Where France goes, other euro nations may follow; No Greek deal a 'threat to euro'; How yoga can wreck your body; 'World's worst hotel' is a hit

1 Where France goes, other euro nations may follow (Stephanie Flanders on BBC) On almost every economic measure you could mention, France is the "median" country of the eurozone - the nation in the middle. After more than four years of financial crisis, the "average" eurozone country is no longer triple A.

Economists at Credit Suisse make the point in a recent report. They look at the average levels of government debt, the budget deficit, economic growth, inflation and the current account since the start of the century, for every eurozone economy as a share of GDP. They then consider how far they are, in absolute terms - in either direction - from the eurozone average. On nearly all of these measures, France has been the country closest to the mean.

When it comes to the current account balance - the gap between what the country buys from the rest of the world and what it sells - you can see that both Greece and Portugal have been outliers for a long time, borrowing a lot more from the rest of the world than the average eurozone economy. The Netherlands and, to a lesser extent, Germany, have been exceptional in the other direction. They have consistently sold a great deal more to the rest of the world than they bought. In this and many other respects, France has been almost exactly average.

The Moody's decision may not matter very much to the French government's cost of borrowing on world markets - at least in the short run. In the grand scheme of things, it may not matter very much at all, given how many other countries have also now lost their triple A. But it does underscore that basic reality, both economic and political: Where France goes, the rest of the monetary union is likely to follow.

2 No Greek deal a ‘threat to euro’ (BBC) The failure of eurozone ministers to reach a deal to give Greece its latest bailout payment threatens the whole bloc, leaders have said. Following nearly 12 hours of talks in Brussels, the Eurogroup said it needed more time for technical work. Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras said: "It's not only the future of our country, but the stability of the entire eurozone [that is at stake]." Greece needs the next tranche of its second bailout worth 130bn euros ($166bn) to avoid insolvency. 

The eurozone "would be threatened if we did not reach" a deal, French Finance Minister Pierre Moscovici said, before adding that "we are very close to a deal." The eurozone finance ministers have been considering ways of reducing Greece's public debt, which is projected to rise to 189% of gross domestic product (GDP) by next year. "We believe that, eventually, eurozone leaders will agree on a deal to cut Greek debt substantially," said Martin Koehring of the Economist Intelligence Unit. The country's bailout programme aims to get debt down to 120% of GDP by 2020.

3 How yoga can wreck your body (William J Broad in The New York Times) On a cold Saturday in early 2009, Glenn Black, a yoga teacher of nearly four decades, whose devoted clientele includes a number of celebrities and prominent gurus, was giving a master class at Sankalpah Yoga in Manhattan. Black is, in many ways, a classic yogi: he studied in Pune, India, at the institute founded by the legendary BKS Iyengar, and spent years in solitude and meditation. He is known for his rigor and his down-to-earth style. But this was not why I sought him out: Black, I’d been told, was the person to speak with if you wanted to know not about the virtues of yoga but rather about the damage it could do. Many of his regular clients came to him for bodywork or rehabilitation following yoga injuries.

According to Black, a number of factors have converged to heighten the risk of practicing yoga. The biggest is the demographic shift in those who study it. Indian practitioners of yoga typically squatted and sat cross-legged in daily life, and yoga poses, or asanas, were an outgrowth of these postures. Now urbanites who sit in chairs all day walk into a studio a couple of times a week and strain to twist themselves into ever-more-difficult postures despite their lack of flexibility and other physical problems.

Many come to yoga as a gentle alternative to vigorous sports or for rehabilitation for injuries. But yoga’s exploding popularity — the number of Americans doing yoga has risen from about 4 million in 2001 to what some estimate to be as many as 20 million in 2011 — means that there is now an abundance of studios where many teachers lack the deeper training necessary to recognize when students are headed toward injury.

“Today many schools of yoga are just about pushing people,” Black said. “You can’t believe what’s going on — teachers jumping on people, pushing and pulling and saying, ‘You should be able to do this by now.’ It has to do with their egos.” When yoga teachers come to him for bodywork after suffering major traumas, Black tells them, “Don’t do yoga.”

5 ‘World’s worst hotel’ is a hit (The Telegraph) The small rooms are said to be filthy and the beer watered down. Such complaints are just a sample of those levelled at Amsterdam's Hans Brinker Budget Hotel, a contender for the world's worst. The hotel's saving grace is that its honest marketing policy leaves travellers looking for cheap digs in no doubt of the no-star experience on offer. 

But in a difficult economy, when hotel owners fear a negative review on a site such as TripAdvisor can make or break them, business for the Hans Brinker is booming. In recent years, self-deprecating adverts produced by the agency KesselsKramer have struck a chord with the hotel's market - backpackers who can see the funny side of spending €25 on a room that, if they party hard enough, they may never have to sleep in. Posters show images of microscopic beasts, dirty linen and carpets charred with cigarette ash, while the hotel website boasts levels of comfort "comparable to a minimum-security prison".

Environmentally-friendly features include sinks serving as showers (the "suite" is the only room with a bath), stairs in lieu of a lift and curtains that double as not-so-fresh towels. Reviews left on hotel booking websites tend to be mixed. One from October described the hotel as having a "fantastic location", while another likened the accommodation to "prison quarters" and stated, "unfortunately most of the reviews were completely true."

Fiscal cliff is 'substantial threat'; Japan trade deficit worst in 30 years; Brazil's corn clout; College of future: Come one, come all; India IT law raises eyebrows

1 Fiscal cliff is ‘substantial threat’ (BBC) The chairman of the US Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke, has warned that the fiscal cliff poses a "substantial threat" to economic recovery. Congress and the White House are trying to strike a deal to weaken the impact of tax increases and spending cuts due to be implemented in January. Mr Bernanke said politicians "will need to protect the economy from the full brunt of the severe fiscal tightening". He also said economic growth was disappointingly slow.

It is estimated that the effects of the fiscal cliff of spending cuts and the expiry of temporary tax breaks will take at least $500bn out of the economy, threatening to push it into recession. The Obama administration and Congress are also negotiating an agreement to reduce the government's huge budget deficit, which has exceeded $1tn for a fourth consecutive year. Ben Bernanke commented in his speech at the Economic Club of New York that "the deficit is on an unsustainable path".

2 Japan trade deficit worst in 30 years (The Wall Street Journal) Government figures showed Japan posted its worst trade deficit for October in more than 30 years as exports to China continued to slump amid territorial tensions between Tokyo and Beijing, stoking concerns that Japan is headed for a recession. 

The 549 billion yen ($6.7 billion) deficit in the trade of goods, the fourth straight month of shortfall, was much bigger than the ¥360 billion shortfall expected by economists surveyed by Dow Jones Newswires and the Nikkei. Exports to China were down 11.6% on year, compared with a 14.1% drop in September.

3 Brazil’s corn clout (Howard Schneider in The Washington Post) As US cornfields withered in drought conditions last summer, Brazil’s once empty Cerrado region produced a bumper crop of the grain, helping feed livestock on US farms and ease a drought-related spike in prices. US imports of Brazilian corn were small by world standards. But they are rising fast, and they mark just one element of the increasingly complex and sometimes contentious relations between the world's agricultural superpower and its fast-growing competitor amid shifts in the global economy.

Starting at zero in 2010, Brazilian corn exports to the US are on pace to exceed $10m this year and are bound to rise as farmers expand planting and more corn is funnelled to nonfood uses, such as ethanol production. Brazil is expected next year to dethrone the US as the world's largest producer of soybeans. With so much land available for cultivation, that status will probably become permanent.

Despite what is described as intense co-operation between the two governments, there is a developing sense of competition as well. Brazil challenged US cotton programmes in the World Trade Organisation in 2009, arguing that US government support for domestic growers held down world prices and hurt Brazil's cotton farmers. Brazil won, and it now receives about $17m in monthly payments from US taxpayers as a result – money being used to advance the Brazilian cotton industry with research on best practices, pest management and other issues.

Brazilian farmers remain focused on soybeans and the export potential to China. The country does not expect to displace the US as the world's top corn producer, said Elisio Contini, head of strategic studies at the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corp. But it does expect to play an increasing role in agriculture. Farmers say the major constraint – a notoriously slow and expensive transport network – can be fixed over time.

4 College of future: Come one, come all (Tamar Lewin in The New York Times) Massive open online courses, or MOOCs, harness the power of their huge enrollments to teach in new ways, applying crowd-sourcing technology to discussion forums and grading and enabling professors to use online lectures and reserve on-campus class time for interaction with students.

The spread of MOOCs is likely to have wide fallout. Lower-tier colleges, already facing resistance over high tuition, may have trouble convincing students that their courses are worth the price. And some experts voice reservations about how online learning can be assessed and warn of the potential for cheating. 

MOOCs first landed in the spotlight last year, when Sebastian Thrun, a Stanford professor, offered a free artificial-intelligence course, attracting 160,000 students in 190 nations. The resulting storm of publicity galvanized elite research universities across the country to begin to open higher education to everyone — with the hope of perhaps, eventually, making money doing so. No one knows just how these massive courses will evolve, but their appeal to a broad audience is unquestioned: retirees in Indiana see them as a route to lifelong learning, students in India as their only lifeline to college-level work. 

5 India IT law raises eyebrows (Margherita Stancati in The Wall Street Journal) The detention of two girls over a message posted on Facebook earlier this week sparked strong responses, raising questions about the right to freedom of expression in India. Several legal experts, activists and politicians say that at the heart of the problem is a controversial law: Section 66a of India’s Information Technology Act, under which the two girls were charged.

Police detained and charged both girls on Monday after one of them, 21-year-old Shahien Dhada, posted a message that questioned why Mumbai effectively shut down for a day for the funeral of Hindu right-wing leader Bal Thackeray. The other girl clicked the “Like” button under her comment.

Both were released on bail later in the day. Section 66a, which was included in India’s IT act through a 2008 amendment, says that offensive information shared through a computer or other devices can be considered a crime. But what constitutes offensive content under the act is unclear, critics say. The Facebook case is the latest example of how even mild criticism on social media is landing people in jail under Section 66a, critics add.

India’s Constitution upholds the right to freedom of speech, but with conditions: Article 19 (2) says that “reasonable restrictions” to this right apply, including in the interests of national security and public order. As a result, free speech in India is not an absolute right. Some experts say Section 66a of the IT Act is especially problematic for freedom of speech. “It has the potential of becoming a dangerous tool that can be used to gag legitimate free speech online,” says Pavan Duggal, a lawyer who specializes in cybercrime.

French rating downgraded; More than a juicy CIA scandal; Rights groups flay 'killer robots; Teenage boys and muscular obsession

1 French rating downgraded (BBC) Credit ratings agency Moody's has downgraded France from its top rating. The country's debt has been reduced from AAA to AA1 and has kept its negative outlook, meaning it could be downgraded again. Moody's blamed the risk of a Greek exit from the euro, stalled economic growth and the chances that France will have to contribute to bailing out other countries.

Moody's said the primary reason for the downgrade had been France's "persistent structural economic challenges" and the threats they pose to economic growth and the government's coffers. "These include the rigidities in labour and services markets, and low levels of innovation, which continue to drive France's gradual but sustained loss of competitiveness and the gradual erosion of its export-oriented industrial base," Moody's said.

2 More than a juicy CIA scandal (Eric S Margolis in Khaleej Times) The US has lost one war and is fast losing a second, yet what really upsets Americans seems to be a juicy sexual scandal; beautiful female general groupies; US brass in Tampa, Florida, living like potentates; the FBI investigating CIA; and the fall of America’s most important intelligence official, former top general, David Petraeus. What business has FBI in monitoring extra-marital escapades of the military brass — provided they are not bedding Chinese or Russian agents?

UN officials assert that some 500,000 Iraqis, mostly children, died due to the US-led blockade under Saddam Hussein. At least another half million died from the US 2003 invasion until 2011. Cost of Iraq: $1.6 to 2.4 trillion; almost 5,000 US soldiers dead, 35,000 seriously wounded.  Some triumph. Petraeus was then sent to work his magic in Afghanistan before returning to Washington to head the CIA.  

Cost of Afghan War: $1 trillion and rising. Afghan dead unknown. US military, some 2,100 dead, 17,000 wounded. The US military has clearly been fought to a standstill in Afghanistan by medieval tribesmen with AK-47’s, reconfirming its name — “graveyard of empires”. As for the military genius of Gen. Petraeus, recall the famous cry of King Pyrrhus, “one more such victory and we are lost”.

3 Rights groups flay ‘killer robots’ (Richard Norton-Taylor in The Guardian) The use of autonomous drones – "killer robots" that could fire weapons with no human control – must be prohibited by international treaty, human rights campaigners and lawyers have said. Weapons being developed that could choose and attack targets without human intervention should be pre-emptively banned because of the danger they would pose to civilians in armed conflict, they said.

Losing Humanity: the Case Against Killer Robots, a 50-page report by Human Rights Watch (HRW), warns that fully autonomous weapons would lack human qualities that provide legal and non-legal checks on the killing of civilians. The New York-based campaign group said its report was based on extensive research into the law, technology, and ethics of the proposed weapons.

Such weapons do not yet exist, and major powers, including the US, have not decided to deploy them. But precursors are already being developed. The US, China, Germany, Israel, South Korea, Russia and Britain are engaged in researching and developing such weapons. Many experts predict that full autonomy for weapons could be achieved in 20-30 years or sooner, according to the report.

4 Teenage boys and muscular obsession (Douglas Quenqua in The New York Times) It is not just girls these days who are consumed by an unattainable body image. Pediatricians are starting to sound alarm bells about boys who take unhealthy measures to try to achieve Charles Atlas bodies that only genetics can truly confer. Whether it is long hours in the gym, allowances blown on expensive supplements or even risky experiments with illegal steroids, the price American boys are willing to pay for the perfect body appears to be on the rise.

In a study in the journal Pediatrics, more than 40% of boys in middle school and high school said they regularly exercised with the goal of increasing muscle mass. Thirty-eight percent said they used protein supplements, and nearly 6% said they had experimented with steroids. Over all, 90% of the 1,307 boys in the survey said they exercised at least occasionally to add muscle.

While college-age men have long been interested in bodybuilding, pediatricians say they have been surprised to find that now even middle school boys are so absorbed with building muscles. And their youth adds an element of risk. Just as girls who count every calorie in an effort to be thin may do themselves more harm than good, boys who chase an illusory image of manhood may end up stunting their development, doctors say, particularly when they turn to supplements — or, worse, steroids — to supercharge their results.

Gaza versus Goliath; A new political order; Must-have job skills in 2013; SA democracy devalued; Drones and winemaking

1 Gaza versus Goliath (Irfan Husain in Dawn) Today, battles – especially completely asymmetrical ones – are waged as much on TV screens as they are on the battlefield. Given this development, even pro-Israeli leaders in the West are advising against a ground invasion as this would cost Tel Aviv dearly in the media war. Chemi Shalev, writing in Haaretz, the Israeli daily, captures this reality well: “Television cameras get closer to the battle, usually from the Palestinian angle, and the view of the campaign shifts to the side that is dramatically outmanned and outgunned. From this point on, it is only a matter of time before even Hamas terrorists are suddenly cast as valiant freedom-fighters opposing the forces of darkness, the oppressed fighting off the oppressors.”

As more time passes, the more difficult it becomes to reach a negotiated peace. Israel’s unending construction activity on occupied land has made a two-state solution all but impossible. However, given the rapidly shifting political alignments in the region, Israel’s 45-year old occupation of the West Bank may soon be more vigorously challenged than it has been thus far. Another truth that policy-makers in Tel Aviv and Washington will have to come to terms with is that as popular governments are elected in Arab countries, leaders will be more responsive to their people. And the vast majority of Arabs are fed up of Israeli oppression in the West Bank, and its siege of Gaza.

For Obama, this is a lose-lose situation. Given the open-ended support Israel has traditionally received from Washington, he cannot withhold his public blessings from a ground assault on Gaza. Yet he knows that by refusing to condemn the relentless pounding of a virtually defenceless people, he risks alienating newly elected Arab governments. If Washington wishes to retain some influence in the new Middle East that’s being shaped today, it will have to rethink its lock-step alliance with Israel. And Israel, too, will need to rethink its policy of continuing its colonial policies in the West Bank, as well as its siege of Gaza.

2 A new political order (Jonathan Power in Khaleej Times) The rubber-stamp congress of China’s communist party is over. There have not been any surprises. Now, for the results of the leadership battle: The script has been written, the actors are in place and the show goes on. I suspect most Chinese don’t care a damn about the details. What the masses see is the momentum of the wave of economic progress which seems to lift most boats, albeit at the price of a widening in income distribution and the most destitute being left behind. But if you are a villager, do you care much if middle-class town dwellers have a new car if you can buy a motorbike, a fridge, better furniture and a TV?

However, a growing middle class — many of them highly educated — does care. It doesn’t like being told what to do by edict. As time passes and their numbers swell, the system will be increasingly questioned. The big secret worry for the leadership must be that the communist party will just collapse one day as it did in Russia and Eastern Europe, an event which hardly any western politician, academic or journalist predicted.

And if it does, is there any kind of governing system China could put in its place? Russia and its satellites had western democracy to turn to. But China is far away and it only experienced democracy for a brief time under the nationalist leader, Sun Yat-sen, following the abdication of the last emperor.

3 Must-have job skills in 2013 (Ruth Mantell in The Wall Street Journal) Even as employers remain cautious next year about every dollar spent on employees, they'll also want workers to show greater skills and results. For employees who want to get ahead, basic competency won't be enough. They must have these skills: (a) Clear communications Whatever their level, communication is key for workers to advance. As office conversations increasingly move online, some workers are losing or never developing the ability to give a presentation, for example. Others may be unable to write coherently for longer than, say, 140 characters. 

(b) Personal branding Human-resources executives scour blogs, Twitter and professional networking sites such as LinkedIn when researching candidates, and it's important that they like what they find. Workers also should make sure their personal brand is attractive and reflects well on employers. (c)  Flexibility The ability to quickly respond to an employer's changing needs will be important next year as organizations try to respond nimbly to customers.

(d) Productivity improvement In 2013, workers should find new ways to increase productivity, experts say. Executives are looking for a 20% improvement in employee performance next year from current levels, according to a recent survey by the Corporate Executive Board, an Arlington, Va., business research and advisory firm.


4 SA democracy devalued (Justice Malala in Johannesburg Times) The Sunday Times reported yesterday - with depressing familiarity - that South Africa’s top prosecutors were "overwhelmingly in favour of pressing ahead" with the corruption case against Jacob Zuma in 2009 despite the emergence of tapes allegedly showing a conspiracy against him. But the NPA was forced to drop charges and Zuma's lawyer has defied court orders to produce the tapes that purportedly exonerate him or prove his case.

The courts are being shown the finger. If the highest office in the land can do this, what is the chance that our children will not be doing it in the future? After all, if the president can break the law then the rest of us might as well do so too. It is not just our institutions that are being devalued. It is happening across the board, with many of our politicians acting in a way that one wonders if they have any regard for the value of the freedoms we enjoy. What we have built in 18 years is of great value.

5 End of a parochial politician (Khaleej Times) While India’s pre-Independence leaders, who had battled a mighty colonial power and won Independence in 1947 brought together a disparate, multi-cultural society comprising millions of people under a common umbrella, a later generation of public men were not so concerned about such niceties. One such man was Bal Thackeray, who in the early 1960s set up the Shiv Sena, which was unabashedly parochial and proudly divisive in its political strategy to win support from the Marathi-speaking people in Bombay, once the most cosmopolitan city in Asia.

The cartoonist-turned-politician, who passed away at the age of 86, was initially used as a tool by the Congress, which wanted him to destroy the leftist stranglehold on the city’s trade unions. But as the Shiv Sena leader tasted blood with his initial foray into politics, he soon turned on his patrons and launched a divisive hate campaign against different communities: initially it was the Gujarati trading community in Bombay, followed by south Indians and later north Indians. But more dangerously, as the Shiv Sena acquired clout, winning the civic elections in the metropolis, he changed gears in the 1980s, projecting himself as a protector of Hindus and targeting Muslims.

A decade later, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which was desperately seeking allies across the country in its bid to form a government at the centre, stitched up an alliance with the Shiv Sena, and began ratcheting communal tensions over the Babri Masjid issue. The results of that discordant campaign were devastating and shattered India’s secular fabric. In his stormy public career spanning nearly 50 years, Thackeray fiercely retained his antediluvian and ultra-orthodox political, social and economic views. He was initially opposed to dynastic politics, but then anointed his son — besides even grooming his grandson — as the Sena chief. 

6 Drones and winemaking (Zoe Kleinman on BBC) Precision viticulture (PV) is the gathering of all sorts of data about a vineyard, from sunny spots to soil humidity, which is then mapped and analysed in order to grow the best grapes possible on the optimum parts of the site. The first step is to get aerial images of the entire vineyard. 

These days, the equipment is a little more sophisticated – some use a Parrot AR Drone controlled by an iPad and captures both stills photographs and video on two cameras - one on the front and one facing downwards. The technology is able to help winemakers track seasonal fluctuations year-on-year. The aerial photography forms the basis of a vineyard map, against which other data such as soil sample results can be plotted and GPS coordinates for the optimum areas for grape growing can be identified.

Double-dip recession in 17 eurozone nations; How shale gas will reshape US' role; The new Japanese worker is Chinese

1 Double-dip recession in 17eurozone nations (Larry Elliott & Josephine Moulds in The Guardian) The head of the European Central Bank has warned that time is running out to resolve the crisis in the eurozone as the latest figures showed the 17 nations of the single currency have slid into a double-dip recession. With financial markets convinced that even worse data will emerge over the winter, Mario Draghi urged policy makers to take full advantage of the breathing space won by the ECB when it announced in the summer it would buy unlimited amounts of government bonds from troubled euro zone countries.

Brussels announced that the euro zone was officially back in recession after a 0.1% fall in output in the third quarter. The decline followed a 0.2% drop in gross domestic product in the second quarter. Christine Lagarde, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund announced that she was cutting short a visit to Asia in order to hold more talks with European policy makers about how to end the crisis.

Greece, where the economy shrank at an annual rate of almost 8% in the third quarter, is pressing George Osborne for details of Greek citizens who have moved funds into HSBC accounts in the tax haven of Jersey. Germany and France - the two biggest economies in the eurozone - posted modest growth of 0.2% in the third quarter, but this was more than offset by the recession spreading northwards from the countries on the single currency's southern periphery.

2 How shale gas will reshape US’ role (Julian Borger & Larry Elliott in The Guardian) US reliance on the Gulf for its oil – and its consequent need to maintain a dominant presence in the Middle East to keep the oil flowing – has been one of the constants of the post-1945 status quo. That could be turned on its head.  It's been dubbed "the homecoming". Cheap energy is being seen as the dawn of a new golden age for the world's biggest economy.

The reason is simple. The US is the home to vast shale oil and gas deposits made commercially viable by improvements to a 200-year-old technique called fracking and by the relentlessly high cost of crude. Professor Dieter Helm, an energy expert at Oxford University, said: "In the US, shale gas didn't exist in 2004. Now it represents 30% of the market."

Looming self-sufficiency in energy has several economic benefits to the US. One is the direct impact on production and employment in the sector, with Barack Obama noting in this year's state of the union speech that fracking was likely to support 600,000 jobs by the end of the decade and that the US now had enough gas to keep it supplied for the next 100 years if current consumption patterns were maintained.

3 The new Japanese worker is Chinese (Alexandra Harney in The New York Times) These days Japan’s newsstands are filled with shrill, hyperbolic and sometimes nationalistic titles about China. “The China Risk.” “The End of China.” “China: Withdraw or Stay the Course.” Such headlines reflect the anxiety of a declining nation that fears its rising neighbor.

And yet, without debate or comment, Japan is opening its arms to Chinese immigrants as never before, relying on Chinese workers to fill jobs once reserved for locals, especially in the service sector. No one in Tokyo seems surprised anymore to hear a Chinese accent or see a Chinese name on the name tags of waiters or convenience-store clerks. Among Japan’s small foreign population, there are now more Chinese — 674,879 as of last year — than people from any other country. That’s about 10 times as many Chinese as were here in 1984, according to the Ministry of Justice.

The number of foreign workers in Japan remains small: They account for less than one percent of all workers. But the changing composition of the foreign workforce reveals a subtle evolution in Japan’s labor market and popular attitudes. Most Chinese workers come through the back door, as exchange students or under vocational training programs.

Japanese companies say they are hiring more foreigners, particularly Chinese, to bring their practices closer to international norms and cultivate employees who understand both the Japanese and Chinese markets. Hiring foreigners can help keep down costs, not only for stores and restaurants in cities like Tokyo, but also for manufacturers in the automotive and electronics sectors. If Japanese customers are now willing to accept more foreigners working for retailers and in restaurants, why not in other service roles, like nursing and elderly care?

A Japanese journalist friend argues that Japan has been able to allow more foreigners in because it hasn’t openly debated its immigration policy. A frank discussion would only awaken immigration’s opponents, he says. But it may be time to face the issue squarely. A country where almost one-quarter of the population is over 65 and the workforce has been shrinking since 1998 must do more than open its back door to part-time foreign workers. It should throw open the front door and maybe even a few windows. Japan needs to give more foreign workers more reasons to build their lives here.