The unusually long and severe cold spell is driving up electricity consumption. According to the government, a surge in power demand for heating boosted peak power consumption to 71.84 million kilowatts at noon Tuesday, sending power reserves falling to a dangerously low level of 4.07 million kilowatts, or 5.7 percent of the nation’s maximum power generation capacity of 75.91 million kilowatts. It

Encouraged by the electoral success of its free school meal program last year, the main opposition Democratic Party has recently unveiled a plan to offer free medical services for the entire population. The scheme, together with the party’s proposals for free child care and halved college tuition fees, is fueling a growing debate on welfare.The DP’s health care plan calls for raising the coverage

The results of coming local elections in Osaka and Aichi prefectures could have a great impact on the shape of Japan’s local government. The people concerned need to carefully watch and consider the moves of two men ― Osaka Gov. Toru Hashimoto and Nagoya Mayor Takashi Kawamura. Hashimoto has the idea of dissolving the Osaka city and integrating the Osaka city and prefectural governments into a met

For eight years, Ed Rendell was governor of Pennsylvania. The eight years before that, he was mayor of Philadelphia. In all that time, he never got the national attention he’s received in his last two weeks as governor, since unburdening himself about what he called “the wussification of America.”He was upset that the NFL postponed the Dec. 26 game between his beloved Philadelphia Eagles and the v

The ugly American ― the stereotypically brutish, ethnocentric, bumbling traveler abroad ― is dead. He’s gone the way of global U.S. hegemony, the strong dollar and mid-20th century American naivete.Thirty years ago, the streets of major European capitals were awash with wide-eyed, culturally entitled, middle-class American tourists who were members of the first generation to take advantage of fore

By its nature, an intelligence service is antithetical to the transparency and accountability that are hallmarks of a democracy. When the Central Intelligence Agency was created in 1947, diplomat Dean Acheson wrote, “I had the gravest forebodings about this organization and warned the president that as set up neither he, the National Security Council, nor anyone else would be in a position to know

Undoubtedly, one of the last things an incumbent president would like to hear of is his lapse, be it ongoing or imminent, into lame-duck status. Who would? Actually, President Lee Myung-bak was previously quoted as saying there would be no such thing until his last day in office.But it is a matter of time before a rapid decline in the presidential power manifests itself in various forms. It usuall

The cost of renting a home is going through the roof. But top economic policymakers do not appear to be much concerned about the rise in rent. They are either ignoring what has developed into a crisis or are ill-informed about it.According to a survey of housing-price trends by Kookmin Bank, rents rose an average 0.2 percent throughout the nation during the week ending on Jan. 3. The bank said the

This year can be the year in which electric cars make headway in attracting a large number of customers who want to buy a vehicle that has no gas emmissions over a vehicle that runs on fossil fuels. But many problems must be overcome before electric cars become a transportation mainstay. Nissan kicked off fierce competition in electric car sales with the December launch of the Leaf, a five-door ha

Cigarette makers do a lot more than shred tobacco and roll it up in thin sheets of paper. A December report by the surgeon general’s office outlined a host of changes that tobacco companies have made over the years to render smoking easier to start and harder to quit. For instance, vents and other filter designs make the smoke feel less harsh even though it does the same damage. A bigger, quicker

When most Americans hear the words “public lands” they think of our national parks or national forests or perhaps even our national wildlife refuges. Yet, what might surprise them is that the largest category of our publicly owned land is administered by a little-known agency, the Bureau of Land Management, with a big mandate ― taking care of 400,000 square miles, an area nearly four times the siz

“You say you want a revolution,” the Beatles sang in a song that was released in the year that students across Europe famously took to the streets to protest against the established order.It may not quite be 1968 all over again. Even so, there is a whiff of youthful rebellion in the air. Young people across the region have been staging angry demonstrations in the last few months as government aust