Word: interestingly
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...Foreign interest in learning Japanese is stronger today than it was in the so-called bubble years when Japan's economy was a more dominating force. In 2006, nearly 3 million people worldwide studied Japanese as a foreign language, triple the number who did in 1990, according to government statistics. "Foreigners used to learn Japanese for career reasons," says Tsutomu Sugiura, an adviser for the Marubeni Research Institute in Tokyo. "But today they learn because they are interested in Japanese culture." To help spread Japanese, the Japan Foundation, the nation's rough equivalent to the British Council or Germany...
...dwindling birth rate. Japan is running out of workers. To fill its factories and care for a graying population, the Asian nation will need to import ever greater numbers of laborers from abroad. What better way to lure skilled immigrants to Japan - ones who might be just as interested in moving to the U.S. or Australia - than piquing their interest in all things Japanese...
Still, more needs to be done. Europe is not an island, and even judged by the narrowest tests of self-interest, it has an abiding need to ensure that its neighbors can savor the same peace and prosperity that Europeans now enjoy. From that logic of geography should flow two pressing priorities of European strategic policy: closer engagement with Russia and with Turkey. Both nations feel aggrieved at their treatment by Europe, Russia because (in breach of promises made in the early 1990s) NATO was extended not just to the borders of the old Soviet Union but actually inside them...
Layaway programs--plans with roots in the Great Depression--are back at Sears, Kmart and TJ Maxx. Merchandise stays at the store as people pay it off little by little, interest-free. No credit card required. Tired of dry-cleaning bills? Ann Taylor Loft promotes the fact that most of its clothes are now washable. And if you suffer buyer's remorse, more than half of retailers say their holiday return policies will be more lenient than usual, up from 35% who said so last year, according to NRF's return-fraud survey...
...general, I consider myself an optimist. Really, I do. But this Dartmouth team, in all its absurd awfulness, has rocked my faith in humanity and in the Hobbesian principle that the first law of human nature is self-interest...