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DRIZZLE/RAIN
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.
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 ...
It took longer than anticipated, but there is finally a victor in Egypt’s first truly competitive presidential elections. Mr. Mohamed Morsi, the candidate of the Muslim Brotherhood, prevailed over former Gen. Ahmed Shafik. The outcome is symbolic on many levels, but most significantly because ...
On June 3, the Metropolitan Police Department arrested former Aum Shinrikyo cult member Ms. Naoko Kikuchi, who was on the wanted list for her suspected involvement in the 1995 sarin attack on the Tokyo subway system. She was living in Sagamihara, Kanagawa Prefecture. Her ...
The Tokyo High Court on June 7 decided to retry a Nepalese man serving a life sentence for the 1997 robbery-murder of a 39-year-old woman in Tokyo on the strength of new evidence and he was released at the court’s order. But the Tokyo ...
The Nagoya High Court on May 25 rejected a retrial request by Masaru Okunishi, an 86-year-old man who has been on death row for the fatal poisoning of five women in 1961. It was his seventh petition for a retrial. The Supreme Court in ...
The diplomatic row between the United States and China over how to treat blind Chinese human rights activist Chen Guangcheng appears to have come to an end with the U.S. issuing him, his wife Yuan Weijing and his two young children visas on May ...
In the trial of former Democratic Party of Japan chief Ichiro Ozawa, charged with conspiracy to falsify political fund reports, the Tokyo District Court said his testimony could not be trusted because it contained changes in time and other irregularities. (He was acquitted but ...
Mr. Mitt Romney, former governor of Massachusetts, has virtually claimed the Republican nomination to challenge U.S. President Barack Obama in the November election. He prevailed in a grueling battle that took a toll on the candidate. Now, he must lick his wounds and refocus ...
A recent Cabinet Office survey has found that 32.9 percent of married women have experienced domestic abuse. This percentage has remained unchanged from the two previous surveys in 2005 and 2008, indicating that little help has been provided for the ongoing tragedy in one-third ...
On Wednesday three lawyers serving as prosecutors appealed a lower court ruling that had acquitted former Democratic Party of Japan chief Ichiro Ozawa of violating the Political Funds Control Law to the Tokyo High Court. On April 26, the Tokyo District Court found him ...
Former Democratic Party of Japan chief Ichiro Ozawa is likely to strengthen his political activities after his April 26 acquittal by the Tokyo District Court of a charge of conspiring with his secretaries to falsify reports of Rikuzankai, his political funds management body. Allthough ...
Mr. Charles Taylor, former president of Liberia, has been convicted of aiding and abetting war crimes and crimes against humanity. The judgment on April 26 by the U.N.-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone on the premise of the International Criminal Court in The Hague ...
The Supreme Public Prosecutors Office on April 5 announced that public prosecutors electronically recorded the entire interrogation process in about 40 percent of 69 suspects in cases unearthed by the prosecutors. The electronic recording of the interrogation of mentally disabled suspects and suspects in ...