Japan News for July 06, 2007

Japan-related news links for today:

LDP In Trouble: Voter disgust at the public pension record-keeping fiasco is looming as a major factor in the July 29 Upper House election, according to polls conducted by the Asahi Shinbun. [Link]

Confident: Ichiro Ozawa said on Thursday that he would resign as head of the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) if opposition parties fail to win a majority in the House of Councillors election on July 29. [Link]

Wikipedia Scandal: The Shizuoka Shimbun newspaper apologized to readers on Thursday, saying a reporter had used information from the online encyclopedia Wikipedia in a column without mentioning the source of the information. [Link]

Secret Service Scandal: A Metropolitan Police Department assistant lieutenant providing security for Cabinet Office member Sanae Takaichi has been arrested on suspicion of groping a woman on a train on the JR Sobu Line. [Link]

Scammers Beware: The Hokkaido prefectural government decided Wednesday to introduce DNA testing of meat products in light of the Meat Hope Co. scandal, in which meat products were falsely labeled. [Link]

Urging Chile: The People’s New Party (PNP) leader Shizuka Kamei urged Chile to consider allowing Fujimori, currently under house arrest in Santiago, to come to Japan to be able to take part in election campaigning on Wednesday. [Link]

Murakami “Awarded” Nobel: A municipal library in Kobe mistakenly uploaded a false report on its Web site that popular novelist Haruki Murakami had won the Nobel Prize for Literature. [Link]

Workers Flee: Workers at the Social Insurance Agency (SIA) are fleeing en masse, many of them tired of dealing with the aftermath of a series of scandals, SIA employment figures show. [Link]

Too Strict? The Justice Ministry has suspended showings of an 8.4-million-yen ($68,415) video on rehabilitating juvenile delinquents because the star of the educational program plans to run in the Upper House election. [Link]

English Tests: In a bid to boost safety by ensuring good ground to pilot communications, air traffic controllers in Japan will be required to pass an English proficiency examination every three years. [Link]

Old Whale: Researchers say a museum in central Japan has right whale fossils that are at least 5 million years old, making them the oldest fossilized remains of the animal in the world. [Link]

Smelly News: Unmarried Japanese women are most unlikely to compromise and tie the knot with a guy if he has a smelly penis, according to Spa! [Link]