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The head of an official inquiry into the deadly collapse of a Bangladesh factory complex said the building’s owner was the “main culprit” for the disaster because he violated construction codes. The cave-in of the eight-story Rana Plaza outside the capital last month killed ...
Throughout most of Japan, June is the rainy season. While all that rainfall is great for rice paddies so that we can have delicious new harvest rice in the fall, it makes it a rather dull month for seasonal produce: The summer’s bounty of ...
“I was stopped by two men in a government-registered vehicle, blindfolded and dragged off the street. They took me away to a house in a place I did not know. I was forced into a room with blood all over the walls and floor, ...
Claude Regy says the team at the Shizuoka Performing Arts Center (SPAC) threw him the “best birthday party ever” when he arrived in Japan just days after the actual May 1 occasion. The 90-year-old French director is hoping for an even better birthday gift, ...
As far as debuts go, Shohei Otani's delivered. The celebrated rookie pitched fairly well on Thursday night, and though he finished outside the decision, he left the mound with the Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters well within striking distance of the Tokyo Yakult Swallows.
For France and for the euro system, the best strategy is to dismantle the monetary union from the top — via the exit of Germany and the other most competitive countries.
The recently celebrated half-century-long Treaty of Friendship between Germany and France has a lesson for Japan concerning reconciliation in Asia.
Military interventions by powerful nations into lesser ones, such as now continues in Mali (and Afghanistan), and is being urged by many into the Syrian civil war, are inherently reckless since even the most powerful states can have the whole project blow up on ...
Greece and Europe have gained some breathing room — but not much — after Sunday’s parliamentary elections in Greece. A victory by the conservative New Democracy (ND) party offers hope that the country will support a government that backs the existing austerity program, permitting ...
A weekly magazine in April reported that the mother of an entertainer earning an annual income of ¥50 million has been receiving public livelihood assistance known as seikatsu hogo (literally livelihood protection). Through a blog of a Diet member and other media, the entertainer ...
The most recent round of nuclear negotiations with Iran began with optimism. The previous round of talks appeared to make headway and there was hope that a breakthrough could be achieved when the seven parties — the five permanent members of the United Nations ...
It was a bitter weekend for Europe. In elections across the continent, voters expressed displeasure with their political leaders. The results were no surprise and reflected deep concern about economic policy and, especially, the impact of the austerity measures that have been adopted to ...
The results of the first round on April 22 of the French presidential election underlined that France’s economic stagnation caused by the 2008 Lehman Brothers shock and the eurozone sovereign debt crisis was an important factor. They point to people’s strong dissatisfaction with the ...
While international attention has been focused on North Korea’s failed “satellite launch,” India last week successfully test-fired a missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead 5,000 km. This development has the potential to shift the regional strategic balance and introduce new uncertainties into Asia. ...
U.S. President Barack Obama has named Dr. Jim Yong Kim as his nominee to lead the World Bank. In the past, that would have been the end of the process — Washington spoke and the bank complied. It is still probable that Mr. Kim ...
The scandal over the repellent way the World Bank president is appointed has obscured an equally scandalous situation: the appointment process of the rest of the senior managers at the bank and the International Monetary Fund. They too are selected through opaque, quota-driven negotiations ...
Deputy Prime Minister Katsuya Okada has directed government ministries to reduce the number of recruits for fiscal 2013 by an average of about 70 percent from fiscal 2009′s level. This is a typical example of the pseudo-reform that the Democratic Party of Japan government ...