Bangladesh has set up anthrax checkpoints at cattle markets as a major outbreak of the disease spreads through the country’s dairy belt, infecting more than 400 people, officials said Wednesday. Eight districts have confirmed human and cattle anthrax infections and meat consumption ahead of the Islamic festival of Eid, set to start Friday, has fallen [...]
A Russian circus touring Australia has dropped an act in which a performer swallows a live fish then regurgitates it after complaints that it was in poor taste and inhumane. Great Moscow Circus general manager Greg Hall said Wednesday that the fish-gobbling part of the show was removed on Monday after the New South Wales [...]
North Korea has marked its founding 62 years ago on Thursday with patriotic songs and commentaries, and national flags decorating street corners, as speculation mounted over political succession plans. In Pyonyang, thousands marked the anniversary by placing flowers at the foot of a giant statue of Kim Il-sung, North Korea’s founder, and father of current [...]
A blind, self-taught activist lawyer who documented forced abortions and other abuses was released from a Chinese prison Thursday and promptly locked down in his rural village with no access to communication, a relative said. Chen Guangcheng, 39, is a charismatic, inspirational figure for civil liberties lawyers who have fought to enforce the rights enshrined [...]
North Korea has finished preparing for a key meeting of its ruling communist party, a South Korean official has said, but there it was still unclear when it would get under way. The Workers’ Party Convention, the first of its type since 1966, is widely expected to confirm the youngest son of leader Kim Jong-Il as [...]
A security check on Chinese airlines has uncovered 200 pilots flying with falsified qualifications, it emerged on Monday. The Chinese Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) began the wide-ranging safety investigation in the wake of last month’s air crash in Yichun, in which 42 people died. Combing through the pilot records of China’s major airlines, officials discovered [...]
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has accused Chinese billionaires of refusing an invitation to a gala event because they are nervous about being buttonholed for donations to charity. The dinner on September 29 had planned to gather “dozens” of China’s richest people together in order to support the Gates Foundation, which funds Aids charities [...]
A court in northern Japan found two Greenpeace activists guilty Monday for stealing whale meat, but suspended their sentences, Greenpeace Japan said. The Aomori District Court ruled that the activists, Junichi Sato and Toru Suzuki, will only have to serve one-year terms if they commit a crime in the next three years, Greenpeace said. In [...]
A Japanese freelance journalist released at the weekend after five months’ captivity in Afghanistan said in an online posting Monday that his kidnappers were not Taliban but corrupt Afghan soldiers. Kosuke Tsuneoka, 41, who had been missing in northern Afghanistan since April, has been under the protection of the Japanese embassy since Saturday, and was [...]
A Japanese Moto2 rider has died after suffering a horrific crash during the San Marino Grand Prix. Shoya Tomizawa, 19, was travelling at full speed when he fell off on a corner and was hit violently by the bikes of Alex De Angelis and Scott Redding, who both also tumbled but looked relatively unhurt. Suter [...]
A South Korean grandmother has become a national celebrity by passing her driving test at the 960th attempt. Cha Sa-soon, 69, whose surname coincidentally means “vehicle” in Korean, is now appearing in a prime-time advertisement for Hyundai, Korea’s largest carmaker. For three years beginning in April 2005, she took her driving test once a day, [...]
Hundreds of Chinese residents, deported to Japan during the World War II, will sue Japan’s Mitsubishi motor corporation, the Xinhua news agency said on Sunday. Some 40,000 people were deported from China to Japan during the World War II, the majority of them worked at the Japanese heavy industries. At least 7,000 of those deported [...]
Tokyo police responded to a record 2,444 Internet crime cases nationwide in the first half of this year, a National Police Agency survey showed today. The number, up 586 or 31.5 per cent from a year earlier, represented a new high since the NPA started gathering statistics for Internet crimes, defined as crimes which use [...]
Rather intriguing, the story of the arrest of Hindu India documentary filmmaker Vijay Kumar at a Houston airport on August 20th. According to a Houston Chronicle report, Kumar is behind bars until a September 8 hearing. Kumar, on his way to Canada, was arrested at a Houston airport after officials noticed Kumar “acting suspiciously” and [...]
A powerful predawn earthquake struck New Zealand on Saturday, causing water mains to break and some buildings to crumble, though there were no immediate reports of deaths or major damage, emergency officials said. Roughly 100 people were being treated for minor bumps and cuts, and two people suffered more serious injuries, hospital officials said, just [...]
A Malaysian man pleaded guilty to wildlife smuggling after his bag bursting with 95 live boa constrictors broke open on a luggage conveyer belt at Kuala Lumpur International Airport, an official said Friday. Keng Liang “Anson” Wong, 52, who was previously convicted of wildlife trafficking in the United States, was charged Wednesday in a district [...]
Confidence in China’s food safety standards has taken another battering after it emerged that authorities in central China covered up the discovery of cancer-causing chemicals in a batch of cooking oil for more than five months. Food safety monitors in Hunan province found high levels of the carcinogen ‘benzoapyrene’ in 42 tons of Camellia oil [...]
Six recruiters were accused of luring 400 laborers from Thailand to the United States and forcing them to work, according to a federal indictment Thursday that the FBI called the largest human trafficking case ever charged in U.S. history. The indictment alleges that the scheme was orchestrated by four employees of labor recruiting company Global [...]
Dozens of Afghan asylum seekers have broken out of a detention centre in northern Australia and held a sit-in near a major highway to protest against the long delays in processing their refugee applications, police say. More than 70 men were peacefully taken back into police custody after their protest, while five others were taken to a [...]
A Japanese man has broken the world record for calculating the value of Pi, reaching 5 trillion digits on a computer that he built himself. Shigeru Kondo, a 55-year-old systems engineer for a food company based in northern Japan, easily surpassed the previous record of 2.7 trillion digits, set late last year by a French [...]
The Government Pension Investment Fund, which manages the reserves for the National Pension and Employees’ Pension Insurance, said Monday it incurred an investment loss of ¥3.59 trillion in the April-June quarter. The fourth-largest quarterly loss on record was largely due to stock price falls both at home and abroad resulting from the sovereign debt crisis [...]
The Japan Football Association on Monday named former AC Milan and Juventus manager Alberto Zaccheroni to lead the national team. The 57-year-old, who becomes the first Italian and sixth foreigner to take the job, is set to be unveiled at a news conference on Tuesday. Reports on Monday said Zaccheroni had agreed to a two-year [...]
The former editor in chief of “Playboy Indonesia” missed a deadline to begin serving a two-year jail term for indecency, vowing to fight his conviction, the Jakarta Globe reported. The boss of the now-defunct publication, Erwin Arnada, was acquitted of charges of indecency by the South Jakarta District Court in April 2007, but prosecutors said [...]
A Saudi employer and his wife, who are accused of torturing a Sri Lankan housemaid by hammering nails into her body, have been arrested in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, officials at the Sri Lankan External Affairs Ministry said Monday. Saudi Arabian authorities could not be reached immediately for verification. No further details were available. The two [...]
India’s government says it has withdrawn its threat to ban Blackberry services for at least two months after the smartphone’s maker agreed under pressure to give security officials “lawful access” to encrypted data. The country’s interior ministry, which wants real time access to corporate emails and instant messaging, said on Sunday it would review Research in Motion (Rim)’s, the [...]
Graduating members of the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) celebrate during the passing out parade of some 413 Sub-Inspector trainees at the National Industrial Security Academy (NISA) in Hyderabad. The Home Ministry’s CISF is responsible for security services at ports and other tranportation facilities, as well as vital industrial units including atomic power plants, aerospace [...]
At least 15 people died and 25 were injured on Sunday when a bus plunged into a ditch in the Coochbehar district of West Bengal, India, Indo-Asian News Service (IANS) said. The injured were hospitalized; four remain in a critical condition. Local people later went on the rampage over claims that the injured received improper [...]
A report finds poor conditions and mistreatment at major zoos and safari parks, including the declawing of tigers and bears. It’s probably much worse at other places, animal advocates say. In 10 years of visiting zoos and animal parks in China, David Neale has seen a bear punched in the head by a trainer, tigers [...]
The Little League team from Japan ended the United States’ five-year reign as World Series champions. The team from Tokyo limited Waipahu, Hawaii, to four singles, and got a homer and three RBIs from Konan Tomori to take the Little League World Series title with a 4-1 victory Sunday. For the first time since 2003, [...]
Japanese billionaire Genshiro Kawamoto aims to cash out roughly half his collection of million-dollar homes and land on Kahala Avenue. And the real estate tycoon is looking to make a considerable profit — about $46 million — if buyers meet asking prices that he recently pumped up. Kawamoto cornered much of the market along the [...]
Indonesia has issued a red alert after the Sinabung volcano on the western island of Sumatra erupted for the first time in 400 years. The volcano spewed smoke and ash 1,500 metres into the air, forcing the evacuation of thousands of people from the Karo district in North Sumatra on Sunday. “Initially we thought the ash [...]
The demonstrators appeared one day in December, just as children at an elementary school for ethnic Koreans were cleaning up for lunch. The group of about a dozen Japanese men gathered in front of the school gate, using bullhorns to call the students cockroaches and Korean spies. Inside, the panicked students and teachers huddled in [...]
A real estate agent who has been trying to sell a Frank Lloyd Wright home for two years is considering an inquiry from clients who want to move it from Southern California to Japan. The La Miniatura in Pasadena is among two of Wright’s experimental textile-block homes that have languished on the market, the Los [...]
North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il reportedly met top Chinese leaders in an apparent bid for Beijing’s diplomatic and financial support for a succession plan involving his third and youngest son, who is said to be traveling with him. Many North Korea watchers predict the son — Kim Jong Un, believed to be in his [...]
A young long tailed macaque monkey has been spotted in a forest protectively nuzzling and grooming a ginger kitten and making sure no harm came to it. The extraordinary sight was captured by amateur photographer Anne Young while on holiday at the Monkey Forest Park, in the Ubud region of Bali, Indonesia. During the remarkable [...]
Hundreds of thousands of Pakistanis were fleeing the Thatta district Friday after the bloated Indus River crushed a levee and flooded new areas, officials said. The UN said as many as one million people have been displaced in the south since midweek. More than eight million people are need in of emergency assistance across the [...]
Former US president Jimmy Carter has secured the release of an American held in North Korea for nearly seven months after crossing the border from China on foot. Aijalon Gomes, 31, left Pyongyang on a plane accompanied by Mr Carter, who had flown to the North Korean capital three days earlier on a private visit [...]
An Australian woman has told how she apparently brought her premature baby son back to life with two hours of cuddles after doctors had declared him dead. Jamie Ogg showed no signs of life when he was delivered along with a twin sister at just 27 weeks gestation and weighing 2lb at a hospital in [...]
Discovery made after X-ray reveals animal’s beating heart and other organs inside woman’s luggage at Bangkok airport. Customs officers at Bangkok airport in Thailand have discovered a drugged tiger cub in a check-in bag filled with stuffed animal toys. An X-ray revealed the animal’s beating heart and other functioning organs inside the oversized luggage of [...]
A Sri Lankan maid returned from her job in Saudi Arabia with 24 nails inside her body — the result of torture by the family who employed her, according to a doctor and a government official. L.G. Ariyawathi’s body is riddled with needles and nails, which are scheduled to be removed Friday, a doctor confirmed. [...]
The United States made an attempt to snatch Russian alleged arms dealer Viktor Bout, who was due to be extradited from Thailand, without appropriate legal permits, Thai Bangkok Post said on Wednesday. Thai English-language daily The Nation said on Tuesday that Bout, suspected by Washington of arms trafficking, would be extradited on Wednesday, though neither [...]
An Australian high school teacher caused a stir this week after asking her class to plan a terror attack that would kill as many innocent people as possible. The teacher of society and an environment class told her pupils to plan a chemical or biological attack in Australia, the Australian Associated Press reported. The students [...]
Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter arrived in North Korea Wednesday to negotiate the release of an American held there. Carter was greeted at the airport by the country’s vice minister for foreign affairs, the communist nation’s official news agency said. The trip is intended to secure the release of Aijalon Mahli Gomes, a 31-year-old Boston, [...]
Much discussion about Indo-jazz fusion rightly focuses on American jazz musicians of Indian heritage. Musicians like Vijay Iyer, Rez Abbasi and Rudresh Mahanthappa have incorporated study of their ancestral music into their own ideas for improvisation. But they represent just the latest development in a more than half-century-long narrative of collaboration between jazz players and [...]
The first foreign tourist marriage ever in Papeete took place Monday morning at the Papeete City Hall. The newlyweds come from Australia. They have been living close to Sydney for fifteen years. But 37-year old Michelle Reid is Scottish and 47-year old Brian Parkinson is Irish. The newlyweds wanted a very exotic and romantic setting [...]
More than 40 people were feared dead after a Chinese passenger jet overshot a runway in the country’s northeast and burst into flames. The Henan Airlines plane crashed in Heilongjiang province’s Yichun City, according to state media, who said 49 of the 91 passengers had been rescued. State media last night confirmed 42 passengers had [...]
All 14 passengers and crew on board a Nepalese plane that crashed in bad weather near the capital Kathmandu on Tuesday were killed, the head of the rescue team said. A small plane heading for the Everest region with 14 people on board including four Americans, a Japanese and a British national when it crashed [...]
Police in the Philippines have defended their handling of a bus hostage crisis that ended in the deaths of eight tourists from Hong Kong, as anger mounts against Philippine authorities. The Chinese government demanded answers from the Philippines on Tuesday, a day after the botched rescue attempt on a bus in the Philippines capital, Manila. [...]
Jimmy Carter is set to travel to North Korea very soon, according to two sources familiar with the former president’s plans, in what they characterized as a private mission to free a U.S. citizen imprisoned there. Carter has decided to make the trip and is slated to leave for the Hermit Kingdom within days, possibly [...]
A humpback whale has put on a spectacular show in waters off Australia’s north Queensland state coast on Monday. The whale repeatedly jumped out of the water, twisting and slapping its tail in what is believed to be a way of attracting female attention, according to Australia’s Channel 7 television. Humpback whales are in northern [...]
Traffic authorities were still struggling to cope with days-long congestion on a major national expressway, nine days after traffic slowed to a snail’s pace, and nearby residents are profiting on the latest traffic snarl by overcharging drivers for food. Since August 14, thousands of Beijing-bound trucks have jammed the expressway again, and traffic has stretched [...]
A riveting, televised hostage situation in the Philippines came to a dramatic end Monday night. There were reports that the armed hostage taker was dead, but CNN could not immediately confirm that. Several people were seen walking off the bus following the 10-hour standoff. Dozens of heavily-armed policemen had earlier converged on the parked tour [...]
A disgruntled ex-policeman armed with an automatic rifle was holding hostage 17 people, including tourists from Hong Kong, on a bus in downtown Manila Monday. The gunman, identified as Rolando Mendoza, had said, via a handwritten note, that a “big deal” would happen after 3 p.m. (8:00 a.m. British time), but the deadline passed without [...]
Flooding has forced the evacuation of more than a quarter-million people in northern China along its border with North Korea, state media said Monday. Heavy rains over the last several days caused the Yalu river, which marks the border, to breach its banks, although the water level had started to fall late Sunday, the official [...]
Flooding has forced the evacuation of 94,000 people in the north China port city of Dandong after heavy rains caused the Yalu river to breach its banks, state media said Sunday. More rain was expected to pound the region, which borders North Korea, and threatened to trigger more flooding Sunday, the official Xinhua News Agency reported. [...]
More than 50,000 people have been evacuated after a swollen river flooded a city in northeastern China on Saturday, the state-run Xinhua news agency reported. Earlier reports said 10,000 people had been evacuated. Torrential rains caused flooding along the Yalu River that marks the border between China and North Korea. Floodwaters cut off transport and [...]
Though some say talk is cheap, one man’s cell phone conversation cost him his life. Gopal Gujjar, 23, was killed Wednesday in India while talking on a mobile phone that exploded, the Times of India reports. There were no witnesses, but Gujjar was believed to be mid-conversation when the accident occurred. Police found pieces of [...]
New Zealand conservation officials are planning another attempt to refloat at least 15 pilot whales that were part of a larger group that beached themselves early Friday. The country’s Department of Conservation said it got a distress call Friday morning from a person who spotted 73 beached whales stranded on Karikari Beach, a remote area [...]
Japan’s search for its centenarians has led to the discovery of the remains of a Tokyo woman who was thought to be 104 stuffed into her son’s backpack for nearly a decade. The discovery comes weeks after the discovery of the more than 30-year-old mummified corpse of a man who had been thought to be [...]
The Thai appeals court ruled on Friday to extradite Russian businessman Viktor Bout to the United States. Bout said he is ready to prove his innocence in front of a U.S. court. “Well, now we’ll just go to a U.S. court and win there instead,” Bout told RIA Novosti after the court had given its [...]
Bangladesh’s Supreme Court on Thursday sentenced an opposition-affiliated newspaper’s editor to six months in jail for contempt, in a case that has been condemned by an international press freedom group. Mahmudur Rahman, editor of the daily Amar Desh, was detained in June when the Awami League government, which swept to power in December 2008 elections, [...]
A truck crashed into four shops early on Thursday morning in east China, leaving an unknown number of people buried under debris., Xinhua news agency reported. The truck rammed into shops in the village of Shangru, in east China’s Zhejiang Province, at 7:00 a.m. local time (23.00 GMT), when many local residents were buying vegetables, [...]
Police in the Philippines have relieved 11 officers of duty after the release of video footage showing the apparent torture a naked detainee. The torturer, allegedly a police commander in Manila, shouts insults as his victim screams in pain as a rope tied around his genitals is pulled. The victim is believed to be a [...]
Fossils from Australia show animal life on Earth began at least 650 million years ago, 70 million years earlier than previous estimates, Princeton University scientists report. Princeton geosciences professor Adam Maloof and graduate student Catherine Rose came upon the fossils while researching a massive ice age, known as the “snowball effect,” that left much of [...]
A North Korean aircraft, thought to be a fighter jet, has reportedly crashed in China, amid speculation its pilot may have been trying to defect to Russia. South Korea’s Yonhap news agency, citing intelligence sources, said the aircraft appeared to be a Soviet-era North Korean fighter jet and that the pilot had been killed following [...]
A surfer has died after being attacked by a shark on a west Australian beach close to the popular tourist region of Margaret River. The 31-year-old man was attacked while surfing alone at about 8.15am. Witnesses said that the shark “tore his leg to shreds”. “We have just had confirmation that a male has died. [...]
A teenage American has been arrested on suspicion of killing his mother in a tourist resort in western India, police said Monday. The woman, identified as Cindy Iannarelli, of Cecil, Pennsylvania, was found with her throat slit at the resort in the historic town of Osian in Rajasthan state last Thursday. Police superintendent Girdhari Lal [...]
Research In Motion (RIM) has assured Indian authorities of limited access to its Messenger services by September 1 and will hold talks this week on giving access to enterprise mail, a government source said on Monday. RIM faces an August 31 deadline to give Indian authorities the means to read e-mail and instant messages sent [...]
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Sunday he has never seen anything like the flood disaster in Pakistan after surveying the devastation and urged foreign donors to speed up assistance to the 20 million people affected. Ban’s comments reflect the concern of the international community about the unfolding disaster in Pakistan, which is battling al-Qaida and [...]
After three decades of spectacular growth, China passed Japan in the second quarter to become the world’s second-largest economy behind the United States, according to government figures released early Monday. The milestone, though anticipated for some time, is the most striking evidence yet that China’s ascendance is for real and that the rest of the [...]
The court in the Indian state of Goa has sentenced a Russian tourist to one-year imprisonment over an expired Indian visa. Alexander Solomin from Russia did not extend his monthly Indian visa, which expired on April 25. He was arrested on May 29 after he went to local police to get an exit permit. The [...]
A Cartier ring for just eight dollars? In Egypt, “Chinese gold”— an affordable imitation of the precious metal — has swamped the jewellery market, granting the poor a little taste of luxury. As in many other countries, the Egyptian market has been flooded with Chinese goods – everything from electronics to plastic cigarette lighters have [...]
Two married Hollywood movie executives have been jailed for six months in Los Angeles for bribing Thai officials so they could run the Bangkok International Film Festival. Gerald Green, 78, and Patricia Green 55, were sentenced to prison despite a supportive letter to the court from the veteran film star Kirk Douglas. Mr Douglas said [...]
The head of the Japan Sumo Association resigned after the nation’s ancient sport was beleaguered by a gambling scandal involving top wrestlers and coaches, with gangsters acting as go-betweens. Outgoing chairman Musashigawa, a former grand champion, was replaced on Thursday by Hanaregoma, who once held the second-highest rank of ozeki. His resignation came as the [...]
The Canadian Navy has boarded a cargo ship carrying nearly 500 Tamil migrants from Sri Lanka. Canadian authorities initially said the ship MV Sun Sea was boarded at midday on Thursday when it veered towards land, but police later said it was not boarded until evening as the ship was escorted to Vancouver island by a naval ship. Local [...]
A new superbug could spread around the world after reaching Britain from India – in part because of medical tourism – and scientists say there are almost no drugs to treat it. Researchers said on Wednesday they had found a new gene called New Delhi metallo-beta-lactamase, or NDM-1, in patients in South Asia and in Britain. [...]
Chinese soldiers frantically dug through the mud with shovels, even with their bare hands, Tuesday to reach the second story of an apartment building in northwestern Zhouqu County. After 60 hours trapped under mud, Liu Ma Shendeng was alive. The soldiers pulled out the 52-year-old man, a rare moment of joy in a search for [...]
Health authorities in China have ordered an investigation into claims that a batch of powdered baby milk has caused children as young as four months old to grow breasts. Tests were ordered on infant formula made by the NASDAQ-listed company Synutra after reports surfaced in China’s state media that three children fed on the formula [...]
Japan apologized once again to South Korea on Tuesday for colonizing the Korean peninsula for more than three decades in the early 1900s. While the apology is not the first from Japan, it coincides with the 100th anniversary this month of the annexation of the Korean peninsula. In his statement, Prime Minister Naoto Kan expressed [...]
Engineers battled on Tuesday to drain an unstable lake created by the country’s deadliest landslide in decades, threatening new misery for a devastated northwestern China town if it bursts its banks. At least 337 people died in Zhouqu when a slew of mud and rocks engulfed swathes of the mountainside community in Gansu province at [...]
A book by a Chinese dissident author who says he was threatened with imprisonment argues China’s premier is not a reformist nor a man of the people, as popularly perceived at home, but a mediocre technocrat who rose to power through good acting. Excerpts of “China’s Best Actor: Wen Jiabao,” seen by The Associated Press [...]
Honda on Monday announced the recall of 383,000 older-model Accord, Civic and Element vehicles in the U.S. for problems related to the ignition mechanism that could allow the cars to roll away. The automaker said in a statement that if the ignition interlock mechanism becomes worn out or damaged, it may become possible for the [...]
The Indian Coast Guard has been trying to contain an oil spill off the coast of Mumbai after a collision between two cargo ships, a defence ministry spokesman said. One vessel has tilted dangerously after the collision between the two Panamanian ships five nautical miles from the shore on Saturday. “One ship, which was carrying [...]
The southern Japanese city of Nagasaki marked the 65th anniversary of the US atomic bomb attack on Monday, three days after Hiroshima held its biggest-ever memorial service. A moment of silence was observed on Monday as the bell tolled at 11.02am local time, the moment the US dropped an atomic bomb on Nagasaki during World [...]
Radical Indonesian cleric Abu Bakar Bashir, once imprisoned for his links to the terror group behind the Bali bombings, was arrested Monday for alleged involvement with a new militant network. His lawyer, Muhammad Ali, said the arrest took place on Monday morning in West Java’s Ciamis district. Bashir is best known as the founder and [...]
California’s Chico Outlaws’s 18-year-old ‘Knuckleball Princess’ is hailed as a pioneer for equality in sport, despite struggling on the field. An obscure baseball stadium in northern California is becoming a real-life field of dreams for Eri Yoshida. In just three months, the 18-year-old has pitched herself into sporting history and the affections of some of [...]
Rescue workers are hunting for an estimated 2,000 people who are still missing after landslides triggered by heavy rains killed at least 127 in flood-hit northwest China, state media has reported. Authorities have sent nearly 3,000 soldiers and about 100 medical experts to help in search and rescue effort in the Gannan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture [...]
India is giving Bangladesh a billion-dollar soft loan, the biggest credit package New Delhi has ever given to any nation, officials said Saturday, highlighting warming ties between the neighbours. Relations chilled between the South Asian neighbours from 2001 to 2006 when Bangladesh was ruled by extremist-allied government and New Delhi regularly accused Dhaka of harbouring [...]
Four days after an al Qaeda-linked group claimed responsibility for targeting an oil tanker, the United Arab Emirates government has acknowledged that it was indeed attacked, state media said Friday. The government had earlier said the tanker was passing through the Strait of Hormuz when it was exposed to a high wave as a result [...]
It is the world’s biggest dam which promised to provide environmentally friendly energy to millions. But China’s Three Gorges superstructure is now under threat from vast floating islands of rubbish and debris which have been swept into the Yangtze River by torrential rain and flooding. The debris has clogged a large swathe of the river [...]
ABOARD THE USS GEORGE WASHINGTON — Nothing projects U.S. global air and sea power more vividly than supercarriers. Bristling with fighter jets that can reach deep into even landlocked trouble zones, America’s virtually invincible carrier fleet has long enforced its dominance of the high seas. China may soon put an end to that. U.S. naval [...]
Three members of organized crime groups affiliated with the Yamaguchi-gumi, the largest criminal organization in the nation, have been arrested on suspicion of extorting 6 million yen from a middleman in illegal gambling operations. The three are the first gang members to be arrested over the gambling scandal that has involved many sumo wrestlers and [...]
A 27-year-old company employee from Izumisano, Osaka Prefecture, has been arrested on suspicion of creating a computer virus and spreading it on the Internet, destroying data on infected computers, police said Wednesday. On Monday, the Metropolitan Police Department arrested Masato Nakatsuji on property destruction charges. He became the first computer virus creator to whom such [...]
Yuan Chonghuan (袁崇焕) was a Ming Dynasty general famous for defeating Nurhaci at the Battle of Ningyuan, which put a temporary halt to the Manchu invasion. Yuan’s ancestral home in Dongguan, Guanggdong, has been turned into a memorial park. Inscribed on the base of a stone statue of Yuan is his battle-cry, shown in the [...]
The death toll has risen to 17 after a drunk driver at the wheel of his bucket loader tore through a rural community in northern China, residents said Tuesday, the latest in a string of grisly rampages in China.
The grandson of Chairman Mao Zedong, the first leader of the People’s Republic of China, has become the country’s youngest army general, state-run media reported. Photographs of the portly Mao Xinyu wearing the insignia of a major general, the lowest of three general ranks in the People’s Liberation Army, were published on the Web site [...]
Tokyo’s oldest man is no longer the city’s reigning centenarian. Why? Because Sogen Kato has been dead for 30 years, a fact his family kept secret. “His family must have known he has been dead all these years and acted as if nothing happened. It’s so eerie,” said Yutaka Muroi, a Tokyo metropolitan welfare official. [...]
Floods sweeping through northeastern China have left more than 100 people dead or missing after 10 days of downpours. Waters have cut off roads, left villages inaccessible and knocked out communications and water supplies in the hardest-hit areas, the official Xinhua news agency reported on Sunday. At least 592,000 residents were evacuated from waterlogged areas [...]
Just 10 inches high, the imperial vases had a pre-sale estimate of between $60,000 and $90,000. But in a hushed saleroom they sold for a total of almost $750,000 to a foreign bidder on the telephone. The vases were discovered by chance after the owners invited an antiques expert to their home to value a [...]
At least 15 people have been killed in an explosion at a coal mine in northern China. Another 20 people were injured in the explosion early on Saturday morning in the dormitory area of the Liugou mine in Linfen city in Shanxi province, the state-run Xinhua news agency said. Local authorities have launched rescue operations [...]
The United States and India on Friday formally signed an agreement on reprocessing spent nuclear fuel that US officials hope will allow American firms a share of India’s $150 billion nuclear energy market. The agreement, signed by US Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Bill Burns and Indian Ambassador to the United States H.E. Meera [...]
Tim Zagat, CEO of Zagat Survey, says if you yearn for an inexpensive power lunch spot in Japan’s capital of Tokyo, then it need not mean a lot of yen. His top three picks are Hommage, Matsukan and Shofuku-ro.
China’s worst flooding in more than a decade has killed nearly 1,000 people across the country and stranded tens of thousands in the northeast without power. The state-run flood control office said 928 people have been killed since the rainy season began in May and 477 others are missing. More heavy rains were expected for [...]
Japan has hanged two death row inmates, in the first executions since the new government took power last year. The two prisoners, both convicted killers, were hanged at the Tokyo Detention Centre. Justice Minister Keiko Chiba – who opposes the death penalty – witnessed the executions and announced the formation of a group to review [...]
A landslide in southern China has left 21 people missing, further adding to the misery of a nation reeling under the worst floods in a decade following heavy rains. Rescuers searched for the missing people after a landslide hit Hanyuan county in the southern province of Sichuan on Tuesday morning, the official Xinhua news agency [...]
Riot police used electric shock batons to beat women sweatshop workers when they stopped producing fashion labels for the UK and other Western nations in Cambodia today. The image of heavily-armed police in protective clothing using their shields and batons to crush a strike by poverty-stricken women workers will do nothing to improve the tarnished [...]
With a population of more than one billion people, China creates massive volumes of waste. But its recycling industry is also growing fast, one that utilizes not only its own rubbish but that of other countries as well. It is the world’s biggest importer of waste, taking in plastics from the US, for example, before [...]
More than 9,000 passengers have become stranded at the Chengdu Airport because of heavy rains over the last two days, Xinhua news agency reported on Monday. Flights from the airport were either delayed or canceled on Saturday and Sunday because of torrential rainstorms. On Saturday, more than 200 flights were delayed and 20 flights canceled, [...]
A United Nations-backed tribunal on Monday found a 67-year-old former prison warden of the Khmer Rouge guilty of crimes against humanity and war crimes for overseeing the torture and killing of more than 14,000 prisoners. He was the first major figure to be tried in the murderous regime since it was toppled 30 years ago. [...]
A popular Swiss tourist train carrying mainly Japanese holidaymakers derailed in the Alps on Friday, killing one and injuring 42 others, local police said. Police would not confirm the nationality of the deceased, but Japanese news agency Kyodo reported that the fatality was a 64-year-old Japanese woman. She was among 14 tourists and a guide [...]
Yu Pengnian’s journey from poor street hawker to Hong Kong real-estate magnate was already a remarkable one. Then the 88-year-old did something even rarer that shocked many in increasingly materialistic China: He gave it all away. Saying he hoped to set an example for other wealthy Chinese, Mr. Yu called a press conference in April [...]
Several U.S. and Japanese warships are taking part in celebrations dedicated to the Russian Navy Day, a spokesperson for the Russian Pacific Fleet said on Sunday. “Two groups of U.S. and Japanese warships, which arrived on Friday in the Pacific Fleet’s main naval base [in Vladivostok] on an unofficial visit, are taking part in the [...]
Handcuffed, shoeless and tied to a rope, these girls are being led through the streets of China as part of a police crackdown against prostitution. But the images of the girls being frogmarched down the Guangzhou road – with their shoes removed to stop them running away – have shocked many in China. An outraged [...]
Zhang Changfu’s street address could almost be: the middle of the road. In this city of perhaps more than 17 million people where buildings seem to shoot up overnight, Zhang lives in what locals call a “nail house,” one that continues sticking out even after the surrounding area has been developed. Zhang’s house juts into [...]
Chinese search engine Baidu can proceed with negligence claims against its domain register following a hacking attack, a US judge has ruled. The claims arose from an attack in January on Register.com by a group claiming to be the Iranian Cyber Army. Baidu alleges the hackers had contacted Register claiming to be Baidu employees and [...]
A Chinese court in the restive western region of Xinjiang has given a Uighur journalist and website manager 15 years in jail for endangering state security by speaking to foreign journalists, his employer said on Friday. Uighurbiz.net, where Gheyret Niyaz worked as an administrator, posted a notice saying he had been sentenced at a hearing [...]
China’s largest reported oil spill had more than doubled by Wednesday, closing beaches on the Yellow Sea and prompting an environmental official to warn the sticky black crude posed a “severe threat” to sea life and water quality. Some workers trying to clean up the inky beaches wore little more than rubber gloves, complicating efforts, [...]
Leonardo DiCaprio is the star of this summer’s blockbuster, “Inception.” But on the sweltering night at Tokyo’s premiere of the movie, you might have mistaken Ken Watanabe as the film’s top-billing actor. “Watanabe Ken-san desu!” said the announcer to a crowd of a thousand screaming fans, as Watanabe stepped onto the red carpet. Waving notebooks [...]
Standing at the spot that divides North and South Korea, US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton urged North Korea on Wednesday to turn away from the isolation that has left its people suffering. Clinton and Defense Secretary Robert Gates paid a rare visit on a rainy day to the heavily fortified border dividing the [...]
The death toll from Typhoon Conson in the Philippines rose to 76 on Tuesday as rescuers pulled more bodies from the sea, with dozens more still missing and feared dead, authorities said. The number of missing stood at 72 as coast guard and navy boats were joined by aircraft in scouring the waters nearly a [...]
A probe into a rail crash in eastern India that claimed more than 60 lives focused Tuesday on why a packed express train hurtled at high speed into a station where it was scheduled to halt. The express roared into Sainthia station in West Bengal state at 90 kilometers an hour (60 miles an hour) [...]
Kwon Ho Ung, former chief delegate for ministerial talks with South Korea, killed by firing squad according to newspaper. North Korea executed a former cabinet official who was in charge of talks with South Korea, a news report said today – the latest reported death sentence for a North Korean official over policy failures. Kwon [...]
A nocturnal, forest-dwelling primate with orb-like eyes and short limbs was photographed in central Sri Lanka late last year after being feared extinct, researchers said Monday. A Horton Plains slender loris was caught on camera after lengthy surveys of the forest by researchers from the Zoological Society of London, the University of Colombo and the [...]
Li Yong, a neighborhood watch volunteer in Zhengzhou, picked up the pigeon over the weekend in a suburban housing compound. “We brought it back to the office, and I found some sweet corn to feed it,” he told the Zhengzhou Evening News. “When it flew down to eat, I saw a small scroll tied to [...]
Specialists in Delhi report hundreds of inquiries from young people keen to make a good first impression at university. It is freshers’ week at Delhi University. In a few days’ time, and thousands of new students will flood the hallowed red sandstone floors and grassy lawns of the Indian capital’s best known institution of further [...]
The scam always starts the same way: the phone rings at someone’s home, and the caller – usually with an Indian accent – asks for the householder, quoting their name and address before saying “I’m calling for Microsoft. We’ve had a report from your internet service provider of serious virus problems from your computer.” Dire [...]
A British author has been arrested in Singapore for alleged criminal defamation a day after launching a book on the death penalty in the country. Alan Shadrake was arrested after the government’s Media Development Authority (MDA) lodged a report on Friday, police said in a statement on Monday. “He is being investigated for alleged offences [...]
Alongside China’s astonishing economic boom, an almost unnoticed religious boom has quietly been taking place. In the country’s first major survey on religious beliefs, conducted in 2006, 31.4 percent of about 4,500 people questioned described themselves as religious. That amounts to more than 300 million religious believers, an astonishing number in an officially atheist country, [...]
Dogfish Head brewery is known for making exotic beer with ingredients like crystallized ginger or water from Antarctica, so it might not sound surprising that one of its recent creations is a brew flavored simply by grapes and flowers. It’s not the recipe that makes this beer so special; it’s where that recipe was found: [...]
Their bodies rotting on the floor of a Japanese dock, these sharks have been killed for one thing: their fins. Like the slaves who walked the rows of cotton in America’s Southern plantations 200 years ago, Japanese workers move silently between the bodies hacking off the fins and catching them in buckets. They are then [...]
The death toll from a typhoon that hit the Philippines rose sharply to 53 Saturday, officials said, warning the number of dead could go up further with dozens of others missing days after the disaster. In some rare good news, three fishermen were plucked by passing colleagues from waters off the Bicol region, after Typhoon [...]
More than 5,000 people have been arrested in a series of police raids on illegal World Cup gambling dens throughout China and South East Asia, Interpol officials have disclosed. Police in China, Thailand, Singapore and Malaysia launched their raids throughout the World Cup finals, arresting organizers, ordinary gamblers and seizing more than $10 Million in [...]
An oil pipeline at a busy Chinese port has exploded, causing a spectacular fire that has blazed since Friday evening. More than 2,000 firefighters worked overnight to control flames and further blasts on a second pipeline after the initial explosion. China Central Television showed flames raging among tanks at the port in the northern city [...]
This toilet-themed restaurant chain proves it isn’t a flash in the pan. Owner Wang Tzi-wei opened the first Modern Toilet outlet in Taipei 2004; there are now branches all over Taiwan, as well as in Hong Kong and mainland China. The pictures in this gallery are from a branch which has recently opened in Shenzhen. [...]
A Japanese mother has admitted tying up her five- year-old daughter and spinning her in the washing machine in an attempt to discipline her. Junko Egashira, 34, who is currently under arrest for allegedly strangling her daughter Mone to death last month, reportedly admitted to a string of abusive acts against the five-year-old. The mother [...]
A second China UFO sighting has residents on edge, just seven days after an unidentified flying object shut down a Chinese airport. The new UFO sighting took place in Chongqing in eastern China on July 15. Witnesses told Shanghai Daily they saw the same thing: “four lantern-like objects forming a diamond shape that hovered over [...]
Geishas have taken to serving beer for $6 as the downturn means people are no longer willing to pay hundreds of pounds simply to enjoy green tea and artful conversation. Say the word “geisha” and images of beautiful kimono-clad women serving green tea, reciting poetry and playing classical instruments may spring to mind. In Japan, [...]
More than 1,600 pounds of illicit ivory has been seized in Thailand after the elephant tusks were smuggled from Africa in pallets labelled as plywood furniture or notepads. Customs authorities said Friday the 765 kilograms (1,683 pounds) of elephant tusks seized Tuesday was Thailand’s third big ivory seizure this year. The shipment was seized Tuesday [...]
Hundreds of mourners Friday marked the death of a teenage bottlenose dolphin who won hearts and sometimes annoyed New Zealand swimmers and surfers with his boisterous antics. Moko’s body, placed in a blue coffin bedecked with flowers, was carried through a seaside town. After a ceremony that drew more than 400 admirers, his casket was [...]
A mother and her seven-year-old son were killed in a mudslide while some 50 trucks and cars were washed away in a flash flood Friday as heavy rains lashed Japan, leaving at least eight dead in three days. Five others remained unaccounted for by nightfall as the weather agency predicted more rain for central and [...]
Sherrie Cramer breaks into stifled sobs as she nears the dirt-streaked former orphanage in China where her daughter lived as a severely malnourished infant. Once again, Cramer is fighting to keep the child she adopted alive. But this time, it’s a battle against leukemia, and the odds are not in her favor. Without a bone [...]
You wouldn’t want to bump into any of these fish while snorkelling on vacation. But these amazing pictures of creatures of the deep sea have been captured by scientists working at record low underwater levels underneath the Great Barrier Reef. Experts from the University of Queensland’s brain institute in Australia used high-tech cameras to glimpse [...]
North Korea’s health care system is in shambles, with doctors sometimes performing amputations without anesthesia and working by candlelight in hospitals lacking essential medicine, heat and power, a rights watchdog said Thursday, July 14. North Korea’s state health care system has been deteriorating for years as the country’s economic difficulties worsen. Many of the country’s [...]
A 900-year-old drainage system has saved a city in south China from severe floods that have left over one hundred people dead and a million homeless across the region. Torrential rain and flash floods have caused £1.9 billion of damage in China. Nearly forty people were killed this week alone in a series of landslides. [...]
Jillian Lauren, an NYU-dropout from New Jersey, has written a book about her time in the Prince of Brunei’s harem. Lauren’s memoir “Some Girls: My Life in a Harem” chronicles the year and a half she spent as a sexual partner for Prince Jefri (pictured below), a man known as the “Playboy Prince.” At the [...]
China’s third largest freshwater body of water, Lake Tai, is at once placid and majestic, until it reveals its dirty secret. Lake Tai, or Tai Hu in Chinese, was once considered an ecological treasure in the heart of eastern China’s land of fish and rice cultivation in Jiangsu province. Today, the lake is lined with [...]
A tiny white mushroom may have triggered fatal heart attacks in hundreds of villagers in south west China, scientists have said. Researchers descended on Yunnan province in China five years ago to try to solve the mystery of Yunnan Sudden Death Syndrome. Each summer for the past 30 years, during rainy season, scores of villagers [...]
Government caught between promoting gaming and restraining its use in world’s most wired nation. As dusk descends on the Sinchon neighbourhood of Seoul, a wave of Saturday shoppers melts away, on cue, into restaurants and bars. But in a windowless room several floors above the throng, Ji Yu-tae is steeling himself for a very different [...]
An upsurge in the number of North Korean soldiers defecting into China fuelled fears of food shortages and an imminent military clash. Previously considered to be among the regime’s most important assets, the North Korean People’s Army has always been well provisioned in order to ensure the troops remain loyal. But a poor harvest and [...]
A drunk Australian tourist has been hospitalized after he broke into a reptile park and climbed onto the back of a 16ft-long crocodile called Fatso. Unimpressed by the stunt, Fatso gave the man a large bite on the leg, but then miraculously let him go. The 36-year-old man suffered “some very nasty lacerations” to his [...]
An elderly Japanese woman attacked a student and broke his nose after he refused to give her his seat on a bus. Tamiko Masuta, 66, the manager of an apartment complex, was arrested after assaulting the teenager on a bus with her umbrella. According to witnesses, she flew into a rage when the student did [...]
The mafia godfather of China’s biggest city, who also doubled as its top justice official, has been executed after an operation to clear the city of corruption. Wen Qiang, 55, used his position as deputy police commissioner and then as director of the justice bureau to shield a network of gangsters. But he met his [...]
Tonga’s shy Oxford-educated King George Tupou V is preparing to relinquish power as the country gears up for its first democratic elections, ending hundreds of years of feudal rule. This week the government published a new electoral role and called on the Pacific nation’s 101,900 citizens to add their names to the document so that [...]
Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan’s coalition government suffered a major blow in Sunday’s upper house election, exit polls showed, threatening efforts to curb massive public debt and putting his own job at risk. Kan’s Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) were set to win just 47 seats and its tiny partner, the People’s New Party (PNP), [...]
The Nagoya Grand Sumo Tournament kicked off the opening day on Sunday to a nearly packed house shaken but undeterred by a gambling scandal rocking the ancient Japanese sport. Grand champion Hakuho, bidding for his third consecutive title, got off to a turbo start with a victory over Georgian Tochinoshin, shrugging off his own critics [...]
Yang Youde wins compensation battle which saw him fight off property developers using homemade pyrotechnics. A Chinese farmer who used homemade rockets to fight off developers was celebrated in the state media today for winning record levels of compensation for his land. Yang Youde has become a cult figure in recent months for his one-man [...]
Following the exhibition “Galleria Borghese” at the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum earlier this year, yet another famous Italian artistic institution is in town. This time it’s the Capodimonte Museum from Naples, with a show at the National Museum of Western Art. Like the Borghese show, this exhibition also focuses on 16th- and 17th-century, mainly Italian, [...]
A copilot of JAL Express Co. became Japan’s first female captain Friday after passing the government’s qualification screening. Ari Fuji, 42, is scheduled to make her maiden flight as a captain next Monday, from Osaka to Sendai, according to the airline, which is wholly owned by Japan Airlines International Co. Fuji joined JAL Express in [...]
Police arrested two junior high school girls Friday suspected of deliberately starting a fatal fire at the home of one of them earlier in the day in Takarazuka, Hyogo Prefecture. The 15-year-old girl and her 14-year-old classmate, both third-year students, are believed to have started the fire in the early hours of Friday. A 31-year-old [...]
Railway companies across Japan are training their staff in martial arts and equipping them with pepper spray due to a sudden increase in the number of attacks on employees. Figures released this week by 25 railway firms show that there were 869 attacks on station staff or train crew in the fiscal year that ended [...]
Reuters has dramatic and graphic video footage of a hostage situation in China’s Guangzhou city that ended when a plain-clothed policewoman shot the assailant dead from close range. The suspect, armed with scissors, kept police away by taking the hostage after having committed a robbery. He can be seen in the video stabbing the hostage [...]
Several sumo figures involved in illegal betting on baseball games have admitted at least one bookmaker at the center of the gambling had ties to a crime group affiliated with the Yamaguchi-gumi–the nation’s largest organized crime organization, according to police sources. The bookmaker decided the odds for baseball games and then passed them to a [...]
Sumo fans expressed shock at the police search Wednesday of several stables that are home to many wrestlers who wagered on professional baseball. “I guess there’s some kind of relationship between the sumo world and gangsters. I hope the cops eventually will figure everything out, and the sumo world will clean itself up,” a Chiba [...]
Asha Saini and Yogesh Kumar were in love and wanted to get married. But Saini’s family did not approve of Kumar: As a taxi driver, they said, he did not have the right kind of job. But more importantly for them, he was from a lower caste. Despite their objections, Saini, 19, kept seeing Kumar, [...]
A Chinese woman who had her legs twisted the wrong way round in a car accident has been told she should be able to walk and stand normally after undergoing corrective surgery. Xiao Fang was just seven when she was involved in an horrific car accident which caused severe damage to her legs. Surgeons managed [...]
Agricultural Bank of China is set to raise up to $22.1bn in the world’s biggest initial public offering, underscoring the strength of investor faith in the growth of the Chinese economy. AgBank, the last of China’s big state-owned banks to go public, has managed to complete its offering during a period in which global markets [...]
A New Zealand anti-whaling activist has been handed a suspended two-year prison term in Japan for offenses relating to his boarding of a Japanese whaling vessel in Antarctic waters Peter Bethune, a former activist of the US-based Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, was accused of injuring a whaler by hurling a rancid butter stink bomb as [...]
Monkeys at a research institute in Japan have used the branches of trees to catapault themselves over an electric fence in order to escape. A group of 15 monkeys at Kyoto University’s primate research institute in Aichi Prefecture, which are the focus of a string of high-profile scientific studies, escaped from their forest home which [...]
The Japanese government has been accused of running slave labor working conditions after 27 foreign interns died in one year following months of working more than 16 hours a day. The majority of the victims were in their 20s or 30s and were among an estimated 200,000 trainees from developing countries that are working here [...]
The Nobel laureate will address a crowd of 5,000 fans and followers at his temple in McLeod Ganj, a hill station in the Indian Himalayas where he has lived since fleeing Tibet in 1959 after a failed uprising against Chinese rule. In apparently fine health and showing no signs of slowing down despite his advanced [...]
With only a sandwich and a glass of milk to fill his legendary stomach after a night in jail, one-time hot dog champ Takeru Kobayashi walked out of court Monday declaring, “I’m hungry!” Kobayashi was released on his own recognizance a day after he rushed the stage at the annual Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest, [...]
An American geologist held by Chinese state security agents who stubbed lit cigarettes on his arms was sentenced to eight years in prison Monday for gathering data on China’s oil industry – a case that highlights the government’s use of vague secrets laws to restrict business information. In pronouncing Xue Feng guilty of spying and [...]
Japan’s governing body of sumo wrestling announced it has fired star sumo wrestler ozeki Kotomitsuki in the wake of a gambling scandal that has enveloped the sport, according to news reports. The unprecedented move also was taken against Kotomitsuki’s stable master, Otake. Kotomitsuki becomes the first active “ozeki,” the champion rank to which he was [...]
Fifteen people were killed and dozens injured when an overloaded bus crashed into a concrete wall in the central Philippines, police said Sunday. Police said the brakes of the bus failed, forcing the driver to slam the vehicle into the wall along a highway in Toledo City in Cebu province, 585 kilometres south of Manila. [...]
Officials unveiled a glittering new multibillion-dollar airport terminal in the Indian capital Saturday, a steel-and-glass structure intended to show that the country’s infrastructure is finally catching up with its rapid economic growth. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh dedicated the ultramodern, $3-billion terminal at New Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport. Terminal 3 or T3 was built in [...]
A Japanese eating champion who sat out this year’s Coney Island Fourth of July hot dog contest apparently couldn’t resist the temptation to hotdog afterward. Competitive eater Joey “Jaws” Chestnut gobbled his way to a fourth consecutive championship Sunday. But he was suddenly upstaged by the surprise appearance of his biggest rival – six-time champion [...]
The gig: Video game designer, Nintendo Co. Since 1979, Miyamoto has created several of the industry’s best-known franchises, including Mario, Donkey Kong and Zelda. While kids dream of becoming a video game designer, game designers dream of becoming Miyamoto. Many developers credit him as their inspiration, including Will Wright, creator of the Sims, and Cliff [...]
A Sydney court on Friday sentenced an Australian Catholic priest to almost 20 years for sexually abusing two dozen boys over two decades, the official news agency said. The district court’s public gallery broke into applause as the judge read out the sentence for John Sidney Denham, 67. Judge Helen Syme said many of the [...]
Toyota Motor Corp has announced a recall of up to 270,000 vehicles globally, including several luxury models, due to faulty engines in the latest quality lapse by the world’s largest carmaker. Announcing the recall on Friday company officials said flaws in valve springs, a crucial engine component, could make the vehicle stall while moving. Toyota [...]
A South Korean medical professor who invented a digital device he claimed could transform tap water into holy water is facing fraud charges. The professor claimed to have digitally captured the supposed curative powers of holy water on devices that he sold to more than 5,000 people for a total profit of nearly 1.7 billion [...]
Though his parents previously vowed to get help, 2-year-old Aldi Suganda Rizal — the Indonesian toddler who caused a sensation in May when video footage of him smoking a cigarette turned up online — continues to indulge his nicotine habit. CBS reporters tracked Aldi and his parents down in a tiny fishing village on the [...]
Workers at a Japanese-owned electronics factory in north China have been on strike for three days, the most recent dispute in a wave of labor unrest. Banners on Thursday at the side of the Tianjin Mitsumi Electric Co., a factory employing 3,000 workers, read “we want a pay rise” and “we want fair treatment”. Strikes, [...]
Amit Virmani was vacationing at Bali’s famous Kuta Beach when he met a 12-year-old boy who told him of his unlikely goal: to grow up fast, so he could be a gigolo. The boy said his heroes were the young bronzed Indonesian surfers who provided erotic services to Japanese women and other female tourists who [...]
Tens of thousands of people were expected to hit Hong Kong’s sweltering streets Thursday for a pro-democracy rally on the 13th anniversary of the former British colony’s return to China. Organisers were expecting around 50,000 protesters to turn out for the July 1 march, down from 70,000 last year, underscoring fears that a deep split [...]
Just 36.8 percent of medical institutions that the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare has recognized as able to provide organs donated by brain-dead children will be equipped to handle such donations when they become legal later this month, a Mainichi survey has found. A revision to the Organ Transplant Law that comes into effect [...]
Researchers have developed a high-precision method to diagnose three types of cancer from saliva, enabling patients to undergo tests without physical discomfort. The results can be available in less than 12 hours, according to the researchers. The method, announced at the current meeting of the international Metabolomics Society in the Netherlands, was developed by a [...]
The number of gangsters who applied for welfare benefits despite a ban on such payments jumped in fiscal 2009 to 41 in Aichi Prefecture, amid the economic stalemate making them short of funds, police data showed Thursday. Following the ban imposed in 2006, the figure came to six in fiscal 14 in fiscal 2007 and [...]
Japan’s football team returned home to an enthusiastic reception on Thursday after having exceeded expectations at the World Cup. Thousands of fans waved flags that read “Thank You” when greeting the squad at Kansai International Airport. Japan surprised many by beating Cameroon and Denmark in group matches before being defeated in a penalty shootout by [...]
Benigno Aquino III has been sworn in as the new president of the Philippines, reiterating his campaign pledges to root out widespread corruption and “lift our country from poverty”. The inauguration on Wednesday took place in front of hundreds of thousands of supporters and followed his landslide win in last month’s election. “If there is [...]
The number of corporate executives at Japanese companies who received over $1 Million in compensation for fiscal 2009 reached 233 individuals as of June 29, according to the Kyodo News Service. The season for general shareholders’ meetings reached its peak on June 29, with a total of 1,087 listed and unlisted Japanese companies — which [...]
More than half a million Sony laptops sold this year contain a software bug that could lead them to overheat, the company said Wednesday. Sony has recorded 39 cases of overheating among Vaio F and C series laptops that have been on sale since January. In some cases the overheating has led the laptop case [...]
Asian shares tumbled Wednesday after sharp falls on Wall Street and in Europe on US economic recovery fears and worries of a potential slowdown in China, as a strong yen hammered Japanese exporters. European banks also plagued sentiment, with concerns about a liquidity shortfall when a European Central Bank lending facility expires Wednesday, potentially leaving [...]
Hiroshi Murayama, a former Tokyo High Prosecutors Office chief, was given the green light on Tuesday to become acting chief in place of Japan Sumo Association Chairman Musashigawa by an oversight panel investigating rampant gambling in the Japanese national sport. Murayama, 73, will officially be confirmed at a JSA board of directors meeting next Sunday. [...]
Sumo stablemaster Otake has revealed that he was involved in illegal gambling on baseball games starting three years ago, sources have told the Mainichi. “I frequently participated in baseball-game gambling through Kotomitsuki over a period of about three years starting from 2007,” sources close to the 42-year-old stablemaster quoted him as saying. In light of [...]
Two Australian security guards who allowed an aboriginal prisoner to cook to death in the back of a van have been told they will not be prosecuted. The decision by the state prosecutor in Western Australia has been greeted with outrage by the man’s family and community leaders. The 46-year-old died of heat stroke after [...]
The last thing Paraguay wanted was to wind up in a shootout with Japan. After all, the South Americans almost never practice penalty kicks – or have any success when they do. Yet Paraguay took the most difficult route to its first World Cup quarterfinals Tuesday. After 120 exhausting minutes without scoring, the Paraguayans found [...]
A daughter has told of the moment she heard her mother being beaten to death by her drunken father – during a mobile phone call. Sarabjit Kaur called her mother, Mohinder Kaur, after she went for a walk with Sukhmander Singh near the family home in Melbourne. Mohinder told her daughter that Sukhmander was beating [...]
Smoke emerged from a train’s pantograph on the Tokyo Metro’s Tozai Line on the morning of June 29, causing service suspensions and affecting 146,000-odd commuters. At around 7:45 a.m., the conductor of a 10-car local train which was stopping at Kayabacho Station on the Tozai Line on its way from Toyo-Katsukadai to Nakano found smoke [...]
The Russian Armed Forces started on Tuesday large-scale Vostok-2010 military exercises in Siberia and the country’s Far East, a spokesman for the Far Eastern military district said. “The exercises started on schedule, without delays. They are held on the territory of the Far Eastern and Siberian military districts from June 29 through July 8,” the [...]
A former sumo wrestler who has been arrested on suspicion of extorting $39,000 (3.5 million yen) from ozeki Kotomitsuki has denied the charges, saying that the money was a reward from Kotomitsuki for collecting money he won from a bookmaker by betting on baseball, according to police investigators. According to the investigators, Mitsutomo Furuichi, 38, [...]
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