The suspect, a 25-year-old truck driver named Daichi Miyazaki from Fukuyama, Hiroshima Prefecture, attacked the victim near her house at around 12:10 AM on Friday, May 17. Earlier in the month, the victim had already reported the stalker to the Okayama Prefectural police, and they had instructed her on keeping safe and making sure she was secure. This was on May 6 and 9.

On the night of May 16, at around 10 PM, the victim had called the police while on her way home, saying that the vehicle owned by the man – who was apparently a suitor whom the woman had already rejected – was spotted near her home. After her call, several police officers had made patrols around the area of her house, but failed to spot the stalker. After two hours, the police – whom had lingered in the area – heard the woman scream and saw Miyazaki run away from the scene. The police spotted Miyazaki near a convenience store, about 400 meters away from the woman’s home, and arrested him on the spot. The suspect eventually confessed to attacking the woman and stabbing her in the chest, but refused to add any further comments.

Okayama Prefectural Police’s chief detective Koji Nakao said that he regrets that police couldn’t protect the victim, though they’d taken every possible measure. That, to us, is a paradox of sorts – since the police were definitely in the area of the attack and failed to prevent it. It means that, no, they did not take “every possible measure”, as apparently, the stalker saw a hiding place that the police failed to spot. We’d hate to put it down to incompetence, but the police should be thankful that the victim escaped with her life, and that her injuries are nowhere near life-threatening, else it would have been a major boo-boo for law enforcement.

Investigators said that the bodies of 39 year old Shino Nonaka, and her two children, 12 year old daughter Ayane and 10 year old son Junpei, were all found lying on their beds. It appears the three were mostly likely killed by strangulation, as they each had severe bruising around their necks. The husband, 43 year old Kenji, was also found strangled, although hanging from a rope in a hallway that was tied to a doorknob.

While no suicide note was found in the home, police say the door was locked from the inside, and there were no signs of a break-in or robbery. They believe Kenji killed his family before committing suicide, and that several days had passed before the bodies were found. Nothing has been said about what would motivate him to make such tragic choices.

Cesium-137 – normally called just “cesium” – is usually a byproduct of radioactive and nuclear processes, and is one of those isotopes that are easily spread in nature. The ingestion of high levels of cesium in the body would cause many negative effects to the health of humans. This is why the Japanese central government sets the safe limit in animals and the environment at 100 becquerels per kilogram.

The phenomenon at hand was officially noted starting with a 47-year-old self-employed woman who caught an eel from the Edogawa River in Tokyo’s Katsushika Ward n March 9. There have been reports of high cesium levels in fish from the river, so the woman sent the eel to Hideo Yamazaki, a professor of environmental analysis at Kinki University in Osaka Prefecture. Yamazaki then found that the eel had 147.5 becquerels of radioactive cesium per kilogram, higher than the central government standard of 100 becquerels. Professor Yamazaki passed on his findings to the Fisheries Agency in late March because he felt there was a need for an official investigation to back up his findings, and maybe look into other species as well. But the local governments of Tokyo and Chiba Prefecture refused to sanction official studies.

An official with the Tokyo’s fisheries division said, “Basically, only fish that enter the distribution network is subject to studies. The eel fishing season also does not start until summer.” The Chiba prefectural government was more downright blunt, saying, “No one in the prefecture catches eels for a living.” But eventually, the Japanese central government compelled both local units to sanction studies because eels were being consumed as food, which is a logical connection to make – not that it was logical enough for the two local government units.

Yamazaki conducted more studies on other eels caught by the same woman in April and May in the Edogawa river. The eels had cesium levels between 97.4 becquerels and 129.6 becquerels per kilogram, with three of the samples having cesium levels exceeding the government standard. Yukio Koibuchi, an associate professor of coastal environmental studies who has looked into the effects of cesium on marine life near the mouth of the Edogawa River, said the findings by Yamazaki may have been caused by various factors. He explained that other fish living in the river ingested cesium maybe at smaller amounts, and eels, being omnivorous, eat them in turn. “We have looked into other fish and shellfish from near the river mouth, but have yet to detect cesium,” Koibuchi said. “But, there is a need for further careful research.”

The official said that most local and multinational companies have resumed hiring new employees, after almost five years of offering very few employment opportunities. The efforts of colleges and Hello Work job-placement offices to place graduating students in good jobs has also yielded positive results. The numbers do not include those graduates that are pursuing further studies in graduate school or those who stayed for another year in college because they still could not find a job. If you include those factors, the rate comes closer to 66% for overall graduates. Female graduates had a better rate of 94.7%, up 2.1 points than the male graduates who were at 93.2%, down 1.3 points.

The survey also showed that 93.4% of graduates of humanities courses and 96.2% of science courses found jobs within the same period. 94.7% of two-year junior college graduates were able to find employment, up 5.2 points and its highest since the survey began in 1997. High school graduates meanwhile also didn’t have such a hard time finding work for the third straight year: 95.8% of them have found gainful employment.

However, the numbers are still 3 points below than the 2008 statistics when it reached its peak.
24,000 graduates still remain jobless and so the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry and the Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Ministry are coming up with plans and programs to help in the job hunting process for new graduates, for a three-month period through June.

The trilateral group – made up of Mitsui, Japan’s second-biggest trading company, and a joint venture formed by Mitsubishi and Nippon Yusen, the country’s largest trader and shipping line respectively – will each hold a 16.6 percent stake in the planned Cameron LNG terminal to be built in Hackberry, Louisiana, as revealed by the companies in separate announcements, also revealing a 20-year deal to buy fuel from the said facility. According to the revealed details of the deal, San Diego’s Sempra Energy will retain a majority stake in the project at 50.2 percent, while France’s GDF Suez SA will take the remainder. Construction of the new Louisiana LNG facility is scheduled to begin next year, and set to start operations by the second half of 2017.

The agreement is another sign of Japan’s major efforts to seek out cheap fossil fuel supplies for thermal power generation; this after the 2011 earthquake and tsunami caused a major panic in Japan regarding nuclear power plants and their safety. This resulted in the mothballing of all but two of the nation’s atomic reactors. “Global demand for natural gas and LNG is expected to grow,” Tokyo-based Mitsui said today in a statement. “Mitsui will contribute to stable LNG production as well as stable energy supply to the global market, including Japan.” Analysts have warned that the Japanese economy, experiencing a bit of improvement in recent weeks, should find a cheaper alternative to imported fossil fuels if the country wants to see sustainable economic growth. Japan is battling with rising fossil fuel costs as it seeks to secure alternative fuels.

Hashimoto had earlier insinuated that Japan’s “comfort women” system – when up to 200,000 women from Korea, China, and the Philippines among others were forced to serve in military brothels catering to the Japanese soldiers – was a military necessity, saying that this was the only way Japanese soldiers could “let off steam”. Washington denounced these comments as “outrageous”. The U.S. State Department’s spokesperson Jen Psaki said that “Mayor Hashimoto’s comments were outrageous and offensive.” The U.S. also urged the Japanese government to work with its Asian neighbors to address the past issue.

But Hashimoto, whose outspoken approach has seen him step on a number of political toes even as he has become popular, slammed the U.S. using his social media account on Twitter. “Let me go straight to the point. When America occupied Japan, didn’t they make use of Japanese women?” Hashimoto tweeted to over a million Twitter users that follow his account. “I can’t help but point out that it is unfair for America to criticize only Japan by putting aside acts by its own country,” said Hashimoto. “(The United States) should face what the US military did against local women, in particular Okinawan women when they occupied Japan,” he added. The Allied powers had been in control of Japan until 1952 after WWII.

He also proceeded to seemingly defend his earlier comments as he claimed that France and Germany were countries that introduced similar wartime “comfort stations”. “It is a historical fact that the comfort station system was used during the Korean War and the Vietnam War,” he tweeted. Hashimoto did not give any explanation to substantiate these claims. There is also no known historical evidence that modern militaries, other than Japan’s, have employed a sex slavery system as widespread as Japan did in WWII.

The Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is a treaty that obliges industrialised nations to reduce their emission of greenhouse gases. The pledge of the 2009 government, headed by then-Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, was to reduce these emissions by 25% by the year 2020. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is seeking to revise that pledge as he feels that the country will not be able to achieve it within that time frame. While the government still cannot commit to a specific numerical goal regarding greenhouse emissions, Abe has committed an “aggressive diplomacy policy” by November. This means that instead of just focusing on cutting emissions domestically, Japan will assist through technology those developing nations who want to cut their greenhouse emissions.

But officials at the Environment Ministry believe that the country needs to come out with a specific strategy soon because 90 countries have already specified their goals to the United Nations. “It has been two years since the Great East Japan Earthquake,” one ministry official said last month. “We cannot keep saying forever that we are still in the middle of the reviewing process.” Since then, the government has strongly encouraged the public and the industrial world to enhance their emission-reducing efforts until the new plan has been finalized and set into motion, hopefully before the United Nations Climate Change Conference in November.

Taro Aso, who also previously served as prime minister of the country, revealed to members of the local media that official data showed core machinery orders surged by 14.2 percent in March. The increase is the highest recorded since April 2005, when data started to be collected. “Capital spending will increase from now on,” Aso confidently stated. Core machinery orders have long been regarded as one of the leading indicators of corporate capital spending, with industry experts saying that the figures here may reflect the general outlook for the country’s economy. The information is another feather on the hat for Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s administration, whose aggressive monetary policies have helped turn around an economy that has been drowning in deflation for years. Just a day before this announcement, the Cabinet Office also made a statement revealing figure that show the Japanese economy expanded by 0.9 percent on quarter from January to March, giving a very encouraging projected annual growth rate of 3.5 percent. The government said in this Friday’s announcement that machinery orders were showing “moves of a gradual recovery”, even as it expects core orders to fall 1.5 percent in the April-June period.

Over the past few weeks, corporate quarterly profit reports have been almost unanimous in saying that “Abenomics” – the nickname for Prime Minister Abe’s current fiscal policy that has gained so much attention these days – have given industries and bulk exporters a positive bump with the weakening of the yen. The stock market is up around 70 percent since late last year, while the yen has lost around a quarter of its value over the same period, the cheaper currency a boon for exporters, who have seen their products become more competitive overseas. The mood in corporate Japan is generally a positive one, and consumers are following the wave, upping the average household spending to new records in the quarter of January to March. Analysts are still very cautious about heralding Abenomics as a veritable success, saying it is too early in the game to tell if Abenomics will have a longer lasting effect. “A real recovery in domestic demand will not come until Japan achieves 2-3 percent economic growth for several years and overcomes deflation. It is too early to expect a revival of domestic demand now,” said Takeshi Minami, economist at Norinchukin Research Institute.

Diesel added that part of the movie will take place in the U.S., as it picks up from Fast & Furious 6, which was just released this year. Number six was set in London, and the fifth installment, Fast Five (see how clever they are with the titles?), took place in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. “We will have a stint in Tokyo and there is the Middle East next, that could be very interesting,” Diesel commented. This won’t be the first time the series visits Japan, as the third movie, released in 2006, was also set in Tokyo.

The 2014 version will also feature co-star Paul Walker, as well as Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson and Jason Statham. The will be a new director taking over, as Justin Lin, who has helmed the last four movies, is stepping down. The new director will be James Wan, famous for the horror movie series Saw. Walker said that he feels Wan will be a “good leader,” and sees him taking the next installment in a new direction with a different look and feel. But not so much as to upset the Fast & Furious fan base, of course.

The test flight, which had two crew members onboard, flew from Haneda airport to New Chitose Airport in Hokkaido. Upon their arrival, the inspection of the plane showed that the switchboard in the rear had been damaged by the heat. Two days before, a Boeing mechanic inspected that keyboard before installing the modified battery. It is believed that a loose nut increased the electrical resistance, resulting in a discoloured electrical panel. The switchboard has since then been replaced upon its return to Haneda airport, but ANA is asking for reassurance from Boeing that this will not happen again.

ANA chalked up the incident as “minor” as it is the first to be reported since the Dreamliner got the greenlight to fly, after being grounded worldwide for four months due to its battery problems. ANA and JAL are planning to resume commercial flights by June 1, barring any more problems like this. ANA currently has 18 Dreamliners with an additional order of 48, while JAL has seven and has ordered 38 more from Boeing. The two airlines are eager to resume the flights as the crisis has forced them to cancel 4,300 flights affecting at least 135,000 passengers in the last four months.