Zaphod comments

Nice to see that film cameras are still around, but 88K seems pretty steep for this simple camera. I still have a few old film cameras lying around, pretty sure they still work.

More "skyscrapers, glitzy stadium to woo global spenders" is the last thing this city needs, imho.

Marlon Brando

The girl said it happened - why would a 10-year-old girl lie about something that is, for most Japanese girls, a shameful, embarrassing and highly stigmatising thing such as sexual assault?!

Playing devils advocate here, but things like this have happened before. You might want to read up on the Satanic Panic in the US, where children told the incredible abuse stories, based influence from activist adults.

Fact is, children are the most easily manipulated members of society.

Not saying that that is the case here, but on the other hand just taking a child's statement at face value is also wrong.

I do not know what is more stupid... a law demanding a drivers license for this bizarre contraption, or the people who actually buy and use it.

So sad to see that these Europeans are blindly following the US, ever closer inching toward WW3. Fact is, the Ukraine war could have been stopped long ago.... Kieve and Moscow already had reached an agreement 2 years ago, before Boris Johnson flew in (on behalf of Washington) to torpedo it.

It is sad to see that the Japanese government still accepts US bases in their country.

Moonraker

Climate change denialists here at work I see above ....

Denial is one way they have to deflect their guilt.

Sigh.... I have not seen any "climate change denier" yet, and I do not expect to one. Such a silly talking point. Fact is, anyone who claims the climate has never changed and should never change is off the rocker.

What people are doubting is that all these government programs in the West like promoting EVs, windmills, and solar panels have any impact on any climate change.

A sometimes halting Biden

"Sometimes halting"?? Talk trying to put lipstick on a pig. CNN went to such extremes to tilt the tables in favour of Biden, and he still crashed. What an epic disaster. Trump did a good job in controlling his temper and staying quiet.... the more Biden speaks, the more clear the trainwreck.

Now I am just curious of CNN tries to claim their show as a "cheap fake"...

Better late than never, but really this persecution remains a stain on American policy.

The power of propaganda. Reminds me of the recently reported Russian shop in Tokyo that had to close because of harrassment.

So misguided. There are plenty of countries that deserve more attention before criticizing Japan.

The handshake event is weird, but I can see her wish to hide her face. There are other artists who doing this to avoid the constant media hounding, like "Green" and "Sekai Owarimade".

opheliajadefeldt

I did not know until I read this story that Japan does not recognise same sex marriage, which I find most bizarre, they harm no one, and never have, but it makes 2 people very happy. As a young Gay woman I also have have no objections to any person who wants gender reassignment

It is impossible to "reassign" gender. What these medical procedures do is create a sort of simulation, but as a result of that the patients are on medication for the rest of their lives, and every cell in their body still remains the birth sex. The question is how far do you want to go to accommodate people with a mental condition? Anorexics look in the mirror and see themselves as fat, even if they look like a skeleton. Should doctors put them on a diet?

This is insane. Of course it appeases the feeling of some people, but it denies biological reality. What do they want to do when the baby grows up and wants to find out its real parent?

2020hindsights

Russia very much meddling in the elections and do not want Moldova to join the EU. That’s exactly why they annexed Crimea in the first place.

No it is not. Russias annexation of Crimea was a direct result of the Maidan coup dètat in 2014. It was very clear that there was no other option. I recommend to read up on history before forming strong opinions.

Neither Ukraine nor Moldova meet any of the criteria for EU membership. This is just more escalation in effort to weaken Russia, driven by US neocons and neolibs.

The media always tries to link antisemism to what they call the right wing, but if you look at the details, you always find it linked to islamists. This article describes the perpetrators as "two adolescent boys".... very informative. That "the word Palestine was mentioned during the attack" is as close as it gets to point at the ideology.

toolonggone

Why? Do you love that wild animals have had so much of their land encrouched upon by humans that they end up "invading" human spaces, thus endangering their (the animals) lives?

Lighten up. The points you raise are valid, but that does not take away from strangeness of the situation. Try to keep a sense of humor, it makes your life better.

Patricia Yarrow

Love that this is "news" in Japan. :-)

Me too, but then again a siege against a bear in a house would kind of be a news story everywhere :-)

Newgirlintown

Lots of xenophobia towards the start of these comments. Putin is the problem, not good people trying to earn an honest living.

Sadly, that is not true. There is no Russian government that could possibly accept Nato expansion into its critial area. Even William Burns warned about this when he was Moscow ambassador.

This has nothing to do with Putin. Do you seriously think if Medvedev was president, youd have a different situation? To the contrary, with the much more impulsive Medvedev in power, all constraints are gone.

wolfshine

Honestly, she should just open a "Ukrainian" shop and sell the same products, seeing as how the bulk of all Ukrainian culture derives from Russian culture

It is the same actually. "Ukraine" simply means "borderland", and the history of area is intimitely intertwined. Kiev is actually the original Russian capital. Remember that Ukraine in its current form was created in the Stalin era. Historically, Eastern Ukraine was part of the Hungarian and Polish-Lithonean empires, and Eastern Ukraine was always Russian. So much simplification in the media.

Aka-no-Hiroba, which opened just a year before Russia's February 2022 invasion of its neighbor, has struggled amid escalating sanctions and logistical hurdles that have pushed up costs and has also faced acts of vandalism and harassment.

That is so stupid. What does her shop have to do with the conflict.

Once again, the media does not even try to explain the background. Of course NK and Russia are being pushed ever closer together now, by the Western sanctions and actions against Russia. Russia has ressources, and NK has manufacturing capacity (a lot of it military related) and cheap labour. It is a natural fit, and the result of Western actions. None of this would have been necessary, look at Blinken et al find the reason for all of this.

Many Western senior diplomats and scholars (like Profs. Mearsheimer and Sachs) have been trying to point this out, but the mainstream press ignores them.

"The total climate damage that the Russian Federation has caused after 24 months of the war amounts to more than $32 billion," it said.

So the Zelenski government, which has been at war with the Dombas region since 2015 has not cased any "climate change"?

gaijintraveller

TaiwanIsNotChina, the Israeli attack on Gaza probably has a far worse effect on the environment and lives.

Where do you get that idea from? The Israel war against Hamas is not even in the same ballpark as the Ukraine war, not to mention the many wars the US has been involved in. Even if you take the figure supplied by the Gaza "ministry of health" aka Hamas at face value, it is a drop in the bucket compared to the figures in East Europe.

Banthu

Is the methane released from the attack on the Nord Stream pipeline included in this study?

Of course it is blanked out, since they can not blame Russia for it.

At the time, environmentalists said it was the single worst manmade intentional environmental disaster in human history.

I didn't hear that, but it clearly was a massive disaster. But certainly "lets bury it" quickly became the motto for our mainstream media.

virusrex

A silver lining of the pandemic is that medical advances related to vaccines have accelerated a lot, covid vaccines have been widely recognized by the experts in public health as a huge success that

Seems to me the only "silver lining" is for pharma industry, which now wants to use the mRNA platform for all sorts of profitable new vaccines, which comes with all sorts of problems for the recipients.

Do these things by themselves really "taste" different from other mollusks? How many garden smails does one have to eat for comparison? I take a pass on that one.

Typical behaviour for Chinese diplomats. Western governments are more clever and deceitful with their silencing actions.

As long as the tourists bring money to the area and do not impede the restauration, I do not see the problem. Pretty safe to assume that if tourists stayed away from the area, some people would complain about that.