| Sep 02 | No. of Internet crime cases hits record high in 1st half (AP) |
| Police responded to a record 2,444 Internet crime cases nationwide in the first half of this year, a National Police Agency survey showed Thursday. The number, up 586 or 31.5 percent from a year earlier, represented a new high since the NPA started gathering statistics for Internet crimes, defined as crimes which use a computer network, on a half-year basis in 2004. Of the total, the number of fraud cases, such as swindling money from a successful bidder by posting false information in an online auction, climbed 22.8 percent to 867 cases. |
| Sep 02 | Mo better boobs: Japanese gals acquire taste for men's mammaries (Tokyo Reporter) |
| It's kind of hard to ignore a 36-point headline emblazoned with the words "Men's Nipples." Why has Sunday Mainichi (Sept. 12) chosen to raise this heretofore largely ignored topic? "Many women," it writes, "take an interest in men's nipples that protrude through their linen shirts or polo shirts. Rather than men's backs, we're in an era when men's nipples are discussed." "I was in a beer garden the other day. The nipples of the man at my table were poking through his polo shirt, and I couldn't get my mind off them!" pants Mika Naito, a 39-year-old author of erotic fiction. Naito says she is particularly turned on by the "fresh" nipples of young acting hunk Haruma Miura, age 20. |
| Sep 02 | Naked romp lands man, woman before prosecutors (Japan Times) |
| Police turned over to prosecutors Wednesday their case against a 21-year-old man who walked naked on a street in Yokohama last month and a 22-year-old woman who ordered him to do so, alleging they committed acts of public indecency. The woman and the man had been living together since January. She was angry with him for not paying rent and was quoted as telling him to, "Take off your clothes" and "follow my bicycle." |
| Sep 02 | O'Barry takes peaceful tack; Taiji on hunt (Japan Times) |
 Animal rights activist Ric O'Barry, who starred in the Oscar-winning documentary "The Cove," stressed Wednesday in Tokyo he will use peaceful methods to press Taiji, Wakayama Prefecture, to stop its annual dolphin slaughter. The port's annual hunt started the same day.
In an event organized by Earth Island Institute, a nonprofit organization, O'Barry said he has heard of calls for a boycott, but he wants to "antiboycott Japan."
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| Sep 01 | Japanese-Argentine couple win world tango championships (AP) |
 A Japanese-Argentine couple won the stage dancing division of the Eighth World Tango Championships held Tuesday in Buenos Aires, reports from Argentina said.
The achievement by Japanese dancer Chizuko Kuwamoto and Diego Ortega from Argentina follows the victory in last year's contest by Japanese married couple Hiroshi and Kyoko Yamao in the salon dancing category.
In this year's competition, in which 405 pairs from 18 countries took part, another Japanese dancer, Naoko Tsutsumizaki, and her Argentine partner, Cristian Lopez, came in third in both stage and salon dancing.
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| Sep 01 | Woman suspected of keeping father's body in closet for 5 yrs (AP) |
| A 58-year-old woman is suspected of keeping her father's body inside a closet in their house in Izumi, Osaka Prefecture, after he died there five years ago, police said Wednesday. After the body of a man believed to be Asakichi Miyata -- who would be 91 years old if alive -- was found in the house, the woman told the police that her father was dead when she came home one day five years ago and that she put his body inside the closet shortly afterward, they said. Miyata, a former banker, is believed to have been receiving a pension, and the daughter may have been living off it, according to city and police officials. |
| Sep 01 | Can pop culture help relations with Russia? (Yomiuri) |
| Put aside serious political issues like the disputed northern territories off Hokkaido for now. The Japanese Embassy in Russia has published the first issue of a Russian-language magazine featuring Japanese pop culture, hoping to broaden pro-Japanese sentiment in the country. The quarterly magazine, mainly targeting young Russians, is far from a serious ordinary "government publication," but rather pop and cool. The opening page of the first issue of Yaponiya (meaning Japan in Russian) includes an interview with Hayao Miyazaki, in which the movie director said he decided to become an anime creator after being moved by the expressiveness of the Soviet-era animated feature film, "The Snow Queen" (1957). |
| Sep 01 | Burglary suspect a bass fiddler (Japan Times) |
 A man under arrest on suspicion of trespassing in a Tokyo musical instrument shop in August was served another warrant Tuesday for allegedly burglarizing a musician's home in May to the tune of five double basses and other items worth ¥53 million, police said.
Yuya Fujita, 26, from Atsugi, Kanagawa Prefecture, who says he plays the double bass as a hobby, is now suspected of stealing 26 items from the musician's home in Mitaka, western Tokyo.
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| Sep 01 | Typhoon hits Okinawa, over 190 flights canceled (AP) |
| A typhoon hit the northern part of the Okinawa Prefecture's main island around 5 p.m. on Tuesday and is moving northwest in the East China Sea, the Japan Meteorological Agency said. Typhoon Kompasu brought strong winds of up to 203 kilometers per hour in Izena village in the prefecture and has caused the cancellation of more than 190 flights to and from Okinawa and its vicinity, affecting about 25,000 people. The typhoon left four people injured in Okinawa and power blackouts have occurred at around 32,000 households in 15 municipalities in the northern part of the island. |
| Sep 01 | 11-year-old boy strangled to death by mom (Mainichi) |
| A mother has reportedly admitted to police she killed her 11-year-old son after the boy was found dead in her apartment in Kasukabe, Saitama Prefecture, on Sept. 1. A male acquaintance of the mother found the boy, Riku Yamamoto, a 5th-grade student at Hoshubana Elementary School, lying dead on the floor and called police. Based on evidence indicating the boy was strangled, police questioned the 29-year-old mother. Police say that when they arrived at the residence, they found the boy lying face up on a mattress in the living room, completely covered with a blanket. |
| Sep 01 | Fuji climbers may have to pay to reach peak (Yomiuri) |
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| Aug 31 | 61-year-old woman missing for over two weeks in mountains rescued (Mainichi) |
| A 61-year-old woman who had been missing for over two weeks in the Kita Alps mountain range is recovering after being discovered by another climber and flown to hospital. At around 9:30 a.m. on Aug. 30, another climber discovered the missing woman sitting next to a stream on the eastern side of 2,841-meter-tall Mt. Mitsumatarengedake. The woman asked for help, so the man called police from a mountain cabin and a police helicopter took the woman to a hospital in Matsumoto, Nagano Prefecture. |
| Aug 31 | Tour through Tokyo's Asakusa (Tokyo Reporter) |
 Tokyo can be crudely described as a metropolis of soaring and undulating concrete collectively illuminated by a glow of garish neon. Yet bordering the Sumida River in the east is the Asakusa district, which adheres to many of those characteristics but also retains certain cultural elements of life back in the Edo Period (1615 - 1868). Tourists and locals will often flock to the area's temples and shrines, which create a lively atmosphere around the New Year's holidays, a prelude to the various festivals and carnivals held throughout the year. It was once Japan's version of Vaudeville, with one district having offered many performance theaters, a legacy that still lingers today.
Ladies in kimono shuffling through Asakusa's narrow alleys is not an unusual site as it is one of Tokyo's six remaining hanamachi, literally "flower town," a reference to the locales in which customers can be entertained by a geisha.
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| Aug 31 | Yokohama police conduct raids over illegal sub-letting of former brothel rooms (Mainichi) |
 Police conducted raids here on Aug. 30 over the illegal sub-letting of rooms in former brothels.
A 47-year-old man, believed to have leased several former restaurants attached to brothels in the Koganecho district in Yokohama's Naka Ward without a real-estate license, is under suspicion of violating the Building Lots and Buildings Transaction Business Act.
After a police crackdown in 2005, brothels attached to restaurants in the district, disappeared, but there are still approximately 140 vacant "restaurants," with many of them now used as "rental rooms."
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| Aug 31 | Life expectancy statistics debated (Yomiuri) |
| After the recent revelation that the whereabouts of numerous citizens aged 100 or over are unknown, should statistics on the average life expectancy for Japanese be reassessed? The media abroad has reported on the missing centenarians with much interest, and some reports have cast doubt on the validity of statistics that famously show Japan's average life expectancy to be among the longest in the world. On July 26, the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry announced that the average life expectancy for Japanese males born in 2009 was 79.59 years. For females born that year, it was 86.44 years. The figures set record highs for both genders for the fourth year in a row. |
| Aug 31 | Over 250,000 climbers scale Mt. Fuji this year (Yomiuri) |
 More than 250,000 people--a record high--have climbed Mt. Fuji by the trail on the mountain's Yamanashi Prefecture side this season, according to the Mt. Fuji safety guidance center.
Last year, 247,066 people--the previous record--climbed the nation's highest mountain from the Yamanashi Prefecture side. The figure is likely to reach 260,000 by Tuesday, the last day of the climbing season, which started July 1.
According to the center at the 6th stage of Mt. Fuji, the season's 250,000th climber set out on the Yoshidaguchi trail at about 11:30 p.m. Saturday.
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| Aug 31 | Fingerprint all Japanese, for safety's sake (Japan Times) |
 If you're a noncitizen and have entered or re-entered Japan in the last couple of years, you've undoubtedly been invited to participate in the wonderful, fun-filled world of biometrics. It's safe to say that many of you felt as though you were being treated like criminals - not to mention the humiliation of being discriminated against, knowing that your Japanese companions could quickly walk through immigration without having to endure the same indignities. Worse still is the fact that the foreign community of Japan worked so long and hard to finally get fingerprinting abolished - only to see it reinstated just a few years later due to pressure from the U.S. government.
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| Aug 31 | Toyota worker held in theft of chewing gum (Japan Times) |
| A Toyota Motor Corp. employee was arrested on suspicion of shoplifting two packs of chewing gum at a supermarket and injuring a security guard in Okazaki, Aichi Prefecture, police said. The police quoted Shigeru Saito, 57, an engineer, as saying, "I didn't do it." Saito is suspected of stealing two packs of chewing gum, worth about ¥600, from the supermarket Sunday and pushing down a 33-year-old female security guard. |
| Aug 30 | Japan resort a hot spot for men with virtual girlfriends (inquirer.net) |
 Long a favorite of lovers and honeymooners, a Japanese beach town with fading sparkle has found a new tourism niche in the wired age by drawing young men and their virtual girlfriends.
One recent sweltering summer's day, a tour bus from Tokyo pulled up at a sun-kissed beach at Atami, a Pacific coast resort southwest of the metropolis, and disgorged more than a dozen excited, iPhone-clutching young men.
The determined youngsters, paying scant attention to the bikini-clad girls frolicking on the sand, instead headed straight for a bronze statue that depicts Kanichi and Omiya, a couple from an old love story set in Atami.
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| Aug 30 | Daughter of '102-year-old woman' arrested over fraud (AP) |
| Police said Sunday they had arrested the 70-year-old daughter of a woman registered as 102 years old but most likely dead, for allegedly defrauding the city of Iwaki, Fukushima Prefecture of 300,000 yen in special benefits payable to her mother if she were alive. Aiko Watanabe, the fifth daughter of Michi Watanabe, turned herself in and was arrested Saturday after skeletal remains were found at their home. She told investigators that her mother died in about 1996 but she received the money and used it for her living expenses, they said. |
| Aug 30 | Japan beyond the Ginza (Toronto Sun) |
 Nintendo, Sony, Sega, Canon, Nikon, Toshiba, Toyota, Honda, Mazda, Mitsubishi, Nissan -- these are just some of the brands that helped build Japan's reputation as a leader in cutting-edge technology. But this ancient country is also home to centuries-old traditions, which endure despite the hi-tech revolution that has taken place around them. The contrast between old and new is what makes Japan a truly fascinating country to visit.
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| Aug 30 | Japan pop artist's Versailles show sparks protests (AFP) |
 A show of outlandish sculptures by a cult Japanese artist in the historic Chateau of Versailles near Paris has enraged traditionalists who say it dishonours France's past.
From September 14 to December 12, visitors to Versailles will see eye-grabbing multicoloured statues in silver, fibreglass and metal by Takashi Murakami alongside the chateau's ornate murals and chandeliers. Versailles enthusiasts however branded it an outrage to their beloved museum in the posh Paris suburb.
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| Aug 29 | Shanghai surprise: Japanese Expo gals banned from evening escapades (Tokyo Reporter) |
| The Japan pavilion has been a popular attraction at the Shanghai World Expo 2010, now at its midway point, but frustrations are mounting among female staffers who have been banned from mingling with men from other countries, reports Shukan Post (Aug. 20-27). Officially known as "attendants," these companion ladies have been told by their superiors that partaking in group gatherings, termed gokon, with males from other Expo nations is out of the question. "A male director who supervises us said during our morning briefing that international meetings in the evening, such as wining, dining and partying with VIPs and staff members of other pavilions, are prohibited," one Japan pavilion gal tells the tabloid. "One girl argued the point, asking for an explanation, but it was simply explained that working with professionalism at all times is the priority." |
| Aug 29 | New dissent in Japan is loudly anti-foreign (New York Times) |
 The demonstrators appeared one day in December, just as children at an elementary school for ethnic Koreans were cleaning up for lunch. The group of about a dozen Japanese men gathered in front of the school gate, using bullhorns to call the students cockroaches and Korean spies. Inside, the panicked students and teachers huddled in their classrooms, singing loudly to drown out the insults, as parents and eventually police officers blocked the protesters' entry.
The December episode was the first in a series of demonstrations at the Kyoto No. 1 Korean Elementary School that shocked conflict-averse Japan, where even political protesters on the radical fringes are expected to avoid embroiling regular citizens, much less children.
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| Aug 29 | Mentally handicapped boy arrested on suspicion of killing brother (AP) |
 A 17-year-old mentally handicapped boy was arrested Saturday on suspicion of stabbing to death his 11-year-old brother with scissors and a knife at their home in Iwakura, Aichi Prefecture, local police said.
The suspect initially admitted to the allegation to the police, saying he stabbed his younger brother after having a fight, but later said he does not remember, the police said. Their grandfather found the younger brother collapsed in a pool of blood in the living room of the house at around 9:30 a.m., with the 17-year-old boy sitting nearby wearing blood-stained clothes.
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| Aug 29 | Credit card scam targeting foreigners on rise in Roppongi (Japan Times) |
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| Aug 28 | Man survives 12 days on mountainside on candies and water (Mainichi) |
| A Tokyo man reported missing on Aug. 15 has been rescued from a mountain in northwestern Saitama Prefecture after surviving for nearly two weeks on just candies and water. Thirty-year-old Junichi Tada had last contacted his family on the morning of Aug. 14 to tell them he was going hiking. According to the rescue team, though he was weak, had a broken left leg and had been living on nothing but stream water and seven small candies, his condition was not life-threatening. |
| Aug 28 | Family register in Yamaguchi lists 186-year-old man as living (Mainichi) |
| A 186-year-old man is still listed as living on the family register of the prefectural city of Hofu, the municipal government revealed on Aug. 26. Records showing people of extremely advanced age as alive continue to be discovered across the country. The 186-year-old man in Hofu was born in 1824, which would make him the same age as Iesada Tokugawa, the 13th shogun of the Tokugawa era and husband of Princess Atsu. |
| Aug 28 | Man arrested for starting blaze that killed young daughter (Mainichi) |
 Police have arrested a man who set his home on fire, resulting in the death of his 11-year-old daughter who went into the burning structure to rescue her cat.
Shigeru Ishihara, 48, was arrested on suspicion of murder and arson of an inhabited structure following the blaze in the predawn hours of Aug. 26. When questioned by police, he reportedly admitted having started the fire, but made vague statements when asked if he acted with murderous intent.
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| Aug 28 | Convenience store manager stabbed to death in Fukui (Mainichi) |
 The manager of a Circle K convenience store in Ono, Fukui Prefecture has died of stab wounds suffered during an apparent armed robbery on Aug. 27.
A delivery worker called police after finding the manager, Yoshihiro Yamamoto, 46, lying in front of the counter covered with blood at around 3:15 a.m. Yamamoto was taken to hospital but pronounced dead shortly thereafter.
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| Aug 28 | An insane asylum for tourists (Japan Times) |
| As the world spins faster and faster on its axis, threatening to cut off our supply of gravity and fling us into outer space, Japan is left wondering what to do next. At this very moment company presidents around the country are scratching their bar code heads thinking, "What can we do to keep our place in the global economy? How do we maintain our gravitational pull in the world?" And though the answers are there, staring them in the face, the answers are hard for them to see. Take our small island of 651 people. Once a popular sea side resort, it has been abandoned by the Japanese who nowadays prefer air conditioned shopping malls and movie theaters. |
| Aug 27 | Execution chamber at Tokyo Detention House opened to media (AP) |
 The Justice Ministry opened the execution chamber at the Tokyo Detention House to the media Friday, allowing reporters to take still and moving images for the first time, under the instruction of Justice Minister Keiko Chiba.
During the 30-minute visit, reporters stepped into the five rooms of the chamber, such as the execution room equipped with a trap footplate and a pulley to hang death row inmates and the so-called "button room" equipped with three buttons to operate the trap footplate.
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| Aug 27 | Wild monkeys go on rampage in Shizuoka Prefecture leaving 43 injured (Mainichi) |
 Wild monkeys inflicted biting and scratching injuries on 43 people from Aug. 22 to Aug. 25 in the neighboring Shizuoka Prefecture cities of Mishima and Susono, it has been learned.
Reports of monkey sightings in areas of Mishima including residential communities in the hills near the Hakone mountain range began coming to authorities in June. From Aug. 22 to Aug. 24, 26 people were reported to have sustained injuries from monkey attacks. On Aug. 24, the city set up a task force and began trying to capture the monkeys.
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| Aug 27 | Summer samba carnival brings the heat to Asakusa's streets (Japan Times) |
 Powerful drum beats, cheerful songs and passionate dancing from Brazil will fill Tokyo's Asakusa district, the capital's traditional downtown, during the 30th Asakusa Samba Carnival.
The annual event was launched in 1981 by an association of local stores in an effort to revitalize the area. The group modeled the event after Rio de Janeiro's famed Carnival. The festival attracted some 500,000 audiences last year, according to the organizers.
The event, which runs from 1:30 p.m. to 6 p.m. on Aug. 28, will take the form of a contest.
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| Aug 27 | Bali killer sentenced to 20 years (Japan Times) |
| A 31-year-old construction worker was found guilty Wednesday of killing and raping a 41-year-old Japanese woman on the Indonesian resort island of Bali late last year and sentenced to 20 years in prison. Presiding Judge I Gusti Bagus Komang Wijaya Adi of a district court in the Bali provincial capital of Denpasar said the defendant, Mawardi, was guilty of killing Hiromi Shimada, stealing her belongings and having sex with her after she was slain. |
| Aug 27 | Touring Tokyo on a tight budget (Fox News) |
One of the most fascinating things about Tokyo is the way it combines both the ancient and the modern. Or rather, the way it doesn't combine them at all, so the new and the old are side by side everywhere you turn.
Take the metro to the Chiyoda Ward in central Tokyo and you'll find yourself surrounded by a tangle of glass and steel skyscrapers - until out of nowhere appears a moat, a pavilion of neatly trimmed grass and the hulking stone walls of the imperial palace. There's hardly a guard in sight and entrance to the surrounding gardens is free and open to the public.
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| Aug 26 | Japanese 'planet' walker rests up in Philly (philly.com) |
 A journey of 3,000 miles begins with a stop in Philly.
Masahito Yoshida, a 29-year-old mechanical engineer from Japan, plans to walk across the continent to Vancouver, British Columbia. The whole way, he'll be lugging a wheeled cart holding his tent, sleeping bag, clothes, and other belongings.
Just as he says he did from Shanghai to Lisbon.
That's right. China to Portugal. About 7,000 miles. The biggest leg of his legging it around the world.
More or less. He did fly from Europe to Philadelphia, and, months from now, he'll fly from Vancouver back to Shanghai, to complete what he says is a more than two-year journey.
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| Aug 26 | Mummified body confirmed as that of '111-year-old man' (AP) |
| Police have determined that the mummified body found last month at a residential house in Tokyo's Adachi Ward is that of Sogen Kato, who lived there and was registered as still being alive at 111 years old, investigative sources said Thursday. They have also decided to build a criminal case against his family members for fraudulently receiving the pension payments he would have been entitled to as a widower, according to the sources. Kato's relatives are suspected of illegally receiving some 9 million yen in pension money payable to his late wife, a former teacher, after her death in September 2004, despite knowing that he was dead, according to the sources. |
| Aug 26 | Lady Gaga poses as male alter ego for Men's Vogue in Japan (Herald Sun) |
 Lady Gaga will appear as her male alter ego who is described as "too cool to care" on the cover of Men's Vogue in Japan, MTV reports.
Dressed as an Italian mechanic named Jo Calderone, the entertainer's hair is dyed black and chopped short. Photos of the Calderone shoot were first leaked in late June and rumours began to swirl that it was Lady Gaga in drag.
Celebrity blogger Perez Hilton tweeted a link to one of the photos with the caption "My hubby!"
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| Aug 26 | Residence registries retained for people over 150 years old (AP) |
| The Osaka municipal government said Wednesday it has found that residence registries have been retained for 5,125 people who would be 120 years or older if they were alive, including a man who was born in 1857. The revelation followed the city government's checks on the registries that went online over the last two years, after the problem of missing centenarians came into light nearly a month ago with sloppy bureaucratic paperwork having been partially blamed. An official in charge of the city's residence registries said it was impossible to delete all the data linked to the problem because the municipal government had to work on registries for about 2.9 million people for its online database system. |
| Aug 26 | Woman ordered to pay damages to neighbor over noise from hitting futons (Mainichi) |
| The Osaka District Court on Aug. 24 ordered a 63-year-old woman to pay 1 million yen in damages to her 72-year-old male next-door neighbor after years of bothering him with noise by hitting futons. The woman exceeded a court-ordered limit that had been agreed to in an earlier settlement, and the neighbor brought the woman to court, seeking 1.86 million yen in damages for infringing on his right to live peacefully. |
| Aug 25 | Japanese pilot forgets to lower landing gear (ABC News) |
| A major Japanese airport has been forced to close for hours after the pilot of a small plane forgot to lower his landing gear while touching down. Pilot Yoshihiko Yamamoto was landing his single-engine Beechcraft aircraft at Kobe airport in western Japan when he realised he had not lowered his landing gear. Luckily for the 57-year old his plane skidded to a stop without bursting into flames. |
| Aug 25 | Teacher busted over panty thefts (Japan Times) |
 A male teacher in Saga Prefecture was arrested Tuesday on suspicion of stealing a woman's underwear from a self-service laundry in Fukuoka last month while dressed as a "hot blonde in a miniskirt," police said. Tsuyoshi Hirano, 43, a teacher at a prefectural public school for the blind, has admitted to the theft charge, according to the police.
He allegedly took two pieces of female underwear from a laundromat in the city of Fukuoka at around 3 a.m. July 18. The underwear belonged to a 22-year-old woman.
The police said video from a security camera in the facility showed a man wearing a blonde wig, a camisole and a miniskirt taking underwear away.
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| Aug 25 | Man torches home over trashed toys (Japan Times) |
| A man charged with torching his home in Kasai, Hyogo Prefecture, admitted Tuesday he did it out of anger because his mother threw away some of his plastic figures from the "Gundam" animation franchise. "Plastic figures of Gundam are like my life partners. I thought I would rather burn to death with them than have them thrown away," said Yoshifumi Takabe, 30, who pleaded guilty as his trial began at the Kobe District Court. Nobody was injured in the blaze. |
| Aug 25 | Man suspected of ramming car into 2 women, attempted rape (Mainichi) |
| A man has been arrested on suspicion of ramming his car into a woman and attempting to rape her, and is also suspected of carrying out the same crimes on another woman. At around 5:10 a.m. on Aug. 23, police received an emergency call that a woman appeared to have been hit by a car in Chuo Ward, Sapporo, and was then carried off by the assailant. About one hour later, a 45-year-old Sapporo woman employed in the adult entertainment industry was discovered about 8 kilometers away in Nishi Ward, lying in a grassy patch on the grounds of a factory. |
| Aug 25 | Georgia man convicted for raping girl in Japan (UPI) |
| A Georgia man convicted of raping a girl over a four-year period in Japan faces a sentence of up to life in federal prison, court records show. Dwain D. Williams, 36, of Pelham was found guilty Thursday by a federal jury in Valdosta of aggravated sexual abuse, abusive sexual contact with a child, engaging in illicit sexual conduct while traveling in a foreign country, and committing a criminal offense while accompanying a member of the armed forces outside of the United States, the Jacksonville, Fla. Times-Union reported. The girl, now 15, said Williams began raping her in July 2004, when she was 9, and continued until she was 13, while she lived in Okinawa. |
| Aug 24 | Americans, Japanese, Irishman among 14 killed in Nepal plane crash (AP) |
| A small passenger plane crashed amid bad weather in a remote area of Nepal on Tuesday morning, killing all 14 people on board, including four American women, a Japanese man and an Irish man, aviation officials said. Kathmandu airport's Rescue Coordination Center confirmed no survivors in the crash of the Agni Air turboprop, which occurred near the village of Shikharpur in Makwanpur district, about 33 kilometers southwest of Kathmandu airport or 100 km away by road. |
| Aug 24 | Man dies after being pushed off from platform and hit by train (AP) |
| A 77-year-old man was killed Monday night after he was inadvertently knocked from a platform at Keio Line's Shinjuku Station by a drunken man and hit by an incoming train, police said Tuesday. The drunken man had stumbled on the platform and bumped into a line of people waiting for a train, creating a domino effect and causing the man at the front of the line to fall on to the track, the police said. The police arrested Yukinori Fujii, a 42-year-old part-time worker from Hino City, who had been allegedly sitting on the platform waiting for a train before standing up and bumping into the commuters. |
| Aug 24 | Japan execution chamber opening could spark debate (Reuters) |
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| Aug 24 | Scolded teenage girl accused of attempted murder after setting home on fire (Mainichi) |
| A teenage girl who set her family home in Tokyo on fire after being told off when she came home early in the morning and didn't have breakfast has been arrested, police said. Police arrested the 16-year-old girl, a first-year high school student whose name has been withheld because she is a minor, on suspicion of attempted murder and arson of an inhabited structure after she admitted having started the fire. |