Japan News for March 03, 2007
Today’s Japan-related news links:
- A USB flash drive containing police investigation data that an officer of the Yamanashi prefectural police lost in December was mailed anonymously Thursday to a news organization in the prefecture that returned it to the police, it has been learned. The memory data storage device contained personal information on crime victims and suspects in about 1,300 cases, and the police are trying to determine what happened to it. [Link]
- Japan had zero inflation in January, underscoring the nation’s struggle to overcome seven years of slumping prices. Core consumer prices, which exclude fresh food, were unchanged from a year earlier, the statistics bureau said on Friday in Tokyo, matching the median estimate of 39 economists. It’s the first time prices failed to rise since May, and followed a 0.1% gain in December. [Link]
- A total of 95.8% of public primary schools in Japan gave pupils some exposure to the English language as part of their curriculums in school year 2006, up 2.2 percentage points from the previous year [Link]
- Telecommunications giant KDDI announced on Friday that the batteries in two of its au brand mobile phones are prone to serious thermal expansion if recharged too often. The battery problem affects the Sanyo W41SA and the Kyocera W41K. [Link]
- The average number of “freeters” — young people living on temporary jobs — dropped by 140,000 in 2006 from the previous year to 1.87 million in Japan, marking the first fall below 2 million since the compilation of data under the same conditions started in 2002, the government said Friday. [Link]
- Three community leaders in Sekikawa, Niigata prefecture were taken to court over the practice of murahachibu, or organized ostracism within a community. Eleven residents were shunned by their village after declining to participate in organizing a local fishing contest. [Link]
