Transcript

Hello and welcome to today’s news from TotemoTech on May 25th, 2024. In today’s news, Panasonic has officially launched its refurbished electronics sales service on April 10th. The company will now sell refurbished products in addition to new ones at Panasonic stores. This move follows Hitachi GLS, which has been selling refurbished electronics since 2022, and Yamada Denki, a major electronics retailer that has been offering refurbished products since 2001. The appeal of these products lies in the fact that they come with a warranty.

In other news, Sharp announced on the 24th that it has signed a cross-licensing agreement with Xiaomi, a Chinese company specializing in mobile software. As a result, the two companies will drop all ongoing patent infringement lawsuits in China. This agreement marks a friendly resolution to their dispute.

Moving on, starting in June, the government has mandated that companies include the amount of income tax reduction on employees’ pay slips due to the introduction of a fixed tax reduction. This requirement has sparked dissatisfaction among companies’ accounting departments. The government’s intention to allow citizens to feel the tax reduction quickly is evident, but for the accounting departments, it is seen as a ‘grateful inconvenience’ due to the increased administrative burden.

In Osaka, two public high schools have reported incidents of lost personal information. The Osaka Board of Education announced on May 24th that USB flash drives containing students’ personal information and answer sheets for end-of-term exams have gone missing. The board has already apologized and explained the situation to the parents, but no cases of information leakage or other damages have been reported.

In a cybersecurity incident, Sekisui House, a leading Japanese housing construction company, has experienced a cyber attack. The company revealed on May 24th that there has been a data breach on its membership site, ‘Sekisui House Net Owners Club.’ It is estimated that over 500,000 pieces of information, including email addresses and passwords of members and employees, may have been leaked. Additionally, it has been confirmed that nearly 300,000 pieces of information were actually leaked.

Moving to politics, the Liberal Democratic Party held a meeting on May 24th to discuss measures against fraudulent advertisements impersonating celebrities on social media. They presented a proposal to the government, calling for stricter pre-screening of advertisements by platform operators and a system revision that prohibits the publication of ads without the consent of the individuals involved. The party plans to submit the proposal to Prime Minister Fumio Kishida next week.

And finally, Panasonic has announced the release of the ‘LUMIX S9,’ a compact and lightweight full-frame sensor camera. This camera is specifically designed for social media users. The suspicion that Panasonic was preparing a compact and lightweight model in the S series was confirmed during the ‘CP+2024’ event in February.

That’s all for today’s news. Thank you for listening to TotemoTech. Stay tuned for more updates on the latest tech developments. Visit JapanDailyNews.com for the news, yen exchange rates, and a daily Japanese proverb.

Keywords - japan, tech, news