Daily News Channel
Now comes the hard part. Handed a sweeping mandate for change, the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) begins the formidable task of delivering on a laundry list of promises intended to lift the country after its worst recession since World War II.
If you happened on Friday morning to walk into the Temple of Earth in Beijing — the nearly 500-year-old monument where Chinese emperors once prayed for good harvests — you would have noticed a steady drip. The environmental group Greenpeace placed ice sculptures of 100 children — made of the glacial meltwater that feeds China’s great rivers — inside the temple, to symbolize the risk that climate change and disappearing ice poses to the more than 1 billion people in Asia threatened by water shortages.
Apple’s iPhone is set to make its debut in China by the end of this year after the US company reached agreement with China Unicom, the country’s second-largest mobile operator. China Unicom on Friday said it would start selling the 3G iPhone in the fourth quarter after signing a non-exclusive three-year contract with Apple
For the first time in more than 60 years, America is without a Kennedy on the national stage and it’s more than just a sentimental loss to President Barack Obama. The last of the Kennedy brothers, Senator Edward Kennedy, died this week of brain cancer at age 77
On the surface, it seems like a fine idea; reproductive rights groups certainly think so.
Voters in Japan will turn out for parliamentary elections Sunday in what poll after poll shows will be a historic shift in political power to oust the ruling party. The Liberal Democratic Party has been in nearly continuous control of Japan’s parliament for more than five decades. But the country’s worst economic crisis since World War II has led a normally sedate electorate to the polls, disgruntled with how slowly the country is emerging from the downturn.
“The greatest expectations were placed upon Ted Kennedy’s shoulders because of who he was,” observed President Barack Obama in his eulogy, “but he surpassed them all because of who he became.” Thus did a sitting President honor the man who never became one, acknowledging that power is wielded in many ways. It was fitting that, in a church famous for its healing miracles, the funeral service was a celebration of private love, for the scarred and broken family he held together; of personal strength in the face of “a string of events that would have broken a lesser man”; and of a public life spent in merry battle. “While his causes became deeply personal, his disagreements never did,” Obama declared.
The United States and Cuba should show some flexibility and take steps to improve relations, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson said Friday during a weeklong trade mission to the island nation. “There is a good atmosphere [between the two countries],” he said at a news conference in Havana on Friday.
The 54-year reign of Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party is expected to come to an end on Sunday in the country’s first general election in four years. The main opposition party, the Democratic Party of Japan , has little experience leading on a national level, but there are strong indications that voters will overwhelmingly support the party and its ambitious platform of reforming Japan’s broken system. After half a century Japan, it seems, is finally clamoring for change.
Swine flu arrived in Macon County, Alabama, last week, showing up in classrooms at all levels and leaving a spate of empty desks in its wake. But authorities are battling the virus on its own turf, using vacant seats as both a map and compass to stem the tide