Search - 2004

 
 
JAPAN
Sep 5, 2000

Agency to unveil stricter requirements for diesels

As part of efforts to improve the dismal air quality in Japan's major cities, the Environment Agency will announce today that diesel automobiles will have to meet stricter standards beginning in 2002, Agency officials said Monday.
LIFE / Digital / SURFERSPUD
Aug 30, 2000

Architects reach for the sky

www.geocities.com/PicketFence/5192/ The address above is actually a really nice metaphor. The "picket fence" it refers to is the chain formed by the world's tallest buildings. Add "center_of_india.html" to the end of the address and take a look at an artist's rendering of what some day might be the...
ENVIRONMENT / OUR PLANET EARTH
Aug 28, 2000

General Motors humming along -- never mind the environment

A vacation is such a wonderful chance to seek out the unusual and inexplicable. This month my family and I are immersed in a foreign culture, intrigued and perplexed by the ways of an alien people. Most confounding, this culture is my own.
JAPAN
Aug 27, 2000

Chopper failure sees test flights canceled

The Defense Agency has canceled test flights for its newly developed antisubmarine patrol helicopter SH60JKai after multiple cracks were found in its rotary wings, agency sources said Saturday.
BUSINESS
Aug 26, 2000

NEC reorganizes group companies

NEC Corp. will transfer its business of office telephones and point-of-sale devices to affiliated Nitsuko Corp. next April as part of efforts to reorganize NEC group companies, top officials of the two firms announced on Friday.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 25, 2000

Wahid battered but still kicking

SINGAPORE -- The threat of impeachment from angry legislators stared Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid grimly in the face on Aug 7., when the 695-member People's Consultative Assembly (MPR) convened in Jakarta to review Indonesia's progress.
EDITORIALS
Aug 22, 2000

Wahid gets a reprieve

Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid has outfoxed his opponents again. Facing an insurrection within the Parliament, the president recently apologized for past behavior and then delegated many of his duties to Vice President Megawati Sukarnoputri. It is a shrewd move by the wily Mr. Wahid. Whether...
BUSINESS
Jul 26, 2000

MMC to update Nagoya factory to produce Z car

Mitsubishi Motors Corp. will renovate its Oe factory in Nagoya to launch a new production line in 2002 for a small next-generation vehicle jointly developed with DaimlerChrysler AG, company officials said Tuesday.
BUSINESS
Jul 24, 2000

Forecast optimistic for Japan despite rapidly aging society

Japan's population has been increasing steadily since 1945, but the most pessimistic government estimates indicate that it will decline after peaking at 127 million in 2004. By 2025, the nation's population is expected to shrink by roughly 10 million.
BUSINESS
Jul 19, 2000

MMC may have hidden complaints

Transport authorities have inspected Mitsubishi Motors Corp.'s head office in Tokyo and some of its dealers on suspicion it concealed documents regarding complaints from users at the time of a regular inspection, Transport Ministry officials said Tuesday.
SPORTS / SPORTS SCOPE
Jul 13, 2000

S. Africa done in by shady vote for 2006

South Africa has been shunned again.
JAPAN
Jul 12, 2000

EU proposes stronger HCFC restrictions

The European Union has proposed stronger restrictions for developing countries on the production of hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs), one of the alternatives to ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), government sources said Tuesday.
JAPAN
Jun 26, 2000

Voters sided with unpopular status quo

Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori's nonstop gaffes and his administration's staggering unpopularity were ultimately tolerated by the voters who preferred the status quo to gambling on the opposition.
COMMENTARY
Jun 16, 2000

Voter turnout key to election

Official campaigning is under way for the June 25 general election. This will be the first Japanese general election to be held in three years and eight months, following the last poll in October 1996. The new Lower House, whose term will run to 2004, will be the center of national politics as Japan...
BUSINESS
Jun 7, 2000

May sales of new minicars increase

Domestic sales of new minivehicles in May rose 1.3 percent from the previous year to 134,617 units, the first increase in two months, the Japan Minivehicles Association said Tuesday.
JAPAN
Jun 1, 2000

Replacement satellite gets nod to launch

A government commission on Wednesday approved a plan to launch in fiscal 2002 a substitute for a multipurpose satellite destroyed in November's failed launch of an H-II rocket.
BUSINESS
May 25, 2000

Firms to offer cell-phone shopping

Fujitsu Ltd., DDI Corp. and Citigroup of the United States jointly announced Wednesday in Tokyo that they have developed what they claim is the world's first shopping settlement system for smart cellular phones.
COMMENTARY / World
May 19, 2000

Populist bloc sends UMNO strong message

KUALA LUMPUR-- Delegates to the recently-concluded triennial elections of Malaysia's top political party have voted according to their conscience, sending a strong signal to party president, Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, that they prefer their leaders who can reach out to the grassroots of the politically-dominant...
BUSINESS
May 18, 2000

Intel joins Mitsubishi on cell phones

U.S. microchip maker Intel Corp. and Mitsubishi Electric Corp. said Wednesday they have agreed to jointly develop a chip set for next-generation cellular telephones that can tap into the Internet.
COMMENTARY / World
May 14, 2000

Awaiting Putin's policy plans

With great fanfare, Vladimir Putin was inaugurated as president of Russia May 7 in the gilded splendor of the Kremlin, the former residence of the Russian czars.
JAPAN
Mar 29, 2000

Prefectures to examine incinerator waste water

The Environment Agency on Tuesday sent off a letter asking prefectures to check waste water from incinerators similar to the one in Fujisawa, Kanagawa Prefecture, that has been found to be spewing record levels of dioxin into a local river.
JAPAN
Mar 29, 2000

Diet votes to reduce benefits in retirees' pension packages

A package of seven bills designed to save the nation's financially strapped pension system by reducing the pensions of private-sector workers cleared the Diet on Tuesday, with the measures to take effect April 1.
JAPAN
Mar 26, 2000

Development reaches the east

Today, it's free and takes only five minutes. But getting to the other side of JR Shinagawa Station was once no easy matter.
BUSINESS
Mar 24, 2000

Daiwa's rogue trader dreams of a return

ATLANTA -- The culprit in a financial scandal that rocked Japan nearly five years ago now has his eye on a second shot at the financial arena from a most unlikely place -- a small town some 60 km northeast of Atlanta.
BUSINESS
Mar 17, 2000

JAMA targets 60% cut in diesel emissions by '05

The Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association announced Thursday that it will implement a scheme to reduce by 60 percent harmful emissions from diesel-powered vehicles in 2005, two years ahead of its original schedule of 2007.
JAPAN
Mar 12, 2000

Domestic uranium plan hits snag

A 1992 plan to produce up to a fourth of the fuel required by Japan's power plants at a uranium enrichment plant in Aomori Prefecture is in jeopardy, with problems arising over technology and cost, power industry sources said Saturday.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 25, 2000

Defections among coalition partners in Malaysia's ruling National Front strain ties

BY DAVID CHEW Special to The Japan Times SINGAPORE -- The defection of key politicians from one to the other of the two main Chinese components in Malaysia's ruling multiparty coalition has caused bad blood and made the role of mediator difficult for the coalition's Malay leader.

Longform

Visitors walk past Sou Fujimoto's Grand Ring, which has been recognized as the largest wooden structure in the world.
Can a World Expo still matter? Japan is about to find out.