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In Japan, being thin isn’t just the price you pay for fashion or social acceptance. It’s the law.
So before the fat police could throw her in pudgy purgatory, Miki Yabe, 39, a manager at a major transportation corporation, went on a crash diet last month. In the week before her company’s annual health check-up, Yabe ate 21 consecutive meals of vegetable soup and hit the gym for 30 minutes a day of running and swimming.
“It’s scary,” said Yabe, who is 5 feet 3 inches and 133 pounds. “I gained 2 kilos [4.5 pounds] this year.”
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The three American hikers who have been detained in Iran for the past 101 days have been charged with espionage. The families of Sarah Shourd, Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal issued the following statement today in response to these charges:
The allegation that our loved ones may have been engaged in espionage is untrue. It is entirely at odds with the people Shane, Sarah and Josh are and with anything that Iran can have learned about them since they were detained on July 31....
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An elderly man stabbed his wife of one year to death after failing to persuade her to stay married to him.
* "If we cannot be together, then we should die together,” the 80-year-old man was heard saying to his 73-year-old wife before taking out a knife from his sarong and stabbing her in Kampung Kuala Sungai in Kubang Rotan here.
* The incident occurred at about 1pm Monday when the man was about to leave the house after spending an hour persuading his wife to remain married to him.
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Zimbabwe gets a lot of bad press, but not many are aware of some of the amazing people making a difference there every day. These are people, who usually at great personal risk, fight for human rights, civil liberties, justice, equality and a better Zimbabwe for all. So here’s a shout out to some personal heroes of mine and I hope you are equally inspired. (Feel free to share stories about other amazing human rights heroes in Zim or southern Africa in general in the comment section.)
Eziuche Chinwe Ubani, a top Nigerian climate change official, has joined a growing chorus of African delegates who believe that developed countries must pledge cash to the continent to help it deal with the effects of global warming.
“Of course I think we should ask for money from developed countries. They have used resources and energy — often our resources — to grow and become developed,” said Ubani, chairman of Nigeria’s House of Representatives committee on climate change, to GlobalPost. “But now we do not have the technology to deal with the bad effects.”
It is often said that the children are those who pay the price for the errors of adults. It is also evident that the same applies to the events in Zimbabwe. A journalist from the BBC visited the Family Support Trust Clinic and interviewed one of the ...
Albino killers in Tanzania are now at long last facing justice, seven men have been found guilty of butchering albinos and selling their body parts to witchdoctors and have been sentenced to death for their crimes. Following the international pressure on Tanzania to take control of the situation there was a visible crackdown on witchdoctors and several people were successfully prosecuted for their parts in the albino slayings which have plagued the country in the past couple of years
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With good cause, we once decided Easter Island was the loneliest place on earth, but apparently that hasn't stopped the problem of too many tourists making their way to the historic and scenic spot, a ways off the coast of Chile.
The locals are of course happy that they get a reliable income from tourism, but they would also be happy with less. Thanks to Easter Island's energetic tourist industry, largely led by visitors wanting to see the much-photographed statues of ancient chiefs, the immigrant population of Easter Island is now about equal to the native Rapanui people.
A Canadian teenager has been rescued from an ice floe drifting in the Arctic sea, where he was reportedly stranded with two polar bears.
Search and rescue teams parachuted onto the 15m (40ft) floe after spotting the 17-year-old Inuit youth from the air.
They told the BBC he appeared to have shot and killed a mother polar bear in self-defence, orphaning her two cubs.
The teenager is being treated for mild hypothermia and frostbite in the small town of Coral Harbour, on Hudson Bay.
The world is not coming to an end on December 21, 2012, the US space agency insisted Monday in a rare campaign to dispel widespread rumors fueled by the Internet and a new Hollywood movie.
The latest big screen offering from Sony Picture, "2012," arrives in theaters on Friday, with a 200-million-dollar production about the end of the world supposedly based on myths backed by the Mayan calendar.
Spoiler alert: she survives.
In the clip, 27-year-old Charice Lewis is shown perilously weaving about on a Boston subway platform before falling onto the tracks. As Lewis stumbles around on the track, hugging the rail and unable or unwilling to reach the horrified bystanders trying to frantically alert the conductor and reach out to the girl, the train rapidly approaches. Police
say that the woman, who was treated for “scrapes,” had been drinking heavily for a long period of time.
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Police in Japan say they are questioning the man suspected of murdering Lindsay Hawker, a British teacher whose badly beaten body was found in an apartment near Tokyo in March 2007.
TV reports said Tatsuya Ichihashi, 30, had been arrested in Osaka, western Japan, days after it was revealed he had attempted to transform his appearance by undergoing extensive plastic surgery.
On November 6, a police officer at the Department of Internal Affairs in Novorossiysk used his personal Web site to address Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and talk about numerous problems police officers face in Russia.
In his video address a...
Nine people have been executed for participating in violent ethnic riots in China’s mainly Muslim north west that left nearly 200 people dead.
The nine are the first people to be put to death for their part in the July 5 riots, when members of the Uighur minority rampaged through the streets of the city of Urumqi, in Xinjiang province, hacking, stabbing and burning majority Han Chinese. Two days later, mobs of Han Chinese took to the streets in revenge.
A plastic bottle thrown into a Taipei recycling bin could be reincarnated as a blanket to warm disaster victims in any of 20 countries, thanks to a unique project by the world’s largest Buddhist charity.
The Taiwan Buddhist Tzu Chi Foundation has been taking plastic bottles from the waste stream of Taipei, a city of 2.6 million, for three years to convert them into about 244,000 polyester blankets intended for disaster zones. It has sent volunteers with relief supplies to some of the world’s biggest disasters, including Hurricane Katrina in the United States in 2005 and last year’s devastating Sichuan earthquake in China.
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The 78 Sri Lankans aboard the Oceanic Viking in port in Indonesia have declared that their "final decision" is to remain on the Australian ship.
In handwritten letters thrown from the vessel, the Sri Lankans say they have rejected all offers made by Australian officials in negotiations over the past few weeks.
Aussies are definitely not impervious to the charms of a cold can of Fosters; after all, they do have record-breaking pub crawls and boats made of beer cans. But if you're flying on a domestic Qantas flight Down Under, there are a few less beers going round these days.
Citing unruly behavior, mostly from drunken mine workers heading home after a couple of weeks working in the desert, Qantas has banned full strength beer and spirits on all flights within Western Australia.
Kevin Rudd, the Australian prime minister, announced the trip, saying the prince would use the visit to "get to know the Australian people".
During his time in New Zealand, the prince will represent the Queen at the opening of the Supreme Court building in Wellington
So far 27 people have been rescued from the unidentified craft, but another 11 were believed to be missing.
Merchant ships that responded to distress calls from the stricken vessel plucked dozens from the sea, while some of the survivors swam to a life raft dropped by an Australian military plane. One person taken aboard a rescue vessel died.
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A husband and wife will today be propelled into the ranks of the super-rich when they are named Britain's biggest-ever lottery winners.
The couple are to be handed a EuroMillions cheque for £45.5million at a press conference in a Cardiff hotel.
They are from Newport in 'Golden Gwent', which had already produced an astonishing six lottery millionaires in three years.
A 21-year-old Lance Corporal has been given leave from the British Army -- to represent England in the Miss World competition.
LCpl Katrina Hodge - dubbed Combat Barbie - will take over from the previous Miss England, who has stepped down after being arrested in an alleged nightclub brawl.
Chancellor Angela Merkel and former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev crossed a former fortified border on Monday to cheers of "Gorby! Gorby!" as a throng of grateful Germans recalled the night 20 years ago that the Berlin Wall gave way to their desire for freedom and unity.
Within moments of a confused announcement on Nov. 9, 1989 that East Germany was lifting travel restrictions, hundreds of people streamed into the enclave that was West Berlin, marking a pivotal moment in the collapse of communism in Europe.
There was uproar in Italy today over a ruling by the European court of human rights that the crucifixes that hang in most Italian classrooms are a violation of religious and educational freedoms.
The seven judges, whose decision could prompt a Europe-wide review of the use of religious symbols on public premises, said state schools had to "observe confessional neutrality".
Except on the far left, the ruling met with condemnation among Italian politicians and was denounced by the Vatican. Silvio Berlusconi’s education minister, Maria Stella Gelmini, said: "No one, not even some ideologically motivated European court, will succeed in rubbing out our identity."
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As Zahi Hawass pushes for the return of Egyptian artifacts across the globe, the country’s Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) has announced that it will give King Tut’s tomb a makeover. Combining their efforts with the California-based Getty Conservation Institute, Egypt says the 5-year project will restore the boy-King’s tomb.
“I always see the tomb of King Tut and wonder about those spots, which no scientist has been able to explain,” said Zahi Hawass...
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Everyone wants to be on the edge of a comeback these days. The city of Beirut isn't releasing a new single or belatedly confiding in Diane Sawyer, but that hasn't stopped the Guardian from proclaiming that Lebanon's capital is "back... and it's beautiful." We'd feel guilty reading this objectifying headline in a different context, but we guess it's okay to do to a city.
While attention has almost entirely been focused on America’s difficult relationship with Pakistan - a writer in Foreign Policy magazine called it the world’s most dysfunctional relationship - India and the United States have quietly gone ahead and completed the largest military exercise ever undertaken by New Delhi with a foreign army.
The exercise named Yudh Abyhas 2009 (or practice for war) and conducted in northern India involved tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, and helicopter-borne infantry.
The Chinese-owned Nile Textile Group has set up shop in the Port Said free zone, overlooking the north entrance of the Suez Canal, and developed an industrial estate now hiring 600 workers, 20 percent of which are Chinese and the rest Egyptian.
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