19
P/SUNNY
The head of an official inquiry into the deadly collapse of a Bangladesh factory complex said the building’s owner was the “main culprit” for the disaster because he violated construction codes. The cave-in of the eight-story Rana Plaza outside the capital last month killed ...
Throughout most of Japan, June is the rainy season. While all that rainfall is great for rice paddies so that we can have delicious new harvest rice in the fall, it makes it a rather dull month for seasonal produce: The summer’s bounty of ...
“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, ...
Claude Regy says the team at the Shizuoka Performing Arts Center (SPAC) threw him the “best birthday party ever” when he arrived in Japan just days after the actual May 1 occasion. The 90-year-old French director is hoping for an even better birthday gift, ...
As far as debuts go, Shohei Otani's delivered. The celebrated rookie pitched fairly well on Thursday night, and though he finished outside the decision, he left the mound with the Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters well within striking distance of the Tokyo Yakult Swallows.
NEW YORK — I was recently surprised to learn that Singapore has 72,500 troops on active duty and plans to double the number of “combat-ready aircraft” to more than 200. It also plans to have 10 more submarines to add to the four it ...
NEW YORK — On opening day of the 112th session of the U.S. Congress, the members of the House of Representatives recited the U.S. Constitution. The Republican Party, now the majority, instituted the unprecedented step. The tea party instigated it. The tea party came ...
NEW YORK — One intriguing story that has come to light as a result of the latest round of WikiLeaks revelations is, to use a somewhat dated term, the sexual politics in Sweden. I, like many, I’m sure, had assumed that Sweden is among ...
NEW YORK — A college or university, especially of a private variety, may not be “an eleemosynary institution,” as Sen. Sam Ervin, of the Watergate hearings, might put it were he alive, but the American insistence on free-market notions has brought the matter to ...
NEW YORK — One aspect of the modern sense of war, be it delusional, duplicitous or both, was palpable in two articles paired at the top of the front page of The New York Times toward the end of September. The headline of one ...
NEW YORK — The United States sets aside an area larger than Japan for wildlife conservation. This is one of the things I found out as we spent two weeks this past summer at an isolated cottage on the Chesapeake Bay. “Cottage,” I gather, ...
NEW YORK — The State of New York plans to “gas” or otherwise kill 170,000 Canada geese to reduce the number from 250,000 to 85,000. This news item, tucked away in The New York Times, struck me as yet another sign of human willfulness ...
NEW YORK — The Museum of the City of New York has an exhibition titled “Samurai in New York: The First Japanese Delegation, 1860.” The “delegation” was the first embassy dispatched by Japan in more than a millennium. The previous one, in 838, went ...
NEW YORK — Just about the time Yukio Hatoyama resigned as Japan’s prime minister, apologizing to the Okinawa people in tears, I was writing about the last day of Yukio Mishima’s life — Nov. 25, 1970. I noticed there was one thing in common ...
NEW YORK — With Barack Obama’s military policy in the Middle East getting murkier by the day, his predecessor George W. Bush’s stated goal of democratizing the region through violence has to be judged to have failed. The thought prompts the reflection that forced ...
When the Vatican “scandal” erupted, I happened to be reading Kumagusu Minakata’s writings on homosexuality — to be exact, his writings as selected, with comments, by Taruho Inagaki. I was doing so because Inagaki (1900-1977) won Japan’s literary “grand prize” for his book, “The ...
NEW YORK — The Toyota saga, though quiet for the moment, will continue. “Lawyers Vie for Lead Roles in Toyota Lawsuits,” said a headline in The Wall Street Journal (March 15). The company’s “legal bill for unintended-acceleration cases will be in the billions,” predicted ...