Earlier this year, whale hunters and environmentalists clashed in the Southern Ocean.
A high-speed environmentalist vessel, the Ady Gil, and a Japanese security vessel collided, in a culmination of weeks of tension over whale hunting.
After the incident, the captain of the damaged trimaran, Pete Bethune, boarded the Japanese ship, Shonan Maru 2, to deliver a letter of protest.
He was then held on board the vessel for just under a month, taken back to Tokyo and arrested by Japanese authorities on Friday morning.
The New Zealander is expected to be charged with trespass.

The first delivery of at least 850 canisters of high-level radioactive vitrified waste arrived Tuesday morning by ship from the U.K. in Rokkasho, Aomori Prefecture, where it will sit in storage for decades before being buried deep underground. Antinuclear activists argue that with no local government yet willing to host a final disposal site and concern over the international security and environmental risks of transporting so much nuclear waste between the U.K. and Japan, the shipments should end.

Kenichi Ikeda of the city of Nagasaki has carried around three bags and a secret he could not tell his family at home — inside the bags were hundreds of women’s undergarments that he had stolen over 10 years, police said.
Police arrested the 36-year-old truck driver, who allegedly had stolen about 260 pairs of women’s underwear and kept them in bags behind the driver’s seat of his truck. “I couldn’t leave them home because I have a wife and children,” Ikeda was quoted as saying by police.
Read the rest of …

The Oscar win for documentary “The Cove” is not getting much applause in Taiji, the port city in western Japan where Louie Psihoyos and his crew secretly filmed the annual dolphin slaughter.

“This film has mistakes of fact,” mayor Kazutaka Sangen told local press. “I’m surprised that it won the award even though its content is not truthful.”

Tokyo-based Medallion Media will release the doc in Japan this summer.

Preparatory education for university entrance examinations is an important rite of passage for many Japanese teenagers. This period of preparation can be a time of profound personal growth, confidence-building, and personal triumph for many of these ambitious youths. Toward that end, Tokyo-based, Mustard Seed Academy (MSA) recently celebrated the debut of its new campus in Shizuoka City last month, introducing to the community a unique approach to preparatory education in Japan. According to author, school dean, and senior English instructor Hajime Nakazawa, “If students deeply experience their worth and value, …

Crown Prince Naruhito of Japan on Sunday began a three-day official visit to Ghana at the head of a 30-strong delegation. He was welcomed at Kotoka international airport by Vice President John Dramani Mahama to traditional Ashanti drumming and dance, an AFP reporter saw. The visit is at the invitation of Ghana and is aimed at boosting ties between the two countries, officials said.
The prince is expected to hold talks with President John Atta-Mills on Monday at the presidential palace, known as the Castle.
Read the rest of the story: Crown …

Australian police searched two anti-whaling ships at the request of Japanese authorities on Saturday, seizing log books and videos, after activists called a halt to their turbulent harassment campaign. Police boarded the Sea Shepherd group’s Steve Irwin and Bob Barker ships as they were greeted by well-wishers in Tasmania, but refused to reveal the reasons for the search warrant. “As a result of a formal referral from Japanese authorities, the Australian Federal Police can confirm it conducted a search warrant in boarding the Steve Irwin this morning,” a police spokesman …

Japan’s government will keep a US military base on Okinawa, meeting the demands of the Obama administration, even if that means alienating a coalition partner and local people, a vice defense minister said.

Okinawan residents, who want the Marine base moved off the island, will be offered compensation in return for accepting the government’s decision, Akihisa Nagashima, said in an interview in Tokyo yesterday, without elaborating. His remarks are the most definitive by a member of the government indicating that Japan will keep the facility on Okinawa.

Nissan Motor Co is recalling about 540,000 vehicles worldwide due to potential defects in brake pedal pins and fuel-gauge components, mostly in the United States.

Five models from 2008 to 2010 model years, including the Titan truck and Armada SUV, will be recalled due to risk of the brake pedal pins partially disengaging, causing a loss of normal braking ability.

Japan’s lower house on Tuesday passed a record trillion-dollar budget that will add to an already bulging public debt mountain as Tokyo tries to stimulate a recovery in the world’s second biggest economy.
The 92.3 trillion yen (1.0 trillion dollar) budget includes new child-care allowances, free public high school tuition and other measures promised by the centre-left government that took power in September.
To finance it, the government will issue a record 44.3 trillion yen in new bonds.
Read the rest of the story: Japan passes record $1 trillion budget
Photo: (AFP/Kazuhiro Nogi)