Emperor Akihito prays ahead of Japan's first abdication in two centuries

Japan's Emperor Akihito prayed to a Shinto sun goddess on Tuesday, starting a day of ceremonies to mark the end of a three-decade reign in which he sought to ease painful memories of World War Two and bring the monarchy closer to people.


from Reuters: Top News https://reut.rs/2Leu2B9

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A brief recap of ‘Tampongate,’ the week’s strangest controversy on Capitol Hill

All’s well that ends well — or maybe it’s a case of much ado about nothing — in an odd dispute that roiled Capitol Hill this week: “Tampongate.” It started when Democratic Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney of New York, a candidate for New York attorney general, claimed that the Committee on House Administration has a “discriminatory policy” that bars members’ offices from buying tampons for use by female staff and visitors. The committee, led by Republicans, manages the daily operations of the House, including overseeing administrative functions. Here’s his story. “Earlier this [week], my office got an email saying that we couldn’t use our funds to buy tampons. . . . When we called out the committee that makes the rules, they denied the rule exists in the first place,” Maloney tweeted Thursday . UPDATE: earlier this wk, my office got an email saying that we couldn't use our funds to buy tampons (even though we have female constituents and staff). When we called out the committee that ...
Read more

R.D. Call, tough-guy actor and Utah native, dies at 70

R.D. Call, a Utah native who was a familiar face playing cops and killers in dozens of movies and TV shows, has died. Call died Feb. 27, in Layton, from complications after back surgery, his family announced. He was 70. Call’s craggy features made him a natural to play tough guys, though, as his family wrote, he “was tough as nails on the outside but a real gentleman on the inside.” He was a regular in the movies of director Walter Hill, starting with his first movie role as a police sergeant in the 1982 Eddie Murphy buddy-cop comedy “48 Hrs.” He worked for Hill again in the Richard Pryor comedy “Brewster’s Millions” (1985) and the Bruce Willis gangster drama “Last Man Standing” (1996). Call appeared several times in movies starring Sean Penn: “At Close Range” (1986), “Colors” (1988), “State of Grace” (1990), “The Weight of Water” (2000), “I Am Sam” (2001) and “Babel” (2006). He also appeared in the Jon Krakauer adaptation “Into the Wild” (2007), which Penn directed. Call played a...
Read more

Utah Jazz players have heard criticism of boycott, but they point to progress already made — with more to come

Image
While the Utah Jazz sat out of Thursday’s game against the Denver Nuggets, just as the rest of the NBA did the day before, they heard the criticism. They heard fans who didn’t understand what they were doing it for. They heard the fans who said it wouldn’t bring about change. They heard the fans that said that they were making mountains out of molehills, or that Jacob Blake’s shooting was justified. Donovan Mitchell has a message for those people. “If I show my driver’s license, I may get out of a ticket. But at the end of the day, the little kid in the inner city, a little kid who was going five miles over the speed limit, should not fear for his life. Sleeping in your own home, you shouldn’t have to fear for your life because of where you live. You shouldn’t be behind the eight-ball because of where you grew up, education wise. There are so many different things, obstacles we have to overcome, that have been pushed to the back burner,” Mitchell said. In particular, Mitchell — and...
Read more