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Global (Page 36)

South Korea establishes special task force to combat escalators and elevators

They kill scores of people annually around the world. They have no motive or ideology and can’t be reasoned with, and yet we rely on them every day because stairs are a real pain.

I’m talking of course about escalators and elevators which caused nearly 300 deaths in the USA in the 90s and injured over 700 Koreans in the past five years leaving 50 for dead. Still with all this carnage the human race continues to embrace these death traps simply because they can get us to other floors quickly.

Not any more, says South Korea’s Ministry of Security and Public Administration (MOSPA), which has created the Elevator and Escalator Safety Division.

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Here’s why this iPhone game is creepier than any horror movie you’ll see in theaters

The horror genre needs some help.

It seems like every year an endless array of movies and video games come out that primarily focus on bloodshed and mayhem.

If you’re tired of these recycled ideas and enjoy classic ghost stories, try playing Papa Sangre II.

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  • Apr 12, 2014

We finally get to meet Goku’s mother — and we think she’s a real cutie!

As many of our readers are well aware, the powerful and spiky-haired Goku from Akira Toriyama’s manga and anime series Dragon Ball is one of the most recognizable icons of Japanese culture not just in Japan but across the world. Since the manga first appeared in the magazine Weekly Shōnen Jump in 1984, Goku’s entourage and family have grown to include an impressive number of unique and memorable characters. It so happens, however, that in all that time, we have never seen Goku’s mother in any of the stories — until now.

Yes, Dragon Ball fans were delighted with the news earlier this month that Goku’s mother would be making an appearance for the first time in the 30-year history of the series in the new comic by Toriyama, Jaco the Galactic Patrolman. Now that the comic has been released, we’ve finally been able to come face to face with the mother of the superhero we’ve come to know so well, and we think she’s a real cutie! Ladies and gentlemen, meet Gine, wife to the Saiyan warrior Bardock, and of course, Goku’s mom.

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That scene from “Frozen” and 10 other fascinating jobs that have gone extinct

Long before we had color television, microwave ovens, mobile phones and the all-mighty Internet, many things had to be done manually and took more time and effort to accomplish. While you may be reading RocketNews24 on your computer or mobile gadget now, the latest news and information used to be only available on handwritten sheets many moons ago.

In many cases, improvement and changes to traditional methods bring greater convenience to the masses, but gone with the olden ways of things are fascinating jobs that once existed to make life easier for the people of their era. How do you think people woke up on time for work before alarm clocks were invented?

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Six (and a half) essential resources for learning Japanese

As we’ve said before, Japanese isn’t actually as hard to learn as it’s often made out to be. Unlike English, for example, Japanese follows its own grammatical rules far more rigidly, pronunciation is easy because there is only one variant of each vowel sound to choose from (none of this tomayto/tomahto business), and it’s possible to create entire, perfectly meaningful and valid sentences without uttering a single pronoun or bothering to conjugate a verb.

Nevertheless, the language will not magically seep into you through a desire to speak it alone — you still need to encounter and study it as often as possible. With that in mind, we’d like to present to you the six and a half resources that no dedicated student of the Japanese language should ever be without. Oh, and the good news is some of them are completely free.

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  • Apr 9, 2014

Wait, those images are for real? Sony 4K commercial is so dazzling, the scenes almost look fake!

Cherry blossom season may now be over in Tokyo, and yes, each year we find ourselves wishing the magnificent pale pink flowers would last longer than a week, but luckily we’ve found a flower-themed video so spectacular, it just might be enough to make us forget the passing of the cherry blossoms.

The video is actually a commercial from Sony advertising their 4K Ultra HD TV, and it features such a massive amount of flowers in an unbelievable array of dazzling colors that you’ll find it hard to believe that the images aren’t computer generated. See the stunning images and colors for yourself in the video below!

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REVIEW: Samsung’s new fitness gadget makes a sleek smartwatch

After releasing a critical dud last fall with its first major smartwatch release, the Galaxy Gear, Samsung surprised a lot of folks in the industry when it announced an attractive new entrant into the wearable computing category, the Gear Fit, just a few months later.

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You can find the happiest pigs in the world on “Pig Island”, and swim with them too!【Photos】

We’ve previously seen Japan’s amazing cat islands and rabbit island, and today, we’re excited to show you yet another animal wonderland, though this time it’s not in Japan!

An uninhabited island, Big Major Cay, located in Exuma of the Bahamas, is home to what are arguably the world’s happiest pigs! More commonly known as Pig Island or Pig Beach by the locals, this tropical getaway is famous for none other than its adorable swimming pigs!

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Attack on Titan is #5 in U.S. Bookstores in March

The first volume of Hajime Isayama‘s Attack on Titan ranked #5 on Nielsen BookScan’s list of top 20 graphic novel sales in March, followed by volume 2 at #7, volume 3 at #15, and volume 11 at #19.

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Get lost all the time? Can’t read maps? Study says you should play more Super Mario 64

I personally never really understood where the stereotype that women are bad at map-reading comes from. When most of the women in my life are more composed, logical, and organised than I or any of the guys I know, it seems odd that girls should be known as poor navigators.

If you do happen to be female and utterly hopeless with maps, though, a recent study suggests that you might benefit from playing video games more often, with findings suggesting that those who regularly pick up a controller have a better sense of direction and get lost less often.

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Anime Does April Fools’ Day – Part 1

It’s April Fool’s Day, which means that plenty of anime companies are having a good chuckle with fake announcements, quirky crossovers, and more. Here’s Part 1 of our round-up; check back later in the day for more!

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International Court of Justice orders halt to Japanese whaling

It’s no secret that you can buy whale meat in Japan. It’s served in schools to young children and even offered up 16 different ways at this shop in Tokyo. In fact, the Japanese have had a history of whaling that dates back to the 12th century. In recent history, however, Japan’s whaling program has been condemned by the international community and its practice of consuming whale meat proven unhealthy. But both whaling and the eating of whale meat, whether you agree with it or not, may be a thing of the past as a result of a recent ruling by the International Court of Justice.

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What do a zebrafish and Dragon Ball’s Krillin have in common?

The zebrafish is an interesting member of the minnow family for a number of reasons. They cute, fairly cheap, and relatively easy to take care of as pets making them great for warming up the old homestead. On the other hand, they are widely used in labs due to their speedy reproduction and development along with their fully sequenced genome.

Krillin, meanwhile, is an interesting recurring character of the Dragon Ball series. The most popular fully human character, he has developed the power of flight and powerful energy disc. He’s also one of the more versatile dressers of the series sporting outfits and hairstyles beyond his fighting gear.

So what is it that connects this fictional fighter to the freshwater fish?

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I am the one who knocks (you out): Street Fighter meets Breaking Bad in genius animation

The only thing we love more than videos about our favourite forms of entertainment are crossover videos that bring them together in one place. Doing precisely that, a talented British animator has just made our Monday that bit more bearable by posting a video titled “Ryu VS Jesse” to YouTube, which combines the worlds of much-loved video game Street Fighter and smash TV show Breaking Bad. And the result is simply awesome.

Full video after the jump.

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Crimean attorney general gets Wikipedia page overflowing with fan art

In a world with 24-hours news networks and a camera on every phone, finding fame isn’t particularly difficult. In fact, we’re all just one slip on a patch ice uploaded to YouTube away from being the next flash-in-the-pan Internet sensation. But that fame is truly fleeting–does anyone even remember “Chocolate Rain” anymore?

So if you really want to “make it” in today’s world of instant Internet glory, you’ll need to do better than getting tweeted or YouTubed–you’ll need to land on Wikipedia, the world’s greatest resource for free, possibly accurate information for high school research papers. And who is Wikipedia’s newest addition to achieve eternal glory and fame? None other than Natalia Poklonskaya, the new attorney general of Crimea we’ve talked about a few times before.

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Play video games, learn Japanese: Crowdfunded JRPG “Koe” reaches its goal with cash to spare

I’ve always maintained that, while the method may work for a very lucky few, drilling lists of words and kanji characters is like trying to commit blocks of random numbers to memory – that is to say painfully hard work, time-consuming, and not in the least bit natural or fun. Rather, a better way to approach language learning is to encounter words in context so as to easier form cognitive connections and assimilate them into that which we already know.

So when I stumbled upon Koe, an upcoming role-playing game designed to help people learn Japanese as they play, I couldn’t help feeling a twinge of excitement.

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2014: The 10 best airports in the world

Skytrax has released the results of its annual World Airport Awards and, once again, Singapore’s Changi Airport has taken the top spot.

It’s no surprise that Changi came out on top again. The international transit hub has incredible amenities, such as a butterfly garden, rooftop pool, movie theaters, hotels, spas, and showers — and even a four-story slide.

Skytrax based its rankings on 12.85 million customer nominations across 110 nationalities and included 410 airports worldwide. It incorporated passenger satisfaction across nearly 40 categories, including service and shopping and security and immigration.

All the airports commended last year made the 2014 list, but in a slightly different order.

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Sailor Moon fan project releases latest scene preview

The Moon Animate, Make Up! project released a new scene preview for the fan-animated episode of Sailor Moon.

The project will reanimate episode 38 of the first season, “Fractious Friends” and use the English language dub. All animation positions are currently filled but you can apply to be added to the waitlist if a scene opens at moonanimatemakeup@gmail.com.

According to the project organizer Kaitlin Sullivan, the project is on track to be finished by late May or Early June.

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We put the internet’s “techniques for emptying your bladder with morning wood” to the test

Ladies, you might want to cover your eyes for this one, ’cause this piece is going to get a little, um… messy.

Guys know all too well how awkward it can be to wake up with what is not-so-delicately referred to as “morning wood;” That is, a big honkin’ erection first thing in the morning for no apparent reason. Now, if you’re getting your standard eight hours of sleep, odds are – man or woman – you’re also going to have an urge to pee, but morning wood complicates this significantly: How on earth do you empty your bladder while pitching an underpants tent?

A series of hilarious diagrams outlining the possible methods a man may use to tackle this situation recently appeared online. The Japanese arm of our site thought these were frankly the best thing ever, but wondered whether they could really be applied to real life, so with a willing model and a camera, headed into the bathroom to give the poses – from “the Lunge” to “the Superman” – a try.

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Comic Walker app launches with 18 manga titles in English

Japanese publisher Kadokawa’s ComicWalker website and app launched on Saturday with 18 titles in English. The launch titles are as follows:

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