Daily Japan Headlines: Tuesday, Jan 10, 2012
Photo Source: CNN.
CNN: Japan’s women scoop football treble
Almost six months after Japan’s women gave the country a much-needed boost by winning the football World Cup, the team was again celebrating after scooping a hat-trick of prestigious awards.
At a ceremony in Zurich, Switzerland late Monday, Homare Sawa was crowned FIFA Women’s World Player of the Year after she captained Japan to the Women’s World Cup title in Germany, while her manager Norio Sasaki was named coach of the year.
Japan’s Football Association also picked up the FIFA Fair Play Award in recognition of the hardships the country endured following the earthquake and tsunami that devastated large parts of Japan on March 11 last year.
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Reuters: Japan 2011 nuclear plant usage rate falls to 38 pct
The average nuclear plant utilisation rate at 10 Japanese power firms fell to 38.0 percent last year, down from 68.3 percent in 2010.
For the month of December, the rate dwindled to 15.2 percent, a record low, against 67.9 percent a year earlier.
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Bloomberg: Japan Wind Power Installations to Drop 68% as Subsidies Halted
Japan’s wind power installations for the year ending in March will decline 68 percent after the government halted a program that provided subsidies for clean energy projects, an industry association said.
The country will add 33 turbines generating 82 megawatts of wind power for the year ending March, according to an estimate by the Japan Wind Power Association released today. For the year ended March 2011, Japan installed 256 megawatts.
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LA Times: U.S. presses China, Japan, South Korea to trim Iran oil imports
Japan is under particular pressure because of the diminished capacity of its power industry following the earthquake and tsunami last March that snuffed out the Fukushima nuclear plant. The country is the world’s largest importer of liquid natural gas and third-largest net importer of oil, with 9% of that oil coming from Iran.
With almost no domestic fossil fuel production, Japan aggressively pursues overseas joint oil and gas ventures, and its state-owned exploration company, Impex, had planned to be a major developer of Iran’s Azadegan natural gas field.
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NY Times: In Japan, a Rebuilt Island Serves as a Cautionary Tale
On the night of July 12, 1993, the remote island of Okushiri was ripped apart by a huge earthquake and tsunami that now seem an eerie harbinger of the much larger disaster that struck northeastern Japan last March. Islanders still recall with horror how a wall of frothing black water raced out of the darkness to consume entire communities, leaving almost 200 people dead.
But today, as Japan begins a decade-long $300 billion reconstruction of the northeast coast, Okushiri has become something of a cautionary tale. Instead of restoring the island to its vibrant past, many residents now say, the $1 billion spending spree just may have helped kill its revival.
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Forex Live: Japan Press: Noda Cabinet Approval Rating Drops On Tax Plan
The approval rating for Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda has slumped as his plan to hike the 5% sales tax in coming years failed to win widespread support, according to the latest poll by local media.
The public rating for Noda’s cabinet has declined 8.9 percentage points to 35.7% in a weekend telephone poll conducted by Kyodo News, from its previous survey a month ago, even though the main opposition party supports a sales tax hike in principle.
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AFP: Japan’s shadow shogun ‘knew nothing’ of funding
Japanese political strongman Ichiro Ozawa on Tuesday told a court he knew nothing about how money for his campaign fund was managed, as he took the stand in a closely watched trial.
“I have been concentrating on politics and have left accounting to my secretaries,” Ozawa, one of Japan’s most influential political powerbrokers, told the Tokyo District Court, according to local media.
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CNN Video: Japan to hand over detained whaling activists to Australia
Japan said Tuesday that it would hand over to Australian authorities three Australian anti-whaling activists being held aboard a Japanese vessel, but that it would press on with its annual whale hunt in the seas near Antarctica.
The activists had illegally boarded the ship, a patrol vessel supporting Japan’s whaling mission in Antarctic waters, to protest the hunting of the giant marine mammals in the area.
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ABC News: Unruly Air Passenger From Japan Arrested in Hawaii
A 65-year-old Japanese man has been arrested on suspicion of assaulting a flight attendant aboard a Delta Airlines flight from Tokyo to Honolulu.
According to a criminal complaint filed in U.S. District Court, Sohei Yamanouchi hit the flight attendant once with an open hand and once with a closed fist after drinking multiple glasses of wine.
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Washington Post: Japanese police arrest woman who lived with doomsday cult fugitive most of his 17 years on run
A woman claiming to have lived with a senior member of the doomsday cult behind the 1995 nerve gas attack on Tokyo’s subways turned herself in and was arrested Tuesday for helping him evade police for nearly 17 years.
Akemi Saito, also a member of Aum Shinrikyo, gave herself up after Makoto Hirata surrendered to police on New Year’s Eve, according to police and Saito’s lawyer.
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