Word: diets
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Consider Tsuyoshi Yamaguchi, an independent Diet member elected in 2000 on a reformist platform. Instead of blasting his name from a noisy sound truck, he had shown a populist touch by riding a bicycle door-to-door soliciting votes. Now a $628 million, 68-km highway is on the drawing board, slated to slice through his home district, creating hundreds of jobs and funneling millions of dollars into rural Hyogo prefecture. It's one of thousands of wasteful highway projects?known as roads to nowhere?that are gradually transforming Japan into a giant parking lot, causing the national deficit...
...highway construction projects, Koizumi actually won approval to privatize the state-run companies that oversee road building. But members of the LDP, pushed by their construction company patrons, demanded assurances that the fate of each of the more than 2,000 proposed projects will be voted on by the Diet, one by one, which means that most of these roads to nowhere will be quid pro quo'd into existence. "This is his most critical moment," says political analyst Minoru Morita. "He has to compromise with his opponents in order to survive." But every compromise amounts to a nail...
...most positions. Koizumi ignored that, a move that particularly irritated the most powerful faction, headed by former Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto. As a result, the factions, supportive as they are of lucrative local projects and pricey bank bailouts, have fought back and continue trying to cement the loyalty of Diet members by promising to keep the gravy train running. Koizumi himself, though once a member of the second largest faction, has always been a lone operator. Never good at building parliamentary alliances, he lacks the power base to vote-trade his agenda through the Diet, leaving him in the position...
...course the best source of any vitamin is a healthy diet. For those of us who still don't eat our beans and vegetables, most multivitamins contain the recommended daily folic-acid dose of 400 micrograms. (Eating four slices of enriched bread gives you the equivalent of roughly 100 micrograms.) There is no risk of overdose, although high levels of folic acid can mask the signs of pernicious anemia in people who have developed the disorder. Folic acid by itself may not keep the doctor away, but there's no harm trying...
...riding on DoCoMo's global ambitions. "Our mobile-phone technology is ahead of the rest of the world?for now," says Hiroyuki Arai, a member of Japan's Diet and director of the parliament's telecom policymaking committee. "DoCoMo is our flag bearer. If the company takes its time getting into the global arena, we will lose our lead to American or other foreign companies. Without that kind of commitment from Japanese companies, our economy will never recover." That's drama a mere television show will be hard-pressed to match...