The health ministry said Thursday it has detected E. coli inside beef liver for the first time, raising the likelihood that raw liver may soon be banned from the dining table.

The findings, to be discussed by a ministry council next Tuesday, come as the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry has been considering whether to prohibit butchers and restaurants from selling raw beef liver, in the wake of food poisoning deaths from raw beef served at barbecue restaurants earlier this year.
Food poisoning from E. coli can be fatal and thorough heating …

Drugs, and drug culture, are common and prevalent in much of the West. Ditto for Japan, even if superficially the country seems immune to such devices. Its not.
Sometimes buying drugs in Japan is as easy as walking up to someone standing on a corner in Tokyos Roppongi. Sometimes, its far more complex, say, if you are in some small town or a boring suburb. Enter the internet.
Twenty-year-old Ryuji Ota and 9 other accomplices set up a drug trafficking ring on 2channel, the countrys largest bulletin board. Westerners are perhaps familiar …

Meiji Co. was tipped off on three separate occasions in mid-November that its milk formula may be contaminated with radioactive cesium, but ignored the information for about two weeks, sources said.

The major food maker only looked into the matter after it was approached by Kyodo News and a citizens’ group earlier this month, the sources said.
Meiji said it had initially concluded that "further investigation was unnecessary" because one of the tipoffs was made by an anonymous caller and the other two, from concerned consumers, cited Internet information the company was …

Masao Yoshida, the former head of the Fukushima No. 1 plant, has esophageal cancer, Tokyo Electric Power Co. said Friday.

The cumulative amount of radiation Yoshida, 56, was exposed to since the nuclear crisis started in March was 70 millisieverts, Tepco said, adding it is unlikely his cancer is linked to the radioactive materials spewed by the plant’s crippled nuclear reactors.
The utility said no signs of esophageal cancer were detected during Yoshida’s regular medical checkup in autumn 2010.
Read the rest of the story: Plant’s ex-chief has esophageal cancer: Tepco.

Scientists in Japan have begun studying the “language” of oysters in an effort to find out what they are saying about their environment.
Researchers are monitoring the opening and closing of the molluscs in response to changes in seawater, such as reduced oxygen or red tide, a suffocating algal bloom, that can lead to mass die-offs.
Using a device they have nicknamed the “kai-lingual”, a play on the Japanese word “kai” or shellfish, scientists from Kagawa University want to see if they can decode oyster movements that might warn of possible problems.
Read …

Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda welcomed Sunday the outcome of just-ended U.N. climate talks, citing its adoption of a road map for launching a new framework in 2020 to tackle greenhouse gas emissions.

The 17th Conference of the Parties to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change "could reap significant results such as a road map toward building a new legal framework in which all countries participate," Noda said in a released comment.
The newly endorsed measure is supported by major emitters China and the United States.
Read the rest of the story: …

The top U.S. nuclear official in Japan said Thursday that his team warned higher-ups that a spent fuel pool at a malfunctioning nuclear plant could be at risk of running dry, an issue that created a political controversy between U.S. officials and their Japanese counterparts.
U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission official Charles Casto was assigned to direct site operations for the U.S. government’s response to the nuclear disaster at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant shortly after the accident last March. The plant was struck by a massive earthquake and a tsunami on …

Japan’s trade minister Yukio Edano has denied reports that troubled nuclear firm Tepco is about to receive a huge government bailout.
Mr Edano said Tepco, which runs the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant, had made no requests for public money.
Reports said the government would buy about 1tn yen ($12.9bn; £8.2bn) of Tepco shares next year – which would in effect nationalise the firm.
Tepco shares plummeted on Thursday, ending the day down more than 11%
Read the rest of the story: Japan’s Yukio Edano rebuffs Tepco bailout claim.

Japan’s two main opposition parties submitted parliamentary censure motions against two of Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda’s Cabinet ministers, and may boycott the next Diet session unless they are fired.
The Liberal Democratic Party and the New Komeito party submitted the non-binding reprimands to the Upper House today against Defense Minister Yasuo Ichikawa and Consumers Affairs Minister Kenji Yamaoka. Ichikawa said this week he will cut his salary to take responsibility after a deputy compared the planned relocation of a U.S. military base on Okinawa to rape.
The opposition-controlled upper chamber is likely …

Japan is spending 2.3 billion yen $29 million from its supplementary budget for tsunami reconstruction to fund the countrys annual whaling hunt in the Antarctic Ocean, a fisheries official confirmed Thursday.
Tatsuya Nakaoku, a Fisheries Agency official in charge of whaling, defended the move, saying the funding helps support Japans whaling industry as a whole, including some whaling towns along the devastated northeastern coast. One ship on the hunt is based in Ishinomaki, a town hit badly by the March 11 tsunami, he said.
The budget request was made to beef up …