TOKYO -- Time spent on the job in Japan has fallen by nearly three 40-hour workweeks since 2018, official data shows, as changes forced by the pandemic combined with government efforts to rein in unhealthy amounts of overtime.

People in Japan worked 1,811 hours on average last year, down 116 hours from 2018, according to a government survey.

Work hours fell across major economies in 2020, the first full year of the pandemic,

TOKYO -- Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and IBM Japan will create a carbon capture trading market as plastics makers and others come up with innovative ways to use carbon dioxide as a raw material.

By bolstering trading of the global-warming gas so that it is used productively in materials, the market, which is scheduled to go online in 2025, could aid efforts to decarbonize the economy.

Mitsubishi Heavy, which holds a 70% share of the global market for carbon capture plants, will place sensors throughout the

PALO ALTO, U.S.-- Twitter has moved the head of its Indian business back to the U.S. amid unabating tensions with the Indian government over new regulations and rows involving the social media company's handling of political content and misinformation.

Manish Maheshwari, who became head of Twitter India in 2019, will start a new role in the company's San Francisco headquarters as a senior director of revenue strategy and operations, focusing on the company's growth in emerging new markets

Nan Li is associate professor at the Antai College of Economics & Management at Shanghai Jiao Tong University. John D. Van Fleet supports industry relations for Antai College.

In a letter to the U.S. Olympic Committee last month, several U.S. senators suggested that athletes attending the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing next February should be aware that the digital Chinese yuan "may be used to surveil Chinese citizens and those visiting China on an unprecedented scale."

For some time now, we have seen

HO CHI MINH CITY -- The Asian Development Bank and the UK-based insurer Prudential plan to announce an ambitious investment scheme to reduce carbon emissions in Asia at the United Nations' COP26 climate conference in November.

The plan calls for buyouts of existing coal-fired power plants to retire them well before the end of their life cycles.

HSBC will join the two, which are now scouring the Philippines, Vietnam and Indonesia for coal-fired power plants that can be purchased for relatively quick closures.

The untested

TOKYO/TAIPEI -- Ajinomoto, the 112-year-old Japanese food maker most famous for its monosodium glutamate seasoning, has emerged as a surprising beneficiary of the upheaval caused by the pandemic.

While its spices and sauces have struggled as lockdowns devastate the restaurant industry, the company's unexpected sideline as a supplier of a high-tech film for the computer chip industry has been booming -- helping Ajinomoto report a record operating profit last quarter.

Ajinomoto illustrates Japan's ability for corporate reinvention, much

SYDNEY -- A pram was set on fire, an activist glued her hands to the pavement, and a parliamentary building was spray painted with graffiti. It was no ordinary day in Australia's capital, and the catalyst for the disruption in Canberra was climate change -- or, more specifically, the Australian government's perceived unwillingness to address it.

Protesters swarmed Parliament House earlier this week to demand more action by Prime Minister Scott Morrison, who refused to commit the country to a 2050 net zero

SEOUL -- South Korea and the U.S. have ignored threats from North Korea and will push ahead with joint military drills next week.

The exercises will consist mostly of computerized simulations with no live field training due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The scale of the drills will also be adjusted in consideration of inter-Korean relations, South Korea's ruling Democratic Party said this week.

The joint operations reflect wider moves to shore up U.S. international military alliances, after tensions grew over former

BERKELEY, U.S. -- The world has seen multipolar monetary systems before, and there can be more than one dominant currency, said Barry Eichengreen, professor of economics and political science at the University of California, Berkeley, in a Nikkei interview.

The Chinese yuan, or renminbi, will inevitably play a larger role in the international system, but every true international and reserve currency in history has come from a democracy or republic with real checks and balances, Eichengreen said.

Will the yuan ever become an international