Pair steals 12 mil. yen in robbery at pachinko pinball parlor
December 28, 2005Two men stole 12.2 million yen early Thursday in a robbery at a pachinko pinball parlor in Ibaraki Prefecture after threatening the manager and employees at knifepoint, police said. The men broke into Zent 245 in Hitachinaka through the back door at 1:40 a.m., and ordered parlor manager Minoru Nousu, 42, to open the safe, threatening him with a kitchen knife.
1 killed, 10 injured in 8-vehicle collisions
December 28, 2005A junior high school student died and 10 other people were injured in a multiple vehicle pileup Wednesday evening on a road loaded with snow in Namerikawa, Toyama Prefecture, highway police said. The accident, which involved eight vehicles, including a van, a large truck and passenger cars, occurred around 5:40 p.m. on eastbound lanes of the Hokuriku Expressway.
Boy survives scrape with 120 kph express train
December 28, 2005A 14-year-old boy had a scrape with an express train in Hakusan, Ishikawa Prefecture, on Wednesday night but survived the accident without life-threatening injuries, the police said. The second-year junior high school student was walking near the railway of the JR Hokuriku Line when the nine-car train with about 200 passengers heading to Osaka from Kanazawa passed him from behind at about 120 kilometers per hour around 7:45 p.m., the police said.
Police disrupt Chinese Christmas gathering, detain 12
December 28, 2005About 200 police officers stopped a Christmas gathering Sunday in western China and detained 12 people for lacking permits, a U.S. Christian aid group said Wednesday. The police stopped a gathering in a rented commercial building in Manasi County in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region as 210 people gathered for a holiday event, according to a statement from the China Aid Association.