Education service provider Benesse Corp. said personal data on 22.6 million customers were stored on a smartphone owned by a Tokyo systems engineer under arrest on suspicion of stealing and illegal copying customer data.
While announcing the figure Monday, Benesse also said the stolen information also includes customer data on its group firms’ online-shopping website Benesse Life Smile Shop and message board website Benesse Women’s Park.
Western powers on Monday ratcheted up the pressure Moscow over the Malaysian plane disaster, as a train loaded with some 280 bodies was finally allowed to leave a rebel-held station four days after the jet crashed in strife-torn east Ukraine.
U.S. President Barack Obama insisted that Moscow force pro-Russian insurgents controlling parts of east Ukraine to cooperate with an international probe into the disaster, and said chaos at the impact site was an “insult” to families of the victims.
A man under arrest for kidnapping and confining an 11-year-old girl in Kurashiki, Okayama Prefecture, had remodeled his home with an additional lock and soundproof walls to confine the girl for a long term, investigative sources said Monday.
With a well-meditated plan, Takeshi Fujiwara, 49, a self-proclaimed illustrator from the city of Okayama, wanted to “raise the girl as I wish,” the suspect was quoted as telling the investigators.
The Abe administration is examining whether it is possible to allow a high-ranking officer of the Self-Defense Forces to take command over international troops in a U.N. peacekeeping operation, a source said Monday.
The move follows the Cabinet decision July 1 to reinterpret the pacifist Constitution to allow Japan to exercise the right to collective self-defense, giving the government more leeway to order the SDF to take a bigger, more proactive role in global security.
South Korean police believe they have found the body of a fugitive businessman who owned the Sewol ferry that sank in April killing hundreds, a report said Tuesday.
A massive manhunt had been launched for billionaire Yoo Byung-eun, the 73-year-old owner of ferry operator Chonghaejin Marine Co, who went on the run shortly after the vessel sank, killing over 300, most of them schoolchildren.
Desperate to reinvigorate the long-stalled economy, the government has spent the past two years cozying up to highly skilled foreign workers through a batch of visa perks. There’s just one problem: few have been wooed.
Hoping to change that, the government passed a bill through the Diet in June to revise the Immigration Law, giving skilled foreigners a new visa status that allows them to stay indefinitely and with a broadened roster of privileges.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe pledged to continue dialogue with Russian President Vladimir Putin, taking a softer line with Moscow than some Western powers after the shooting down of a passenger jet over Ukraine.
Abe has worked to improve Japan’s relations with resource-rich Russia, a centerpiece of his foreign policy.
The Japanese government has “hidden from the public” that a controversial U.S. military base relocation within Okinawa is planned in an area larger than disclosed, a newly obtained U.S. briefing document shows.
The central government aims to relocate U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Futenma from a residential area in Ginowan to the less populated Henoko district in Nago, both on Okinawa Island. It was recently revealed that the replacement facilities will be built not only in the coastal area as publicized, but inland as well.
A long-sought immigration system that will provide Japanese working families, and working women in particular, with much-needed help and create a more multiethnic Japan, or an ill-considered political sop to female voters that will lead to discrimination and human rights abuses?
That’s the question being asked in Osaka and elsewhere as the prefecture begins discussions with the central government on setting itself up as a specially designated zone to accept foreign domestic laborers.
The Okayama Prefectural Police department took a missing 11-year-old girl into protective custody on Saturday after finding her at the home of a 49-year-old man in the city of Okayama.
The police arrested the man, Takeshi Fujiwara, on charges of confining the girl, Sakura Moriyama. According to police sources, Fujiwara, who described himself as an illustrator, has admitted to the charges.
