Someone Made A Boo Boo

This is a little bit embarrassing.

The big headline in Japan yesterday was that someone is killing Government officials who were involved with making a mess of the Pension system. The former Vice Health Minister and his wife were murdered, and the wife of another former Vice Health Minister was stabbed by someone pretending to be her postman. Over 64 million pension records were lost (it was a huge crisis when I was there) and, although it hasn't been proven that the attacks are linked, it's looking that way.

So where did it go amiss? Mainichi, a leading newspaper were hot on the tails of criminals pre-announcing their crimes online and found an entry on Wikipedia detailing exactly that: six hours before the actual murders. Mainichi printed this 'fact' across their front page yesterday morning for the world to see.

However, and this is a big however, the time-stamp was not Japanese Standard Time but GMT: three hours after the murders. They even printed (in large font) the innocent and unsuspecting name of the author who had updated the Wikipedia entry. Oops.