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COMMENTARY / World

Sep 28, 1999

Amnesty International fetes the Year of Child

By Beth Lindsay

Amnesty will stage its annual Tokyo charity concert Oct. 3 with one of Tokyo’s longest-running bands, the Howling Loochie Brothers, providing music to get people up and dancing.

EDITORIALS

Sep 25, 1999

Cold War leftovers

“There’s no such thing as retirement, really,” John le Carre’s secret pilgrim muses in the 1991 spy novel of that name. A few old spies in Britain and the United States have been sharply reminded of the truth of that aphorism this month following sensational revelations that the Cold War espionage web...

EDITORIALS

Sep 24, 1999

A woman’s place

Mrs. Raisa Gorbachev, wife of former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, died this week, succumbing to leukemia at the age of 67. The world has extended its condolences to her grieving husband, a man who transformed the world as he transformed his country. Few doubt that Mr. Gorbachev could have achieved...

EDITORIALS

Sep 24, 1999

Hope amid the rubble

Taiwan is digging out of the worst earthquake to hit the island since 1935. The magnitude 7.6 temblor has claimed more than 2,100 lives, and the death toll is sure to climb as rescuers search for the other 3,000 people thought to be trapped in the rubble. More than 5,000 others are injured; 100,000 have...

EDITORIALS

Sep 23, 1999

No mandate for Mr. Obuchi

Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi has been re-elected president of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party by warding off the challenge from former LDP Secretary General Koichi Kato and former LDP policy chief Taku Yamasaki. Many LDP Diet members have been quick to see his impressive victory as a vote of confidence...

COMMENTARY / World

Sep 22, 1999

Australia’s belated epiphany

By Alan Goodall

SYDNEY -- As an Australian-led multinational rescue mission landed at burned-out Dili on Monday, a shocked nation is asking: How could Indonesia have permitted such horror? And could we have done more to prevent this Asian holocaust?

COMMENTARY / World

Sep 22, 1999

‘Advance Australia fair’ takes on a whole new meaning

By Roger Pulvers

“There goes another shiftless Aboriginal,” said the Pioneer bus driver to those of us taking the half-day tour of Alice Springs. “We give them cars, they drive them till they’re out of petrol, then, bloody hell, they just leave the bloody things by the side of the road.”

COMMENTARY / World

Sep 22, 1999

Americans debate the whys and whens of intervention

By Edward Neilan

WASHINGTON -- When is military intervention justified? What is a just war? Are some wars mere whims? Americans have been debating these questions recently as the crisis in East Timor escalated.

EDITORIALS

Sep 21, 1999

When the whole world is watching

What can we do when faced with atrocities being committed on a monstrous scale? It is an old question, but it has taken on a renewed urgency with the advent of new communications technologies and mass media eager to exploit them in the competition for viewers. Being blind to distant injustices is a luxury...

EDITORIALS

Sep 20, 1999

Negotiating with North Korea

The United States and North Korea have struck yet another deal. This time, the two parties seem to have negotiated a framework for the relaxation of U.S. economic sanctions against North Korea in exchange for the suspension of Pyongyang’s ballistic missile testing program. Some ask, why does the U.S....

EDITORIALS

Sep 19, 1999

Targeting the tobacco menace

While smoking rates have plunged throughout the rest of the industrialized world, Japan continues to have the highest percentages of adults who smoke: 55.2 percent of men and 13.3 percent of women in 1998. Both rates represent increases over the figures for 1997, which were 52.7 percent and 11.6 percent...

COMMENTARY

Sep 19, 1999

Smooth sailing ahead for Obuchi and LDP

By Ryuichiro Hosokawa

It appears certain that Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi will be re-elected president of the Liberal Democratic Party Sept. 21, which means he will remain at the helm of the government. Although his term as head of the ruling party does not run out until Sept. 20, 2001, whether he will serve out as prime...

One of the many entrances to the Kabukicho neighborhood in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward.

Kabukicho: Tokyo’s ‘stadium of desire’

The Terasaka Rice Terraces are seen with Mount Buko in the background.

What Yokoze can teach Japan about rural revival

By Alex K.T. Martin

SUSTAINABLE JAPAN

Sompo looks beyond insurance to focus on well-being

Sompo looks beyond insurance to focus on well-being

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