Japan News for April 25, 2007

This morning’s Japan-related news links:

• Two crewmen from the U.S. aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk were given suspended terms Tuesday for skipping out on a restaurant bill and beating the restaurant manager who chased them down in Kamakura, Kanagawa Prefecture, last December. [Link]
• North Korea is an “enormous” threat to Japan and must be closely watched to see that it fulfills its pledge to shut down its nuclear weapons program, Japanese national security adviser Yuriko Koike said. [Link]
• A man died after he apparently jumped off a pedestrian overpass onto the tracks of the JR Yamanote Line in Tokyo yesterday. The Yamanote Line and other JR lines temporarily stopped operations, affecting some 35,000 passengers. [Link]
• Japan Post, which will be privatized on Oct. 1 into a holding company and four service firms, plans to post combined after-tax profits of 587 billion yen in fiscal 2011, sources said Tuesday. [Link]
• A record 5,185 bears were captured across Japan in fiscal 2006, the highest figure since officials started collecting statistics in 1923, an Environment Ministry investigation has found. [Link]
• New York Yankees left-hander Kei Igawa got a rude awakening in a seven-run pummeling by the Tampa Bay Devil Rays on Monday. [Link]
• Preschool centers and other institutions in Saga Prefecture have received threats to injure pupils unless money is paid into a designated account, police said. [Link]
• Many schools faced the Education, Science and Technology Ministry’s national achievement tests Tuesday with a mixture of optimism that they could help halt the decline in academic standards and anxiety over the smooth running of the tests. [Link]
• Scalpers who buy up tickets and illegally sell them for a profit have started to disappear from baseball games in Tokyo, apparently as a result of increased penalties for scalping and sagging interest in games. [Link]
• Aflac Inc. reported an 11% increase in first-quarter net income late Tuesday, but the life and health insurer also said that sales in Japan fell 10.6%, a bigger decline than some analysts were expecting. [Link]

Afternoon Update:

• A group of researchers led by the University of Tokyo has broken Internet speed records – using modified protocols, the team broke the record again by sending data over the same 32,000-kilometre path at 9.08 Gbps. [Link]
• Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is furious about a weekly magazine story that suggests one of his secretaries has a link to a gang of which the killer of former Nagasaki Mayor Itcho Ito is a member. [Link]
• West Japan Railway Co. discontinued paying medical expenses to a passenger injured in the April 2005 train crash on JR Fukuchiyama Line in Amagasaki, Hyogo Prefecture, based on a medical certificate that claimed the treatments would not improve his condition, The Yomiuri Shimbun has reported. [Link]
• KDDI Corp said Tuesday its group operating profit surpassed 300 billion yen for the first time ever in fiscal 2006, backed by a rise in the number of new contracts for its core “au” mobile phone services. [Link]
• Japanese nationals planning an overseas trip during the upcoming Golden Week Holidays should take precautions against a host of infectious diseases, such as bird flu and rabies, according to a Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare warning issued today. [Link]
• The European Union has asked Japan to send a team of civilian police officers to Afghanistan for a multinational mission to train local police there, and Japan has begun mulling the idea, Japanese-EU sources said Tuesday. [Link]
• The Center for Food Safety of Hong Kong announced Tuesday that it would resume processing applications for beef imports from Japan with effect from Friday after more than five years of suspension amid mad cow disease worries. [Link]
• Japan marked the 60th anniversary of its postwar Constitution on today, a day after Prime Minister Shinzo Abe rallied for changes in the pacifist charter that would give the military a greater global role. [Link]