News On Japan

The government is arranging to appoint Koji Tsuruoka, deputy foreign minister in charge of economic affairs, as Japan's chief negotiator for the Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade talks, government sources said Wednesday. (Kyodo)

Wednesday marked the 18th anniversary of the sarin nerve gas attack on Tokyo's subway system. (NHK)

Japanese researchers have boasted a major breakthrough in regenerative medicine for breast cancer patients. (Japan Times)

A Japanese doctor is working on raising public awareness of the disease called surfer's ear, an ailment that has become more common amid a surfing boom in recent years. (Japan Times)

Swaziland's government has sold maize donated by the Japanese government to feed hungry Swazis for $3m and deposited the money in the Central Bank of Swaziland. (guardian.co.uk)

Seibu Holdings Inc. has indicated it will reject a planned tender offer by U.S. private equity fund Cerberus Capital Management LP. (Yomiuri)

A Guam court set another pretrial hearing Wednesday for a local man charged with slaying three Japanese tourists and wounding 11 other people in a vehicular and knife rampage. (Japan Times)

The unauthorized wanderings of a passenger at Hokkaido's New Chitose Airport on Tuesday forced about 1,250 passengers to undergo a second security inspection, according to airport authorities. (Yomiuri)

A 19-year-old man turned has himself in to police in connection with an incident in which a 39-year-old man was beaten unconscious in Tokyo's Kita Ward on Tuesday night. (Japan Today)

Japan's goods trade deficit stood at 777.5 billion yen in February, marking the eighth straight month of red ink, as the steep depreciation of the yen drove up costs of fossil fuel imports amid tepid exports, the government said Thursday. (Kyodo)

Japan's Nikkei average climbed to a fresh 4-1/2 year high on Thursday as financials and exporters gained on the news of the U.S. Federal Reserve's pledge to maintain stimulus and hopes of more monetary easing by the Bank of Japan's new leadership. (Business Standard)

The Sea Shepherd anti-whaling fleet docked in Australia on Wednesday claiming victory over Japan, as the activist group urged Canberra to grant fugitive founder Paul Watson free passage into the country. (france24.com)

New Bank of Japan Governor Haruhiko Kuroda pledged on Thursday to launch full-scale efforts to end deflation in the country, one day after he took the reins of the central bank. (Jiji Press)

The operator of the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant said Wednesday it suspects a rat-like animal of causing a short circuit in a switchboard that may have led to the power outage at the plant, disabling cooling systems for spent fuel pools earlier this week. (Kyodo)

New Bank of Japan Gov. Haruhiko Kuroda started work Thursday with a daunting mission: pumping trillions of yen into the world's third-largest economy to encourage businesses and individuals to spend. Yet the country's small businesses are divided over whether this new era of easy money will bring them prosperity, or just more hard times. (Wall Street Journal)

A group of Japan's major utilities has given up on devising by the end of March a plan on how to use about 0.6 tons of fissile plutonium to be extracted by reprocessing spent nuclear fuel in the fiscal year starting from April, sources close to the matter said Thursday. (Kyodo)

French nuclear energy firm Areva says it is preparing to ship recycled plutonium fuel to Japan. The firm made the announcement on Wednesday. (NHK)

An increasing number of stranded young sea turtles have been found along the Sea of Japan coast in recent months, with 119 confirmed since November, according to the Sea Turtle Association of Japan. (Yomiuri)

Japan finally has a central bank governor determined to chart a much more aggressive monetary policy in the battle to reverse 15 years of deflation - something many economists, particularly overseas, have been urging for years. (Wall Street Journal)

Japan and the United States have started mapping out joint operation plans to prepare for any contingency arising from conflicting claims between Tokyo and Beijing over the Senkaku Islands, sources close to Japan-U.S. ties said Thursday. (Kyodo)

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