WEC Class Notes

Japan booed as it advances on yellow cards Nice guys don't necessarily finish last at the World Cup. Fair play, a newly implemented tiebreaker in the group stage of the world's biggest soccer tournament, was put into use for the first time Thursday and Japan came out as the beneficiary. Despite losing 1-0 to Poland, the Japanese were able to advance to the round of 16 because they received fewer yellow cards than Senegal, which lost to Colombia by the same score at the same time. Once Colombia had scored in Samara, Japan knew it had done enough to advance even though it was losing late in its match. The Japanese players slowed play down to almost nothing, softly passing the ball back and forth in little triangles in their own end to waste time. "My decision was to rely on the other match," Japan coach Akira Nishino said. "I'm not too happy about this but ... I forced my players to do what I said. And we went through. "It was an ultimate decision fo...

Why is hi-tech Japan using cassette tapes and faxes? 1. Japan has a reputation for being fascinated by robots and hi-tech gadgets - a nation at the forefront of manufacturing innovation.  But the technological reality in many offices is strikingly different.  This is a country that uses people to do the work of traffic lights and where big-name companies running 10-year-old software is the norm. 2. There are even tape cassettes for sale in the ubiquitous convenience stores for office use, along with fax machines - remember them? Even tech visionaries like Sony still use a fax. 3. "Japanese companies generally lag foreign companies by roughly five-to-10 years in adoption of modern IT practices, particularly those specific to the software industry," says Patrick McKenzie, boss of Starfighter, a software company with operations in Tokyo and Chicago.  "The pace of development is glacial ." 4. It's a curiosity for any observer of a country that ...

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Tuesday pledged zero tolerance on sexual harassment, ordering senior officials to undergo training to prevent abuse after a scandal involving a top government bureaucrat.  "Sexual harassment is a clear violation of human rights. It must never be tolerated," Shinzo Abe told a panel of ministers. "We ask each one of the ministers to implement this emergency measure in a swift manner," he said, referring to a new policy that will require senior bureaucrats to undergo anti-sexual harassment training.  The training will be tied to promotion for bureaucrats in a bid to ensure the success of the effort. The initiative comes after a senior finance ministry official was forced to resign following allegations he sexually harassed female reporters.  He denied the allegations, but a ministry probe found them credible and docked his retirement pay. The finance ministry came under fire for its handling of the allegations, with Fin...