Ministers back down after hundreds of government offices insist banishing fax would be impossible. From a report: Most bureaucrats might be expected to welcome the chance to be freed from the tyranny of the fax machine. But in Japan, government plans to send the must-have item of 1980s office equipment the way of telex have in effect been scrapped after they encountered resistance from "faxophile" officials. A cabinet body that promotes administrative reform said in June it had decided to abolish the use of fax machines "as a rule" by the end of the month and switch to emails at ministries and agencies in the Tokyo district of Kasumigaseki, Japan's bureaucratic nerve centre. The move would enable more people to work from home, it said, citing concerns that too many people were still going to the office during the coronavirus pandemic to send and receive faxes. Exceptions would be made for disaster response and interactions with the public and businesses that had traditionally depended on faxes. Instead of embracing the digital age, however, hundreds of government offices mounted a defence of the much-maligned machine, insisting that banishing them would be "impossible," according to the Hokkaido Shimbun newspaper.

The backlash has forced the government to abandon its mission to turn officialdom into a digital-only operation, the newspaper said on Wednesday. Members of the resistance said there were concerns over the security of sensitive information and "anxiety over the communication environment" if, as the government had requested, they switched exclusively to email. Japanese ministries and agencies use faxes when handling highly confidential information, including court procedures and police work, and the Hokkaido Shimbun said there were fears that exclusively online communication would result in security lapses. "Although many ministries and agencies may have stopped using fax machines, I can't say with pride that we managed to get rid of most of them," an official at the cabinet body told the newspaper.

The calico prances and dozes on a 26-by-62-foot LED billboard in Tokyo. It has drawn crowds in real life and sparked joy on social media. From a report: Ryoko Kikuchi was strolling home from a Tokyo movie theater when she saw a cat the size of a yacht strutting high above the sidewalk, coyly licking its paws. "The way it was meowing was too cute to bear," she said. A lot of people in Tokyo feel the same way, no matter that the cat is just a bunch of pixels on a billboard. The 4K display does not officially "open" until Monday, but it has already drawn socially distanced crowds -- and inspired many social media posts -- since its installation last month. The digital calico behaves a bit like an actual cat, in the sense that it does whatever it pleases. Visitors are only treated to a few brief appearances per hour, in between a stream of advertisements and music videos.

The cat yawns here and there, and at 1 a.m. it drops off to sleep for about six hours, resting its head on white paws that hug the side of what appears to be an open-air perch near the Shinjuku subway station. (The three-dimensional look is an illusion created by a curved, 26-by-62-foot LED screen.) It also talks, greeting pedestrians with "nyannichiwa." That is a blend of "konnichiwa," or hello, and "nyan," Japanese for "meow."

The Yahoo brand, once an Internet name as iconic as Google, might be worth little to Gen Z-ers more familiar with TikTok and Instagram. But it still has value in Japan, where the once-illustrious marquee just sold for $1.6 billion. From a report: Z Holdings, a unit of Masayoshi Son's SoftBank Group Corp, agreed to buy the rights to the Yahoo name in Japan for 178.5 billion yen to replace an existing licensing agreement. The deal follows the sale of Verizon's media division, the bulk of which is the original U.S. version of the Yahoo web portal, to private equity firm Apollo Global for $5 billion. Yahoo! was one of Son's early big investments, who built a $100 million stake in one of the original web startups in the mid-90s. He subsequently formed the joint venture Yahoo! Japan, which over the years morphed into tech and e-commerce platform Z Holdings as Yahoo sold off its core assets.

Most people in the poorest countries will need to wait another two years before they are vaccinated against COVID-19, researchers have told Nature. From a report: Around 11 billion doses are needed to fully vaccinate 70% of the world's population against COVID-19. As of 4 July, 3.2 billion doses had been administered. At the current vaccination rate, this will increase to around six billion doses by the end of the year, researchers from the International Monetary Fund, based in Washington DC, project. But so far, more than 80% of the doses have gone to people in high-income and upper-middle-income countries. Only 1% of people in low-income countries have been given at least one dose, according to the website Our World in Data.

Last month, the leaders of the G7 group of wealthy nations pledged extra doses for low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) by the end of 2022, at a summit in Cornwall, UK. The centrepiece was a promise from US President Joe Biden to donate 500 million doses of the vaccine made by pharmaceutical company Pfizer of New York City and biotechnology company BioNTech in Mainz, Germany. This is in addition to 87.5 million previously pledged. The United Kingdom pledged 100 million, and France, Germany and Japan have pledged around 30 million each.

Hmmmmmm shares a report from the Financial Times: China's strengths as a cyber power are being undermined by poor security and weak intelligence analysis, according to new research that predicts Beijing will be unable to match US cyber capabilities for at least a decade. The study, published on Monday by the International Institute for Strategic Studies, comes as a series of hacking campaigns have highlighted the growing threat of online espionage by hostile states.

IISS researchers ranked countries on a spectrum of cyber capabilities, from the strength of their digital economies and the maturity of their intelligence and security functions to how well cyber facilities were integrated with military operations. China, like Russia, has proved expertise in offensive cyber operations -- conducting online spying, intellectual property theft and disinformation campaigns against the US and its allies. But both countries were held back by comparatively loose cybersecurity compared with their competitors, according to the IISS. As a result, only the US is ranked as a "top tier" cyber power by the think tank, with China, Russia, the UK, Australia, Canada, France and Israel in the second tier. The third tier comprises India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, North Korea, Iran and Vietnam.

Greg Austin, an expert in cyber, space and future conflict at the IISS, said media reports focusing only on the positive sides of China's digital advances -- such as its aspirations to become a global leader in artificial intelligence -- had contributed to an "exaggerated" perception of its cyber prowess. "On every measure, the development of skills for cybersecurity in China is in a worse position than it is in many other countries," he said. What set the US apart in the first tier, according to the IISS, was its unparalleled digital-industrial base, its cryptographic expertise and the ability to execute "sophisticated, surgical" cyber strikes against adversaries. Unlike opponents such as China and Russia, the US also benefited from close alliances with other cyber powers, including its Five Eyes partners.

The Wall Street Journal reports: Authorities in the U.K. and Japan took aim at affiliates of Binance Holdings Ltd., the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange network, in the latest regulatory crackdown on the wildly popular trade in bitcoin and other digital assets. The U.K. Financial Conduct Authority, the country's lead financial regulator, told consumers Saturday that Binance's local unit wasn't permitted to conduct operations related to regulated financial activities...

Binance Markets Ltd., the company's U.K. arm, applied to be registered with the Financial Conduct Authority and withdrew its application on May 17. "A significantly high number of cryptoasset businesses are not meeting the required standards" under money-laundering regulations, said a spokesperson for the FCA in an email. "Of the firms we've assessed to date, over 90% have withdrawn applications following our intervention."

Japan's financial watchdog issued a statement on June 25, saying that Binance isn't registered to do business in the country...

As of April, Binance operated the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world by trading volume, allowing tens of billions of dollars of trades to pass through its networks, according to data provider CryptoCompare. It was founded in 2017 and initially based in China, later moving offices to Japan and Malta. It recently said it is a decentralized organization with no headquarters... The FCA move doesn't ban customers from using Binance completely; U.K. customers can continue to use Binance's non-U.K. operations for activities the FCA doesn't directly regulate, such as buying and selling direct holdings in bitcoin.
The Financial Times called the move "one of the most significant moves any global regulator has made against Binance" and "a sign of how regulators are cracking down on the cryptocurrency industry over concerns relating to its potential role in illicit activities such as money laundering and fraud, and over often weak consumer protection." But more countries are also taking action, Reuters reports: Last month, Bloomberg reported that officials from the U.S. Justice Department and Internal Revenue Service who probe money laundering and tax offences had sought information from individuals with insight into Binance's business. In April, Germany's financial regulator BaFin warned the exchange risked being fined for offering digital tokens without an investor prospectus.
And CoinDesk adds: Binance is no longer open for business in Canada's most populous province, apparently choosing to close shop rather than meet the fate of other cryptocurrency exchanges that have had actions filed against them for allegedly failing to comply with Ontario securities laws.

AmiMoJo shares a report from TorrentFreak: Police in Japan have arrested three individuals who uploaded so-called "fast movies" to YouTube. These edits of mainstream movie titles, that use copyrighted content to reveal entire plotlines in around 10 minutes, are said to discourage people from watching the originals, costing the industry hundreds of millions in lost revenue. According to Content Overseas Distribution Association (CODA), there are channels with hundreds of uploads being viewed tens of millions of times, often with a for-profit motive. This means that they may fall outside traditional "fair use" style exceptions.

Miyagi Prefectural Police Life Safety Division and the Shiogama Police Station arrested three suspects under suspicion of uploading "fast movies" to YouTube without the rightsholders' consent. The arrests were reportedly carried out under the Copyright Act, which was boosted with new amendments on January 1, 2021. "From June to July 2020, the suspects edited 'I Am a Hero' and two other motion pictures owned by Toho Co., Ltd. as well as 'Cold Fish' and one other motion picture owned by Nikkatsu Corporation down to about 10 minutes without the permission of the right holders. Further, the suspects added narration and uploaded the videos to YouTube to earn advertising revenue," CODA explains. All of the channels shared by CODA appear to be operated from Japan but there is no shortage of YouTube channels operated from the US too.

As California approaches the biggest state tax rebate in U.S. history, Bloomberg News co-founder Matthew A. Winkler questions its reputation as a state doomed by over-regulation and high taxes.

In fact, California "has no peers among developed economies for expanding GDP, creating jobs, raising household income, manufacturing growth, investment in innovation, producing clean energy and unprecedented wealth through its stocks and bonds." By adding 1.3 million people to its non-farm payrolls since April last year — equal to the entire workforce of Nevada — California easily surpassed also-rans Texas and New York. At the same time, California household income increased $164 billion, almost as much as Texas, Florida and Pennsylvania combined, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. No wonder California's operating budget surplus, fueled by its surging economy and capital gains taxes, swelled to a record $75 billion...

While pundits have long insisted California policies are bad for business, reality belies them. In a sign of investor demand, the weight of California companies in the benchmark S&P 500 Index increased 3 percentage points since a year ago, the most among all states, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Faith in California credit was similarly superlative, with the weight of corporate bonds sold by companies based in the state rising the most among all states, to 12.5 percentage points from 11.7 percentage points, according to the Bloomberg Barclays U.S. Corporate Bond Index. Translation: Investors had the greatest confidence in California companies during the pandemic. The most trusted measure of economic strength says California is the world-beater among democracies. The state's gross domestic product increased 21% during the past five years, dwarfing No. 2 New York (14%) and No. 3 Texas (12%), according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The gains added $530 billion to the Golden State, 30% more than the increase for New York and Texas combined and equivalent to the entire economy of Sweden.

Among the five largest economies, California outperforms the U.S., Japan and Germany with a growth rate exceeded only by China...

Corporate California also is the undisputed leader in renewable energy, with 26 companies worth $897 billion, or 36% of the U.S. industry, having reported 10% or more of their revenues derived from clean technology. No state comes close to matching the 21% of electricity derived from solar energy. Shares of these firms appreciated 282% during the past 12 months and 1,003%, 1,140% and 9,330% over two, five and 10 years, respectively, with no comparable rivals anywhere in the world, according to BloombergNEF. The same companies also increased their workforce 35% since 2019, almost tripling the rate for the rest U.S. overall and four times the global rate...

California companies invested 16% of their revenues in R&D, or their future, when the rest of the U.S. put aside just 1%...

Much has been made of the state reporting its first yearly loss in population, or 182,000 last year. Had it not been for the Trump administration preventing new visas, depriving as many as 150,000 people from moving to California from other countries annually, the 2020 outcome would have been more favorable.

In light of the recent wave of high-profile ransomware attacks that have caused havoc in the US and Europe, the member states of the G7 group have called on Russia and other countries to crack down on ransomware gangs operating within their borders. From a report: "We call on all states to urgently identify and disrupt ransomware criminal networks operating from within their borders, and hold those networks accountable for their actions," the G7 group said in a communique published on Sunday, at the end of a three-day conference held in Cornwall, UK. "In particular, we call on Russia [...] to identify, disrupt, and hold to account those within its borders who conduct ransomware attacks, abuse virtual currency to launder ransoms, and other cybercrimes," the G7 group added.

The joint statement was signed by the governments of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK, and the US -- more commonly known as the Group of Seven (G7). It comes after a series of ransomware attacks that caused disruptions at hospitals during the COVID-19 pandemic, fuel outages on the US East Coast following the Colonial Pipeline attack, and beef supply issues across Australia and the US following the JBS Foods ransomware incident.

Slashdot reader Charlotte Web writes: The "Group of Seven" (or G7) nations are some of the world's largest economies — the U.S. and Canada, the U.K., France, Germany, and Italy, and Japan. On Sunday they pledged $2 billion to help developing countries pivot away from fossil fuels and pledged an "overwhelmingly decarbonized" electricity sector by 2030. The New York Times calls these "major steps in what leaders hope will be a global transition to wind, solar and other energy that does not produce planet-warming carbon dioxide emissions."

Politico's Ryan Heath argues "The language on a 'green revolution' is quite strong — there's plenty of detail missing, but it gives climate campaigners a lot to hit leaders with if they fail to deliver. And it's a big deal for the G-7 to agree to 'to conserve or protect at least 30 percent of our land and oceans by 2030.'"
Other reports from Politico's writers:

• "Boris Johnson admitted that the world's richest economies had not managed to secure a widely advertised 1 billion vaccine doses to send to developing countries. The final communique says the group will deliver 870 million doses over the next year."

• "The G-7 nations called for a 'timely, transparent, expert-led, and science-based WHO-convened' investigation into the origins of Covid-19, including in China. WHO's first crack at an investigation — released in March — called a lab leak 'extremely unlikely,' but China didn't grant access to key documents and Secretary of State Antony Blinken called that investigation 'highly deficient' this morning. The U.S. government remains split between two origin theories."

In the longest biological experiment on the International Space Station yet, freeze-dried mouse sperm remained viable after nearly six years in space. Exposure to space radiation didn't seem to harm the sperm's DNA or the cells' ability to produce healthy "space pups," researchers report in Science Advances. Science News reports: That may be good news for future spacefarers. Scientists have worried that chronic exposure to space radiation might not only put astronauts at risk for cancer and other diseases, but also create mutations in their DNA that could be passed down to future generations. The new results hint that deep-space travelers could safely bear children. Studying how space radiation affects reproduction is tricky. Instruments on Earth can't perfectly mimic space radiation, and the ISS lacks freezers for long-term cell storage. So biologist Teruhiko Wakayama of the University of Yamanashi in Kofu, Japan and colleagues freeze-dried sperm, allowing it to be stored at room temperature. The team then sent sperm from 12 mice to the space station, while keeping other sperm from the same mice on the ground.

After returning the sperm cells to Earth, rehydrating them and injecting them into fresh mouse eggs, the team transferred those embryos to female mice. About 240 healthy space pups were born from sperm kept on the ISS for nearly three years; about 170 others were born from sperm kept on the space station for nearly six years. Genetic analyses revealed no differences between these space pups and mice born from sperm stored on the ground. Space pups that mated as adults had healthy children and grandchildren.

Americans got richer off bitcoin than any other country last year -- pocketing $4.1 billion in profits as the price of the volatile cryptocurrency soared to $29,000 from under $10,000, according to a new analysis. The New York Post reports: The US was followed by China, which cashed out some $1.1 billion in profits in 2020, according to data published Monday by blockchain firm Chainalysis. Japan came in third with $900 million, followed by the United Kingdom with $800 million and Russia with $600 million. The figures only cover realized gains, meaning that profits still held in cryptocurrencies or in exchange accounts are not included.

According to Chainalysis, Americans appear to have stepped up their bitcoin investments last year, despite nationwide lockdown orders and record unemployment. US crypto investors then cashed out toward the end of the year when the price of bitcoin has soared more than three times its $9,000 price tag. While cryptocurrency profits can be hard to track due to the currencies' intentionally decentralized nature, Chainalysis produced its estimate by collecting data including deposits, withdrawals and web traffic from cryptocurrency exchanges like Coinbase.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: The nations that make up the G7 have pumped billions of dollars more into fossil fuels than they have into clean energy since the Covid-19 pandemic, despite their promises of a green recovery. As the UK prepares to host the G7 summit, new analysis reveals that the countries attending committed $189 billion to support oil, coal and gas between January 2020 and March 2021. In comparison, the same countries -- the UK, US, Canada, Italy, France, Germany and Japan -- spent $147 billion on clean forms of energy. The support for fossil fuels from seven of the world's richest nations included measures to remove or downgrade environmental regulations as well as direct funding of oil, gas and coal.

The analysis from the development charity Tearfund, the International Institute for Sustainable Development and the Overseas Development Institute showed that the nations missed opportunities to make their response to the pandemic greener. In most cases, money provided for fossil fuel industries was given with no strings attached, rather than with conditions requiring a reduction in emissions or pollution. The analysis found that eight in every 10 dollars spent on non-renewable energy came without conditions. This included lifelines that were thrown to the aviation and car industries, which received $115 billion from the G7 countries. Of that money, 80% was given with no attempt to force the sectors to cut their emissions in return for the support. Only one in every 10 dollars committed to the Covid-19 response benefited the "cleanest" energies such as renewables and energy efficiency measures.

"All over the world, countries are confronting population stagnation and a fertility bust, a dizzying reversal unmatched in recorded history..." reports the New York Times.

There's already been some surprising results: Maternity wards are already shutting down in Italy. Ghost cities are appearing in northeastern China. Universities in South Korea can't find enough students, and in Germany, hundreds of thousands of properties have been razed, with the land turned into parks. Like an avalanche, the demographic forces — pushing toward more deaths than births — seem to be expanding and accelerating. Though some countries continue to see their populations grow, especially in Africa, fertility rates are falling nearly everywhere else. Demographers now predict that by the latter half of the century or possibly earlier, the global population will enter a sustained decline for the first time.

A planet with fewer people could ease pressure on resources, slow the destructive impact of climate change and reduce household burdens for women. But the census announcements this month from China and the United States, which showed the slowest rates of population growth in decades for both countries, also point to hard-to-fathom adjustments. The strain of longer lives and low fertility, leading to fewer workers and more retirees, threatens to upend how societies are organized — around the notion that a surplus of young people will drive economies and help pay for the old. It may also require a reconceptualization of family and nation. Imagine entire regions where everyone is 70 or older. Imagine governments laying out huge bonuses for immigrants and mothers with lots of children. Imagine a gig economy filled with grandparents and Super Bowl ads promoting procreation.

"A paradigm shift is necessary," said Frank Swiaczny, a German demographer who was the chief of population trends and analysis for the United Nations until last year. "Countries need to learn to live with and adapt to decline...." The ramifications and responses have already begun to appear, especially in East Asia and Europe. From Hungary to China, from Sweden to Japan, governments are struggling to balance the demands of a swelling older cohort with the needs of young people whose most intimate decisions about childbearing are being shaped by factors both positive (more work opportunities for women) and negative (persistent gender inequality and high living costs)... As women have gained more access to education and contraception, and as the anxieties associated with having children continue to intensify, more parents are delaying pregnancy and fewer babies are being born. Even in countries long associated with rapid growth, such as India and Mexico, birthrates are falling toward, or are already below, the replacement rate of 2.1 children per family.

The change may take decades, but once it starts, decline (just like growth) spirals exponentially. With fewer births, fewer girls grow up to have children, and if they have smaller families than their parents did — which is happening in dozens of countries — the drop starts to look like a rock thrown off a cliff... Some countries, like the United States, Australia and Canada, where birthrates hover between 1.5 and 2, have blunted the impact with immigrants. But in Eastern Europe, migration out of the region has compounded depopulation, and in large parts of Asia, the "demographic time bomb" that first became a subject of debate a few decades ago has finally gone off...

According to projections by an international team of scientists published last year in The Lancet, 183 countries and territories — out of 195 — will have fertility rates below replacement level by 2100...
The article asks us to imagine a world where now-empty homes become "a common eyesore," noting that in regional towns in Korea, already "it's easy to find schools shut and abandoned, their playgrounds overgrown with weeds, because there are not enough children."

Balmuda, a Japanese design company known for its stylish appliances, has announced plans to make a smartphone. From a report: There aren't many details on the device itself yet, but it'll be a 5G handset that's expected to be released in November. SoftBank will sell it as a carrier model, while Balmuda will also offer an unlocked version. In its announcement, Balmuda notes that since the smartphone business is getting increasingly commoditized, the company wants to provide an experience that only it can.

However, the actual manufacturing is out of Balmuda's wheelhouse, so it's partnering with Kyocera on the phone. Balmuda has a fairly limited product line for the home including air purifiers, humidifiers, lights, speakers, rice cookers, and so on. Its best known product is a toaster called "Balmuda The Toaster," which sells for 25,850 yen (about $235, though it's available in the US for $329 through the MoMa Design Store) and uses steam to ensure your shokupan, among other things, is perfectly crispy on the outside and fluffy on the inside. Bloomberg reported five years ago that it had become a cult hit in Japan with a three-month waiting time to buy one.

An out-of-control Chinese rocket plunged out of orbit and reentered Earth's atmosphere in the Indian Ocean (just west of the Maldives), reports CNN, citing China's space agency: Most of the rocket was "destroyed" on reentry to the atmosphere, the space agency said. The rocket, which is about 108 feet tall and weighs nearly 40,000 pounds, had launched a piece of a new Chinese space station into orbit on April 29.

After its fuel was spent, the rocket had been left to hurtle through space uncontrolled until Earth's gravity dragged it back to the ground.

Generally, the international space community tries to avoid such scenarios. Most rockets used to lift satellites and other objects into space conduct more controlled reentries that aim for the ocean, or they're left in so-called "graveyard" orbits that keep them in space for decades or centuries. But the Long March rocket is designed in a way that "leaves these big stages in low orbit," said Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Astrophysics Center at Harvard University.

In this case, it was impossible to be certain exactly when or where the booster would land. The European Space Agency had predicted a "risk zone" that encompassed "any portion of Earth's surface between about 41.5N and 41.5S latitude" — which included virtually all of the Americas south of New York, all of Africa and Australia, parts of Asia south of Japan and Europe's Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece. The threat to populated areas of land was not negligible, but fortunately the vast majority of Earth's surface area is consumed by oceans...

The rocket is one of the largest objects in recent memory to strike the Earth after falling out of orbit, following a 2018 incident in which a piece of a Chinese space lab broke up over the Pacific Ocean and the 2020 reentry of an 18-metric-ton Long March 5B rocket [also launched by China].

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Science Magazine: Thirty-five years after the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine exploded in the world's worst nuclear accident, fission reactions are smoldering again in uranium fuel masses buried deep inside a mangled reactor hall. "It's like the embers in a barbecue pit," says Neil Hyatt, a nuclear materials chemist at the University of Sheffield. Now, Ukrainian scientists are scrambling to determine whether the reactions will wink out on their own -- or require extraordinary interventions to avert another accident.

Sensors are tracking a rising number of neutrons, a signal of fission, streaming from one inaccessible room, Anatolii Doroshenko of the Institute for Safety Problems of Nuclear Power Plants (ISPNPP) in Kyiv, Ukraine, reported last week during discussions about dismantling the reactor. "There are many uncertainties," says ISPNPP's Maxim Saveliev. "But we can't rule out the possibility of [an] accident." The neutron counts are rising slowly, Saveliev says, suggesting managers still have a few years to figure out how to stifle the threat. Any remedy he and his colleagues come up with will be of keen interest to Japan, which is coping with the aftermath of its own nuclear disaster 10 years ago at Fukushima, Hyatt notes. "It's a similar magnitude of hazard."

Japan is opening its first gym for esports in Tokyo, a space for both amateur and experienced gamers to train and get professional coaching, according to Japan Today. From a report: The competitive gaming space, which is set to open on May 19 and will be known as "Esports Gym," will include a lounge and gaming PCs outfitted with some of Japan's most popular games, including Valorant and League of Legends. Gamers can book a three-hour time slot at one of the PCs for about $13 or opt for a monthly membership starting at $50, which allows daily access to the gaming PCs as well as optional coaching sessions that can be added on for about $25 an hour. Esports Gym, which is jointly operated by private transit company Tokyo Metro and esports education company Gecipe, will welcome experienced gamers as well as those who are new to gaming PCs or don't understand the game rules, according to the website.

A union leader at Amazon's Japan offices has filed a lawsuit against the company for wrongful termination, alleging he was unfairly targeted for his organizing activity. From a report: Masafumi Ito, who worked at the tech giant as a salesperson for more than seven years, was fired last month after being placed on a series of performance improvement plans, or PIPs, which he alleges were a ruse to force him out of the company. Ito is seeking to have his job reinstated and force Amazon to pay his lost wages. "I joined Amazon because I love the company. I want to return to work and continue to contribute," Ito said at a press conference in Tokyo earlier this week. "I brought this case because I want to change the work environment where people are suddenly fired for unfair reasons. My colleagues cannot work safely under such an environment."

Ito and other members of the Amazon Japan Union -- who organized as part of the Tokyo Managers' Union (MU) in 2015 -- say the company weaponizes PIPs to arbitrarily dismiss employees, particularly those who challenge its relentless work culture. Amazon argues the plans help staff develop and learn, but their use has been controversial at the tech giant in Tokyo, as well as the U.S., for years. Ito's case, which has received significant attention in Japan, will now test whether Amazon's practices can survive in the country. Ito's role at Amazon was to bring more electronics stores onto the company's shopping platform and encourage them to use Amazon Prime. He said he performed well, but managers still subjected him to a series of PIPs and disciplinary actions over the past few years. Ito was finally fired in March, after he failed to meet the requirements of his latest evaluation, and managers told him he showed no desire to improve.

NASA has tweeted a video showing the arrival of four astronauts from three countries on the International Space Station early Satuday morning.

CNN describes the significance to their arrival — and what the astronauts will do during their six-month stay in space: This mission, dubbed Crew-2, marks the third-ever crewed flight for Elon Musk's company and the first to make use of a previously flown, privately-owned rocket booster and spacecraft... On Saturday morning, the capsule slowly aligned itself and moved in to dock directly with one of the space station's ports.

The crew consists of NASA astronauts Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur, Thomas Pesquet of the European Space Agency, and Akihiko Hoshide with Japan's JAXA space agency.

A prime focus of the astronauts' mission will be research with "tissue chips," or "small models of human organs containing multiple cell types that behave much the same as they do in the body" and that NASA hopes will advance the development of drugs and vaccines, according to the space agency. That work will build on years of studying biological and other scientific phenomena aboard the ISS, where the microgravity environment can give scientists a better fundamental understanding of how something works.

Kimbrough, McArthur, Pesquet, and Hoshide joined seven astronauts already on board the station, four of whom arrived on a different SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule in November. That brings the space station's current total of personnel to 11 — one of the largest crews the ISS has ever hosted. But that number will quickly drop back down to seven when four of the astronauts who'd been on board hitch a ride home from the station on April 28.