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NTT DoCoMo Inc., despite being Japan’s biggest mobile phone carrier, has been struggling against tough smartphone competition from KDDI Corp. and Softbank Corp., which is leading in that area. But one edge that the cellphone behemoth — it has more than 60 million subscribers ...
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 ...
If you don’t get into the ring once or twice, then you’re a coward, Geoffrey Ima says as he describes people’s attitudes toward boxing in his hometown in Uganda. Ima has been in the ring hundreds of times and came to love boxing so ...
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, ...
The 27-year-old defender says he was ready for a change of scenery after helping Sanfrecce Hiroshima win theJ. League title last season.
Two emotionless prison guards watch Ai Weiwei as he eats, sleeps, paces, showers — and even sits on the toilet — in the artist’s new obscenity-filled, metaphor-rich music video mocking China’s state power. The video accompanying the visual artist’s single “Dumbass” — released Wednesday but blocked online in mainland China ...
In the annals of bizarre bureaucratic desk jobs, the Chinese government may have all others beat. Officials in charge of ...
The United States has given back to Mongolia the remains of a 70-million-year-old Tyrannosaurus skeleton stolen from the Gobi Desert ...
Unamused Chinese censors have been hard at work trying to stop people sniggering over the new Beijing headquarters of the People’s Daily newspaper, which bear a resemblance to a giant penis. Photos of the imposing tower, which is still under construction, had Internet users ...
New Zealand officials Wednesday released a list of 77 baby names proposed by parents that were rejected because they were too bizarre or offensive, including “Lucifer” and “Mafia No Fear.” The list shows one child was set to be called “Anal” before the Department ...
Papua New Guinea Prime Minister Peter O’Neill has announced a renewed push for the death penalty, as well as life sentences for rape, saying that “draconian” penalties were needed to tackle violent crime, local media reported Wednesday. O’Neill said the impoverished Pacific nation would ...
The Swiss luxury hotel chain Kempinski is dropping plans to open a huge pyramid-shaped hotel that has stood half-built for decades in North Korea amid tensions on the peninsula. “Kempinski Hotels confirms that KEY International had initial discussions to operate a hotel in Pyongyang. ...
In a country of almost 1.4 billion people, life for Chinese is an unending struggle for resources. And it doesn’t get easier in death. Prices for graves are skyrocketing, driven by decades of unbridled development and scarce city land. The government’s answer to this ...
Wrists bent and fingers curled, the immaculately dressed dancers perform a series of gestures that, according to ancient custom, carry the wishes of the Khmer kings to the heavens. Sporting golden head-dresses, the dancers slowly stretch back their wrists and — standing on one ...
India’s remote northeast is home to an ancient tribe whose high regard for women makes it a striking anomaly in the male-dominated country. But the region has become a staging ground for an unlikely battle in which men are trying to end a matrilineal ...
Supermarkets across New Zealand stocked up with Marmite for the first time in more than a year Wednesday, as a shortage of the breakfast spread caused by the Christchurch earthquake came to an end. In a crisis dubbed “Marmageddon,” the country’s only Marmite factory ...
One young contender created the world’s largest sequin mosaic using 325,000 of the sparkly discs. Two other youths achieved 123 consecutive badminton passes in one minute. And 1,450 participants broke the record for the most people arm wrestling. Such are the skills that Guinness ...
A Chinese city is searching for a foreign traveler to become a “modern Marco Polo,” with a €40,000 ($52,000) salary on offer to the winner, a tourism official said Wednesday. The eastern city of Hangzhou, renowned for its canals and bridges, was described as ...
Stacked up in Liu Yi’s studio, dozens of China’s most sensitive subjects stare out from thick black-and-white oil paintings, from victims of Tiananmen Square to Tibetans who have set themselves on fire. Liu, 50, is a rare example of a member of China’s Han ...
Australia has resurrected its hugely popular Best Jobs in the World campaign, offering candidates the chance to become a “Chief Funster,” “Taste Master” or “Outback Adventurer.” The marketing push announced Tuesday is targeting the youth demographic, which contributes 12 billion Australian dollars ($12.2 billion) ...