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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
Donnie Walsh wasn’t impressed. The former and longtime Indiana Pacers general manager had returned to his Indianapolis home for the 2011-12 NBA season. He still was on the payroll of the New York Knicks, but they were going in that famous other direction — ...
While Japan and the rest of the baseball universe are deep in the World Baseball Classic fever, the conventional major league and Japanese teams are going about their business getting ready for their respective April 1 and March 29 opening days. In the U.S., ...
The American media recently made a big to-do over Michael Jordan turning 50. Among noted outlets, Sports Illustrated devoted the greater part of an issue to His Airness. And ESPN the Magazine likewise allocated huge space to the beginning of Mike’s sixth decade on ...
The Dodgers are not returning to Brooklyn, and neither is Phil Jackson. Actually, when Phil was playing for the Knicks in the late 1960s and early 1970s, he lived in an apartment in Chelsea in lower Manhattan not far from the Brooklyn Bridge. That’s ...
To all those who say Manny Pacquiao is finished because of his recent knockout loss, MAS says “Hogwash!” Manny hasn’t lost “it”. What he definitely needs to lose, though, is his humongous, concentration-sapping entourage. Those myriad hangers-on, just as much as the perfect storm ...
MAS felt quite guilty seated on press row at a recent Charlotte-Portland NBA contest, courtesy of the home team Bobcats. You could even say he was on a literal guilt trip that had taken him across three U.S. state lines to North Carolina’s Queen ...
Former longtime Japan resident Dave Wiggins, who was a sports columnist and television analyst in Tokyo, is now a sports writer based in Vero Beach, Florida. He will be contributing a bi-monthly column on the North American sports scene to The Japan Times beginning ...
When you have been in this business for a long time, it’s easy to become jaded. Players, coaches, executives and trends come and go. But every once in a while, someone extraordinary hits the scene and makes you take notice. Just 10 short days ...
The worst way to start a new relationship of any kind is with a lie. I think most people would agree with this observation. Yet there it was, front and center and about as subtle as a cockroach on a white rug, at the ...
Sometimes the smartest thing an athlete, team or coach can do is call a timeout. That’s what Tokyo native Kosuke Kitajima did after capturing his third and fourth Olympic gold medals — repeating in the 100- and 200-meter breaststroke races in Beijing — three ...
In a performance almost as dominating as the one that earned her the Olympic gold medal 16 months ago, South Korea’s Kim Yu Na put on a show for the ages this week at the International Olympic Committee’s meeting in South Africa. The 20-year-old ...
Where will it all end? Last week’s revelations of match-fixing in sumo was just the latest blow for what was once Japan’s pride and joy. The ancient and traditional sport continues its downward spiral and appears headed to oblivion. The apologists, cheerleaders and those ...