A Japanese man who brokered human transplant operations on the Internet has been arrested in China and charged with violating laws on organ trading, Chinese officials said on Tuesday.
The man was arrested in northeast China's Shenyang City for "illegal trading" in recent days, said foreign ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao (
Liu said the man had posted messages on the Internet since 2004 under the name of his China-based company to provide organ transplants for Japanese patients.
"This has violated the Ministry of Health's regulations which ban the trading of organs ... so he was arrested," Liu told reporters, adding that others involved in the case have also been detained.
Chinese police also confirmed the arrest.
Hiroyuki Nagase is believed to have set up the "China International Organ Transplant Support Centre" and helped to arrange organ transplants for more than 200 Japanese patients in hospitals in Liaoning and Shanghai, Japan's Jiji press said.
Before his arrest, he told Jiji there was a shortage of organ donors worldwide and China was the last resort for Japanese who failed to find donors locally.
He said 90 percent of Chinese donors were death-row convicts and Chinese hospitals tended to give preferential treatment to foreigners including Japanese because "they can earn hard currency."
But he denied that his company was engaged in the sales of organs, saying that it did not directly deal with organ providers.
Amid ongoing claims that taking body parts from executed prisoners is common, China in May formally banned trading in human organs, prohibiting all organizations and individuals from trading them.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS