Print

Email story

Comment

Letter to the editor

Digest

Postcard from WWII finally arrives

By Times Wires
Published October 21, 2007

TOYKO

A postcard that a Japanese soldier mailed from Burma, now called Myanmar, during World War II has reached a recipient in Japan 64 years later, Mukogawa Women's University, whose student helped deliver it, said Saturday. Shizuo Nagano, an 80-year-old retiree in Japan's southwestern state of Kochi, received the card Friday - by way of Nagasaki, Arizona and Hawaii.

Nagano's former colleague at a retail store, Nobuchika Yamashita, mailed the card in 1943, a year before Yamashita died at war at age 23. The card initially failed to reach Nagano's address in Nagasaki, and was instead collected there by an American soldier during the U.S. occupation after Japan's 1945 defeat. The American kept it at his Arizona home until he died 25 years ago. The letter was kept by his son - who moved to the Hawaiian island of Maui and then gave the letter to a Japanese exchange student he met through his wife. The exchange student, Yuko Kojima, spent two years after her return from Maui trying to find Nagano through the government.

"I never would have guessed I could see (Yamashita) again this way ... I'm overwhelmed," Nagano said as he was handed the postcard.

BOGOTA, Colombia

Kidnapped canine reunited with owners

A kidnapped German Shepherd has been returned to its elderly owners in Bogota, days after a police sting operation thwarted payment of a $350,000 ransom. The dog, named Aldo, had been left by its captors at a veterinarian's office last week and was identified and returned to its owners on Friday, after the story of its kidnapping was published on the front page of the country's largest newspaper, El Tiempo. "They lived alone and loved the dog like it was a child," said Capt. Wilfredo Vasquez of the dog's wealthy, retired owners. Aldo was taken hostage on Sept. 18, when kidnappers broke into the couple's house, subdued the dog with a tranquilizer and took it away, Vasquez said.

HAVANA

U.S. election process corrupt, Castro says

Fidel Castro lampooned U.S. elections Saturday as corrupted by corporate money aimed at "brainwashing" the few Americans who still bother to go to the polls. The Cuban leader's comments came a day before the communist-run island holds municipal elections featuring 37,258 candidates vying for 15,236 seats on local assemblies. Today's process culminates with parliamentary elections in the spring. Lawmakers could then decide to officially replace the ailing 81-year-old Castro with his younger brother Raul atop the island's supreme governing body, the Council of State. Fidel Castro, whose name will not be on any ballot today, trumpeted his country's complicated, multitiered election cycle as "the antithesis of those held in the United States."

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil

Plan to search for oil in Amazon unveiled

Plans to search for oil and natural gas in Brazil's remote western Amazon have raised concerns that one of the last untouched areas of the world's largest wilderness will be spoiled. The National Petroleum Agency plans to invest $36-million to look for oil and gas in Acre, an Amazon state bordering Bolivia, the government news agency Agencia Brasil said Saturday. But Joao Paulo Capobianco, the Environment Ministry's executive secretary, said no study had been done to assess how the search will affect the Amazon. The region covers about 1.6-million square miles.

Elsewhere

Blantyre, Malawi: An opposition party, the Alliance for Democracy, suspended its national convention Saturday after 26 supporters died Friday night when the truck they were traveling in overturned on the way to the conference, party officials said.

Srinagar, India: Thousands of angry villagers on Saturday torched government vehicles in street battles that injured 30 police after army soldiers allegedly shot dead schoolteacher Abdul Rashid Mir, 26, in Indian Kashmir. Army officials said Mir was accidentally shot after a squabble with an army patrol team on Friday. Villagers said he was tortured and shot in custody.

MOGADISHU, Somalia: Bashir Nor Gedi, manager of Radio Shabelle, which is critical of both the Somali government and Islamic militants trying to topple it, was killed late Friday outside his home. He was the eighth journalist slain in the country this year.

[Last modified October 21, 2007, 01:52:50]