FUDAI, Iwate Pref. - In the rubble of the northeast, one small village stands as tall as ever after the tsunami. No homes were swept away. In fact, they barely got wet. Fudai survived thanks to a huge wall once deemed a mayor's expensive folly and now vindicated as the community's salvation. The 3,000 residents living between mountains behind a cove owe their lives to a late leader who saw the devastation of an earlier tsunami and made it the priority of his four-decade tenure to defend his people from the next one. (Japan Times)
Electricity supply from nuclear plants, already down by almost 20 percent following the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, will drop further during peak summer demand as operators shut reactors for maintenance. Six reactors are scheduled to be offline for checks and maintenance by the end of August. Chubu Electric Power Co. last week shut two reactors out of fear of a natural disaster causing a crisis similar to the one at Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant. The planned shutdowns mean 75 percent of Japan's nuclear power capacity will be idled or damaged by August when air conditioning demand surges as temperatures can rise to as high as 40 degrees. (Japan Times)
An express train in Japan derailed and caught fire inside a tunnel overnight, injuring 39 passengers, according to railway officials. The injured were taken for hospital treatment though no-one was seriously hurt, officials said. The train, carrying 240 passengers, made an emergency stop inside a 685-metre tunnel on the northern Hokkaido island at around 10:00 pm on Friday after its driver noticed smoke emerging from the train. The passengers escaped but the fire continued to burn until early Saturday morning, destroying the six-carriage train. (AFP)
Japan has agreed to sign a treaty that settles international child custody disputes. Japan and Russia are the only G8 members not to have signed the Hague Convention on international child abduction. The Hague Convention on International Child Abduction aims to protect both parents' rights and 
The Japan Meteorological Agency said Friday the rainy season has started in the central and eastern regions including the Tokyo metropolitan area earlier than the average year. The period of frequent rain came 12 days earlier than usual for both the Tokai central region that includes Shizuoka and Aichi Prefectures and for the Kanto-Koshin eastern areas that include Nagano Prefecture, it said. (Kyodo)
The global platinum 
A major international mission to investigate Japan's 
Japan fell into a trade deficit in April as exports 
Tokyo Electric Power Co, the operator of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant disabled by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, confirmed on Tuesday that there were meltdowns of fuel rods at three of the plant's reactors early in the crisis.It had said earlier this month that fuel rods in the No.1 reactor had melted, but officials of the utility, known as Tepco, confirmed at a news conference that there were also meltdowns of fuel rods at the plant's No.2 and No.3 reactors early in the crisis.
The 
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao on Sunday said Beijing would ease some bans imposed on Japanese food imports over a nuclear crisis as leaders of Japan, China and South Korea held a trilateral summit. For Japan the three-way meeting was an opportunity to address the concerns of its neighbours over its handling of world's worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl 25 years ago, triggered by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami. Tokyo's neighbours have been concerned by the leak of radiation from the crippled Fukushima Daiichi plant and its impact on food safety across the region. For Japan, the summit was an opportunity to secure the easing of import restrictions. (AFP)
Tokyo Electric Power's belated admission that damage to crippled reactors at its nuclear plant is worse than it first thought has fuelled suspicion it withheld bad news in the first days of Japan's crisis. A series of revisions to earlier assessments about damage to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant have emerged since the utility began sending workers into reactor buildings for the first time. More than two months after the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl was triggered, TEPCO last week admitted fuel rods inside reactor cores melted down in the first few hours after the March 11 tsunami disabled cooling systems. (AFP)
The Supreme Court said Saturday it has rejected an objection by Takafumi Horie, the former president of Internet company Livedoor Co., to its ruling supporting his imprisonment over accounting fraud, finalizing his 30-month prison term. The top court's latest decision was dated Friday, and the Tokyo High Public Prosecutor's Office is expected to begin procedures soon to imprison Horie, 38. Horie is likely to serve a maximum of around 28 months as a lower court recognized he has already served 40 days in detention. (Japan Times)
During the 30-minute ferry ride from Motobu on mainland Okinawa, Iejima reveals itself in stages. First, Mount Tacchu emerges above the waves like a chunk of the peanut brittle for which the island is renowned. Next, the wind-blown scent of countless thousands of hibiscuses sweetens the stink of the ship's diesel engines. Finally, swaths of sugar cane come into view - followed by khaki-green tobacco fields and white sand beaches flanking the island's southern shores. Without question, Iejima is a beautiful place - but dig a little deeper and you soon realize that, beneath its rich red soil, there lies an awful lot of suffering. (Japan Times)
A Tokyo-based art collective has admitted 
Two months after the explosions and radiation leaks at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan, the prime minister, Naoto Kan, has announced that the country will not build any new reactors. If Kan really means it, the government will have to abandon the plans for expanding nuclear power it adopted only last year. To make up the energy 
Japanese developers have unveiled an electric car they said Wednesday can travel more than 300 kilometres before its battery runs flat. Electric vehicle specialist SIM-Drive, which hopes to take the car to market by 2013 but gave no projected cost, said its four-seater "SIM-LEI" had motors inside each wheel and a super-light frame, allowing for 333 kilometres (207 miles) of motoring on one charge in a test. Its designers say they hope the prototype, a joint project among 34 organisations including Mitsubishi Motors and engineering firm IHI, will be sold to car manufacturers for mass production. (AFP)
The hacker attack that crippled Sony Corp.'s PlayStation Network and Qriocity entertainment services was "a hiccup" in the company's online strategy, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Howard Stringer said. "Nobody's system is 100 percent secure," Stringer said Tuesday in a phone interview, his first public comments on the attack. "This is a hiccup in the road to a network future." Stringer, 69, spoke in an interview almost a month after Sony, maker of the PlayStation console, shut down its online movie, music and games services. (Japan Times)
Two months after the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami struck, there are warnings of power shortages over the peak summer period. Japan's Environment ministry has announced a "Super Cool Biz" campaign, to persuade workers to swap their suits for polo shirts, Hawaiian shirts, jeans and trainers. Shintaro Ishihara, the Tokyo governor, has called for the hundreds of thousands of vending machines that supply everything from hot coffee to schoolgirl's underwear to be turned off. (Washington Times)
The traditional Japanese storyteller kneels in front of a room full of families that have lost everything - their homes, their loved ones, their entire town - and his face stretches into a broad grin. "There once was a samurai who loved to drink sake," he says, and begins to sway as though tipsy. The samurai story, a classic comedy hundreds of years old, normally draws a steady stream of laughs. But it gets only a few chuckles at this shelter for those who lost their homes in the March 11 earthquake and tsunami. (AP)
Two months after Japan's quake and tsunami catastrophe sparked a nuclear disaster, Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko were to visit evacuees from the radiation zone on Wednesday. Tens of thousands have been forced from their homes in a 20-kilometre (12-mile) no-go area around the Fukushima Daiichi plant, where emergency crew are still struggling to stabilise the stricken reactors. The emperor - the living "symbol of the state and the unity of the people" - and empress were to visit evacuees near Fukushima City northwest of the stricken plant, and then the coastal town of Soma north of the plant. (AsiaOne)
The president of TEPCO on Tuesday submitted a request for Japanese government aid in compensating those affected by its stricken nuclear power plant, as the utility said it faced funding problems. Presenting the request to trade and industry minister Banri Kaieda, Masataka Shimizu told reporters that the company accepts it has liability for damages caused by the world's worst nuclear accident for 25 years. "We face an extremely severe situation regarding fund-raising such as loans from financial institutions, not to mention bond issuance," Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO) said in the submitted document. (AFP)
Japan's government may take an equity stake in Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO), the operator of a crippled nuclear power plant, to help pay compensation to affected people, a report said Tuesday. The president of the beleaguered utility was to meet the government Tuesday as TEPCO seeks government help in compensating victims of the Fukushima nuclear crisis. The Fukushima Daiichi Plant was heavily damaged by the deadly earthquake and tsunami of March 11, and has since been releasing radioactive material. (AFP)