Japan Times: News & Business

GENEVA (Kyodo) A 61-year-old Japanese man has gone missing while climbing in the Alps in southern Switzerland, the Japanese Embassy in Switzerland said Friday.
He left his hotel last Sunday to climb the Jungfrau, one of the mountain range's main summits, but the hotel on Wednesday asked police to search for him and the police are looking for him by helicopter, embassy officials said.

Japanese criminals, too, are becoming more internationally minded. According to a white paper released by the National Police Agency on July 23, domestic criminal organizations are forming partnerships with overseas crime syndicates to smuggle drugs and launder money, and foreign groups are increasingly operating within Japan.
In recent years a European group has carried out jewelry heists, a mainly Nigerian group fenced electronic goods purchased with fake credit cards, and a multinational ring of criminals from Pakistan, Cameroon and Sri Lanka stole and disassembled cars and machinery to ship outside of Japan.

China sharply expanded investments in Japanese government bonds in the first months of this year, apparently to increase exposure to stable Japanese vehicles against the backdrop of the European debt crisis, data from the Finance Ministry and other sources showed Saturday.
While welcoming the interest from deep-pocketed China, which sits on rapidly growing foreign currency reserves, Japanese officials remain guarded about the country's intentions, fearing that the sharp expansion in investments may turn out to be a temporary shift to "safe" instruments.

TSU, Mie Pref. (Kyodo) Loggerhead turtle eggs have been found at a beach near a major industrial complex in Yokkaichi, Mie Prefecture, for the first time since 2003, according to a local conservation group.
The 100 or so eggs, which are expected to hatch in about two months, were confirmed at Yoshizaki beach on Tuesday by the sea turtle conservation group in Yokkaichi after it received a report from a man who was fishing at night.

Japan's population fell to 127,057,860 in the year to March 31, down for the first time in three years, largely because of an increase in the number of deaths amid the aging of the population, data released by the internal affairs ministry showed Saturday.
The population was down 18,323, with the number of deaths exceeding births, translating into a record net drop, or natural decline, of 73,024, according to the data compiled by the Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry based on basic resident registers nationwide.

OSAKA (Kyodo) A 23-year-old mother who was arrested Friday after the rotting corpses of her two toddlers were found at their apartment in the city of Osaka has told investigators that she wanted time for herself, police sources said Saturday.
"I thought about a week later they might be dead," she was quoted as telling the investigators. "I didn't feel like I should return home to save them," she added.

In a time of major uncertainty for the Japanese book world, the latest winners of two major book awards have been announced. The Akutagawa Prize for promising newcomers went to Ms. Akiko Akazome, and the Naoki Prize for more established writers of popular fiction to Ms. Kyoko Nakajima.
Ms. Akazome told reporters that, after entering graduate school in Hokkaido, she sought to portray in writing the humor and sensibility of her Kyoto background. Her winning work "Otome no mikkoku" (The Maiden Informer) portrays a young woman coming of age in the stifling closed world of female university students studying the diary of Anne Frank in German. The judges felt she skillfully juxtaposed that circle of petty jealousies and betrayals against the closed world of Anne Frank in hiding and the mystery of who betrayed her family to the Germans.

MATSUE, Shimane Pref. (Kyodo) A citizens' group in Matsue, Shimane Prefecture, on Saturday launched a prototype dugout boat into a lake in preparation for re-enacting an ancient sea voyage between Japan and the Korean Peninsula.
The group, which held a launching ceremony at Lake Shinji, plans to carry out the actual sea journey next summer from the South Korean city of Pohang to the Shimane Peninsula.

BEIJING (Kyodo) Japan's new ambassador to China, Uichiro Niwa, arrived in Beijing on Saturday and said he will serve with "patriotism and a pro-China spirit."
Niwa said he wants to develop bilateral relations in a long-term perspective, citing a time frame of "1,000 and 2,000 years," and that he sees little sense the two countries will "confront and compete" in issues of the next 10 to 20 years.

The Tokyo Sky Tree tower, under construction in central Tokyo and already the tallest building in Japan, topped the 400-meter mark Friday, reaching 408 meters in height in the afternoon, its operator said.
The new communications tower in Sumida Ward is scheduled to be 634 meters high, possibly next spring, after extending its antenna. It will be used mainly for terrestrial digital broadcasting.

MORIOKA, Iwate Pref. (Kyodo) A mudslide hit a local train running on the JR Iwaizumi Line in Iwate Prefecture on Saturday morning, causing the one-car train to partly derail and come to an emergency stop, slightly injuring four people on board, police said.
The mudslide occurred between two tunnels in the town of Iwaizumi, Iwate Prefecture, when soil next to the single-track line in a rugged mountainous area slipped around 7:35 a.m. when the train was passing. There were seven passengers and two operators aboard at the time, but all were rescued about three hours later, the police said.

An independent panel whose aim is to introduce reform measures to clean up the scandal-tainted world of sumo proposed a framework Saturday for the Japan Sumo Association to sever ties with the criminal underworld.
In the third meeting of the independent panel, the group suggested that penalties be imposed to prohibit associations with gangsters, so that criminal elements are eliminated from the national sport.

HONG KONG, PACIFIC PERSPECTIVES — For me, there is no question that Hong Kong is one of the world's most wondrously livable cities. After 30 years of having Hong Kong as my home, I would challenge anyone to claim that — on balance — any other city can deliver the same combination of virtues.
So you can imagine the sense of perplexity when three quite separate organizations recently published "livable city" indexes that left Hong Kong bumbling along in the deep penumbra of "also ran" cities.

Candlelit illumination event in city of Nara
The "Nara to-kae" illumination event will take place in Nara from Aug. 5 to 14.

SINGAPORE (Kyodo) Singapore will collaborate with Japan to help war-torn Afghanistan train its civil servants in combating corruption.
The training in anticorruption and public governance will be offered under an existing Japan-Singapore partnership program for joint technical assistance to developing countries, Singapore's Foreign Ministry said earlier in the week.

BRIG, Switzerland (Kyodo) Swiss transport authorities on Friday blamed excessive speed for the July 23 Glacier Express derailment that killed a 64-year-old Japanese woman and injured 42 other passengers.
Authorities cited human error in releasing preliminary results of the investigation in Brig, located some 10 km from the accident site. They said the train was behind schedule at the time of the accident.

PARIS — Just before Kosovo's unilateral declaration of independence from Serbia in 2008, Vuk Jeremic, the Serbian foreign minister, warned that in Africa alone "there are about fifty Kosovos waiting to happen." The 50 African wannabes can take heart, as the International Court of Justice has just ruled that Kosovo's action was not illegal, as international law contains no "prohibition on declarations of independence."
The International Court of Justice is a conservative body whose judges are almost evenly split between those whose home countries have recognized Kosovo's independence and those that have not, but 10 of the 14 judges on the panel voted for the ruling. The ruling does not oblige other countries to recognize Kosovo's independence, but it definitely shifts the balance in favor of secession.

The government plans to compile punitive measures against Iran over its nuclear ambitions in early August, following the adoption of a resolution by the U.N. Security Council in June to impose new sanctions on Tehran, government sources said.
The move is aimed at signaling Tokyo's willingness to work in step with the United States, as Washington has enacted tough sanctions against Tehran over its uranium enrichment program that Western nations view as a cover for the production of nuclear weapons.

The Miyazaki Prefectural Government on July 22 lifted its last ban on the shipment of livestock. This is a sign that the foot-and-mouth disease crisis in the prefecture, which lasted more than three months, is nearing an end. But it must be kept in mind that the eradication of the virus that causes foot-and-mouth disease has not yet been confirmed.
It only is confirmed that there are no more new cases of foot- and-mouth disease. There is the possibility that the virus remains in animal waste on livestock farms and in other substances. To prevent its spread, thorough disinfection must be carried out.

China's economic and military might has grown in recent years along with its overseas trade and investment. China is becoming an oceanic power with growing clout in the Asia-Pacific region.
It demonstrated naval, air and amphibious strength this year by holding exercises in the South and East China seas, where it has unresolved territorial and maritime boundary disputes with several Southeast Asian countries and with Japan.