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Japan Times
WORLD / Society
Apr 6, 2013

PETA founder Ingrid Newkirk: making the fury fly

My favorite story about Ingrid Newkirk, the founder and head of PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals), the animal-rights organization, involves her storming the dining room of the Four Seasons hotel in New York, depositing a dead raccoon on Anna Wintour's dinner plate and calling the veteran...
Reader Mail
Apr 4, 2013

Where does human respect live?

Regarding Thomas Clark's March 28 letter, "Review of the Easter message": Clark would do well to take a look at the world he lives in rather than filtering his experience through the stained glass of dogma. It seems that all the places where human rights are well-respected and the quality of life is...
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT
Mar 30, 2013

Brazilian chief wields high-tech tools in battle to save tribe, forests

As a small boy in the early 1980s, Almir Surui hunted monkeys with a bow and arrow, wore a loincloth and struggled with Brazil's official language, Portuguese.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 30, 2013

Resource issues threaten Asia's continued rise

Asia's re-emergence on the global stage after a two-century decline is accompanied by an insatiable appetite for natural resources that it doesn't have.
Japan Times
JAPAN / FORUM ON AFRICA-JAPAN RELATIONS
Mar 30, 2013

Regional challenges: what Japan can do to help

The second session dealt with Africa's regional challenges and development in the overall African economy. Ambassadors Ito, Comberbach and Arrour were joined by Ambassador Wasswa Biriggwa of Uganda, chairman of the ADC TICAD Committee; Ambassador Godwin N. Agbo of Nigeria, vice chairman of the ADC Trade...
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE FOREIGN ELEMENT
Mar 26, 2013

If corporal punishment works, where are all the champions?

In the final scenes of Aaron Sorkin's powerfully written film "A Few Good Men," one of the U.S. Marines on trial for the murder of a fellow serviceman is bewildered as to why he has not been cleared of all charges after his commanding officer admits ordering the attack. "We did nothing wrong," cries...
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 26, 2013

Nuclear agenda out of play

In 2009, U.S. President Barack Obama outlined a vision of a world freed of the threat of nuclear weapons, however, disappointingly little progress has been made in the ensuing four years.
Reader Mail
Mar 24, 2013

University rankings too sweet

The March 14 front-page article "Universities to boost classes in English" states: "According to Times Higher Education's World University Rankings, only two Japanese colleges make the top 100 — the University of Tokyo (No. 27) and Kyoto University (No. 54)."
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Mar 17, 2013

The rising of a nation

This superb book charts the improbable rise of South Korea from the devastation of war and impoverishment to rapid development and prosperity, and from brutal dictatorship to the most vibrant democracy in Asia. It is 'impossible' in terms of its economic and political achievements, 'the most unlikely and impressive story of national building of the last century,' Daniel Tudor writes.
Japan Times
WORLD / Society
Mar 16, 2013

'We are abandoning all the checks and balances'

Evgeny Morozov is a Belarus-born technology writer who has held positions at Stanford and Georgetown universities in the United States. His first book, "The Net Delusion," argued that "Western do-gooders may have missed how [the Internet] ... entrenches dictators, threatens dissidents, and makes it harder...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Mar 15, 2013

Classical community unites to celebrate bicentennials of Verdi and Wagner

This year marks the bicentennials of the births of two great composers: Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901) and Richard Wagner (1813-83), both giants of the classical music world who brought opera to the peak of its artistic expression in the 19th century.
LIFE / Digital
Mar 13, 2013

Online, some are more equal than others

A few years ago, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman published a bestselling book with the title "The World is Flat." In it he used the concept of "flatness" to describe "how more people can plug, play, compete, connect and collaborate with more equal power than ever before — which is what is...
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 11, 2013

Ending the violence against women and girls

Two teenage girls, from Vietnam and Uganda, have traveled to U.N headquarters to find out what the world is doing to end violence against women.
Reader Mail
Mar 10, 2013

Don't rely only on 'reputation'

Readers should be careful when evaluating the rather biased Times (magazine) Higher Education World Reputation Rankings of the world's top 100 universities, which were reported in the March 6 Kyodo article "University of Tokyo maintains reputation as top institution in Asia: survey." As stated in the...
EDITORIALS
Mar 9, 2013

Venezuela loses its champion

Hugo Chavez will be missed by all the Venezuelans who benefited from his largess and by world leaders who delighted in antagonizing Washington.
EDITORIALS
Mar 3, 2013

Pope Benedict XVI bows out

Big problems — from child sex-abuse cases to Vatican politics — probably proved too much for an aging academic theologian like the outgoing pope.
Japan Times
WORLD / Crime & Legal
Mar 2, 2013

PLA hackers are just the tip of cyberwarfare risk

China is awash with nondescript new office buildings, so the 12-story tower in Shanghai's Pudong area hardly looked likely to cause global headlines. Not even propaganda posters on walls surrounding it or People's Liberation Army guards standing at the gates made the building stand out.
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Feb 23, 2013

Economic woes provide opening for White House

Japan's economic troubles may be pushing the country toward free-trade negotiations with the United States, a goal long-sought by officials in Washington who see it as a potential boon.
Reader Mail
Feb 17, 2013

Let dreams live in championships

My opinion about organized sports is eccentric. I like sports as a recreation, but as soon as they are turned into an organized, competitive activity in which opposing teams play according to rules for the purpose of acquiring points in order to defeat opponents, then you lose me. Where's the fun in...
Japan Times
WORLD
Feb 4, 2013

Navy SEAL author of 'American Sniper' shot dead

He said he killed 160 people, perhaps many more, making him one of the leading U.S. military snipers of all time. In the course of four combat deployments to Iraq, he said insurgents nicknamed him "the devil of Ramadi" and placed a $20,000 bounty on his head.
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 31, 2013

How will Australia rebalance its trade, security relations?

How does Australia reconcile the pull of its European heritage, the security imperatives of the U.S. alliance and its trading ties with East Asia?
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 30, 2013

The return of the trading city

Although global trade imposes short-term costs on people and places, it provides a route to long-term prosperity that runs squarely through cities.
JAPAN / Politics
Jan 29, 2013

Policy speech by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to the 183rd session of the Diet

Delivered Jan. 28, 2013
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT
Jan 25, 2013

Can the discovery of oil save Ecuador's rainforest?

American biologist Kelly Swing thwacks a bush with his butterfly net and a dozen or so bugs and insects drop in. One is a harvester, or daddy-long-legs, another a jumping spider that leaps onto a leaf where two beetles are mating.
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 25, 2013

Address shows Obama is playing make-believe

There was a make-believe quality to U.S. President Barack Obama's second inaugural address, as if all that's required to solve serious problems are the intelligence to produce proper policies and the political grit to get them approved. Perish the thought that there are deep conflicts among the things...
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 23, 2013

Washington's tangled foreign policy problems

The desert sands of Mali and Algeria provide an unlikely arena for an existential challenge to the global alliance system the United States has managed since World War II. But the hesitant and timid U.S. and European Union responses to the crisis in northwestern Africa drip like acid on the rock of alliance...
MULTIMEDIA
Jan 12, 2013

Nomad writer and photographer keeps his passions fueled by travel

Fiction can work like a cheap flight; a good novel takes off, jetting readers to new worlds. Writers and photographers triple the distance traveled. Sean Lotman, 37, an avid reader, writer, photographer and nomad, has logged thousands of kilometers around the world.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / JUST BE CAUSE
Jan 1, 2013

The year for non-Japanese in '12: a top 10

Back by popular demand, here is JBC's roundup of the top 10 human rights events that most affected non-Japanese (NJ) residents of Japan in 2012, in ascending order.

Longform

In 2020, 38% of all households were single-person. That figure is projected to rise to 44.3% by 2050.
The rise of AI companionship in a lonely Japan