Overview
- Prosecutors in Kobe declined to indict Governor Motohiko Saito over alleged election law violations, citing insufficient evidence, and likewise dropped the case against the PR firm president.
- Six additional complaints tied to Saito and the gubernatorial race were also closed for lack of evidence after earlier police searches and document seizures in February.
- A joint Hokkaido–Hyogo task force arrested a 29‑year‑old Osaka man on suspicion of serving as a phone caller in a Dubai‑based fraud ring that extracted about 27.7 million yen from elderly victims.
- Sapporo city said a brown bear that repeatedly entered Maruyama Zoo since November 9 was captured in a box trap and euthanized after scaling a fence over two meters high, with cameras, electric fencing, and a full closure of adjacent Maruyama Park deployed as countermeasures.
- In Sendai, a school‑age boy found collapsed in a residential building on November 10 was pronounced dead at a hospital as police investigate the possibility of a fall.