Japan

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Japan's longest-serving premier, said on Friday he was resigning because of poor health, ending a stint at the helm of the world's third-biggest economy during which he sought to revive growth and bolster its defences.

With their stadium devoid of fans due to coronavirus restrictions, Japanese baseball team Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks have come up with an imaginative replacement: dancing robots.

Tokyo was named the world's safest city on Thursday (local time) by the Economist Intelligence Unit, in an index ranking cities' ability to handle everything from climate disasters to cyber attacks.

A man shouted "die" as he doused an animation studio with fuel and set it ablaze in Japan on Thursday, public broadcaster NHK said, killing at least 33 people in the nation's worst mass murder in nearly two decades.

At least 13 people were feared dead and dozens more either unconscious, hurt, or missing in a suspected case of arson at an animation studio in the Japanese city of Kyoto on Thursday, the local fire department said.

US President Donald Trump urged Japanese business leaders on Saturday to increase their investment in the United States while he chided Japan for having a "substantial edge" on trade that negotiators were trying to even out in a bilateral deal.

More than 40 people were injured in an explosion on Sunday at a bar in Sapporo in northern Japan, Kyodo news agency reported.

Five US Marines were missing after two Marine Corps aircraft collided in mid-air and crashed into the sea off the coast of Japan during an air-to-air refuelling exercise on Thursday (local time), Japanese and American officials said.

Japan issued evacuation advisories for more than a million people and cancelled hundreds of flights as Typhoon Jebi sliced across the west on Tuesday (local time), cutting power, overturning cars and killing at least six people.