A Glimpse of the World: Slurring Japan Finance Minister Only Latest Panic Casualty

Howard W. French is an associate professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, where he began teaching in September 2008. From 1986 to 2008, Howard was a reporter for The New York Times, and 18 of those years, from 1990 to 2008, were spent working overseas... read more

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A Continent for the Taking

Africa first captivated New York Times journalist Howard W. French more than twenty-five years ago, but his knowledge of and passion for the continent has the depth of a lifetime association. His experiences there awakened him as nothing before to… read more

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Slurring Japan Finance Minister Only Latest Panic Casualty (Gawker)

February 17, 2009 10:19 AM

Japan’s finance minister resigned over this video of him sleeping and slurring at a G-7 meeting in Rome. If he was drunk, he wouldn’t be the first to buckle under economic stress.

The minister, for the record, denies being intoxicated. He blamed his behavior on fatigue and a cocktail of medications. Either way, the intense pressure of trying to rescue a national economy from a global financial meltdown got to Shoichi Nakagawa somehow.

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Howard W. French (http://www.howardwfrench.com)