Arrested Ex - Softbank Employee Talks About Russian

Arrested ex-SoftBank employee talks about Russian

Japanese investigators say an arrested former employee of Tokyo-based telecommunications giant SoftBank Corporation admitted he received personal benefits from a Russian official.

Forty-eight-year-old Yutaka Araki allegedly accessed the company's confidential information on a corporate server in February last year. He was arrested on Saturday on suspicion of violating a law aimed at preventing unfair competition.

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Utility Looks Into Ikata Plant Power Outage

Utility looks into Ikata plant power outage

The Ikata nuclear power plant in western Japan has had a short electricity outage, causing suspension of maintenance work on one of its reactors. All three reactors at the plant are currently offline.

Officials at Shikoku Electric Power Company and Ehime Prefecture say the plant lost power at around 3:40 p.m. on Saturday.

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Hotels Concerned Over China's Halt Of Group Tours

Hotels concerned over China's halt of group tours

Hotels in Japan are concerned about the possible impact of China's decision to halt overseas group trips beginning Monday in a bid to contain the spread of the new coronavirus.

One hotel in central Tokyo usually has about half of its 90 rooms occupied by guests from China.

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Ex - Softbank Employee Arrested In Hacking Case

Ex-SoftBank employee arrested in hacking case

A former employee of Tokyo-based telecommunications giant SoftBank Corporation has been arrested on suspicion of hacking the company's confidential information.

Forty-eight-year-old Yutaka Araki was arrested by Tokyo police on Saturday. He is suspected of violating a law on preventing unfair competition.

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Videos Show Japanese Customs To Foreign Tourists

Videos show Japanese customs to foreign tourists

The Japan Tourism Agency has made video clips showing manners and customs of the country amid the rise in the number of foreign travelers.

The ten one-minute videos seek to cope with a phenomenon known as "over-tourism," which causes tensions between visitors and residents.

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Memorial For Tetsu Nakamura Killed In Afghanistan

Memorial for Tetsu Nakamura killed in Afghanistan

A Japanese doctor who was killed in Afghanistan has been honored in a memorial held in his hometown in southwestern Japan.

Tetsu Nakamura, who represented the Japanese NGO Peshawar-kai, spent years in the war-ravaged country providing humanitarian support and helping with water projects.

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Japan Confirms 3rd Case Of New Coronavirus

Japan confirms 3rd case of new coronavirus

Health authorities in Japan have confirmed the country's third case of the new coronavirus.

Health ministry officials say a woman in her 30s from the inland Chinese city of Wuhan complained of fever and other symptoms after she arrived in Japan last Saturday as a tourist.

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Kono Inspects Destroyer, The Takanami

Kono inspects destroyer, the Takanami

Japanese Defense Minister Taro Kono has given a talk to the crew of a Maritime Self-Defense Force destroyer that will set out in early February for a mission in the Middle East.

Japan's government issued an order earlier this month to dispatch a destroyer and aircraft to the Middle East for an intelligence-gathering operation designed to safeguard commercial ships with links to Japan.

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New Govt. Bond Issuance Expected To Rise In Fy2021

New govt. bond issuance expected to rise in FY2021

Japan's Finance Ministry has indicated new government bond issues in fiscal 2021 may increase for the first time in 11 years. The announcement comes amid rising social security costs such as medical care and pensions.

The ministry has worked out an estimate which indicates that if the economy continues to grow by 1.5 percent in nominal terms, social security costs in fiscal 2023 will increase to 38.5 trillion yen, or about 352 billion dollars. That is up 2.6 trillion yen, or nearly 24 billion dollars, from the budget plan for fiscal 2020.

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Care Home Killer Rejects Insanity Plea

Care home killer rejects insanity plea

A former care home worker accused of mass killings in Japan has rejected his lawyers' argument that he is mentally unfit to stand trial.

The Yokohama District Court began questioning defendant Satoshi Uematsu on Friday. The 30-year-old is charged with killing 19 people with intellectual disabilities and injuring 26 others at the care home in Sagamihara City in July 2016.

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Tokyo Games Organizers Compiling Contingency Plans

Tokyo Games organizers compiling contingency plans

With just six months to go before the start of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, organizers are busy compiling contingency plans.

The organizing committee for the Games is facing the challenge of preparing against natural disasters and other emergencies, as the country last year suffered huge damage from a series of typhoons.

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Narita Crowded With Lunar New Year Travelers

Narita crowded with Lunar New Year travelers

Narita Airport east of Tokyo is crowded with tourists from China as the Lunar New Year holiday period gets underway.

Direct flights arrived from China one after another on Friday except from Wuhan, where outbound flights were grounded due to the spread of a new coronavirus almost across China.

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Experts Warn Of High Risk Of Nankai Trough Tsunami

Experts warn of high risk of Nankai Trough tsunami

A panel of Japanese experts says that over the next 30 years, many people living along the Nankai Trough face a higher chance of experiencing a deadly tsunami than being injured in a traffic accident.

The government's Earthquake Research Committee gave the assessment in a report on Friday.

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Japan To Advise Citizens Not To Travel To Hubei

Japan to advise citizens not to travel to Hubei

Japanese Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi says the ministry will swiftly raise the infectious disease warning for China's Hubei Province to the second-highest level of three. Hubei is home to the city of Wuhan, where infections of the new strain of coronavirus are centered.

Motegi told reporters on Friday that the ministry will urge Japanese citizens to refrain from traveling to Hubei Province.

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