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JAPAN / Science & Health / NATURAL SELECTIONS
Jul 9, 2008

Is there anyone out there?

W hat's the most incredible headline you could expect to read in a newspaper? For me, it would have to be something like: "We are not alone: Life found on other planets."
COMMENTARY
Jul 9, 2008

After a century has passed, Young Turks at a crossroads

The Ottoman Empire had already been in retreat for over a century when the Young Turk revolution broke out in July, 1908. Some of the Young Turks hoped to save the whole empire; others wanted to abandon the empire and rescue an independent Turkey from the wreckage. The latter group won the argument,...
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 5, 2008

Exorcising Musharraf's ghost

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Following its recent free elections, Pakistan is rebounding politically. But the euphoria that came with the end of the Musharraf era is wearing off, as the new government faces stark choices.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 5, 2008

Obama can't escape America's realpolitik

During the Democratic Party primary season, all those eons ago, Barack Obama deployed no more powerful line against Hillary Clinton than his insistence that "we can't just tell people what they want to hear. We need to tell them what they need to hear." More than just a catchy couplet, the phrase was...
JAPAN / G8 COUNTDOWN
Jul 4, 2008

Japan scrambling for any summit progress

With only a few days to go until the Group of Eight summit gets under way in Hokkaido, Japanese diplomats were still struggling to find ways to achieve progress — no matter how small — over last year's G8 gathering.
JAPAN / G8 COUNTDOWN
Jul 2, 2008

Talks may heat up and go nowhere but global warming isn't waiting

Eleven of the 12 years between 1995 and 2006 ranked among the 12 warmest years since 1850, and since 1993 the global sea level has risen by an annual rate of 3.1 mm.
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Jul 1, 2008

Regaining trust key: insurance group chief

Nonlife insurers must do everything they can to regain the trust squandered by such industrywide missteps as failing to honor legitimate claims and overcharging on premiums, according to the new chairman of a nonlife insurers' industry group.
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT
Jun 28, 2008

The truth behind the 'Origin of the Species'

JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Jun 22, 2008

How can the press be free if it's used as a public-relations tool?

The Supreme Court's decision on June 12 to reverse a lower-court ruling that had found in favor of a women's group received a fair share of concerned media coverage. The suit involved a program NHK had produced about a 2001 citizens' tribunal, which prosecuted Japan's wartime leaders on behalf of sex...
COMMENTARY
Jun 19, 2008

What's Europe's next move?

The Irish have spoiled the party. By decisively voting down in a referendum the proposed Lisbon Treaty on the future organization and governance of the European Union, the Irish have brought the whole process of EU reform to a dead halt.
JAPAN
Jun 18, 2008

Death sentences on the increase

Tuesday's hangings of serial killer Tsutomu Miyazaki and two other inmates come at a time when courts are more inclined to mete out capital punishment.
EDITORIALS
Jun 18, 2008

Black Friday for the EU

Ireland has rejected the European Union reform treaty.
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 18, 2008

Neither blatant benevolence nor silent giving

PRINCETON, New Jersey — Jesus said that we should give alms in private rather than when others are watching. That fits with the common-sense idea that if people only do good in public, they may be motivated by a desire to gain a reputation for generosity. Perhaps when no one is looking, they are not...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Jun 17, 2008

Lawmaker takes 9/11 doubts global

In a September 2003 article for The Guardian newspaper, Michael Meacher, who served as Tony Blair's environment minister from May 1997 to June 2003, shocked the establishment by calling the global war on terrorism "bogus." Even more controversially, he implied that the U.S. government either allowed...
LIFE / Language / KANJI CLINIC
Jun 17, 2008

King Kojien dictionary knights new words

The four writing systems utilized in Japanese (>kanji, katakana, hiragana and the Roman alphabet, known as romaji ) provide Japanese advertising copywriters, journalists and young people with an abundance of raw material from which to create new words. The great majority of these neologisms fade away...
JAPAN / EXPLAINER
Jun 17, 2008

How hard is it really to learn Japanese?

As a language so distinct from most others, Japanese has an air of mystery about it.
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Jun 15, 2008

Nuggets of 'wisdom' can speak volumes beyond what's said

"Biting Comments, Curious Statements and Famous Misstatements" is the headline on the lead article in the June 5 issue of the popular Japanese weekly magazine Bungei Shunju. It features dramatic ejaculations of famous politicians, sports figures and entertainers, among others.
CULTURE / Books
Jun 15, 2008

Stopping North Korea going nuclear

THE PENINSULA QUESTION: A Chronicle of the Second Korean Nuclear Crisis, by Yoichi Funabashi. Washington: Brookings Institution, 2007, 592 pp., $36.95 (cloth) NORTH KOREA ON THE BRINK: Struggle for Survival, by Glyn Ford with Soyoung Kwon. London: Pluto Press, 2008, 249 pp., £18.99 (cloth)
COMMENTARY
Jun 13, 2008

Scrutable, 'invisible' Japan

The international community of scholars with an interest in Japan is rife with whisperings of Japan's "invisibility."
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 13, 2008

'Juno'

For a long time I was of the opinion I'd see anything with French actress Beatrice Dalle in it. My obsession dated back to 1986's "Betty Blue," which featured a performance by Dalle of such typhoon-like passion and intensity that nothing she's done since even comes close. Still, I indulged her, out of...
Reader Mail
Jun 8, 2008

For Africa's sake, stop money aid

My answer to the problem of alleviating poverty in Africa is to stop offering monetary assistance. Rock star Paul Hewson (Bono) very proactively advocates debt cancellation. He did so again last month in Yokohama at the Tokyo International Conference on African Development. I want to suggest that forgiving...
JAPAN
Jun 6, 2008

Tokyo makes final round for Olympics

Tokyo has been picked as one of the four candidate cities to host the 2016 Summer Olympics, receiving the top rating in the preliminary selection round, the International Olympic Committee announced Thursday.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 5, 2008

Humble Harrison bucks his years

Reader Mail
Jun 5, 2008

God's-eye view of irrelevance

I am saddened but not surprised at Barrett Balvanz's June 1 letter, "Reality of life without a god" -- concerning the controversy surrounding Peter Singer's May 19 article. What saddens me is Balvanz's indiscriminating response to what he calls the "backlash" of letters provoked by the article. He sees...
COMMENTARY
Jun 4, 2008

Energy-cost issue boils over

Is the green party over? Is the ferocious rise in energy costs worldwide, driven by the soaring price of oil, undermining all the enthusiasm for saving the planet in the longer term via cutting carbon emissions and penalizing all forms of fossil-fuel consumption?
COMMENTARY
Jun 4, 2008

Cluster bomb ban is a good start

The British armed forces clung to their cluster bombs like a baby to its rattle, and some suspected that they were trying to sabotage the treaty on behalf of their American friends. But Prime Minister Gordon Brown overruled them, in the end, and Britain was among the hundred countries that agreed to...

Longform

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