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March 19, 2025
 

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COMMENTARY / World
Apr 10, 2008
The international community is betraying Afghanistan
By Kevin Rafferty
HONG KONG — It is a magnificent land, a high plateau, landlocked, bitterly windswept and freezing in winter; sweltering, parched and dry in summer. It has a proud stiff-necked people who reflect the tough climate, rugged, stubborn, fiercely tribal, traditionally loyal but with a tenaciously vicious...
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 10, 2008
Is Tibetan culture slated for extinction?
By Ian Buruma and Luca Casiraghi
NEW YORK — Are the Tibetans doomed to go the way of the American Indians? Will they be reduced to nothing more than a tourist attraction, peddling cheap mementos of what was a once-great culture? That sad fate is looking more and more likely, and the Olympic year already has been soured by the Chinese...
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 10, 2008
Could the IMF have prevented U.S. crisis?
By Hector R. Torres
WASHINGTON — Until recently, the International Monetary Fund's main job was lending to countries with balance-of-payment problems. Today, however, emerging countries increasingly prefer to "self-insure" by accumulating reserves (and sharing them through regional pooling arrangements). As a result,...
COMMENTARY
Apr 9, 2008
Contrasting responses to crackdowns in Tibet and Burma
By Brahma Chellaney
NEW DELHI — There are striking similarities between Tibet and Burma — both are strategically located, endowed with rich natural resources, suffering under long-standing repressive rule, resisting hard power with soft power and facing an influx of Han settlers. Yet the international response to the...
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 9, 2008
Whither Africa's 'frontier markets'?
By Ian Bremmer
NEW YORK — Zimbabwe's election appears to confirm a truism: Africa only seems to make international headlines when disasters strike — a drought, a coup, a war, a genocide, or, as in the case of President Robert Mugabe, grossly incompetent government.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 9, 2008
NATO meeting sends dangerous signals
By Uffe Ellemann-Jensen
COPENHAGEN —Two dangerous signals were sent from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's Bucharest summit. The first was that Russia has re-established a "sphere of interest" in Europe, where countries are no longer allowed to pursue their own goals without Moscow accepting them. The other was that...
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 9, 2008
Yet another fine mess in Italian politics
By Paolo Messa
ROME — A game of smoke and mirrors: this is how Italy's current electoral campaign appears — both to Italians and the wider world. Of course, there is nothing new in this:
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 9, 2008
The world's hungry billion
By Bjorn Lomborg and Sue Horton
COPENHAGEN — Hunger has slipped from the rich world's consciousness. Televised images of Third World children with distended bellies no longer shock viewers. Polls show that developed nations now believe that the world's biggest problems are terrorism and climate change.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 8, 2008
Rudd pencils in Tokyo visit
By Alan Goodall
SYDNEY — After much grief in Canberra, Kevin Rudd has set a date to meet with Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda in Tokyo. True, it's a bit late and the timing comes a poor second to his talks with other world leaders. But at least it's on and tempers may now cool.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 7, 2008
No end in sight to India's fiscal follies
By Mira Kamdar
NEW DELHI — India's new budget for 2008-2009 says less about the country's current financial health than it does about the irresistible tendency of Indian governments to use the national budget as a pre-election cudgel. Every year, India struggles to reconcile the irreconcilable: stimulate economic...
COMMENTARY
Apr 7, 2008
Starving the emissions beast
By Takamitsu Sawa
The focus of the debate on climate change has shifted drastically in the past several years. The Kyoto Protocol was signed in 1997 on the assumption that climate change and global warming were being caused by emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 6, 2008
U.S. debt isn't the bargain it used to be
By Kenneth Rogoff
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — As the world's financial leaders meet in Washington this month at the World Bank-International Monetary Fund annual meeting, perhaps they should be glad there is no clear alternative to the dollar as the global currency standard.
Tokyo pub hit with first-ever closure order for illegal street tables
One pub in Tokyo's Shimbashi district received more than 60 warnings from law enforcement for setting up tables on the street, blocking the way for traffic.
Japan to extend financial aid to more people moving out of Tokyo
Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba (right) speaks to officials of Miyada in Nagano Prefecture on Saturday during his visit to the village.
Tokyo gears up for April launch of law against harassment by customers
Tokyo will soon require all companies in the city to make efforts to stop harassment by customers, such as by creating a manual on how to handle suspected cases.
Mount Fuji hikers to be charged ¥4,000 on all trails
Tourists gather at the Fuji Subaru Line 5th station, which leads to the popular Yoshida Trail for hikers climbing Mount Fuji, ahead of its reopening for the season in Narusawa, Yamanashi Prefecture in June 2024.
Geely billionaire goes on a cost-cutting spree to catch rivals
Cars at the Geely Auto production base in Hangzhou, in China's eastern Zhejiang province on Feb. 16
At Tokyo Dome, a stage so big that even Shohei Ohtani felt nervous
Shohei Ohtani tips his batting helmet during the opening game of the MLB season between the Dodgers and Cubs on Tuesday at Tokyo Dome
Assassin’s Creed Shadows puts samurai style over substance
Releasing on March 20, Assassin's Creed Shadows excels in atmosphere and open-world gameplay but falls short of narrative expectations.
At Ventinove, Tuscan specialties taken to new heights
Tucked away behind the historic Tsuchida sake brewery, Ventinove's location and sleek, angular architecture make for impressive destination dining.
Private clubs quietly open in Tokyo for free-spending Chinese businesspeople
Sources say a hui suo — a private club, which in Japan caters mainly to Chinese businesspeople — will soon open on the upper floors of the Moutai Building in the Ginza district of Tokyo.
Japan’s youth climate activists still searching for a breakthrough
While climate demonstrations around the world often draw thousands of participants, in Japan such demonstrations rarely break the 100-person barrier.

Podcast

One of the many entrances to the Kabukicho neighborhood in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward.
Kabukicho: Tokyo’s ‘stadium of desire’

Longform

Passengers that were on a morning train attacked by members of the Aum Shinrikyo group wait for medical assistance outside Kasumigaseki Station on March 20,1995.
The day a religious cult brought terror to Tokyo
By Alex K.T. Martin

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