Koyasan Shingon Buddhism, the Japanese owner of a cluster of World Heritage Site temples founded in the 9th century, reported losses equal to about a quarter of its assets after bets in the Australian dollar and structured bonds soured. (financialpost.com)

Former prosecutor Masaru Wakasa, 56, a frequent commentator on news programs and talk shows who once worked in the Tokyo District Public Prosecutor's Office, said Thursday he will run in this summer's Upper House election as a Liberal Democratic Party candidate. (Japan Times)

Photos published in a tabloid magazine this week show AKB48′s Tomomi Kasai staying overnight with the president of AKS, the management agency of the popular all-girl group. (Tokyo Reporter)

Japan on Thursday urged renewed vigilance against a spread of H7N9 bird flu after Taiwan reported a case of the deadly strain, the world's first outside mainland China. (inquirer.net)

A memorial service was held on Thursday to mark the eighth anniversary of the 2005 Fukuchiyama Line train crash in Amagasaki, Hyogo Prefecture, western Japan, which killed more than 100 people. (Jiji Press)

Leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations on Thursday discussed how they can speed up consultations with China on the South China Sea territorial dispute. (Kyodo)

Aiming to establish itself as a major exchange in Asia, the Tokyo Stock Exchange plans to create a new stock price index that focuses on return on equity (ROE). (Yomiuri)

The latest national achievement test for sixth-grade primary and third-year middle school students aimed in part to assay students' comprehension in areas that were cited as weak points in the past. (Yomiuri)

Boeing reported a better-than-expected first-quarter profit even as it scrambled to fix its grounded 787. (Yomiuri)

Japanese entrepreneur Takahito Iguchi wants people to see the world through other people's eyes. But as a less ambitious jumping off point, he'll kick it off with a world that looks like a Japanese manga cartoon. (gigaom.com)

Universal Studios Japan booked its second-highest sales total in fiscal 2012, thanks to a rise in family attendance, the Osaka-based theme park said Thursday. (Japan Times)

Western lowland gorilla Momoko gave birth Wednesday at Tokyo's Ueno Zoo, officials at the facility said Thursday. (Japan Times)

South Korea called in Japan's ambassador Thursday to lodge a strong protest in an escalating diplomatic row over visits by Japanese cabinet ministers and lawmakers to a controversial war shrine. (AFP)

A mysterious pestilence has befallen Yakushima's primaeval forests, leaving behind the bleached, skeletal remains of dead trees that now dot the dark green mountainsides. (Sydney Morning Herald)

For Japanese jazz musicians these days, going to the United States to further mastery of the genre is a much-pursued rite of passage. This route has enabled a number of acts to gain international recognition and success. (Japan Times)

A 37-year-old man has been arrested for exposing his genitals to schoolchildren at a school in Tokyo, police said Thursday. (Japan Today)

The mother of an epileptic crane driver who caused the deaths of six children in an accident in Tochigi Prefecture in April 2011 has been ordered by the Utsunomiya District Court to pay compensation to the victims' families. (Japan Today)

City officials in Hamamatsu, Shizuoka Prefecture, warned Thursday that a series of landslides that brought down part of a cliff-top tea field on Tuesday, may not be over. The landslides have so far sent about 50,000 cubic meters of earth and sand into the Sugigawa river flowing beneath it (Japan Today)

A group of parents in the central Russian region of Ural called on President Vladimir Putin Thursday to ban the "Death Note" manga series. (Jiji Press)

A group of parents in the central Russian region of Ural called on President Vladimir Putin Thursday to ban the "Death Note" manga series. (Jiji Press)