Nagoya shuts down subway cellphone usage

When we first saw an article saying that the city of Nagoya was shutting down cellphone base stations on its subway platforms we assumed that paranoia about phone-activated terrorist bombs had spread to Japan too. However, it turns out that the paranoia is about pacemakers being interfered with by cellphones, which the Ministry of Health reckons is a problem if the two get within 22 cm of one another. Given how crowded Japan's trains get (the old chestnut is that half the carriage breathes in while the other half breathes out), that's liable to happen pretty often, though admittedly we've yet to hear of someone keeling over after being zapped by a cellphone.