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January 16, 2025

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EDITORIALS

Apr 3, 2000

OPEC opts for stability

Under substantial pressure from the United States, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries has decided to increase crude oil production. It is a smart move. Increased production should lower oil prices worldwide, which will ease inflationary pressures. The U.S. contribution to the decision-making...

EDITORIALS

Apr 2, 2000

The sense of taking leave

You have to feel a spark of sympathy for British first lady Cherie Blair. Never having sought the spotlight herself, she was in it anyway, as the wife of the prime minister -- although she managed to avoid the worst of the glare by focusing on her legal career and her three children. But the wattage...

EDITORIALS

Apr 1, 2000

Tokyo's new tax raises big questions

The tax debate sparked by Tokyo Gov. Shintaro Ishihara has reached a milestone now that the metropolitan assembly has almost unanimously approved his plan to impose a new asset-based tax on large banks operating in the capital. The bank tax, which is good for five years and replaces the current business...

EDITORIALS

Mar 31, 2000

A good first choice from Mr. Chen

In a surprise move, Taiwan's president-elect, Mr. Chen Shui-bian, picked the current defense minister, Mr. Tang Fei, to serve as his prime minister. It is a good move: It ensures continuity in government, provides the new Cabinet with much-needed experience and will help reassure Chinese on both sides...

EDITORIALS

Mar 31, 2000

Familiar faces in a new Cabinet

In France, Prime Minister Lionel Jospin resorted to a compromise strategy in a Cabinet reshuffle announced earlier this week. Rattled by a series of missteps, Mr. Jospin needs to rebuild public confidence. To do so, he appointed two prominent rivals from his Socialist Party to key positions. It is a...

EDITORIALS

Mar 30, 2000

The real need for foreign workers

Japan must soon get ready to accept, even to welcome, a far greater number of legal foreign workers in its midst. The possibility is not remote, in view of plans just announced by the Justice Ministry's Immigration Bureau to relax visa procedures for non-Japanese workers in a wider range of fields than...

EDITORIALS

Mar 29, 2000

The man in the mirror

To no one's surprise, Mr. Vladimir Putin won Russia's presidential election Sunday. Although the acting president did top the 50 percent level, which allowed him to escape a runoff ballot, the narrowness of his margin was an eye-opener. The much-anticipated landslide never materialized, the Communist...

EDITORIALS

Mar 28, 2000

Subverting campaign-finance reform

The ruling Liberal Democratic Party has been busy setting up new chapters across the country. If the move was aimed at expanding party activities to put politicians, not bureaucrats, in the driver's seat, or to improve its local programs in tandem with devolution, it would be fine. But the new chapters...

EDITORIALS

Mar 27, 2000

Clinton walks the tightrope

For all the aspersions cast at U.S. President Bill Clinton, it cannot be said that he lacks courage. For no other word can describe Mr. Clinton's foray into the treacherous politics of South Asia. The decades-long standoff between India and Pakistan has become yet more threatening since the two governments...

EDITORIALS

Mar 26, 2000

A man of faith, frustrated

Pope John Paul II declared that his visit to Israel and the Middle East was a spiritual journey. The pontiff wanted to fulfill a long cherished dream and walk in the footsteps of Christ, 2,000 years after his birth. The pope did just that, with trips to the site of Christ's birth, baptism and the Sea...

EDITORIALS

Mar 25, 2000

The day the Muzak dies

"If music be the food of love, play on..." The famous opening line of Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night," despite its wary "if," became a cliche for a reason. It draws on the common human experience of music as something associated with good things: in this case, as Duke Orsino surmises, with romance, but...

EDITORIALS

Mar 24, 2000

Haze returns to Southeast Asia

It is the burning season in Southeast Asia. Landowners eager to clear land light fires to do the job quickly. At the best of times, it is a destructive process; when the weather is especially dry, as in 1997 and again this year, it creates a choking haze that blots out the sun and poisons the air. Although...

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

Kabukicho: Tokyo’s ‘stadium of desire’

It's back to the classroom for some residents as municipal governments across the country conduct lessons to learn how to use new technologies.

Can aging Japan go digital without leaving anyone behind?

By Tomoko Otake

SUSTAINABLE JAPAN

Site designer on why expos matter more than ever

Site designer on why expos matter more than ever

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