Japan issued an order on Tuesday to deport former world chess champion Bobby Fischer, announced the Justice Ministry. Japanan’s Minister of Justice Daizo Nozawa turned down an appeal against a deportation order and claim for political refugee status and told Fischer and his lawyers that he will be deported on Tuesday.
They trigger fires, prey on the elderly and thrive in the cement jungles of Japanese cities. But they’re not delinquents or gang members. Japan’s latest urban scourge comes not on two legs, but on four: big city rats. Complaints about the rodents have soared over the past decade.
The death toll in Japan from heavy rain and flooding caused by Typhoon Megi climbed to six on Wednesday, with another two people missing, disaster officials said. The bodies of an 84-year-old man and a 75-year-old woman who had been swept to sea were found on Wednesday near Kagawa prefecture.
Hot dog buns filled with ice cream instead of sausages are keeping youth cool this summer in Japan’s western Osaka city, local media reported on Monday. ”Ice dogs” have been made popular by an Rokko Ranch Arai ice-cream shop in downtown Osaka’s America Village.
Former world chess champion Bobby Fischer, who has been fighting a deportation order to the United States since Japan took him into custody two weeks ago, has formally asked Tokyo to let him stay in Japan. The American chess player, wanted by US authorities for playing a 1992 match in the former Yugoslavia in violation of international sanctions, was granted a three-day extension on Friday.
Demand for rare reptiles as pets has made Japan one of the top markets for smuggled exotic animals and conservationists in the country are concerned that law-enforcement authorities lack teeth to deal with the problem. Lax enforcement of laws against smugglers encourages the underground business.
Japan’s oldest man has died in hospital at the age of 109 years. Minsho Ozawa, a former Buddhist priest in the central city of Yamanashi, passed away on Monday after being hospitalised with pneumonia. He leaves behind 47 children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
The text on Sony’s new Librie electronic book reader doesn’t quite equal ink on a page in clarity, but it comes remarkably close. It’s easier on the eyes than any electronic display yet. The Librie is the first major consumer product to feature a long-in-the-works display technology that is designed to replace printed words on paper — so-called electronic ink.
Microsoft and Japan’s top computer maker Fujitsu said on Monday they have agreed to jointly develop next-generation Windows-based servers for release from 2005. Fujitsu and Microsoft said global sales from the new servers, software products and services are expected to reach 800-billion yen (,2-billion) by 2007.
In fading light, the murmur of a cool stream soothes your jangled nerves. Your back is slowly massaged, stretching muscles exhausted from the long commute home. Before you know it, you’re fast asleep. It sounds like treatment you might get at an exotic resort. But a Japanese company has developed a sleep machine system it says will deliver a full eight hours of z’s in your own bedroom.
The Japan offices of Intel, the world’s largest maker of computer chips, were raided by the country’s fair trade watchdog last week over allegations that the company had pressured PC manufacturers not to install chips made by rivals.
Electronics giant Sony have developed a ”paper disc” that can record more than two hours of high-definition images and be destroyed with scissors for foolproof data security, officials said on Monday. The 25-gigabite Blu-ray optical disc is 51% paper and was developed jointly with Toppan Printing of Japan.
Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi denounced terrorists’ threats to burn three hostages alive as ”cowardly” and vowed on Friday that Japanese troops would stay in Iraq despite tearful pleas from the captives’ families and calls by protesters to bow to the gunmen’s demands.
About 600 people staged a demonstration in Tokyo on Friday, calling for the immediate withdrawal of troops as demanded by militants in Iraq, who are holding three Japanese citizens hostage. The rally was held near the cabinet office and the Diet building following reports that the three were taken hostage in Iraq by an armed group which threatened to kill them unless Japanese troops were pulled out within three days.
A Japanese husband and wife apparently hanged themselves on Monday after he was accused of covering up a bird-flu outbreak in his family’s poultry business, police said as experts warned that wild crows may be spreading the disease to new locations.
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/ 4 February 2004
A moderate earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 5,2 jolted northern Japan on Wednesday, but there were no reports of damage or injuries, police said. The offshore earthquake was centered about 70km beneath the seabed just off the coast of Iwate prefecture, the Meteorological Agency said.
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/ 30 December 2003
Japan’s top carmaker, Toyota, will develop a humanoid robot designed to help factory workers and provide assistance in nursing care and rescue operations, a newspaper report said on Tuesday. Toyota will announce details of the project in January and plans to unveil the as-yet-unnamed robot in 2005.
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/ 29 December 2003
A Japanese demolition firm has found a smashing way of making a name for itself — through its company song, with lyrics like ”We will destroy houses! We will destroy bridges! We will destroy buildings!”. It is the first time that a ”shaka”, or corporate anthem, has made the charts.
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/ 24 December 2003
Countries across Asia banned the import of United States beef products on Wednesday after a cow on a Washington state farm tested positive for mad cow disease. Japan, the number-one importer of US beef, imposed an indefinite ban and planned to recall certain meat products already on the market.
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/ 18 December 2003
Sony’s child-shaped walking robot already knows a few hip dance steps and can kick a miniature soccer ball. Now, it can jog — a new trick developers say is ingenious because it requires the machine to jump off the ground, even for a fraction of a second.
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/ 17 December 2003
The Japanese government said on Wednesday it plans to help fund the joint development of next-generation routers, devices that control traffic on the internet, in a programme reportedly involving major chip makers NEC and Hitachi.
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/ 19 November 2003
Japan will send government officials to the Philippines on Thursday to investigate unconfirmed reports that a few Japanese soldiers are still hiding out in the jungle, refusing to surrender after World War II. If the reports prove true, it would be the first confirmation of Japanese holding out since 1974.
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/ 17 November 2003
A Japanese magnetically levitated train broke its own world speed record on Monday when engineers sent it hurtling at 560kph down a test track west of Tokyo. At this speed, the train would travel from Johannesburg to Cape Town in just under three hours, and from Johannesburg to Pretoria in about six minutes.
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/ 30 October 2003
Two Japanese satellites have been in trouble following geomagnetic storms triggered by recent solar flares, one of them the largest in three decades, the Japanese space agency said on Thursday. Adeos-2, one of the world’s biggest earth observation satellites, has lost contact with the Earth.
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/ 22 October 2003
Sony Corporation is studying ways to let consumers use their cellphones to buy groceries at convenience stores, pick up the tab for lunch and pay train fares. The electronics giant already has its own smart card payment service called Edy — an acronym for ”euro, dollar, yen” — which is accepted by about 2 700 stores in Japan.
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/ 15 October 2003
A strong earthquake measuring 5,0 on the Richter scale struck Tokyo and other eastern Japanese areas on Wednesday, leaving at least five people injured. The tremors were powerful enough to make tall buildings in central Tokyo shake noticeably for several seconds.
African leaders on Wednesday voiced regret over the collapse of World Trade Organisation (WTO) talks, saying there should be a fair global trade system to help integrate the continent’s economy into the world market.
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/ 22 September 2003
Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi has named a new Cabinet two days after being re-elected, replacing several key members — including his ailing finance minister — in a bid to consolidate his power and breathe new life into his promises to turn around Japan’s sickly economy.
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/ 16 September 2003
The world’s oldest person has turned 116 in Japan. Kamato Hongo, who was born in 1887, celebrated her birthday quietly ”by doing her usual dance with her arms”, said her 47-year-old grandson.
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/ 16 September 2003
At least three people died and more casualties are feared in an explosion that has wrecked the fourth floor of an office building in central Japan where a man took eight hostages. The blast blew out the windows of the fourth-floor offices of a courier firm and showered glass and documents on to the street.
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/ 11 September 2003
A powerful typhoon — the strongest typhoon to hit the Okinawan islands in southern Japan in more than 30 years — swept across the islands on Thursday, flipping over cars, toppling telephone poles and causing at least one death.
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/ 11 September 2003
Governments across the Asian region urged more cooperation against terrorists while people laid wreaths for their victims on Thursday’s second anniversary of September 11, and Australia’s leader warned the battle against terror would not end any time soon.