Mainichi Daily News articles from June 2001, page 3

Mainichi Daily News archives from June 2001

Kids petition to save "killer" teacher's job.
June 19, 2001... KITAKYUSHU -- Sixth graders at an elementary school here have started a petition to save their teacher, who faces the ax for showing them how they could fatally stab somebody, education officials said Sunday. About 30 pupils signed the...

America must not go at it alone.
June 19, 2001... The rift between the United States and Europe appears to be growing. The biggest agenda items on U.S. President George W. Bush's tour of Europe, which took him to an informal summit of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in Brussels on...

Rapist slapped with life term for women's deaths.
June 18, 2001... YOKOHAMA -- A man found guilty of drugging and raping two women, then leaving them to freeze to death, was Thursday sentenced to life imprisonment. The accused, Katsumi Hoshino, 25, had protested that he bore no responsibility for the...

Crank caller freaks out Sendai school.
June 18, 2001... SENDAI -- An apparent crank caller has threatened to kill pupils here -- like "what happened in Osaka" -- prompting concerned officials to partly barricade the school. Officials of the Yagiyama Junior High School in Sendai's Taihaku-ku...

Saitama teacher resigns over nude-photo demand.
June 18, 2001... YASHIO, Saitama -- A local teacher here has quit in disgrace after pressuring a junior high school student to pose nude for a photograph, apologetic officials have announced. The May 23 harassing actions of the 40-year-old instructor,...

Gunfire rips into Kabukicho bar clientele.
June 18, 2001... An armed assailant fired on customers in a bar in Tokyo's notorious Kabukicho district early Thursday, wounding one man seriously and leaving another with light injuries. Police are hunting for the attacker and several cohorts who burst...

Pupil-killer scrutinized legal rulings.
June 18, 2001... IKEDA, Osaka -- Schoolkid slaughterer Mamoru Takuma apparently studied past court rulings involving mentally disabled people and feigned craziness before his killing spree last Friday to avoid prosecution, police said Thursday. "I...

Group: Wine scam soaks up Foreign Ministry budget.
June 18, 2001... The Foreign Ministry racked up a wine bill of 30 million yen between fiscal 1997 and 1999, all part of a wasteful plan to absorb budget surpluses, a citizen's group has claimed. Documents handed over to Information Clearinghouse Japan, a...

Sources: Tanaka's son got peek at secret funds documents.
June 18, 2001... Foreign Minister Makiko Tanaka let her accountant son examine documents on secret funds set aside for prime ministers' overseas trips, government sources have claimed. But the fiery politician, appearing in the Diet on Thursday, angrily...

Bureaucrat zapped for e-mailing deadly messages.
June 18, 2001... An elite Patent Office bureaucrat who e-mailed death threats to a colleague was nailed Thursday by the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department's hi-tech crime bureau. The arrested patent examiner, Takatoshi Ikeda, 33, fired off about a...

LDP aims for 50-seat minimum in July.
June 18, 2001... The ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) needs to secure at least 50 seats in the upcoming House of Councillors election to proclaim victory, the party's No. 2 man said Thursday. "We are analyzing the situation, and I don't think it is...

Shoppers shaft store's history.
June 18, 2001... Hundreds of shoppers braved the elements Thursday and queued for the grand opening of an electric appliance megastore that replaced failed Sogo Co. department's flagship outlet in the Yurakucho district of Tokyo. But the history of the...

Feeling the squeeze from postponed reforms? Not yet!
June 18, 2001... Cabinet Office statistics released Monday suggest the economy is headed for a recession. Heizo Takenaka, the minister for economic and fiscal policy, believes that the numbers reflect the actual strength of the Japanese economy, and confirm...

Appeal lands murderer back on death row.
June 18, 2001... NAGOYA -- One defendant's escape from the noose was cut short after a court ruled Thursday he and an accomplice should be executed for strangling two men in the 1990s. In handing down the latest sentences after a slew of court battles...

Gov't admits economy moving toward recession.
June 18, 2001... The government acknowledged Thursday -- for the first time ever -- that the nation's economy is beginning to run into a recession. The June monthly economic report that Financial and Fiscal Policy Minister Heizo Takenaka submitted...

Scam marriage ring busted.
June 15, 2001... A scam marriage ring that involved gangsters rounding up homeless men and sending them off to China to marry women looking for long-term Japanese visas was broken Wednesday with a spate of arrests and raids, police said. Ex-gangster...

Tokyo arsonist hurts 4.
June 15, 2001... A serial arsonist struck six times in rapid succession in Tokyo's Adachi-ku early Wednesday, with one blaze causing minor injuries to a family of four, police said. Names of those injured in the 3:30 a.m. blaze were not released, but...

Deadly drivers face tougher penalties under new law.
June 15, 2001... Drunken or drugged drivers causing injuries will face harsher penalties from June next year following the passage Wednesday morning of legal revisions aimed at cracking down on deadbeat drivers. Revisions to the Road Traffic Law that were...

Court: AUM still lethal.
June 15, 2001... The AUM Shinrikyo cult is still dangerous and should continue to be monitored under organization regulatory laws, the Tokyo District Court ruled Wednesday. Rejecting claims from cult members that government monitoring of the cult...

Schoolkid-killer lied about drugs.
June 15, 2001... Confessed child slayer Mamoru Takuma lied when he told investigators his drugged state set off a rampage last week that left eight kids dead and another 15 seriously injured, police said Wednesday. When confronted with test results that...

Bereaved want killer hanged.
June 15, 2001... A man who went on a berserk daylight rampage that killed two people in 1999 deserves to hang, a Tokyo court heard Wednesday. Katsutoshi Takahashi, whose 29-year-old wife was slain on the streets of Toshima-ku in September 1999, told the...

Seaman busted for train prank.
June 15, 2001... YOKOHAMA -- A U.S. military member who jumped with other foreigners onto train tracks, setting off an alarm and delaying a train for several minutes has been arrested, police said Wednesday. Juan Ricardo Ceronyupe, 22, a third-class...

Slain husband's body left in box since March 2000.
June 15, 2001... SANJO, Niigata -- A woman who abided by her husband's request to kill him has been arrested after leaving his fully clothed body in a box for a year and three months, police said Wednesday. Takako Sasage was arrested for murder by request...

Bags fall from U.S. plane.
June 15, 2001... GINOWAN, Okinawa -- Two duffle bags containing military fatigues apparently fell from a U.S. military plane Wednesday, landing in a residential district here, police said. Nobody was injured by the falling bags, nor did they do any...

Yomiuri pitcher avoids boozed-behind-wheel rap.
June 15, 2001... Yomiuri Giants pitcher Hideki Okajima was let off despite being found driving while drunk, police said Wednesday. Where most people would usually be arrested for breaking the Road Traffic Law, Okajima was allowed to escape with only a...

Court labels drunk driver a murderer.
June 15, 2001... A man was sentenced to 3 1/2 years in jail Wednesday after the Tokyo District Court ruled he was "as bad as a murderer." Hideo Inoue, 52, a former driver from Edogawa-ku, Tokyo, was convicted of breaking the Road Traffic Law and for...

Teacher's violence halts classes.
June 15, 2001... YAMATO, Saga -- An inherently violent teacher caused kids at a junior high school here to miss cooking classes for a month because of a vicious attack on two of his pupils, school officials said. It was only one of more than a dozen times...

Preventing crimes by the mentally ill.
June 15, 2001... The murder of eight schoolchildren at an elementary school in Ikeda, Osaka Prefecture, by a man with a history of psychiatric illness has focused renewed attention on the loopholes in our system for dealing with crimes committed by the...

Teacher suspected of leaking bookkeeping exam.
June 15, 2001... Questions for a bookkeeping exam held by the Japan Chamber of Commerce and Industry (JCCI) this week may have been leaked to examinees, it was learned Wednesday. A man sitting the second level of the five-question exam wrote a letter to...

Tanaka to propose relocation of some US Marine drills.
June 15, 2001... Foreign Minister Makiko Tanaka said Wednesday she will propose that some of the drills of the U.S. Marine Corps, currently conducted in Okinawa, should be relocated abroad to lessen the burden of the island prefecture. "I'm sure I'll...

Education options shrink for early school leavers.
June 15, 2001... Only universities will be able to accept students who leave high school a year early, ruling and opposition parties agreed Wednesday. In a move cutting out junior colleges and technical schools from enrolling students who want to start...

Koizumi fears US missile shield may launch 'arms-race'.
June 15, 2001... The controversial U.S. missile defense program could trigger an arms race, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi said during Diet debate with opposition leaders on Wednesday. "Military policy always involves some contradictions. Even if the...

Britain -- no pain, no gain.
June 14, 2001... Prime Minister Tony Blair and his Labor Party secured a second term with their landslide victory in Thursday's general election. The Labor Party trounced the opposition, winning just five fewer seats than it won in the previous 1997 poll....

Tanaka to meet with Powell on Monday.
June 14, 2001... Foreign Minister Makiko Tanaka is set to meet with U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell next Monday in Washington if the Diet approves her plan, government sources said Tuesday. Tanaka intends to discuss overall bilateral issues including...

Ex-Osaka politico gets suspended term for graft.
June 14, 2001... A former Osaka Prefectural Assembly member was handed a suspended prison sentence Tuesday for accepting bribes from a construction company in exchange for helping it to win public works contracts. The Osaka District Court sentenced...

TV commentator slashed while apprehending robber.
June 14, 2001... A television personality was slashed in the hand early Tuesday as she wrested a knife from a burglar who broke into her Tokyo home, police said. Kimiko Jinnai, a freelance television sports announcer and representative of Japan at the...

Careless trucker sets off six-car pile-up.
June 14, 2001... NAGOYA -- Twenty-eight people were injured in a massive pile-up on a national highway here apparently caused when a truck driver went digging for a receipt on Tuesday morning. At around 7:25 a.m., a 10-ton truck rear-ended a bus carrying...

Leprosy patients dying uncompensated.
June 14, 2001... Twelve former Hansen's disease patients have died uncompensated one month after the Kumamoto District Court ruled the government was responsible for mistreating sufferers of the disease. The state will not compensate the 12 under a bill...

Shiokawa leans on central bank over monetary policy.
June 14, 2001... The Bank of Japan (BOJ) came under mounting government pressure on Tuesday to further relax monetary policy in a bid to haul the economy out of the recession. Finance Minister Masajuro Shiokawa, speaking to reporters after a regular...

Nigeria-to-Japan pot smugglers busted.
June 14, 2001... YOKOHAMA -- Two men have been arrested on suspicion of smuggling a colossal 234 kilograms of marijuana from Nigeria into Japan, law enforcers said Tuesday. A 53-year-old Japanese exporter living in Yokohama and a 32-year-old Nigerian...

Beefed-up restrictions hang over visas for Chinese.
June 14, 2001... The Foreign Affairs Ministry has decided to tighten the screws on short-term visas for Chinese to combat the reportedly rising number of illegal entrants into Japan. The crackdown comes because illegal immigrants have been abusing P-type...

Pilot dies in paraglider crash.
June 14, 2001... YAMAGATA -- A self-employed man died after his paraglider plummeted 15 meters into the ground in Yamagata Prefecture on Tuesday afternoon, local police said. Law enforcers are investigating what caused 47-year-old Hitoshi Kosugo's...

Kobe's population slowly revives after quake.
June 14, 2001... KOBE -- Kobe's population has clawed back close to the number of people who were living there just before the 1995 Great Hanshin Earthquake ravaged the city, municipal officials announced Tuesday. As of June 1, the city's population stood...

Slick trick slips oil importers in law's hands.
June 14, 2001... Three Tokyo oil dealers were nabbed Tuesday for evading over 11.4 billion yen in taxes, police said. Former executives of Puromedia Oil, Ryo Yamagishi and Tetsuyuki Sakayori, were detained at Narita Airport on Tuesday after they were...

Source: Foreign Ministry refused to ax thieving diplomat.
June 14, 2001... The late Japanese ambassador to Cuba pilfered millions of yen in diplomatic funds in early 1990s, but the Foreign Ministry hushed up the scandal and let him keep his job despite only a fraction of the stolen money being returned, an...

Jury plan steps toward reality.
June 14, 2001... Public participation in criminal trials and a significant increase in the number of legal experts will form the backbone of Japan's revolutionary legal system reform, the government said Tuesday. A special team will be set up in July to...

Teacher fingerprints second graders over graffiti.
June 13, 2001... SAWADA, Niigata -- A public elementary school teacher has apologized to parents because she fingerprinted her second graders to find out who had written graffiti on a poster, school officials said. "I have caused hurt the children in a...

Handcuffed burglar escapes cops.
June 13, 2001... KITAIBARAKI, Ibaraki -- A handcuffed burglar duped police into leaving him alone and ran away from them during an early Monday heist, police said. The burglar tricked police into believing that he was working with accomplices and while...

Camera clue to killing.
June 13, 2001... A Tokyo construction company owner shot dead over the weekend by a man posing as a deliveryman had installed a surveillance camera at the entrance to his office before being slain, police said Monday. Investigators suspect that he may...

Chinese busted for station stabbing.
June 13, 2001... A Chinese student who stabbed a suburban Tokyo railway attendant during an early May heist has been arrested, police said Monday. Mu Xeuchen, 23, the Chinese student living in the Tokyo suburb of Hachioji, was arrested for attempted...

Man arrested for dumping dog.
June 13, 2001... KURASHIKI, Okayama -- A man was arrested Monday for leaving his dog at an old home after he moved, police said. It is extremely rare for accused offenders of the animal prevention law to be arrested and placed in police custody, but...

GDP grows 0.9% but falls short of target.
June 13, 2001... The nation's gross domestic products (GDP) achieved a 0.9 percent growth in the 2000 fiscal year but the figure fell short of the governmental target of 1.2 percent, a Cabinet Office report released Monday shows. The failure to achieve...

Seoul urges Japan to resume talks with Pyongyang.
June 13, 2001... WASHINGTON -- South Korean Foreign Affairs-Trade Minister Han Seung-soo has urged Japan to resume normalization talks with North Korea at an early date to ease tensions on the Korean Peninsula. Han, visiting Washington, made the remarks...

Counselors visit homes of students after massacre.
June 13, 2001... IKEDA, Osaka -- Psychiatrists, teachers and counselors began Monday to visit the homes of students at a national elementary school following Friday's fatal stabbing of eight children here. A team comprising more than 50 experts from 10...

Group to fight death from overwork.
June 13, 2001... Doctors, lawyers and labor law experts will launch the nation's first organization to rescue company employees from karoshi, or death from overwork, in Osaka Tuesday. Members of the group, "Labor Standard Ombudsmen," say that they will...

DPJ asks TV tycoon Ohashi to run as candidate.
June 13, 2001... The largest opposition Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) is asking former popular TV MC man Kyosen Ohashi to become a candidate for the party in the upcoming House of Councilors election, sources said Monday. Sources in the DPJ admitted...

Man attacks Kobe train with toxic spray.
June 13, 2001... KOBE -- A man suddenly sprayed dozens of passengers on a train here Monday afternoon, sickening many of them before he fled, police said. The man, about 20 years old, was one of the passengers on a JR Sanyo Line train heading for Himeji....

Judge's wife comes clean in sexual harassment case.
June 13, 2001... FUKUOKA -- A judge's wife who faces trial for harassing a lover of her e-mail boyfriend admitted Monday that she discarded cellular phones she used to send mail to the victim because she knew she was at a center of an investigation. ...

PM says nation must accept low growth for now.
June 13, 2001... The nation has to "endure a low level of economic growth" for a few years until it solves the bad loan problem before full-fledged growth led by the private sector can be achieved, draft guidelines by Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's...

Replacing Futenma.
June 13, 2001... Although more than five years have elapsed since Japan and the U.S. agreed to replace Futenma Air Station in Okinawa Prefecture, the central government has still not reached a final decision on a substitute airfield to be built off the coast...

Counselors visit homes of students after school massacre.
June 13, 2001... IKEDA, Osaka -- Psychiatrists, teachers and counselors began Monday to visit the homes of students at a national elementary school following Friday's fatal stabbing of eight children here. A team comprising more than 50 experts from 10...

Internet-based Sony Bank begins operations.
June 13, 2001... Sony Bank Inc., a banking affiliate of the electronic giant Sony Corp., began operations Monday morning as Japan's second Internet-based bank. The branch-free bank hopes to attract depositors by trimming expenses and thereby offering...

MADMAN KILLS 8 IN SCHOOL RAMPAGE.
June 12, 2001... IKEDA, Osaka -- Eight elementary schoolchildren were killed by a knife-wielding man who stormed into their school during a break, unconfirmed reports said Friday. At least 21 other students and teachers were stabbed in the rampage, which...

Women-only tea making class accused of sexism.
June 12, 2001... KAGOSHIMA -- A Kagoshima Prefectural Government office that organized a "tea-making class" exclusively for female officials is being accused of sexism by women in the prefecture's "gender equality division." Iwao Sano, an official of the...

Man beats wife while negotiating divorce in court.
June 12, 2001... FUKUOKA - A man hit his wife in the face at a court while they negotiated a divorce but escaped being charged because she didn't file complaint with police in April, officials have said. Officials of the Fukuoka Family Court admitted that...

Gov't admits economy worsening.
June 12, 2001... Economic Minister Heizo Takenaka said Friday that the government would admit the nation's economy was faltering further in its June monthly business report. The government has not decided on how to describe Japan's slowing economy. ...

Madman stabs 8 kids dead in school rampage.
June 12, 2001... IKEDA, Osaka -- Eight elementary schoolchildren were killed by a knife-wielding man who stormed into their school during a break on Friday. At least 15 other students and teachers were stabbed in the rampage, which occurred at about...

Cops scour Kobe for hit-and-run driver.
June 12, 2001... KOBE -- Law enforcers have fired up a manhunt for the driver responsible for the hit-and-run death of an 8-year-old girl. Investigations have revealed that the corpse of the girl, Kobe's Kita-ku resident Saki Miyazaki, was dumped in a...

Barrier lifted on Miyake Island.
June 12, 2001... Suspicion shadowed a metropolitan government decision to allow some 70 evacuated Miyake Island residents to check their damaged homes for the first time since fleeing last September's volcanic activity. Tokyo disaster officials on Friday...

American pollees salute US-Japan treaty.
June 12, 2001... A record 89 percent of Americans think the Japan- U.S. security treaty signed in 1960 benefits their country, a Japanese government survey released Friday shows. But the poll, conducted in the United States on behalf of the Japanese...

Tokyo hands down U.S.-base proposal to Nago.
June 12, 2001... Nago, Okinawa Prefecture, must pick one of eight construction plans for the U.S. Futenma Air Station's replacement facility under a proposal the national government tabled on Friday. The eight plans that use three construction methods --...

Trio bagged for embezzling used-car firm's 4.7 bil. yen.
June 12, 2001... A successful used-car dealer's former president and ex-chairman have been arrested for embezzling a colossal 4.7 billion yen from the Tokyo firm, police said Friday. Noboru Watanabe, 47, the former chairman of used car sales company JAC...

Ichiro snaps Nagashima's streak in popularity survey.
June 12, 2001... Seattle Mariners' Ichiro Suzuki, with his sensational achievements in his debut year in the major leagues, has eclipsed Japan's Mr. Baseball, Shigeo Nagashima, as the nation's favorite sportsperson, a poll shows. Ichiro topped the list...

Takeshita's pitiful estate stuns taxman.
June 12, 2001... Noboru Takeshita, the late Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) powerbroker who dominated politics through faction numbers and an ample war chest, has left 215 million yen in taxable inheritance, peanuts compared to other deceased LDP bigwigs'...

Opposition must one-up Koizumi.
June 12, 2001... Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi held his first face-to-face debate with the leaders of the opposition parties on Wednesday. The debate focused on Koizumi's reform agenda, but the opposition, and the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) in...

Teen makes bomb threat.
June 12, 2001... SAPPORO -- A teen-age boy has been taken into custody after he threatened to bomb a controversial Sapporo festival attacked by a terrorist last year, police said Saturday. The 17-year-old boy, whose identity can't be disclosed under the...

Slayer had checkered past.
June 12, 2001... OSAKA -- Accused child slayer Mamoru Takuma had a checkered work record that included a stint as an Air Self-Defense Force (ASDF) airman, police said Saturday. Takuma was arrested Friday after he allegedly went on a berserk rampage that...

Tanaka threatens to wield ax on ministry jobs.
June 12, 2001... Firebrand Foreign Minister Makiko Tanaka has threatened to slash jobs at the Foreign Ministry. "We've got 5,000 people . Even major banks only employ 4,000. We have to sack some," Tanaka told a Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) meeting. ...

Violence striking rail workers.
June 12, 2001... Recent fatal bashings have turned Japan's focus to violence between train passengers, but that has forced the growing number of attacks on railway employees from the limelight. Terrified railway workers have little idea how far they can...

Would-be "quitter" kidnapped, bashed by boss, co-workers.
June 12, 2001... Three men who kidnapped and brutally assaulted a co-worker while holding him hostage for a month because he wanted to leave their company were arrested Saturday, police said. Shuichi Ozawa, 37, president of a construction company, of...

Cop in fiery death.
June 12, 2001... TSUCHIURA, Ibaraki -- A depressed police officer killed himself Saturday by dousing his body in kerosene and setting it alight, police said. The officer, a 49-year-old assistant police inspector whose name is being withheld, apparently...

Body saved from strays.
June 12, 2001... KASHIMA, Ibaraki - Parts of a person's severed body were found Saturday in a rice paddy here just moments before a pack of stray dogs were about to eat them, police said. Forensic scientists said that a skull and torso belonged to...

Man strangles wife over allowance.
June 12, 2001... MINAMIASHIGARA, Kanagawa -- A man who stabbed and strangled his wife because she would not give him any pocket money or obey his orders was arrested Saturday, police said. Yoshiaki Sato was arrested for the murder of his wife, Reiko. ...

Emphasize universality, not differences.
June 12, 2001... We have entered a golden age of cultural exchange. Britain this year is commemorating Japan 2001, a yearlong program of events introducing Japanese culture. As part of these festivities, a Japanese style matsuri festival was organized last...