Japan News for March 18, 2007
Today’s Japan-related news links:
- Former dot-com mogul Takafumi Horie’s 2 1/2-year prison sentence may have come as a surprise, considering most white-collar criminals are allowed to walk free, but some legal experts and Livedoor shareholders said Friday it was the right decision, according to the Japan Times. [Link]
- Six Vietnamese women who worked at a sewing factory in Ibaraki Prefecture have asked a local labor standards office to investigate what they say are unpaid wages totaling around 4.6 million yen withheld from their salaries. [Link]
- Mari reports on Tokyo Walker Magazine’s “Tokyo’s best neighborhoods 2007″ ranking. Did your neighborhood make the list? [Link]
- The Gunma Prefectural Board of Education has instructed the principals of schools under its jurisdiction to investigate to see if teachers have inappropriate relations with students that could lead to sexual harassment or molestation. The moves is in response to the arrest of four public school teachers in the prefecture since the end of last year over their sexual relations with students. [Link]
- The Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department on Friday began delivering plastic boards for note-taking outside police boxes that can also be used as shields against knife attacks. Some 3,500 of the boards, about 30 centimeters long and 23 cm wide, will be delivered to all police boxes in the capital. [Link]
- Comedian Kinzo Sakura has suggested that he intends to run in the upcoming Tokyo gubernatorial race. Sakura, 50, whose real name is Shigeki Sato, will officially announce his candidacy at a news conference on Monday. [Link]
- The Aichi prefectural police on Friday arrested a Chinese employee of car parts manufacturer Denso Corp on suspicion of taking out a laptop with more than 130,000 pieces of product design data downloaded from its database without the company’s authorization. [Link]
- A Japanese loan shark whose group’s threatening method of debt collection led to three people committing suicide was arrested after being taken into custody in Romania. In the specific case for which he was arrested, the man conspired with seven subordinates to loan 15,000 yen to a 69-year-old woman and forced her to pay back some 135,000 yen in interest, 270 times the upper limit set by the law. [Link]
- A Bombardier Inc. aerospace executive bowed to Japanese transportation officials as he apologized Friday for technical problems that resulted in an emergency landing of a turboprop operated by All Nippon Airways Co. Ltd. [Link]
- An elderly man was arrested Saturday after he was spotted rolling a spool of electrical cable that he had stolen from a building in Hyogo Prefecture. [Link]
- Shukan Shincho weekly magazine has been ordered to pay 3.3 million yen compensation for defaming a Doshisha University professor in a story saying he annoyed his students by showing them a sex video. [Link]
- Japanese ruling party leaders and China’s President Hu Jintao agreed to make progress in a row over gas exploration rights in the East China Sea, officials said. [Link]
- Since 2002, Japan has been laying the groundwork for a plan to liberalize and promote toxic waste trade among Asian countries in violation of an international treaty, claims a hazardous waste watchdog group based in Seattle. [Link]
- The Osaka Labor Bureau has ordered an Osaka outlet of Electronics store Yamada Denki Co. and several consumer-electronics manufacturers to improve the conditions for salespeople working at the outlet who are dispatched from the manufacturers, citing a violation of the Employment Security Law. [Link]
- Yahoo Japan has launched their version of a social news sharing site with a Digg-esque feel; Minna No Topics (Everyone’s Topics). [Link]
