A LIKELY STORY

A burly American golfer at Tama Hills found himself part of a unique “hole-in-one” when he fell into an eight-foot deep sinkhole that opened up beneath him on the fairway. He climbed out and finished his round, as you do.

Mountain climber Nobukazu Kuriki was forced to abandon his climb up Mount Everest-the mountain with the biggest tits in the world, as the boys from Monty Python once pointed out-just 1,000 meters from the summit when crows ate his food supply.

It was reported that Princess Mako, the oldest daughter of Prince Akishino and Princess Kiko, said on her 20th birthday that “she will try to act appropriately as an adult as she has come of age.” Where’s the fun in that? Time to party, we say.

Need proof that Japan has gone cat crazy? It may have all started with Hello Kitty, but now we have a couple who created a “cat town,” a mall operator who started a “cat idol group,” and a virtual town that elected a cat as mayor.

“Noda enjoyed loach soup in Seoul on Tuesday night,” proclaimed the headline on the Kyodo story, referring to Japan PM Yoshihiko Noda, who famously compared himself to a loach in an election speech.

A man was arrested for leaving the dead body of his dear old dad in a closet in Kanagawa. No relation to a rotting corpse found in a wooden box in a Kanagawa apartment, vacant since May. Is there a shortage of cemeteries in Kanagawa, by any chance?

Rise of an economic superpower: What does China want?

 Other countries unnerved, despite Beijing’s efforts to assuage their fears

By Peter Ford

Staff writer

It had been billed as a friendly exhibition game in basketball-crazy Beijing, between the Georgetown University Hoyas from Washington, D.C., and the Chinese Army’s Bayi Rockets. But after some blatantly biased Chinese refereeing and unashamedly aggressive play by Bayi, it ended in a bench-clearing brawl, with Chinese fans in the Olympic stadium throwing chairs and bottles of water at the Americans.

Some foreigners in the crowd that hot night in August were tempted to see the melee as nothing less than a metaphor for China’s role in the world today: contempt for the rules and fair play, crowned by a resort to brute strength in pursuit of narrow self-interest.

SIC TRANSIT

An 82-year-old man in Osaka drove his car a distance of 1km along railway tracks on the Nara line. The man said he “panicked” when, after accidentally steering onto the tracks, the crossing gates began closing ahead of an approaching train.

A quick-thinking passenger was credited with averting a disaster when he grabbed the wheel of a tour bus whose driver fell unconscious on a highway in Hokkaido.

A government study group has recommended that air traffic controllers be banned from bringing PCs and cellphones to work to prevent the leak of “sensitive information.”

Hawaiian Airlines issued an apology after one of its planes improperly taxied onto a runway at Kansai Airport, forcing an approaching ANA cargo plane to abandon its approach a mere two minutes before it was scheduled to land.

The Metropolitan Police Department says that the increase in the number of people who commute by bicycle following the March 11 disaster is responsible for the drastic rise in bike accidents in Tokyo. There were 56 such crashes in April 2010, but 400 during the same month this year, according to the MPD.

Protesters, police clash in Denver, face off in Nashville

 Incidents come amid a week of police crackdowns around the country

msnbc.com news services

DENVER – The simmering tension near the Colorado Capitol escalated dramatically Saturday with more than a dozen arrests and authorities firing rounds of pellets filled with pepper spray at supporters of the Occupy Wall Street movement.

The clash came as Occupy Wall Street protesters and state officials in Tennessee squared off for a third consecutive night, even though a local judge has refused to jail demonstrators who have been arrested.

In Denver, officers in riot gear moved late in the day into a park where protesters were attempting to establish an encampment, hauling off demonstrators just hours after a standoff at the Capitol steps degenerated into a fight that ended in a cloud of Mace and pepper spray.

NICE BOOBS ON THE DEAD GUY

Headline of the Week: “Autopsy shows man found dead in Nagano Prefecture had breast enlargement surgery” (via The Mainichi Daily News)

Close runner-up (via The Tokyo Reporter): “Deflation cutting hand-job prices to the bone” (on depression-induced discounts in shady massage joints… as low as ¥2,700 in some places, in case you were wondering)

A team of Japanese researchers who came up with a wasabi fire alarm, which wakes people up by releasing a cloud of wasabi mist in burning rooms, were honored with the Ig Nobel prize for chemistry by Harvard University.

The Japan Racing Association, the local overseers of horse racing here, revoked the license of a top trainer over his ties to the yakuza. Apparently the guy had been swindled out of some ¥10 million by the Yamaguchi-gumi.

The Japan Boxing Commission told the Kameda boys to avoid ties with gangsters after several top yakuza members were spotted ringside during Koki Kameda’s WBC title fight in August at the Budokan.

The owner of a bunch of sex clubs in Osaka staffed by married women was charged with evading some ¥46 million in taxes. He now faces a ¥62 million fine.

Say what? A rugby player was banned for 30 days by the union after saying to some players on a team from Iwate Prefecture, “The quake must have screwed up your minds.” The witty jab was delivered during a scrum.

New Zealand rugby legend John Kirwan stepped down as Japan’s national rugby team coach in the wake of the Brave Blossoms’ disappointing World Cup campaign, in which they failed to win a match.

Occupy Chicago: At least 100 anti-Wall Street protesters arrested in Grant Park

 Some demonstrators waiting to be taken into custody shout ‘take me next!’ to police officers

msnbc.com staff and news service reports

CHICAGO – At least 100 anti-Wall Street demonstrators were arrested early Sunday after defying police orders to clear out of a downtown Chicago park, authorities said.

Occupy Chicago spokesman Joshua Kaunert vowed after the arrests that the demonstrators would be coming back.

“We’re not going anywhere. There are still plenty of us,” Kaunert told The Associated Press after police carried out the arrests for more than hour.

THE BIG FREEZE

The first snowfall of the season was recorded on October 3 in Asahikawa, Hokkaido. It had been 113 years since snow fell so early in the year in Japan.

The Chinese government denied a request by Fuji Heavy Industries to enter into a joint venture with a midsize domestic automaker in Dalian.

Owners of Korean restaurants are up in arms over new safety guidelines that require them to cook meat “at more than 60 degrees Celsius for at least two minutes.” The regulations are in response to an E. Coli outbreak from a raw-beef dish that killed four people and sickened dozens this spring.

Headline of the Week: “Problematic Wild Goats on Kyushu Islands Put to Good Use Through Eco-weeding Project” (via The Mainichi Daily News)

Protests go global, rampage, tear gas in Rome

Minority of violent demonstrators stretch into evening, hours after tens of thousands of people join global ‘day of rage’ against bankers, politicians

msnbc.com staff and news service reports

 Hundreds of hooded, masked protesters rampaged through Rome in some of the worst violence in the Italian capital for years Saturday, torching cars and breaking windows during a larger peaceful protest against elites blamed for economic downturn.

Police repeatedly fired tear gas and water cannon in attempts to disperse them but the clashes with a minority of violent demonstrators stretched into the evening, hours after tens of thousands of people in Rome joined a global “day of rage” against bankers and politicians.

YA DON’T SAY

Typhoon Roke didn’t slow down testing of a new maglev high-speed train in Yamanashi Prefecture, which apparently passed with flying colors during the storm.

Two guys who run a company in Hokkaido called alibi.com-that makes up bogus background info for people applying for loans, jobs, etc-were in trouble with Johnny Law… for making up bogus info. “Since that’s our business, we provided a false explanation,” reasoned one of the accused.

Yakult Swallows outfielder Aaron Guiel hung up the cleats after a five-year spell in Japan that saw him belt 90 home runs. Back injuries forced the former MLB player to call it a career and head back to his native Canada.

A story in The Asahi Shimbun said a 132-meter long ferry called the Yotei Maru 2, docked at a maritime museum in Odaiba, can be yours for the taking, provided you have a place to moor the vessel.

Not surprisingly, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism reported that “land prices have tumbled in the three prefectures of northeastern Japan most affected by the March 11 disaster.” Some property in Miyagi Prefecture has plummeted more than 18 percent. Now that’s a toxic market.

On the other side of the coin, a spokeswoman for the Candle House chain said that sales of candles increased about 50 percent after March 11.

Yukio Akagariyama became the first Japanese billiards player to win the World 9-Ball Championship in 13 years when he beat Ronnie Alcano of the Philippines in the final in Doha.

au will start selling Apple’s iPhone in Japan, and local cellphone producers fear the worst.

In other news from the cellphone sector, NTT DoCoMo is coming out with a phone that has a cover, or jacket, capable of “measuring bad breath, body fat and even radiation.”

A security guard working on a cash delivery truck in Saitama was shot in both knees by a man who snatched a bag from him before taking off on a motorbike. The bag reportedly contained only a few documents and no cash.

Secret US memo made legal case to kill Anwar al-Awlaki

Document provided justification for acting despite an executive order banning assassinations

By CHARLIE SAVAGE

The Obama administration’s secret legal memorandum that opened the door to the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki, the American-born radical Muslim cleric hiding in Yemen, found that it would be lawful only if it were not feasible to take him alive, according to people who have read the document.

The memo, written last year, followed months of extensive interagency deliberations and offers a glimpse into the legal debate that led to one of the most significant decisions made by President Obama – to move ahead with the killing of an American citizen without a trial.