Japan News for March 31, 2007
Today’s Japan-related news links:
- The Asian Women’s Fund, a fund set up by Japan to help Asian women forced into prostitution by its military during World War II will expire today. [Link]
- The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport issued a warning against All Nippon Airways on Friday for allowing 11 unlicensed mechanics to make final aircraft checks from January 2006 and March this year. [Link]
- A senior official from the Taito-ku ward office in Tokyo was arrested on Friday for molesting a woman on a Keisei Electric Railway train. [Link]
- Four Nagoya Prison wardens convicted of killing one inmate and injuring another through violent treatment avoided prison sentences in a ruling at the Nagoya District Court on Friday. [Link]
- The number of retired Japanese government bureaucrats working at cushy post-retirement jobs at affiliated governmental organizations and semi-public entities increased by 5,789 in 2006 from the previous year. [Link]
- Japan’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate stood at 4% in February, unchanged from the previous month, the government said Friday. [Link]
- The South Korean Foreign Ministry has denounced newly printed Japanese textbooks that continue to consider the Takeshima (Dokdo) islets as Japanese territory. [Link]
- A Japanese court sentenced a member of a now-defunct violent ultra-leftist group to life in prison Friday for his involvement in the hijacking of a flight bound for Paris in 1977. [Link]
- Japan’s Crown Prince Naruhito, 47, will undergo surgery to remove a benign abnormal growth in his intestines, the palace said Friday. [Link]
- Only one-eighth of remodeled airsoft guns outlawed in August under the revised Firearms and Swords Control Law in August have been disposed of or returned to their original condition, a National Police Agency survey has found. 700,000 illegal airsoft guns in circulation in Japan. [Link]
