CBS News
Ukrainian-Japanese Miss Japan pageant winner Karolina Shiino returns crown after affair comes to light
Tokyo — The Ukraine-born winner of the Miss Japan pageant has relinquished her crown after a report emerged of an affair she had with a married doctor. Karolina Shiino’s nomination in January first sparked debate after some right-wingers questioned the title being awarded to a naturalized Japanese citizen. A scandal then erupted over her private life when weekly magazine Shukan Bunshun reported on her extra-marital relationship – taboo for beauty pageant contestants, who are held to squeaky-clean moral standards in Japan.
Japanese entertainment personalities who have affairs, dabble in drugs or suffer other scandals also often find themselves shunned by their fans and employers.
The Miss Japan Association said Monday that it had accepted a request from Shiino to return the crown for “personal reasons,” adding there would be no Miss Japan for 2024.
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Shiino, who emigrated to Japan at the age of five, said she wanted to “deeply apologize” to those involved, including the man’s wife, on the same day her management agency said she had confirmed the affair.
At first “I couldn’t speak the truth due to chaos and fear… I apologize to those who believed in me and supported me,” the 26-year-old said on Instagram. “I take the situation seriously and have relinquished the Miss Japan Grand Prix title.”
In a statement Monday, Shiino’s agency said she told them she had begun seeing the man believing him to be divorced, but continued the relationship after learning he was still married.
The man involved, Takuma Maeda, is a social media influencer known online as the “muscle doctor,” who, according to The Associated Press, said on Instagram that he had no plans to leave his wife and offered an apology the trouble he’d brought Shiino and others. He promised to devote himself to his work, and his private life.
Women are often more heavily criticized over extramarital affairs in Japan’s deeply conservative, male-dominated culture.
Miss Japan, first held in 1950, is awarded for “Japanese-style beauty” consisting of “inner beauty, beauty in appearance and beauty of actions,” its website says.
After Shiino’s nomination attracted attention online, people quickly weighed in on social media.
“It doesn’t matter if she is Jewish-Ukrainian or not, but I can’t accept her character… Why is she Miss Japan?” one user wrote.
Others wrote in support of Shiino on her Instagram post, however.
“You have Japanese spirit. I don’t think such (a) personal private thing should be a reason for you to step down but this is Japan,” said a reply with nearly 350 likes.
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CBS News
McDonald’s investing $100 million to lure customers back to the fast food giant after E. coli outbreak
McDonald’s is investing $100 million to bring customers back to stores after an outbreak of E. coli food poisoning tied to onions on the fast-food giant’s Quarter Pounder hamburgers.
The investments include $65 million that will go directly to the hardest-hit franchises, the company said.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said that slivered onions on the Quarter Pounders were the likely source of the E. coli. Taylor Farms in California recalled onions potentially linked to the outbreak.
The E. coli outbreak has sickened 104 people in 14 states, federal health officials said in an update on Wednesday.
At least 34 people have been hospitalized, and four developed hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS), a serious condition that can cause kidney failure. An 88-year-old man who resided in Grand Junction, Colorado, died, as previously reported. The illnesses began at the end of September, and the most recent onset of illness occurred as of Oct. 21, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
The Food and Drug Administration has said that “there does not appear to be a continued food safety concern related to this outbreak at McDonald’s restaurants.”
However, the outbreak hurt the company’s sales.
Quarter Pounders were removed from menus in several states in the early days of the outbreak.
In a statement Wednesday obtained by CBS News, McDonald’s said it had found an “alternate supplier” for the approximately 900 restaurants that had temporarily stopped serving Quarter Pounders with slivered onions.
“Over the past week, these restaurants resumed the sale of Quarter Pounder burgers with slivered onions,” McDonald’s said.
CBS News reached out to McDonald’s on Saturday for a statement regarding the reported investment.
Health officials said Saturday they have confirmed the first U.S. case of a new form of mpox that was first seen in eastern Congo.
The person had traveled to eastern Africa and was treated in Northern California upon return, according to the California Department of Public Health. Symptoms are improving and the risk to the public is low.
Mpox is a rare disease caused by infection with a virus that’s in the same family as the one that causes smallpox. It is endemic in parts of Africa, where people have been infected through bites from rodents or small animals.
Earlier this year, scientists reported the emergence of a new form of mpox in Africa that was spread through close contact including through sex.
More than 3,100 confirmed cases have been reported just since late September, according to the World Health Organization. The vast majority of them have been in three African countries – Burundi, Uganda, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Since then, cases of travelers with the new mpox form have been reported in Germany, India, Kenya, Sweden, Thailand, Zimbabwe, and the United Kingdom.
Health officials earlier this month said the situation in Congo appears to be stabilizing. The Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has estimated Congo needs at least 3 million mpox vaccines to stop the spread, and another 7 million vaccines for the rest of Africa.
The current outbreak is different from the 2022 global outbreak of mpox where gay and bisexual men made up the vast majority of cases.
