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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 ...
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, ...
Former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's tax fraud conviction and four-year prison sentence are upheld on the first appeal in a case that could see him barred from public office for five years.
Giulio Andreotti personified the nation he helped shape, the good and the bad. One of Italy’s most important postwar figures, he helped draft the country’s constitution after World War II, served seven times as prime minister and spent 60 years in Parliament. But the ...
An Italian judge rejected a request by prosecutors to seize as much as €1.95 billion ($2.5 billion) in assets held by Nomura Holdings Inc. as they probe how Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena SpA used derivatives to conceal losses. The judge in Siena ...
Guess who is back? The real winner as Italy’s long political crisis comes to an end is none other than Silvio Berlusconi, a scandal-tainted billionaire tycoon and international figure of fun. The 76-year-old former prime minister is not expected to be included in the ...
Italy’s center-left leader, Pier Luigi Bersani, on Friday told members of his party that he will step down after failing to push through his preferred candidate for president. Bersani, who has come under increasing pressure from his own party in recent weeks, said he ...
Italian lawmakers failed to agree on a choice for the country’s next president Thursday, and some cast prank ballots for porn star Rocco Siffredi and actress Sophia Loren. Parliament Speaker Laura Boldrini was quick to point out that Siffredi “does not have the prerequisites.” ...
Italy’s two main political blocs have agreed to back a former trade unionist for president ahead of voting in Parliament from Thursday, heralding a possible end to a two-month impasse on a new government. Pier Luigi Bersani’s Democratic Party, which won elections in February ...
Behind the counter, amid the Mussolini clocks, swastika badges, fascist recipe books and busts of Hitler, Benizzi Ferrini has hung a T-shirt featuring the face of Paolo Di Canio. “When Paolo gave his salute on the pitch it was a gesture from the heart, ...
Italian center-left leader Pier Luigi Bersani said Wednesday that only a mentally ill person would want Italy’s top job as he raced to secure enough support to form a government in the recession-hit country. Bersani, who was asked by the president last week to ...
An ancient statue of Mars has lost its fake penis and his counterpart Venus her hands, reversing the cosmetic changes ordered by former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, a newspaper reported Wednesday. In 2010, Berlusconi decided the two marble statues adorning the official residence ...
Mr. Smith went to Washington. Carlo Sibilia has come to Rome. The 27-year-old elevator salesman, who has no experience in political office, arrived in the Italian capital this month with 162 other freshman legislators from the Five Star Movement, a Web-based force whose success ...