Yahoo Japan Corp. said the news most frequently searched for this year on its Web portal site was about the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington.
The second and third items most in demand were news related to damage inflicted on the Tokyo metropolitan area by typhoon No. 11 and the June 8 killings of students at an elementary school in Osaka Prefecture, according to Japan's largest Internet portal.
The 10 most searched items include five entertainment-related items, including the No. 4 overall item: the arrest of Goro Inagaki, a member of the Japanese pop group SMAP, on suspicion of attempting to dodge a parking ticket in Tokyo's Shibuya district and injuring a female police officer during the attempt.
Yahoo Japan attributed the increase in demand for entertainment-related news to constant Internet access services that "have made it easier to watch the Net during the daytime and so have increased the number of users among housewives."