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CLOUDY
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. The four characters translate loosely as “early root, early sprouting”; ...
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 ...
Rene Carlos Vos, an arms dealer in Alexandria, Virginia, began hanging around the Washington headquarters of the National Rifle Association in the mid-1980s. The NRA’s staff were intrigued to see the garrulous, back-slapping Vos in the group’s seventh-floor suite, home to its lobbying operation and the chief congressional lobbyist, Wayne ...
About 30 security agents showed up just after midnight, breaking down the door to an apartment in the town of ...
The twins were 7, shy and scared. Talking was tough, and describing what had happened to them was nearly impossible. ...
There was a time, not so long ago, when anyone with a proper education spoke French. Diplomacy and business were conducted in French. Knowledge was spread in French. Travelers made their way in French and, of course, lovers traded sweet nothings in French. Viewed ...
President Barack Obama’s professed ignorance of the targeting of conservatives by one government agency and his support of tracking journalists’ sources by another highlight one of the great paradoxes of his presidency: Sometimes he uses his office as aggressively as anyone who’s held it; ...
The hunt for an HIV vaccine has gobbled up $8 billion in the past decade, and the failure of the most recent efficacy trial has delivered yet another setback to 26 years of efforts. With the next attempts expected to be years away, top ...
Angered over Syrian President Bashar Assad’s brutal repression of peaceful protests in Syria two years ago, Paris closed its embassy in Damascus, virtually cutting off the lifeline to the capital’s once-thriving French school. But tenacious parents and staffers, driven by their love for French ...
The hordes are rising. A cicada invasion is imminent in the United States, with millions of the large cricketlike insects beginning to emerge from the earth after 17 years lying in wait. The first of the bugs that are expected to blanket the U.S. ...
The embarrassing arrest of a suspected CIA officer in Moscow is the latest reminder that, even after the Cold War, the U.S. and Russia are engaged in an espionage battle with secret tactics, spying devices and training that sometimes isn’t enough to avoid being ...
Chastened by the experience of Afghanistan, where hundreds of Saudi Arabians fought before returning to sow terror at home, the kingdom is now battling to avoid similar blowback from the conflict in Syria, analysts say. In recent months, Saudi officials have issued increasingly stern ...
Raha Muharraq, a 25-year-old Saudi woman, on Saturday reached the summit of Mount Everest in a first for the conservative Muslim kingdom, where women’s sports are severely restricted, her father said. Hassan Muharraq said that Raha, a graduate of the University of Sharjah in ...
Connecticut chef Bun Lai is already known for his Mexican grasshopper dish and his fried rice with mealworms and crickets. But he might soon also be recognized as the cicada chef. Lai, owner of Miya’s Sushi, told the New Haven Register that he plans ...
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 ...