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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
An alarming new report estimates that between 30 and 50 percent of all the food produced in the world is lost and wasted. This is a shocking finding given the scale of malnourishment and hunger on our planet. While it is tempting to blame ...
The 2012 white book on tourism endorsed by the Cabinet on June 15 shows that foreign tourists are once again visiting Japan. The Japanese government has a plan to attract 18 million tourists from abroad by 2016. To ensure its success, it will be ...
The Diet has started deliberations on bills to raise the consumption tax rate and reform the social welfare system. Two bills deal with pension-related issues such as beefing up benefits for low-income people and improving pension coverage for irregular workers. Another two bills are ...
Now what? Just when we thought things were getting better, North Korea pulled the rug out from under everyone, including itself, by announcing a planned satellite launch to commemorate Great Leader Kim Il Sung’s 100th birthday celebration. Pyongyang (pretends to) believe that there is ...
The removal of radioactive contamination caused by Tokyo Electric Power Co’s stricken Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant is an important and urgent task as Japan strives to push reconstruction efforts forward in areas struck by the 3/11 earthquake and tsunami. Decontamination will be ...
A year after the 3/11 earthquake and tsunami devastated the Pacific coastal areas of the Tohoku region, the government and people need to realize that 3/11 will not be the last large-scale natural disaster to hit Japan. The nation needs to prepare for powerful ...
At 2:46 p.m. Sunday, March 11, my family and I joined millions of Japanese standing silently at a Buddhist temple or a Shinto shrine. With heads bowed, we remembered the events of one year earlier, when our house swayed for nearly three minutes and ...
A series of incidents in which people who had received no help from others citizens or local governments and apparently died alone raises concerns that human ties in Japanese society are growing increasingly thin and that the nation’s social safety net has serious holes. ...
Areas hit by the 3/11 disasters are suffering from a shortage of volunteer workers. Reconstruction is entering a critical phase and the whole nation must make an effort to lend a helping hand so that those whose lives have been upended by the disasters ...
The recent “food for freeze” agreement between the United States and North Korea has been described accurately by the State Department as reflecting “important, if limited, progress” and inaccurately by the media as constituting a “breakthrough” in the seemingly endless march toward Korean Peninsula ...
The world is in the midst of a boom in groundwater use. The rate of extraction from aquifers more than doubled in the 40 years to 2000. It has continued to soar since then. Professor Craig Simmons, who directs Australia’s National Center for Groundwater ...
The world faces two existential threats: climate change, and nuclear Armageddon. Action on both is required urgently. Tackling the first will impose significant economic costs and lifestyle adjustments, while tackling the second will bring economic benefits without any lifestyle implications. Those who reject the ...