AP A car bomb exploded outside a mosque Sunday, killing at least 37 people and wounding another 141 in a mostly Shiite Muslim neighborhood in the southern Pakistan city of Karachi — the third mass-casualty attack on the minority sect in the country this ...
It's a dangerous, unpredictable world. Twice in January Chinese warships in the East China Sea challenged Japan's Maritime Self Defense Forces patrols in a manner deemed threatening. And on Feb. 12 came North Korea's nuclear test.
Here's an open secret: Japanese men have a bad international reputation on the romance front.
SELLING WOMEN: Prostitution, Markets and the Household in Early Modern Japan, by Amy Stanley. University of California Press, 2012, 282 pp., $49.95 (hardcover) In the vast cultural landscape, Japan fascinates the mainstream with manga and anime, the martial arts, Zen and kimono. Of course, ...
Kenta Maeda shook off worries about his form with five shutout innings as Japan beat China 5-2 in first-round Pool A of the World Baseball Classic on Sunday at Fukuoka Dome. Japan improved to 2-0 following a tough win over Brazil in Saturday evening’s ...
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The Supreme Court's Grand Bench will examine two cases that question whether a Civil Code stipulation limiting inheritance rights of children born out of wedlock infringes on the Constitution, which guarantees equality for all under the law.
Delivering a key policy speech to the Diet, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe says no country should resort to force to "change the status quo" regarding territorial disputes, in an apparent warning to China.
Haruhiko Kuroda, a strong advocate of aggressive monetary easing, is officially nominated as the next Bank of Japan governor.
Caroline Kennedy, the daughter of the late President John F. Kennedy, is a leading candidate to become the next U.S. ambassador to Japan, two sources say.
Three Chinese maritime surveillance ships sail inside Japanese territorial waters near the disputed Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea on Thursday morning.
The Nuclear Regulation Authority revises its disaster mitigation guidelines compiled in light of the Fukushima crisis by adding criteria for evacuation and other protective actions against radiation exposure.
The arrest of Mexico’s most powerful union leader echoes the hardball tactics of Mexico’s once-imperial presidency while pushing forward an education reform that Enrique Pena Nieto has made a centerpiece of his new administration. Elba Esther Gordillo, known for flashing her Hermes handbags and ...
The Senate confirms Jacob Lew to be Treasury secretary, affirming President Barack Obama's choice of a budget expert at a time when Congress and the White House are at odds over sharp government spending cuts.
Why has Italy's muddled election result spooked global investors so much? Because it raises unsettling questions about the availability of the financial safety net that has kept Europe from catastrophe for the past six months.
A private-sector group led by millionaire Dennis Tito plans to send a middle-aged married couple to Mars and back.
Japan hopes to develop commercially viable technology for exploiting seabed methane hydrate, viewed as a next-generation energy source, by fiscal 2018, according to a draft new basic ocean policy plan made available Wednesday.
Mothers should remember that the responsibility of raising children lies first with each household before making “shameless” demands for more nursery schools, a Suginami Ward Assembly member wrote Feb. 21 in his blog, drawing hundreds of angry comments. Yutaro Tanaka, a member of the ...
The suspect in the Feb. 12 rampage on Guam that left three slain and several others wounded pleads not guilty by reason of mental illness.
About 5 tons of liquid waste containing sodium cyanide leak from a plating factory in Iwate, but the operator says it has retrieved most of the toxic fluid and received no reports of health issues.
The government will demand that South Korea swiftly return two Buddhist statues that were stolen last year from a temple on the Nagasaki Prefecture island of Tsushima.
On an April 2009 visit to the Italian mountain town of Sulmona, Pope Benedict XVI solemnly placed his pallium, the vestment symbolizing his papal authority, on the tomb of Celestine V. The medieval pontiff’s abdication in 1294 had resulted in imprisonment by his successor ...
Rangers pitcher Yu Darvish is sharp in his first outing of the spring.
NTT DoCoMo Inc. is ready to return to investing in phone companies outside Asia after rival Softbank Corp.’s deal to acquire a majority stake in Sprint Nextel Corp. in the U.S., its chief executive officer said. “The acquisition plan of Sprint was quite astonishing ...
By now, the looks, character and history of Gutai, the post-World War II Japanese art movement born in 1954 in Ashiya, between Osaka and Kobe, are familiar to regular viewers of modern-art exhibitions in Japan. Last summer’s “Gutai: The Spirit of an Era,” a ...
Captured half a world away, off the coast of Oman in the Indian Ocean, four Somalis are sent to Tokyo to stand trial for piracy after a failed attempt to hijack an oil tanker. Three have already been convicted by the Tokyo District Court.
Conductor Seiji Ozawa performed Wednesday in public for the first time since ill health forced him to suspend his musical activities last March, conducting a choir of 340 elementary school pupils in Kawasaki. The 77-year-old maestro conducted the singing of a song titled “Hiroi ...
Fisheries minister Yoshimasa Hayashi said Japan will never stop hunting whales despite fierce criticism from other nations and violent clashes at sea with militant conservationists. “I don’t think there will be any kind of an end for whaling by Japan,” he said Tuesday. Hayashi, ...
South Korea has big plans to become a major nuclear energy player, but they are unfolding at a time when the global industry is under intense scrutiny after the 2011 Fukushima disaster. And its ambitions have not been helped by a series of domestic ...
Just over seven years have passed since Toninho Cerezo ended his first glittering reign as Kashima Antlers manager, but after returning to the club for a second stint, the Brazilian is pleased to find that not everything has changed in his absence. Cerezo led ...
In February 2013, there were three events that shook the world: the resignation of the pope, North Korea’s successful test of a nuclear bomb, and the release of Irish/British rock band My Bloody Valentine’s first new album in 22 years. Dispatched with less frequency ...
The government on Wednesday upgraded its basic assessment of the economy for the second straight month, saying industrial output has picked up in February amid expectations that a global economic upturn could perk up exports. “The Japanese economy is bottoming out, while weakness can ...
Tetsuya Utsumi is making an appearance at his second World Baseball Classic, but his role will be a lot more important this time. Although he was on the hill for just three innings, the Yomiuri Giants lefty put up a superb outing on Tuesday ...
Cristiano Ronaldo got the better of Lionel Messi on Tuesday, scoring twice to lead Real Madrid to a 3-1 win at Barcelona and a spot in the Copa del Rey final. After salvaging a 1-1 draw in the first leg, Madrid neutralized Barcelona’s passing ...
The White House is moving toward a major policy shift on Syria that could provide the rebels with equipment such as body armor, armored vehicles and possible military training and could send humanitarian assistance directly to Syria’s opposition political coalition, according to U.S. and ...
Japanese makers’ share of the market for lithium-ion batteries in consumer electronics continued to fall in 2012, widening the gap with their South Korean rivals, who topped the ranking for the first time the previous year. Three Japanese makers — Panasonic Corp., Sony Corp. ...
Rendered as “What We See” in English, the title of this show should perhaps more accurately follow the Japanese one, which would be: “Dream, Reality, Illusion?” “Video” art is now mostly moribund because technology has changed, leaving that form of expression as largely digitized ...
Japan has always produced good pitchers. The country’s first major leaguer, Masanori Murakami, was a pitcher; its second was Hideo Nomo, a right-hander with a strange tornado-style delivery who swept the U.S. up in Nomomania during the summer of 1995 and became the catalyst ...
Sanfrecce Hiroshima were brought back to earth with a thud on Wednesday as the J. League champions crashed to a 2-0 defeat at home to Uzbekistan’s Bunyodkor in their Group G opener in the Asian Champions League. Back in the ACL for the first ...
A Liberal Democratic Party panel signaled Wednesday it would tolerate Japan’s participation in Trans-Pacific Partnership free-trade talks on condition that core national interests are protected. The panel, titled the Research Commission on Regional Diplomatic and Economic Partnership, adopted a resolution requesting that the Abe ...
The U.N. human rights chief declared recently that it was time for a “long overdue” investigation into what she called unparalleled rights abuses in North Korea. The probe, unprecedented in scope, could help establish whether Pyongyang’s leaders are committing crimes against humanity. Navi Pillay’s ...
The rapid spread of vigilante-style community self-defense groups is drawing debate in Mexico after the latest group popped up with suspiciously sophisticated weapons, printed T-shirts and clothing that doesn’t reflect the usual mix of participants. The group appeared this week in Tepalcatepec, in the ...
Sinead O’Connor has chosen to call her latest concerts the Crazy Baldhead Tour. The funny name demonstrates the shaven-headed Irish star’s unadorned honesty. She’s often caricatured for her outspoken views and erratic behavior. Notoriously, she ripped up a photograph of Pope John Paul II ...
Marubeni Corp. is planning the first on-site survey for a geothermal power project in a national park following deregulation last March by the Environment Ministry. The one-year research initiative, starting possibly in May, will use dedicated surveyors to confirm geothermal sources in Daisetsuzan National ...
U.S. authorities revealed Tuesday that they have released hundreds of detained immigrants in recent days to trim expenses ahead of massive automatic budget cuts due to take effect this week. With days to go before the so-called sequester — $85 billion in across-the-board cuts ...
Satellite images show that Iran’s Arak heavy water plant is operational, raising fears that it is trying to produce plutonium for a nuclear bomb, Britain’s Daily Telegraph claimed Tuesday. The newspaper published images on its website that appear to show steam rising from forced ...
She didn’t know the man in the casket, never met him or his family. Yet, Kate Hopkins stood watch over 48-year-old Francisco Carmona’s funeral on a gray, cold day in a Kentucky cemetery. Hopkins joined a group of students, a few county employees and ...
Lexus topped all automotive brands in Consumer Reports magazine’s 2013 brand report card. Japanese automakers again dominated the rankings, taking eight of the top 10 spots. Lexus vehicles are rarely sporty, but they earned the top score of 79 points out of 100 because ...
Virtuoso movie director Nobuhiko Obayashi has created a film that pays homage to Tohoku’s postdisaster recovery in an unusual collaboration with all-girl pop idol group AKB48. The short feature, lasting around an hour, serves as a promotional video for AKB48′s new single “So long!” ...
March means the (eventual) return of nice weather, so you no longer have to bundle up or stay indoors cursing the cold world beyond your apartment. And as the climate warms up, for those in need of more incentive to venture outside, there are ...
Police in the border city of Mexicali say they have seized a powerful improvised cannon used to hurl packets of marijuana across a border fence into California. Police told the Televisa network that the device was made up of a plastic pipe and a ...
Former NBA star Dennis Rodman brought his basketball skills and flamboyant style — tattoos, nose studs and all — to the country with possibly the world’s strictest dress code: North Korea. Arriving in Pyongyang, the American athlete and showman known as “The Worm” became ...
Gaza militants on Tuesday fired a rocket into Israel for the first time in three months, rattling a cross-border truce that has held since Israel’s military offensive against the Hamas-run territory. Israel closed Gaza’s main cargo crossing until further notice, an apparent warning to ...
Heat coach Erik Spoelstra summed up the efforts of LeBron James and Dwyane Wade in three words: “Video game numbers,” he said. Both put up monster stat lines. And the Miami Heat needed them. James scored 40 points and added a career-high 16 assists, ...
Sakura Front, a charity group set up by Japanese living in London, is increasing its activity ahead of the second anniversary of the Great East Japan Earthquake that hit the Tohoku region on March 11, 2011. The group is calling for supporters to wear ...
According to folklore, Europeans have always treated their food with reverence, eating grandma’s slow-cooked stews concocted with farm-fresh ingredients while Americans wolfed down the genetically modified, chemically preserved junk symbolized by burgers and fries. Over the past two weeks, however, Europeans have watched an ...
The Osaka High Court on Tuesday reduced a 20-year prison term for a murderer with Asperger’s syndrome imposed by citizen judges that was four years longer than prosecutors sought. Citing society’s lack of means to handle people with such developmental disorders, the high court ...
J. League clubs got off to a less than stellar start in the 2013 Asian Champions League on Tuesday as 2007 champions Urawa Reds lost 3-0 away to Guangzhou Evergrande while Vegalta Sendai failed to mark their continental debut with a victory, having to ...
Maybe it’s bargain shopping. Maybe it’s the fallout from the strict U.S. security climate. Maybe it’s a sign of China becoming more comfortable with its international role. But as Chinese companies and entrepreneurs move to invest more overseas, they have been drawn increasingly to ...
A Vancouver junior hockey coach has been sentenced to 15 days in jail for tripping a player during a postgame handshake. Martin Tremblay swept out the leg of an opposing player while the teams were going through the typical hockey ritual of lining up ...
Stocks lost further ground Wednesday on concerns over the political turmoil on Italy. The Nikkei 225 closed down 144.84 points at the day’s low of 11,253.97 after diving 263.71 points Tuesday. The Topix slumped 13.05 points to end at 953.72 after losing 13.93 points ...
Mike Krzyzewski said again Tuesday he doesn’t plan to return as U.S. men’s basketball coach after leading the Americans to two Olympic gold medals. Saying “my stance hasn’t changed,” Krzyzewski told ESPN Radio he expects USA Basketball to name a new coach this summer. ...
An exhibition based on the 1945 A-bombing of Nagasaki began Monday in Khartoum to inspire a country hit by a decades-long civil war that killed 2 million people before it ended in 2005. “We want to convey to Sudanese people how Nagasaki recovered from ...
Five-time NBA champion Derek Fisher isn’t planning on his latest stint with the Oklahoma City Thunder being his last chance to play in the league. He has just one goal in mind and he’ll wear a reminder of it on his jersey in every ...
It didn’t take long for Bobby Valentine to move past his year to forget in Boston. Of course, there was a new challenge to help him along the way. Some five months after being fired as manager of the Red Sox, Valentine was introduced ...
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party-led government will adopt new national defense program guidelines by year’s end, replacing those drafted by his predecessor administration, led by the Democratic Party of Japan, amid China’s accelerating moves to modernize its military. The LDP administration will ...
Saudi Arabia has been supplying Syrian rebels battling the regime of President Bashar Assad with arms bought from Croatia, according to The New York Times. Citing unnamed U.S. and Western officials, the newspaper reported late Monday that the Saudi-financed “large purchase of infantry weapons” ...
Worried about horse meat in your beef? Try water buffalo, donkey and goat: South African food scientists said they have found all three in mislabeled foods, including beef burgers, ground beef and sausages. A study by three professors at Stellenbosch University found that 68 ...
A shark possibly over 4 meters long killed a swimmer near a popular New Zealand beach Wednesday, then disappeared after police attempting to save the man fired gunshots at it. Muriwai Beach near Auckland was closed after the fatal attack, one of only a ...
The music industry announced Tuesday the first increase in global sales since 1999, suggesting that the long-awaited rebound against the digital revolution has begun. Sales rose 0.3 percent to $16.5 billion in 2012, according to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), which ...
The Florida Panthers broke out of their power-play slump in a big way. Tomas Kopecky recorded his first career hat trick and Tomas Fleischmann had the go-ahead score for his 100th career goal, lifting the Panthers to a 6-4 win over the Pittsburgh Penguins ...
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un oversaw a live-fire artillery drill aimed at simulating an “actual war,” state media reported a day after South Korea swore in its first female president. “An endless barrage of shells were fired by artillery pieces on ‘enemy positions,’ ...
Web users who illegally share music, movies or TV shows online may soon get warning notices from their service providers that they are violating copyright law. Ignore the notices, and violators could face an Internet slowdown for 48 hours. Those who claim they are ...
The dollar moved on a soft tone mostly below ¥92 in Tokyo trading Wednesday amid risk-aversion prompted by sluggish stocks. At 5 p.m., the dollar was quoted at ¥91.83-83, almost flat from ¥91.80-81 at the same time Tuesday. The euro stood at $1.3093-3095, up ...
Prosecutors sought prison terms of up to 12 years Wednesday for two U.S. sailors charged with raping and injuring a woman in her 20s in Okinawa last October. In the pair’s lay judge trial before the Naha District Court, prosecutors recommended a 12-year sentence ...
Former NBA superstar Dennis Rodman’s colorful tweets from the heart of Stalinist North Korea appear to have upset South Korea’s best known cultural export, the “Gangnam Style” rapper Psy. In one of several tweets since Rodman arrived in Pyongyang on Tuesday with members of ...
A coroner’s investigation has showed that a promising English cricketer had taken cocaine and ecstasy before being hit by a train and killed. The London coroner ruled that Tom Maynard’s death in June was an accident. He was hit by a train and electrocuted ...
The head of Istanbul’s bid for the 2020 Olympics hopes a winning vote coincides with wrestling’s reinstatement. The International Olympic Committee executive board voted this month to drop wrestling from the 2020 Summer Games, but the final decision will be made at the assembly ...
“Madonna del Granduca” is a beloved masterpiece by Italian painter Raffaello Sanzio (1483-1520), known by most as simply Raphael. Described by critics as one of the great Madonna and child paintings, it was a source of inspiration for many generations of painters. As one ...
Fourth-seed Kei Nishikori retired in the first set of the Delray Beach International Tennis Championships on Tuesday due to a nagging left oblique injury. Nishikori, coming off his third career victory at the U.S. National Indoor Championships in Memphis last week, was about to ...
Architect Shigeru Ban is renowned for involving himself in unusual projects, and he has become particularly well-known for his experiments with paper as a cheap and sustainable building material. In response to the 1995 Great Hanshin Earthquake, Ban designed paper temporary shelters for victims. ...
The U.S. Senate Finance Committee on Tuesday voted Tuesday to back Obama nominee Jack Lew as Treasury secretary despite qualms about his reputation as a doctrinaire Democrat and his ties to Wall Street. Senators voted 19-5 in favor of Lew, with several Republicans joining ...
A former Illinois legislator who favors an assault weapons ban captured the Democratic nomination Tuesday in the race to replace disgraced ex-U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., after a campaign dominated by gun control issues in the wake of the Connecticut elementary school massacre. Ex-state ...
A fire broke out at an illegal six-story plastics market in Kolkata early Wednesday morning, killing at least 19 people, Indian police said. The blaze, which started before 4 a.m., was likely caused by a short circuit, said West Bengal fire minister Jived Khan. ...
China’s first aircraft carrier is headed for its permanent base in the northern port of Qingdao, where it will be responsible for operations in waters surrounding Japan and the Korean Peninsula, reports said Wednesday. Speculation has swirled over which base the vessel, christened the ...
The Japan Association of Travel Agents said Wednesday it will start certifying the service qualities of parties handling foreign tourists as part of efforts to boost visitors from abroad, whose numbers have fallen since the 2011 natural and nuclear disasters and recently reignited territorial ...
The agriculture ministry said Wednesday it will raise wholesale prices for five imported wheat varieties by an average of 9.7 percent to ¥54,990 per ton in April, the second rise since October, due to higher international market prices and the yen’s depreciation. The yen’s ...
Canadian universities and colleges welcomed a record 100,000 foreign students in 2012, the government said Tuesday, part of a plan to replace retiring baby boomers in the workforce. The figure is a 60 percent rise in enrollment from 2004. The government is also working ...
Aides to top Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell voiced outrage Tuesday after a left-leaning group suggested he supported China over the United States due to his Taiwan-born wife. McConnell, who faces re-election next year, is married to former Labor Secretary Elaine Chao. She was born ...
A cargo of high-level radioactive waste produced through reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel in Britain arrived Wednesday at a port in Aomori Prefecture for storage. The ship carrying the 28 canisters of vitrified radioactive waste, which left a British port Jan. 9, arrived at ...
The city of Kamakura, Kanagawa Prefecture, is a popular tourist destination that attracts around 19 million visitors a year, many of whom visit from nearby Tokyo. It became increasingly popular during the Edo Period (1603-1867), when pilgrimages to its Buddhist sites became a fashionable ...
The city of Amsterdam said Tuesday it will raise the legal age of prostitutes from 18 to 21 and announced plans to close brothels during the early morning hours in a bid to protect sex workers. “The minimum age for a prostitute is raised ...
Two lawmakers on Wednesday left the small opposition Kokumin Shinto (People’s New Party), which seeks to merge with the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, making party head Shozaburo Jimi its only remaining Diet member. Takeshi Noma of the Lower House and Kazuyuki Hamada of the ...
Egypt’s main opposition coalition said Tuesday it will boycott upcoming parliamentary elections, a decision likely to push the country into a new round of political turmoil and worsen an already troubled economy. The announcement by the liberal, secular National Salvation Front was made in ...
The head of a fishermen’s cooperative in Nago, Okinawa Prefecture, said its members will agree to landfill work necessary for the planned relocation of the Futenma military base to the city’s Henoko coastal area. “We are unable to fish freely in the planned landfill ...
Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ President Nobuyuki Hirano is expected to succeed Katsunori Nagayasu as president of its holding company on April 1, sources said Wednesday. Hirano, 61, will continue to serve as president of the banking unit while Nagayasu, 65, who also serves as ...
U.S. banking giant JPMorgan Chase plans to eliminate 19,000 jobs by the end of 2014 as it seeks to rein in costs, the company said Tuesday in an investor presentation. JPMorgan Chase intends the majority of the cuts — 15,000 — to come from ...
The U.S.-led military coalition in Afghanistan backed off from its claim that Taliban attacks dropped off in 2012, tacitly acknowledging a hole in its widely repeated argument that violence is easing and that the insurgency is in steep decline. In response to inquiries from ...
Radical Salafist Muslims murdered Tunisian opposition leader Chokri Belaid, Interior Minister Ali Larayedh said Tuesday, and though four suspects have been arrested and the killer identified, he is still on the run. The breakthrough comes as Larayedh, named as prime minister-designate, presses efforts to ...
The Japanese and Vietnamese construction industries plan to launch a project to train Vietnamese engineers using Japanese technologies, according to industry officials. The two sides are expected to reach a formal agreement on the project when they meet March 7 in Hanoi at a ...
A robot suit designed to help the disabled and elderly in their daily activities was given a safety certification Wednesday by a quality assurance organization, becoming the world’s first “welfare robot” to be so certified. The Hybrid Assistive Limb, or HAL, robot suit developed ...
Britain is seeking to withhold information about Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko at the forthcoming inquest into his death to avoid damaging trade deals with Moscow, a court was told Tuesday. A preinquest hearing at the Royal Courts of Justice heard that Foreign Secretary William ...
Authorities will urge residents to stay indoors if the level of toxic smog spreading to Japan from China is expected to exceed twice the maximum limit set by the central government, officials said. The Environment Ministry guidelines say prefectural governments will recommend that people, ...
Artists have added text to artworks for centuries, usually as a way to enhance or explain a concept. Tadanori Yokoo, however, combines painting and words in ways that often have no purpose at all. Sometimes, lettering is chosen for purely aesthetic purposes — to ...
