TMCnet News

Kyodo news summary -1-
[July 12, 2014]

Kyodo news summary -1-


(Japan Economic Newswire Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) ---------- Chief negotiators of Pacific free trade struggle for deals OTTAWA - Chief negotiators from 12 Pacific Rim countries continued Friday with their discussions on a free trade initiative, struggling to reach deals on contentious issues such as market access and international dispute settlement.



On the penultimate day of the eight-day round in Ottawa, the chief negotiators of the U.S.-led Trans-Pacific Partnership deal sorted out matters to be referred to ministerial-level officials at a future meeting, a Japanese official said.

---------- Sharp eyes buying from Apple production facility for iPhone LCDs OSAKA - Struggling electronics maker Sharp Corp. is in talks to buy from Apple Inc. of the United Sates the equipment to produce liquid crystal displays for iPhones at a Sharp plant in Kameyama, Mie Prefecture, industry source said Saturday.


Through the purchase, possibly for 30 billion to 40 billion yen, Sharp envisions using its Kameyama Plant No. 1 not only to supply Apple but also Chinese and other communication device makers, they said.

---------- FEATURE: Japan war photographer holds Vietnam exhibition TOKYO - A Japanese war photographer takes pride in the fact he kept on documenting the Vietnam War and its aftermath over many years.

Bunyo Ishikawa, 76, showed some 50 photos at an exhibition titled "Senso to Heiwa: Vietnam no 50 Nen" (War and Peace: 50 Years of Vietnam) at Nikon Salon in Tokyo's Ginza district for two weeks from late May.

---------- Benesse customer info may have leaked to multiple companies TOKYO - Customer information apparently stolen from a group company of Benesse Holdings Inc., Japan's biggest provider of correspondence education for children, was sold to several name-list traders, suggesting the information may have ended up in the hands of multiple companies, one trader said Saturday.

Data believed to have been stolen from a Benesse affiliate in late 2013 and sold to a name-list trader by around early 2014 was already found to have been used by software developer Justsystems Corp.

---------- M6.8 quake causes small tsunami on Japan's northeastern shores TOKYO - A strong quake struck off the Pacific coast of Japan's northeast early Saturday morning, sending small tsunami shoreward in the region that was devastated by huge tsunami after a massive quake in March 2011.

Evacuation advisories were issued for some coastal communities in Iwate and Miyagi prefectures, while electric power companies and local officials said there were no reports of abnormalities at nuclear power plants in the region including the Fukushima Daiichi plant crippled by the disaster three years ago.

---------- Japan, U.S. agree to reflect Tokyo's security shift in new guidelines WASHINGTON - Japan and the United States agreed Friday that Tokyo's recent reinterpretation of the Constitution to expand the role of its armed forces should be reflected in new bilateral defense cooperation guidelines due out by the end of the year.

After talks with Japanese Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera, U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said Washington "strongly supports" what he described as a "historic" decision made by the Cabinet of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to lift a long-held ban on collective self-defense.

---------- FEATURE: Gov't recruiters vie for female job seekers to meet PM Abe's 30% goal TOKYO - Recruiters in Japan's central government offices have wound up a particularly hectic hiring season this year as they were faced with a new challenge -- a tug-of-war over the best and the brightest female candidates to fulfill Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's order to raise the ratio of women among new employees to 30 percent or more.

The prime minister's call was part of measures to encourage greater female participation in the workforce, one of the major pillars of his "Abenomics" reforms aimed at revitalizing the Japanese economy.

(c) 2014 Kyodo News

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