TOKYO -- Toshiba will accelerate its efforts to diversify its board members and enhance its governance in a bid to regain shareholder trust in the wake of a probe that found the company colluded with a government ministry to pressure activist shareholders.

On Monday, Chairman Osamu Nagayama told reporters that the company aims to reassemble its board to include more foreigners and new voices, with the aim to "strengthen the board."

"We will hold discussions with shareholders and take their opinions into account during the process to reconstruct the board,"

TOKYO -- As China faces a growing labor shortage and a rapidly aging population, concern is growing that rising wages in "the world's factory" could push up price levels globally and put an end to years of low inflation.

China's Communist Party unexpectedly announced late last month that it would allow married couples to have up to three children. As the population ages, the labor force will decrease and burden of nursing care will increase, Ning Jizhe, head of the National Bureau of Statistics, had explained

PHNOM PENH -- Encased in a teardrop of glass fixed to an elaborately decorated gold-colored pedestal, Cambodia's first drops of oil were memorialized at a ceremony on Wednesday, six months after being extracted from beneath the Gulf of Thailand.

Presided over by Cambodia's ministers for energy and defense, the long-planned event praised Prime Minister Hun Sen, to whom ultimate credit was given for realizing the country's decadeslong ambitions to pump petroleum.

The timing could hardly have been worse. Less than a week

TOKYO -- Toshiba has removed two current directors from its list of board candidates less than two weeks ahead of a shareholder vote, the Japanese industrial group said Sunday as it deals with the aftermath of a probe into alleged influencing of investors.

Junji Ota, Toshiba's audit committee chair, and Takashi Yamauchi, an audit committee member, will step down as of the June 25 annual general meeting.

The announcement comes after an independent investigation found Toshiba's July 2020 annual general meeting was "not

CORNWALL, U.K. -- The Group of Seven summit concluded on Sunday, with the leaders' closing communique vowing action on the pandemic and climate change while projecting a united stance on democratic values and a shared understanding of global challenges, including those arising from China.

In a first for the G-7, Taiwan garnered a mention in the communique, with China invoked in different areas of the leaders' concluding statement, which was based on three days of wide-ranging discussions held in Cornwall, England.

William Pesek is an award-winning Tokyo-based journalist and author of "Japanization: What the World Can Learn from Japan's Lost Decades."

As governments around the globe scramble to keep pace with China's digital currency project, it is time to worry about laggard India.

It is hard to think of a top-10 economy with more to gain from phasing out paper money. India's sprawling and cacophonous financial sector is a poster child for how a digital currency could increase efficiency, pull

TOKYO -- As geothermal power gains momentum as a viable renewable energy source, Japanese contractors are well positioned to flex their dominance in this growing business.

Environment Minister Shinjiro Koizumi said this spring that the ministry will take the lead to accelerate development of geothermal power as part of the government's goal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 46% from fiscal 2013 levels in fiscal 2030.

"Although geothermal takes long to put online, we want to get it done in time," Koizumi

SINGAPORE -- The impact of the soaring prices of agricultural staples from wheat to vegetable oils to sugar over the past few months is now hitting consumers and businesses in Asia.

Food manufacturers are offloading higher prices to households, which is weighing on consumption and potentially subduing any economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic in some countries. Some exporters and farmers are, however, benefiting from the favorable market conditions.

The benchmark food price index published by the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) -- which

MOSCOW -- State-owned Russian Railways has brought in military units to work on the modernization of the Baikal-Amur Mainline (BAM), which connects Siberia with the far eastern part of the country, to make up for a lack of foreign workers due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The spread of the coronavirus has led to a severe shortage of foreign construction workers. In addition to the military, there is also a proposal to use prison labor as was done in the former Soviet Union.

In April