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November 26, 2024

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COMMENTARY / WASHINGTON UPDATE

Apr 19, 2001

Bush's mettle gets put to test

By Bob Keefe

Chinese pilot Wang Wei gave U.S. President George W. Bush his first critical foreign-policy test. Wei's collision over the South China Sea with a Navy reconnaissance plane, which dropped 24 U.S. military personnel into the hands of the Chinese military on Hainan Island, provided an excellent course in...

COMMENTARY / World

Apr 19, 2001

Mideast raids fuel fear of regional conflict

By David Hirst

BEIRUT -- It has long been feared that the Palestinian intifada would widen into a regional confrontation, and that South Lebanon would be the flash point from which it does so. With Israel's first deliberate attack on a Syrian military target in Lebanon since its 1982 invasion of the country, that confrontation...

EDITORIALS

Apr 18, 2001

Mr. Mori's year in review

A new prime minister of Japan will take office later this month, following the election of a new Liberal Democratic Party president next Tuesday. It does not matter that Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori has not yet publicly announced his resignation. His exit has been a foregone conclusion for some time....

COMMENTARY

Apr 18, 2001

The crew's home; now what?

By Ralph Cossa

HONOLULU -- The release of the crew of the American EP-3E reconnaissance plane from Chinese "protective custody" may have defused the crisis but hardly represents the end of this affair. Meetings are now under way between U.S. and Chinese officials to deal with the aftereffects. While both sides agree...

COMMENTARY

Apr 18, 2001

Mistaken cures for the Japanese economy

By Gregory Clark

The debate over economic reform in Japan, especially the alleged need to force banks to dispose of bad loans, resembles the story about the hospital patient on life support because of a serious blood-circulation problem. One result of that problem is badly swollen feet. But the doctors can only focus...

COMMENTARY / World

Apr 17, 2001

Hopes for peace are fading

By Marcus Noland

WASHINGTON -- Last year, U.S. President Bill Clinton spent his final months in office trying to cobble together a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. Today, the Middle East teeters on the edge of the largest-scale violence since the Persian Gulf War and the greatest involving...

EDITORIALS

Apr 17, 2001

Spoiling for a fight in Iran

A wave of arrests signals a conservative crackdown as Iran prepares for national elections scheduled for June 8. President Mohammad Khatami is being squeezed between the need to defend reform and the fear of provoking a backlash by hardliners. It is a delicate position, but one Mr. Khatami knows well:...

EDITORIALS

Apr 16, 2001

Sanctioning death in the Netherlands

Once again, the Netherlands has braved the storm. Last week, the country's Senate, the upper house of Parliament, passed a bill legalizing euthanasia. When Queen Beatrix signs the law, which was passed by the lower house last November, the Netherlands will be the first country to permit mercy killing....

COMMENTARY / World

Apr 16, 2001

Understanding the message in the madness

By Dan Considine

Human history is rife with examples of natural phenomenon radically changing his existence — the ice ages and smallpox, to name two. The AIDS virus has had a profound effect on the sexual behavior of many people the world over. Now, a mysterious protein, the prion, is about to change the eating habits...

COMMENTARY / World

Apr 16, 2001

The worst is yet to come in Macedonia

By Micah Zenko and Michael O'Hanlon

WASHINGTON -- While the world's eyes were fixed on Hainan Island off the coast of China, Macedonia's ethnic Albanian rebels were completing a tactical retreat after an offensive by government forces. Some hope that Macedonia's government will now, as expected, offer greater political rights to its ethnic...

COMMENTARY

Apr 16, 2001

The curse of 'shikata ga nai'

By Hugh Cortazzi

"The Japanese phrase that I particularly hate is 'shikata ga nai,' (it can't be helped)" said a friend who had spent some years teaching in Japan. I responded that it was surely appropriate if you were driving a car and the traffic lights turned red just when you got to them. She accepted that in such...

EDITORIALS

Apr 15, 2001

Prepare now for demographic changes

The rapid aging of Japan's population, combined with a steady decline in the birthrate, makes it certain that the productive-age population will begin to fall sharply in the not-so-distant future. As a result, the entire population will also start shrinking, making it necessary to redesign the economic...

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

Kabukicho: Tokyo’s ‘stadium of desire’

Totopa in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward was picked by consultants TTNE as the best sauna of the year.

Japan’s sauna movement: Relax, refresh, repeat

By Greg Dvorak

SUSTAINABLE JAPAN

Azabudai Hills, Tokyo’s green new downtown ‘village’

Azabudai Hills, Tokyo’s green new downtown ‘village’

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