Tokyo – Japanese police have finally nabbed a nimble “ninja” thief who dressed in black and scrambled over walls to commit scores of break-ins over an eight-year career – and were astonished to find he was 74.

Police in the western Japanese city of Osaka had been stumped by a string of burglaries, their only lead being security camera footage showing an agile thief with a black neck-warmer pulled up to the nose and a parker hood down to the eyebrows.

“He was dressed all in black just like a ninja,” a senior official at the Kawachi police station told AFP.

But the master thief made a mistake in May – his neck-warmer slipped and his identity was revealed on camera.

Police recognised their man as Mitsuaki Tanigawa, 74, who had a previous record of thefts.

They then started watching the aged crook and tried to trap him.

“Investigators watched him doddering out from his house like any other old man during daytime. He then went to an abandoned apartment room where he changed and waited until it got dark,” the official said.

“When he came out in the dark, he was all in black… He did not take ordinary streets, squeezing through tight spaces between houses and running on the tops of walls,” he added.

As investigators were unable to pursue the agile thief to catch him in the act, they finally pounced when he came back to his hideout at 4am after robbing an electronics store.

Under arrest, Tanigawa said he “hated working and thought stealing is quicker,” according to the police official.

He has been charged for over 254 break-ins for thefts totalling 30 million yen ($260,000) over the past eight years.

He later told the police that he needed only 10 minutes to sneak into a house, stealing mainly cash from people as they slept.

“He’s a pro. He told us ‘I have confidence in my job’,” the police official said.

“If I were younger, I wouldn’t have been caught. I’ll quit now as I’m 74 and old enough,” the thief was quoted as saying.

The world’s top 10 fastest growing tourism cities are all in Asia, according to new data from the World Travel and Tourism Council.

The Council’s latest “City Travel and Tourism Impact” report shows that Asian cities will be at the forefront of tourism growth over the next decade, and that’s especially true for those in China.

The city of Chongqing in southwest China tops the list on the latest study, with 14 per cent growth per year. That’s closely followed by Guangzhou at 13.1 per cent.

“The strong Chinese domestic market is behind the growth of cities such as Chongqing and Guangzhou which rely on spend from Chinese nationals for 94.5 per cent and 89.1 per cent of their Travel & Tourism GDP respectively,” the report said.

Shanghai also shows growth at 12.8 per cent, while China’s capital city of Beijing is at 12 per cent per year.

“The two-digit growth that we see here in this part of the world is very impressive,” Gloria Guevara, president and CEO of the World Travel and Tourism Council told CNBC’s “The Rundown.”

“China is good not only as a sourcing market for some other countries, but also their domestic travelling is huge,” she added.

The other cities on the top ten list are Chengdu in China (11.2 per cent), Manila in the Philippines (10.9 per cent), Delhi in India (10.8 per cent), Shenzhen in China (10.7 per cent), Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia (10.1 per cent) and Jakarta in Indonesia (10 per cent).

The study covers a total of 65 cities, chosen for being among the top ranked for arrivals, and spending by visitors. Twenty-one of those cities are in Asia Pacific.

SOLID FUNDAMENTALS

About 138 million inbound trips were made into China in 2016, a 3.5 per cent rise over the same period of the previous year, according to the China National Tourism Administration.

“The Chinese tourism sector is experiencing an amazing boom,” Jim Qian, group global partner and senior vice president at Chinese conglomerate Fosun, told CNBC’s “Street Signs.”

“The number of middle class population in China has increased tremendously. In 2002, the middle class population percentage was 4 per cent. Since then, it’s increased to 31 per cent,” he added.

China is also home to some of the world’s largest travel and tourism cities. Shanghai has the largest tourism and travel GDP contribution in the world, at US$30.2 billion (S$41.1 billion). It also accounts for 11 per cent of China’s total travel and tourism GDP contribution.

“The dominance of the Chinese market is clear – both in terms of future growth and overall size and as a main source market for destinations in the wider Asia Pacific region,” the report said.

The report also found other pockets of growth in Asia, such as Singapore.

Singapore’s travel and tourism doubled over the past 10 years to a total of US$12.4 billion in 2016, the report said, noting that the industry supports 164,000 jobs in the island nation.

One of the world’s most secretive states is going green – for national security reasons.

Pyongyang may be interested in developing algae as “a strategic resource,” according to a recent note on 38 North, a website focused on North Korea that’s part of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

Algae, plantlike organisms that includes kelp and spirulina, is a multipurpose resource that can produce food, fertilizer, feedstock and fuel from the same biomass. And it makes sense for Pyongyang to be interested: Over time, an algae industry could gradually “mitigate the negative effects of sanctions both on the country’s energy supply and food security,” the note said.

Research facilities dedicated to open ponds and aquaculture systems – key infrastructure for algae growth – have existed in the rogue state since the early 2000s but they have recently become more complex, 38 North said, pointing to large plants in two different areas as examples.

“It is not surprising that the North Korean government is developing thousands of rural open ponds producing algae and bigger and more sophisticated sites, whose purpose increasingly looks like algae production,” the note said.

BENEFITS OF GREEN GOLD

The isolated nation lacks domestic petroleum reserves as well as fertilizer. To make up for that, its agricultural deficiencies and chronic food shortages, Pyongyang has long attempted to become resource independent. Self-reliance is even part of its official state ideology known as Juche.

But the rogue state still remains dependent on foreign imports of fuel and food for survival. Historical ally China has long been Pyongyang’s primary trading partner and economic lifeline, but Beijing banned certain energy exports last month to comply with United Nations resolutions.

As international sanctions take their toll, the North Korean economy is under pressure. Ordinary households face insufficient food supplies and a lack of electricity, former senior North Korean economic official Ri Jong Ho told the Asia Society in New York last week.

That’s where algae can help.

When processed, algae boasts high protein content, making it an excellent food supplement and fertilizer, 38 North said. The photosynthetic organisms, sometimes referred to as green gold, are often used to combat malnutrition in developing countries and also marketed as superfoods.

“The same algae can also contain approximately 20 per cent lipids, which can be processed into biofuels,” the note continued.

Using data from nine North Korean facilities, the note estimated that 2,851 tons of algae biomass could be produced each year. That contains approximately 1,425.5 tons of nutritional mass and could be converted to the equivalent of 4,075.6 barrels of oil.

“If there were just 100 times more acreage in production and being utilized, the oil yield could be 6.5 per cent of North Korea’s 2014 estimated requirements for their entire economy,” the note said.

“Given the potential for algae-based oil production, a more thorough investigation is warranted of whether these facilities could in the future fulfil a national security requirement.”

Algae could be helping North Korea get around sanctions from CNBC.

Local police caught a man in his 40s secretly filming another man in the male restroom on Oct. 21 in Dong Seoul Bus Terminal, according to a report from The Herald Business, the sister paper of The Korea Herald Tuesday.

Seoul Gwangjin Police announced Monday that the suspect was arrested with the help of a 23-year-old male who reported seeing a suspicious looking man lurking in the men’s bathroom.

Recent rumours online have hinted at the likelihood of the second and third floor men’s restrooms being used by homosexuals to express their sexual fantasies.

Online commenters have further mentioned that homosexual persons initially connect through a mobile dating application called “Jack’d.”

Recalling the rumours surrounding the men’s restroom, the young man reported seeing flashes from what he suspected was a smartphone and immediately called the police.

The suspect is charged with allegedly violating the Special Act on the Punishment of Sexual Assault Crimes, specifically using his smartphone to film. Police will be investigating whether the suspect had any partners in crime.

Reports of men being secretly filming is on the rise. Statistics from the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency showed that there had been 120 and 160 male victims in 2015 and 2016, respectively.