CHUBU Four people believed to be family members died in a fire Tuesday morning that razed their house and destroyed surrounding structures in a mountainous community, police said. (1) [ASAHI]

CHUBU A female prisoner in her 60s died after being placed alone in a soundproof cell at Kasamatsu Prison in Gifu Prefecture, prison officials have announced. [MAINICHI]

CHUBU A woman in Hamatsu, Shizuoka Prefecture suffered serious burns after she accidentally stepped on a can of insecticide and the gas that came out reached a nearby kerosene heater and ignited. [MAINICHI]

CHUBU A male patient died after a doctor gave him three times the proper dose of an anticancer drug to treat a brain tumor, a hospital in Tajimi, Gifu Prefecture has confessed. [MAINICHI]

CHUBU Two teenage boys were arrested Friday for robbing two junior high school boys of 23,000 yen they had received as New Year’s gifts from relatives, police said. [MAINICHI]

CHUBU Tokyo Electric Power Co.‘s Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power station recorded a jolt with a seismic intensity of 7 on the Japanese scale of 7–similar to that of the Great Hanshin Earthquake in 1995–during the Niigata Prefecture Chuetsu Offshore Earthquake in July, it was learned Sunday. [YOMIURI]

CHUBU A fairly strong earthquake jolted Fukui Prefecture Friday afternoon, the Meteorological Agency said. [MAINICHI]

CHUBU To prevent accidents among climbers aiming to see the first sunrise of the year from the summit of Mt. Fuji, police officers will be deployed at the volcano’s fifth station on Dec. 31 and Jan. 1 to turn back any climbers deemed to be too lightly dressed. [YOMIURI]

CHUBU Ninety people were trapped inside gondolas as a ski lift in Nagano Prefecture came to a sudden stop Saturday morning, and the rescue operation was completed half a day later, local police and fire department officials said. [KYODO]

CHUBU Aichi Prefectural Police stepped up its crackdown on cyclists’ traffic violations this year, issuing 92 violation tickets since the beginning of the year, officials said. [MAINICHI]

CHUBU A wheelchair-bound man was killed when he plunged off a station platform in Nagoya onto railway tracks and was run over by an express train, police said. [MAINICHI]

CHUBU A 34-year-old man and a person he met on the Internet were arrested on suspicion of robbing the man’s 22-year-old former girlfriend, according to police. [YOMIURI]

CHUBU A singer was ordered Tuesday to spend 12 years behind bars for strangling a female fan after she urged him to marry her. [MAINICHI]

CHUBU Kansai Electric Power Co. President Shosuke Mori said Monday the firm would examine whether it could resume the suspended pluthermal project at the Takahama Nuclear Power Plant in Takahamacho, Fukui Prefecture. (1) [YOMIURI]

CHUBU About 80 percent of those caught driving while drunk on Aichi roads last month were aware that tougher penalties had been imposed since September, but almost 40 percent of them felt confident cops wouldn’t catch them anyway, an Aichi Prefectural Police study showed Saturday. [MAINICHI]

CHUBU The body of a man who went missing after a plane crash Thursday was found Friday in a mountain in Gifu Prefecture, police said. [KYODO]

CHUBU A not-guilty verdict handed down on a man accused of molesting a woman on a crowded train became fixed as the deadline for prosecutors to file an appeal expired on Wednesday. [MAINICHI]

CHUBU One person died, one is missing and another was seriously injured after a small aircraft crashed near the summit of a mountain in Gifu Prefecture on Thursday morning, police said. [YOMIURI]

CHUBU A man walked into a convenience store in Nagano Prefecture and placed several million yen on the counter while making a purchase, then walked out without the cash and disappeared, police said. (1) [MAINICHI]

CHUBU The Toyama District Court on Wednesday sentenced a man to 25 years in prison for sexually assaulting 14 teenage girls in three prefectures after he confessed to two of the cases that had formed the basis of the wrongful conviction of another man in Toyama Prefecture. [KYODO]