Los Angeles - On a night when most Oscar winners followed expectations, the crowning of Departures as the best foreign film marked the biggest surprise of the Academy Awards.

The drama directed by Yojiro Takita stars Masahiro Motoki as a devoted cellist in an orchestra. But as soon as he spends most of his savings on a new cello, the ensemble is disbanded. Finding himself without a job, he moves back to his hometown with his wife to look for work and start over.

Tokyo - Japanese Crown Prince Naruhito celebrated his 49th birthday Monday, saying he and his wife Crown Princess Masako would do all they could to help his father, Emperor Akihito, with his royal duties.

Celebrating his birthday at his Tokyo palace, the prince expressed concern over his 75-year-old father, who recently suffered from stress-induced illnesses.

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Sydney - Australian police Saturday seized video clips and log books from the militant Sea Shepherd protest ship that clashed with Japanese whalers in the Southern Ocean, news reports said Saturday.

Police boarded the Steve Irwin on Friday when it docked at Hobart, Tasmania, and confiscated video, taken from the ship's helicopter, showing a whaler's explosive-tipped harpoon piercing a whale.

"The whale was then pulled alongside the boat and it was shot seven times with a shotgun," Steve Irwin crew member Andrew Perry told Hobart's Mercury newspaper. "It was an incredibly distressing thing to behold. We've never been able to get footage like that before. It's going to be damning."

Tokyo - Forty-three people were injured - one suffering a broken neck - when a Boeing 747-400 of the US company Northwest Airlines plunged briefly in violent turbulence off the Japanese coast Friday, according to local media reports.

They quoted witnesses as saying the aircraft, arriving from Manila and in a holding pattern prior to landing at Tokyo's Narita airport, suddenly plunged and then immediately regained its altitude, causing chaos on board.

Tokyo  - Three Filipino passengers were seriously injured and more than 30 others suffered minor injuries Friday in turbulence encountered by a Northwest Airlines flight headed to Japan, media repo