Transport authorities launched a full-fledged investigation Sunday into the derailment of a bullet train on the Akita Shinkansen Line in Daisen, Akita Prefecture, on Saturday afternoon.
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 ...
Baseball commissioner Bud Selig has called for tougher penalties for major leaguers who violate the sport’s drug agreement, a move the union is willing to consider but not for the 2013 season. Speaking at a news conference Saturday at the Arizona Diamondbacks’ spring training ...
The head of an animal rescue center in China says volunteers have rescued about 900 dogs that were being transported in a truck. Chen Mingcai of the Chongqing Small Animal Protection Association said Sunday that a citizen became suspicious of the truck and called ...
Millions of Bulgarians and Romanians on Friday observed a centuries-old regional custom, handing out spring charms to loved ones as they do every March 1. The charms, called “Martenitsi” — from the Bulgarian word for March — in their simplest form are red-and-white woolen ...
Australian soldiers in southern Afghanistan shot dead two children tending cattle, officials said Saturday, in an incident likely to escalate tensions over the conduct of international troops. Civilian casualties caused by NATO-led forces have been one of the most contentious issues in the campaign ...
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is still in charge and mulling political, social and economic policies even as he receives a new round of chemotherapy, his vice president said Saturday. Vice President Nicolas Maduro said that the 58-year-old socialist leader, who is convalescing in seclusion ...
Israeli President Shimon Peres on Saturday gave Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a two-week extension to form a new coalition government, after he failed to do so in an initial four-week period. After his Likud-Beitenu list emerged as the largest party in the Jan. 22 ...
Animals and insects in the vicinity of the Fukushima No. 1 plant contain high concentrations of radioactive cesium, providing a clue to how radioactivity accumulates in the food chain, a study has shown. More than 6,700 becquerels per kilogram of cesium 137 were detected ...
An oil leak at a North Sea platform caused it to be partially evacuated on Saturday, its Middle East operator said, the second such incident at the installation in less than two months. The Alpha Cormorant platform and the pipeline system it services were ...
Pakistani Taliban have threatened to bomb a mobile phone market in the northwestern city of Peshawar for the “shameless” selling of video clips, ring tones and accessories, officials said Saturday. Some 60 shopkeepers received letters in the mail ordering them to burn the offending ...
Rescue workers announced Saturday that they have halted their search for the body of a man whose bedroom was swallowed up by a sinkhole in a Florida town. The hole opened up in the Tampa suburb of Seffner late Thursday, shattering the concrete slab ...
