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Japan Times
WORLD / Science & Health
Mar 8, 2013

Sleep deprivation has genetic consequences

Hey, you, yawning at 2 in the afternoon. Your genes feel it, too.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 1, 2013

Afghanistan's legacy of child opium addiction

A report just released by the United Nations Mission in Afghanistan states that there were 2,754 civilian deaths and 4,805 civilian injuries in that country during 2012. Unmentioned is a serious side effect of the conflict: the high number of opium-addicted children in Afghanistan.
Japan Times
WORLD / Politics
Feb 20, 2013

Ailing Chavez returns to Venezuela

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez made a surprise return to his homeland on Monday after a 10-week convalescence in Cuba following cancer surgery, a long absence that had raised doubts among his opponents and even some supporters about who was running the oil-rich nation.
WORLD / Society
Feb 18, 2013

Americans face massive retirement funds shortfall

For the first time since the New Deal, a majority of Americans are headed toward a retirement in which they will be financially worse off than their parents, jeopardizing a long era of improved living standards for the nation's elderly, according to a growing consensus of new research.
JAPAN / Science & Health
Feb 8, 2013

Rubella outbreak spreading quickly

The fresh rubella outbreak spreading quickly nationwide poses the greatest threat to fetuses, the National Institute of Infectious Diseases says.
Japan Times
WORLD / Science & Health
Feb 1, 2013

Mummies yield ancient clues to origins of disease

As a pathologist, Michael Zimmerman was familiar with dead bodies, but when he was asked to autopsy a mummy for the first time he wasn't sure what to expect. There were a dozen layers of wrapping that he peeled off one at a time "like Chinese boxes," he said. When he finished, he found the body was dark...
EDITORIALS
Jan 25, 2013

Targeting the use of mercury

More than 140 countries in Geneva agree on a treaty that marks the first step in global efforts to prevent health-environmental damage from mercury.
WORLD / Science & Health
Jan 24, 2013

Smokers who quit by about age 40 can stave off early death, study finds

Smokers who quit by around age 40 can stave off an early death, according to a landmark study that fills key gaps in our knowledge of smoking-related health ills.
EDITORIALS
Jan 23, 2013

Ensure sufficient welfare support

The government must ensure that adjustments to the livelihood assistance program don't rip the economic safety net from out under Japan's poor.
JAPAN / Science & Health / NATURAL SELECTIONS
Jan 13, 2013

How Japan's teens can avoid sleep demons

Have you ever woken up but been unable to move; felt a powerful pressure holding you down, gripping you tight? Haruki Murakami has, and he describes it like this: "I was having a repulsive dream — a dark, slimy dream. ... After I awoke, my breath came in painful gasps for a time. My arms and legs felt...
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 31, 2012

The fight to limit agricultural use of antibiotics can be won with the right political alliances

Ask a dozen food activists what political change they want to see in 2013 and you'll get a dozen different answers, maybe two dozen: Restrict sodium in packaged foods. Label genetically modified ingredients. End subsidies to big farms.
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 24, 2012

Don't confuse mental illness with evil incarnate

As a baby reporter in Texas, I covered what we euphemistically called mental health services in the state. These "services," reserved for the dangerously ill, involved brief, groggy hospital stays followed up with a handshake, script for enough pills to stun a moose, and best wishes: See you soon!
JAPAN / ELECTION 2012
Dec 18, 2012

Nothing left for the election-gutted DPJ to do but rebuild

The drubbing taken by Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda's Democratic Party of Japan on Sunday left it with just 57 seats and one option: to rebuild.
Reader Mail
Dec 16, 2012

Japan apocalypse in the making

For all the useless rhetoric about the so-called end of the Mayan calendar, which is simply a change from one era to another, it saddens me that so little attention is paid to the real hazards of the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, including reactors 5 and 6. (Reactors 1 through 4 were shut down...
Japan Times
WORLD / Politics
Dec 12, 2012

Is macho man Putin eyeing a gentler public image?

Hold the Botox! The latest rumors swirling around the Kremlin suggest Vladimir Putin needs a makeover, dropping his macho, macho man refrain in favor of some crinkly-eyed gravitas.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Dec 11, 2012

Childbirth in Japan: Plan, prioritize for a smooth delivery

Emotions during pregnancy and childbirth run the gamut, from excitement and trepidation to joy and even fear. Foreign women who find themselves pregnant in Japan may experience additional stress as they cope with cultural differences, language issues and being away from their own families. Add in talk...
LIFE
Dec 4, 2012

'Were we marines used as guinea pigs on Okinawa?'

Newly discovered documents reveal that 50 years ago this week, the Pentagon dispatched a chemical weapons platoon to Okinawa under the auspices of its infamous Project 112. Described by the U.S. Department of Defense as "biological and chemical warfare vulnerability tests," the highly classified program...
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Dec 4, 2012

'Were we marines used as guinea pigs on Okinawa?'

Newly discovered documents reveal that 50 years ago this week, the Pentagon dispatched a chemical weapons platoon to Okinawa under the auspices of its infamous Project 112. Described by the U.S. Department of Defense as "biological and chemical warfare vulnerability tests," the highly classified program...
Japan Times
LIFE
Nov 11, 2012

The war legacy that binds Okinawa and Vietnam

As the motorbike taxi I'm aboard zigzags through the traffic in Da Nang, Vietnam's fourth-largest city, a bus pulls out of nowhere, causing my driver to brake, swerve and slam us into a sidewalk stack of bamboo cages packed with soft plump ducklings.
COMMUNITY / How-tos / LIFELINES
Nov 6, 2012

If you need to bring drugs to Japan, sort out the paperwork — or else

Reader BM wants to know if morphine can be brought into Japan legally, and if having a tattoo would prevent her from visiting bathing facilities.
JAPAN
Nov 2, 2012

Encephalitis vaccine deemed safe; no link found to deaths

A health ministry panel has concluded there is no need to stop administering the vaccination for Japanese encephalitis despite the deaths this year of two children who received the drug.
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH
Oct 21, 2012

Singing the praises of greenery

This year's annual hop between the hemispheres in my capacity as a globetrotting nature-tour guide took me to my namesake country, Brazil, with strange and unusual hopes.
EDITORIALS
Oct 12, 2012

Mr. Chavez wins again

It was supposed to be a close vote; some even believed that an upset was in the works. But when the dust settled, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez had won another election. This time, however, his margin of victory was considerably reduced, from 25 percentage points six years ago to about 10 percentage...

Longform

Tetsuzo Shiraishi, speaking at The Center of the Tokyo Raids and War Damage, uses a thermos to explain how he experienced the U.S. firebombing of March 1945, when he was just 7 years old.
From ashes to high-rises: A survivor’s account of Tokyo’s postwar past