Readers eager to lay their hands on the new novel by Japan’s Haruki Murakami have only a few hours to wait until they get their latest fix of one of modern literature’s most talked-about authors.

Self-confessed geeks in Japan who might ordinarily be too shy to ask someone on a date are trying a new kind of matchmaking: wearing cartoon character masks.

A team of scientists who last year suggested neutrinos could travel faster than light conceded on Friday that Einstein was right and the sub-atomic particles are — like everything else — bound by the