日文新聞平台

With rockets raining deep inside Israel, the military pummeled Palestinian targets Wednesday across the Gaza Strip and threatened a broad ground offensive, while the first diplomatic efforts to end two days of heavy fighting got under way.

Egypt, which has mediated before between Israel and the Hamas militant group, said it spoke to all sides about ending the violence. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry was in touch with Israel to try to lower tensions. And the head of the United Nations warned of a “deteriorating situation . . . which could quickly get beyond anyone’s control.”

The Tokyo Metropolitan Government will inspect stores suspected of selling quasi-legal narcotics as early as this week, officials said Wednesday, a day after the Cabinet pledged a crackdown on so-called “dappo” (law-evading) drugs.

The inspections of about 70 shops will be conducted jointly with the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry and the Metropolitan Police Department. If inspectors find dappo drugs, the metropolitan government will issue an order to remove them from view and from sale, the officials said.

Benesse Holdings Inc., Japan’s largest provider of correspondence education for children, said Wednesday the personal information of up to about 20.7 million customers may have leaked from its group company, Benesse Corp.

Based on an in-house investigation, Benesse said it suspects an insider who is not an employee had leaked the information. Police are investigating the matter, it added.

Nobody ever expected this.

The Germans tore apart Brazil’s porous defense time and time again Tuesday, routing the hosts 7-1 in the World Cup semifinals, the largest margin of defeat at this stage in the history of the tournament.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Tuesday declared a new war against quasi-legal highs known as “dappo” drugs, pledging to adopt a speedier process by which regulators can identify and outlaw products with dangerous narcotic or hallucinogenic ingredients.

The pronouncement came at an emergency government meeting was held in response to a recent spate of car accidents involving drivers high on the drugs. In some cases the drivers hit and killed pedestrians.

North Korea appears to have fired ballistic missiles toward the Sea of Japan early Wednesday, the Japanese government said, adding that no damage to aircraft or ships has so far been reported.

The missiles appear to have been launched from the country’s southwest, beginning at around 4 a.m.

Japanese TV broadcasters should introduce English subtitles in news programs by 2020 in light of an expected increase in the number of foreign visitors ahead of the Tokyo Olympics that year, according to an expert panel at the communications ministry.

“Subtitled television programs would serve as one of the most effective tools” to help foreign residents and tourists understand developments, the panel said Friday in a report.

The Supreme Court is expected next week to uphold a lower court ruling endorsing the government’s decision not to disclose diplomatic documents about the 1972 reversion of Okinawa from U.S. control, judicial sources said Monday.

The top court is likely to reject an appeal over the Tokyo High Court’s September 2011 decision that nullified

The Nuclear Regulation Authority will delay unveiling an interim report on restarting two reactors at a plant in Kagoshima Prefecture, sources matter said Monday.

The NRA had planned to present the draft to its decision-making panel Wednesday, but regulators judged that further evaluation was needed for measures to deal with severe accidents proposed by the plant’s operator, Kyushu Electric Power Co., the sources said.

The administration won’t introduce a package of bills related to new national security policy, including legislation aimed at allowing Japan to exercise the right to collective self-defense, until next year’s ordinary Diet session, informed sources said Monday.

The Abe team will need three to four months to prepare the bills, too long a time to have them ready by this autumn’s extraordinary Diet session, the sources said.

After Ukrainian forces’ seizure of a key rebel stronghold in the east, the major cities of Donetsk and Luhansk could be the next focus of major fighting. Three bridges on roads leading to Donetsk were blown up Monday — possibly to hinder military movements, though the rebels claim it was the work of pro-Kiev saboteurs.

As nerves fray over the prospect of fighting in the sprawling cities, Russia urges Europe to put pressure on the government to end the fighting, but takes no overt action. Rebels in Ukraine and nationalists at home have called for the Kremlin to send in troops to protect the pro-Russia insurgents, but President Vladimir Putin, wary of more sanctions being imposed by the West, has resisted.

Chinese President Xi Jinping on Monday commemorated the 77th anniversary of the official start of the war with Japan, condemning those who “ignore the incontrovertible facts of history” in an oblique jab at Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

Xi and a cast of hundreds of soldiers and schoolchildren gathered for a ceremony on the edge of the capital to mark the Marco Polo Bridge incident, a skirmish between Chinese and Japanese troops on July 7, 1937, that served as a pretext for Tokyo’s forces to seize Beijing and thus trigger the Sino-Japanese War.

Japan is set to approve its first arms export following the relaxation of a self-imposed ban as the nation seeks to boost its global military and economic stature, a report said Sunday.

Mitsubishi Heavy Industries plans to export a high-performance sensor to the United States, where it will be used in the Patriot Advanced Capability-2 (PAC-2) missile defense system due to be exported to Qatar, the Nikkei business daily said, without providing sources.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe may use an address to Australia’s parliament this week to outline plans for expanding the nation’s military role in joint exercises carried out under the mantle of collective self-defense — a move that has been welcomed by the U.S. but opposed by China as well as the majority of the public.

“Abe’s speech to the Australian Parliament will be of much broader significance than just its part in Australia-Japan relations,” Greg Sheridan, foreign editor of The Australian newspaper, wrote in an editorial on Saturday. “The whole world, or certainly the entire global strategic class, will be watching.”

Current trade talks in Ottawa involving Japan, the United States and 10 other Pacific Rim countries will be key to advancing the planned Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) to its final stage by year-end, the country’s chief negotiator said Saturday.

U.S. President Barack Obama on June 20 announced his aim to have a free-trade draft he could take to meetings with other leaders in November, while negotiator Koji Tsuruoka also referred to a late-2014 goal.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe unveiled Sunday his plan to create a ministerial post in charge of national security legislation under his government’s new defense policy to broaden the scope of Self-Defense Forces’ activities.

Before departing on his three-nation Oceania tour, Abe told reporters at Haneda airport his Cabinet will introduce a package of legal measures to redefine SDF roles, allowing the military to engage in collective self-defense missions, cope with “gray zone” situations short of full-blown military clashes, and do more in U.N.-led peacekeeping operations.

Chinese President Xi Jinping and South Korean President Park Geun-hye have agreed that their countries will cooperate in joint research and other projects related to the wartime victims of sexual servitude.

Chinese and South Korean research institutes will work together regarding the “comfort women,” mainly Asians, who were forced to serve as prostitutes for Japanese soldiers before and during World War II, according to a document attached to a joint statement issued after Xi and Park met Thursday in Seoul.

Japan will lift some of its unilateral economic sanctions on North Korea on Friday because of progress Pyongyang has made in setting up an “unprecedented” panel to investigate what happened to Japanese nationals kidnapped and taken there, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said Thursday.

It will ease restrictions on travel and the transfer of funds between Japan and North Korea. It will also allow North Korean ships to visit Japanese ports for “humanitarian purposes,” which could include the export of goods and medical supplies to North Korea.

In 1992, a 14-year-old Japanese girl set out to save our universe from total anhiliation.

She became a hero for young women around the world, saving them from evil and from the macho male heroes that permeated the media at the time. Her name was Usagi Tsukino, but you may know her better as the one named Sailor Moon.

The research was described as game-changing by many experts in the field when it was published in January. However, it was subsequently investigated by the Japanese government-affiliated Riken institute, which “categorized some of the errors as misconduct,” Nature said.

The two papers, led at Riken by Haruko Obokata, 30, detailed simple ways to reprogram mature animal cells back to an embryonic-like state, allowing them to generate many different types of cells — suggesting hope for a way of replacing damaged cells or growing new organs in humans.