Global warming danger zone

The Japanese general public's interest in the global warming issue has been sagging of late, and few LDP government leaders appear ready to try to prop it up.

Are we all blinded by our sense of beauty?

Are we all blinded by our sense of beauty?

by Stuart Munro

Sophie Calle is an enigma. She is an artist, writer, photographer and filmmaker yet doesn’t work exclusively in any of these areas. She has become famous for her work in photography but her objects and later films have drawn equal attention — work that ...

January 2013
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Jan 31, 2013

Tesla chief offers to help Boeing end Dreamliner nightmare

Tech entrepreneur Elon Musk, founder of the electric carmaker Tesla and aeronautics firm SpaceX, has offered to help Boeing fix the apparent problems with the batteries in its grounded 787 Dreamliner. Spokeswomen from both of Musk’s firms confirmed that he has reached out to ...

'Beauties of the Late Edo and Meiji Periods'

Jan 31, 2013

'Beauties of the Late Edo and Meiji Periods'

by Tomohiro Osaki

Ukiyo-e “pictures of the Floating World” have traditionally included paintings and woodblock prints of landscapes, folk tales, kabuki actors and beautiful women. This exhibition focuses on women during the period following the fall of the Tokugawa shogunate in 1868. Under the Meiji government, the ...

Schools have knack for healthy meals

Jan 31, 2013

Schools have knack for healthy meals

by Chico Harlan

In Japan, school lunch means a regular meal, not one that harms your health. The food is grown locally and almost never frozen. There’s no mystery behind the meat. From time to time, parents even call up with an unusual question: Can they get ...

Jan 31, 2013

Debris removal to start in former no-go zone

Work to remove debris left by the 2011 earthquake and tsunami will begin in places previously included in the no-go zone around the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant, the Environment Ministry said. The first such work will start Friday in the Tsukabara and Oi ...

Jan 31, 2013

Local economies show signs of bottoming out

Regional economies have “shown partial signs of having bottomed out” on the back of the yen’s recent depreciation and rising stock prices, the Finance Ministry said Wednesday. Although eight of 11 regions, excluding Hokkaido, Okinawa and quake-hit Tohoku, downgraded their assessments of the economy ...

Jan 31, 2013

Canon net profit fell 9.7% last year

Canon Inc. said Wednesday its group net profit for the business year that ended in December dropped 9.7 percent to ¥224.56 billion due to the global economic slowdown, the strong yen and weakening demand in China. It said its consolidated operating profit fell 14.3 ...

Jan 31, 2013

F-35 role may face arms export ban

Japan’s planned participation in the production of the F-35 fighter jet could be in violation of its arms export ban, government officials said. The government will continue to support the efforts of Japanese companies to participate in the project, the officials said Tuesday. Some ...

Jan 31, 2013

Smartphones lift DoCoMo earnings

NTT DoCoMo Inc. said Wednesday its group net profit in the April-December period rose 5.5 percent from a year earlier to ¥416.49 billion, helped by increased revenue from data communications services amid the growing popularity of smartphones. It reported a consolidated operating profit of ...

Jan 31, 2013

Cops hunt Marikana miners in video

Footage shown on British television has reignited allegations that South African police did not act wholly in self-defense when they fatally shot 34 miners during an illegal pay strike last year. Channel 4 News this week broadcast cellphone footage of police officers trailing fleeing ...

Jan 31, 2013

Ukraine journalist's killer gets life

A Ukrainian court on Tuesday sentenced a former senior Interior Ministry official to life in prison for strangling critical journalist Georgy Gongadze in 2000, the highest-profile criminal case in the country’s post-Soviet history. Olexiy Pukach, the former head of external surveillance at the Ukrainian ...

Jan 31, 2013

Games bid support at 73%: poll of 400

Support among Tokyo residents for hosting the 2020 Summer Olympics has increased to 73 percent from 66 percent, the bid committee said Wednesday, marking the first time backing has topped 70 percent. Tokyo learned when it missed out on hosting the 2016 Olympics that ...

Jan 31, 2013

Musicians' bodies dumped in well

Mexican authorities are investigating why a band that performed love songs was kidnapped and killed by gunmen, who dumped their bodies in a well in the drug cartel-infested north. The killings underscored yet again the pervasiveness of Mexico’s grisly drug violence, which has claimed ...

Jan 31, 2013

Israel first to boycott U.N. rights review

Israel on Tuesday became the first country to boycott a periodic review of its practices by the U.N. Human Rights Council, citing what it called the body’s strong bias against it. Israeli representatives did not attend the session of the 47-member council in Geneva, ...

Jan 31, 2013

Zimbabwe has just $217 in the bank

After paying public workers’ salaries last week, the balance in cash-strapped Zimbabwe government’s public account stood at just $217, Finance Minister Tendai Biti said Tuesday. “Last week, when we paid civil servants, there was $217 (left) in government coffers,” Biti told journalists in the ...