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A sit-in by visa violators and their families entered its second day Tuesday in front of the Tokyo Regional Immigration Bureau with protesters seeking government good will. The action at the bureau in Minato Ward is being organized by the Asian People’s Friendship Society, ...
Kazuhiro Shiraishi, 66, is a guest-house manager in the Izu-kogen Highlands, a famous resort area on the Izu Peninsula of Shizuoka Prefecture. Looking out onto the Pacific Ocean, and just 90 minutes by train from Tokyo, Izu has a warm climate all year round ...
“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, ...
Takashi Miike's blood-soaked vengeance tale, one of two Japanese films being shown in competition at the Cannes Film Festival, draws the biggest boos so far, with critics savaging it as overacted and cliched.
Have you ever given your best effort while striving to achieve something but felt like what you were doing was futile? That’s the feeling I’m getting about Tokyo’s bid to host the 2020 Olympics. With just over three months to go until the IOC ...
Bombastic claims of nuclear achievement, threats to close critical international waterways, alleged terrorist plots and hints of diplomatic outreach — all are emanating from Tehran right now. Last week, confrontation between Iran and the West reached new heights as Israel accused Iran of a ...
A year after the Arab Spring came to symbolize the ascent of people’s power, hope has given way to a bleak sequel. The democratic awakening has fallen prey to murky geopolitics that has cleaved the Arab Spring into two parts, with the oil monarchies ...
No sooner did U.S. President Barack Obama welcome home American troops from Iraq and laud that country’s stability and democracy than an unprecedented wave of violence — across Baghdad and elsewhere — revealed the severity of Iraq’s political crisis. Is that crisis an unfortunate ...
China’s meteoric rise to become the world’s second biggest economy and a global manufacturing center is sustained by ever-growing imports of raw materials and increasing investment abroad, often in under-developed countries shunned by the West for alleged human rights abuses or because they are ...
Can Muslim governments free themselves from their countries’ powerful militaries and establish civilian control comparable to that found in liberal democracies? This question is now paramount in countries as disparate as Egypt, Pakistan and Turkey. To predict how this struggle will play out, it ...
The world is in the midst of a boom in groundwater use. The rate of extraction from aquifers more than doubled in the 40 years to 2000. It has continued to soar since then. Professor Craig Simmons, who directs Australia’s National Center for Groundwater ...
The world faces two existential threats: climate change, and nuclear Armageddon. Action on both is required urgently. Tackling the first will impose significant economic costs and lifestyle adjustments, while tackling the second will bring economic benefits without any lifestyle implications. Those who reject the ...
The eastern half of what used to be Pakistan narrowly escaped a military coup last month. Brig. Masud Razzak, spokesman for the Bangladeshi Army, announced Jan. 19 that “a band of fanatic officers has been trying to oust the politically established government. Their attempt ...
THE SHOCKING COUP: “The situation is no good.” “It’s just a matter of time,” a top minister had told him. “We only have a few weeks left before they act.” Another had told him: “Our days are numbered.” By Sept. 17, 2006, in New ...
Compared with its long historical and cultural ties and deep economic relations with China, Japan’s relations with India are not so strong. But the economic and strategic importance of the world’s largest democracy to Japan is growing fast. Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda’s visit to ...
If you’re not allowed to enslave people any more, or even loot their resources, then what is the point of being a traditional great power? The United States kept an army of over 100,000 soldiers in Iraq for eight years, at a cost that ...
India’s economy grows mainly in the night, some say, when the government is asleep. If every economic prospect pleases, India’s politics can be vile. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh flattered in his first term only to deceive in the second. His government has been drifting ...