DIAMOND DUST

Sho Darvish, the younger brother of Nippon Ham Fighters ace Yu Darvish, was arrested twice in June-once for marijuana possession and again for assaulting a 19-year-old woman. So much for weed mellowing you out…

Seattle Mariner Ichiro Suzuki saw his string of ten straight MLB All-Star Game appearances come to an end when he finished seventh in fan voting among American League outfielders. He still picked up over 2.5 million votes.

A renegade cat delayed a BayStars vs. Hiroshima Carp ballgame at Yokohama Stadium when it got on the field and had to be chased off by security.

Golfer Tiger Woods may have philandered away millions in endorsement contacts in the U.S. but he’s still big in Japan. Woods is the new face of Kowa, a Japanese muscle balm.

The heat is on once again and the Japan Football Association has decided to allow sports drinks, as well as your standard water, on the sidelines at soccer games to prevent heatstroke. Some stadiums, however, have a water-only policy in effect, worried that a little Pocari Sweat might kill the grass.

A 17-year-old boy scout with Japanese roots from Utah delivered soccer balls, uniforms and whistles to students affected by the March 11 earthquake/tsunami. Perhaps more suited to Sudan than Japan, but a good deed nonetheless.

GOING DIGITAL

A communications ministry survey revealed that, for the first time in 29 years, the number of landline phone subscriptions fell below 40 million.

At the same time, the “penetration rate” of mobile phones in Japan has reached 96.8 percent.

It was reported that the communications ministry has set up 160 temporary call centers in 44 prefectures around the country to help people deal with the changeover from analog to digital terrestrial TV broadcasting, scheduled for July 24.

Meanwhile, sales of flat-panel TVs are skyrocketing ahead of the changeover. Stores are reporting sales 250 percent higher than a year ago.

Other hot items this summer include electric fans, whose sales have jumped 4.5-fold compared to last year.

GOTTA BOUNCE

After winning 10 straight national trampoline championships, 27-year-old Haruka Hirota decided to retire from the sport due to a rule change regarding how much time the athletes spend in the air.

Former Livedoor boss Takafumi Horie decided to go out in style, sporting a Mohawk haircut and wearing a T-shirt bearing the phrase “Go To Jail” as he began his prison sentence for fraud.

Forty-year-old tennis queen Kimiko Date Krumm gave Venus Williams a run for her money at Wimbledon, before finally bowing out 6-7 (6), 6-3, 8-6 in nearly three hours in the second round.

In Sapporo, four “Super Grandmas” aged between 75 and 88 set a world record in the 400-meter medley for swimmers with a combined age between 320 and 359 years. Their combined age was 322 years and they shaved a full 40 seconds off the record.

Doara, the popular mascot of the Chunichi Dragons baseball club, was sent down to the minor leagues to work on his flips after a few mishaps.

Yoshie Soma, a 69-year-old special adviser to the president of Kobe University, was named one of the “most distinguished women in chemistry and chemical engineering in the world” by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry. She discovered a copper carbonyl catalyst in the 1960s that has been used in paint for cars and the bottom of ships.

Starvation returns to the Horn of Africa

Drought and war threaten millions with famine, as the refugee camps overflow .

By David Randall, Simon Murphy and Daud Yussuf in Kenya  Sunday, 3 July 2011

In the Horn of Africa, unseen as yet by the world’s television cameras, a pitiful trek of the hungry is taking place. Tens of thousands of children are walking for weeks across a desiccated landscape to reach refugee camps that are now overflowing. They are being driven there by one of the worst droughts in the region for 60 years which, combined with the war in Somalia and soaring food prices, is threatening a famine that could affect between eight and 10 million people.

The malnourished children, some of whom become separated from their parents on the way, are now arriving at the camps in northern Kenya at a rate of 1,200 every day.

BREAK OUT THE PARTY HATS

A Guinness World Record was set in Toyama when 1,566 people got together to play a game of tag.

JAXA’s unmanned probe Hayabusa, which spent five years collecting samples from a space rock named Itokawa, has been certified by Guinness “as the first spacecraft to have brought back materials from an asteroid.”

Meanwhile, a team of researchers from Tohoku University and NEC Corp announced that they have developed the world’s first “large-scale integrated circuit that requires no standby power.”

Last year was the first time since 2001 that the number of suicides in Japan fell below 32,000, according to the National Police Agency.

People in their 70s killed themselves at a lower rate in 2010 compared to a year ago, but folks in their 20s and 30s committed suicide more frequently.

Former Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso joined Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao in Beijing to kick off the inaugural Japanese Film and TV Week, which aims to “promote cultural exchanges between young people from the two countries.”

According to London-based human resources firm ECA, Tokyo is the most expensive city in the world for expats, followed by Oslo, Nagoya, Stavanger (Norway), Yokohama, Zurich, Luanda (Angola), Kobe and Bern.

The Japanese, apparently, have not been drowning their sorrows in booze following the March 11 quake: beer shipments in May were the lowest on record.

The Japan Sumo Association agreed to “provisionally pay a salary” to a wrestler named Sokokurai, who was implicated in the recent bout-fixing scandal. The thing we really like about this story is that the Chinese wrestler’s original name is Enhetubuxin.

China’s Communists mull the party’s future

The 90th anniversary celebration has some bemoaning the changes time has wrought. Oh, for the days when a man could hang a portrait of Mao above his couch.

By Barbara Demick, Los Angeles Times  

Want to know what happens these days within a Chinese Communist Party cell?

Party members at the Jinxin Garden apartments get together once a month to discuss their volunteer projects, like raising money for earthquake victims and preventing neighborhood robberies. Or they plan excursions, such as a trip last week from their southern Beijing suburb to the Olympic stadium for a concert honoring the party’s 90th anniversary.

If it sounds as exotic as the Rotary Club, that’s precisely the problem. The 90-year milestone, celebrated Friday, prompts the question of how an ideology born out of the class struggles of 19th century Europe can remain relevant in the 21st century. By surviving to the age of 90, is the party a testament to endurance or is it merely old and in the way?

Revealed: British government’s plan to play down Fukushima

Internal emails seen by Guardian show PR campaign was launched to protect UK nuclear plans after tsunami in Japan

Rob Edwards

guardian.co.uk,  

British government officials approached nuclear companies to draw up a co-ordinated public relations strategy to play down the Fukushima nuclear accident just two days after the earthquake and tsunami in Japan and before the extent of the radiation leak was known.

Internal emails seen by the Guardian show how the business and energy departments worked closely behind the scenes with the multinational companies EDF Energy, Areva and Westinghouse to try to ensure the accident did not derail their plans for a new generation of nuclear stations in the UK.

Read The Emails Here

Report: Pakistan ends US use of base for drone attacks

Ties between the two countries remain strained since the bin Laden raid

REUTERS  

Pakistan has stopped the United States from using an air base in the southwest of the country to launch drone strikes against militant groups, the defense minister was quoted as saying, as ties remain strained between the two countries.

Pakistan has long publicly opposed the missile attacks as a violation of its sovereignty, but has in private given support including intelligence to help target members of al-Qaida and the Taliban in the northwest region along the Afghan border.

Afghans Build Security, and Hope to Avoid Infiltrators



By RAY RIVERA

 For someone who had once joined an insurgent group, and whose family was tied to a top Taliban commander, Akmal had a strikingly easy path into the Afghan National Army.

The district governor who approved his paperwork had never met him. A village elder who was supposed to vouch for him – as required by recruiting mandates – did little more than verify his identity.

No red flags went up when, after just six weeks in the army, he deserted. He returned more than three months later with the skimpiest of explanations and was allowed to rejoin. “I told them I got sick,” Akmal recalled.

Europe Stifles Drivers in Favor of Alternatives



By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL

Published: June 26, 2011

ZURICH – While American cities are synchronizing green lights to improve traffic flow and offering apps to help drivers find parking, many European cities are doing the opposite: creating environments openly hostile to cars. The methods vary, but the mission is clear – to make car use expensive and just plain miserable enough to tilt drivers toward more environmentally friendly modes of transportation.

Cities including Vienna to Munich and Copenhagen have closed vast swaths of streets to car traffic. Barcelona and Paris have had car lanes eroded by popular bike-sharing programs. Drivers in London and Stockholm pay hefty congestion charges just for entering the heart of the city. And over the past two years, dozens of German cities have joined a national network of “environmental zones” where only cars with low carbon dioxide emissions may enter.