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JAPAN
Oct 20, 2015

Tilting condo may be tip of iceberg for shoddy housing construction nationwide

The scandal surrounding structural flaws and falsified data for a tilting residential building in Yokohama has cast a spotlight on loopholes in the real estate industry's entrenched system, according to experts who speculate the trouble may turn out to be just the tip of an iceberg.
Japan Times
ASIA PACIFIC
Oct 18, 2015

Beijing's lighthouses in South China Sea buttress maritime claims

The next time the United States sends warships by China's man-made islands in the disputed South China, officers aboard will have to decide how, if at all, they will engage with a pair of giant lighthouses that Beijing lit up there this month.
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
Oct 16, 2015

Exterminators in rural Japan; a wealthy family at war; CM of the week: Panasonic

Few vital professionals are as unheralded as exterminators, and these fearless protectors of property get their due on "Nihon Zenkoku Kujo no Tatsujin VIII" ("All-Japan Expert Exterminators Part 8"; TV Tokyo, Sun., 7:54 p.m.)
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 16, 2015

The perverse rise of autonomous killer robots

By allowing killer robots to make life-and death decisions we remove people's responsibility for their actions and eliminate accountability.
Japan Times
WORLD
Oct 11, 2015

Syria airstrikes leave Russia at risk of revenge attacks

President Vladimir Putin has taken a risk by launching airstrikes against Islamists in Syria because they could incite militants to seek revenge by attacking targets inside Russia.
JAPAN
Oct 10, 2015

New JICA head envisages 'effective approach' for ODA

Shinichi Kitaoka, the newly appointed president of Japan International Cooperation Agency, said he wants to carefully study the needs of recipients and work to provide development aid effectively given the country's limited financial resources.
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Oct 10, 2015

Rich Chinese facing backlash over property prices in Vancouver, North America's costliest city

James Hankle, a software engineer in his 50s who was sporting blue jeans and a Green Party T-shirt, was trying to explain to a reporter his fix for Vancouver's runaway property prices when he was interrupted by an eavesdropping passerby: "Stop allowing people from China to buy our houses and leave them...
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 9, 2015

Russia passes the West in race across the Syrian minefield

Peace will remain elusive in Iraq and Syria until Islamic State is defeated. If Putin accomplishes this he will earn the world's gratitude.
WORLD / Science & Health
Oct 8, 2015

Scientists call for urgent trials to judge flu drugs for pandemics

Scientists still don't know if two commonly used flu drugs — Roche's Tamiflu and GlaxoSmithKline's Relenza — really work in seasonal or pandemic flu outbreaks and say robust clinical trials are urgently needed to find out.
Japan Times
WORLD / Politics / ANALYSIS
Oct 5, 2015

Canada election may be so close that it leads to political instability

With Canada's three main political parties all getting around 30 percent support in polls, the odds of a period of political instability after the Oct. 19 election are rising.
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
Oct 2, 2015

False marriages; the castles of Japan; CM of the week: Sumitomo Life Insurance

In the advertisements for the new drama series, "Giso no Fufu" ("A Fake Couple"; Nihon TV, Wed., 10 p.m.), the word "Giso" is printed as a correction to the word "Riso" (ideal), thus providing both a pun and a concept worth pondering.
Japan Times
ASIA PACIFIC / Crime & Legal
Oct 2, 2015

Difficult to buy a gun in China, but not explosives

A series of deadly bomb blasts in China this week has shown how easy it is to acquire explosives in the country, revealing a major gap in its huge security apparatus as the economy slows and anger grows over issues like graft and poor public services.
EDITORIALS
Oct 1, 2015

Valid concerns over My Number

Public worry is high over the coming My Number system, and with good reason.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Politics
Sep 30, 2015

Senior official says Japan ready to build all submarines for Canberra in Australia

Japan is ready to match European rivals and build a fleet of submarines for Canberra entirely in Australian shipyards, a senior Japanese official said Tuesday, after stumbling in its effort to win a contract worth 50 billion Australian dollars or $34.76 billion.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 28, 2015

Xi Jinping's high-stakes visit to Washington

The visit to Washington by President Xi Jinping illustrated the old saying that politicians need to be able to 'walk and chew gum at the same time.'
Japan Times
ASIA PACIFIC / Politics
Sep 23, 2015

As Malaysian leader struggles in graft scandal, his party plays the race card

When thousands of Malay Muslims marched through Kuala Lumpur last week to support his scandal-racked government, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak kept his distance.
Japan Times
ASIA PACIFIC / ANALYSIS
Sep 23, 2015

U.S.-China hacking deal likely to skip industrial espionage for now

Disputes over what is acceptable behavior in cyberspace threaten to overshadow the agenda when Chinese President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Barack Obama meet in Washington late this week.
Japan Times
WORLD
Sep 22, 2015

Syrian war spurs first withdrawal from doomsday Arctic seed vault

Syria's civil war has prompted the first withdrawal of seeds from a "doomsday" vault built in an Arctic mountainside to safeguard global food supplies, officials said on Monday.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Sep 21, 2015

Tokyo at high risk of devastating floods, experts say

It's just a matter of time before Tokyo is struck by the same magnitude of flooding that devastated parts of the northern Kanto region this month.
Japan Times
ASIA PACIFIC / Politics / FOCUS
Sep 21, 2015

Four funerals and a wedding: Xi mends political bridges

Chinese President Xi Jinping's attendance at the funeral earlier this year of a one-time propaganda minister was a surprise; Deng Liqun, who died aged 99, was never a top-ranked official and had been a political enemy of Xi's father.
Japan Times
JAPAN / FUKUSHIMA FILE
Sep 20, 2015

Radioactive rain releases can't be curbed due to lack of laws: NRA

Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s stricken Fukushima No. 1 power plant has released rainwater tainted with radioactive substances into the Pacific Ocean at least seven times since April.
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Sep 19, 2015

Yakuza infighting puts nation on edge

Around the start of this year, the weekly magazines — Shukan Taishu, Asahi Geino and Shukan Jitsuwa in particular — were brimming with articles feting the centennial anniversary of the Yamaguchi-gumi, which had gone from being a small group of tough guys on the Kobe waterfront in 1915 to Japan's...
Japan Times
WORLD / Politics / ANALYSIS
Sep 19, 2015

Syrian losses spooked Kremlin into hasty military build-up

For Vladimir Putin, Russia's military build-up in Syria is a potential diplomatic trump card and a handy way of diverting attention from Ukraine's frozen conflict. But it was a panicky realization that the Syrian government was being turned over on the battlefield that tipped the Kremlin's hand.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Sep 16, 2015

'Two Raging Grannies' try to figure out the global economy

As Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone's scabrous political correspondent, has often observed, one of the ways that Wall Street protects itself is by cloaking its activities in jargon so dense and dull that it's impenetrable to the average observer. In "Two Raging Grannies," a documentary by Norwegian director...
JAPAN / Society
Sep 15, 2015

Justice Ministry unveils eased refugee-recognition criteria but critics quick to cry foul

A wide-ranging review will cover everything from accepting more highly skilled non-Japanese workers and revising the foreign trainee program to cracking down harder on visa overstayers.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Society
Sep 15, 2015

Japanese firms need more diverse workforce, says Harvard academic

The recent passage of a bill requiring companies to set numerical goals in hiring and promoting women should improve the working environment for them, a Harvard Business School professor has said.
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 14, 2015

Look to past crises for clues on handling Syrian exodus

The Indochinese refugee crisis has lessons to offer for today's Syrian exodus.
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Sep 14, 2015

China experts highlight need for economy based on consumption, innovation

Can the Chinese economy continue to thrive? This was the question that dominated discussions among leading Chinese and foreign business executives who gathered at a World Economic Forum meeting in the northeastern city of Dalian last week.

Longform

Japan's growing ranks of centenarians are redefining what it means to live in a super-aging society.
What comes after 100?