MILESTONES

Railway fans flocked to Tokyo station to witness the initial runs of the new 300kph E5 Series Hayabusa bullet train. Someone even bid ¥385,000 for a ticket.

A young woman received a kidney from her brain-dead mom, the first case of a family member being prioritized since Japan revised its organ transplant law last year.

Peace-loving no more: lawmakers say they are rethinking Japan’s long-standing ban on the export of “weapons and related technologies.”

Takuya Kagata has taken sumo wrestling to the beaches of Japan as executive director of the Nippon Beach Sumo Association.

Fagiano Okayama defender Ryujiro Ueda scored what is thought to be a world-record 58.6-meter goal with a header during a J. League second division soccer match against Yokohama FC.

It’s official-Guinness World Records has declared the 634m-tall Tokyo Sky Tree the world’s tallest tower, supplanting the 600m Guangzhou Tower in China.

UN climate conference approves landmark deal

New accord will put all countries under the same legal requirements to control greenhouse gases by 2020 at the latest.

Last Modified: 11 Dec 2011

The president of a United Nations climate conference in South Africa has announced agreement on a programme mapping out a new course by all nations to fight climate change over the coming decades.

The 194-party conference agreed on Sunday to start negotiations on a new accord that would put all countries under the same legal regime to enforce their commitments to control greenhouse gases. Approved by 2015, it would take effect by 2020 at the latest.

However, key components of the accord remain to be hammered out, and observers say the task will be arduous. Thorny issues include the still-undefined legal status of the accord and apportioning cuts on emissions among rich and poor countries.

HEY, YOU WANTED EQUAL RIGHTS…

A global survey commissioned by a company called Regus reveals that women in Japan’s workforce put in just as much overtime as their male counterparts.

The Regus poll also found that Brazil has now passed Japan in terms of the average length of working day. Didn’t see that one coming…

A 65-year-old man who hijacked a bus in Chiba and held two hostages at knifepoint said he did it to draw attention to complaints he had over his treatment in prison after a previous brush with the law.

The Elvis-like king of Bhutan and his super-hot new queen were in Japan for a visit, where the royal couple handed over some rare butterflies to their hosts.

On the subject of butterflies, Japanese researchers have solved the “eternal mystery” of why the colorful insects choose to lay their eggs where they do. Apparently, it’s all in their forelegs, where sensors identify chemicals in leaves that allow them to determine locations offering the best shot at survival. You’ll probably sleep better knowing that.

In Gaza, lives shaped by drones

 

By Scott Wilson, Sunday, December 4

GAZA CITY – The buzz began near midnight on a cool evening last month, a dull distant purr that within moments swelled into the rattling sound of an outboard motor common on the fishing boats working just offshore.

At a busy downtown traffic circle not far from the dormant port, a pickup truck full of police pulled up abruptly. The half-dozen men spilled into the streets.

“Inside, inside,” the officers, all of them bearded in the style favored by the Hamas movement that runs Gaza, urged passersby. Then, pointing to the sky, one muttered, “Zenana, zenana.”

OK, IF YOU SAY SO

A Japanese aid worker who was rescued from the rubble following last month’s earthquake in Turkey said that the glow from her laptop “calmed me down and gave me hope to stay alive.”

The newly installed head of the US Navy’s 7th Fleet, which is based in Yokosuka, claims to spend “a lot of time thinking about North Korea.”

Officials at Mitsubishi Heavy Industries say that no national defense secrets were lost during a recent cyber-attack on its servers, although the company didn’t rule out the possibility that “important data, such as those related to nuclear power, have been leaked.”

An Air SDF pilot whose plane crashed into the East China Sea in July and whose body was never recovered is believed to have suffered from G-LOC, or g force-related loss of consciousness.

A poll conducted by the Yomiuri Shimbun and the Xinhua news agency found that 17 percent of Japanese have a positive view of relations with China, while 46 percent of Chinese have a positive view of Japan.

Mexico seeks to fill drug war gap with focus on dirty money

The evolving anti-laundering campaign could change the tone of the Mexican government’s battle by striking at the heart of the cartels’ financial empire, analysts say.

By Ken Ellingwood and Tracy Wilkinson, Los Angeles Times

November 27, 2011

Reporting from Mexico City– Tainted drug money runs like whispered rumors all over Mexico’s economy – in gleaming high-rises in beach resorts such as Cancun, in bustling casinos in Monterrey, in skyscrapers and restaurants in Mexico City that sit empty for months. It seeps into the construction sector, the night-life industry, even political campaigns.

Piles of greenbacks, enough to fill dump trucks, are transformed into gold watches, showrooms full of Hummers, aviation schools, yachts, thoroughbred horses and warehouses full of imported fabric.

HIDE AND SEEK

Apparently, a South Korean magazine, Weekly Chosun, claims to have tracked down Japanese abductee Megumi Yokota, alive and well and living in Pyongyang. North Korea admitted snatching a 13-year-old Yokota in 1977, but they claim she killed herself in 1994.

The captain of a Chinese fishing boat was arrested in Japanese waters off Nagasaki after leading the Coast Guard on a chase. Sound familiar?

The body of a 35-year-old Iwate man missing since the March 11 tsunami was discovered by his wife in a crushed car being kept at a temporary junkyard.

A powered exoskeleton robot-like suit made by Tsukuba-based Cyberdyne, which would come in handy during nuclear accidents, “features computer-controlled, motorized limbs, which respond to a user’s movements.”

The Daidogei World Cup of street performers featured 87 acts from 21 countries doing their thing at a Shizuoka park.

In an event organized by Panasonic to promote its Lamdash shaver, a world record was set for the largest number of men using the same model of electric razor at the same time in Japan and abroad. According to Guinness World Records, 1,981 men participated at 18 locations.

Around the Fukushima plant, a world left behind

 

By Chico Harlan, Published: November 20

Namie, JAPAN – Eight months ago, people left this place in haste. Families raced from their homes without closing the front doors. They left half-finished wine bottles on their kitchen tables and sneakers in their foyers. They jumped in their cars without taking pets and left cows hitched to milking stanchions.

Now the land stands empty, frozen in time, virtually untouched since the March 11 disaster that created a wasteland in the 12-mile circle of farmland that surrounds the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

KIDS THESE DAYS

A newspaper survey revealed that 26 percent of female high school students say using a cellphone is their favorite after-school activity, while just 11 percent of boys say so.

On the other hand, 21 percent of guys said they devote themselves to video games, but just 6 percent of girls do.

After a subway car in Nagoya was found covered in graffiti, an official with the local transportation bureau said it had been “decades” since such a thing had happened in the city.

A teenager who had been hospitalized since eating tainted beef at a yakinuku restaurant in April became the fifth person to die from an E. coli outbreak in Toyama.

Cops in Miyagi believe that a total of 89 gangsters have received quake-related welfare loans from the government despite a requirement that applicants submit a formal declaration stating they are not yakuza members.

Occupy Oakland and News Media Coexist Uneasily

 

By SHOSHANA WALTER

Published: November 12, 2011

Immediately after a man was shot to death Thursday afternoon near the Occupy Oakland encampment, Randy Davis, a cameraman for KGO-TV, turned his lens on a group of protesters helping the victim. Then part of the crowd turned on him.

Protesters formed a chain around the victim. About a dozen men – some shouting, “No cameras!” and “No media!” – punched Mr. Davis in the head and pushed him to the ledge overlooking a BART station stairwell before other protesters intervened, witnesses said.

The attack, one of at least two against journalists that night, highlighted the growing tensions between Occupy Oakland and the news media after a week of largely negative coverage of problems at the encampment.