WASHINGTON (AFP) - US President Barack Obama on Friday offered his "condolences" to the people of Japan and said his country stood ready to help them after a massive earthquake and tsunami.   "(First Lady) Michelle (Obama) and I send our deepest condolences to the people of Japan, particularly those who have lost loved ones in the earthquake and tsunamis," he said in a statement.   "The Unite

TOKYO (AFP) - The death toll from the massive 8.9-magnitude earthquake that hit Japan on Friday, causing huge tsunamis along its Pacific coast, has reached 19, press reports said.The dead included a 67-year-old man crushed by a wall and an elderly woman killed by a fallen roof, both in the wider Tokyo area, press reports said.Three were crushed to death when their houses collapsed in Ibaraki prefe

JAKARTA (AFP) ― A strong 6.2-magnitude earthquake struck off the Indonesian resort island of Bali early Friday but was located too deep to generate a tsunami in the Indian Ocean, seismologists said.The tremor hit at 1:08 a.m. and was centered 261 kilometers northeast of Bali’s capital Denpasar at a depth of 510 kilometers, the U.S. Geological Survey said.The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Hawai

   Taiwan's central weather bureau on Friday warned people living on its east and northeast coasts to be on guard for tsunamis set off by a major quake off Japan.  The Philippines also warned people living on its entire east coast to be on alert for the possibility of tsunamis after a major quake off Japan, the government's seismology agency   Russia's emergency ministry issued a tsunami warning F

Student sperm donation has drawn controversy in China and debate has been raised as to whether it is moral to do so. College students make up about 90 percent of sperm donors in China, Chinese news reports said Thursday.An official at a sperm bank in Guangdong, southern part of the South China Sea, said that about 2,000 students donated sperm last year, making up 95 percent of all donors. “It is h

TOKYO (AFP) ― The United States on Thursday sacked a senior diplomat who infuriated Japan with reported slurs against the people of Okinawa island, which has reluctantly hosted American forces since World War II.The State Department’s Japan desk head Kevin Maher was replaced after he reportedly called Okinawans “lazy” and “masters of manipulation and extortion,” triggering outrage in Tokyo and on

Carnival has returned to Haiti, a year after the devastating earthquake, but this time it is darker and more menacing rippling with violent under tones as Haitians seek to exorcise their demons.Papier-mache artist Jean-Marc Turin created a sculpture dubbed “Haiti Kolera” for this year’s carnival in the coastal town of Jacmel.The striking cardboard figure of a red and blue woman, vomiting down her front representing the cholera epidemic stalking the nation, is a far cry from the happy, fantasy-fi

MANILA (AFP) ― Like some bad science-fiction movie, Philippine fishermen are encountering strange alien creatures: tough, speckled fish with sharp spines that tear and rip their nets.These suckermouth catfish from South America are just one of a growing number of foreign species that are spreading in local waterways and forests, threatening to edge out the country’s indigenous plants and animals.The catfish, locally known as “janitor fish,” were originally introduced locally for aquariums but ca

The sun is shining on the tourism trade in Asia-Pacific with double-digit growth notched up in 2010, spurred largely by Chinese and Indian middle classes packing their bags for a break abroad. Strong economies, the proliferation of low-cost airlines and a burgeoning constituency of online shoppers are adding to the region’s rosy outlook.There was an 11 percent rise in arrivals in the region overall last year, according to preliminary data from the Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA). And 2011