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A sit-in by visa violators and their families entered its second day Tuesday in front of the Tokyo Regional Immigration Bureau with protesters seeking government good will. The action at the bureau in Minato Ward is being organized by the Asian People’s Friendship Society, ...
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, ...
Takashi Miike's blood-soaked vengeance tale, one of two Japanese films being shown in competition at the Cannes Film Festival, draws the biggest boos so far, with critics savaging it as overacted and cliched.
Have you ever given your best effort while striving to achieve something but felt like what you were doing was futile? That’s the feeling I’m getting about Tokyo’s bid to host the 2020 Olympics. With just over three months to go until the IOC ...
Voters in the Philippines appear to have delivered a resounding victory to President Benigno Aquino in midterm elections. The son of former President Corazon Aquino looks set to control both houses of Congress, giving him a mandate to continue his reform policies. His biggest ...
Irritants in Australia-Indonesia ties stem from popular Australian misperceptions about the changes in Indonesia and political condescension by some leaders.
Asian millionaires have surpassed North American millionaires for the first time ever, according to a study by Capgemini consultancy and the Royal Bank of Canada. The Asia-Pacific region now has 3.37 million so-called high-net-worth individuals, calculated in terms of the number of people with ...
The biannual meetings of the world’s leading financial institutions, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, are generally pretty staid affairs — after all, how riled up can gatherings of central bankers and finance officials really get? In recent years, the answer is ...
The word “orangutan” comes from the Malay and Indonesian words meaning “person of the forest.” Unfortunately, soon there may be no forest and no “person,” either. The encroachment of palm oil companies into orangutans’ natural habitat and the illicit trade in baby orangutans have ...
The scandal over the repellent way the World Bank president is appointed has obscured an equally scandalous situation: the appointment process of the rest of the senior managers at the bank and the International Monetary Fund. They too are selected through opaque, quota-driven negotiations ...
Since China announced another big rise in its military spending earlier this month, Chinese officials in Beijing and diplomats posted in Asia-Pacific countries have been trying to spread an orchestrated message to the region: Don’t be alarmed. China is in a bind. Its declared ...
For much of 2010 and 2011, tensions over conflicting claims to disputed islands, maritime territory and energy resources rippled through the South China Sea, embroiling several Southeast Asian states and China in disputes that also involved the interests of outside powers, including Japan and ...
Scientists working on ways to detect and prevent the spread of the avian flu virus have suspended their work out of concern that it could either be used for bioterrorism or that it might escape the lab; either development could create a global pandemic ...
When the Arab Spring began a year ago, the Western world was shocked. On the surface, it had seemed that liberty had bypassed the Arabs; they had seemed resigned to tyranny. But once unleashed, the upheaval knew no restraint, and there were mayhem and ...
PADANG, West Sumatra — Transparency International publishes the Corruption Perception Index (CPI) every year. Based on 13 different expert and business surveys, the CPI measures and ranks public sector corruption in 180 nations. The 2010 Corruption Perceptions Index shows that nearly three-quarters of the ...
UNITED NATIONS — Amid severe food shortages affecting up to a quarter of the population, horrific human rights abuses, and an expanding and costly nuclear weapons program, the United Nations has tried to respond to North Korea with a combination of carrots and sticks. ...