The mother of Sakura Moriyama, a missing girl from Kurashiki in Okayama Prefecture, contacted police twice before the 11-year-old disappeared on Monday, fearing her daughter might have been falling prey to a stalker, investigative sources said on Thursday.
According to police, Sakura’s mother reported that her daughter had been followed by a silver car near their house before her disappearance.
When Prime Minister Shinzo Abe showed up last Sunday for the 19th International Conference for Women in Business, Kaori Sasaki — who has been organizing the gathering to empower women since 1996 — finally felt that society was changing.
When Sasaki launched the project almost two decades ago, companies scoffed at her, saying a meetup for female professionals was for losers, she recalls.
Government secrets will be kept to a minimum and disclosed as quickly as possible, the Abe administration vowed Thursday in an outline of new rules for designating and disclosing “special secrets” under the controversial secrecy law.
The law caused a public uproar amid fears that it will undermine the public’s right to know in a nation where the press is controlled by a “kisha club” system and disclosure is already hard to come by.
A Tokyo systems engineer was arrested Thursday on suspicion of illegal copying for allegedly stealing data on millions of customers from the computer servers of education service provider Benesse Corp.
The Metropolitan Police Department arrested Masaomi Matsuzaki, 39, on suspicion of downloading and copying the personal data of some 10.19 million Benesse customers onto his smartphone from the Tokyo branch of affiliate Synform Co. on June 17.
The impending reactivation of reactors shut down following the 2011 nuclear crisis has raised a difficult question: Who will take responsibility for the decision?
On Wednesday, the Nuclear Regulation Authority effectively finished screening the two reactors at the Sendai plant in Kyushu, certifying they meet the new safety standards adopted after the Fukushima meltdowns.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said Tuesday his administration will consider creating a permanent law allowing dispatch of the Self-Defense Forces overseas, a comment that could lead to a further rift between the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and its junior coalition partner, New Komeito.
The move would allow the government to send the SDF on overseas missions by bypassing Diet debate and without having to re-enact special legislation each time.
Two U.S. military KC-130 air refueling tankers arrived Tuesday at the U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni in Yamaguchi Prefecture in the first transfer under a bilateral agreement to reduce the burden on Okinawa of hosting U.S. bases.
The long-delayed transfer will bring a total of 15 KC-130s to Iwakuni by the end of August, along with approximately 870 U.S. military personnel and their family members, according to the Iwakuni air station. It is the first time U.S. units have been moved from Okinawa to another area in Japan.
The arrest of a Tokyo artist on obscenity charges for distributing data that allowed recipients to make 3-D prints of her vagina has sparked protests over what supporters say is an attack on free expression.
Megumi Igarashi, 42, who calls herself Rokudenashi-ko (“a no-good girl”), had been trying to raise funds online to pay for the construction of a kayak, using a 3-D printer, modeled on the shape of her genitals.
A man who has admitted involvement in the massive leaks of Benesse Corp. customers’ personal information has also told police that he sold the illegally obtained data to a name-list broker for millions of yen that he used for gambling, sources said Tuesday.
The Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department is questioning the broker while checking the sold data against the original information stored on Benesse’s database.
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jose Antonio Vargas, a Philippines-born immigration activist who has lived and in the U.S. illegally since he was a child, was released by U.S. Border Patrol agents on Tuesday after they detailed him at a Texas airport.
Border Patrol spokesman Omar Zamora said Vargas was stopped going through security at the airport in McAllen, just across from the Mexico border. A spokeswoman for Define American, Vargas’ advocacy group, confirmed his release Tuesday afternoon.
