Finance Minister Taro Aso told U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on Thursday that Japan opposes linking trade and currency policy, countering Mnuchin's insistence that a provision preventing currency devaluations be included in a trade agreement with Japan.

Next week will see the 退位 (taii, abdication) of the current Emperor, who will pass the role on to his son, Crown Prince Naruhito, on May 1.

Heisei ga hajimatta koro wa, ima to zenzen chigatte-ita deshō ne. (At the start of Heisei, things would have been totally different from (what they are) now.)

French President Emmanuel Macron announced tax cuts for middle-class workers and plans for a more representative parliament Thursday as part of a promised response to the weekly yellow vest protests that damaged his presidency.

A 17th century Geneva Bible, one of the hundreds of rare books authorities said were stolen from a Pittsburgh library as part of a 20-year-long theft scheme, is back home.

The chairman of Poland's conservative ruling party, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, has called the LGBT rights movement a foreign import that threatens the Polish nation.

A pilot who was trying to crash-land this week in an Idaho field instead brought his small plane to rest at the top of a 60-foot (18-meter) tree, officials said.

U.S. stock indexes finished mostly lower Thursday as disappointing earnings reports from several industrial sector companies weighed on the market, offsetting strong results from Facebook, Microsoft and others.

Nomura Holdings Inc. said Thursday it incurred a group net loss of 100.44 billion yen ($897 million) in the year ended March, its first red ink in 10 years, dragged down by sluggish retail and wholesale revenues.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Thursday called on European Union leaders to help Britain avert a potentially disastrous departure from the economic bloc without an exit deal.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Thursday asked the leaders of three Central European countries for help in a long dispute with North Korea over the abductions of Japanese citizens decades ago.

Former Nissan Chairman Carlos Ghosn walked out of a detention center for a second time late on Thursday, freed on 500 million yen bail after agreeing to curbs on contacting his wife as he awaits trial on financial misconduct charges.