Search - world

 
 
COMMENTARY
May 25, 2011

Risky business, IMF style

We need to have a clear understanding about what is happening with the International Monetary Fund. Do not for a minute believe the current scandal is just one of those more or less happening things. It may not be the total end of the world for the IMF, but if the world's largest money-granting bureaucracy...
COMMENTARY
Apr 7, 2011

West is on a slippery slope

NEW DELHI — From initially seeking to protect civilians to now aiming for a swift, total victory in Libya, the mission creep that has characterized the Western powers' military attack raises troubling questions about their Libyan strategy and the risks that it could end up creating — however inadvertently...
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Apr 3, 2011

Japan's reaction to Fukushima may point to a better way of living

One day in September 1923, the great writer and poet of the Tohoku region, Kenji Miyazawa, went into woods not far from his hometown of Hanamaki in Iwate Prefecture to chop down a tree. Suddenly rocks broke away from the cliff, rocks he called "assassins." But he was not surprised or shocked. "After...
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media
Mar 20, 2011

Planning pays off as NHK takes its quake news global

"The Shibuya, Tokyo, studio is now shaking extremely strongly. The Shibuya, Tokyo, studio is shaking strongly."
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 9, 2011

How big is China's economy?

HONG KONG — There was much fanfare last month when Beijing reported that China had overtaken Japan to become the second biggest economy in the world. But this celebration was bogus — because the reality is that in real terms China has already become the biggest economy in the world, edging slightly...
BUSINESS / THE VIEW FROM EUROPE
Mar 7, 2011

Germany's economic miracle: New lessons await for old Japan

The economies of Japan and Germany, similar in many respects, are often compared. Not only did both rise from the ashes of World War II to become the leading economies in their regions, but they also formed strong manufacturing bases, large numbers of successful midsize companies and enjoyed extreme...
Japan Times
JAPAN / History
Feb 13, 2011

Japan's first pop culture

Pop culture. Japan's today is thriving, vibrant, spreading, turning people the world over into manga/anime freaks and costume players.
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 27, 2011

Facing the specter of famine

SINGAPORE — In India, a potentially huge economic and social crisis is in the making, involving extensive rewriting of recipe books to exclude a favorite ingredient. Onions are in short supply and their prices have risen by 80 percent, too expensive for many Indians to afford as part of their daily...
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT
Jan 9, 2011

Are Japan's fish lovers eating tuna to extinction?

Pick up a newspaper in Japan these days and you'll almost always find a story in it about the state of bluefin tuna somewhere in the world.
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 31, 2010

If U.S., China would listen

NEW YORK — In 2010, economic conflict between the United States and China became one of the most worrying global developments. The U.S. pressed China to revalue the renminbi, while China blamed the U.S. Federal Reserve policy of "quantitative easing" for currency market turmoil. The two sides are talking...
Japan Times
LIFE
Dec 12, 2010

Brazil: the wild side

Statistics tell us one story of Brazil: It is the world's fifth-largest country and South America's largest by far, and it is an anomaly in being the only Portuguese-speaking nation on that continent.
LIFE
Nov 28, 2010

Summiteering with Nobel peace laureates

Hiroshima is a beautiful city with cute trams cruising along its tree-lined streets.
ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH
Nov 21, 2010

The explosion of life: uprising

First of two parts
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 20, 2010

The paradox of blinking

SINGAPORE — The world has recently witnessed two major diplomatic blinks. Japan, facing mounting pressure from China, unconditionally released a Chinese trawler captain whose ship had rammed a Japanese Coast Guard patrol boat. And U.S. President Barack Obama did nothing when Israel refused to extend...
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 9, 2010

Leaders' broken promises are costing lives

PRINCETON, N.J. — In 2000, the world's leaders met in New York and issued a ringing Millennium Declaration, promising to halve the proportion of people suffering from extreme poverty and hunger by 2015.
Japan Times
LIFE / Digital
Sep 29, 2010

Japanese facility aimed at creating a sun on Earth

Outside a small town in Gifu Prefecture is a little-known scientific research establishment engaged in a project to "create a sun on the Earth." If successful, this venture will profoundly affect the lives of most people in the world.
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 8, 2010

Earth over a barrel of oil

HONG KONG — Oil prices continue to fluctuate nervously with every report or rumor that the world economy is either on the mend or heading for double dip recession. They slithered again when it became clear that the U.S. economy is still in trouble. Ben Bernanke, the U.S. Federal Reserve chairman, and...
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 20, 2010

Consequences of U.S. debt

MILAN — Italians and other Europeans have serious problems addressing their own national debts, public and private, so it may seem immodest for a European to discuss America's growing and grave debt problem.
JAPAN
Aug 19, 2010

Flickers of hope for nuke abolitionists

HIROSHIMA — In Hiroshima, this place where a fearful age was born one fiery instant 65 years ago, the Flame of Peace still flickers on, awaiting the day when the world is rid of nuclear weapons.
EDITORIALS
Aug 6, 2010

Accelerate nuclear disarmament

This year Hiroshima and Nagasaki hold their peace memorial services to mark the 65th anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombings of them as the world feels the "global momentum toward a nuclear weapons-free world," as U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki Moon observes. It is important that every nation and citizens...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Jul 17, 2010

Briton looks through lens with an eye to change

Japan-based photographer and activist El-Branden Brazil quotes Tibet's exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama: "If you think you're too small to make a difference, sleep in the room with a mosquito."
EDITORIALS
Jul 15, 2010

A Spanish 'beauty' in South Africa

The 2010 World Cup held in South Africa ended Sunday with Spain winning its first championship by defeating the Netherlands 1-0 on Andres Iniesta's goal four minutes from the end of extra time. Spain is the third national team to become world and European champion at the same time.
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 12, 2010

Quantitative analysts take on the 'Beautiful Game'

HONG KONG — Sepp Blatter and the Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), the organizers of the World Cup, had better watch out — the quants have arrived and have put their infamous models to work in predicting the outcome of the World Cup that has just kicked off in South Africa....
COMMENTARY / World
May 23, 2010

Nuclear disarmament depends on two decades of sustained will

BERLIN — As the recent U.N. and Washington summits have demonstrated, nuclear arms control and disarmament are among the top issues on the world's political agenda. They are likely to remain so for the foreseeable future. Indeed, 2010 will determine whether U.S. President Barack Obama's vision of a...
JAPAN
May 12, 2010

Japan avoiding initiative in nonnuclear movement

The August 1945 Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings killed tens of thousands of people outright and drew a line in history between the prenuclear world and what came afterward.
COMMENTARY / World
May 5, 2010

Nuclear disarmament goal a harmful myth

MOSCOW — Russia and the United States have signed a new strategic nuclear-arms reduction treaty (START). Officially, the treaty cuts their weapons by one-third; in fact, each party will decommission only several dozen.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / CLOSE-UP
May 2, 2010

Renho: Japan's fiscal firebrand

Renho, a first-term Upper House member from the ruling Democratic Party of Japan, shot to stardom in Japan last November when, as a member of a government committee tasked with screening ministries' budget requests, she had several fierce, face-to-face battles with bureaucrats.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 14, 2010

Who should lead the IMF?

HONG KONG — With the popularity of Nicolas Sarkozy plummeting in French opinion polls and with Dominique Strauss-Kahn (DSK) winning a good reputation as head of the International Monetary Fund, speculation is already swirling about when Strauss-Kahn will formally quit the fund to seek glory as president...
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 2, 2010

Whose GDP is No. 2 misses point

HONG KONG — News headlines this month proclaimed that Japan is still the world's second-biggest economy, ahead of its neighbor China. Gross domestic product figures for 2009 showed Japan with $5.085 trillion against China's $4.91 trillion.

Longform

Rock group The Yellow Monkey played K-Arena Yokohama in June as part of a nationwide tour. Concerts are increasingly popular in the age of social media as users value in-person experiences.
Inside Japan’s arena boom: Sports, sound and city-building