Top News

Financial Markets

Nikkei recoups 2.6% after nose-diving over 1,140 points in last session

After nose-diving 1,143 points, or 7.3 percent, Thursday, the Nikkei 225 stock average rebounded more than 2.6 percent in morning trading Friday as investors were soothed by the dollar’s uptick ...
3 hours ago

Financial Markets

Nikkei dives 7%, ends below 14,500

Tokyo's Nikkei stock index falls more than 7 percent to end below 14,500 as selling triggered by weak Chinese data outpaced sharp gains made earlier.
3 hours ago

World

Obama defends drone strikes, sees narrower terrorist threat

by Washington

President Barack Obama sought to move the U.S. beyond the war effort of the past dozen years, defining a narrower terrorist threat from smaller networks and homegrown extremists rather than ...
3 hours ago

World

'Soldier' hacked on London street

Two men with butcher knives hack a man to death near a London military barracks, and one of them then goes on video, shouting political statements and waving a meat ...
16 hours ago

National

Ex-comfort women, citing ‘political game,’ cancel meet with Hashimoto

by Eric Johnston

Two former South Korean comfort women cancelled their meeting with Osaka Mayor and Nippon Ishin no Kai (Japan Restoration Party) coleader Toru Hashimoto on Friday morning, saying through a spokesperson that they do not ...
3 hours ago
National

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 ...
16 hours ago
World | Focus

Most buildings in 'Tornado Alley' lack shelters

Seventy-five percent of the world’s tornados occur in the U.S., yet few people who live in “Tornado Alley” bother with the trouble and expense of a proper shelter from the storms. Mel Evridge, 69, ...
16 hours ago

Latest News

Politics & Diplomacy

Abe welcomes Thai leader, urges eased rules on food imports

by Reiji Yoshida

16 hours ago

Corporate

Nissan to recall 841,000 cars over steering glitch

16 hours ago

Social Issues

Judo federation probes exec's alleged sexual misdeed against female athlete

16 hours ago

Science & Health

Life-saving 3-D airway printed for young boy

by Marilynn Marchione

16 hours ago

Business

EU summit ends banking secrecy

16 hours ago

World

Damage from Oklahoma twister could exceed $2 billion

16 hours ago

National

LCCs revive female flight attendant aspirations

by Yoshihiro Nakajima

16 hours ago

News

Asia Pacific

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 ...

Sports

Baseball | SPORTS SCOPE

Fighters rookie Otani makes solid impression in mound debut

by Jason Coskrey

As far as debuts go, Shohei Otani's delivered. The celebrated rookie pitched fairly well on Thursday night, and though he finished outside the decision, he left the mound with the Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters well within striking distance of the Tokyo Yakult Swallows.

Community

Issues | THE FOREIGN ELEMENT

Fear and incarceration, from Kampala to Nagoya

by Stephen Carr

“I was stopped by two men in a government-registered vehicle, blindfolded and dragged off the street. They took me away to a house in a place I did not know. I was forced into a room with blood all over the walls and floor, ...

Life

Food & Drink

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

Stage

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

Editorial

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 ...

Editorial

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 ...

Walter Pincus

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 ...

Lakshmi Puri

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 ...