Wasted Daily News

Japan’s Foreign Ministry denied on Saturday media reports that Beijing had for the first time acknowledged that pesticide-laced dumplings — at the heart of a bilateral row — had probably been contaminated in China.

Japanese media, including NHK public television, said China had told Japan an individual working with the factory that produced the poisoned dumplings was probably to blame for causing food poisoning in China in June. Read the rest of this entry →

Diamonds really are forever. Algordanza, a small company based in the mountainous southeast of Switzerland, uses the ashes of dead people to make diamonds as a permanent memento for their nearest and dearest.

And with prices starting at less than 5,000 euros ($7,488), the jewels are not solely the preserve of the jetset.

“Some people find it helpful to go to the cemetery and grieve, and they leave their grief in the cemetery,” said Algordanza Chairman Veit Brimer. “There are some people who, for whatever reason, do not want to have this farewell. Read the rest of this entry →

The Japanese government will have to pay damages to the parents of a sailor who hanged himself after being repeatedly insulted by his superior, in the first such court ruling involving a civil servant, media said.

The Fukuoka High Court in southern Japan ordered 3.5 million yen ($32,000) be paid to the parents of the petty officer third class, a court spokesman said, declining to give further details.

Kyodo news agency said the court recognized that the sailor’s suicide had been caused by depression, a result of stress accumulated from insults such as: “You are not qualified as a petty officer third class” and “Are you dumb?” Read the rest of this entry →

A 79-year-old woman slashed two women with a fruit knife near a crowded Tokyo railway station because she wanted police help after running away from a shelter for homeless people, police said on Saturday.

The victims, in their 20s, were only slightly injured in the attack on Friday night in a crowded shopping and entertainment district of the city. The elderly woman was arrested from the scene, a spokesman at the Shibuya police station said. Read the rest of this entry →

Morning train commuters in Tokyo were joined on their way to work by an unusual companion Wednesday: a wild monkey. A security guard spotted the monkey near ticket gates in Shibuya Station, said Norihiru Masui, a spokesman for train operator Tokyu Corp.

The monkey climbed to a perch high atop a departure board, and around 30 policemen surrounded the area and attempted to snare it with a variety of nets, as commuters crowded around and snapped pictures with their cell phones. Read the rest of this entry →

A 61-year-old Japanese woman has given birth to a surrogate child, an obstetrician in central Japan said on Wednesday. She is believed to be the oldest surrogate mother yet recorded in Japan.

The woman became pregnant with an embryo created from the egg of her daughter, who has no uterus, and sperm from the daughter’s husband, the maternity clinic involved said in a statement.

The clinic is run by Yahiro Netsu, who has defied longstanding opposition to surrogate births from Japanese obstetricians. Read the rest of this entry →

A Toyota Motor Corp employee died of overwork after logging more than 106 hours of overtime in a month, a judge ruled Friday, reversing a ministry’s earlier decision not to pay compensation to his widow.

The Toyota Labor Standards Inspection office, a local branch of Japan’s labor ministry, refused to pay the widow the usual compensation for a spouse’s work-related death, saying the man had only logged 45 hours of overtime in the month before he died, Japanese media reported. Read the rest of this entry →