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August 01, 2025

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COMMENTARY / World

Mar 29, 2004

Kala azar casts shadow over Nepal's poor

By Cesar Chelala

KATMANDU -- Nepal, the "country of a thousand gods," presents a sad paradox. Endowed with exquisite beauty, it is at the same time home to a series of infectious diseases that take a heavy toll on its population. Perhaps the less known among them, and the most neglected, is kala azar. The name literally...

COMMENTARY / World

Mar 29, 2004

Afghanistan deserves the world's support

By Frank Polman

MANILA -- The international donor community and the Afghan government will meet in Berlin later this week to discuss strategies and funding for the future development of Afghanistan. It will be one of the most important international events of 2004, with implications reaching far beyond Afghan borders....

COMMENTARY / World

Mar 29, 2004

U.S. forces prepare for surprises in Asia

By Richard Halloran

HONOLULU -- They call it the "tyranny of distance," and it ranks up there in U.S. strategic thinking with conventional threats like that from North Korea and unconventional dangers posed by terrorists in Southeast Asia.

COMMENTARY

Mar 29, 2004

Environment tax can work

By Takamitsu Sawa

On Nov. 18 the Japan Federation of Economic Organizations (Nippon Keidanren) issued a statement opposing a proposed environment tax. Keidanren noted that it had set its own fiscal 2010 targets for reducing carbon-dioxide emissions generated by the industrial and energy-conversion sectors below 1990 levels,...

EDITORIALS

Mar 28, 2004

The little horse that couldn't

Haruurara, the chestnut mare famous for having now lost 106 races in a row, must be a secret fan of Samuel Beckett, the acerbic Irish playwright who died in 1989. We are thinking in particular of Beckett's late play "Worstward Ho," a line from which is said to have become the mantra of a thousand struggling...

COMMENTARY / World

Mar 28, 2004

The Iraq war in retrospect

By Ramesh Thakur

The question that crops up repeatedly when we register our opposition to the Iraq war is: Would you rather then have Saddam Hussein still in power? It's a fair question that deserves a serious answer. Unlike in 1990, when Hussein did have a few admirers, last year he had none. This makes the failure...

EDITORIALS

Mar 27, 2004

The last thing Japan, China need

Japan-China relations are strained again, this time over a territorial dispute involving a group of uninhabited islets in a potentially oil-rich area of the East China Sea. On Wednesday, seven Chinese activists landed on one of the Senkaku Islands. Japanese police arrested them for violating the Immigration...

COMMENTARY / World

Mar 27, 2004

Tale of three Asian elections

By Eric Teo Chu Cheow

SINGAPORE -- Taiwan held its landmark presidential election last Saturday, Malaysia organized legislative elections last Sunday, and Indonesian legislative elections are scheduled April 5.

COMMENTARY / World

Mar 27, 2004

Tony Blair loses his touch

By Jonathan Fenby

LONDON -- When he led the reformed British Labour Party to two overwhelming general election victories in 1997 and 2001, Tony Blair epitomized a new political generation that would sweep away both the cobwebs of traditional socialist policy and the increasingly incoherent, sleaze-tainted performance...

EDITORIALS

Mar 26, 2004

Last resort to protect privacy

Over the past two weeks Japanese media have made much of a privacy issue involving the eldest daughter of former Foreign Minister Makiko Tanaka. It all started with an article in a popular weekly describing the daughter's private life. Responding to a request from her lawyer, the Tokyo District Court...

EDITORIALS

Mar 25, 2004

A bullet tips Taiwan's ballot

Taiwan President Chen Shui-bian won last weekend's national election by a sliver. A mysterious assassination attempt on the eve of the ballot may have provided the margin of victory. The protests and charges of misconduct that followed the announcement of the results were predictable. It will take time...

COMMENTARY

Mar 24, 2004

Advice for presidential candidate Kerry

By Ralph Cossa

TOKYO -- U.S. Sen. John Kerry, the Democratic presidential nominee, is wise to ignore the tempest in the teapot caused by his revelation (gasp! surprise! surprise!) that there are leaders who would prefer that President George W. Bush not be re-elected. However, he needs to forcefully respond to the...

One of the many entrances to the Kabukicho neighborhood in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward.

Kabukicho: Tokyo’s ‘stadium of desire’

Ichiro Suzuki, one of the most iconic players in NPB and MLB history, was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame with 99.7% of the vote.

With Hall of Fame induction, Ichiro makes himself heard loud and clear

By Jason Coskrey

SUSTAINABLE JAPAN

Ishii Iron Works remakes self for workers, new energy

Ishii Iron Works remakes self for workers, new energy

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