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Former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s private disco featured not only aspiring showgirls performing striptease acts as sexy nuns and nurses, but one woman dressed up as President Barack Obama and a prominent Milan prosecutor whom the billionaire media mogul has accused of persecuting him, ...
Tonkatsu is comfort food, gourmand grub — not a gourmet delicacy. So what are those hearty, unpretentious deep-fried breaded pork cutlets doing in an elegant little bar-style restaurant above one of Ginza’s temples to high-end consumption? Katsuzen has come a long way from its ...
Life in Japan just seems tailor-made for certain foreign residents, who slip into the fabric of this society as smoothly as a hand slides into a glove. American Curtis Patterson, a professional koto player and music teacher, is a case in point. Not only ...
It is a tricky deal being an authorized biographer. Charles Moore’s big advantage over those who have previously tackled Margaret Thatcher is that he has been provided with material denied to them. Of the arrangement that he was offered by his subject, he writes: ...
Unbelievable energy. Splendid self confidence. Never-wavering faith in his abilities or his teammates. Those are ingredients to success for Draelon Burns, the Yokohama B-Corsairs’ super substitute. Burns buried a remarkable three buzzer-beating shots to close out the three final quarters, and his team needed ...
To what extent will our future on Earth be shaped by fire? As the world gets hotter, the risk of more and bigger fires increases. 2010 was the hottest year on record, with global temperatures 0.53 degree Celsius above the 1961-1990 average. This year ...
China’s President Hu Jintao has a reserved demeanor. So it is hard to imagine him as a poker player. But in energy politics with neighboring Russia, he certainly is. On a visit in midyear to the world’s biggest natural gas exporter and one of ...
As Chinese President Hu Jintao greeted his Philippine counterpart Benigno Aquino in Beijing recently at the start of a state visit, the official Xinhua news agency laid out terms for a sustained improvement in relations between the world’s second biggest economy and its much ...
China lost no time warning Yoshihiko Noda what it expected of him, after he was chosen by the ruling Democratic Party of Japan as its leader this week and subsequently was elected prime minister. The official Xinhua news agency said on Aug. 29 that ...
Buoyed by growing economic and military strength, China is drawing more lines in the sand in the vast, but disputed, offshore zones in Asia over which it claims sovereignty or jurisdiction. These “red lines,” which China warns should not be crossed, affect the vital ...
As the United States and Europe struggle with heavy debts and weak growth, China increasingly powers the expansion of nearly every economy in the Asia Pacific region. It raises a critical question, particularly for Southeast Asia and Australia: Which are the ties that bind ...
U.S. prominence in Asia since World War II has rested on a widespread belief among friends, foes and nonaligned nations alike that Washington would use its economic and military power to prevent what it saw as dangerous challenges to the region’s peace, stability and ...
China appears to have reached a watershed in its food security strategy, which has long set a target of 95 percent self-sufficiency in four key grains — rice, wheat, corn and soybeans. If recent trends continue, the world’s most populous nation and second-largest economy ...
Nestled on the deck of its mother ship, China’s most advanced deep-sea submersible is on its way to the depths of the central Pacific Ocean in a program that is being closely watched in Asia and the West for its mining and military potential ...
China appears to be increasingly determined to strengthen its presence and control in areas of the South China Sea close to Southeast Asia that it sees as strategically and economically important. The Philippines recently accused Chinese navy and maritime surveillance ships of intruding into ...
As China’s power becomes ever more obvious, especially to neighbors in Asia, Chinese leaders are finding it increasingly difficult to reconcile soothing words with assertive actions. The recent attempt by China’s defense minister to assure Southeast Asian countries and other nations that see the ...
China recently launched an oil and natural gas drilling platform that may be as significant as military modernization in buttressing Beijing’s claims to control most of the islands, water and seabed in the maritime heart of Southeast Asia. Designed to withstand typhoons, the giant ...