News On Japan

The nation will try to lure additional highly skilled foreign professionals and exchange students as part of a drive to stimulate the stagnant economy, according to the latest draft of an immigration policy review compiled by the Justice Ministry. (Japan Times)

The Tokyo Disney resort is to get cheaper--but only if it involves an overnight stay. (Asahi)

Sony Corp. in autumn will release the world's first smartphone featuring a 4K-resolution display and a more powerful camera. (Asahi)

Tokyo Electric Power Co. started pumping up groundwater from wells at its disaster-stricken Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant on Thursday in an operation to prevent radiation-tainted water from increasing further. (The Japan News)

Ahead of the October start of the new "My Number" universal numbering system for people and corporations, competition between companies offering system updates and information management services is heating up. (The Japan News)

The town of Taiji in Wakayama Prefecture began its controversial dolphin hunt on Thursday after bad weather delayed the start, according to a local fisheries official, while a separate whaling hunt is due to start at the weekend. (Japan Today)

Indonesia scrapped plans for its first high-speed railway and asked China and Japan, who were battling over the multi-billion dollar contract, to submit new proposals to build a slower train, a senior minister said on Thursday. (Japan Today)

Police investigating the murder of a 25-year-old woman in her apartment in Tokyo's Nakano Ward last week, said pieces of a man's skin were found under her fingernails. However, police said a DNA analysis was unable to match it with any of the victim's male acquaintances, Fuji TV reported Thursday. (Japan Today)

Police charged 689 people in January-June for the possession, smuggling and use of government-designated "dangerous" drugs, or quasi-narcotics, and related crimes and accidents, the National Police Agency said Thursday. (The Japan News)

The North Pacific Fisheries Commission on Thursday agreed to take steps to curb an increase in saury fishing boats to help protect fish stock in northern Pacific waters over the long term. (Jiji Press)

Japan's government and ruling camp are considering unifying liquor tax rates on beer and quasi-beer that now depend on the amount of malt the beverages contain, informed sources said Thursday. (Jiji Press)

The Diet, Japan's parliament, on Thursday enacted revisions to the My Number law to link the new national identification numbers to bank accounts on a voluntary basis from 2018 and to basic pension numbers by May 2017. (Jiji Press)

A 200-year-old castle tower has begun a slow journey of 2 months to a nearby site in the northeastern Japanese city of Hirosaki. (NHK)

The Nikkei index in Tokyo hit a 7-month-low on Friday on concern about economic prospects. The release of US jobs data is to come later in the day. (NHK)

In a bid to deal with rampant cases of people falsely applying for refugee status in order to be able to work in Japan, the Justice Ministry will likely review the refugee recognition system and take strict countermeasures, including urging those judged as illegally residing in the country to leave. (The Japan News)

A huge underground bus terminal with 13 bus stops will be constructed near JR Tokyo Station, part of which will open by the 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympics. (Asahi)

The labor ministry on Friday made public the name of a dermatology clinic in Ibaraki Prefecture that it says defied numerous instructions not to dismiss an employee on the grounds of her pregnancy. (Japan Times)

General-account budget requests for fiscal 2016 from Japanese government ministries and agencies totaled a record 102,409.9 billion yen, the Ministry of Finance said Friday. (Jiji Press)

The wages rebounded in July after plunging the prior month but summer bonus payments rose only modestly, government data showed, suggesting that soft household spending may weigh on the world's third-largest economy for longer than expected. (The Japan News)

The organizing committee of the 2020 Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games says the overall expense of its scrapped emblems will amount to nearly 500,000 dollars. (NHK)

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