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 ...
Paris AFP-JIJI The French Army regards the actions of one of its soldiers photographed while posing in a skeleton mask in Mali as “unacceptable” behavior, a military spokesman said Monday. “This is unacceptable behavior,” Col. Thierry Burkhard told a news conference. The image, which ...
A week of violence in Algeria and Mali has transformed al-Qaida’s North Africa branch into a cause celebre for militant Islamists around the globe, boosting recruitment and fundraising for the jihadists and spurring fears of further terrorist attacks in the region and beyond. Even ...
West African leaders Saturday sought urgent U.N. aid for a regional force to fight Islamists in Mali as President Francois Hollande said French troops would remain as long as needed to stamp out “terrorism.” The emergency summit of the Economic Community of West African ...
The hostage standoff at an Algerian gas field has thrown a fresh spotlight on the spillover unleashed by the 2011 war that toppled Moammar Gadhafi in Libya. Experts say the vast quantities of weapons and fighters that streamed out of Gadhafi’s arsenals may have ...
Mali’s struggle against Islamists being targeted by French and African forces has raised fresh questions over an insurgency in nearby Nigeria and ties between extremists in both countries. Nigeria plans to send some 900 troops to Mali as well as command the African force ...
Cracks in France’s united front behind military action in Mali appeared Wednesday as concern grew over the expanding operation and the reluctance of other Western powers to commit troops. Opposition leader Jean-Francois Cope called the intervention “just and necessary” in a parliamentary debate that ...
French troops surrounded the desert village of Diabaly in central Mali on Wednesday, the first direct engagement since France launched a military assault last week to oust radical Islamists who have advanced to within 400 km of the capital, Bamako. In waging ground combat, ...
The White House is considering significant military backing for France’s drive against al-Qaida-linked militants in Mali, but its support for a major ally could test U.S. legal boundaries and stretch counterterrorism resources in a murky new conflict. The United States is already providing surveillance ...
Paris AP France appears to be halting the lightning advance of radical Islamists seen as a threat to Europe. But the operation raises the specter of an African quagmire in a new theater of the West’s “war on terror” just as France and other ...
France’s vow to battle Islamist militants in Mali “as long as necessary” risks plunging the former colonial power into a prolonged campaign, according to diplomats and experts. “It is getting nasty and there will be a chaotic few weeks ahead,” said a senior U.N. ...
President Moncef Marzouki said Saturday that Tunisia is becoming a “corridor” for arms to Islamist militants in Mali, and the prime ministers of Algeria, Libya and Tunisia sealed a pact to secure their borders against arms trafficking. “The situation in Mali has always worried ...
Paris AFP-JIJI France has a long history of armed action in Africa, mostly in its former colonies. The following are the main interventions since 1960, when most of the African colonies became independent. Libya: In February 2011, after the United Nations authorized action to ...
