News On Japan

Russia criticized Japan on Tuesday for imposing new sanctions against Moscow over the recent shooting down of a Malaysian Airlines passenger jet in eastern Ukraine. (Jiji Press)

A British court has ordered the return of a child to Japan under the Hague convention on child abduction, in the first case applied to a Japanese child since Japan ratified the treaty to help settle international child custody disputes, people involved in the case said Tuesday. (Kyodo)

Restaurants across Japan serving grilled eel were busy on Tuesday with customers seeking to build up stamina to overcome the summer heat. (NHK)

Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata says the pressure he felt while serving as the commander of the International Space Station was like nothing he had experienced before. (NHK)

McDonald's Holdings Co. (Japan) apologized Tuesday for a recent scandal over chicken meat provided by a Chinese producer, promising to do "whatever it takes" to ensure the safety of food on its menu. (Kyodo)

Coverage of Hyogo prefectural assemblyman Ryutaro Nonomura's July 1 televised tantrum is finally winding down in the mainstream media. But on the Internet, where a YouTube video of his press conference registered over 2 million views in just two days, it's still going strong. (Japan Today)

A record high 13.5 percent of existing housing units in Japan were vacant as of last Oct. 1, up 0.4 percentage point from five years earlier when the survey was last conducted, the government said Tuesday. (Kyodo)

It's hard to know what the organizers at Fuji Rock Festival were thinking when they decided to have Jack Johnson headline the main stage on the event's last day. (Japan Times)

The Japanese government moved Tuesday to give the least-paid workers their second-biggest raise in the past 20 years. (Nikkei)

The 16-year-old girl in the city of Sasebo, Nagasaki Prefecture, suspected of killing and dismembering a high school classmate did not hold a grudge against the victim, investigative sources said Tuesday, retracting an earlier view that there may have been personal problems between the two. (Japan Times)

A total of 741 smartphone users under 18 became victims of sex crimes in Japan in 2013 as a result of the use of social networking sites, up 4.6-fold from the previous year, the National Police Agency said Tuesday. (Jiji Press)

Theodore "Dutch" Van Kirk, the last surviving member of the Enola Gay plane that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945, has died at a retirement home in Georgia at age 93. (Asahi)

On July 7, Tokyo Metropolitan Police arrested 30-year-old Ikki Jin for allegedly slipping a sleeping powder into an alcoholic drink consumed by a 23-year-old male and robbing him of a total of 350,000 yen in cash and valuables in February. (Tokyo Reporter)

Tokyo stocks rose slightly on Wednesday as market sentiment was lifted by a weaker yen and strong corporate results. (china.org.cn)

Toyota remained the top-selling automaker for a second year in a row, beating U.S. rival General Motors by some 270,000 vehicles in 2013, and set an ambitious target to sell more than 10 million vehicles this year. (nydailynews.com)

A former nursing home employee has been sentenced to eight years in prison for fatally assaulting a female resident at the facility in Kasukabe, Saitama Prefecture. (Japan Today)

Sony said Wednesday it would de-list its shares from the London Stock Exchange after 44 years because of thin trading volume, following a series of pullouts by other Japanese firms. (Japan Today)

The government plans to start a system this fiscal year under which it will provide living costs of Y6.5 million per year, for up to two years, for people who quit their companies and start a new business. (The Japan News)

Yasuda Kodo auditorium, a symbol of University of Tokyo, is undergoing reconstruction to restore it to its original 1925 exterior. (The Japan News)

A belief widely held in Japan that blood type is linked to personality has no scientific basis, according to a recent statistical analysis conduced by a Kyushu University lecturer. Kengo Nawata, who specializes in social psychology, analyzed survey results encompassing more than 10,000 people from Japan and the United States to draw the conclusion. (The Japan News)

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