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Glyn Ford
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 3, 2000
2002 World Cup: Soccer without fear?
BRUSSELS -- The first world cup of the new millennium is to be staged in Japan and South Korea in the summer of 2002. Both countries want to use this billion-dollar sporting showpiece as a global shop window allowing those watching, both in the stadiums and on TV, to see the real Japan and the real South...
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 27, 2000
Shaky finances threaten to sink KEDO
Sinp'o is a quiet coastal town on the edge of the Japan Sea in North Korea, almost two hours by helicopter from the capital Pyongyang. There is a beautiful swath of unspoiled beach, edged with bushes and shrubs typical of marine margins, and clusters of shabby houses and farms littered across the landscape....
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 20, 2000
Is Pyongyang coming in from the cold?
The Huichon Children's Hospital is cold and damp. It is the only hospital in this city 200 kilometers north of Pyongyang. It has had no heating since floods in 1995 ruined the boiler. Along with no heat, there is no medicine and no food. Huddled listlessly in the small communal rooms that serve as wards...
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 12, 2000
In Labor's moment of crisis, Blair delivers
The recent Labor Party conference in Brighton saw Prime Minister Tony Blair in an unprecedented position. Set against a backdrop of enormous public discontent, evident in the response to the fuel strike by the major oil companies, the Labor Party staged its centenary conference. The phony peace that...
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 7, 2000
Britain's future is at the heart of Europe
Britain is still on course to join the euro despite the narrow rejection of formal membership by Denmark in last week's referendum. Denmark is Europe's second-smallest country, represents only 2 percent of European gross national product, and anyway has already tied its currency, the krone, to the euro....
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 16, 2000
Shining a light on global 'Big Brother'
Perhaps more appropriately to the world of James Bond than to the European Union, Echelon -- an international spying network in which governments covertly cooperate to intercept global communications -- is causing a stir in the European Parliament.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 19, 2000
Socialist International surveys the scene
The Socialist International's Asia Pacific Committee met Aug. 7-8 in Wellington, New Zealand, at the invitation of Helen Clark, the Labor prime minister. The urgent issue on the agenda was Fiji. Prime Minister Mahendra Chaudhry, the Fiji Labor Party leader who had been overthrown, explained the background....
CULTURE / Books
Aug 16, 2000
The 'third way' goes via Japan
CULTURE AND TECHNOLOGY IN MODERN JAPAN, edited by Ian Inkster and Fumihiko Satofuka. 2000, I.B. Tauris, 39.50 British pounds / St. Martin's Press, $59.50. THE JAPANESE AND EUROPE: Images and Perceptions, by Bert Edstrom. Japan Library, 35 British pounds / $55. In less than 150 years, Japan has changed...
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 30, 2000
Enlist currency speculators in poverty war
BRUSSELS -- How can we eradicate world poverty? This is a question all developed nations have a responsibility to consider. At the beginning of the new millennium, we may have found the answer -- a global tax on capital transfers.
COMMENTARY / World
May 7, 2000
European sports play by their own rules
It is said that the military is always prepared to fight the last war and never the next. In the economic domain the same is true of politicians, who are generally at least a generation or two out of date. In Britain in 1913, there were 1.3 million miners, meaning that almost one in 10 men were working...
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 2, 2000
High-tech juggernaut is a dangerous ride
Apparently, sales of dog food by the U.S. shopping giant Wal-Mart were bigger than the worldwide sales chalked up by e-commerce last year. Even if that is true, the current media frenzy about e-commerce makes it hard to countenance. There is a danger that this current fashion for one particular technology...
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 26, 1999
Causes of Tokai disaster not so simple
In November, I visited JCO Co.'s nuclear fuel-processing plant -- a subsidiary of Sumitomo Metal Mining Co. -- where Sept. 30 a level-5 nuclear incident took place. The plant is located 110 km from Tokyo in the small town of Tokaimura, Ibaraki Prefecture. The plant is in an area that is a blend of residences...

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Construction takes place on the Takanawa Gateway Convention Center in Tokyo, slated to open in 2025.
A boom for business tourism in Japan?