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The Japan Times: News & Business
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The latest news and business stories from The Japan Times
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Westinghouse gets two U.S. reactors
Toshiba Corp. said Tuesday its U.S. nuclear power unit, Westinghouse Electric Co., and U.S. engineering firm Shaw Group Inc. have won a deal to build two nuclear reactors in Florida.
They will construct the AP1000 reactors for Progress Energy Florida, a subsidiary of U.S. power utility firm Progress Energy, Toshiba said. The first of the reactors is planned to start operation in 2016 and the second in 2017.
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Toyota bests GM output a second year
NEW YORK (Kyodo) General Motors Corp. produced an estimated 8.15 million vehicles worldwide in 2008, down 12 percent from the previous year, GM officials said Monday, making it certain Toyota Motor Corp. will remain the world's largest automaker in output terms.
Late last year, Toyota said its global output would probably come to 9.23 million vehicles, down 3 percent.
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5,000 homes still without water
AOMORI (Kyodo) Tap water has been restored as of Tuesday to all but 5,000 out of 90,000 households in seven cities and towns in Aomori Prefecture that were affected by a broken duct, water supply companies said.
The cutoff that started Thursday initially affected some 230,000 people in 90,000 households. The 5,000 households, in Hachinohe and Hashikami, still only have tap water for certain hours of the day, the companies said.
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Furukawa airs hopes for ISS mission in '11
Astronaut Satoshi Furukawa expressed his hope of contributing to the field of life sciences as a crew member of a six-month mission to the International Space Station beginning around spring 2011.
"I want to contribute to life science experiments and hope this will help prepare for a time in the near future when anyone can go into space easily," the 44-year-old doctor told a news conference Monday in Tokyo.
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LDP figure hits Hibiya jobless as slackers, retracts gaffe
Parliamentary Secretary for Internal Affairs and Communications Tetsushi Sakamoto on Tuesday retracted controversial remarks in which he questioned the willingness of unemployed people to find work.
Referring to the hundreds of laid-off temp workers and others who sought shelter over the weekend at a tent village in Tokyo, the Liberal Democratic Party member said at a New Year's address Monday, "I wonder if people who are really serious about working gathered there."
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Senkaku fishery talks to restart
TAIPEI (Kyodo) Taiwan and Japan have agreed to restart negotiations next month on joint development of fishery resources in disputed waters after nearly four years of stalled talks, the island's semiofficial agency involved in ties with Tokyo said Tuesday.
The two sides have not settled on dates and the roster of negotiators, said Tsai Ming-yao, secretary general of the Association for East Asian Relations.
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Teachers beset by unruly parents
When the 27-year-old rookie elementary school teacher in Kanagawa Prefecture began receiving phone calls from the mother of one of his students demanding an apology from the parents of their child's alleged "bullies," he thought it was just a misunderstanding by an overprotective parent.
The teacher, who declined to be named, didn't see any bullying among his first-graders, and the child in question seemed to be doing fine, enjoying school life.
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Two more cabbies attacked
OSAKA (Kyodo) Two cab drivers were assaulted early Tuesday in Osaka Prefecture, but the cases are not believed related to two recent slayings of taxi drivers and a robbery in the Kansai region.
Police arrested temp worker Masahito Sawamura, 23, for inflicting minor injuries on Hirofumi Minamoto, a 53-year-old cab driver, with a box cutter in Neyagawa and trying to run away without paying his fare.
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Saizeriya to post ¥5.8 billion loss
Italian restaurant chain Saizeriya Co. said Tuesday it expects to post a group net loss of ¥5.8 billion instead of an earlier projected profit of ¥4.2 billion for the business year ending in August.
The projected loss represents a sharp deterioration from its ¥4.01 billion profit last year.
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Women's dream of becoming airline pilots getting less elusive
More Japanese women are fulfilling their dream in a field long dominated by men and have achieved what was once thought to be a pie in the sky for females — flying a commercial airplane.
"I had no idea why people used to say to me, 'No you can't be a pilot because you are a woman,' " said Kumiko Yamauchi, 31, who joined Air Nippon, an All Nippon Airways affiliate, in the 2004 business year and became its first female copilot in January 2007.
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