minister to China, Taipei’s government said in a statement. TAIPEI, Taiwan — Honduras has severed diplomatic relations with Taiwan in favor of recognizing China, dealing a blow to Taipei’s international standing and Washington’s diplomatic efforts in Central America. The diplomatic win for China further reduced the small number of countries that have ties with Taiwan, the island democracy that Beijing claims as its territory. The decision was announced in a statement by the   Honduran Foreign Ministry on Saturday. While not directly addressing Honduras’s move away from Taiwan, Honduran government officials had said days earlier that forging closer links with China was vital to improving the coun...

World on ‘thin ice’ as UN climate report gives stark warning Humanity still has a chance, close to the last, to prevent the worst of   climate change’s   future harms, a top United Nations panel of scientists said Monday.  But doing so requires quickly slashing nearly two-thirds of carbon pollution by 2035, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said. The United Nations chief said it more bluntly, calling for an end to new fossil fuel exploration and for rich countries to quit coal, oil and gas by 2040. “Humanity is on thin ice — and that ice is melting fast,” United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said. “Our world needs climate action on all fronts — everything, everywhere, all at once.” Stepping up his pleas for action on fossil fuels, Guterres called for rich countries to accelerate their target for achieving net zero emissions to as early as 2040, and developing nations to aim for 2050 — about a decade earlier than most current targets. He also calle...

  KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Prime Minister Fumio Kishida made a surprise visit Tuesday to Kyiv, engaging in dueling diplomacy with Asian rival President Xi Jinping of China, who met in Moscow with Russian President Vladimir Putin to promote Beijing’s peace proposal for Ukraine that Western nations have all but dismissed as a non-starter. The two visits, about 800 kilometers (500 miles) apart, highlighted how countries are lining up behind Moscow or Kyiv during the nearly 13-month-old war. Kishida, who will chair the Group of Seven summit in May, became the group’s last member to visit Ukraine and meet President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, after paying tribute to those killed in Bucha, a town that became a symbol of Russian atrocities against civilians. Xi and Putin announced no major progress toward implementing the Chinese peace deal, although the Russian leader said it could be a basis for ending the fighting when the West is ready. He added that Kyiv’s Western allies have shown no interest ...

  On the banks of the Tigris River one recent evening, young Iraqi men and women in jeans and sneakers danced with joyous abandon to a local rap star as a vermillion sun set behind them. It’s a world away from the   terror that followed   the U.S. invasion   20 years ago. Iraq   ’s capital today is throbbing with life and a sense of renewal, its residents enjoying a rare, peaceful interlude in a painful modern history. The wooden stalls of the city’s open-air book market are piled skyward with dusty paperbacks and crammed with shoppers of all ages and incomes. In a suburb once a hotbed of al-Qaida, affluent young men cruise their muscle cars, while a recreational cycling club hosts weekly biking trips to former war zones. A few glitzy buildings sparkle where bombs once fell. President George W. Bush called the U.S.-led invasion on March 20, 2003, a mission to free the Iraqi people and root out   weapons of mass destruction . Saddam Hussein’s government was ...