NATIONAL Shoichiro Beppu, a reporter at public broadcaster NHK’s America General Bureau in New York, was chosen Monday as the recipient of the 2007 Vaughn-Uyeda Prize for contributions made by Japanese journalists in the field of international affairs. [KYODO]

NATIONAL Japan’s oldest person, 113-year-old Tsuneyo Toyonaga, died Friday from old age, her relatives said. [MAINICHI]

NATIONAL The number of money laundering cases in Japan in which people were arrested or had papers sent to prosecutors increased in 2007 by 40 from the year before to a record 184, the National Police Agency said in an annual report Thursday. [KYODO]

NATIONAL The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that a collection of pictures by the late American photographer Robert Mapplethorpe showing male nudes could not be called an indecent publication, scrapping an earlier import ban on the collection by Japanese customs. [KYODO]

NATIONAL More than 2,800 people have complained of feeling sick after eating frozen food from China, but none other than the original 10 victims was chemically poisoned, health officials say. [THE JAPAN TIMES]

NATIONAL Justice Minister Kunio Hatoyama told an advisory board Wednesday to study the possibility of legally lowering the age of adulthood from 20 to 18. [THE JAPAN TIMES]

NATIONAL The Environment Ministry said Thursday it has set a target of reducing per capita household garbage generation, excluding recyclables, by 20 percent from the fiscal 2000 level to about 530 grams a day by fiscal 2015. [KYOTO]

NATIONAL Police saved the lives of as many as 72 suicidal people last year after receiving information from Internet service providers about their entries on Web sites. [MAINICHI]

NATIONAL Japan has officially lodged a protest with the United States over the alleged rape of a 14-year-old girl in Okinawa Prefecture by a U.S. Marine, saying it strongly deplores the incident and calling for thorough measures to prevent similar occurrences, Chief Cabinet Secretary Nobutaka Machimura said Tuesday. (7) [KYODO]

NATIONAL More than 2,700 people have reported suffering health problems in the wake of a report that pesticide-contaminated gyoza produced in China had sickened 10 people in Japan, according to the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry. [YOMIURI]

NATIONAL A plane believed to be a Russian air force bomber intruded into Japanese airspace early Saturday, Japanese officials said, prompting a scramble from 24 Japanese planes, including F-15 fighters, and sparking a government protest. [MAINICHI]

NATIONAL Police investigators have decided to use chemical fingerprinting to help identify the place where packets of Chinese-made dumplings were contaminated with insecticide in a nationwide poisoning scare. (1)

NATIONAL In the wake of poisonings in Japan linked to Chinese-made gyoza, some anti-Japan messages have been appearing on Chinese Web sites while Internet postings critical of China have emerged in Japan. [YOMIURI]

NATIONAL Another type of pesticide has been detected in “gyoza” dumplings made by Tianyang Food, the Chinese company under fire over its suspected link to recent food poisonings in Japan, a distributor of the dumplings said Tuesday. [THE JAPAN TIMES]

NATIONAL A probe into poisoning caused by frozen Chinese-made dumplings has been narrowed down to two products that could cause further harm, but most of the packets have still not been recovered, investigators said. [MAINICHI]

NATIONAL Up to 100,000 people could be hospitalized per day with bird flu if its virus mutates into one that spreads from people to people, a high-ranking official of the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry said. [MAINICHI]

NATIONAL Three death-row inmates were executed at three separate detention centers on Friday, the Justice Ministry announced. [MAINICHI]

NATIONAL More than 60 new victims of food poisoning from frozen Chinese-made “gyoza” dumplings have been discovered in 18 different prefectures after the first 10 victims were discovered in Chiba and Hyogo Prefecture on Wednesday.

NATIONAL Nearly half of all road fatalities in Japan last year involved elderly people aged 65 or over, a survey by the National Police Agency (NPA) has found. [MAINICHI]

NATIONAL An academic panel studying the pros and cons of surrogate births agreed Wednesday to recommend basically banning them by law and punishing all those involved except surrogate mothers. [THE JAPAN TIMES]