Japan News for May 24, 2007

This morning’s Japan-related news links:

• Yokozuna Asashoryu rebounded from the previous day’s defeat, muscling out sekiwake Kotomitsuki in a lopsided affair to go 10-1 and stay hot on the heels of undefeated ozeki Hakuho at the Summer Grand Sumo Tournament on Wednesday. [Link]
• The Diet on Wednesday passed a bill to promote the realignment of U.S. forces in Japan, which will create a controversial system that offers financial rewards to municipalities that cooperate in the moves. [Link]
• Tokyo Broadcasting System will place a takeover defense on the agenda for its general meeting on June 28th; Rakuten, which wants to buy TBS, is warning that it may move to invalidate the measure if there is no two-thirds shareholder majority in support. [Link]
• Nearly 25% of roller coasters and similar rides nationwide have never undergone maintenance checks by amusement park operators, the transport ministry said Wednesday. [Link]
• Seven roller coasters examined in emergency inspections following a fatal accident at an amusement park in Osaka Prefecture had problems such as worn wheels and cracked axles, it has emerged. [Link]
• The Diet enacted an amendment to an environment bill on Wednesday to allow projects aimed to confine factory-emitted carbon dioxide in undersea aquifers as part of measures to deal with global warming in line with a revised international treaty. [Link]
• A group of high school students who rescued an mentally disabled man who fell onto the tracks of the JR Hanwa Line in Hannan, Osaka Prefecture, have been commended by the prefecture. [Link]
• Two homeless teenage girls were arrested Tuesday for abandoning a baby boy in a plastic bag in Chiba last February, police said Wednesday. [Link]
• A local court in Hokkaido acquitted a man Wednesday of molesting an elementary school girl after determining that the girl may have lied. [Link]
• A man who fatally stabbed a camera store operator and his son in a brutal attack after being sexually assaulted by the son as a child was sentenced to life imprisonment in a ruling at the Yamagata District Court on Wednesday. [Link]
• All carriages of East Japan Railway Co trains will have SOS stickers that clearly pinpoint where emergency alarms are located, the company announced Tuesday, making the move after an incident last summer on the JR Hokuriku Line in which a man raped a woman but none of her fellow passengers alerted train operators. [Link]
• About 2,200 pigs were burned to death in a fire that badly damaged a piggery in Hokkaido early Wednesday. [Link]
• Hitachi has successfully trial manufactured a lightweight, portable brain scanner that enables users to keep tabs on their mental activity during the course of their daily lives. [Link]

Afternoon Update:

• Emperor Akihito, who arrives in Britain on Sunday for an official visit, will not face any of the protests he had to endure on his last trip, but former prisoners of war would still like to meet him and spell out their grievances. [Link]
• Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Chinese President Hu Jintao may have a meeting at the summit of the Group of Eight industrialized nations next month in Germany, Japan’s top government spokesman said. [Link]
• A female university student has been arrested for abandoning her newborn baby in Sendai. [Link]
• Chinese coal exporters are demanding buyers in Japan and South Korea pay as much as 44 percent more for the fuel this year as output fails to keep pace with power station demand. [Link]
• The Tochigi prefectural government broke the law when it allowed a man, who shot two neighbors, to possess a gun even though he was in a dispute with one of the victims, a court ruled today. [Link]
• Mitsubishi UFJ, Japan’s biggest banking group, has announced it earned $7.2 billion in its first year as a combined company. [Link]
• Nearly half of smoking moms of pre-school-age children in Japan failed to quit the habit while they were pregnant, according to a survey conducted by a pharmaceutical company. [Link]
• Despite the World Organization for Animal Health’s classification of the United States as a “controlled risk” region for bovine spongiform encephalopathy, Japan said it won’t immediately ease restrictions on U.S. beef imports. [Link]
• A pistol and illegal drugs have been sent to the Tokyo headquarters of the Yomiuri Shimbun, prompting a police investigation. [Link]
• Another of the six eggs recently laid by an endangered oriental white stork has hatched at a breeding farm in Hyogo Prefecture, but the chick died shortly afterward. [Link]
• The Monju fast breeder nuclear reactor in Tsuruga, Fukui Prefecture, marked a turning point in resuming operations Wednesday as the Japan Atomic Energy Agency began pouring sodium coolant into pipes of its secondary cooling system, 11-1/2 years after a sodium leak accident shut the reactor down. [Link]
• Japan’s prime minister has agreed to write a pledge that his country will not dump toxic waste in the Philippines, to speed up the implementation of a bilateral free trade pact. [Link]
• The Tokyo Fire Department on June 1 will introduce a trial triage system in which ambulance workers at the scene of an incident will select which patients need to go to hospital urgently and which do not. [Link]
• Three workers suffered minor injuries in an explosion which rocked a factory operated by an affiliate of Mitsubishi Chemical Corp in Yokkaichi, Mie Prefecture, on Wednesday evening. [Link]
• Prosecutors have decided not to indict actor Akihiro Miwa for crashing his car into a motorbike in March, leaving the rider with slight injuries. [Link]
• Japanese police on Wednesday arrested a 34-year-old South Korean man who they said belonged to a five-member pickpocket ring after the man was handed over by South Korean authorities under an extradition treaty. [Link]
• A self-professed woman hater iN Hokkaido has been arrested for committing bigamy by marrying 3 women. [Link]
• The Japan Business Federation will give top priority to improving the country’s child-rearing environment so as to avoid a further decrease in the labor force, Fujio Mitarai, chairman of the business lobby, said in an interview. [Link]
• Japan’s Self-Defense Forces have got some unexpected defending on their hands, thanks to a sex-crazed sergeant with too much interest in privates’ parts, according to Asahi Geino. [Link]