Japan’s Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday that laws requiring married couples to have the same family name does not violate the Constitution, dismissing a challenge by three couples who wanted to keep their original names.

A driver of a bullet train temporarily left the cockpit to use the bathroom on Sunday while the train was running with about 160 passengers on board. He asked a conductor, who didn’t have a driver’s license, to man the train in his absence.

Tennis star Naomi Osaka expressed her rage over the recent racial attacks against Asian-Americans in the United States. They have become the targets of hate crimes since the start of the pandemic last year.

The Economist’s latest “glass-ceiling” index shows that Japan ranks second from the bottom among the world’s industrialized countries. As usual, Nordic countries including Sweden and Iceland take the top four spots.