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COMMENTARY / World
Jun 11, 2013

Egypt threatens to beat war drums for the Nile

The Great Ethiopian Renaissance Dam will serve as the first real test of Egypt's tolerance for upstream dam-building on the Nile.
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 6, 2013

China's troubling core interests

This week Chinese President Xi Jinping appears set to offer his U.S. counterpart, Barack Obama, an alluring deal for closer economic cooperation.
Japan Times
WORLD / Politics / ANALYSIS
Jun 5, 2013

Naming Lautenberg's successor puts GOP's Christie in bind

In a state where political blood feuds have been a proud tradition, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a Republican, and Sen. Frank Lautenberg, a Democrat, went to extremes trying to live up to the legend: They hated each other and made it known.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE FOREIGN ELEMENT
Jun 4, 2013

'Okinawa bacteria' toxic legacy crosses continents, spans generations

Tu Du Hospital in Ho Chi Minh City houses one of Vietnam's busiest maternity clinics, but hidden in a quiet corner, far from the wards of proud new mothers, is a room stacked floor to ceiling with every parent's nightmare.
Japan Times
WORLD / Politics
May 30, 2013

What Bachmann meant to politics

Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann's surprise retirement announcement likely brings an end to an Icarus-like political career in which she rapidly rose to national prominence before falling hard.
Reader Mail
May 30, 2013

Nature will be last to weigh in

Regarding Kevin Rafferty's May 21 article, "Weep for poor Earth itself": Why weep for poor Earth? It's a planet with a 4-billion-year history despite what evangelical rightwing Christians would have us believe. Earth has weathered far worse than anything a naked, bipedal primate, known as homo sapiens,...
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle
May 28, 2013

281_Anti Nuke's anger at authority is at a critical mass

More than two years after the triple reactor meltdowns at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, hundreds of thousands of residents of the Tohoku region of northeastern Honshu remain displaced, the power station teeters on the brink of further disaster and large swaths of northern Japan are so irradiated...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE FOREIGN ELEMENT
May 28, 2013

Want more out of Japan but face doesn't fit? Be TOFITR

I recently served as a "private sector representative" in a panel discussion before an audience of foreign graduate students at the University of Tokyo. Many of the students will soon be seeking employment in Japan; because I have spent 25 years living in or traveling to Japan, the last 10 or so running...
COMMENTARY / World
May 28, 2013

Contradictions live in Iran-India's tangled web

Natural parks in the Tohoku-Pacific coastal region devastated by the 3/11 disasters are being reorganized into the new Sanriku Restoration National Park.
Japan Times
WORLD / ANALYSIS
May 26, 2013

U.S. drone program 'tough to dismantle'

The White House is ready to hand U.S. drone operations back to the military from the CIA, but counterterrorism officials are convinced the Pentagon hasn't improved enough yet.
JAPAN
May 19, 2013

Suga clams up as source spins Iijima trip to North

During his surprise visit to Pyongyang, Isao Iijima, a special advisor to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, explained to officials there that Tokyo continues to seek "comprehensive solutions" to the North's abductions of Japanese and to its nuclear arms and missile threats, a source said Saturday.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
May 16, 2013

Thaemlitz's mix tackles antidancing law

It's fitting that I should be meeting Terre Thaemlitz on May 1, International Workers' Day — she wryly refers to herself as a "feminist Marxist" before we begin our interview in proper.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / How-tos / HOME TRUTHS
May 14, 2013

On uneven ground: landfill property pitfalls

After the real estate agent unlocked the front door, the musty smell told us that the house had not been aired for some time. He laid out slippers for us and proceeded to raise the shutters and open the windows. Then, upon entering the kitchen he exclaimed, "Katamuite iru" ("It's uneven").
EDITORIALS
May 4, 2013

Constitutional values at stake

Constitution Day (May 3) is a good time to scrutinize recent statements by political leaders who seek to make imprudent revisions to Japan's Constitution.
BUSINESS
Apr 29, 2013

GOP shifts budget focus from cuts to tax reform

With another fight over the national debt brewing this summer, congressional Republicans are de-emphasizing their demand for politically painful cuts to retirement programs and focusing on a more popular prize: a thorough rewrite of the U.S. tax code.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Entertainment news
Apr 13, 2013

How keeping it real took Matt Damon to the top

In 1987, when Bruce Springsteen wrote the song "Ain't Got You," he was the biggest rock star in the world. He had vast estates in New Jersey and Beverly Hills, and he had not long returned from a honeymoon at Gianni Versace's villa in Lake Como. "Ain't Got You" was Springsteen's attempt to make a self-aware...
Japan Times
WORLD / Crime & Legal
Apr 6, 2013

One man's crusade against America's war on drugs

Once consigned to the fringes of libertarianism, the argument for the legalization of drugs has received an unlikely boost in America in recent months with the release of a documentary titled "The House I Live In." Coinciding with the decision by the states of Colorado and Washington to legalise marijuana,...
Japan Times
WORLD / Politics / FOCUS
Apr 4, 2013

U.K. immigration critical to success of anti-EU party

For the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), defeat has never looked this much like victory.
Japan Times
WORLD / Politics / FOCUS
Apr 3, 2013

As U.S. wallows in debt, bright ideas to save country billions go to waste

After President Barack Obama set up a national online suggestion box in 2009 asking federal workers for new ways to cut the budget, 86,000 ideas came in. Some, inevitably, were a little odd.
Japan Times
WORLD / Politics
Apr 1, 2013

Have U.S. political parties lost their purpose?

The Democrats and Republicans may be worlds apart on most things, but at their headquarters just two blocks away from each other on Capitol Hill, each is confronting the same question: Have political parties lost their purpose?
Japan Times
MORE SPORTS
Mar 27, 2013

Track legends moved by interaction with athletes in Tohoku

Nine-time Olympic gold medalist Carl Lewis came to Japan hoping to boost the spirits of young athletes from the Tohoku region, but the track legend says it was he who came away inspired in the end.
JAPAN / Media / CHANNEL SURF
Mar 17, 2013

Rhapsody in scrubs; Foreign hometowns; CM of the week: De Niro for BeeTV

The doctor shows just keep coming, but the two-part "Kyokuhoku Rhapsody" (NHK-G, Tues.-Wed., 10 p.m.) borrows a current issue from the headlines to make its dramatic point.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Mar 14, 2013

Japan urged to send out global SOS over No. 1 plant

Two years after the March 11, 2011, earthquake and tsunami, the herculean task of decommissioning the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant is the subject of growing international involvement.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 28, 2013

Leon Panetta: a legacy of the conventional wisdom

Leon Panetta's failure to accommodate a rapidly changing world will be his most important, and disappointing, legacy as U.S. secretary of defense.

Longform

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