TOKYO/MANILA (Reuters) – Japanese billionaire Kazuo Okada was facing a crisis: work on his dream casino by the bay in Manila was going nowhere.

Instead of a world-class resort packed with Chinese high-rollers, Okada, 70, was sitting on a $300-million patchwork of reclaimed and undeveloped land next to the Manila airport that by the middle of 2009 was threatening to become a money pit, according to company records and people involved.

TOKYO/MANILA, Nov 19 (Reuters) – Prosecutors in Manila will
investigate whether bribes were paid in relation to the $2
billion Manila Bay casino being developed by Japanese
billionaire Kazuo Okada, a spokesman for Philippine President
Benigno Aquino said on Monday.

Edwin Lacierda, a spokesman for Aquino, told reporters the
country’s Department of Justice had been asked to investigate
whether bribes were paid in relation to the project being
developed by Okada’s Tokyo-based company Universal Entertainment
.

TOKYO/MANILA (Reuters) – Shares in Universal Entertainment Corp sank to a nine-month low on Monday after Reuters reported U.S. gaming regulators were investigating payments from its affiliates to an associate of the former head of the Philippine gaming regulator.

Shares in the Tokyo-based company closed down 11.04 percent and have lost nearly 30 percent of their value this year. Universal is required to the Nevada Gaming Control Board because it supplies slot machines for casinos in that state in addition to making and marketing “pachinko” machines for the Japanese market.

TOKYO (Reuters) – U.S. gaming regulators are investigating millions of dollars paid by affiliates of Japanese billionaire Kazuo Okada’s Universal Entertainment Corp to a former consultant for the Philippine gaming authority around the time the company was lobbying to win concessions for a $2 billion Manila casino.

A Universal subsidiary made a $5 million payment in May 2010 to Rodolfo Soriano, a close associate of the former head of the Philippine gaming regulator, according to a Reuters examination of bank records, corporate filings, court documents and records prepared by Universal staff. The payment was made via a shell company in Hong Kong and was part of $40 million in transfers made by Universal’s U.S. affiliate Aruze USA that are now a focus for investigators.

TOKYO, Nov 16 (Reuters) – U.S. gaming regulators are
investigating millions of dollars paid by affiliates of Japanese
billionaire Kazuo Okada’s Universal Entertainment Corp
to a former consultant for the Philippine gaming authority
around the time the company was lobbying to win concessions for
a $2 billion Manila casino.

A Universal subsidiary made a $5 million payment in May 2010
to Rodolfo Soriano, a close associate of the former head of the
Philippine gaming regulator, according to a Reuters examination
of bank records, corporate filings, court documents and records
prepared by Universal staff. The payment was made via a shell
company in Hong Kong and was part of $40 million in transfers
made by Universal’s U.S. affiliate Aruze USA that are now a
focus for investigators.

TOKYO (Reuters) – Google Inc has made no move to provide Google Maps for the iPhone 5 after Apple Inc dropped the application in favor of a home-grown but controversial alternative, Google’s Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt said.

Apple launched its own mapping service earlier this month when it began providing the highly anticipated update to its mobile software platform iOS 6 and started selling the iPhone 5.

TOKYO (Reuters) – Even if Japanese track cyclist Kazunari Watanabe’s longshot Olympic dream comes true in London, there will be no happy homecoming. The town no longer exists.

Watanabe’s home town of Futaba sits next to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, which was hit by the March 2011 earthquake and massive tsunami that followed, sparking explosions that scattered radioactive debris and forced the town to be evacuated.

TOKYO, June 14 (Reuters) – Even if Japanese track cyclist
Kazunari Watanabe’s longshot Olympic dream comes true in London,
there will be no happy homecoming. The town no longer exists.

Watanabe’s home town of Futaba sits next to the Fukushima
Daiichi nuclear plant, which was hit by the March 2011
earthquake and massive tsunami that followed, sparking
explosions that scattered radioactive debris and forced the town
to be evacuated.

FUKUSHIMA, Japan (Reuters) – Japanese officials said on Saturday the unprecedented effort to remove spent fuel rods from one of the crippled Fukushima nuclear reactors was on track despite lingering concerns about the structure’s vulnerability to another earthquake.

“I don’t think the situation is unstable,” said Goshi Hosono, Japan’s minister in charge of the response to the nuclear crisis. He was speaking to reporters after his first tour of the twisted and partly destroyed building that houses Fukushima’s No. 4 reactor.

TOKYO (Reuters) – The radiation released in the first days of the Fukushima nuclear disaster was almost 2-1/2 times the amount first estimated by Japanese safety regulators, the operator of the crippled plant said in a report released on Thursday.

Tokyo Electric Power said its own analysis conducted over the past year put the amount of radiation released in the first three weeks of the accident at about one-sixth the radiation released during the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.