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Japan Times
WORLD
Mar 30, 2015

Tunisian forces kill nine militants, including suspected museum attack plotter, before world leaders attend 'Bardo' march

Tunisia forces killed nine Islamist militants, including a top commander, during a raid late on Saturday, the government said, hours before world leaders were due to march in Tunis in solidarity after an attack on the Bardo museum this month.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 29, 2015

Call Cameron's 'gaffe' anything but guileless

There's been much debate over whether British Prime Minister David Cameron's shock announcement about his political future was just an unguarded slip — as he tried to look like a normal family man rather than a power-crazed politician on a soft-feature TV show — or a tactic.
EDITORIALS
Mar 29, 2015

Letting popular will prevail

Political parties and lawmakers should not put off trying to resolve the vote-value gap between the nation's electoral districts just because recent high court rulings on the matter have been inconclusive.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 29, 2015

Forgotten Balkans look set to plague the 21st century

Twenty years after 1945, Germany was at peace with its neighbors and had normal diplomatic relations with the countries it once occupied. Nearly 20 years since the massacre at Srebenica, no final settlement is in sight for the Balkan region from Croatia to Greece.
Japan Times
WORLD / Politics
Mar 28, 2015

Reid to retire, wants Schumer to replace him as Senate Democratic leader

U.S. Senate Democratic Minority Leader Harry Reid said on Friday he will retire next year and threw his weight behind New York Sen. Chuck Schumer to replace him as leader after he leaves office.
EDITORIALS
Mar 27, 2015

Battle looms over Futenma

The standoff over construction of a replacement facility for U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Futenma threatens to develop into an all-out legal battle between the Abe administration and Okinawa Prefecture.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 27, 2015

The time for indifference on Venezuela is over

By classifying Venezuela an 'extraordinary threat' to U.S. security and ordering sanctions against seven officials, President Barack Obama may be trying to force Venezuela's neighbors to choose sides: Either support Venezuela explicitly or support the U.S. in opposing its leaders' policies.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Mar 27, 2015

Why Chinese tourists love Japan

Despite the apparent ill will that Beijing, and occasionally the Chinese public, express toward Tokyo, Chinese tourists can't seem to get enough of Japan. In 2014, Chinese visits to Japan increased 83 percent on the previous year.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 26, 2015

The model Lee engineered needs innovation

The only way Singapore can maintain the remarkable gains made under its late legendary founder Lee Kuan Yew is to find ways to innovate.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 25, 2015

The Chinese government wants to buy Europe

European openness to investment by Chinese state entities means support for a regime that is not necessarily Europe's friend and that certainly doesn't share its values.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / LABOR PAINS
Mar 25, 2015

Japan sees progress on sexual harassment, but some still don't get it

On the one hand we have the legal framework to tackle sexual harassment. On the other, awareness of the issue remains sorely lacking.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Mar 25, 2015

Noda's 'Egg' scrambles understanding

After his acclaimed French debut last year with "The Bee," news of Hideki Noda's return to the Theatre National de Chaillot in central Paris with his pop-war-and-Olympian extravaganza "Egg" created quite a buzz of anticipation.
Japan Times
ASIA PACIFIC / Politics
Mar 25, 2015

As Lee era ends, Singapore braces for change as young worry about future

If Lee Kuan Yew represented the Singapore of yesteryear, his death this week raises the question of whether the generation of leaders in waiting will reshape the mould that transformed the city-state from a colonial backwater to a haven of prosperity.
Japan Times
WORLD
Mar 25, 2015

Tunisia's Bardo museum in symbolic reopening after attacks

Tunisia's Bardo museum held a ceremonial reopening on Tuesday a week after gunmen claiming alliance with Islamic State killed 20 foreign tourists in an attack aimed at destroying the country's tourism industry.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Mar 24, 2015

BOJ needs to spread the wealth to rural Japan

The BOJ needs to broaden the impact of the its unprecedented easing program beyond Japan's biggest cities.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 24, 2015

Asia's almighty middle class

Asia's rapidly growing middle class will serve as a keystone for economic and political development in the region.
EDITORIALS
Mar 23, 2015

Netanyahu's destructive tactics

The tactics used by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the last days of the campaign alienated many Israelis and antagonized many of the country's international partners. Relations with the U.S. have been especially hard hit.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 23, 2015

There's no exaggerating the role of two parents

Dismayed by inequality and the intergenerational transmission of poverty, the U.S. must face the truth that economic success depends less on whether your father was rich or poor than on whether you knew your father at all.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 23, 2015

Netanyahu girds Israel for isolation

The way that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu finagled his decisive electoral victory will have serious political and diplomatic consequences for Israel.
Japan Times
WORLD / Politics
Mar 23, 2015

Poll finds fictional TV presidents are more popular than Obama

Whether it's the earnest Josiah Bartlet from "The West Wing" or the manipulative Frank Underwood in "House of Cards," Americans prefer television presidents to their real-life POTUS, President Barack "No Drama" Obama.
WORLD
Mar 22, 2015

Tunisia arrests more than 20 in crackdown since museum attack

Tunisian authorities have arrested more than 20 suspected militants in a nationwide security crackdown since gunmen killed 23 people, mostly foreign tourists, in Wednesday's attack in the capital, the government said.
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Mar 21, 2015

Celebrating 50 years of antipathy, recriminations

On March 1, South Korean President Park Geun-hye renewed her call for Japan to come clean on its colonial and wartime atrocities, including the sexual enslavement of women. Her speech was delivered on the anniversary of the anti-Japanese uprising by Koreans in 1919 and in a year when South Koreans will...
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 21, 2015

Why Asia should welcome the Fed's 'taper'

Asian governments will need to act differently if U.S. Fed 'tapering' leaves less money sloshing around global markets. Challenges like excess money supply will seem preferable to massive capital outflows.
ASIA PACIFIC
Mar 21, 2015

Tunisian in museum attack showed no signs of hard-line Islamist ideology

Shortly before he and a friend gunned down 20 foreign tourists — including three Japanese — on Wednesday at the Bardo National Museum in Tunis, Yassine al-Abidi sat down to a breakfast of olive oil and dates with his family and left for work at his travel agency as usual.
EDITORIALS
Mar 20, 2015

Dangerous nuclear rhetoric

President Vladimir Putin's recent disclosure on a television program that he was ready to put Russia's nuclear forces on alert during the Crimea crisis in 2014 could end up thwarting nuclear disarmament efforts worldwide.
ASIA PACIFIC / Crime & Legal
Mar 19, 2015

Yingluck rice subsidy case to go before court

Thailand's Supreme Court accepted a criminal case against ousted Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra on Thursday on a charge of mishandling a multibillion-dollar rice subsidy scheme, and she could be jailed for 10 years if found guilty.

Longform

An illustration features the Japanese signs for "ganbare" (good luck) and the Deaflympics, which will be held between Nov. 15 and 26.
A century of Deaf sport finds its moment in Tokyo