A little Island

記事を満遍なくという感じ。天皇陛下のお名前に「hito」がつくのはなぜか聞かれた^^

1)   For the first time in 2 centuries, Japan’s Emperor will be allowed to step down.
The Diet has enacted a bill that allows Emperor Akihito to abdicate, but the law only makes the provision for him. The law is designed to allow him to hand over the throne to his son, Crown Prince Naruhito.

2)   The operator of a nuclear research facility near Tokyo says one of its workers may have suffered a high levels of internal radiation exposure.

Five workers at the facility of the Japan Atomic Energy Agency in Oarai Town, Ibaraki Prefecture, were accidentally exposed to radioactive substances on Tuesday.

3)   A police officer in southwestern Japan has been arrested for allegedly killing his wife. The couple’s young children were also found dead at their home on Tuesday.

Police arrested Mitsuru Nakata based on forensic evidence at the scene. The 38-year-old works for the Fukuoka prefectural police.

4)   Japanese education minister Hirokazu Matsuno says his ministry will reinvestigate the existence of controversial ministry documents.

The documents are alleged to be related to the planned creation of a new veterinary school by Kake Educational Institution, which is run by a close friend of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

One of the documents allegedly mentions the intentions of the highest level of the Prime Minister’s Office in calling for swift approval of the opening of the new school.

5)   A man held as a murder suspect in Japan is believed to have been helped by more than 10 members of his radical leftist group while on the run for over 45 years.

Sources with the investigation say members of the Chukaku-ha group gave shelter to Masaaki Osaka and helped him elude the authorities.

Police on Wednesday served Osaka with a fresh arrest warrant in the killing of a police officer during a riot in Tokyo in 1971.

6)   Haagen-Dazs Japan has announced a recall of new ice cream products that may contain black pieces of rubber.

Company officials soon received complaints from consumers saying they found black pieces in the ice cream. The officials say they found worn rubber in manufacturing equipment at a factory, and that fragments may have been mixed into the ice cream.

7)   Japan’s largest business organization is asking Vietnam to help get the Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade deal back on track after the US withdrawal.

Japan and Vietnam are among the 11 remaining signatories of the TPP.

8)   South Korea’s military says it has found small, unmanned aircraft crashed on a mountain in the northern part of the country. The military says the drone’s size and shape are similar to a North Korean drone found on a remote island 3 years ago.

9)   The US state of Hawaii has enacted legislation calling for continued efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions across Hawaii in line with the Paris climate change agreement.

10)   67 members have joined a new effort to stop multinational tax avoidance. Members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development have backed a convention that stops companies from exploiting countries with lower taxes.

The move follows claims that firms such as Apple and Amazon were shifting profits to low-tax jurisdictions despite having little presence there.

パリ協定とか日本の塾の話とか。

1)   US President Donald Trump says his country will withdraw from the Paris Agreement on climate change.

Trump said he will keep his promise to US taxpayers. He referred to the largest emitter China and said the Paris deal is unfair to the US as it allows other countries to continue to pollute at a greater rate.

2)   A US Defense Department official has expressed confidence about establishing a missile defense system capable of handling threats from North Korea and Iran.

The Pentagon announced on Tuesday that an interceptor launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California successfully shot down a mock-up of an intercontinental ballistic missile.

3)   Japanese police have arrested 5 women for allegedly trying to smuggle gold from South Korea through an airport in central Japan.

Police say the women arrived at Chubu international airport last December with about 30 kilograms of gold bars hidden in pockets sewn inside their clothes.

The gold is said to be worth about 1.2 million dollars.

Police believe the women were serving as couriers for the ringleader, thought to be a South Korean woman, who allegedly purchased the gold in Hong Kong.

4)   The Japan Coast Guard has arrested 5 Japanese and 3 Chinese men on suspicion of smuggling what appears to be over 200 kilograms of gold bullion into the country.

Coast Guard officials say they believe the owner of the small boat used by the suspects is Yasuaki Saito, a resident of the city of Iki in Nagasaki Prefecture.

Saito and the 7 others allegedly unloaded about 206 kilograms of cargos believed to be gold at a fishing port in the city of Karatsu in Saga Prefecture on Wednesday.

5)   The UN Human Rights Council released on Wednesday a report compiled by Special Rapporteur David Kaye. He is a professor at the University of California.

Kaye notes that Japanese media face direct and indirect pressure from government officials, urging the government to strengthen media independence.
6)   The job interview season has officially started in Japan, as next spring’s graduates begin the task of landing a job with a major firm.

The season is scheduled according to guidelines set by the Japan Business Federation, or Keidanren.

University students are pressing their suits and polishing their interview skills.

7)   A government advisory panel on education reform proposed to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Thursday steps to ease the workload of teachers in Japan and boost community and parent involvement with schools, amid concerns about overwork.

The panel is recommending introducing a “Teachers’ Day,” designed to make local communities more aware and involved in tasks handled by teachers.

8)    Japan’s health ministry on Friday abandoned its plan to completely ban smoking in restaurants as part of measures to lower cancer risks, yielding to a ruling party proposal advocating smokers’ rights.

The Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare will still aim to fully eliminate smoking in government offices and medical institutions, its officials said, as the host country of the 2020 Olympics and Paralympics seeks to implement tighter measures to counter passive smoking.

9)   Apple is preparing to launch a connected speaker to serve as a smart home assistant in a challenge to Amazon Echo and Google Home, a news report says.

The speaker powered by Apple’s digital assistant Siri may be unveiled at the annual Worldwide Developers Conference next week in Silicon Valley, Bloomberg News reported Thursday.

10)   Price hikes for a number of items went into effect in Japan on Thursday, among them beer, butter and postcards.

The new law will require mass merchandisers to raise the price of beer and happoshu (low-malt beer-like beverages) by about 10%.

1)   British police suspect a 22-year-old man carried out the bomb attack in Manchester that killed 22 people and injured 59.

2)   Japanese police have arrested 6 men in connection with last year’s robbery of gold bars worth millions of dollars near a train station in the city of Fukuoka, western Japan.

3)   Some Japanese insurance companies are expanding their policies to cover cyberattacks because of increased risks worldwide.

Officials at Sompo Japan Nipponkoa Insurance have updated their policies for small and medium-size businesses relating to cyberattacks.

4)   A pair of melons produced in the northern city of Yubari, Hokkaido, sold for 1.5 million yen in the first auction of this harvest season on Friday.

The price was half the record 3 million yen fetched for a pair of Yubari melons, a type of premium cantaloupe, in the previous year’s auction, but largely in line with prices set in regular years at the Sapporo Central Wholesale Market.

5)   Businesses and local authorities in Japan are turning to environmentally friendly bioplastics for shopping and garbage bags, as well as product containers, in a bid to step up their conservation efforts.

Environmentally conscious consumers have responded positively to the use of such materials, viewing it as a practical way of helping conservation.

6)   The last Japanese peacekeepers with a United Nations mission have left South Sudan. The team was Japan’s first with an expanded mandate to use force if necessary to protect civilians and U.N. staff.

Japan decided in March to end its peacekeeping mission in the East African nation where civil war is well into its fourth year.

7)   Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and US President Donald Trump have confirmed that both countries will work closely to tackle the issue of North Korea.

Abe and Trump held talks in Italy on Friday on the sidelines of the Group of Seven countries summit.

At the top of the meeting, Trump said the issue of North Korea is on the global agenda, and that it definitely needs to be resolved.

8)   Japan is to increase the number of officials assigned to tourism promotion as it gears toward a target of 40 million visitors from overseas in 2020.

Last year, a record 24 million foreigners visited Japan. The government wants to boost this to 40 million when Tokyo hosts the Olympics and Paralympics.

The ministry in charge of tourism says it will boost the number of personnel at the Japan Tourism Agency, an external agency, by about 50 to 150 by this summer.

9)   Japan’s Education Minister has reiterated that he can’t confirm the existence of documents allegedly tying Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to a university operator’s plan to open a school. The operator is run by a close friend of Abe’s.

10)   Japan’s Consumer Price Index for April was up for the 4th straight month.

The officials at the Internal Affairs Ministry say the CPI was 0.3 percent higher from the same month last year.
The reading includes oil products, but not fresh food

11)   The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and major non-OPEC oil producing nations have agreed to extend their cuts in crude oil output until March of next year.

12)   Rural areas in Japan are being hit by severe declines in population. A government-affiliated housing loan provider has decided to offer mortgages with lower interest rates to those moving to the countryside.

The Japan Housing Finance Agency says it will cut the rates on their 35-year fixed mortgage by quarter of a percentage point with certain conditions.

トランプ大統領と皇室と共謀罪の話

1)   The cabinet on Friday approved a bill to allow Emperor Akihito to hand over the Chrysanthemum throne to Crown Prince Naruhito in what would be Japan’s first abdication in roughly 200 years.

2)   Toxic benzene at up to 100 times the government safety limit was detected again in groundwater samples collected in April at the planned relocation site for Tokyo’s Tsukiji fish market, the Tokyo metropolitan government said Thursday.

3)   The ruling coalition has won crucial approval for a controversial bill that would criminalize the act of plotting terrorist attacks or other serious crimes. A majority of members on a Lower House committee have given their backing to the legislation.

The vote was a scene of chaos as opposition lawmakers shouted out in protest.
They’ve called the deliberations insufficient, and said the bill doesn’t have the public’s support.
But members of the ruling coalition voted in favor

4)   A hospital in Japan has started a clinical study to find out whether laughter can have therapeutic effects on cancer patients by boosting their immune systems with help from professional entertainers.

The Osaka International Cancer Institute and 3 entertainment companies will conduct the experiment. Professional comic storytellers, known in Japan as “rakugo-ka,” and pairs of stand-up comedians called “manzai-shi,” will participate in the research.

5)   A global treaty designed to restrict the manufacture and trade of products that contain harmful levels of mercury will take effect in August.

As of Friday, 51 signatories, including Japan, the United States and the Netherlands, had ratified the Minamata Convention. It was adopted at a UN conference in Kumamoto Prefecture, southwestern Japan, in 2013.

The convention was named after a city in the prefecture where people suffered health problems caused by industrial mercury poisoning.

6)   US information security firm is looking into the possibility that North Korean hackers were involved in last week’s massive global cyberattacks.

The US government says at least 300,000 computers in 150 countries were affected.

In each case, ransomware encrypted the computers’ data and locked users out of their systems.

7)   One day before the first anniversary of her inauguration, Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen urged China to try to improve cross-strait relations without sticking to the “One China” principle.

Tsai made a speech before an overseas group on Friday. She admitted that she has achieved little to revitalize the economy and narrow the wealth gap among Taiwanese people.

On relations with China, she said old problems should be left in the past, adding that leaders face a new task of keeping peace and prosperity on both sides of the strait.

8)   New university graduates in Japan are enjoying the best job market on record.

The labor and education ministries say 97.6 percent of graduates had landed jobs by April 1st. The ministries jointly polled 4,770 students who left university in March.

The employment rate is up 0.3 percentage points from last year, the highest since the survey began in 1997.

9)   4 carmakers have agreed to pay 553 million dollars to settle a class action suit in the United States over a massive recall of Takata airbags.

Toyota, Subaru, Mazda and BMW say they reached a settlement with car owners who said they incurred economic losses because of the recall.

 

この中にはないけれどFBI長官の話。アメリカだなぁ。と。

1)   The Japanese government for the first time has released a nationwide list of over 300 companies that have violated labor laws, hoping this name-and-shame tactic would help eliminate abuses and prevent karoshi, or death by overwork.

Major companies such as advertising agency Dentsu Inc and electronics maker Panasonic Corp are named for illegal overtime, and a local unit of Japan Post, a subsidiary of Japan Post Holdings Co, is mentioned for failing to report a work-related injury.

2)    A man has been sentenced to 30 months in prison for causing the death of a woman in Kasugai, Aichi Prefecture, last August while playing Pokemon Go as he was driving.

The Nagoya District Court ruled that 27-year-old Yusuke Okuyama from Toki in neighboring Gifu Prefecture was giving his attention to his smartphone when his car hit the 29-year-old Vietnamese woman.

3)   Police in Tokyo have arrested an unemployed 31-year-old man on suspicion of theft after he was caught stealing a wallet from a woman’s tote bag on a train.

According to police, the suspect, Nobutaka Ando, stole the wallet, containing 18,000 yen. Police said Ando may be responsible for at least 21 pickpocketing cases on the Saiko Line this year.

4)   Rice planting for commercial sales began on Wednesday in a village in Fukushima Prefecture for the first time since the disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in 2011.

5)   Police say 85 million yen in cash, or about 750,000 dollars, was stolen from a safe in a police station in the city of Hiroshima, western Japan. Police say confiscated evidence is normally kept in a safe in the investigators’ division, but in this case, the cash was stored in a bigger safe in the accounting division, as the amount was large.

6)   The youngest-ever professional player of the Japanese board game shogi, 14-year-old Sota Fujii, has stretched his run of official consecutive victories to a fresh record of 17.

Fujii made headlines last month when he broke an earlier record of 10 straight wins in the game, which is often called Japan’s version of chess. Since then he has continued to dominate.

On Friday, Fujii beat Kazuhiro Nishikawa, a shogi master who holds the rank of 6th dan, to notch his 17th win.

7)   Tokyo police have raided the headquarters of a yakuza crime syndicate in the western prefecture of Hyogo in connection with an extortion case.

About 30 investigators conducted a search of the headquarters of the Kobe Yamaguchi-gumi on Friday.
The group, which was formed in 2015, is an offshoot of Japan’s largest crime syndicate, the Yamaguchi-gumi.

8)   New Zealand has ratified the Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade agreement, becoming the second country to do so after Japan.

9)   The head of a Chinese-led development bank says it wants to cooperate with the region’s long-established lender, the Asian Development Bank.

Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank President Jin Liqun attended a meeting of the World Economic Forum in Cambodia on Thursday.

Jin said his bank was not created to be a rival of the ADB. He added that he believes the 2 lenders can share responsibilities and work together. The ADB promotes health and education, while the AIIB focuses on support for infrastructure.

10)   Japan’s central government debt stood at a record 1,071.56 trillion yen ($9.4 trillion) at the end of fiscal 2016 in March, the Finance Ministry said Wednesday. The amount owed per person came to approximately 8.45 million yen, based on Japan’s estimated population of 126.79 million as of April 1.

11)   Thousands of people took part in a parade in Tokyo’s Shibuya district Sunday to raise awareness of issues related to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, marching on along busy shopping streets led by a float decorated in rainbow colors about 6,000 participated.

12)   The United States cannot continue to run huge trade deficits with major trading partners, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said following the release of data showing the U.S. merchandise trade deficit with Japan hit a nine-year high in March. “The United States can no longer sustain this inflated trade deficit with Japan.

13)   JR East will open a prayer room within Tokyo Station’s premises due to an increase in travelers from Muslim countries, notably Southeast Asia.

14)   More Japanese Ground Self-Defense Force troops left Juba, South Sudan, on Thursday, to return to Japan.

Their departure is part of the process to end their five-year participation in the ongoing U.N. peacekeeping mission.

1)   A car driven by an elderly woman has rammed into a hospital in southwestern Japan, leaving 13 people injured.

Police suspect the driver, who is 76 years old, made an error and lost control of the car.

2)   Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has said he wants to put a revised Constitution into force in 2020.

3)   North Korea has warned Japan that it would suffer the greatest damage if war breaks out on the Korean Peninsula.

4)   Anti-refugee sentiment is rising in Europe and the United States but in Japan those seeking haven from tyranny and war have long faced daunting legal and social gauntlets.

One of the world’s wealthiest countries, Japan accepted just 28 refugees in 2016

5)   Japanese researchers have succeeded in extracting natural gas from frozen methane hydrate deep in the seabed off the Pacific coast of central Japan.

6)   A Japanese research group has found a new type of computer virus that destroys programs in devices that are connected to the Internet.

7)   US electric car maker Tesla more than doubled its sales in the January-March quarter from the same period last year, thanks to record volume.

8)   Japan’s economy has expanded in the first 3 months of this year thanks to brisk exports and consumer spending.

The growth estimates for annualized real-term GDP range from 1.4 percent to 3.1 percent from the previous quarter.

9)   The number of children in Japan fell for the 36th straight year to another record low, the latest data showed Thursday, indicating efforts by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s government have been inadequate to tackle the long-standing issue of a declining birthrate.

10)   Tokyo risks being one of the unhealthiest Olympic Gamaes hosts in years, as an anti-smoking law exposes deep rifts over tobacco tax revenue, personal freedom and the dangers of passive smoking.

先生の住む地域が乾燥しててwild fireが近くまで来ているそうな。http://wildfiretoday.com/tag/florida/ 雨が降るといいのだけど。

1)   The Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department says internet users were denied access to its website on Friday afternoon in a suspected cyber-attack.

The department said on Friday it is the first time that internet users have been prevented from accessing its website due to a massive amount of data.

2)   More than a dozen journalists in Japan have protested a government-sponsored anti-terrorism bill. They say the law could suppress freedom of thought.

The bill would punish a criminal organization planning a serious crime, such as a terrorist attack, if a member of the group is found to make any preparations. A Diet committee is deliberating the bill.

3)   A Cabinet Minister in charge of rebuilding areas hit by the 2011 earthquake and tsunami has resigned after making a remark seen as offensive to those affected by the disaster.

Reconstruction Minister Masahiro Imamura submitted his letter of resignation to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Wednesday morning.

4)    South Koreans are taking issue with US President Donald Trump’s recent call for their country to pay for a missile defense system being deployed there.

Amid rising tensions over North Korea’s accelerated nuclear and missile programs, the United States is deploying the Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, in South Korea.

On Thursday, Trump said in an interview with Reuters that he wants South Korea to pay for THAAD, which costs an estimated 1 billion dollars.

5)   The US Navy has unveiled on its website a photo of its aircraft carrier Carl Vinson and destroyers from Japan’s Maritime Self-Defense Force engaged in joint exercises.

The Carl Vinson strike group was joined by 2 Maritime Self-Defense Force destroyers on Sunday off the coast of the Philippines for the joint drills.

6)   US President Donald Trump says he wants to solve the problem of North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs diplomatically, but it’s very difficult.

Trump spoke with the Reuters news agency at the Oval Office on Thursday, ahead of his 100th day in office on Saturday.
7)   Russian President Vladimir Putin says that if his country and Japan conclude a peace treaty, it must benefit the national interests of both sides.

Putin attended a joint news conference with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe after their talks in Moscow on Thursday.

Putin described the meeting as constructive, saying Russia and Japan are ready to solve the most difficult issue facing them.

8)   The Japanese government has released key economic figures for the month of March. They show a mixed picture.

The labor market remains tight, with the unemployment rate at 2.8 percent. That’s unchanged from February.

The ratio of job offers to applicants rose very slightly, to 1.45. This means there were 145 job openings for every 100 people looking for work.

On the downside, industrial output fell 2.1 percent from the previous month. That’s the first decline in 2 months.

The consumer price index was up 0.2 percent from March last year. That was the third consecutive monthly increase.

Household spending was down 1.3 percent from a year earlier, declining for the 13th month in a row.

9)   The Japanese government says the country’s catch of young bluefin tuna has exceeded its annual quota, two months early.

Japan agreed in 2015 to limit its catch of Pacific bluefin weighing less than 30 kilograms, under an international accord aimed at conserving the species.

The country’s quota is 4,007 tons, but the Fisheries Agency said the total catch had reached 4,008 tons as of Thursday. The tuna fishing season ends in June.

It is the first time Japan has failed to keep within its quota. The Agency blamed underreporting of catches and illegal fishing in 9 prefectures.

10)   Executives at struggling electronics maker Toshiba are considering selling the company’s semiconductor business to a Japan-US group.

Sources say the group includes US investment firm KKR and a Japanese government-backed fund, the Innovation Network Corporation of Japan.

Also in the group are the government-affiliated Development Bank of Japan and several other Japanese businesses.

But it remains unclear whether the Japan-US group can come up with the roughly 18 billion dollars needed to cover Toshiba’s massive losses.

福岡の三億円事件と北朝鮮の話あたり。

1. 1)   Investigators say the man barged into a businessman who was carrying a bag containing about 670,000 dollars in cash along a street.The alleged thief was wearing a blue jacket and jeans.
   Police say footage captured by a nearby security camera shows two men fleeing the scene on a black motorcycle.

   Investigators suspect the two men were involved.

1. 2) Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike has been chosen as one of the world’s 100 most influential people by Time magazine of the US.Koike is listed in the category of Pioneers. The first woman mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, describes her as a governor with both ambitions for Tokyo and an acute awareness of the challenges it faces.

1. 3)   Japan’s governing Liberal Democratic Party has accepted an offer by a member lawmaker to leave the group over a scandal involving an extramarital affair.  Lower House member Toshinao Nakagawa told the party on Friday that he doesn’t want to cause it any more trouble. A weekly magazine had reported on the affair the day before.

1. 4)   Japan’s foreign minister says the US must consult with Tokyo before taking military action against North Korea from any bases on Japanese soil. Fumio Kishida made the comment on Thursday during an Upper House committee meeting on foreign affairs and defense.

1. 5) The number of children in Japan who’ve become victims of crimes through social networking services hit a record high last year. The National Police Agency says 1,736 children up to age 17 were victimized last year. That’s up 84 from 2015.

1. 6) Japanese and Indian teams taking part in an international competition to send rovers to the Moon have conducted test runs of their vehicles. Japanese team HAKUTO and Team Indus performed the test runs for a media audience in Tokyo on Friday.

1. 7) A Japanese city plans to collect virtual currency donations to help maintain a popular cherry blossom viewing park. The park in Hirosaki City, Aomori Prefecture is known for its 2,600 cherry trees and 400-year-old castle. The park attracts 2 million people during blossom season each year. But caring for the trees costs hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.

1. 8) Japan’s Finance Minister Taro Aso has expressed his view that the remaining 11 nations of the Trans-Pacific Partnership will start discussions in May to put the TPP deal into effect. The United States withdrew from the TPP after President Donald Trump took office earlier this year.

1. 9) China and South Korea have criticized Japanese government leaders and parliament members for their actions relating to Tokyo’s Yasukuni Shrine.

1. 10) A US research group has released satellite imagery of what appears to be people playing volleyball at a nuclear test site in North Korea. Researchers say the North’s preparations for a nuclear test may have gone into “stand-by” mode.