Japan News for February 01, 2007

A few Japan-related headlines for this morning:
• The New York Stock Exchange and Tokyo Stock Exchange announced an alliance Wednesday that extends the NYSE’s global reach and could lead to an eventual combination of the world’s two largest financial markets. [Link]
• A recycling company employee found 28 million yen in banknotes mixed in with a pile of old newspapers put out for collection in Takasaki, Gunma Prefecture, it was learned Tuesday. [Link]
• David in Tokyo mocks a poorly-written propaganda pamphlet created by the UK to convince other nations to take an anti-whaling stance. [Link]
• Japan has agreed to cut its catch of Atlantic bluefin tuna by almost a quarter over the next four years in the latest attempt to save the fish from commercial extinction. [Link]
• The New Zealand government has denied it is “doing the bidding of Japan” by not telling protesters the location of a Japanese fleet hunting whales off Antarctica. [Link]

Afternoon Update:

• The government must certify two of four A-bomb survivors as having health problems caused by exposure to A-bomb radiation in 1945, the Nagoya District Court ruled Wednesday, calling the evaluation process flawed. [Link]
• Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Wednesday told seven members of a group of war-displaced Japanese that he has told the health ministry to look at new ways to help the roughly 2,500 resettled Chinese of Japanese descent who were left behind at the end of the war. [Link]
• The so-called bosozoku or speed gangs saw their membership numbers fall last year but the ratio of adult members grew, accounting for more than half of the total for the first time, the National Police Agency said Thursday. [Link]
• Shares of insurance company Aflac Inc. fell in premarket trading Wednesday after the supplemental health insurer reported weak sales in Japan. Aflac said sales in Japan declined 16.6 percent because of soft demand for medical coverage. [Link]
• East Japan Railway Co. is warning passengers that higher fares will be incurred on certain sections of rail and subway lines when the new PASMO integrated circuit card, which goes online March 18 for private railways and subway lines, is used together with JR’s Suica card. [Link]
• The number of shooting incidents in Japan last year dropped 30% from the previous year to 53 cases, a record low since the police began compiling such statistics in 1988, the National Police Agency said in a report Thursday. [Link]
• U.S. Rep. Mike Honda has submitted a new version of a resolution demanding that Japan acknowledge and accept responsibility for “comfort women.” Two previous resolutions, submitted in 2001 and 2005, were both shelved due to strong Japanese lobbying. [Link]
• Cash cards stolen from customers of Chinese bars in entertainment quarters in Tokyo, including one in Ueno, were used to withdraw about 300 million yen on about 400 occasions over three years to the end of last year, the Metropolitan Police Department said Wednesday. [Link]
• Charles Jenkins, a former U.S. Army deserter who spent nearly four decades in North Korea, has been hospitalized after fracturing his rib bone at his home in Sado, Niigata Prefecture, city government officials said Wednesday. [Link]