The world’s longest-serving death row inmate, Iwao Hakamada, was released after 48 years in prison, when a judge last month found that “the possibility of his innocence has become clear to a respectable degree.” Mr. Hakamada’s case is another strong argument for the abolition of the death penalty. Mr. Hakamada was sentenced to death for the 1966 murder of the manager of the company where he worked

In Promoting His City for 2020 Games, Tokyo’s Bid Chairman Tweaks Others With less than five months to go before the International Olympic Committee chooses a city to host the 2020 Summer Games, the three remaining bidders — Istanbul, Madrid and Tokyo — are increasing their efforts to win over delegates and the public. The Olympic committee’s rules prohibit bid committee members from directly crit

The New York City medical examiner’s office is undertaking an unusual review of more than 800 rape cases in which critical DNA evidence may have been mishandled or overlooked by a lab technician, resulting in incorrect reports being given to criminal investigators. Supervisors have so far found 26 cases in which the technician failed to detect biological evidence when some actually existed, accord

Elderly people work out with wooden dumbbells on the grounds of a temple in Tokyo on Sept. 17, 2012.Credit...Yoshikazu Tsuno/Agence France-Presse — GettyImages TOKYO THE first grade class at the elementary school in Nanmoku, about 85 miles from Tokyo, has just a single student this year. The local school system that five decades ago taught 1,250 elementary school children is now educating just 37.

Tens of thousands of people rallied on Sunday in Okinawa to protest plans to deploy the MV-22 Osprey, the trouble-plagued tilt-rotor aircraft, at the United States Marine Corps base in the city of Ginowan. The Marines want to bring in 24 Ospreys to replace a fleet of Vietnam-era helicopters, but Okinawans, turning out in one of the largest anti-American protests in years, are bristling. The Osprey

Rosie, who comforts traumatized children and aided a teenager on the stand in a rape trial, outside the Dutchess County Courthouse in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., with Dale Picard.Credit...Kelly Shimoda for The New York Times POUGHKEEPSIE, N.Y. — Rosie, the first judicially approved courtroom dog in New York, was in the witness box here nuzzling a 15-year-old girl who was testifying that her father had rap

Protesters outside the prison after Troy Davis was executed on Wednesday night. Reporters who witnessed his death said Mr. Davis remained defiant about his innocence until the end.Credit...Grant Blankenship for The New York Times JACKSON, Ga. — Proclaiming his innocence, Troy Davis was put to death by lethal injection on Wednesday night, his life — and the hopes of supporters worldwide — prolonged

A Dutch court ordered the government on Wednesday to compensate the widows of seven villagers who were summarily executed and a man wounded in a notorious 1947 massacre during Indonesia’s battle for independence from colonial rule. The landmark ruling was the first time the Dutch government has been held responsible by a court for the massacre. The Hague Civil Court said it was “unreasonable” for

ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates — Late one night last November, a plane carrying dozens of Colombian men touched down in this glittering seaside capital. Whisked through customs by an Emirati intelligence officer, the group boarded an unmarked bus and drove roughly 20 miles to a windswept military complex in the desert sand. The Colombians had entered the United Arab Emirates posing as constructio

CAIRO � Two Egyptian leaders have been struck down in 30 years: one by an Islamist assassin’s bullets, the other by the demands of hundreds of thousands of protesters in a peaceful uprising. The first event, the death of President Anwar el-Sadat, marked a spectacle of the most militant brand of political Islam. The revolution the world witnessed Friday, the toppling of President Hosni Mubarak, may

TOKYO � Striking a conciliatory tone on an issue that has divided Japan and the United States, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said Thursday that the Obama administration would follow Tokyo’s lead in working to relocate an American air base on Okinawa. During talks with Japanese leaders in Tokyo, Mr. Gates said he also discussed a sophisticated new antimissile system that the United States is jo

North Korea Relies on China, but Tends to Resist Its Guidance BEIJING � North Korea’s unending appetite for confrontation has left many wondering what its bottom line is, none more so than its supposed patron and big brother, China. Despite its impoverishment and heavy dependence on Chinese aid and support, North Korea seems to regularly defy every Chinese diplomatic initiative, from Beijing’s wor

Dr. Josef Mengele in 1956, left. Arthur Rudolph, center, in 1990, was a rocket scientist for Nazi Germany and NASA. John Demjanjuk in 2006.Credit...Left and center, Dave Dieter/The Huntsville Times, via AP; C.H. Pete Copeland/Plain Dealer, via AP WASHINGTON — A secret history of the United States government’s Nazi-hunting operation concludes that American intelligence officials created a “safe hav

KYOTO, Japan � The demonstrators appeared one day in December, just as children at an elementary school for ethnic Koreans were cleaning up for lunch. The group of about a dozen Japanese men gathered in front of the school gate, using bullhorns to call the students cockroaches and Korean spies. Inside, the panicked students and teachers huddled in their classrooms, singing loudly to drown out the

Msgr. Charles Scicluna, the Vatican’s sex crimes prosecutor, left, and the Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, discussed the new set of norms issued on Thursday to respond to the worldwide clerical abuse scandal.Credit...Andrew Medichini/Associated Press VATICAN CITY — The Vatican issued revisions to its internal laws on Thursday making it easier to discipline sex-abuser priests, but ca