TOKYO — Japanese game maker Nintendo Co. has upgraded its 3DS handheld to sport a screen nearly twice as big as the previous model amid hot competition against smartphones and tablets that are wooing people away from dedicated gaming machines. The Kyoto-based maker of the Super Mario games and Wii home console said Friday the Nintendo 3DS LL, called 3DS XL in overseas markets, goes on sale in Japan and Europe on July 28, and in the U.S. on Aug. 19. It will sell in Japan for 18,900 yen ($236) and $199.99 in the U.S. It did not give a price for Europe.

TOKYO — Thousands of Japanese marched to celebrate the switching off of the last of their nation’s 50 nuclear reactors Saturday, waving banners shaped as giant fish that have become a potent anti-nuclear symbol. Japan was without electricity from nuclear power for the first time in four decades when the reactor at Tomari nuclear plant on the northern island of Hokkaido went offline for mandatory routine maintenance.

TOKYO — Radioactive water leaked inside a nuclear power plant in southwestern Japan but did not escape into the environment, the government said Saturday. The leak Friday at Kyushu Electric Power Co.'s Genkai plant occurred as Japan attempts to stabilize a tsunami-hit nuclear plant on its northeastern coast where three reactor cores melted and large amounts of radiation were released into the air and ocean.

WAKO, Japan — Honda's human-shaped robot can now run faster, balance itself on uneven surfaces, hop on one foot, pour a drink and even almost "think" on its own. Honda's demonstration of the revamped "Asimo" on Tuesday at its Tokyo suburban research facility was not only to prove that the bubble-headed childlike machine was more limber and a bit smarter. It was a way to try to answer some critics that Asimo, first shown in 2000, had been of little practical use so far, proving to be nothing more than a glorified toy and cute showcase for the Honda Motor Co.