Tokyo, 6 July, /AJMEDIA/
Japan ruling bloc tipped to win over half of upper house race seats
TOKYO – Japan’s ruling coalition will likely win more than half of the seats being contested in Sunday’s House of Councillors election, according to a Kyodo News poll showing it has a solid lead over opposition parties.
Pro-constitutional amendment forces — the ruling coalition of the Liberal Democratic Party and Komeito, the Japan Innovation Party and the Democratic Party for the People as well as some independents — are also in sight of maintaining the two-thirds majority required to initiate proposals for constitutional reform, the telephone survey conducted from Saturday to Tuesday showed.
———-
KDDI mobile service fully restored, ending 86 hours of disruptions
TOKYO – KDDI Corp. said Tuesday its “au” mobile phone service had been fully restored by the afternoon, ending 86 hours of service disruptions that affected millions of customers and a range of business activities.
The service outage affected up to 39.15 million mobile connections, disrupting banking systems, the transmission of weather data, parcel deliveries and network-connected cars, among other things, according to Japan’s second-largest mobile carrier by subscribers.
———-
Tokyo’s daily COVID cases double from week ago to over 5,000
TOKYO – Tokyo confirmed 5,302 new COVID-19 cases Tuesday, more than double the level the week before and exceeding the 5,000 mark for the first time since April 28.
Across Japan, a total of 36,189 new coronavirus cases were recorded, more than an 80 percent increase from a week earlier, with each of the country’s 47 prefectures seeing higher case counts. The last time the nation saw an excess of 30,000 new daily cases was May 26.
———-
Chinese ships enter Japanese waters near Senkakus, 15th this year
NAHA, Japan – Two Chinese coast guard vessels entered Japan’s territorial waters near the Senkakus on Tuesday, a day after a Chinese naval ship was spotted near the China-claimed islands, as tensions heighten between Tokyo and Beijing despite the approaching 50th anniversary of the normalization of diplomatic ties.
The Japan Coast Guard said the intrusion, the 15th this year and the first since June 23, happened around 4:35 a.m. after the Chinese ships tracked a Japanese fishing boat.
———-
Japan’s FY 2021 tax revenue hits record 67.04 trillion yen
TOKYO – Japan’s tax revenue in fiscal 2021 hit 67.04 trillion yen ($495 billion), up 10.2 percent from the previous year and setting a record for the second straight year, as the economy continues on its recovery track from the coronavirus pandemic, the Finance Ministry said Tuesday.
Consumption tax was the largest contributor to overall tax revenue during the year through March, raking in 21.89 trillion yen, up 4.4 percent from the previous year.
———-
Typhoon Aere weakens to tropical cyclone, rain forecast across Japan
TOKYO – Typhoon Aere has been downgraded to an extratropical cyclone after making landfall in southwestern Japan’s Kyushu region early Tuesday, bringing torrential rain primarily to the country’s west and raising concerns of destabilized conditions nationwide through Wednesday, the weather agency said.
The extratropical low-pressure system is moving slowly eastward toward the western and central parts of the country, and the Japan Meteorological Agency is asking people to remain vigilant for potential landslides and overflowing rivers.
———-
App developed to automatically delete children’s nude selfies
NAGOYA – A smartphone app that automatically deletes children’s nude selfies from their phones has been developed in Japan in an effort to prevent sexual exploitation.
The app, which uses artificial intelligence, was created as there has been a sharp increase in cases of adults contacting children through social media to have them send their naked pictures.
———-
FOCUS: Nuclear ban treaty chair urges Japan to change approach
TOKYO – The chairman of the first meeting of parties to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons urged Japan, the only nation that has experienced a nuclear attack, to change its stance on the treaty.
“Of course, it’s a decision of the government of Japan, and it’s not at all for me to say. But, I would hope that this approach will change,” Ambassador Alexander Kmentt told Kyodo News in a recent online interview. The senior Austrian diplomat chaired the three-day U.N. conference held in Vienna last month.
