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Pope Francis’ fascination with the devil took on remarkable new twists Tuesday, with a well-known exorcist insisting Francis helped “liberate” a Mexican man possessed by four different demons despite the Vatican’s insistence that no such papal exorcism took place. The case concerns a 43-year-old ...
Kazuhiro Shiraishi, 66, is a guest-house manager in the Izu-kogen Highlands, a famous resort area on the Izu Peninsula of Shizuoka Prefecture. Looking out onto the Pacific Ocean, and just 90 minutes by train from Tokyo, Izu has a warm climate all year round ...
“I was stopped by two men in a government-registered vehicle, blindfolded and dragged off the street. They took me away to a house in a place I did not know. I was forced into a room with blood all over the walls and floor, ...
Guitarist Dustin Wong hesitates for a split second. It’s a pause that would go unnoticed during most other sets, but Wong has spent the last 40 minutes seemingly in a trance while playing guitar and looping the notes via an array of pedals in ...
Tim Duncan saves the day as the Spurs hold off the Grizzlies in overtime
This month, the Vermillion bird of the South — which is currently flying 550 km above Earth — meets an astronomical swan some 6,000 light-years away. In Eastern mythology, the Vermillion bird of the South represents fire — it is a spirit creature renowned ...
If dragonflies are the insects of Japan’s day, then the mysterious, magical fireflies are its bugs of the night. About now, firefly grubs will be emerging from rivers around the country. They’ve been living in the mud in larval form for the last year, ...
This month, we celebrate the mongrel, a word that means different things to different people. For some, it may bring to mind nonpedigree dogs, mutts that don't belong to a specific breed; in Japanese, the word is daken, which has the definite negative connotation ...
It’s the most celebrated and notorious fish in the world, certainly in culinary circles. Now the puffer fish — one of Japan’s most enigmatic creatures — meets some of biology’s deepest questions: Why did sex evolve? Why are there two sexes? Why is the ...
Have you ever woken up but been unable to move; felt a powerful pressure holding you down, gripping you tight? Haruki Murakami has, and he describes it like this: “I was having a repulsive dream — a dark, slimy dream. … After I awoke, ...
It was hardly the result the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) hoped for, or expected. In a survey of 1,200 Japanese people across the country, conducted in October 2012 by the Nippon Research Center, more people supported the hunting of whales than opposed ...
At age 56, Toshinobu Horiuchi was a desperate man. He had suffered kidney failure and needed a transplant. As a doctor, based in Tokyo, he knew better than most that he faced a long wait. In Japan, nearly 13,000 people, according to the Japan ...
It’s easy to take for granted the epic scale of what some scientists are attempting these days. When the news broke a couple of weeks ago that Japanese scientists had turned normal cells from a mouse into eggs, and then fertilized them and seen ...
In this month’s column I am going to claim an audacious link with that great “god of manga,” Osamu Tezuka. Though he is most famous for the nuclear-powered, peace-loving robot child he named Tetsuwan Atomu (known to English-speaking fans as Astro Boy) — a ...
I’ll preface this column by admitting that it is fairly common, among journalists on the science and health beats, that after they personally reproduce they experience a burning desire to write about the science of childbirth. Seasoned editors know to expect that postnatal reporters ...
I like to think of myself as a rational human being most of the time, but I have to suppress a shudder if someone opens an umbrella indoors, and I’d probably comment if a black cat crossed my path. Most people are like this, ...
Where is Japan’s equivalent of Elon Musk? Where’s the young entrepreneur with a huge bank balance and dreams to match? Where is that someone raised in these isles on sci-fi manga and space movies who wants to make human travel in space a reality? ...