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November 25, 2024

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COMMENTARY

Dec 24, 2000

English-education reform gets watered down

By Gregory Clark

Imagine the fuss if Japan's car industry was producing a million defective cars a year. But for some reason no one bothers much if Japan's English-education industry produces roughly that number of defective English speakers each year.

COMMENTARY / World

Dec 24, 2000

Arms policy playing into China's hands

By Ted Galen Carpenter

WASHINGTON -- As tensions continue to simmer between the People's Republic of China and Taiwan, the Bush administration will come under increasing pressure to provide Taiwan with a firm security guarantee. That could be dangerous and put the United States directly at risk. Instead, the U.S. should increase...

COMMENTARY

Dec 23, 2000

Robert Downey's problem is not criminal

By Doug Bandow

Drugs can exercise a powerful hold over the human person. Witness American actor Robert Downey, Jr.

COMMENTARY / World

Dec 23, 2000

Volunteerism: not just a Western idea

By Hisashi Uno

Even before global observance of the International Year of Volunteers begins in January, Japanese are deeply involved in a search for the spirit of international volunteerism. Some insist that it is based on the wisdom of Oriental thought.

COMMENTARY

Dec 23, 2000

Cabinet reshuffle solves little

By Kenzo Uchida

Just a week remains until the curtain comes down on the 20th century. We are, in the true sense of the phrase, at the end of a century. Words like fin de siecle and millennium tend to be tossed about, but this year really can only be described as one of end-of-the-century blues.

COMMENTARY

Dec 22, 2000

The EU gets ready to grow

By Hugh Cortazzi

LONDON -- The recent European Union summit at Nice seems to have been bad tempered and acrimonious. Yet it eventually, even if only after days of wrangling, ended in an agreement of sorts and the way is now open to the admission of new members from Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean, leading in due...

COMMENTARY / World

Dec 21, 2000

Kim, de Gaulle: visionary but vulnerable

By John Barry Kotch

SEOUL -- South Korean President Kim Dae Jung returns from Norway and Sweden this week with his Nobel Prize in hand, having secured his place on the world stage. But at home, he faces a nation deeply divided over his "sunshine policy," deeply troubled over its economic prospects and enveloped in a social...

COMMENTARY / World

Dec 21, 2000

Mounting problems to test Cambodia's new 'stability'

By Peter Eng

PHNOM PENH -- They fought with guns and bombast during a civil war, a U.N. peacekeeping mission, an election, a coup, another election -- and every free moment in between. For most of the past two years, the followers of Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen and Prince Norodom Ranariddh have cooperated in...

COMMENTARY / World

Dec 21, 2000

Time once again for Russia's perennial heating crisis

By Russell Working and Nonna Chernyakova

VLADIVOSTOK, Russia -- The communist central planners who designed modern Russia's infrastructure devised a system of boiling water kilometers from where it is needed, running it through aboveground pipes across a region where temperatures can drop as low as minus 40 C -- and expected this to warm the...

COMMENTARY / WASHINGTON UPDATE

Dec 20, 2000

A divided Capitol awaits new president

By Bob Keefe

WASHINGTON -- Wow! What a list of things to do for U.S. President-elect George W. Bush. It is long, and the degree of difficulty of almost every item on the list is of Olympian proportion.

COMMENTARY

Dec 20, 2000

The world may welcome Bush

By David Howell

LONDON -- While the United States adjusts to the idea of having George W. Bush as its new president, his predecessor has been treading the international stage for the last time -- at least in a presidential capacity. Bill Clinton's "final" visit to Britain received immense coverage, some of it almost...

COMMENTARY / World

Dec 19, 2000

Eco-terrorism threatens Galapagos natural treasures, eco-tourism

By Mark Brazil

The Galapagos Islands, the world's second-largest marine reserve, are under attack from fishermen spurred by Asian markets for marine products. The Ecuadorean government has done nothing to halt the eco-terrorism in what only recently was a paradise for eco-tourism.

One of the many entrances to the Kabukicho neighborhood in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward.

Kabukicho: Tokyo’s ‘stadium of desire’

Construction takes place on the Takanawa Gateway Convention Center in Tokyo, slated to open in 2025.

A boom for business tourism in Japan?

By Kathryn Wortley

SUSTAINABLE JAPAN

The celebrated artist ‘updating’ the kimono

The celebrated artist ‘updating’ the kimono

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