Economy | ANALYSIS
Households to take hit from tax hike
by Tomoko Otake
The consumption tax increase will hit every household in Japan hard, with many people’s financial future hanging on whether their wages rise enough to offset the hike's impact.
27
P/SUNNY
In 1967, Ethiopia was the last African country south of the Sahara still without any national parks — an embarrassment for a nation then entertaining ambitions to assume leadership of the continent. In September that year, after five months on Baffin Island working as ...
The humble tuk-tuk, a fixture of Asian cities from Bangkok to Bangalore, is rapidly becoming a common sight in the touristy parts of Paris — and the bane of traffic police. The three-wheeled auto rickshaws, as well as human-powered pedicabs, first appeared in the ...
A plan to link the Red Sea with the shrinking Dead Sea could save it from total evaporation and bring desalinated water to thirsty neighbors Israel, Jordan and the Palestinians. But environmentalists warn that the “Red-Dead” project could have dire consequences, altering the unique ...
Otters can help rejuvenate sea grasses, a vulnerable natural resource that protects coastlines and provides habitats for fish, according to new research. Scientists examined how the sea grasses in one area of California rebounded when otters returned to the area, and found that the ...
If pollution had a mascot, it would be the smokestack. Do a Google image search for “pollution.” What do you see? A bunch of smokestacks with ominous gray clouds billowing out the top. It is a reasonable association to make. Smokestack emissions contain nasty ...
A 40-year-old nuclear plant in Vermont will shut down next year due to the high costs of competing with cheap natural gas, the company said Tuesday. Entergy Corp. said the Vermont Yankee plant, which employed some 600 people and was licensed to operate until ...
My day job as a professor in Japan offers precious few chances to take a step back from work and give the old brain a bit of free rein. But August is one such golden opportunity. This year, as usual, I have been visiting ...
It is all but certain that human activity has caused a steady increase in global temperatures over the past 60 years, leading to warmer oceans and an acceleration in rising sea levels, according to the most recent climate change report by an international U.N. ...
The United States, China and Qatar were accused of environmental plunder on Tuesday as green activists marked “Earth Overshoot Day,” the date at which mankind has exhausted a year’s budget of natural resources. “In just over eight months, we have used as much nature ...
The world's 136 largest coastal cities could risk combined annual losses of $1 trillion from floods by 2050 unless they drastically raise their defenses, a study warns.
A heavy fog hangs around the forested area of Yambaru in the northern hills of Okinawa. On this rainy-season morning in June, there’s a steady dripping all around, though what I can see of the sky is cloudless. Instead, this “rain” is droplets that ...
Jimmy Carter first installed solar panels in 1979. Ronald Reagan called them a joke and had them removed in 1986. And this week, nearly three years after promising to restore them as a sign of the administration’s commitment to renewable energy, President Obama is ...