BEHIND EVERY GOOD MAN…

   Empress Michiko decided to forego the standard dress-and-heels ensemble in favor of traditional kimono and wooden sandals when she attended a memorial for victims of the March 11 quake/tsunami. It seems she was worried that she might have to spring into action if the Emperor, who had recently undergone heart bypass surgery, started to go down, and high heels just might not cut it under those circumstances.

   Speaking of ailing Emperor Akihito, it was reported that he twice had to have fluid drained from his chest after his heart surgery.

   In Iran, thousands of women have been training in the way of the ninja, but it’s more for fitness and protection, their instructor says, not to unleash an army of trained female assassins on an unsuspecting world, as some Western media have speculated.

   Maya Nakanishi, a 26-year-old paralympian who lost her right leg in a work accident five years ago, put out a calendar featuring semi-nude photos of herself to raise funds to get her to London for the Games this summer. You go girl!

   A 33-year-old train conductor was arrested for grabbing the boobs and nether regions of a 16-year-old high-school girl on an out-of-service Odakyu Romance Car. He is also accused of “committing sexual acts” with the same girl at a karaoke shop and in a hotel on two other occasions. Hold on… sounds he was just trying to add some romance to an ongoing relationship.

   Meanwhile, a 23-year-old art teacher at a junior high school in Kagawa Prefecture was canned after surreptitiously snapping photos of students’ snappers up their skirts while on the job.

   Ninety-two people wolfed down as many fermented beans as they could during a natto-eating contest in Ibaraki Prefecture. A 27-year-old from Nara was crowned king of the natto-eaters after downing 350 grams of the sticky stuff in 27.7 seconds.

‘Disaster emergency’ as dozens of tornadoes pummel Midwest

　

By msnbc.com staff and news services

A disaster emergency has been declared in Kansas are a severe storm system moving through the state spawned a number of strong tornadoes, causing damage in multiple counties.

Governor Sam Brownback issued a declaration of disaster emergency to help speed relief to areas affected by the storms. “We are continuing to assess all the damages across the state,” said Brownback, “and signing this declaration clears the way for making state aid available to those counties that need help with clean-up and recovery.”

Dozens of tornadoes were reported Saturday as baseball-size hail shattered windows and tore the siding off homes in northeast Nebraska and one twister damaged a hospital in Creston, Iowa. Several homes were wrecked in Kansas.

GROOVIN’ TO THE OLYMPIC BEAT

   Arata Fujiwara, who will represent Japan in the London Olympic marathon, credits a new dance craze with helping him qualify for the Games. “After I got some lessons from (dancer Hiromi) Kashiki and her curvy dancing, my running style dramatically improved,” said Fujiwara, after finishing second in the Tokyo Marathon.

   Hiroshi Hoketsu, 71, Japan’s oldest-ever Olympian, will compete in the equestrian dressage event at the London Games. Hoketsu first saddled up for the Tokyo Olympics in 1964.

   BJ League basketball star Lynn Washington of the Osaka Evessa, a two-time league MVP, and his wife Dana were arrested for allegedly trying to smuggle a kilo of weed into Japan.

   A couple of high school runners orphaned by the March 11 tsunami were part of a tour of Dodger Stadium while in Los Angeles for the LA Marathon.

   The news just keeps getting worse for the storied Yomiuri Giants baseball club. This time, the rival Asahi Shimbun dug up dirt that the Giants paid pitcher Takahiko Nomaguchi cash under the table when he was still an amateur playing in the corporate league, which is a definite no-no.

   Osunaarashi, or “Great Sandstorm,” won his debut sumo bout at the Spring Tournament in Osaka, becoming the first African to enter the age-old sport. The 20-year-old jonokuchi hails from Egypt.

US defines opening move in new talks with Iran

Diplomats: Allies will seek dismantling of new nuclear facility deep in mountain  　　

By DAVID E. SANGER and STEVEN ERLANGER  

The Obama administration and its European allies plan to open new negotiations with Iran by demanding the immediate closing and ultimate dismantling of a recently completed nuclear facility deep under a mountain, according to American and European diplomats.

They are also calling for a halt in the production of uranium fuel that is considered just a few steps from bomb grade, and the shipment of existing stockpiles of that fuel out of the country, the diplomats said.

GETTING THE LARD OUT

   A government survey revealed that 25 percent of people who receive medical consultations for “metabolic syndrome” are able to overcome the condition.

Metabolic syndrome is better-known in the West as “being a fat-ass.”

   A 500kg bull in Kagoshima gored a 56-year-old farmer as he tried to shield his three grandkids from the rampaging animal. The man is in serious condition.

   Pasmo halted an online service that provided details about the train-riding history of its cardholders to anyone who entered basic information about the user. Apparently, wives and husbands were using the site to check if their partners were cheating on them.

   The health ministry says Nagano has the lowest death rate of any prefecture in Japan, while Aomori is the spot most frequently visited by the Grim Reaper.

U.S. Plans No Charges Over Deadly Strike in Pakistan

 By ERIC SCHMITT

WASHINGTON – The United States military has decided that no service members will face disciplinary charges for their involvement in a NATO airstrike in November that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers, an accident that plunged relations between the two countries to new depths and has greatly complicated the allied mission in Afghanistan.

An American investigation in December found fault with both American and Pakistani troops for the deadly exchange of fire, but noted that the Pakistanis fired first from two border posts that were not on coalition maps, and that they kept firing even after the Americans tried to warn them that they were shooting at allied troops. Pakistan has rejected these conclusions and ascribed most of the blame to the American forces.

THERE’S GOOD NEWS AND THERE’S BAD NEWS…

          Women’s World Cup titleholders Nadeshiko Japan beat the powerful Americans in soccer once again, this time 1-0 at the Algarve Cup tournament in Portugal.

   Unfortunately, however, the Japanese women would go on to lose 4-3 to Germany in the Algarve Cup final.

   US pop singer and 1980s icon Cyndi Lauper was in tsunami-hit Ishinomaki to cheer up local elementary school students with a few songs. Lauper was also here a year earlier, arriving on March 11, 2011. Not the greatest timing for a girl who just wanted to have…

   A private detective agency in Japan revealed that 21.5 percent of married women with jobs that they were hired to track had been unfaithful.

   The number of Japanese students who committed suicide in 2011 was up to 1,029, a record and over 100 higher than the previous year, according to the National Police Agency.

   A 6m fishing boat, swept away by the March 11 tsunami from a town in Iwate Prefecture and later recovered off the coast of Hyogo Prefecture, was returned to the owner’s family. The man who owned the boat was killed by the tsunami.

   A Buddhist temple in Nagano has made wooden Jizo statues, which spiritually protect temples, out of fallen pine trees from disaster-hit Rikuzentakata in Iwate Prefecture.

   US Navy Admiral Robert Willard, the man who coordinated the US military’s post-March 11 relief operations in Japan-Operation Tomodachi-stepped down from his post as commander of the US Pacific Command.

   An elderly man and woman were found dead in a Tokyo apartment. The pair apparently expired due to “illness,” according to the local police.

   Pieces of haniwa clay figures shaped in the form of humans dating from the 5th century were found at a burial site in Shimane Prefecture, the oldest artifacts of their type ever discovered in Japan.

U.S. Faces a Tricky Task in Assessment of Data on Iran

By JAMES RISEN

While American spy agencies have believed that the Iranians halted efforts to build a nuclear bomb back in 2003, the difficulty in assessing the government’s ambitions was evident two years ago, when what appeared to be alarming new intelligence emerged, according to current and former United States officials.

Intercepted communications of Iranian officials discussing their nuclear program raised concerns that the country’s leaders had decided to revive efforts to develop a weapon, intelligence officials said.

That, along with a stream of other information, set off an intensive review and delayed publication of the 2010 National Intelligence Estimate, a classified report reflecting the consensus of analysts from 16 agencies. But in the end, they deemed the intercepts and other evidence unpersuasive, and they stuck to their longstanding conclusion.

STRANGE BEDFELLOWS

         The municipality of Nagaoka in Niigata has entered into a sister-city partnership with the Hawaiian capital of Honolulu. Which is interesting, because Nagaoka’s most famous son is Isoroku Yamamoto-commander-in-chief of the fleet that attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.

   The mother of AKB48 performer Minami Takahashi-one of the group’s most popular members-was arrested for having sex with a 15-year-old boy.

   The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry and the Consumer Agency will distribute 500,000 leaflets urging people to get rid of non-childproof cigarette lighters.

   Bottom Story of the Week: “Researchers have discovered that a wooden strip unearthed at an ancient ruins site in Ibaraki Prefecture bore a ‘kanji’ Chinese character meaning the unit for a length of cloth, which had been in use in an ancient capital in western Japan.” (via Mainichi Daily News)

 Japan remembers earthquake, tsunami with silence, rallies

 Year after 16,000 killed, country grapples with the human, economic and political toll

 msnbc.com news services

With a minute of silence, prayers and anti-nuclear rallies, Japan marked on Sunday the first anniversary of an earthquake and tsunami that killed thousands and set off a radiation crisis that shattered public trust in atomic power and the nation’s leaders.

A year after the magnitude 9.0 earthquake unleashed a wall of water that hit Japan’s northeast coast, killing nearly 16,000 and leaving nearly 3,300 unaccounted for, the country is still grappling with the human, economic and political costs.