Passengers aboard a cruise ship south of Tokyo have finally started to go home, after spending two weeks in quarantine.

NHK World's Haruka Nouchi reported from Yokohama Port.

A court in Osaka has found a former school operator and his wife guilty of defrauding the central and local governments of school-related subsidies.

The former president of Moritomo Gakuen, Yasunori Kagoike, and his wife Junko were charged with defrauding the central government, Osaka Prefecture and Osaka City of some 170 million yen, or about 1.5 million dollars.

Authorities in some prefectures where people are confirmed to be infected with the new coronavirus are providing multilingual information services for foreigners visiting or living in Japan.

Okinawa Prefecture has set up a round-the-clock hotline serviced by medical professionals who provide information on medical institutions that can handle foreign languages. The service is available in English, Mandarin, Cantonese, Korean, Portuguese, Spanish, Vietnamese and Thai. The phone number is 0570-050-235.

Passengers aboard a cruise ship south of Tokyo are finally starting to go home, after spending two weeks in quarantine. NHK World's Haruka Nouchi filed this report from Yokohama Port.

NOUCHI: It's been a busy morning at Yokohama port.

Passengers aboard a virus-stricken cruise ship are finally on dry land. Those who served out a 14-day quarantine aboard the Diamond Princess have begun disembarking, with Japanese officials expecting 500 people to do so by the end of Wednesday.

The first group of passengers were required to test negative for the new coronavirus. They also could not have any symptoms.

Japan's health ministry says about 500 passengers are expected to disembark on Wednesday from a cruise ship that has been quarantined at Yokohama, near Tokyo, because of an onboard outbreak of the new coronavirus.

The ministry says passengers who have tested negative for the virus and show no symptoms will start leaving the Diamond Princess on Wednesday following a 14-day quarantine period.

South Korea's presidential plane has left Japan, carrying evacuees from the quarantined cruise ship Diamond Princess.

The plane took off from Haneda Airport in Tokyo early Wednesday morning.

Japanese authorities say nearly 100 people were confirmed on Tuesday to be infected with the new coronavirus, including one person under the age of 20.

Three men in Tokyo are among the new cases.

Passengers and crew on a quarantined cruise ship at Yokohama Port in Japan are to start disembarking soon if they are not infected with the new coronavirus.

Japan's health ministry plans to test all remaining passengers and crew on the Diamond Princess for the virus. They are to disembark starting on Wednesday if the results are negative and they show no symptoms.

Teams of researchers from across the world have reported on how some patients infected with the new coronavirus have recovered.

A group at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published a report in a medical magazine on the treatment of a 35-year-old male patient who returned from Chinese city of Wuhan, the epicenter of outbreak. He was confirmed to have been infected after complaining of coughing and a fever.

An expert who examined quarantine measures on a cruise ship at Yokohama Port near Tokyo says keeping passengers and crew on board was appropriate for curbing domestic infections.

Professor Shigeru Sakurai of Iwate Medical University led an expert team from the Japanese Society for Infection Prevention and Control on a two-day inspection on the ship Diamond Princess last week.

Japanese health officials say 88 more people on a quarantined cruise ship have tested positive for the new coronavirus, bringing the total number of confirmed cases from the ship to 542.

Health ministry officials say that of those recently confirmed infected, 65 are not showing any symptoms.

Police in Kobe, western Japan, are investigating the theft of 6,000 surgical masks from a hospital in the city. Masks are in short supply in the country due to the coronavirus outbreak.

Staff at the Japanese Red Cross Kobe Hospital noticed last Thursday that four cartons containing 120 boxes of masks were missing. The hospital notified the police on Monday.

Japan's Foreign Ministry says the new head of the International Atomic Energy Agency will visit the country next week.

IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi will visit Japan from Monday to Friday. This will be his first visit to Japan since he took office in December following the death of his predecessor Yukiya Amano from Japan.