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Farmers in the city of Tamura, Fukushima Prefecture, have begun planting rice in a district once designated a no-go zone because of radioactive fallout ejected by the disaster-hit Fukushima No. 1 power plant.
Recently I was asked to write a blurb for a new liquid plant-nutrient. As soon as I saw the name of the product, 早根早起 （Hayane Hayaoki), I smiled at this example of linguistic creativity.
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 ...
Denmark’s Emmelie de Forest won this year’s Eurovision Song Contest on Saturday night with her ethno-inspired flute and drum tune “Only Teardrops,” despite tough competition from spectacular stage shows by performers from Azerbaijan and Ukraine. Juries and television viewers across Europe awarded the barefoot, ...
One team’s quest for a first title has ended. The other team’s fight will continue next season. The Yokohama B-Corsairs outplayed the Rizing Fukuoka in Sunday’s bj-league championship game, controlling the tempo for larger stretches and making enough timely baskets to fill an instructional ...
An elderly driver plowed into dozens of hikers marching in a Saturday parade in a small Virginia mountain town, and investigators are looking into whether he suffered a medical emergency before the accident. About 50 to 60 people suffered injuries ranging from critical to ...
Jerome Cahuzac, France’s former budget minister who was forced out of office over a tax fraud scandal, will not seek re-election to his former parliamentary seat, a newspaper reported Sunday. Cahuzac, who last month bowed to pressure and also resigned from the National Assembly, ...
Nigeria’s military Saturday imposed a 24-hour curfew in parts of a northeastern city as soldiers pressed on with a campaign against Boko Haram Islamists that has sent people fleeing from their homes. Nigeria launched the sweeping operation earlier in the week, deploying thousands of ...
France will see its first gay weddings within days, after President Francois Hollande signed a law Saturday authorizing marriage and adoption by same-sex couples and ending months of nationwide protests and wrenching debate. Hollande’s office said he signed the bill Saturday morning, a day ...
Officials opened an investigation Saturday into a rush-hour collision between two commuter trains that injured more than 70 passengers and severed a key rail link. Train service in the busy Northeast corridor from New York City to New Haven, Connecticut, used by tens of ...
Held a virtual prisoner by the Bolsheviks months before his execution, Russia’s last czar Nicholas II pasted informal snapshots of his family into an album that has now come to light in a Russian provincial museum. The photographs, most of which have never been ...
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, ...
An Organization of American States study released Friday is calling for a serious discussion on legalizing marijuana. Advocates for drug policy reform called the report historic, though it made no specific proposals. It said there is “no significant support” among the 35-member OAS for ...
After David Beckham’s long and distinguished soccer career ends on an artificial turf field in northwestern France, his life promises to be perhaps even more glamorous than it already has been. Nearly 20 years after breaking into the Manchester United lineup, the 38-year-old former ...
President Barack Obama’s most recent budget request will reduce borrowing by $1.1 trillion over the next decade compared with current law — almost entirely through higher taxes on the rich, large estates and smokers, congressional budget analysts said Friday. In addition to raising nearly ...
An unemployed drifter who became an Internet sensation in February after he brandished a hatchet to stop an assault has been charged with murder following his arrest in Philadelphia, police said. Caleb “Kai” McGillvary, 24, was detained at a bus station Thursday after a ...
A video purportedly showing Toronto Mayor Rob Ford smoking crack has caused an uproar in Canada. Ford on Friday called the allegations “ridiculous.” The video has not been released publicly, and there is no way to verify whether it is authentic. Reports by gossip ...