Bangladesh disaster probe blames owner

Bangladesh disaster probe blames owner

The head of an official inquiry into the deadly collapse of a Bangladesh factory complex said the building’s owner was the “main culprit” for the disaster because he violated construction codes. The cave-in of the eight-story Rana Plaza outside the capital last month killed ...

An overture to Pyongyang

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe sent an aide, Mr. Isao Iijima — a former secretary to Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi — to North Korea last week in an effort to make progress on unresolved bilateral issues, including the past abduction of Japanese nationals by North ...

Shizuoka theater festival courts the avant-garde

Shizuoka theater festival courts the avant-garde

by Nobuko Tanaka

Claude Regy says the team at the Shizuoka Performing Arts Center (SPAC) threw him the “best birthday party ever” when he arrived in Japan just days after the actual May 1 occasion. The 90-year-old French director is hoping for an even better birthday gift, ...

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Bill for ID number program clears Diet

The Diet passes a bill for a system to assign an identification number to every citizen to improve government management of income, social security and tax information, despite public concerns ...

Germany tops Japan in popularity poll

Germany is the most popular country again in terms of "global influence," with Japan dropping from first to fourth place, an annual poll for the BBC World Service reveals.

  • Obama seeks to redefine U.S. war on terrorism

    Obama seeks to redefine U.S. war on terrorism

    by Washington

    President Barack Obama laid out new guidelines for drone strikes Thursday and launched a fresh bid to close Guantanamo Bay, warning that a “perpetual” U.S. war on terrorism will be self-defeating. Obama told Americans ...

  • Historians tour Takeshima, hit Japan

    Historians tour Takeshima, hit Japan

    Three Japanese historians on Thursday visited the South Korean-controlled Takeshima islets claimed by Japan to carry out on-site research, a member of the group said. While dozens of people, including Japanese, are believed to ...

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Bangladesh disaster probe blames owner

Bangladesh disaster probe blames owner

The head of an official inquiry into the deadly collapse of a Bangladesh factory complex said the building’s owner was the “main culprit” for the disaster because he violated construction codes. The cave-in of the eight-story Rana Plaza outside the capital last month killed ...

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Springtime beans aim for the sky

Springtime beans aim for the sky

by Makiko Itoh

Throughout most of Japan, June is the rainy season. While all that rainfall is great for rice paddies so that we can have delicious new harvest rice in the fall, it makes it a rather dull month for seasonal produce: The summer’s bounty of ...

Culture

Shizuoka theater festival courts the avant-garde

Shizuoka theater festival courts the avant-garde

by Nobuko Tanaka

Claude Regy says the team at the Shizuoka Performing Arts Center (SPAC) threw him the “best birthday party ever” when he arrived in Japan just days after the actual May 1 occasion. The 90-year-old French director is hoping for an even better birthday gift, ...

Opinion

An overture to Pyongyang

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe sent an aide, Mr. Isao Iijima — a former secretary to Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi — to North Korea last week in an effort to make progress on unresolved bilateral issues, including the past abduction of Japanese nationals by North ...

Mr. Murakami's tale of redemption

Mr. Haruki Murakami’s latest novel, “Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage,” his first since the publication of “1Q84″ about three years ago, sold a million copies in seven days after it hit the stands. The publisher, Bungei Shunju, printed 500,000 copies in ...

No heroes in AP news leak

Whoever provided the initial leak to the Associated Press in April 2012 not only broke the law but caused the abrupt end to a secret, joint U.S./Saudi/British operation in Yemen that offered valuable intelligence against al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula. One goal was to ...

Global call to women standing on the sidelines

Hardly a day goes by without a news story on some violation of women’s rights. In recent months, appalling incidents of violence against women and girls — from Delhi to Johannesburg to Cleveland — have sparked public outrage and demands to tackle these horrific ...