This morning’s Japan-related news links:

• Talks here between Japan and North Korea had hardly started before they were over Thursday, the final day of a two-day bilateral session. No agreement was reached on any point, nor was any decision made on when the two sides would next meet. [Link]
• Japan lags behind all countries in addressing the gender gap for top level executives, according to a global survey which found that the rest of Asia has more women in senior management roles than Europe. [Link]
• A strong earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 6.0 struck in Pacific Ocean waters off Japan’s eastern coast Thursday, but there was no tsunami danger, Japan’s Meteorological Agency said. [Link]
• The Tokyo Metropolitan Government and a school organization for Korean residents reached a settlement on Thursday over a lawsuit in which Tokyo demanded the group surrender the land where a Korean elementary school is located. [Link]
• The United Nations Democracy Fund, an initiative which supports projects to strengthen new and restored democracies, received a $10 million contribution from Japan, and the country now joins the ranks of the United States, India and Qatar as the Fund’s largest donators. [Link]
• “Honobono-kun,” a serial cartoon that held the record for the longest-running newspaper cartoon by one illustrator was published for the last time on Thursday in the Tokyo Shimbun after it started in 1956. [Link]
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• Some 30 to 40 Fujiya franchise stores will close down following revelations that the confectionery maker used ingredients that had passed their expiry dates to make cakes, company officials said Thursday. [Link]
• CNN has profiled Nobu Matsuhisa, the man behind a global empire of fashionable and expensive Japanese restaurants. [Link]
• W. David Marx of Neomarxisme has launched a new blog called Clast, which aims to break down consumer and media insights in Japan. [Link]
• The second Japan Blog Matsuri is up, check it out! [Link]

Evening Update:

• Ampontan has translated a report on the press conference held in Washington DC by Ryozo Kato, the Japanese ambassador to the US, regarding the comfort women brouhaha. The US media ignored the press conference. [Link]
• The United States “fully” supports Japan’s policy of pursuing a resolution to a spat over Japanese nationals abducted by North Korean agents in the 1970s and 1980s, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack reiterated Thursday. [Link]
• A diary written by a chamberlain to the late Japanese Emperor Hirohito has been found, chronicling what he said from before the start of World War II in the Pacific theater to the country’s defeat in 1945, and a publisher will be printing details from the diary in a magazine set to go on sale Saturday. [Link]
• The head of a crime syndicate was sentenced Friday to 20 years for ordering attacks on the home of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in his electoral constituency in Shimonoseki, Yamaguchi prefecture, in 2000.Motoshi Takano, 57, who heads the syndicate based in Kitakyushu, Fukuoka Prefecture, ordered junior syndicate members who threw gasoline bombs into Abe’s home and his supporters’ office on five occasions between June and August in 2000. [Link]
• About 1,000 aluminum dishes and bowls for school lunches that were to be discarded have been stolen from a school lunch center in Osaka. Investigators suspect that the thief stole them in a bid to sell them as metal prices are rising on the international market, and are searching for the culprit. [Link]
• In a related story, the owner of an abandoned factory in Mito sprayed a fire extinguisher at a thief who was trying to steal metal sheets from the plant and subdued the man before handing him over to police. [Link]
• India has surpassed Japan with the number of billionaires on the annual Forbes magazine list of the world’s wealthiest people for the first time since the magazine started publishing the list in 1987, the magazine announced Thursday. [Link]
• Amid a lavish party filled with fans, impersonators, orphans and handicapped children, Michael Jackson said that he wouldn’t change the path of his career, despite “deliberate attempts to hurt me.” [Link]
• Residents of Roppongi Hills are complaining that one of their number dropping dollops of doggy doo-doo from the upper floors of their high-rise, according to Josei Jishin/Wai Wai. [Link]