Latest from Nikkei Asia

Nikkei Asia
30 minutes ago
- Health
- Nikkei Asia
Japan discards 2.5m doses of expired COVID drugs from Pfizer, Merck
Japan discarded 1.75 million doses of Pfizer's Paxlovid treatment for COVID-19 by November 2024. © Reuters OSHIRO SEKIGUCHI TOKYO -- Roughly 2.5 million doses of oral COVID-19 medication bought by the Japanese government during the pandemic expired and were disposed of by the end of February, Nikkei has learned. About 1.75 million doses of Pfizer's Paxlovid were discarded by November, along with roughly 780,000 doses of Lagevrio from Japanese Merck arm MSD by February, the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare reports.


Nikkei Asia
2 hours ago
- Politics
- Nikkei Asia
Japan ruling coalition at risk of losing upper house in election: Nikkei poll
Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba's ruling Liberal Democratic Party is struggling in the polls days before the July 20 upper house election. (Photo by Mayumi Tsumita) RIEKO MIKI TOKYO -- Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party and coalition partner Komeito are struggling in the final stretch of the upper house election campaign, with their majority in question as opposition parties make strides, a Nikkei poll and reporting shows. A total of 125 of the chamber's 248 seats are up for election on Sunday, including 50 seats allocated by proportional representation and one by-election for a vacant Tokyo seat.


Nikkei Asia
2 hours ago
- Politics
- Nikkei Asia
Japan ruling coalition at risk of losing upper house in Sunday's election: Nikkei poll
Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba's ruling Liberal Democratic Party is struggling in the polls days before the July 20 upper house election. (Photo by Mayumi Tsumita) RIEKO MIKI TOKYO -- Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party and coalition partner Komeito are struggling in the final stretch of the upper house election campaign, with their majority in question as opposition parties make strides, a Nikkei poll and reporting shows. A total of 125 of the chamber's 248 seats are up for election on Sunday, including 50 seats allocated by proportional representation and one by-election for a vacant Tokyo seat.
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Nikkei Asia
2 hours ago
- Business
- Nikkei Asia
Yen softens beyond 149 against dollar amid Japan election jitters
Japan's election uncertainties and U.S. inflation numbers have weakened the yen. (Photo by Mizuho Miyazaki) RYO SAEKI and GENKI IKUTA TOKYO -- The yen weakened beyond 149 to the dollar at one point Tuesday in New York, a level it last reached in early April, amid uncertainty over whether Japanese opposition parties calling for fiscal expansion will gain more clout after the upper house election this coming Sunday. Polling this week by Nikkei showed that the ruling coalition of the Liberal Democratic Party and Komeito could secure fewer than 50 of the seats up for election -- below the threshold for a majority. If so, they may end up needing to cooperate with opposition parties that have been urging expansionary policies, including a consumption tax cut.


Nikkei Asia
2 hours ago
- Business
- Nikkei Asia
Huawei brushes aside accusations of copying Alibaba AI model
Huawei announced a slate of new large language models in June, which it said were developed in-house. (Huawei) ITSURO FUJINO, SHOGO SUGIYAMA and RYOSUKE EGUCHI GUANGZHOU/TOKYO -- China's Huawei Technologies has been accused of copying an Alibaba Group artificial intelligence large language model for its own AI, a development that has roiled the Chinese tech industry and cast a light on intellectual property issues in cutting-edge fields. The accusation stems from a paper posted this month on GitHub, a U.S. software development and sharing platform. The paper analyzed Huawei's Pangu Pro MoE large language model, released in June, and found that it showed "extraordinary correlation" with Alibaba's Qwen 2.5 14B. It said Huawei may have reused Alibaba's model.