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COMMENTARY / World

Aug 16, 2003

A turnaround remembered

By Richard Halloran

HONOLULU -- August stirs memories of the darkest hours in the complicated 150-year history of America's relations with Japan.

EDITORIALS

Aug 15, 2003

Ambiguous signs of economic change

At first glance, Japan's latest GDP figures look impressive. In the second quarter of this year, April through June, the gross domestic product in real terms, excluding the effects of price change, expanded 0.6 percent from the previous quarter for an annualized rate of 2.3 percent. Thus the economy...

COMMENTARY / World

Aug 15, 2003

A new tide of nationalism

By Eric Teo Chu Cheow

SINGAPORE -- Leaders in Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia have become increasingly vocal in calling for more independent policies and outlook in Southeast Asia, especially in the context of post-American military intervention in Iraq.

COMMENTARY / World

Aug 15, 2003

Baron of porn spills it all

By Kevin Rafferty

HONG KONG -- His pictures beamed across the nation's television stations and front pages of all of its newspapers from down market tabloids to sober-sided broadsheets: the grin on his face was as wide as a melon and he held, fanlike, a huge wad of currency notes for all the world, like a television game...

COMMENTARY

Aug 15, 2003

Talks on North Korea face usual impasse

By Harvey Stockwin

HONG KONG -- At long last, the four major powers in East Asia and the two Koreas aim to honor Clause 60 of the 1953 Korean Armistice Agreement. Clause 60 was supposed to have been implemented within three months of the July 27, 1953, signing of the ceasefire in the war. Now the stage looks set in Beijing...

EDITORIALS

Aug 14, 2003

Unconditionally settle abduction issue

Japan and North Korea are expected to discuss the abduction issue on a bilateral basis during the six-nation talks on the North Korean nuclear crisis to be held late this month in Beijing. Japanese negotiators should demand that Pyongyang address this issue in good faith and allow abductees' relatives...

COMMENTARY / World

Aug 14, 2003

The identity of the Arab world

By David Hirst

DAMASCUS -- Fadil Shururu, chief political officer of Ahmad Jibril's Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, has come a long way since I first met him 35 years ago in Jordan's Ghor Valley, seedbed of the newborn guerrilla movement that was to liberate the whole of the Palestinian...

EDITORIALS

Aug 13, 2003

Justice under siege in Rwanda

Justice is supposed to be blind. Taking that idea literally, though, may cost the chief United Nations war-crimes prosecutor, Ms. Carla Del Ponte, her job. Ms. Del Ponte is under attack by the Rwandan government for believing that her mandate is to prosecute all perpetrators of war crimes in that horrendous...

COMMENTARY / World

Aug 13, 2003

Mideast violence is forecast

By Ramzy Baroud

DOHA, Qatar -- Despite the positive spin that optimistic politicians put on current developments in the Arab-Israeli conflict, a crashing storm threatens the shores of the Mediterranean. Such a prediction can easily be read over the events surrounding the Middle East peace process in the last month alone....

COMMENTARY

Aug 13, 2003

U.S. can return to the moral high road

By Ralph Cossa

KUALA LUMPUR -- On Aug. 6, peace activists from around the world flocked to Hiroshima to pray for peace and remember those who died when the first nuclear bomb was dropped on that city 58 years ago. More subdued ceremonies marked the anniversary of the second, and we all hope last, use of nuclear weapons...

EDITORIALS

Aug 12, 2003

Time to rethink Japan-China ties

A quarter century ago, on Aug. 12, 1978, Japan and China signed a treaty of peace and friendship in Beijing, putting a legal end to the technical state of war between the two nations. With the United States and the Soviet Union locked in the Cold War, however, the treaty talks reflected the hard realities...

COMMENTARY

Aug 12, 2003

Test for Japanese diplomacy

By Keizo Nabeshima

The standoff over North Korea's nuclear-arms development is entering a new stage as officials of six nations -- the United States, North Korea, South Korea, Japan, Russia and China -- prepare to meet soon in Beijing to discuss the threat. At Pyongyang's insistence, the U.S. will hold direct talks with...

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

Kabukicho: Tokyo’s ‘stadium of desire’

In 2020, 38% of all households were single-person. That figure is projected to rise to 44.3% by 2050.

The rise of AI companionship in a lonely Japan

By Alex K.T. Martin

SUSTAINABLE JAPAN

Ishii Iron Works remakes self for workers, new energy

Ishii Iron Works remakes self for workers, new energy

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