Japan News for April 18, 2007

This morning’s Japan-related news links:

• A 23-year-old South Korean student has been identified as apparently the sole shooter in the worst massacre in U.S. history. Expect the Japanese blogosphere to go crazy with for the next few days… [Link]
• A cargo vessel went aground off northeastern Japan in the Pacific early Tuesday but all 17 Russian crew members were safely rescued. [Link]
• The Osaka District Court on Tuesday sentenced a 25-year-old man to 10 years in prison for killing his mother with a hammer at their home in Toyonaka, Osaka, last July. [Link]
• More cerifications to pay for: Cram school teachers will undergo exams to test their abilities under new rules to be introduced by an industry association. [Link]
• A retired teacher faces charges for illegally dumping over 100 used car batteries on the premises of the high school in Hokkaido where he used to work. [Link]
• A Japanese man who admitted to smuggling endangered butterflies into the United States and attempted to sell them was sentenced Monday to 21 months in federal prison. [Link]
• Russia’s Pacific Fleet, based in Vladivostok, has announced Russia will hold maneuvers with India from April 24-26 in the Sea of Japan. [Link]
• National Federation of Families with the Mentally Ill in Japan, an organization supporting the families of mentally handicapped people is set to go bankrupt after it became unable to repay a huge amount of debts. [Link]
• The owner of a boxing gym to which former Light Fly Weight champion Koki Kameda belongs apologized on Tuesday over abuse of a referee by the fighter’s father following a bout that his son won. [Link]
• The death of a 26-year-old female trainee doctor last April has been recognized by the Ikebukuro Labor Bureau in Tokyo as a case of suicide induced by overwork. [Link]
• 200 ethnic Koreans face evacuation from Utoro, a small derelict Korean village in Japan’s Kyoto Prefecture, after a court has declared them to be illegal squatters. [Link]
• Japan is considering a merger of its stock, commodity and other financial markets to boost their competitiveness in an increasingly fierce global environment, an official said on Tuesday. [Link]

Afternoon Update:

• Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said Tuesday he sent a letter to U.S. President George W Bush expressing his condolences to relatives of the victims of Monday’s shooting rampage at the Virginia Tech campus in the United States. [Link]
• The Asahi Shinbun reports on the 2 municipalities using e-voting in the 2007 unified elections. [Link]
• Egyptian authorities have charged a nuclear engineer at the state’s Atomic Energy Agency with spying for Israel, along with two foreigners ・a Japanese man and an Irishman, a prosecutor said Tuesday, according to Reuters news agency. [Link]
• The New York Times has an interesting article on cash bonuses for baseball players, which are separate from a player痴 salary, and are common in Japanese baseball and known as kantoku shou, which, translated literally, means manager prize. [Link]
• Sparked by fears of burned buttocks, Japan’s leading toilet maker is offering to repair 180,000 bidet toilets for free after wiring glitches caused several to catch fire, the company (Toto) said Monday. [Link]
• Uniqlo Co, the operator of the Uniqlo-brand casual clothing shop chain, announced Tuesday it will start selling white pants made of a special fabric that prevents underwear from showing through. [Link]
• The Anpanman Children’s Museum with a large collection of goods based on the popular stories whose superhero “Anpanman” (an-bread man) has a renewable head made of a bun filled with “an,” or bean jam, is due to open in Yokohama on Friday. [Link]