A little Island

今日トピック多過ぎ。^^  日産、スバルときたから来月あたりホンダが。。。

 

1)   The head of Japanese automaker Subaru bowed deeply in apology Friday as the company admitted that it has been carrying out flawed inspections of its Japan-made cars for years.

2)   The number of reported bullying cases at Japanese schools hit a record high of more than 320,000 in the 2016 academic year due partly to efforts to detect early signs, the education ministry says.

Altogether 323,808 bullying cases at elementary, junior high and high schools were reported, up 43.8% from a year before, with the figure for elementary schools jumping 1.5-fold.  90.6% of the total cases had been resolved.

3)   A Japanese teenager is suing the government of Osaka, saying her public high school repeatedly forced her to dye her naturally-brown hair black or be banned from attending school, local media reported on Friday.

In a lawsuit filed in Osaka District Court, the 18-year-old girl said her mother informed Kaifukan School in Habikino city upon her enrolment that she was born with brownish hair, as the school had a policy banning hair coloring, media reported.

Educators, however, instructed her to color her hair black, telling her repeatedly that the dye job was insufficient and forcing her to “either dye the hair black or quit school”, Kyodo news reported, citing the lawsuit.

4)   Japan’s Nikkei share average rose more than 1% to a fresh 21-year high on Friday, led by banking shares as U.S. yields remained high and by tech shares after their U.S. counterparts posted strong earnings.

5)   Approximately 1,000 apples were stolen earlier this week from an orchard in Hirosaki City, Aomori Prefecture, shortly after they were picked.

According to police, at around 4:30 p.m. on Oct 24, the owner of the orchard reported that 1,000 Fuji apples awaiting their scheduled shipment had been stolen, Fuji TV reported. The stolen apples are worth about 40,000 yen

6)   Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Thursday called for pay hikes through negotiations between management and labor unions next spring, making such a request for the fifth straight year to inject fresh momentum into wage growth.

“I hope to see wages raised by 3% in next spring’s wage talks,” Abe told a government panel meeting at his office. It’s rare for the prime minister to refer to a specific number for wage increase.

7)   Don’t want Amazon boxes sitting on the porch? The company hopes you’ll let a stranger inside to drop them off.

Amazon said Wednesday it’ll launch a service called Amazon Key next month that will let people allow the door to be unlocked when they’re not there so packages can be left inside.

The proposal drew plenty of humorous reactions on social media, as well as concerns about safety or delivery employees being mistaken for intruders. Amazon said the drivers would be well-vetted, while one expert said the company has built up trust with customers and younger customers were more likely to try it out.

8)   With the arrival of the cold-and-cough season, you may be thinking about cooking up a big batch of chicken soup as a cure for what ails us.

I love the stuff, too, but I suggest you stock up on some fresh ginger root instead. Ginger, of course, is one of the many flavors to be found in a stir-fry Asian dish or Indian curry. But used in larger quantities than specified for those recipes, it can become quite spicy. Of all the home remedies out there, I have found tea, prepared with fresh ginger, to be the most effective.

9)   Percent of men who favor the addition of male-only trains cars

● Age 20-29: 66 percent

● Age 30-39: 51 percent

● Age 40-49: 47 percent

● Age 50-59: 38 percent

Percent of women who favor the addition of male-only trains cars

● Age 20-29: 58 percent

● Age 30-39: 53 percent

● Age 40-49: 63 percent

● Age 50-59: 57 percent

10)   The regional parliament of Catalonia has voted to unilaterally declare independence from Spain. The move comes after voters overwhelmingly chose to break away in a referendum earlier this month.

The 135-member Catalan parliament reconvened a plenary session on Friday to discuss the issue. 70 voted in favor, 10 were against and 2 submitted blank ballots.

Meanwhile, the upper house of Spain’s parliament authorized Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy to impose direct rule on Catalonia. Rajoy says he will first dismiss Catalan President Carles Puigdemont.

11)   US President Donald Trump has stressed that he will be working to solve the problems of North Korea’s missile and nuclear threats.

Trump spoke in an interview with FOX TV on Wednesday, ahead of his visit to Japan, South Korea and China from November 5th.

He said he hopes his Asian tour will be historic and positive. He said they have to solve the North Korea issue, which he said is a very big problem. Trump said he will get it solved.

12)   Malicious software has been used to launch a massive cyber-attack against computers in Russia and Ukraine.

Russian media outlets say the malware took down the country’s Interfax news agency on Tuesday.

The attack also affected Ukraine’s Odessa airport and Kiev’s subway system. Flights were delayed, as staff members had to handle boarding procedures manually.

Bulgaria, Germany, and Turkey were similarly targeted.

An expert at the Israeli information security firm Kela says the malware, called BadRabbit, locks computers using encryption and demands a ransom for their release.

13)   A driverless bus has taken to the roads in the southeastern German state of Bavaria.

The first self-driving shuttle service in Germany, operated by state-owned rail company Deutsche Bahn, started in Bad Birnbach, a spa resort with a population of about 6,000, on Wednesday.

The small, 6-seat electric vehicle developed by a French startup doesn’t have a driver’s wheel. It detects its surrounding environment with sensors and relies on GPS to confirm where it is running.

The bus shuttles some 700 meters linking the town center and spas at a speed of less than 15 kilometers per hour.

14)   Kobe Steel says its JIS or Japanese Industrial Standards certificate has been revoked for some products at a subsidiary for data falsification.

Its officials said on Thursday that quality control authorities Japan Quality Assurance Organization removed the certification for some copper products.

15)   A private study group says economic losses from unclaimed land in Japan last year amount to about 1.6 billion dollars.

When legal heirs or other successors fail to register their ownership of estates, their land becomes unclaimed.

The group estimated in June that Japan’s unclaimed land totaled about 4.1 million hectares. That’s equivalent in size to the southwestern island of Kyushu.

16)   Japan’s Finance Ministry has presented a plan to review and curb medical and other social security expenses in forming the fiscal 2018 budget.

Medical, nursing and other social security expenses account for about one-third of government spending. The plan proposes an additional increase in the 10 percent ceiling on co-payment for seniors aged 75 or older. It says the ceiling should be reviewed in fiscal 2019 or after. The government hopes to gradually raise the ceiling to 20 percent.

17)   Japan’s opposition party Hope led by Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike has decided not to name a co-leader for the time being in the wake of their setback in Sunday’s general election.

The decision comes after Koike said she will remain party president while serving as Tokyo governor

18)   The leader of Japan’s opposition Democratic Party, Seiji Maehara, has expressed his intention to resign from the post.

19)   Japan’s Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko have visited victims of torrential rains in northern Kyushu, western Japan, where more than 1,000 people are still living in temporary housing 3 months after the disaster struck.

20)   The Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department is tightening security in the capital ahead of US President Donald Trump’s visit next month.

Trump will arrive in Tokyo on November 5th. The president’s 3-day trip to Japan is part of his Asian tour.

フロリダはまだ半袖でいいのね。突然こんなに寒くなると困る。ヒートテックに文句を言っていたが早速着た朝。

1)   Akira Shimizu, an actor and celebrity impressionist, apologised at a news conference in Tokyo on Thursday night after his son Ryotaro, 29, was arrested earlier in the day on suspicion of violating the Stimulants Control Law.

2)   Police on Wednesday arrested a 66-year-old man on suspicion of violating the Public Election Law after he assaulted a candidate for the Oct 22 lower house election while he was giving a public speech in Kashiwa, Chiba Prefecture.

According to police, Yoshio Amano approached Yoshitaka Sakurada who was campaigning in front of Kashiwa Station at around 7 p.m. Wednesday and hit him in the head, Sankei Shimbun reported. Nearby staff subdued Amano and called police.

Sakurada, a member of Japan’s ruling Liberal-Democratic Party (LDP), was not injured, police said.

3)   A man serving a 10-year jail term for attempted murder has confessed to murdering another woman in 2006, saying he “has changed his mind to repent after falling sick,” investigative sources said.

Hirokazu Suzuki, 37, who is suffering from a cerebral infarction, was arrested Tuesday on suspicion of stabbing Yuri Kuronuma, 27, in Kawasaki, near Tokyo in September 2006.

4)   A key member of an international organization that won this year’s Nobel Peace Prize has criticized the Japanese government for effectively ignoring a landmark U.N. treaty that outlaws nuclear weapons.

5)   Bank of Japan Governor Haruhiko Kuroda on Thursday stressed the central bank’s resolve to maintain its ultra-loose monetary policy, even as its U.S. and European counterparts begin to dial back their massive, crisis-mode monetary stimulus.

Kuroda offered an upbeat view of Japan’s economy, saying it was expanding moderately with rising incomes leading to higher corporate and household spending.

But he said inflation and wage growth were disappointingly low, despite such improvements in the economy.

6)   Shares in Japan’s Kobe Steel dived on Friday on a report that its widening quality scandal has spread to more than 30 foreign customers, including Boeing, General Motors, and French automaker PSA.

The embarrassing scandal for Kobe Steel — a venerable firm that once employed Prime Minister Shinzo Abe — has already hit wide sections of Japanese industry, including automakers Toyota, Nissan and Honda which used the affected materials in their vehicles.

7)   The United States said Thursday that it was pulling out of the U.N.’s culture and education body, accusing it of “anti-Israel bias” in a move criticised by the head of the Paris-based organisation.

8)   Gun control in Japan, combined with the prevailing respect for authority, has led to a more harmonious relationship between civilians and the police than in the U.S. The Japanese police, in choosing to use sub-lethal force on people, generate less widespread fear among the public that they’ll be shot. In turn, people feel less of a need to arm themselves.

The U.S., meanwhile, has a more militarized police force that uses automatic weapons. There is also less widespread trust between people (and between people and institutions). The factors combine to produce a much fearful culture that can seem to be always on edge.

9)   Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s snap election gamble looked like paying off after media forecasts showed his ruling bloc heading for a surprisingly big win, possibly enough to re-energise his push to revise Japan’s post-World War Two pacifist constitution.

10)   Yuriko Koike says she went into politics to be a player, not a bystander.

Now Tokyo’s first female governor is shaking things up as her new Party of Hope challenges Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s ruling bloc in an Oct 22 poll, called by the Japanese leader to seek a fresh mandate after nearly five years in office.

11)   Wildfires continue to ravage northern California in the United States, killing 31 people over the past 4 days. California State officials say the fires that started on Sunday have burned about 77,000 hectares of land, mainly in the wine-producing counties of Sonoma and Napa.

They say about 3,500 homes and stores have been destroyed and that more than 20,000 people have been evacuated. Local media are calling the wildfires the deadliest in the state’s history.

12)   The Spanish prime minister has demanded that the leader of Catalonia clarify by next Monday whether he declared independence from Spain.

13)   An Iraqi court has issued arrest warrants for the members of the Kurdish electoral commission that organized last month’s independence referendum. The Kurdish regional government unilaterally conducted the referendum on September 25th, despite objections from Iraq’s central government as well as neighboring Turkey and Iran, and the United States.

The majority of voters supported the independence of the Kurdish autonomous region from Iraq in the poll. The regional government says it wants to proceed with negotiations with the central government for independence, based on the referendum. But the government in Baghdad regards the referendum as invalid.

14)   A record-high 2.47 million foreigners were living in Japan at the end of June.

The Justice Ministry’s Immigration Bureau says the number of foreign residents was 2,471,458

15)   Tokyo’s benchmark stock index ended on Friday above the 21,100 mark for the first time in nearly 21 years, on expectations for strong Japanese corporate earnings.

16)   Japan’s big brewers are struggling to reverse a decline in their business. They say a change to the pricing law and cooler weather led to record low summer shipments.

The top five brewers say, from July to September, combined shipments of beer and beer-like drinks came to just over 1.3 million kiloliters.

That figure is down 4.2 percent from the previous year and represents a 7th consecutive year of decline.

17)   Tokyo’s Haneda Airport is set to introduce Japan’s first unmanned immigration gates as it moves to free up customs officers to handle the growing number of international tourists.

The Justice Ministry’s Immigration Bureau on Friday held a demonstration of the machines’ facial recognition technology. The bureau plans to start operating 3 gates for Japanese citizens next Wednesday.

18)   Australia’s government says it will not allow entry of North Korea’s under-19 soccer team for a championship qualifier next month because of Pyongyang’s continued nuclear and missile development.

 

ラスベガスの事件の話などなど。

1)   Japanese Transport Minister Keiichi Ishii said on Friday that unauthorised technicians had been found certifying vehicles at five Nissan Motor Co plants that the ministry has been inspecting.

2)   A gunman perched high on the 32nd floor of a Las Vegas Strip casino unleashed a shower of bullets down on an outdoor country music festival below, killing at least 50 people and wounding more than 200 as tens of thousands of frantic concert-goers screamed and ran for their lives, officials said Monday.

3)   Japan accepted just three refugees in the first half of 2017 despite receiving a record 8,561 fresh asylum applications, the government said on Tuesday, highlighting the nation’s reluctance to accept foreigners.

4)   The Japanese nuclear watchdog’s decision on Wednesday to allow two reactors run by Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc (TEPCO) to pass its safety review has drawn fierce criticism from citizens who remain evacuated from their home over six years after the nuclear crisis at the utility’s Fukushima complex.

5)   Tokyo Gov Yuriko Koike’s new party unveiled on Friday what it calls “Yurinomics” – policies to revitalise Japan’s economy while cutting reliance on the aggressive spending and monetary easing that are central to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s strategy.

It has made populist calls to freeze a scheduled sales tax hike in 2019 and phase out nuclear power, as part of a effort to set itself apart from the government on key issues.

6)   The infotainment technology that automakers are cramming into the dashboard of new vehicles is making drivers take their eyes off the road and hands off the wheel for dangerously long periods of time, an AAA study says.

Cars used to have a few buttons and knobs. Some vehicles now have as many as 50 buttons on the steering wheel and dashboard that are multi-functional. There are touch screens, voice commands, writing pads, heads-up displays on windshields and mirrors and 3-D computer-generated images.

7)

In one of the most bizarre British political speeches in a generation, May’s address on Wednesday to her annual conference was ruined by a comedian handing her a fake employment termination letter, repeated coughing fits and even by letters falling off the slogans on the set behind her.

May’s authority was already diminished by her botched bet on a June snap election that lost her party its majority in parliament just days before the opening of formal Brexit talks with the European Union.

8)   A magnitude 5-point-9 earthquake has struck northeastern Japan.

The quake was focused off the coast of Fukushima Prefecture at a depth of 50 kilometers.

The Nuclear Regulation Authority says there are no reports of abnormalities at 2 nuclear plants in Fukushima, including the crippled Daiichi plant.

9)   About 500 people enjoyed the first outdoor ski run of the season in Japan at a resort at the base of Mt. Fuji. The slope in Susono City in Shizuoka Prefecture opened on Friday.

The resort is the first to open for outdoor runs in Japan for the 19th straight year. This year’s opening comes 2 weeks earlier than last year.

10)   The Japan Table Tennis Association is trying to confirm whether China’s Super League has decided not to accept foreign players for its 2017 season, which usually starts in October.

Association officials say World Championship bronze medalist Miu Hirano applied to join a Super League team to improve her skills, but was rejected in late September due to financial reasons.

The team also said the league decided not to accept foreign players this season.

11)   A Chinese billionaire living in the United States has stepped up criticism of China’s Communist Party ahead of the party’s National Congress later this month.

Guo said there is no rule of law in China. He claimed that the family of Wang Qishan, a Politburo member who has led the party’s anti-corruption campaign, secretly possesses massive assets in the US and elsewhere.

Guo warned that the Chinese government has dispatched 27 agents to the United States this year on espionage missions. He showed a picture of what he said was a secret Chinese government document.
12)   Spain’s Constitutional Court has ordered the suspension of a Catalan parliamentary session next week.

The region’s legislature is expected to declare unilateral independence from Spain on Monday.

The suspension order on Thursday follows an appeal from Catalan lawmakers opposing independence.

13)   Japan’s leading advertising agency Dentsu has been fined for excessively overworking its employees.

A summary court in Tokyo ordered the firm on Friday to pay a fine of 500,000 yen, or over 4,400 dollars.

Dentsu was indicted on suspicion of violating the labor standards law. The company forced 4 employees to work illegally long hours.

14)   US Vice President Mike Pence says the United States will return its astronauts to the moon and build a base there to send them to Mars and beyond.

Pence delivered a keynote speech as the chair of the inaugural meeting of the National Space Council near Washington on Thursday.

The administration of President Donald Trump set up the Council to promote manned space exploration.

15)  Retailer Takashimaya has opened a specialty section in one of its Tokyo department stores that sells only robots. Most of them cost between 900 and 2,700 dollars.

One small robot uses artificial intelligence to help people learn English. It uses the program to respond at the learner’s level.

Another AI-equipped robot helps with the laundry. It folds clean clothes and sorts them according to whom they belong to.

16)    US Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue has expressed an interest in negotiating a bilateral free trade agreement with Japan.

Perdue affirmed his eagerness to boost farm exports to Japan in a speech in Washington on Wednesday. The secretary said he wants Japan to lower what he called high tariffs on American farm products, such as beef, pork, and dairy products, as well as fruits and vegetables.

Perdue stressed that he wants the 2 nations to enter into negotiations to remove trade barriers.

17)   Saudi Arabia said last month that it’s lifting its ban on female drivers next year. With that in mind, many women are heading to a major motor show in the country, looking forward to getting behind the wheel.

18)   Sony is planning to roll out smart speakers controlled by Japanese language commands in December.

They say Sony’s product will feature high quality sound for playing music, as well as allowing users to give commands either with voice or hand movements.

AI speakers are already popular in the United States, but not in the Japanese market.