News Headlines - 26 July 2018
▽Japan sends last six Aum death row inmates to the gallows | The Japan Times
The six remaining Aum Shinrikyo cult members on death row were executed Thursday morning, the Justice Ministry said, with all 13 of the cult members sentenced to death now having been hanged over the span of three weeks.
The executions followed the hanging of Shoko Asahara, the founder of the doomsday cult, and six former senior members of the group on July 6.
▽Official arrested as ministry is rocked by 2nd bribery scandal：The Asahi Shimbun
The education ministry is reeling from the arrest of a second high-ranking bureaucrat this month in another suspected bribery case involving the same alleged "fixer."
Investigators with the Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office on July 26 arrested Kazuaki Kawabata, 57, director-general for international affairs at the education ministry, on suspicion of accepting bribes in the form of wining and dining when he was assigned to work as a vice president at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) between August 2015 and March 2017... Also arrested on July 26 was Koji Taniguchi, 47, a former executive with a medical care consulting company in Tokyo. He is suspected of providing lavish meals and drinks totaling about 1.4 million yen ($12,600) that constituted the bribe.
▽Toyota to double production in China to 2 mil. units in early 2020s - The Mainichi
Toyota Motor Corp. is planning to double its annual production in China to around 2 million units in the early 2020s in an effort to catch up with its rivals in the world's largest auto market, a source close to the matter said Wednesday.
Toyota manufactured 1.14 million cars and sold 1.29 million units in China last year, lagging behind Volkswagen AG and Nissan Motor Co., which sold 4.18 million and 1.51 million cars, respectively.
▽North Korea to transfer remains of U.S. soldiers from Korean War on Friday: Yonhap | Reuters
North Korea will transfer the remains of an unspecified number of soldiers killed in the Korean War on Friday, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reported, after accepting about 100 wooden caskets sent by the United States.
On Wednesday night, President Nicolás Maduro announced his plan to tame Venezuela’s brutal hyperinflation, which the International Monetary Fund says is on track to top 1 million percent this year. The president announced that our nearly worthless currency, the bolivar, is to shed five zeroes. From September, Venezuelans will get a new “sovereign bolivar” for each 100,000 of their old bolivars.
