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Amazon's smart assistant Alexa can now be made to encourage children to say: "Please," and: "Thank you," when they ask it something. The new function addresses some parents' concerns that use of the technology was teaching their offspring to sound officious or even rude.

The move has been welcomed by one of Alexa's critics. In January, the research company ChildWise published a report warning that youngsters that grew up accustomed to giving orders to Alexa might become aggressive when they have to interact with humans.

The Trump administration has announced a position on protecting migratory birds that is a drastic pullback from policies in force for the past 100 years.

In 1916, the U.S.A. and Great Britain signed the Migratory Bird Treaty, which became U.S. law in 1918. The measures protected more than 1,100 migratory bird species by making it illegal to pursue, hunt, take, capture, kill or sell live or dead birds, feathers, eggs, and nests, except as allowed by permit or regulated hunting.

The standard classroom maps we all learned geography from are based on the Mercator projection, a 16th century rendering that preserved lines used for navigation while hideously distorting the true sizes of continents and oceans further from the equator. The result is a widespread misconception that Greenland is as big as Africa, Siberia and Canada are disproportionally massive, and that Antarctica apparently just goes on forever.

The Yomiuri Shimbun Paralympian Atsushi Yamamoto has returned to the athletics track after competing in snowboarding at the Pyeongchang Winter Paralympics in March 2018.

Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg has taken out full-page adverts in several UK and US Sunday newspapers to apologise for the firm's recent data privacy scandal.

He said Facebook could have done more to stop millions of users having their data exploited by political consultancy Cambridge Analytica in 2014.

The number of children on nursery school waiting lists in Japan as of Oct. 1 last year grew 7,695 from a year before to 55,433, up for the third straight year, the welfare ministry has said.

In March 2017, the ministry expanded the scope of the waiting lists to include cases in which parents decided not to return to work and extended parental leave because they could not find nurseries with enough space to accept their children.

Future spacecraft could think for themselves using the same technology that powers Bitcoin.

A new $330,000 NASA grant supports work to develop autonomous spacecraft that could make more decisions without human intervention. One example could be enabling spacecraft to dodge space debris faster than a human on Earth could help out the far-away probe.

More and more elementary school teachers in Japan are turning to English language schools with native speakers, as they seek to gain confidence in teaching the language before it is formally added to their curricula in the academic year starting April 2020.

Many teachers admit to lacking confidence in their English, in areas from vocabulary to grammar, expressiveness and pronunciation. Elementary school teachers say they are afraid of teaching their students “the wrong thing.”

Every day, we use products that are built using “rare earths”—a group of 17 elements that are, as the name suggests, very rare. They’re used to make everyday items such as rechargeable batteries, LED lights and display panels, as well as larger products such as wind turbines.

Now, it turns out, Japan has an estimated 16 million tons of the stuff on its turf. Researchers claim the trove might be enough to supply the world with metals such as yttrium and europium on a “semi-infinite basis.”

When I mentioned to a friend that my baseline neurosis had evolved from daily stress into anxiety, her response was, "Go for a float!"

A float?

Yes — spend an hour in a dark, soundproof room floating in a salted, body-temperature warm pool. "You just lie there and meditate," my friend told me.

At just 30 years old, Yuki Kawauchi is in a distance running category of his own.

Constructing a home by hand can be both expensive and time-consuming, especially when the home features a custom design. Some homebuilders have chosen to automate part of the construction process instead.

A new architectural startup called Branch Technology uses 3D-printing robots that can construct parts for homes.

Well-heeled space tourists will have a new orbital destination four years from now, if one company's plans come to fruition. The California-based startup Orion Span aims to loft its "Aurora Station" in late 2021 and begin accommodating guests in 2022.

Many business leaders still believe that time on-task equates to productivity. However, studies have shown that shorter amounts of sleep lead to both lower efficiency and slower completion of basic tasks. That is, sleepy employees are unproductive employees, and they generate fewer and less accurate solutions to problems.

Many people don't understand that when you are not getting enough sleep, you work less productively and thus need to work longer hours to accomplish a goal, creating a negative feedback loop.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe wants to repeal a Japanese law requiring broadcasters to show impartiality, a step critics fear will lead to sensational reporting and polarize views, just as a similar move has been blamed for doing in the United States.

Abe’s government has drafted changes to Japan’s broadcast law and plans to include them in reform proposals as early as May, laying the groundwork for future legislation, three government sources told Reuters.

The Japanese government has asked the Chinese government to loan Japan more giant pandas. Amid the growing popularity of the giant panda cub Xiang Xiang, who is on public view at Ueno Zoo in Taito Ward, Tokyo, the Japanese government hopes to realize the loan as soon as possible as a symbol of improved relations between Japan and China.

The start-up scene in Japan has historically lagged behind the Silicon Valley and China, but several investors told CNBC that things are changing.

Workers have traditionally seen starting a company as "kind of a Plan B," according to James Riney, head of 500 Startups Japan. Finding entrepreneurial talent in the country used to be difficult because of an aversion to risk among Japanese workers. Many wanted the stability of corporate or public-sector jobs.

Japan will charge a departure tax of 1,000 yen ($9.37) per person beginning next year, with plans to use the anticipated 40 billion yen raised annually to bolster tourism.

Foreigners and Japanese alike leaving the country by air or sea will pay the tax when they buy tickets, much like they do with airport facility fees. Travelers younger than 2 are exempted from the levy, which debuts Jan. 7.

Less than 20 years ago, the only challenges for the 100 residents of the tiny island of Kakara, off southwest Japan, were the elements and ensuring the fishermen’s catch could get to market on time. 

Today, the islanders are outnumbered three to one by wild boar who feast on their gardens and are becoming increasingly aggressive and territorial.

The problems facing the residents of Kakara are being repeated across Japan, with boar numbers exploding as rural populations decline. 

After more than a decade working in tech, Kimbal Musk (brother of famous technologist Elon Musk) decided to lean into his true passion: local food. He now runs a chain of local food-focused restaurants called The Kitchen, as well as Big Green, a national nonprofit that builds educational gardens in public schools.