Japan's Environment Ministry has decided to establish an expert panel early next year to discuss how to deal with possibly toxic compounds detected near US military bases in the country.

The panel, made up of experts in public health and other fields, is expected to decide domestic targets to keep concentrations of the organofluorine compounds PFOS and PFOA at low levels. The experts will also consider ways to monitor water quality.

A court in Japan has cleared a former high-ranking Finance Ministry bureaucrat of liability for compensation relating to the 2018 suicide of a regional official who was allegedly pressured to falsify government documents.

The Osaka District Court on Friday dismissed a claim for damages filed by the official's widow, Akagi Masako.

A new variant of the coronavirus that was first detected in South Africa has been confirmed in Japan.

On Monday, the health ministry said it was found in a woman in her 30s who arrived at Narita Airport near Tokyo on December 19. She traveled from South Africa.

NHK has learned that records of the dissection of more than 1,000 leprosy patients after their deaths are being kept at national sanatoriums in Japan.

The public broadcaster carried out a survey of 12 sanatoriums after an institution in Kumamoto Prefecture said in September that its records show the bodies of at least 389 of its residents were dissected.

A record 2,684 people were found to have been infected with the coronavirus in Japan on Saturday.

Fourteen deaths have also been reported.

A drawing of bodhisattvas, or Buddhist saints, has been discovered on one of the doors at a World Heritage-listed temple in Kyoto Prefecture.

The door was made nearly 1,000 years ago, when the Byodoin temple was built in what is now Uji City. It was for the temple's phoenix hall.

A plastic container apparently from Iwate Prefecture in northeastern Japan, where a massive earthquake and tsunami struck in 2011, has washed ashore on a remote Japanese island.

The container measures 1.5-meter-long, 1.1-meter-wide and 70-centimeter-deep and was found on the coast of Ishigaki Island in the southern prefecture of Okinawa.

The Japan Coast Guard has rescued another man during a search for a missing Panamanian-registered cargo ship off an island in southwestern Japan.

Coast Guard patrollers say the man was found unconscious on Friday morning about 120 kilometers off Amami Oshima in Kagoshima Prefecture.

There are plenty of markets around the world that might not have a population that’s willing to shell out $1,000 for a smartphone. This is why there are companies that purely make cheap Android phones to sell to the masses. Obviously there are compromises when you make a cheap phone, such as using less premium materials or using lower-end hardware.

Unfortunately, it also seems that in some cases, you might end up compromising on security as well. According to a report from BuzzFeed News, it seems that there are cheap Chinese Android smartphones being sold in regions such as Africa where it has been discovered that these phones actually come preloaded with malware that will steal your money.

Rescue workers have found a man dead in a huge disused underground tank in Yokohama City, near Tokyo. The man is believed to be a missing construction worker in his 60s.

The man was found dead at around 5:30 p.m. on Friday in the cabin of the earth-moving machinery he was operating when he apparently fell into the tank on Tuesday evening.

The argument that the US government is using in their bid to ban TikTok is that they claim that the app collects data on US citizens, which they believe poses a risk to national security. It seems that whatever excuses TikTok is making to defend itself might be moot, especially with a recent discovery.

According to a report from The Wall Street Journal, it appears that towards the end of 2019, TikTok had actually been collecting data on Android users in the form of the user’s MAC addresses. Unlike cookies that can be easily deleted, MAC addresses are unique identifiers that are used especially in digital advertising to identify devices.

The iconic Castrol TOM's Racing Toyota Supra has been found and the racing team has embarked on a project to restore it to its former glory.

Police in Shizuoka Prefecture, central Japan, say they have found the bodies of four people at the site of a warehouse fire. They believe they are three firefighters and one police officer, who had been unaccounted for after rushing into the building shortly after the fire broke out.

Local firefighting authorities say that shortly after 1:30 a.m. on Sunday, they received a report from a security firm that the factory warehouse of a commodities manufacturer, LEC, was on fire in the town of Yoshida.

NHK has learned that a research team of archaeologists and volcanologists have found that Mount Fuji's Hoei eruption in 1707 burned a settlement near the crater.

Little was known about the settlement in the Subashiri district in Oyama Town, Shizuoka Prefecture other than what is written in old documents, as it was completely buried under about 3 meters of ashes, and new homes were built over it.