Japan estimated on Tuesday that it has more than 5,000 "net cafe refugees," a new class of working poor who live in all-night lounges and are seen as a sign of a growing rich-poor gap.
Internet cafes and "manga" comic cafes are omnipresent in urban Japan, offering couches, computers, soft drinks and comic books to stressed businessmen or commuters who missed their train.
But a government survey found that an estimated 5,400 people have virtually moved in to the 24-hour cafes.
It said some 80 percent of Japan's "net cafe refugees" are men and that 52.7 percent said they decided to live in the lounges because they lost their jobs.
Another 13.8 percent said they moved into the net cafes because of deteriorating relationships with their families, according to the survey by the health and welfare ministry.
The average salary of the "refugees" was ¥113,000 (US$983) per month -- about equivalent to what a minimum-wage employee would earn in Tokyo if working 40 hours a week.
The health ministry launched the first-of-a-kind survey, which questioned operators and customers at 3,000 Internet cafes nationwide, amid growing national attention to the problem.
The Bolivian government on Friday struck a deal with protesting miners, but was still grappling with blockades and demonstrations by other workers across La Paz. Other groups are still blocking access roads into the city, which is also the seat of the government. Police on Thursday prevented the miners from entering the main square by using tear gas, while the demonstrators hurled stones and explosives with slingshots. Protests against the policies of Bolivian President Rodrigo Paz have convulsed the Andean nation since early this month, and roadblocks were choking routes into La Paz throughout Friday, the national road authority said. Miners demanded that Paz
The Philippines said it has asked the country’s Supreme Court to allow it to arrest former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte’s chief drug war enforcer to stand trial in an international tribunal. The International Criminal Court (ICC) last week unsealed an arrest warrant against Philippine Senator Ronald dela Rosa, accusing him along with Duterte and other “coperpetrators” of the “crime against humanity of murder.” Dela Rosa briefly sought refuge in the Philippine Senate last week while asking the Philippine Supreme Court to stop an ongoing attempt by government agents to arrest him. “By his own conduct, he has placed himself outside the protection of
A ship anchored off the United Arab Emirates (UAE) was seized and taken toward Iran and another — a cargo ship near Oman — sank after being attacked, authorities said on Thursday, as tensions escalated near the Strait of Hormuz. It was not immediately clear who was behind these incidents, but they happened as a senior Iranian official reiterated his country’s claim of control over the waterway and another said it had a right to seize oil tankers connected to the US. The turmoil in the strait has been a sticking point for weeks in talks between the US and Iran to
The researchers in Ireland looked at their computer screen, marveling at a medieval book tracked down in a Roman library. They flipped through its digitized pages and found their sought-after treasure: the oldest surviving English poem. “We were extremely surprised. We were speechless. We couldn’t believe our eyes when we first saw that,” said Elisabetta Magnanti, a visiting research fellow at Trinity College Dublin’s school of English. The poem was also within the main body of Latin text, she said, calling it “extraordinary.” Composed in Old English by a Northumbrian agricultural worker in the 7th century, Caedmon’s Hymn appears within some copies of
RSS