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jp0002252
|
[
"world",
"crime-legal-world"
] |
2019/03/12
|
Iranian human rights lawyer newly sentenced to 38 years and 148 lashes, husband says
|
GENEVA - Nasrin Sotoudeh, an internationally renowned human rights lawyer jailed in Iran, was handed a new sentence Monday that her husband said comprised 38 years in prison and 148 lashes. Sotoudeh, who has represented opposition activists including women prosecuted for removing their mandatory head scarves, was arrested in June and charged with spying, spreading propaganda and insulting Iran’s supreme leader, her lawyer said. She was jailed in 2010 for spreading propaganda and conspiring to harm state security — charges she denied — and was released after serving half her six-year term. The European Parliament awarded her the Sakharov human rights prize. Speaking at a revolutionary court in Tehran on Monday, Judge Mohammad Moqiseh said that Sotoudeh had been sentenced to five years for assembling against national security and two years for insulting Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported. Sotoudeh’s husband, Reza Khandan, wrote on Facebook that the sentence was decades in jail and 148 lashes, unusually harsh even for Iran, which cracks down hard on dissent and regularly imposes death sentences for some crimes. The news comes days after Iran appointed a new head of the judiciary — Ebrahim Raisi, a hard-line cleric who is a protege of Supreme Leader Khamenei. The appointment is seen as weakening the political influence of President Hassan Rouhani, a relative moderate. Iran, often accused of human rights abuses, said on Monday it had allowed U.N. Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights Kate Gilmore to visit last week at the head of a “technical” mission. The visit, confirmed by a U.N. official, appeared to be the first in many years by U.N. human rights investigators who have been denied access by the government. The U.N. investigator on human rights in Iran, Javaid Rehman, raised Sotoudeh’s case at the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva on Monday, saying that last week she “was reportedly convicted of charges relating to her work and could face a lengthy prison sentence.” “Worrying patterns of intimidation, arrest, prosecution, and ill-treatment of human rights defenders, lawyers, and labor rights activists signal an increasingly severe state response,” Rehman said.
|
rights;women;iran;nasrin sotoudeh
|
jp0002253
|
[
"world",
"crime-legal-world"
] |
2019/03/12
|
U.S. Coast Guard lieutenant pleads not guilty to arms and drug charges in alleged plot to kill Democrats and TV journalists
|
LOS ANGELES - A U.S. Coast Guard lieutenant accused of stockpiling weapons and plotting to attack Democratic politicians and TV journalists pleaded not guilty to weapon and drug charges on Monday in a federal courtroom in Maryland. Authorities arrested Christopher Paul Hasson, 49, on Feb. 15 and seized his stash of 15 firearms and more than 1,000 rounds of ammunition from his residence in Silver Spring, Maryland. Hasson pleaded not guilty to the drug and weapon charges before a federal magistrate judge in Greenbelt, Maryland, according to court records, and was sent back to jail ahead of his trial. Prosecutors later said Hasson, who was assigned to the Coast Guard Headquarters in Washington, was a self-described white supremacist with a list of potential targets, including House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi and MSNBC television host Joe Scarborough. But so far, prosecutors have not brought charges directly accusing Hasson of plotting an attack. The initial criminal complaint listed weapon and drug charges. A federal grand jury, in a follow-up indictment on Feb. 27, charged Hasson with two counts of unlawful possession of firearm silencers, one count of unlawful possession of pain medication tramadol and one count of unlawful possession of firearms by an addict of a controlled substance. A public defender for Hasson could not be reached for comment late on Monday. A different public defender, Julie Stelzig, told a court hearing last month that Hasson’s gun collection was not extraordinarily large. He formerly served in the U.S. Marine Corps. Hasson could receive a maximum sentence of 31 years in prison if convicted of all the charges against him, said Marcia Murphy, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office. Murphy declined to comment on whether Hasson will face more charges related to accusations he plotted an attack.
|
u.s .;murder;weapons;democrats;u.s. coast guard;nancy pelosi;christopher paul hasson
|
jp0002254
|
[
"world",
"crime-legal-world"
] |
2019/03/12
|
Robert Mueller's Russia probe said already financed through September
|
WASHINGTON - Special counsel Robert Mueller and the team he assembled to investigate U.S. President Donald Trump and his associates have been funded through the end of September 2019, three U.S. officials said on Monday, an indication that the probe has funding to keep it going for months if need be. The operations and funding of Mueller’s office were not addressed in the budget requests for the next government fiscal year issued by the White House and Justice Department on Monday because Mueller’s office is financed by the U.S. Treasury under special regulations issued by the Justice Department, the officials said. “The special counsel is funded by the Independent Counsel appropriation, a permanent indefinite appropriation established in the Department’s 1988 Appropriations Act,” a Justice Department spokesman said. There has been increased speculation in recent weeks that Mueller’s team is close to winding up its work and is likely to deliver a report summarizing its findings to Attorney General William Barr any day or week now. Mueller’s office has not commented on the news reports suggesting an imminent release. Representatives of key congressional committees involved in Trump-related investigations say they have received no guidance from Mueller’s office regarding his investigation’s progress or future plans. The probe, which began in May 2017, is examining whether there were any links or coordination between the Russian government led by Vladimir Putin and the 2016 presidential campaign of Trump, according to an order signed by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. Critics of the probe, including Trump allies, have suggested the investigation is a misuse of taxpayer funds and should be wrapped up quickly. Justice Department documents show that Mueller’s office reported spending around $9 million during the fiscal year that ran from Oct. 1, 2017, to Sept. 30, 2018. No figures are available for the current fiscal year. Ninety days before the beginning of a federal government fiscal year, which starts on Oct. 1, special counsels such as Mueller “shall report to the Attorney General the status of the investigation and provide a budget request for the following year,” according to the regulations. Department officials said that under these regulations, a special counsel should request funding for the next fiscal year by the end of June. It is not known if Mueller is preparing such a request for fiscal year 2020. Russia has denied meddling in the 2016 presidential election. Trump has said there was no collusion between his campaign and Moscow, and has labeled Mueller’s investigation a “witch hunt.”
|
u.s .;robert mueller;donald trump;russia probe
|
jp0002255
|
[
"world"
] |
2019/03/12
|
U.S. aviation agency to declare Boeing 737 Max 8 airworthy but will act on any safety concerns
|
WASHINGTON - The United States will tell international carriers later Monday that the agency believes the Boeing 737 MAX 8 is airworthy but officials emphasized they will “take immediate action” if regulators identify any safety issue following Sunday’s fatal crash in Ethiopia. U.S. Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao said on Monday the Federal Aviation Administration would issue a Continued Airworthiness Notification to the International Community, or CANIC, for Boeing 737 MAX 8 operators at 5 p.m. EDT (2100 GMT). “If the FAA identifies an issue that affects safety, the department will take immediate and appropriate action,” Chao told reporters. “I want people to be assured that we take these incidents, these accidents very seriously.” Boeing Co. did not immediately comment Monday. Canada is taking a similar approach and its transport minister said he will not hesitate to act once the cause of the crash is known. An Ethiopian Airlines passenger jet bound for Nairobi crashed minutes after take-off on Sunday, killing all 157 people on board and raising questions about the safety of the Boeing 737 MAX 8, a new model that also crashed and killed 189 people in Indonesia in October. FAA chief Dan Elwell on Monday said the notification basically “informs the international community where we are and sort of a one answer to the whole community.” He dubbed it a “broadcast to the world about where we are.” The National Transportation Safety Board and the FAA are both on scene in Ethiopia, Chao said. Boeing’s share price dropped 10 percent in early trading on Monday at the prospect that two such crashes in such a short time could reveal flaws in its new plane. They were down 5.8 percent in the late-afternoon trading on the New York Stock Exchange. The 737 line, which has flown for more than 50 years, is the world’s best-selling modern passenger aircraft and viewed as one of the industry’s most reliable. China ordered its airlines to ground the jet, a move followed by Indonesia and Ethiopia. Other airlines, from North America to the Middle East, kept flying the 737 MAX 8 on Monday after Boeing said it was safe.
|
u.s .;ethiopian airlines;elaine chao;air accidents;boeing 737 max 8;canic
|
jp0002256
|
[
"world",
"politics-diplomacy-world"
] |
2019/03/12
|
Speaker Nancy Pelosi tells Washington Post 'I'm not for impeachment' as Trump's 'just not worth it'
|
WASHINGTON - No effort should be made to impeach President Donald Trump unless the reasons are overwhelming and bipartisan, given how divisive it would be for the country, U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in a Washington Post interview published on Monday. “I’m not for impeachment,” Pelosi, the top U.S. Democrat, said in the interview, which was conducted last week. “Impeachment is so divisive to the country that unless there’s something so compelling and overwhelming and bipartisan, I don’t think we should go down that path, because it divides the country,” she said. “He’s just not worth it.” Special counsel Robert Mueller is investigating Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign and whether there was any collusion between Trump’s campaign and the Russian government. He also is looking into whether Trump has attempted to obstruct the investigation. Trump has denied wrongdoing and called the probe a witch hunt. Mueller is expected to send a report soon to Attorney General William Barr outlining his findings. If there is evidence of wrongdoing, that could prompt Congress to take action against the president. Several panels in the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives are also investigating the president. Although Pelosi said she believed it would be too divisive to try to impeach Trump, she characterized the president as unfit to hold office. “No, I don’t think he’s fit to be president of the United States,” Pelosi told the Post, adding that he was “ethically unfit, intellectually unfit, curiosity-wise unfit.”
|
u.s .;congress;robert mueller;washington post;impeachment;nancy pelosi;donald trump;russia probe
|
jp0002257
|
[
"world",
"politics-diplomacy-world"
] |
2019/03/12
|
Trump budget boosts military and Mexico border wall but targets vital social services that help poor and elderly
|
WASHINGTON - President Donald Trump in his 2020 budget on Monday called for overhauls of social programs that help poor and elderly Americans, while boosting military spending and funding a U.S.-Mexico border wall, in the opening gambits of his next funding fight with the U.S. Congress. The Republican president’s $4.7 trillion budget was immediately panned by Democrats in Congress, who rejected his push last year for wall funding in a standoff that led to a five-week partial shutdown of the federal government. Like past presidential budget proposals, Trump’s spending plan was highly unlikely to become law — especially with Democrats in control of the House of Representatives — but it does serve as an early manifesto of the policy priorities he will bring to his 2020 re-election campaign. “President Trump has somehow managed to produce a budget request even more untethered from reality than his past two,” said Democratic Rep. Nita Lowey, chairwoman of the House Appropriations Committee. Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said in a statement that Trump’s plan “is not worth the paper it is printed on.” This year, the stakes for a deal are higher than in past years. An Oct. 1 deadline to keep the government running coincides with a deadline to lift the debt limit. Without an increase in the limit the U.S. government would risk a default, which could shock the world economy. Trump’s budget includes politically volatile proposals for overhauling Medicare, Medicaid and other costly social programs that form the American social safety net and help the poor and underprivileged. It asks for $8.6 billion to build a wall on the border with Mexico. That figure is more than six times what Congress gave Trump for border projects in each of the past two fiscal years, and 6 percent more than he has corralled by invoking emergency powers this year after failing to get the money he wanted. Trump also calls for defense spending to rise more than 4 percent to $750 billion, using the emergency Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) account — derided by conservatives as a slush fund — to skirt spending caps set out in a 2011 fiscal restraint law. Nondefense spending was held below those caps, thanks to steep proposed funding cuts to the State Department (23 percent) and Environmental Protection Agency (31 percent), among others. Even with the cuts, which the White House said would add up to $2.7 trillion in savings over a decade, the budget office said the Trump plan would not balance until 2034, exceeding the traditional 10-year outlook. Tax cuts have been a priority for the Republican White House and Congress in recent years, rather than deficit reduction. The deficit ran to $900 billion in 2019 and the national debt has ballooned to $22 trillion. The Committee for a Responsible Budget said Trump’s budget would add $10.5 trillion to the debt over a decade, and criticized the White House for what it called a “fantasy assumption” of 3 percent economic growth over that time frame — higher than the 2 percent average used by independent forecasters. Unless the White House and Congress reach an agreement, the automatic spending caps from the 2011 law will kick in on Oct. 1 and add another level of urgency to the fall deadlines. The White House wants to shake up the practice of pairing increases in defense spending with a corresponding increase in nondefense spending, a method that has been used to secure contentious funding deals in the past. “We are signaling in this budget that the paradigm of a dollar of nondefense increase for every dollar of defense is no longer — and hasn’t been for some time — affordable for this country,” said a senior administration official who spoke to reporters on condition of anonymity.
|
military;budget;medicaid;republicans;donald trump;medicare;border wall
|
jp0002258
|
[
"world",
"politics-diplomacy-world"
] |
2019/03/12
|
May says she has won 'legally binding changes' to Brexit deal from EU
|
STRASBOURG, FRANCE - British Prime Minister Theresa May said Monday she had won “legally binding changes” to the planned Brexit deal and called on Parliament in London to back it. “MPs were clear that legal changes were needed to the backstop. Today we have secured legal changes.” May told reporters, sitting alongside EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker. “Now is the time to come together, to back this improved Brexit deal, and to deliver on the instruction of the British people,” she said.
|
eu;jean-claude juncker;u.k. parliament;brexit;theresa may
|
jp0002259
|
[
"world",
"politics-diplomacy-world"
] |
2019/03/12
|
Trump ally GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham says Golan should stay in Israeli hands
|
JERUSALEM - An influential U.S. senator allied to President Donald Trump toured the occupied Golan Heights on Monday and vowed to work to have Washington recognize Israeli sovereignty over the strategic plateau. Lindsey Graham’s pledge was a boost to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who toured the Golan with him, ahead of April 9 Israeli elections. Netanyahu has been pushing for the United States and other countries to recognise Israeli sovereignty over the Golan, which it seized from Syria in the 1967 Six-Day War. Israel later annexed the 1,200 sq. km (460 sq. miles) it seized, in a move never recognized by the international community. “Strategically, I am standing on one of the most important pieces of ground in the state of Israel, and who would you give it back to?” Graham asked, standing alongside Netanyahu and the U.S. ambassador to Israel, David Friedman. “You’re going to give it to Assad? I think not. You might as well give it to Iran,” Graham said, referring to Syrian President Bashar Assad, who is backed by Iran and Russia. “You’re going to give it to Russia? I think not. So, the idea of this territory going to somebody else is off the table.” Graham is a Washington ally of Trump, who has given strong backing to Netanyahu, and said he would work to have the United States recognize the Golan as part of Israel “now and forever. In November, the United States voted for the first time against an annual U.N. resolution condemning Israel’s occupation of the Golan. Netanyahu has argued in his re-election campaign that his close relationship with Trump is a major benefit to Israel. Trump handed a huge victory to Israel in 2017 when he recognized Jerusalem as its capital and decided to move the U.S. Embassy to the disputed city despite Palestinian anger.
|
u.s .;israel;syria;benjamin netanyahu;republicans;lindsey graham;bashar assad;golan heights;donald trump
|
jp0002260
|
[
"world",
"politics-diplomacy-world"
] |
2019/03/12
|
Britain to make unilateral declaration that backstop won't apply if talks break down, says May
|
LONDON - Britain will make a unilateral statement that nothing can prevent it from pulling out of an Irish border backstop if talks about a future relationship with the European Union after Brexit break down, Prime Minister Theresa May said on Monday. In a news conference in Strasbourg, France, May said that in addition to a joint instrument and a joint statement announced earlier in Parliament, Britain would also make a Unilateral Declaration on the so-called backstop — an insurance policy aimed at avoiding a hard border on the island of Ireland. If the backstop comes into force and talks on the future relationship break down with no prospect of an agreement, May said the declaration would make clear: “it is the position of the United Kingdom that there would be nothing to prevent the U.K. instigating measures that would ultimately dis-apply the backstop.”
|
ireland;eu;u.k .;u.k. parliament;brexit;theresa may
|
jp0002261
|
[
"world",
"politics-diplomacy-world"
] |
2019/03/12
|
Trump wants clocks pegged at daylight savings time
|
WASHINGTON - Americans pushing for an end to the annual ritual of losing an hour’s sleep on changing clocks to daylight savings time got a new ally Monday: President Donald Trump. U.S. clocks go forward by an hour each spring and back an hour in November, ahead of winter. The switch, which took place at 2:00 a.m. in Washington on Sunday, now means more daylight in the evenings. Left groggy by the disruption, critics say the back-and-forth of the clock is unnecessary and maybe even dangerous. Trump seems to agree. “Making Daylight Saving Time permanent is O.K. with me!” he wrote on Twitter. Political momentum for leaving the clocks on summer schedule year-round is building in state legislatures from California to Florida. The U.S. Congress would have to give a final approval.
|
u.s .;congress;donald trump;daylight savings time
|
jp0002262
|
[
"world"
] |
2019/03/12
|
U.K. suspends Boeing 737 Max from airspace after Ethiopian Airlines crash
|
LONDON - The U.K. on Tuesday joined a growing number of nations to suspend flights by Boeing 737 Max aircraft over their territory, after an Ethiopian Airlines plane of that model crashed on Sunday, killing 157 people. “The U.K. Civil Aviation Authority has been closely monitoring the situation, however, as we do not currently have sufficient information from the flight data recorder we have, as a precautionary measure, issued instructions to stop any commercial passenger flights from any operator arriving, departing or overflying U.K. airspace,” a spokesperson said in a statement. “The U.K. Civil Aviation Authority’s safety directive will be in place until further notice.” Malaysian authorities also announced all flights by the Boeing aircraft into and out of the country have been suspended following two fatal crashes, including the Ethiopian Airlines crash, involving the jet in less than five months.
|
boeing;aviation;airplanes;ethiopian airlines;air accidents
|
jp0002263
|
[
"world"
] |
2019/03/12
|
Ethiopian jetliner smoked, strewed debris and shuddered before death plunge, say witnesses
|
GARA-BOKKA, ETHIOPIA - The Ethiopian Airlines plane that crashed killing all 157 people aboard was making a strange rattling noise and trailed smoke and debris as it swerved above a field of panicked cows before hitting earth, according to witnesses. Flight 302 took off from the Ethiopian capital on Sunday morning bound for Nairobi with passengers from more than 30 countries. All on board the Boeing 737 MAX 8 died. The pilot had requested permission to return, saying he was having problems — but it was too late. Half a dozen witnesses interviewed by Reuters in the farmland where the plane came down reported smoke billowing out behind, while four of them also described a loud sound. “It was a loud rattling sound. Like straining and shaking metal,” said Turn Buzuna, a 26-year-old housewife and farmer who lives about 300 meters (328 yards) from the crash site. “Everyone says they have never heard that kind of sound from a plane and they are under a flight path,” she added. Malka Galato, 47, a barley and wheat farmer whose field the plane crashed in, also described smoke and sparks from the back. “The plane was very close to the ground and it made a turn. … Cows that were grazing in the fields ran in panic,” he said. Tamirat Abera, 25, was walking past the field at the time. He said the plane turned sharply, trailing white smoke and items like clothes and papers, then crashed about 300 meters away. “It tried to climb but it failed and went down nose first,” he said. “There was fire and white smoke which then turned black.” As the plane had only just taken off, it was loaded with fuel. At the site, Red Cross workers in masks sifted gently through victims’ belongings. Children’s books — Dr Seuss’s “Oh The Thinks You Can Think” and “Anne of Green Gables” — lay near a French-English dictionary burnt along one edge. A woman’s brown handbag, the bottom burnt, lay open next to an empty bottle of perfume. The aircraft was broken into small pieces, the largest among them a wheel and a dented engine. The debris was spread over land roughly the size of two football fields. “When it was hovering, fire was following its tail, then it tried to lift its nose,” said another witness, Gadisa Benti. “When it passed over our house, the nose pointed down and the tail raised up. It went straight to the ground with its nose, it then exploded.” Local resident Nigusu Tesema helped gather victims’ scattered identity papers to hand to police. “We are shocked and saddened,” he said.
|
boeing;ethiopia;ethiopian airlines;air accidents;boeing 737 max 8
|
jp0002264
|
[
"world"
] |
2019/03/12
|
Deadly plane crash a setback for Ethiopia's rise
|
The crown jewel in Ethiopia’s transformation to a continental power in recent years has been its state-owned airline that calls itself “the new spirit of Africa.” Sunday’s crash of an Ethiopian Airlines jet that killed 157 people has set back those grand designs that were undertaken by a reformist new leader who has vowed to hold free and fair elections next year. Now, Africa is mourning not only the victims of the aviation disaster but also a symbol of the continent’s rise. “This couldn’t have come at a worse time for Ethiopian Airlines,” Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari said in a statement, mindful that his own country, Africa’s largest economy, has no national carrier. “Like every other African leader, I am proud of the fact that Ethiopian Airlines represents one of Africa’s success stories.” Africa’s only profitable carrier, the airline is the symbol of a country shaking off a decades-old image of devastating poverty and famine. Thanks in part to financing from China, Ethiopia has ambitious projects in infrastructure and industry that have facilitated some of Africa’s fastest rapid economic growth. These include one of the continent’s few metro rail services, a massive hydropower dam on the Nile and numerous projects linking the landlocked nation with the Red Sea, one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes. “Many Ethiopians see yesterday. I see tomorrow,” Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, Africa’s youngest head of government, told The Financial Times last month in his first major interview. Abiy, who took power in the country of some 110 million people nearly a year ago, has freed opposition figures from jail, welcomed home exiles and made peace with neighboring Eritrea. These are startling changes that he hopes to continue in business, opening the airline and other state-owned sectors to the world. As more countries and investors reach out to Africa, their gateway increasingly is Ethiopia’s capital of Addis Ababa, where the crash occurred. The dead came from 35 countries. “Ethiopian Airways is a key player in linking Africa to Gulf relations and a signature project of Ethiopia’s internal capacity,” said Angelo Izama, a regional analyst based in the United Arab Emirates. “So the wider community basically took the crash as a shock to Ethiopia and its status as a potential hegemon in the Horn (of Africa) and in East Africa.” In January, Addis Ababa’s Bole International Airport inaugurated a passenger terminal equipped to handle 22 million visitors a year, tripling its capacity in a city that is a diplomatic hub with the headquarters of the African Union continental body. The opening was a dramatic pushback against the long-held image of African air travel as chaotic and dangerous on a bustling continent of more than 1 billion people. Before Sunday, no major aviation accident had occurred in more than two years. Ethiopian Airlines appears determined to spread its success, reaching out to other African airlines for partnerships and investment. Many African carriers have collapsed in the last few decades, often because of mismanagement. In its push for dominance, Ethiopian Airlines continues to open new international routes, flying to nearly 120 destinations. In January, it opened a route to Moscow and announced plans for nonstop flights to Houston. The company has been among the first buyers of commercial jets hitting the market. In 2012, it became the first in Africa, and one of the first around the globe, to take delivery of Boeing’s flagship Dreamliner jet. The purchase was celebrated with fanfare at home as a source of immense pride. Ethiopian Airlines’ latest headline purchase was the Boeing 737 Max 8, the newest version of the best-selling airliner in history. The airline ordered 30 of them last year, and one of the planes was delivered in mid-November. On Sunday, six minutes after takeoff, it crashed. No one yet knows why. Within hours, both the prime minister and the airline’s CEO went to the crash site to pay their respects.
|
boeing;ethiopia;ethiopian airlines;air accidents
|
jp0002265
|
[
"world"
] |
2019/03/12
|
U.N. says 2018 deadliest year yet for Syrian children, with 1,106 killed
|
BEIRUT - Last year was the deadliest yet for children in Syria, with more than 1,100 killed by fighting, the United Nations said on Monday, ahead of the bloody conflict entering its ninth year. U.N. children’s agency UNICEF said it had been able to verify 1,106 child deaths from the fighting in 2018 — the highest annual toll since war broke out in 2011 — but that the true figure was likely to be much higher. “Today there exists an alarming misconception that the conflict in Syria is drawing quickly to a close — it is not,” said executive director Henrietta Fore in a statement. “Children in parts of the country remain in as much danger as at any other time during the eight-year conflict.” The biggest cause of child casualties was unexploded ordnance, which accounted for 434 deaths and injuries last year, UNICEF said. Syria’s war has killed an estimated half a million people and driven about 5.6 million people out of the country. Another 6.6 million people still in the country have lost or fled their homes. Turkey and Russia, one of the Syrian government’s staunchest allies, brokered a deal in September to create a demilitarized zone in the northwest Idlib region that would be free of all heavy weapons and jihadist fighters. The deal helped avert a government assault on the region, the last major bastion of opponents of President Bashar al-Assad. But Fore said she was concerned about the intensification of violence in Idlib, where 59 children have been reported killed in recent weeks. “UNICEF again reminds parties to the conflict and the global community that it is the country’s children who have suffered most and have the most to lose. Each day the conflict continues is another day stolen from their childhood,” said Fore. Since January about 60 children have died trying to get to the al-Hol camp in northeastern Syria, which is now home to more than 65,000 people fleeing Islamic State, according to the U.N. Thousands have flooded the al-Hol camp as the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) lay siege to the last vestige of Islamic State’s territorial rule at the village of Baghouz near the Iraqi border. “Syria is still one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a child, with ongoing violence, insecurity and displacement,” said Caroline Anning, spokeswoman for Save the Children. “Even where conflict has subsided, the risk from explosive remnants of war like landmines and cluster munitions is growing,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in an emailed statement.
|
conflict;children;terrorism;syria;islamic state;syrian democratic forces
|
jp0002267
|
[
"asia-pacific"
] |
2019/03/12
|
'I'm an Aussie': Refugee soccer player Hakeem al-Araibi granted Australian citizenship
|
SYDNEY - A refugee soccer player who fled Bahrain and was held in a Thai prison for months during a tense extradition standoff between Australia and the Gulf state was granted Australian citizenship on Tuesday. Hakeem al-Araibi, 25, left Bahrain in 2014 after he was accused of crimes committed during the Arab Spring protests of 2011, which he denied. He was granted refugee status in Australia but after an Interpol notice requesting his arrest was made by Bahrain, he was apprehended by Thai authorities in November when he flew to Bangkok for a honeymoon. “I’m an Aussie now,” he told reporters in Melbourne after a citizenship ceremony on the banks of the Yarra River that flows through the city. “I’m very happy to be safe.” Prime Minister Scott Morrison, who lobbied for his release from detention in Thailand, met al-Araibi after the citizenship ceremony and handed him the Australian flag lapel pin from his jacket. “I had a little badge I was going to give you today, but I’m going to give you mine,” Morrison said. “I think this is a tremendous day that we welcome you, absolutely, into the Australian family.” Hundreds of supporters cheered “Welcome home, Hakeem!” when he arrived at Melbourne’s airport following his release from jail in Bangkok a month ago. He was among more than 200 people from 44 countries who, having passed a citizenship exam, pledged loyalty to Australia and were granted citizenship at the ceremony, the Australian Associated Press reported. Pascoe Vale, the semi-professional team he plays for in Melbourne, congratulated Araibi. “A moment we all have been waiting for,” the club said on Twitter. “Finally, no country can follow me now because I am Australian,” Araibi told the Guardian newspaper. “Bahrain, please don’t follow me. I am now 100 percent safe in this country.”
|
immigration;australia;terrorism;soccer;thailand;refugees;bahrain;hakeem al-araibi
|
jp0002268
|
[
"asia-pacific"
] |
2019/03/12
|
China lawmakers urge easing of family planning curbs to 'liberate fertility' as birth rates plunge
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SHANGHAI - Delegates to China’s parliament are urging the overhaul or even scrapping of controversial family planning rules and say radical steps are needed to “liberate fertility” and reverse a decline in births and a rapidly shrinking workforce. With its population aging as a result of longer lifespans and a dwindling number of children, the world’s most populous nation decided in 2016 to allow all couples to have a second child, relaxing a tough one-child policy in place since 1978. But birth rates plummeted for the second consecutive year last year. Policymakers now fret about the impact a long-term decline in births will have on the economy and its strained health and social services. In proposals submitted at the National People’s Congress, delegates from across the country urged leaders to improve health care and maternity benefits, offer tax breaks, and provide more free public education. Some went further, saying China should forget about trying to control births and even remove all references to family planning from the constitution. “Continued control over fertility will inevitably defeat the purpose and make it even harder to resolve ingrained population problems,” Guangdong province delegate Li Bingji said in a proposal that described population as China’s number-one priority for the next four decades. The number of live births per 1,000 people fell to 10.94 in 2018, official data showed, less than a third of the 1949 level. Liaoning in the northeast, which has seen its population decline in recent years, has a birth rate of 6.49 per thousand. The estimated number of children each Chinese mother will have in their lifetime is 1.6, down from 5.18 in 1970. The global average is 2.45. Think tanks expect China’s population to peak at 1.4 billion in 2029 and then begin an “unstoppable” decline that could reduce the workforce by as much as 200 million by 2050. They also forecast that over-60s will account for 25 percent of the population by 2035, up from 17.3 percent in 2017. More than a third of China’s population could be over 60 by the middle of the century. According to Steven Mosher, president of the U.S.-based Population Research Institute which opposes government attempts to control population, China is entering a “low-birthrate recession.” “China has set up a deadly demographic trap for itself, condemning itself to low or no growth for years to come, regardless of how many babies they can, using persuasion or compulsion, get young women to bear,” he said. By Tuesday, the phrase “comprehensive liberation of fertility” had appeared in five proposals submitted to parliament, suggesting a groundswell of opinion in favor of a radical overhaul of family planning rules. Some delegates, including Xiong Sidong of Jiangsu province, even urged the state to remove “family planning” from the constitution. “To drop the requirement that all couples plan their births from the constitution would be a major shift in thinking, as the planning of human production nationwide has, since the mid-1970s, been deemed as vital to China’s modernization as the planning of material production,” said Susan Greenhalgh, research professor at Harvard University, who has studied the one-child policy. The original restrictions were aimed at curbing runaway population growth, and required the establishment of family planning offices in every village across the country. Critics said the policy was enforced through compulsory abortions and violated human rights. It also created gender imbalances as poor rural families chose to abort or abandon baby girls. The government has defended the program, saying it allowed the country to limit population growth by around 400 million and thereby tackle entrenched poverty. Researchers warn of a demographic time bomb, with a dwindling workforce unable to pay the health care bills of the elderly, but after four decades, the policy adjustments could prove too little too late. “Virtually no country in the world has been able to coax birth rates up for a significant period of time after childbearing rates have dropped with modernization,” said Greenhalgh. “If the government were to encourage unmarried women in their 30s, or same-sex couples, to have a child, that might make a difference, but such changes seem unlikely given the social conservatism of the current regime.”
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china;children;family planning;population
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jp0002269
|
[
"asia-pacific"
] |
2019/03/12
|
U.N. investigating North Korea sanctions violations in 20 countries, document shows
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UNITED NATIONS/WASHINGTON - U.N. experts say they are investigating possible violations of United Nations sanctions on North Korea in about 20 countries, from alleged clandestine nuclear procurement in China to arms brokering in Syria and military cooperation with Iran, Libya and Sudan. The expert panel’s 66-page report to the Security Council, obtained Monday by The Associated Press, also detailed the appearance in North Korea of a Rolls-Royce Phantom, Mercedes-Benz limousines and Lexus LX 570 all-wheel drive luxury vehicles in violation of a ban on luxury goods. And it noted a trend in North Korea’s evasion of financial sanctions “of using cyberattacks to illegally force the transfer of funds from financial institutions and cryptocurrency exchanges.” The report’s executive summary, which was obtained in early February, said North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs “remain intact” and its leaders are dispersing missile assembly and testing facilities to prevent “decapitation” strikes. The full report said “the Yongbyon nuclear complex remained active,” noting that satellite imagery through November showed excavation of water channels and construction of a new building near the reactors’ water discharge facilities. Satellite imagery also “indicates possible operation of the radiochemical laboratory and associated steam plant,” it said. The panel said it continues monitoring uranium concentration plants and mining sites in the country. It also has “surveyed, confirmed and reported ballistic missile activity sites and found evidence of a consistent trend” by North Korea “to disperse its assembly, storage and testing locations,” the report said. In addition to using civilian facilities, the panel said North Korea is using “previously idle or sprawling military-industrial sites as launch locations” — some close to, and some up to 10 kilometers (6 miles) from the assembly or storage sites. As examples of this trend, it cited the test launch of Hwasong-14 intercontinental ballistic missiles from the Panghyon aircraft factory on July 4, 2017, and a launch from Mupyong-ni 24 days after that. It said Pyongyang’s Sunan International Airport, the country’s largest civil-military airfield, was used to launch Hwasong-12 missiles on Aug. 29 and Sept. 15 of that year. As for trade sanctions, the experts said they continue to investigate two Chinese companies on the U.N. sanctions blacklist — Namchogang Trading Corp. and Namhung Trading Corp. — and associated front companies and their representatives “for nuclear procurement activities.” The panel said it is also currently surveying the world’s manufacturers of nuclear “choke point” items such as “pressure transducers,” focusing on their end-use delivery verification methods. The experts said they also were continuing “multiple investigations into prohibited activities” between North Korea and the Syrian government of President Bashar Assad. These include Syrian nationals reported to be engaged in arms brokering on behalf of North Korea “to a range of Middle Eastern and African states, reportedly offering conventional arms and, in some cases, ballistic missiles, to armed groups in Yemen and Libya,” the panel said. They also include North Koreans working for sanctioned “entities” and for Syrian defense factories, it said. The experts said a country, which they didn’t identify, had informed them that Iran “was one of the two most lucrative markets” for North Korean military cooperation and that both the Korea Mining Development Trading Corp. and Green Pine Associated Corp. offices in the country “are active.” The unnamed country also indicated that North Koreans in Iran were being used as cash couriers, the report said. The Iranian government replied to the panel that the only North Koreans in the country were diplomats, and they have not violated U.N. sanctions, the report said. The panel said it is continuing investigations into “multiple attempts at military cooperation” between North Korea and various Libyan authorities and sanctioned “entities” and foreign nationals working on their behalf. The experts said they are also continuing investigations into military cooperation projects between North Korea and Sudan, including information on activities involving a Syrian arms trafficker and technology for “anti-tank and man-portable air defense systems.”
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u.s .;north korea;kim jong un;u.n .;nuclear weapons;sanctions;north korea nuclear crisis;donald trump
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jp0002270
|
[
"asia-pacific"
] |
2019/03/12
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North Korean election sees 99.99% turnout, state media says
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PYONGYANG - Turnout in North Korea’s single-candidate elections hit 99.99 percent this year, state media said Tuesday — up from a seemingly unimprovable 99.97 percent the last time they were held. With participation figures that Western democracies would never achieve, millions of North Koreans head to nationwide polls every five years to elect members of the rubber-stamp legislature known as the Supreme People’s Assembly. But with only one approved name on each voting slip in the isolated country, which is ruled with an iron grip by Kim Jong Un’s Workers’ Party, the result is never in doubt. This year’s turnout fell just short of 100 percent as those “abroad or working in oceans” were unable to take part, the North’s official KCNA news agency reported. Like in 2014, results for the nationwide election held on the weekend came in 100 percent in favor of all named candidates. “All the electors participated as one in the election to cement our people’s power as firm as a rock,” KCNA said, citing a report released by the Central Election Committee. “One hundred percent of them cast their ballots for the candidates for deputies to the SPA registered in relevant constituencies,” it added. A detailed list of the 687 candidates was not immediately available. But Kim’s younger sister and close aide Kim Yo Jong was among the newly elected according to the South’s Yonhap news agency, citing Pyongyang state media. Critics say the North’s election — with its total absence of electoral competition — is largely a political rite for enabling the authorities to claim a mandate from the people while reinforcing loyalty to the government and social unity.
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north korea;kim jong un;elections
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jp0002271
|
[
"asia-pacific"
] |
2019/03/12
|
15 years after activists' disappearance in Bangkok, family of missing Thai lawyer still 'waiting for justice'
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BANGKOK - The wife of a lawyer who vanished after being snatched off the streets of Bangkok 15 years ago urged Thailand on Tuesday to toughen laws to end impunity of officials accused of carrying out enforced disappearances. Rights groups say 30 human rights activists have disappeared or been murdered in Thailand since 2001. While local officials have been accused of being involved in some cases, they are rarely held accountable in a country where the police and courts are warped by power and influence. A draft law on preventing enforced disappearances is currently in parliament. But the bill must be toughened up as it currently is focused “on protecting government officials,” said Angkhana Neelapaijit of Thailand’s National Human Rights Commission. “The state must stand with the victims.” Angkhana is the wife of prominent Muslim human rights lawyer Somchai, who disappeared on this day 15 years ago when he was bundled into a car off the streets of Bangkok, according to eyewitnesses. Well-known for representing clients accused of insurgency-related violence in Thailand’s deep south, Somchai’s abduction came while he was defending suspected Islamic militants who had accused authorities of torturing them while in custody. Five police officers — one of whom was briefly jailed — were eventually acquitted in Thailand’s Supreme Court, a verdict that is a stain on the country’s law enforcement record. “Bringing perpetrators to justice … cannot be ignored, no matter the level of the government official,” Angkhana said during a memorial event at the Netherlands Embassy in Bangkok. “The families of the disappeared — including myself — are still waiting for justice.” The event Tuesday was attended by family members of other missing activists around the region, including Shui-Meng Ng, whose husband, environmental campaigner Sombath Somphone, went missing in 2012 in Laos. Speaking to a sombre crowd, Shui-Meng urged the Thai government to give closure to Somchai’s family, saying she “stands in unity with your pain … with your anger and indignity.” Somchai’s unsolved case is one of at least 82 cases of enforced disappearances in Thailand since 1980 recorded by the United Nations.
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human rights;thailand;corruption;activism;bangkok;disappearences
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jp0002272
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[
"national"
] |
2019/03/12
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Japan's 'Olympic ojiisan' hopes to complete 56-year odyssey at 2020 Tokyo Games
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For most people, going to watch the Olympics is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, but for 92-year-old superfan Naotoshi Yamada it has become a quadrennial ritual over the last five and a half decades. Yamada, known to his Japanese compatriots as “Olympic ojiisan ” (“Olympic Grandad”), first experienced the Summer Games when Tokyo last hosted the gathering in 1964, and he has been there for every minute of every one since. “Mexico, Munich, Montreal, Los Angeles, Moscow. Japan did not even participate at the Moscow Olympics but I went to see that games,” said Yamada, speaking in Tokyo. “Moscow, Seoul, Barcelona, Sydney, Athens, Beijing, London. I went to all games from the opening to the closing ceremony … There is no other such person like me. I am the only one on the earth.” With his distinctive gold top hat, red jacket and beaming smile, Yamada has become one of the most familiar and colorful figures at the games, regularly followed by television cameras and cheered by other fans. Now, as the nation marks on Tuesday the 500 days to go until the formal start of next year’s Tokyo Olympics, he has one final wish — to live long enough to witness that sporting spectacle. “It will be the culmination of all my years cheering at the Olympics,” said Yamada. Yamada was a relative stripling of 38 when he attended his first Olympics, hoping not just to witness the sporting spectacle but also to sate an earlier desire to experience the world that was inspired by a speech given at his university by Emperor Hirohito, who is posthumously called Emperor Showa. “The Emperor said he wanted the young generation to rebuild our country,” Yamada said. “I felt that I wanted to do something for my country. I think that it is one of the reasons why I started to attend the Olympics.” Yamada’s first games outside Japan was Mexico City, in 1968, where he paired his classic Haori Hakama kimono with a Mexican sombrero. Yamada said it was impossible for him to choose a favorite from the 14 Olympics he has attended. “If you have … different colors of crayons and someone asks which color is the favorite one? Black? Red? Blue? Green? … Each color has its own character,” said Yamada, a wide grin etched across his face. “So I cannot say which is my favorite one. Each of the Olympics were fascinating.” Yamada loves the international nature of the Olympic Games and has a vast collection of souvenirs he has collected over the years, some of them acquired through swaps with other fans. His haul of flags, stamps, photographs and other items are on display at a gallery in his hometown of Nanto, Toyama Prefecture. “The Olympics is the only international festival for all humankind,” said Yamada. “Athletes and tourists from more than 200 countries will gather at one place. “For the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, so many people want to come to Japan. “I think that 2020 will be amazing event.”
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olympics;2020 tokyo olympics;naotoshi yamada;olympic ojiisan
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jp0002273
|
[
"national"
] |
2019/03/12
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At palace in Tokyo, Emperor Akihito starts series of succession rites ahead of abdication
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Emperor Akihito on Tuesday took part in a rite at the Imperial Palace to report his planned abdication to his ancestors, kicking off a series of rituals and ceremonies — set to extend over months — related to the succession. The 85-year-old, set to abdicate the throne on April 30, will become the first Japanese monarch in about two centuries to step down. He will be succeeded by his elder son, Crown Prince Naruhito, 59, the following day. In a ceremony Tuesday, the Emperor wore traditional attire and offered the report at sanctuaries within the Tokyo palace. The succession events involving Emperor Akihito will end with a ceremony marking his relinquishment of the throne at the end of next month, during which he is to deliver a speech. He will also again ceremonially report the abdication to his ancestors at the Imperial Palace. On March 26, Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko will visit the Nara Prefecture mausoleum of Emperor Jimmu, Japan’s legendary first Emperor, to report the abdication. The Emperor will also travel to the Grand Shrines of Ise in Mie Prefecture on April 18 and the Tokyo mausoleum of his father, Emperor Showa, on April 23 for the same purpose. Crown Prince Naruhito, who will ascend to the Chrysanthemum Throne on May 1, will report to the ancestors at a ceremony at the Imperial Palace on May 8. He will also make similar reports on Oct. 22, the day of his Enthronement Ceremony, and during the Nov. 14-15 Daijosai thanksgiving ceremony. Emperor Akihito expressed his desire to abdicate in a rare video message in August 2016, citing concern that he might not be able to fulfill official duties due to his age. In June 2017, Japan enacted one-off legislation enabling him to step down.
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royalty;emperor akihito;imperial family;abdication;emperor naruhito
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jp0002274
|
[
"national"
] |
2019/03/12
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The teen formerly known as Prince (Oji-sama) begs parents in Japan to avoid kira-kira names
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KOFU, YAMANASHI PREF. - A teenager’s decision to change his name spawned a viral tweet and led to a broader conversation online and in the media amid a trend for Japanese parents to give their children unusual given names. The boy, who was ashamed of his given name — Oji-sama — which translates to Prince, is starting a new life as Hajime, a change which was legally endorsed by a family court last week. Hajime Akaike, 18, from the city of Kofu, said he wants his decision to encourage other people who are embarrassed by their given names or find them to be peculiar. He urged prospective parents to think twice when naming their children amid a trend among parents of giving their kids so-called kira-kira (glittery) names with unusual readings. Among such names are unconventional ones inspired by anime characters such as Pikachu — composed of the Chinese characters for “light” and “space” — and Nausicaa — a combination of “now” and “deer” — who is the protagonist in a popular 1984 anime movie by Hayao Miyazaki. “If someone dislikes his or her name, it is possible to act (to change it). I would like them to have the courage to do so,” Akaike said. Akaike said his mother had chosen the name Oji-sama to express her belief that her child was “one and only, like a prince.” But he felt that, although the name may sound cute during childhood, having it as an 80-year-old would be questionable. Akaike began to think about changing his name as a ninth-grade student. Whenever he provided his name to create membership cards, such as at karaoke outlets, shop employees thought it was a fake one and repeatedly tried to confirm its authenticity. Akaike was embarrassed when his female peers at high school burst out laughing when he introduced himself. He says he was never bullied, but that he felt increasingly miserable and decided to change his name on the occasion of his graduation from high school. The Kofu Family Court approved the application for the name change on March 5. People unhappy with their given name can seek court approval to legally change it and can do so even if their parents or others oppose the move, as long as they are at least 15 years of age. A court will approve the change only if it deems that an applicant’s current name causes “difficulty in having a social life.” His mother was unhappy with his decision but his father accepted it, telling him, “This is your life.” Akaike chose Hajime at the suggestion of a friend who is a monk. The name, meaning beginning, is to express his desire to “start anew after resetting his past life.” The Chinese characters he chose for his new name are identical to those of Hajime Kawakami’s, a deceased Marxist economist whom Akaike respects, partly for his desire to help the poor. Akaike tweeted about his decision to change his name and his post was retweeted more than 100,000 times. He received numerous requests for advice by others who felt similarly about their unusual names. ハァァーイ！！！！！ 名前変更の許可が下りましたァー！！！！！！！！ pic.twitter.com/jusyxdSHtQ — あかいけ (@akaike_hardtype) March 7, 2019 Akaike wants to make the most out of his college life, starting in April, by taking classes in social welfare and playing in a band. He said that, with his name change, he will not feel anxious about introducing himself when meeting new people and that he looks forward to taking the “first step” of this new beginning in the spring.
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social media;twitter;names;hajime akaike
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jp0002275
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[
"national",
"social-issues"
] |
2019/03/12
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To wear or not to wear: Okayama police in showdown with teen rebels sporting rebellious uniforms
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Japan has its share of rebellious teenagers and one of the most popular ways for youth to demonstrate their edginess is for them to deck themselves out in provocative uniforms. Over the years, the practice of junior high school students sporting modern-day incarnations of tokkōfuku combat uniforms — long considered a symbol of motorcycle gangs — in lieu of their standard school outfits on the day of their annual graduation ceremonies has become an increasingly familiar spectacle. The custom has also long irked authorities, who have a history of demonizing the attire as a gateway to delinquency. And this year, one prefectural police unit has decided they’ve had enough. In an unusual step, the Okayama Prefectural Police has launched a full-scale crack down on students planning to don the much-maligned attire on Wednesday, when many junior high schools across the prefecture are slated to host graduation ceremonies, and are threatening to take them into custody if they dare show up publicly in the controversial get-ups. A junior high school boy in Okayama Prefecture will deck himself out in this uniform on his graduation day Wednesday. ‘I’ve betrayed my parents, made them cry and caused them lots of trouble, but I swear this will be the last unfilial thing I’ll do,’ it reads. | COURTESY OF KAZUHIRO NAKAGAWACHI “We’ve received many complaints from local residents that the sight of tokkōfuku-wearing kids massing around Okayama Station (after graduation ceremonies) is intimidating,” said Tomoyasu Yokoyama, an official with the prefecture’s education board. “Some witnesses to the scenes have said they now think Okayama is a scary, dangerous place. Others say the scenes are an embarrassment for Okayama.” But not everyone is convinced. Defenders of the youth culture movement have criticized the move by authorities as tantamount to depriving students of their right to freedom of expression. Despite the public perception of these costumes as “menacing,” closer inspection reveal that they are, in fact, anything but, stitched with a plethora of heartwarming messages for their parents, teachers and friends, they claim. Synonymous with heavy, colorful embroidery, tokkōfuku was once an indispensable companion to the bōsōzoku biker gangs that would cause headaches and disturbances by revving their motorcycles through neighborhoods late into the night. The groups’ activity peaked in the 1980s, but over the past decade or two, junior high school students interested in bad-boy looks have fused this fashion with their gakuran uniforms to create the new sartorial culture of shishū-ran (embroidered school uniforms), showing them off at their graduation ceremonies or, as is the case in Okayama, outside the school premises after the events wrap up. Officials are unsure exactly when the annual tradition in front of Okayama Station began, but Yasushi Namba, a juvenile section official of the Okayama Prefectural Police, believes it’s been around for at least 10 years. Namba said the stepped-up crackdown on the punk uniforms is meant to “nip in the bud” the possibility of children misbehaving en masse or networking with other delinquents. “We do realize they have the freedom to wear whatever they want, but when these kids wearing this stuff get together, they sometimes get carried away and engage in illegal conduct,” Namba said. Three boys in Aichi Prefecture pose on their graduation day last year. The student on the left dons a uniform sewn with a thank-you message for teachers ‘who took good care of me.’ | COURTESY OF KAZUHIRO NAKAGAWACHI He said that some of the children, unsatisfied with the mere display of their costumes, had in the past sought to kick it up a notch by climbing the venerable statue of Momotaro — a well-known hero from a Japanese folktale of the same name — set up outside the station, or vandalizing nearby flower beds. Okayama police are not alone in their crackdown on tokkōfuku. The Fukuoka Prefectural Police Department has also been taking similar steps to bring children into custody should they march down shopping streets or gather in large groups at other public spaces while wearing tokkōfuku or its spinoff, shishū-ran. The backlash against tokkōfuku and the attitudes that sometimes accompany those wearing it has even emerged from unexpected quarters. Two junior high school girls in Okayama Prefecture pose in front of their school on their graduation day last year. | COURTESY OF KAZUHIRO NAKAGAWACHI Iconic rocker Eikichi Yazawa, too, released a statement on his website in January saying that he would not tolerate “acts of intimidation” by some of his most hardcore fans who, among other things, sport tokkōfuku or brandish flags at his concert. “Tokkōfuku is so inevitably associated with biker gangs or yakuza that we can’t really condone 15-year-old kids swaggering around wearing it,” Namba said. Kyoto-based freelance tokkōfuku-maker Kazuhiro Nakagawachi, however, has condemned moves by police. The industry veteran said few of the custom-made uniforms in question are actually what authorities claim. “I could understand their argument that these costumes are intimidating if they were stitched with all these violent phrases or messages, but if you look at them closely, they are all about ‘thank you my sensei (teacher), Dad and Mom for everything’ or something like this. Some kids even write ‘Daddy and Mommy,'” Nakagawachi said, adding that poems and messages he often sews onto the garments are all custom-ordered by children themselves. “How could that be ‘intimidating’? It’s just a bunch of kids sporting showy clothes and having fun,” he said. Nakagawachi said that while he has nothing against police cracking down on actual misbehavior, taking them into custody solely based on what they are wearing “borders on an infringement of their rights to express themselves.” “They shouldn’t be judged based on how they look,” he said. “Deep down, many of them are good kids.”
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fashion;timeout;bosozoku;youth culture;tokkōfuku
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jp0002276
|
[
"national"
] |
2019/03/12
|
Lose your wallet or cash in Okinawa? It's more than likely you'll get them back, police data shows
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Lost wallets or hard cash reported to the Okinawa Prefectural Police last year had a higher chance of being returned than in the preceding four years, earning praise from foreign tourists who got their money back. The police said that ¥203.7 million in lost cash was reported in Okinawa in 2018. Of this amount, ¥138.28 million, or 67.9 percent, made its way back to owners — the best return rate since 2014. The five-year average for successfully returning lost money was about 66 percent, with a low of 64.8 percent in 2017. Money returned to owners the year after it was handed in to police was not included in the statistics. Some foreign tourists who retrieved their wallets lauded the practice of returning lost money, according to the prefectural police’s finance division. The five-year average return rate for goods, however, was only 36.4 percent due to the difficulty of finding the owners. In many cases, the owners simply gave up on retrieving their belongings. Lost money was taken to police in various condition, such as inside a wallet or envelope or just hard cash, according to the finance division. An elementary school student once handed in a ¥10 coin to a police box. The Tomigusuku Police Station, which has jurisdiction over Naha Airport, handles the most lost items among 14 police stations in the prefecture. Last year, it dealt with 43,427 cases of lost property and ¥3 million to ¥4 million in lost money. “We can identify an individual who dropped a wallet by checking the person’s driver’s license and other items in it, making it possible to return it,” said Satoshi Kinjo, head of the police station’s finance division. “But it is hard to find the person when the cash was handed in on its own.” Nonetheless, some people pick up hard cash or other items and take them to the police even though there is a chance it may be impossible to find the owner. “The lost item may be an important or memorable thing for people who dropped or left it behind,” Kinjo said. The law on lost property stipulates that cash reported to police must be kept for three months. During that time, officials in each police station’s finance division look for the owners and try to get in touch with them. After three months, the ownership will be transferred to the individual who picked up the cash. If the individual doesn’t want the money, it ends up in the prefectural coffers. Last year, Okinawa police logged a record number of reports of lost items, at 168,220. Wallets were the most common item, at 9,852, followed by 7,360 driver’s licenses, 7,339 ATM cards and 6,823 mobile phones. The increase has been attributed to the growing numbers of tourists and openings of big commercial facilities. Some of the more unusual items included an ihai (memorial tablet) inscribed with the posthumous Buddhist name of a deceased person, and divorce papers.
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okinawa;tourism;okinawa times;police
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jp0002277
|
[
"national"
] |
2019/03/12
|
Japan decorates former Pentagon chief William Cohen for strengthening alliance with U.S.
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WASHINGTON - Japan on Monday recognized former U.S. Defense Secretary William Cohen for his contribution to strengthening the bilateral security alliance. In a ceremony in Washington, Japanese Ambassador to the United States Shinsuke Sugiyama presented the Grand Cordon of the Order of the Rising Sun — the third-highest order bestowed by the government — to Cohen, who served as Pentagon chief from 1997 to 2001 under President Bill Clinton. Sugiyama praised Cohen for leading the revision of the Japan-U.S. defense cooperation guidelines in 1997, as well as his leadership in bilateral defense ministerial meetings and “two-plus-two” security talks involving the defense and foreign ministers of the two countries. Cohen underscored the significance of the Japan-U.S. alliance and called Tokyo the “anchor” of Washington’s security relations throughout the Asia-Pacific, a region that faces challenges such as China’s rising assertiveness and military buildup. The current chairman and chief executive officer of the Cohen Group, a Washington consulting firm, thanked Japan for hosting U.S. forces with what he described as the “generosity of the Japanese people.” Cohen dismissed the view that maintaining alliances and stationing American troops in Japan and other allies is a burden to the United States. “It’s one of the greatest benefits we have,” he said. “We have Japan as our key ally in the Asia-Pacific region, or what we now call the Indo-Pacific region.”
|
awards;u.s .;u.s. military;pentagon;u.s.-japan relations;william cohen
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jp0002278
|
[
"national",
"politics-diplomacy"
] |
2019/03/12
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Finance Minister Taro Aso ponders tariffs in spat with South Korea over wartime labor
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Finance Minister Taro Aso said tariffs were among the measures Japan could take against South Korea if a dispute over wartime labor worsens between the major trading partners. In response to a lawmaker’s questions in the Diet, Aso said that matters had not reached that stage yet, but halting remittances or stopping visa issuance could also be considered if more damage were to be caused. His comments came after the Sankei newspaper reported Sunday that South Korean lawyers were considering an attempt to seize the assets of Japanese companies in Europe. Fractious ties between the two countries have turned hostile over a series of lawsuits regarding wartime labor filed against Japanese companies whose roots can be traced back to the 1910-1945 period when Japan controlled the Korean Peninsula. Japan says all claims relating to the colonial period were settled under an economic cooperation pact attached to a 1965 treaty that normalized ties, which was accompanied by a payment of $300 million, and that South Korea should be responsible for any compensation. “There are various possible retaliatory measures, but I think negotiations are going on and we have not reached that point,” Aso said. “If things progress and there is more damage, we will be at a different stage.” South Korean President Moon Jae-in has said the 1965 pact between the two countries doesn’t prevent Koreans from suing Japanese firms and the decisions of the courts should be respected. The Supreme Court in Seoul ruled in November that Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. must pay between 100 million won and 150 million won ($88,500 to $133,000) to each of five plaintiffs who were forced to work in a military factory, a month after finding Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal Corp. liable in a similar case. There are more than a dozen other lawsuits in the pipeline, affecting about 70 Japanese companies, according to the Japanese Foreign Ministry. Jiji Press reported on the weekend that tariffs on about 100 South Korean products, cutting the supply of some Japanese goods to South Korea, and tightening the issuance of visas were among the measures Tokyo was considering if Seoul sells assets of Japanese companies that have been seized during the dispute.
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wwii;history;taro aso;south korea;tariffs;wartime labor;south korea-japan relations
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jp0002279
|
[
"national",
"politics-diplomacy"
] |
2019/03/12
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Russia begins military drill on disputed islands off Hokkaido
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MOSCOW - The Russian military on Tuesday launched an exercise on Etorofu and Kunashiri, two of the four Russian-held islands off Hokkaido claimed by Japan, according to the Interfax news agency. Some 500 troops from machine gun and artillery units participated in the drill, which included practicing how to prevent an enemy force from landing, the Russian news agency said. The exercise involved various types of military equipment, including T-72 tanks and mortars. Moscow is strengthening its military capabilities on the four disputed islands, treating them as a major military foothold in Russia’s Far East. Last week, Russian authorities said 350 troops took part in a drill on the Kuril Islands, which comprise an island chain called Chishima in Japan, and the four disputed islands.
|
northern territories;russia-japan relations;south kuril islands
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jp0002280
|
[
"national"
] |
2019/03/12
|
Toyota and JAXA plan to send rover to the moon in 2029, with space inside for four astronauts
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Toyota Motor Corp. said Tuesday it will jointly develop a rover to be sent to the moon in 2029, amid fierce global competition to explore Earth’s natural satellite. Toyota unveiled the project with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency to build a rover that can be powered by fuel cells and enable astronauts to live inside it for a certain period without wearing space suits, in what would be the first such development in the world. JAXA is planning to send manned missions to the moon between 2029 and 2034. “It is the greatest joy for engineers to be involved in projects on the surface of the moon. I’m really excited,” Shigeki Terashi, an executive vice president of Toyota, told a symposium held by JAXA in Tokyo. The rover is planned to be 6 meters long, 5.2 meters wide and 3.8 meters high, with a living space of 13 square meters for up to four people, according to their study. The tie-up comes at a time of growing international competition in lunar exploration. The United States is planning to build an outpost high above the moon, while China announced in January it had become the first country to successfully land an unmanned probe on the dark side of the satellite. Last month, Israel launched its first lunar lander in a mission that was privately funded. JAXA, which succeeded in February in having the Hayabusa2 probe touch down on a distant asteroid, is now focusing on using the technology to achieve a controlled touchdown on the Moon’s surface. It is also planning to land an unmanned probe in the 2020s among other projects, before sending the rover to the Moon on an American rocket in 2029.
|
space;jaxa;toyota;moon
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jp0002281
|
[
"national"
] |
2019/03/12
|
New website of Japan's Prime Minister's Office takes its cue from Trump White House
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The new website of the Prime Minister’s Office, which has become less wordy and uses more pictures after a recent design overhaul, resembles the site of the White House. The Prime Minister’s Office implemented the change on March 2, making the Japanese version of the website easier to use for smartphone users. For the renewal, the office took into consideration the websites of foreign governments. The office put emphasis on visual appearance, an official said, adding that no major change in content was made. The top page with its image of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is very similar in structure to that of the White House’s website , which features an image of U.S. President Donald Trump. The two websites also share features such as menu buttons on the top left and search boxes on the top right. The new page that lists the past and current Japanese Cabinets is different from a similar page before the renewal in that Abe’s current Cabinet is placed at the top, with a stress on Abe’s long tenure as prime minister. The changes were made without any political intentions, the Cabinet Public Relations Office said.
|
shinzo abe;internet;white house;prime minister 's office
|
jp0002283
|
[
"national"
] |
2019/03/12
|
Japan marks 500 days until 2020 Tokyo Olympics with events and official sport pictograms
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Japan on Tuesday marked 500 days to go until next year’s Tokyo Olympics formally begin as the local organizing committee unveiled a set of pictograms representing the different sports and competitions to be contested at the 2020 Summer Games. Also Tuesday, Yoshiro Mori, president of the Tokyo Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games, revealed that the 2020 torch relay will start at Fukushima Prefecture’s J-Village, a sports facility that was used as a base for workers heading to the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant in the initial stages of the 2011 meltdown crisis. The choice is designed to underline reconstruction efforts in the Tohoku region, which was hit by a massive earthquake and tsunami on March 11, 2011, leading to meltdowns at the Fukushima nuclear plant. Organizers revealed the 50 Olympic pictograms at an event in Tokyo, which was joined by two medal-winning Japanese athletes. A number of events were hosted in the capital and surrounding areas to mark the 500-day milestone and set the mood for the games. The pictograms, which have become part of every Olympics’ unique livery, were first introduced in 1964, the last time Tokyo hosted the event. The pictograms for the 2020 Games are based on the 20 that were used at the previous Tokyo Olympics. Shota Iizuka, a member of Japan’s Rio Olympic silver-winning men’s 4×100-meter relay team, said the pictogram representing his sport shows “the ideal starting angle and looks fast.” Kiyo Shimizu, a gold medalist in the women’s karate kata event at last year’s Asian Games, said the karate pictogram looks “cool and realistic,” and struck the same pose as the icon for cameras. The organizing committee collaborated with the International Olympic Committee and sport governing bodies in creating the 50 icons. A team of some 10 people, including graphic designer Masaaki Hiromura, started developing the pictograms in June 2017. Also on Tuesday, the organizing committee launched a project that involves a promotional bus traveling across the three northeastern prefectures that were badly hit by the 2011 disasters, another part of Tokyo 2020’s continuing efforts to demonstrate the games as being the “reconstruction Olympics.” The bus will spend a few days in Tokyo before heading to Fukushima, Miyagi and Iwate prefectures. Softball, the first competition of the Tokyo Games, will be staged in Fukushima Prefecture on July 22, two days before the opening ceremony. The 2020 Tokyo Olympics, which will have its opening and closing ceremonies on July 24 and Aug. 9, respectively, will feature a record 339 events. Of the 33 sports, four — karate, skateboarding, sport climbing and surfing — are being staged for the first time, while the dual baseball and softball tournaments return after being dropped from the core Olympic program after 2008. Meanwhile, preparations to stage the competition for some 11,000 athletes from around the world are making progress. Most of the venues were 50 to 70 percent complete by the end of January as the construction efforts sped up ahead of test events that will kick off this summer. The games’ centerpiece, the new National Stadium located in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward, is poised to be completed in November. Construction workers finished building the iron framework of the venue’s trademark wooden roof in February. The organizers said in January they will begin accepting ticket applications from Japanese fans as early as this April.
|
olympics;2020 tokyo olympics;2020 tokyo paralympics
|
jp0002284
|
[
"national"
] |
2019/03/12
|
Shrinking Wakayama village cuts assembly to five, tying Okinawa council for fewest members in Japan
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WAKAYAMA - A mountainous village in Wakayama Prefecture will have the joint-smallest assembly in the country, represented by only five members, it said Tuesday, in the latest sign of the nation’s declining population. The assembly of the village of Kitayama passed an ordinance to cut the number of assembly members from six to five, effective in December when it is slated to hold an election. It will share the title of the village with the fewest representatives in Japan with the village of Kitadaito in Okinawa Prefecture. One seat has been unfilled since 2016, after a member stepped down to become village mayor. “There have been no immediate issues with just five representatives. Our verdict represents the reality we are facing today of a decreasing population,” said Kenya Katsuragi, one of its members. “We have settled on this decision after extensive discussions on the pros and cons of lowering the number of representatives,” Manabu Kubo, who chairs the assembly, said after it enacted the ordinance. “We may revert back to six members if the population increases again.” The village has a population of 440 and is located in the mountains bordering Mie and Nara prefectures. It is known to be the country’s only exclave, isolated from any other village or city in Wakayama.
|
population;local government;wakayama;rural life;kitayama
|
jp0002286
|
[
"national",
"crime-legal"
] |
2019/03/12
|
Canadian charged with smuggling record haul of stimulant drugs into Japan worth ¥1.8 billion
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CHIBA - A Canadian man was charged Monday with attempting to smuggle about 30 kilograms of stimulant drugs through Narita airport, the biggest amount ever seized by Japanese customs authorities from a passenger’s luggage. Jonathan Isabelle, 21, who was arrested on his arrival at the international airport near Tokyo on Feb. 17, was indicted on a charge of violating the Stimulants Control Law, according to police, Tokyo customs and prosecutors. The drugs, discovered by a sniffer dog, had an estimated street value of ¥1.8 billion ($16 million). The Narita branch of the customs office quoted Isabelle as saying he brought two suitcases handed to him at a Canadian airport by an individual who had asked him to take them to Japan, and he agreed to do so as he wanted a reward but did not know what he was carrying. A similar quantity of stimulant drugs was seized at Haneda airport in Tokyo in April last year, but the amount Isabelle had was 400 grams more, according to the authorities.
|
drugs;canada;records;customs;narita airport
|
jp0002287
|
[
"national"
] |
2019/03/12
|
Event held in Taiwan to mark eighth anniversary of 3/11 earthquake and tsunami
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TAIPEI - A memorial ceremony was held in Taipei on Monday to mark the eighth anniversary of the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami, which devastated northeastern Japan, and express gratitude for the assistance provided by Taiwan. Around 80 people attended the event held at the Taipei office of the Japan-Taiwan Exchange Association, Japan’s de facto embassy in Taiwan in the absence of official ties. The ceremony began with the observation of a minute of silence at 1:46 p.m., the local time when the quake occurred on March 11, 2011. The earthquake triggered huge tsunami waves that engulfed the six-reactor Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, causing core meltdowns and explosions in the following days. Mikio Numata, the head of the office, said the equivalent of ¥20 billion in donations sent by Taiwanese following the disasters was a huge boost to the spirits of people in the Tohoku region. “There was already a special bond between Japan and Taiwan before the disaster,” Numata said. “The northeastern Japan earthquake made us see it more clearly.” Numata said the disaster areas are on their way to recovery in a gradual and steady way, citing the increase in foreign tourists visiting Tohoku. Describing Taiwan as “a good friend” of Japan, Taiwan-Japan Relations Association President Chiou I-jen told the same ceremony that the perseverance of the Japanese people and reconstruction efforts of the Japanese government have served as an inspiration for all mankind. “As a good friend of Japan, we are more than happy to work with you,” Chiou said. “We might not be able to do much and we might not be powerful enough, but please remember Taiwan is your friend and we are always there for you.” Naruyuki Ando, a director of the Taipei branch of the Japanese Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said the Japanese people will never forget the loss of innocent lives and property in the 2011 disaster. Nor will they forget the support and encouragement their Taiwanese friends have provided. Ando said that while people living outside the disaster areas have returned to their normal lives, many in the Tohoku region still live in temporary housing. Before they return to normal life, the affected people still need help and support. Thanking Taiwan on behalf of Japanese living in Taiwan, Ando pledged to commit his association to advancing bilateral relations, saying the 2011 disaster strengthened the friendly relationship with Taiwan. “Taiwan makes us see friends in need are friends indeed,” he said. Takeshi Yagi, an executive of the local Japanese chamber, said the event was held to remember not only lives lost in the 2011 disaster but also Taiwan’s support and encouragement. The event closed with participants from Japan and Taiwan presenting wreaths of white flowers.
|
great east japan earthquake;taiwan;disasters;3.11;anniversaries
|
jp0002288
|
[
"business"
] |
2019/03/13
|
U.S. and China within 'weeks' of accord but deal not guaranteed, says official
|
WASHINGTON - Washington’s top trade official on Tuesday said the United States and China were likely within “weeks” of ending their trade negotiations — but a successful outcome was not assured. “Our hope is that we’re in the final weeks of an agreement but I’m not predicting one,” U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said in Senate testimony. “We can’t predict success at this point but we are working hard.” Eight months into their sprawling trade war, U.S. and Chinese officials have alternated between projecting optimism and warning that they have much to do before reaching a final outcome. The two sides have exchanged tariffs on more than $360 billion in two-way trade, but Lighthizer on Tuesday declined to state publicly whether Washington would lift the tariffs it has so-far imposed if both sides reach a deal. U.S. officials are demanding far-reaching changes to Chinese industrial policy — including an end to massive state intervention in markets, subsidies and the alleged theft of American technology — and insist that any agreement be enforceable. Lighthizer refused to say whether the United States planned to lift any existing tariffs as part of the current talks, but said Washington would reserve the right to impose them should China fail to keep up its end of the bargain. “We have to maintain the right to be able to — whatever happens to the current tariffs — to raise tariffs in situations where there’s violations of the agreement,” he said. “That’s the core. If we don’t do that, then none of it makes any difference.” Democrats have accused President Donald Trump of going soft in the trade talks and moving toward a superficial agreement rather than tackling long-standing problems in trade with China. But Lighthizer said Tuesday the agreement would either have teeth “or the president won’t agree to the agreement.” During four rounds of shuttle diplomacy since December, officials announced that China had agreed to resume or increase purchase of US agricultural goods, with Trump announcing he would likely seal any deal at a “signing summit” with Chinese President Xi Jinping late this month. But the White House has since said there is no date yet for such a meeting.
|
china;u.s .;trade;tariffs;donald trump;robert lighthizer;trade war
|
jp0002289
|
[
"business"
] |
2019/03/13
|
Drones retain their buzz at Japanese trade show, with industrial uses expected to bolster growth
|
CHIBA - With the market for business-use unmanned aircraft looking promising in coming years, a large-scale drone expo that kicked off Wednesday showed more companies are eager to get involved with the industry. Companies ranging from the small to the powerful are showing off their business solutions using drones at Japan Drone, an annual exhibition at Makuhari Messe in Chiba that features more than 200 firms and runs until Friday. Telecom giant KDDI Corp. is showcasing its “smart” drone platform connected to KDDI’s mobile communication networks across the country, which allows a drone to navigate a wider swath of territory via remote control. “One merit of using our service is that drones can be remote controlled through our communication networks anywhere in Japan, unlike most drones exhibited at this event, which tap Wi-Fi networks with limited coverage,” said So Yamazaki, a KDDI official. KDDI will launch the service to corporate customers in June and lists surveillance, inspection, land survey and analysis as the envisioned applications. Industrial usage is sure to grow in the coming years, said Yamazaki. One particular area he personally has high expectations for is the surveillance of factories, stadiums and other facilities, as this spans a wide range of industries. KDDI’s rival NTT Docomo Inc., Japan’s largest mobile phone carrier in terms of subscribers, is also displaying its new drone business, which is scheduled to debut this year. “We are looking not only at domestic potential but also overseas,” said Shinji Okazaki, manager of the drone business development office at NTT Docomo. Like KDDI, NTT Docomo provides a packaged solution that uses unmanned aerial vehicles that can connect to its mobile communication networks, provides the machines and software and applies for flight permission. The carrier will also launch an inspection service for solar panels. The presence of more large firms at the expo indicates that business opportunities for drones are growing, said Takashi Nasu, chief operating officer at Blue innovation Co., which provides drone solutions for purposes such as indoor infrastructure inspection and security surveillance. The Tokyo-based company also provides drone landing ports, which have been used for drone delivery experiments in mountainous areas. Drones can land more accurately if they have visual recognition of the ports, and these spots could be critical hubs for logistics services in depopulated areas, Nasu said. While many companies are pitching industry-use drones, Drone no Yado, which launched last October, is seeking to tap drones’ entertainment value. Next month, it will offer nonexperienced drone users the chance to stay overnight with other enthusiasts to practice drone photography and videography. The plan will see people stay at an inn in the hot spring area of Yuhuin, Oita Prefecture, and also comes with training sessions to teach them how to operate the drones and edit the images they take. “We are inviting people who purely want to enjoy taking aerial images,” said official Tetsuya Sonoda. The overnight plan costs ¥35,000, he said. In the future, the service may be pitched to non-Japanese as “drone tourism,”said Kaz Naito, who manages the inn. The overall business drone market in Japan is projected to grow to ¥93.1 billion in fiscal 2018, up 85 percent from the previous year, according to the 2019 edition of the Drone Business Research Report by Impress Research Institute, the think tank of media company Impress Corp. That would jump to ¥507.3 billion in fiscal 2024. The biggest chunk of the service market growth between fiscal 2018 and fiscal 2020 is expected to come from the agricultural sector, which uses drones to spray agrochemicals and fertilizers. From fiscal 2022 onward, infrastructure inspection is expected to be the No. 1 driver of market growth, followed by agriculture and logistics. “Much of Japan’s infrastructure is aging because it was built during the period of rapid economic development (from the mid-1950s to the early-1970s),” said Daisuke Kono, a researcher at Impress Research Institute. “The government and companies began surveying facilities as experiments or for business, with hopes running high for more efficient inspections.”
|
agriculture;drones;ntt docomo;kddi
|
jp0002290
|
[
"business"
] |
2019/03/13
|
T-Mobile's proposed $25.5 billion Sprint deal draws flak from U.S. Democrats concerned about prices
|
WEDNESDAY - T-Mobile US Inc.’s proposed $26.5 billion purchase of Sprint Corp. came under congressional scrutiny for the second time in as many months, with Democrats warning that the merger between two of the nation’s top four carriers could lead to higher prices for consumers. “I’m deeply skeptical that consolidation is the path forward” to lower prices and more competition, said Rep. David Cicilline, of Rhode Island, the Democratic chairman of the House antitrust subcommittee, as he opened the panel’s hearing Tuesday. T-Mobile Chief Executive Officer John Legere and Sprint Executive Chairman Marcelo Claure appeared before the panel to defend their bid to combine the third- and fourth-largest U.S. wireless carriers. The companies say that together they could build an advanced 5G network, and form a stronger competitor to mobile leaders AT&T Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc. Legere on Tuesday said the companies plan “a faster, broader, deeper network that is truly nationwide.” The new company will win customers “through lower prices and better services,” Legere said. Claims of benefits from the merger should be viewed with “healthy skepticism,” said Rep. Jerrold Nadler, of New York, chairman of the Judiciary Committee. “I am concerned about any merger that would significantly increase the concentration in a market that is already highly concentrated,” Nadler said. The combined company “may no longer have any market-based incentive to lower prices and to offer pro-consumer policies once it becomes as large as the other two carriers.” The Republican-led Federal Communications Commission last week paused its review of the merger, adding to a battle for approval that has extended for more than eight months at the agency. The FCC said more time’s needed to examine T-Mobile’s proposal for wireless in-home broadband. The deal needs clearance from the FCC and from antitrust authorities at the Justice Department. Antritrust enforcement is facing heated debate, with critics contending that officials responsible for investigating mergers have fallen short, leaving large companies insulated from competition. While many lawyers and economists dispute that notion, some proponents have pushed the idea to center stage. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Democratic presidential candidate, has proposed breaking up companies like Facebook Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google. In February, Rep. Mike Doyle, the Pennsylvania Democrat who’s chairman of the House communications subcommittee, used a hearing to warn that the merger would bring market concentration to “a level that raises lots of red flags.” Members of Congress don’t have a direct role in merger reviews, but seek to influence authorities who directly vet the deals, such as antitrust officials and FCC commissioners. T-Mobile and Sprint each have foreign owners that would have significant roles in the combined entity. Deutsche Telekom AG, based in Bonn, would own 42 percent of the new company, while Tokyo-based SoftBank Group Corp. would own 27 percent.
|
u.s .;congress;softbank;sprint;democrats;t-mobile
|
jp0002291
|
[
"business"
] |
2019/03/13
|
Macron on trip to woo East Africa amid China's business expansion on continent
|
LALIBELA, ETHIOPIA - President Emmanuel Macron visited former French colony Djibouti on Tuesday with promises of a “respectful” partnership in the face of growing African indebtedness to China, which is fast expanding its foothold on the continent. Both Paris and Beijing — as well as Japan and the United States — have military bases in East Africa’s smallest country due to its strategic location along a key shipping lane leading to the Suez Canal. Macron described Djibouti, the last colony to gain independence from France — in 1977 — as a “historical partner and strategic ally,” and “the point of entry” to the Horn of Africa region. Its geographic importance forms the foundation of Djibouti’s hopes of becoming a major trading hub. Two years ago, it inaugurated its newest and biggest port — part of an infrastructure expansion, partly funded by China, that includes three other ports and a railroad to the capital of landlocked Ethiopia. Djibouti President Ismail Omar Guelleh’s administration hopes to turn the country into a “new Dubai” competing for business with overcrowded African ports such as Mombasa in Kenya. Sandwiched between Ethiopia, Somalia and Eritrea, tiny Djibouti is a crucial part of Beijing’s “Belt and Road” global infrastructure initiative along what has been dubbed the “Maritime Silk Road.” It allows China to reach Africa and Europe via the Indian Ocean. The project has seen Beijing lend developing countries in Asia and Africa huge amounts of money to develop infrastructure and ease trade. But the International Monetary Fund has sounded the alarm over an increase of Djibouti’s public debt from 50 percent of GDP in 2014 to 85 percent in 2017. The U.S.-based China Africa Research Initiative in 2017 estimated Djibouti’s debt to China at some $1.3 billion. “I would not want international investments to weaken the sovereignty of our partners,” Macron said Tuesday, in a reference to China’s growing African presence. “French companies are able to offer a respectful partnership,” the president added. Guelleh, who described himself as “a great friend of China” when he visited President Xi Jinping in 2017, told Macron: “There are opportunities for French companies, particularly in the field of infrastructure. “Our country is open, I have not lost hope that France can boost its investments in Djibouti.” Later Tuesday, Macron visited the remote Ethiopian town of Lalibela with its renowned 13th-century church complex, a UNESCO World Heritage site. He promised to “finance and assist the work with the Ethiopians to restore these churches” threatened by erosion and temporarily covered by vast metal-and-tarpaulin structures much hated by locals. Macron is scheduled to attend a state dinner in Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa. On Wednesday, he will meet leaders of the African Union before making the first-ever trip to Kenya by a French president. On Thursday, he will attend the One Planet Summit in Nairobi on reversing climate change. Rwanda meanwhile has invited Macron to attend the 25th anniversary of the country’s 1994 genocide that killed some 800,000 of its citizens. Rwandan authorities have long accused France of complicity in the massacre. Macron has not indicated whether he will attend the event on April 7 in the capital Kigali.
|
china;france;africa;u.s .;east africa;emmanuel macron;belt and road
|
jp0002292
|
[
"business"
] |
2019/03/13
|
Big Japanese firms offer smaller wage hikes as economy wobbles
|
Big firms offered smaller pay increases at annual wage talks Wednesday as the economy sputters, tempering hopes that domestic consumption will offset external risks to growth. Major firms are set to raise wages for a sixth straight year as Prime Minister Shinzo Abe kept up the pressure on businesses to boost pay in an effort to beat the deflation that has dogged Japan for nearly two decades. But as economic growth slows, firms have grown wary about offering big pay increases because that commits them to higher fixed costs at a time of uncertainty when company profits are leveling off. Results of the shuntō (spring labor offensive) talks between management and unions — announced by blue chips in sectors such as cars and electronics — set the tone for wage hikes across the nation, which have implications for consumer spending and inflation. “I worry the momentum toward wage hikes may weaken as underlying inflation remains weak and there is a strong sense of uncertainty,” said Hisashi Yamada, senior economist at Japan Research Institute. “Uncertainty is high on the external outlook such as the U.S.-China trade war and Europe’s unstable politics. On top of that, a national sales tax is scheduled to increase in October.” A slowdown in the global economy, the U.S.-China trade war and trepidation over the final shape of a deal to seal the U.K.’s exit from the European Union have sharply increased strains on businesses worldwide. Faced with the heightened uncertainty about the growth outlook, cautious Japanese firms usually prefer to offer one-off bonuses and other benefits depending on annual profits. They tend to focus more on the annual total sum payment than fixed base salaries, which will determine retirement payment and pension benefits. Toyota Motor Corp., a bellwether and Japan’s largest automaker, on Wednesday offered a pay raise of ¥10,700 on average, down ¥1,000 from last year, domestic media reported, underscoring growing pressure on businesses. Electronics giants such as Panasonic Corp. offered a base pay raise of ¥1,000, down ¥500 from last year. A survey by the Institute of Labour Administration, a think tank, predicted wage growth will slow to 2.15 percent this year, pulling further away from the 17-year peak of 2.38 percent in 2015, despite hefty cash piles at corporations. A Reuters Corporate Survey last month found a slim majority — 51 percent of firms polled — saw wages rising around 1.5 to 2 percent this year, versus last year’s 2.26 percent average across all Japanese industries. In the coming fiscal year from April 1, Abe’s government will start to implement work-style reform to curb Japan’s notoriously long work hours. The reform also includes “equal pay for equal work” aimed at narrowing the pay gap between full-time employees and contract workers or part-timers, and raising the retirement age to cope with the aging population. The move has shifted the focus of both unions and management away from pay hikes, dashing policymakers’ hopes of stoking a virtuous cycle of a tight job market boosting wages to stimulate consumption and spur inflation to the Bank of Japan’s 2 percent target. Japan’s unions tend not to be so aggressive in pressing their demands as those in the West because they attach greater importance to job security and retain a sense of company loyalty. Dwindling union membership has also deprived unionists of bargaining powers, with companies hiring more nonunionized part-timers and nonregular employees, who represent nearly 40 percent of workers. “At this year’s shuntō, both companies and unions don’t seem to put greater emphasis on wage hikes than before,” said Kiichi Murashima, economist at Citigroup Global Markets Japan. “Instead, they are considering a wider range of issues like pay disparity, labor productivity and work-life balance.”
|
wages;shunto
|
jp0002293
|
[
"business",
"tech"
] |
2019/03/13
|
U.S. House intel panel chief Adam Schiff has 'profound concern' over Huawei role in U.S. 5G networks
|
WASHINGTON - House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff said he has “profound concern” about Chinese networking giant Huawei Technologies Co. and the security and privacy threats that integrating its equipment across 5G mobile networks would incur. Schiff said Tuesday he believes the company would be unable to refuse Chinese government requests for data that are accessible through its technology. “I have profound concerns about Huawei and do believe that Huawei is a national security threat,” Schiff told reporters during a breakfast sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor. “Particularly if it becomes integral and integrated into our 5G network, or that of our allies.” The Trump administration has told Germany that intelligence-sharing could be limited if it proceeds with allowing Huawei to build Germany’s new mobile-internet systems. The California Democrat was asked about a potential executive order to stop the company from selling advanced telecommunications equipment in the U.S. Schiff said his committee previously investigated Huawei 11 years ago and had concern then “based on what we were able to learn.” “Those concerns have only heightened over the years since,” he said. “While much of this I can’t discuss publicly, you know — I can say this. Huawei is not in a position to say ‘no’ to the Chinese government. It owes its existence and livelihood and future profitability to staying in the favor of the Chinese government.” Schiff said that means if data are routed through China, or data are accessible through Huawei technology, “and the Chinese government asks for that — with no showing, no probable cause, no interest in privacy, not nothing — Huawei must comply.” “And that is not a circumstance I think the United States or its allies should willingly put themselves in,” Schiff added.
|
china;u.s .;cybersecurity;huawei;donald trump;5g;adam schiff;mobile networks
|
jp0002294
|
[
"business",
"financial-markets"
] |
2019/03/13
|
Dollar a tad weaker around ¥111.30 in Tokyo
|
The dollar was marginally weaker around ¥111.30 in late Tokyo trading Wednesday, amid a growing wait-and-see mood ahead of a British parliamentary vote later in the day on Britain’s exit from the European Union without a deal. At 5 p.m., the dollar stood at ¥111.32-32, down from ¥111.36-36 at the same time Tuesday. The euro was at $1.1279-1280, up from $1.1266-1266, and at ¥125.56-57, up from ¥125.47-47. The dollar fell below ¥111.20 in the midmorning as the Nikkei stock average expanded losses. But the greenback rose back above ¥111.30 in afternoon trading on buying on a dip, traders said. In late hours, players turned inactive, waiting to see whether the no-deal Brexit will be voted for or down, a domestic bank official said. An official of a major securities firm said investors are rather paying attention to how long Britain’s departure from the EU will be put off, as they strongly believe that the no-deal exist will be rejected. Active trading was held in check prior to announcements of economic indicators in the United States on Wednesday, an official of a foreign exchange margin trading service firm said.
|
forex;currencies
|
jp0002295
|
[
"business",
"financial-markets"
] |
2019/03/13
|
Tokyo stocks take sharp downturn on profit-taking
|
Stocks fell back sharply on the Tokyo Stock Exchange on Wednesday, hit by selling to cash in gains following the previous day’s surge. The 225-issue Nikkei average gave up 213.45 points, or 0.99 percent, to end at 21,290.24. Tuesday, the key market gauge soared 378.60 points. The Topix index of all first-section issues finished down 13.41 points, or 0.84 percent, at 1,592.07, after climbing 24.04 points the previous day. The market got off to a weak start and accelerated its downswing around midmorning as investors stepped up profit-taking in view of sluggish movements of Chinese equities, market sources said. In the afternoon, stocks resisted dropping further, although they remained deep in negative territory. Small-lot selling by individual players hit wide-ranging issues, an official of a bank-affiliated securities firm said. Yoshihiko Tabei, chief analyst at Naito Securities Co., pointed out that the U.K. Parliament’s rejection on Tuesday of Prime Minister Theresa May’s revised Brexit deal weighed down the market, as the move made murkier the situation surrounding the U.K.’s proposed exit from the European Union. Masahiro Ichikawa, senior strategist at Sumitomo Mitsui Asset Management Co., said that the market showed some resilience in the afternoon, with “long-term players seeing no reason to sell.” The market’s downside was supported by hopes for the Bank of Japan’s purchase of exchange-traded funds, Ichikawa added. Falling issues far outnumbered rising ones 1,648 to 411 in the TSE’s first section, while 75 issues were unchanged. Volume inched down to 1.225 billion shares from Tuesday’s 1.231 billion shares. Control equipment maker Omron Corp. dived 5.96 percent, falling an easy prey to profit takers following its recent spurt. Other big losers included electronic parts supplier Murata Manufacturing Co., chipmaking equipment maker Tokyo Electron, mobile phone carrier KDDI Corp. and clothing retailer Fast Retailing Co. By contrast, Shin-Etsu Chemical Co., a supplier of semiconductor-related materials, attracted purchases on its announcement of own-share buybacks. Also bought were Japan Tobacco Inc. and advertising agency Dentsu Inc. In index futures trading on the Osaka Exchange, the key June contract on the Nikkei average plummeted 280 points to finish at 21,050.
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stocks;nikkei;tokyo stock exchange;topix
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jp0002296
|
[
"business",
"corporate-business"
] |
2019/03/13
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Nissan deals fresh blow to U.K. by stopping Infiniti production at Sunderland plant amid Brexit
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LONDON - Nissan Motor Co. Ltd. will stop production of its upscale Infiniti models in the U.K. as part of a plan to withdraw the brand from Western Europe and focus on North America and China. Production of the Q30 sedan and QX30 crossover models will cease by July at Nissan’s Sunderland plant in northeast England, the carmaker said Tuesday. It’s the second blow within weeks for the U.K.’s biggest car plant, after Nissan abandoned a plan to make the X-Trail sport utility vehicle there, citing uncertainty over Brexit as a factor. “In anticipation of its planned withdrawal from Western Europe in early 2020, the company is working to find alternative opportunities for any employees who would be affected,” Infiniti said in a statement. Operations in Eastern Europe, Middle East and Asia won’t be affected. Infiniti’s retreat from Europe marks an end to an 11-year effort to establish the brand in one of the world’s most competitive markets for luxury cars and the home of premium marques including Volkswagen AG’s Audi, Daimler AG’s Mercedes-Benz and BMW AG’s namesake brand. Last year, Nissan’s deliveries of Infiniti vehicles plunged 34 percent to just 10,958 units. That compares with Audi’s 2018 total of 700,674 vehicles, BMW’s 778,343 and Mercedes’ 838,358 in the European Union, according to the European Automobile Manufacturers Association. Even Japanese rival Toyota Motor Corp.’s Lexus sold 44,961 vehicles in EU countries last year, up 2.7 percent from 2017. Sunderland made about 12,000 Infinitis last year, a sliver of its more than 442,000 total units produced. The two British-made subcompact models will disappear from the brand’s lineup globally, a spokesman said. Nissan will electrify its luxury division’s portfolio from 2021 onward and discontinue diesel offerings to focus on its SUV lineup in North America and unveil five new models in China. Car companies are streamlining their portfolios and production sites amid growing global pressures, including trade wars, the costly shift to electric cars and weakening markets. The U.K. has been particularly hard-hit, with Brexit adding another drag. Honda Motor Co. announced last month it will shut its plant in the U.K., while Jaguar Land Rover is cutting about 4,500 jobs, most of them in Britain. Nissan’s Sunderland plant employs more than 7,000 people, and 250 of them are focused on the Infiniti models, a spokesman said. “The company will place more focus on its SUV lineup in North America, bring five new vehicles to China over the next five years, work to improve quality of sales and residual value, and realize more synergies with Nissan Motor Company,” Infiniti said.
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europe;u.k .;infiniti;nissan;sunderland
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jp0002297
|
[
"business",
"corporate-business"
] |
2019/03/13
|
Gmail and Google Drive services temporarily disrupted in Japan and globally
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Google Inc.’s Gmail and Google Drive temporarily experienced service disruptions Wednesday as part of a worldwide outage —including in Japan. The company said at around noon that Gmail users began reporting having trouble both attaching and accessing attachments, saving email drafts and sending emails. Google Drive users were similarly experiencing trouble uploading and downloading files. Google Drive is a file storage and share service. The multinational technology firm later said that the issues had been resolved. “We apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience and continued support,” Google said in a statement released on its website. According to downdetector.com , a site that keeps track of outages, some of the hardest hit countries based on the number of status reports were Japan, Australia, Singapore and Indonesia. It is not immediately clear how many users were affected by the service disruption.
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internet;google;gmail;google drive
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jp0002298
|
[
"business",
"corporate-business"
] |
2019/03/13
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Kobe Steel hit with ¥100 million fine over data fabrication that continued for four decades
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A Tokyo court ordered Kobe Steel Ltd. on Wednesday to pay a ¥100 million ($898,000) fine for fabricating product quality data at its domestic plants. The Tachikawa Summary Court found that three of the steelmaker’s plants had sent about 300 falsified product certificates to clients over a year through September 2017, even though the products failed to meet clients’ specifications. Kobe Steel was accused of violating the law preventing unfair competition by fabricating product quality data. The fine was in line with the amount sought by prosecutors, who claimed during the trial that Kobe Steel “damaged the credibility of made-in-Japan products” by continuing the practice for more than 40 years. The steelmaker’s defense team had sought a lenient ruling, arguing the company did not intend to secure improper financial gains through the practice. “We are fully committed to implementing measures to prevent a similar incident from happening again and will introduce drastic reforms to win back trust,” Kobe Steel said in a statement. The company’s report on the data fabrication scandal revealed in March last year that the aluminum and copper products in question had been supplied to over 600 firms at home and abroad and used to manufacture bullet trains and aircraft, among other products.
|
scandals;kobe steel;data fabrication
|
jp0002299
|
[
"business",
"corporate-business"
] |
2019/03/13
|
Honda recalls 1.1 million cars in U.S. to re-replace Takata air bags with another firm's after injury
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NEW YORK - Honda Motor Co. said Tuesday it is recalling some 1.1 million vehicles in the United States to re-replace defective air bags supplied by Takata Corp. Honda made the decision to replace the Takata air bags with products from a different company after a driver suffered a related injury in an accident. Eight 2001-2014 Honda-brand models and six 2002-2016 models of its Acura luxury brand are subject to the automaker’s latest recall. Honda recalled all of these models from 2014 to 2016 to replace Takata’s air bag inflators with new products, also supplied by the Japanese maker of auto parts. In January last year, a replaced air bag inflator ruptured when a Honda Odyssey minivan crashed, injuring the driver’s arm. An investigation found that the inflator manufactured at Takata’s plant in Mexico was defective. Due to Takata’s faulty air bags, Honda has recalled some 12.9 million vehicles and replaced about 21 million inflators. Takata went bankrupt in June 2017.
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u.s .;accidents;honda;cars;takata;recalls
|
jp0002300
|
[
"world",
"social-issues-world"
] |
2019/03/13
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'Pulling up the drawbridge': Trump camp reportedly closing U.S. immigration agency's overseas offices
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WASHINGTON/NEW YORK - President Donald Trump’s administration is planning to close the U.S. immigration agency’s overseas locations, according to current and former officials and an internal memo, in a move affecting offices that currently handle family visa requests, international adoptions and other tasks. The move is the latest from an administration that has worked to limit both legal and illegal immigration since Trump took office in January 2017, including cuts to the U.S. refugee program and heightened vetting of U.S. visa applications. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) Director Francis Cissna, in an email message to agency employees, announced plans for closure of the international field offices. The plans called for shifting those duties to U.S.-based agency offices and American consulates and embassies abroad. The agency, part of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, currently operates 23 offices overseas, scattered across Latin America, Europe and Asia, according to the agency’s website. The agency offices carry out services including: helping American citizens who want to bring relatives to the United States; processing refugee applications; enabling overseas citizenship applications; and assisting Americans who want to adopt foreign children, according to its website. The international offices can also process naturalizations of U.S. military service members who are not already U.S. citizens. USCIS officers abroad also look for fraud in visa applications and provide technical immigration advice to other U.S. government officials. On Monday, senior USCIS officials told employees within its Refugee Asylum and International Operations division that the agency had decided to close its overseas posts, one current and one former official said. The closures will happen over the next year and some of the offices’ tasks likely will be shifted to the State Department, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “Change can be difficult and can cause consternation,” Cissna wrote, but said the agency is committed to implementing “as smooth a transition as possible.” In places where USCIS does not have overseas posts, the State Department already carries out some of its duties, such as replacing green cards for American legal permanent residents who have lost theirs. International USCIS staff provide support to U.S. officials who travel abroad to interview refugee applicants. The administration has put in place new barriers for asylum seekers, barred citizens of several Muslim-majority countries from traveling to the United States and pushed new rules that would make it harder for low-income immigrants to become legal permanent American residents. Advocates expressed concern that the move to close down overseas offices would create additional roadbocks for vulnerable applicants. “They are doing an across-the-board effort to dismantle the capacity of this country to process refugees and immigrants legally,” said Mark Hetfield, president of the U.S. refugee assistance organization HIAS. “It is not consistent with what President Trump said in the State of the Union (address), which is that he wants immigrants to come here, that he wants them to come here legally. “This is another example of the administration pulling up the drawbridge,” Hetfield added. Leon Rodriguez, USCIS director under Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama, said the shift may have been aimed at cutting costs and that most duties now performed internationally by USCIS likely will be delegated to U.S. consulates abroad. “Symbolically it is retreating from an international presence,” Rodriguez said. Agency spokeswoman Jessica Collins said by email: “As we have internally shared, USCIS is in preliminary discussions to consider shifting its international USCIS office workloads to USCIS domestic offices in the United States and, where practicable, to U.S. embassies and consulates abroad.” “The goal of any such shift would be to maximize USCIS resources that could then be reallocated, in part, to backlog reduction efforts,” Collins said. The agency will work closely with the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security “to ensure no interruption in the provision of immigration services to affected applicants and petitioners,” Collins added. USCIS has in the past decided to close individual offices based on demand for its services. The agency previously announced that its Moscow field office will permanently close at the end of this month, citing a “significant decrease in workload.”
|
u.s .;immigration;islam;refugees;donald trump;dhs;francis cissna;uscis
|
jp0002301
|
[
"world",
"crime-legal-world"
] |
2019/03/13
|
U.S. college arms race goes too far with wealthy 'gaming the system'
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NEW YORK - In the American blood sport of college admissions, the rich have long had more levers to pull. It starts as early as a private kindergarten ($20,000 to $50,000 a year depending on location), then to boarding school (another $50,000-plus) and continues with tutors, consultants, test prep and exotic trips that become fodder for college essays. Big donations also help get children admitted, whether to encourage a legacy decision at one’s alma mater or even at schools one didn’t attend, as when Charles Kushner gave $2.5 million to Harvard before his son Jared matriculated. The wealthy have always had an edge, but the revelation that dozens actually paid to grease their kids’ way underscores what many parents feel in their bones: the college admissions process has become an escalating contest where money often wins. In the latest scandal, parents paid bribes of $100,000 to $6.5 million to guarantee their children got into top schools, including Yale, Stanford, the University of Southern California and Georgetown. Among the accused are Douglas Hodge, the former chief executive officer of Pacific Investment Management Co.; William McGlashan, managing partner of TPG Growth; Robert Zangrillo, the founder of private investment firm Dragon Global Management; and actresses Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin, according to a complaint Tuesday. Athletic coaches, exam administrators, counselors and test-takers also are alleged to have participated. Anyone who’s gone through the process of watching a nervous son or daughter wrestle with an unopened decision notification can appreciate the appeal of such an arrangement — and its unfairness. “We’re talking about a scandal about rich people trying to put their finger on the scale,” said Chris Falcinelli, founder of Focus Educational Services, a private tutoring firm in Brooklyn that also provides college counseling. One cooperating witness in the case described the path he was offering wealthy families as a “side door” into college, as opposed to the front door, “which means you get in on your own,” he said in the complaint. “The back door is through institutional advancement, which is 10 times as much money.” ‘Desperate parents’ How money can influence the process is a sore subject aggravated by increasing competitiveness in admissions, and made even worse as the country grapples with systemic inequality. For rich and poor alike, attending a highly selective college can be the ticket to desirable jobs, mates and social circles. Most top colleges say they’re trying to improve economic diversity, but in many cases progress has been slow. “These are desperate parents who believe their kids will not be successful, or their family image will be hurt, unless their kid enrolls at a name-brand school,” said Robert Schaeffer, public education director at FairTest, a nonprofit that monitors the testing industry. The best metaphor is an “arms race,” Schaeffer said, in which affluent parents take extreme measures to get their children into good schools because they fear that other parents are doing the same. “It just ramps up the competitive hysteria.” Despite the anxiety, it’s still relatively easy for the wealthy and celebrities to give their children an advantage in admissions, said Joseph Soares, a sociology professor at Wake Forest University who studies college admissions. “If you’ve got an awful lot of money, your offspring have to be stupider than a doorknob to not get into some of these institutions,” he said. “You have a big pool of people who are academically qualified,” he added, so schools give extra points to qualified applicants who come from philanthropic families. In the college admissions race, the poor and middle class are often at a disadvantage. Tutors and consultants Basic test prep courses can cost more than $1,000, while one-on-one tutors can cost hundreds of dollars an hour. Consultants, meanwhile, charge tens of thousands of dollars to groom the college admissions resumes from a young age. They make sure teenagers have the right extracurricular activities, go on the right volunteer trips and write compelling essays. Colleges also have a built-in financial interest in admitting students who can pay full tuition, which now averages $35,830 at private four-year colleges, according to the College Board, not including $12,680 in room and board. Reformers have been pushing back at these upper-class advantages. More than 1,000 colleges and universities no longer require ACT or SAT scores from applicants, according to FairTest. Dozens of top universities — mostly those with the largest endowments — now say their admissions are need-blind. The most elite schools guarantee substantial financial aid, often free of loans, to poorer students. Still, most universities and colleges do take financial means into account. Wesleyan University reversed its need-blind admission policy in 2012, citing financial pressures. “This scandal has exposed a huge rift among haves and have-nots in the admissions process, and there’s a lot of resentment,” said David L. Marcus, an independent admissions coach for 10 years. “The wealthy have been gaming the system, and it’s tragic.”
|
fraud;universities;scandals;wealth
|
jp0002302
|
[
"world",
"crime-legal-world"
] |
2019/03/13
|
Italy outraged as court finds victim too ugly to be raped
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ROME - Italy’s Justice Ministry has ordered a preliminary inquiry into an appeals court’s ruling that overturned a rape verdict by arguing in part that the woman who was attacked was too ugly to be a credible rape victim. The ruling has sparked outrage in Italy, prompting a flash mob Monday outside the Ancona court, where protesters shouted, “Shame!” and held up signs reading, “Indignation.” The appeals sentence was handed down in 2017 — by an all-female panel — but the reasons behind it only emerged publicly when Italy’s high court annulled it on March 5 and ordered a retrial. The Court of Cassation said Wednesday that its own reasons for ordering the retrial will be issued next month. Two Peruvian men were initially convicted of the 2015 rape of a Peruvian woman in Ancona, but the Italian appeals court overturned the verdict and absolved them, finding that she was not a credible witness. The woman had claimed one of the men raped her while the other stood guard after they had spiked her drink with drugs. Doctors said her injuries were consistent with rape and found traces of a date rape drug in her blood. But the judges ruled it was “not possible to exclude the possibility that it was” the alleged victim who “organized the ‘exuberant’ evening,” according to Italian media reports. In part of the ruling, the court noted that the suspects said they had found her unattractive. They said the alleged rapist “didn’t even like the girl, to the point of having stored her number in his phone under the nickname ‘Viking,’ an allusion to an anything but feminine figure, rather a masculine one.” Cinzia Molinaro, a lawyer for the victim, said her appeal to the Cassation contested a host of procedural problems with the acquittal verdict but said she had also cited the “absolute unacceptability” of the Italian court’s reference to the victim’s appearance. Molinaro noted that the woman, who has since returned to Peru, had suffered such genital trauma in the rape that she required stitches. The Justice Ministry said it was conducting the “necessary preliminary investigations” into the appeals verdict. The case is the second to spark criticism in recent weeks in Italy, where cases of sexual violence and the murders of women regularly top the news. Protests broke out earlier this month after an appeals court in Bologna nearly cut in half the sentence for a man who admitted to killing his partner. The court cited as one of its reasons for the reduction the “emotional storm” of jealousy that the killer experienced. Critics said the sentence basically sanctioned the practice of “honor killings.”
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courts;italy;women;sex crimes;peru
|
jp0002303
|
[
"world"
] |
2019/03/13
|
U.S. evacuates staff as paralyzed Venezuela braces for protests; Maduro probes Guaido for blackout 'sabotage'
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CARACAS - Venezuela braced for fresh protests called by opposition leader Juan Guaido on Tuesday, day five of a crippling power blackout, as the U.S. moved to pull all remaining diplomatic staff from the crisis-wracked country. Venezuela’s state prosecutor, Tarek William Saab, meanwhile told reporters he would place Guaido under investigation for “his alleged involvement in the sabotage of the Venezuelan electricity system.” It is the first government move against the U.S.-backed Guaido since his return to Venezuela last week after defying a travel ban to visit several South American leaders. President Nicolas Maduro has blamed the blackout on U.S. “sabotage” in the form of an electromagnetic attack on the country’s main hydroelectric complex in Guri, which supplies 80 percent of Venezuela’s electricity. Guaido dismissed that explanation as “Hollywoodesque.” Critics have long blamed the government for failing to maintain the power grid. Guaido, 35, is seeking to capitalize on public anger over the blackout, which has piled misery on a population suffering years of economic crisis and shortages of food and medicine under Maduro. The youthful National Assembly leader — locked in a power struggle with Maduro since declaring himself interim president on Jan. 23 — said stopping the socialist leader’s “usurpation” of power would depend “on us demonstrating in a massive and organized way in the streets.” “I call on all Venezuelans to take to the street and avenues nearest them,” urged Guaido, who has been recognized as interim president by more than 50 countries. Outlining the case against Guaido, Saab said the opposition leader had disseminated a series of messages that have “stoked violence. “At this moment he appears as one of the intellectual authors of this electrical sabotage and is practically calling for a civil war in the middle of this blackout.” Prompted by Guaido’s urging, the opposition-dominated National Assembly declared a “state of alarm” on Monday to pave the way for the delivery of international aid, 250 tons of which has been stuck for a month at Venezuela’s borders with Colombia and Brazil. However, with Maduro controlling the military and security services — which are currently preventing aid from entering the country — he has no means of enforcing it. Maduro used the military to begin distributing food, water and other assistance in several districts on Tuesday. Marshaled by security forces, crowds formed impatient lines at water trucks distributed in some areas, as they waited to fill containers. But tensions were running high amid the shortages. “I saw people lining up for a kilogram of rice, and the shopkeepers had to fire shots in the air to keep the lines under control,” Alberto Barboza, 26, told AFP in the oil capital Maracaibo. “I heard a lot of shooting,” said Barboza, adding that a local bakery and a tire shop were looted. The blackout has left millions without running water. Many people lined up to buy bottled water in Caracas supermarkets, but most are reduced to desperate means — besieging fountains in public parks and any available water sources around the capital. In one area, a desperate crowd swarmed around a concrete gully taking run-off water into the capital’s polluted River Guaire, using water bottles and all kinds of containers and cans. Guaido called on the military and security services to “refrain from preventing or hindering” Tuesday’s protests. Maduro meanwhile called for grassroots groups known as “colectivos” to hit back against what he called attacks encouraged by the U.S. against the country’s electrical grid. “The time has come for active resistance,” he said in a speech late on Monday. His call came after armed men on motorbikes were seen riding through areas of the capital at the weekend. The opposition argues the colectivos have been armed by the government and act as militia. Critics say such groups were behind the death of seven people on February 23 when the opposition tried in vain to bring U.S.-supplied food and medicine across the borders with Colombia and Brazil. Power has been restored to some areas since the weekend but — with residents and businesses fearing that refrigerated food would spoil — service has been intermittent and the power often drops out. Businesses and schools remained shuttered Tuesday on Maduro’s orders, as they have been since the blackout began. In any event, the lack of public transport made travel difficult, even in Caracas. As the situation worsened, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced Washington is withdrawing all its remaining personnel from the U.S. Embassy in Caracas. All nonemergency staff were ordered to leave on Jan. 24. “This decision reflects the deteriorating situation in #Venezuela as well as the conclusion that the presence of US diplomatic staff at the embassy has become a constraint on US policy,” Pompeo wrote on Twitter. Venezuela has been in recession for more than four years, has struggled with hyperinflation the International Monetary Fund says will hit a staggering 10 million percent this year, and seen a mass exodus of an estimated 2.7 million migrants since 2015.
|
u.s .;energy;venezuela;nicolas maduro;mike pompeo;juan guaido
|
jp0002304
|
[
"world",
"politics-diplomacy-world"
] |
2019/03/13
|
Even after all the diplomacy, U.K. lawmakers resoundingly reject Brexit deal for second time
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LONDON - British MPs resoundingly rejected Prime Minister Theresa May’s Brexit deal for a second time on Tuesday, plunging the country into further uncertainty just 17 days before it is due to split from the European Union. The House of Commons voted 391-242 against the divorce deal, even after May secured further guarantees from Brussels over its most controversial elements. The move risks unleashing economic chaos, as Britain is scheduled to end ties with its biggest trade partner after 46 years on March 29, no matter what. Appearing before MPs in a voice half-breaking due to a cold, May defiantly vowed to fight on, saying she “profoundly” rejected the outcome. “The deal we’ve negotiated is the best and indeed the only deal,” she told the hushed chamber moments after the vote. May promised to allow MPs to vote on a “no deal” option on Wednesday and, if that is rejected as expected, to decide on Thursday whether to ask the EU to delay Brexit. She said Parliament faced “unenviable choices” if it voted for an extension, including revoking Brexit, holding a second referendum or leaving with another deal. However, euroskeptics believe the current deal is so bad that it is worth the risk of leaving with no plan. The latest vote comes two years after Britain set the clock ticking on its departure from the EU following a highly divisive referendum in 2016. Michel Barnier, the EU chief Brexit negotiator, said Brussels had nothing more to offer and must now brace for the possibility of a messy divorce. “The EU has done everything it can to help get the Withdrawal Agreement over the line,” Barnier tweeted. “The impasse can only be solved in the #UK. Our ‘no-deal’ preparations are now more important than ever before.” But a spokeswoman for European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker said EU members would consider a “reasoned request” for a Brexit delay. Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the main opposition Labour party who has been trying force snap elections, said May must now admit that her government’s overarching strategy had failed. “Their deal, their proposal, the one the prime minister’s put, is clearly dead,” Corbyn said, calling on her to change negotiate for a softer Brexit to keep close economies ties with the EU. After MPs first rejected the 585-page Brexit deal in January, May promised changes to the hated backstop plan, which is intended to keep open the border with EU member Ireland. Weeks of talks failed to make a breakthrough, but May made a last-minute trip to Strasbourg to meet EU leaders on the eve of the vote. She announced she had secured the promised “legally binding changes” to the backstop, which would keep Britain in the EU’s customs union if and until a new way was found to avoid frontier checks. Hours later, however, Attorney General Geoffrey Cox said the additions would not completely allay MPs’ fears of being trapped in the arrangement forever. It did not take long for Brexit-supporting MPs in May’s Conservative party, and her allies, Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), to declare their opposition. Some euroskeptics did change their mind, urging their colleagues not to risk everything. Former minister Edward Leigh said: “You may not like the deal, it’s not perfect, but it delivers Brexit and let’s go for it.” But the margin of Tuesday’s defeat was not substantially smaller than the 230-vote thumping the plan suffered on Jan. 15. The pound, which has been highly volatile since the 2016 referendum, initially rose after the vote but then sank against both the euro and dollar. The backstop is designed to protect the peace process in Northern Ireland, which involved the removal of border checks with EU member Ireland. Brexit supporters wanted a unilateral way out of it, or a time limit to the arrangement, but the EU said this would make it worthless. But leaders across Europe also united behind a message that this was the best and final offer Britain could expect. “There will be no third chance,” Juncker said after his talks on Monday with May. If MPs vote against a no-deal exit on Wednesday, and want to postpone Brexit, the other 27 EU nations would need to agree. Their leaders will meet in Brussels for a summit on March 21-22. But any postponement may have to be short-lived. Juncker on Monday said Brexit “should be complete before the European elections” at the end of May.
|
ireland;eu;u.k .;jean-claude juncker;u.k. parliament;brexit;theresa may;jeremy corbyn
|
jp0002305
|
[
"world"
] |
2019/03/13
|
Trump wants to cut U.S. missile defense budget just as North Korea ramps up rocket activity
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WASHINGTON - Just when it looks like North Korean leader Kim Jong Un may restart his ballistic missile testing program, U.S. President Donald Trump has proposed trimming the missile defense budget, as one set of deterrents is delayed by two years. The U.S. Missile Defense Agency (MDA) — charged with developing, testing and fielding a ballistic missile defense system — will delay the expansion of the Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system by two years because of a delay in the redesign of the Raytheon Co.-made “kill vehicle” the system uses. A “kill vehicle” pops off the top of the defending missile above the Earth’s atmosphere and seeks out and destroys the attacking missile’s warhead. The GMD is a network of radars, anti-ballistic missiles based in Alaska and California, and other equipment designed to protect the United States from intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). The expansion of the field of interceptors in Alaska from 44 ground-based interceptors (GBIs) to 64 had been slated for completion in 2023. But the delay, due to technical issues and not connected to the cut in the agency’s budget, now means that the placement of the additional 20 interceptors will not be operational until 2025, the MDA said Tuesday. “The important thing is to get it right, and if we’re going to build more GBI’s, we want to put the best kill vehicle on the top of it,” said Tom Karako, a missile defense expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. At the same time, North Korea has been pushing ahead with its nuclear weapons program after a summit meeting between Kim and Trump in Hanoi ended abruptly on Feb. 28 without an agreement on denuclearization. New activity has been detected at a North Korean ICBM plant, South Korean media said on March 7, as Trump said he would be “very disappointed” if Pyongyang rebuilt a rocket site. In the budget, the MDA saw its appropriation cut by $1 billion to $9.4 billion. Michelle Atkinson, chief financial officer of the MDA, told reporters: “What you are seeing in ’20 actually looks like a decrease, but it’s really just the declining funding,” as the agency comes off recent financial injections. Trump’s smaller request comes on the heels of a significant budget boost last year after several North Korean missile tests. The MDA projected a budget of $9.2 billion in 2021, and $9.1 billion in 2022, continuing the trend of declining funding. One Pentagon-wide effort in lasers that could be used to defeat missiles saw investment slow dramatically. After nearly doubling just the MDA’s budget for directed energy from $109 million in 2018 to $224 million in 2019, the Pentagon as a whole plans to invest only $235 million in the technology in fiscal 2020. Among other proposals included in a recently published Missile Defense Review is one involving lasers mounted on drones — aimed at stopping missiles just after takeoff in what is called the boost phase. During this portion of the flight the missile is most vulnerable, flying at its slowest speed, easily detected by the heat from its engines and incapable of evading interceptors as it accelerates to break out of the Earth’s atmosphere.
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u.s .;north korea;military;kim jong un;nuclear weapons;missiles;north korea nuclear crisis
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jp0002306
|
[
"world"
] |
2019/03/13
|
Italian freighter sinks off France's Atlantic coast after fire; all 27 aboard rescued
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ILLE-ET-VILAINE, FRANCE - An Italian cargo ship sank about 330 km (200 miles) off the Western Atlantic coast of France on Tuesday after rescue vessels were unable to put out a fire that broke out late Sunday, officials said. All 27 people aboard the Grande America were rescued without injury on Monday night. The ship was on its way from Hamburg, Germany, to Casablanca in Morocco before the blaze, “which intensified over the past 24 hours,” French naval authorities said on Twitter. “The ship had been listing increasingly to the right as time went on,” it added. French Environment Minister Francois de Rugy told lawmakers in Paris on Tuesday that officials still did not know what the ship was transporting, but that anti-pollution measures were already being taken. “As always in these situations, there are pollution risks, we can’t deny it, because already there was the heavy fuel used for the engine,” de Rugy said. A first tugboat to reach the ship was unable to extinguish the fire, and two others were on their way to the site Tuesday when the ship sank in waters that are about 4,600 meters (15,000 feet) deep.
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pollution;france;italy;marine accidents;grande america
|
jp0002307
|
[
"world"
] |
2019/03/13
|
Safety fears about Boeing 737 MAX grip U.S. passengers and crews
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NEW YORK - U.S. airlines are standing behind Boeing despite the wave of countries and carriers that have grounded the 737 MAX, but fear has gripped crews and passengers, and many are refusing to fly on the plane. Following the second deadly crash of one of its aircraft, some U.S. politicians also have called for the plane to be grounded while the investigation continues, but regulators so far have not taken that step. “Two brand new Boeing 737 Max 8 airplanes crashed in 5 months. If China has grounded all 96 of its 737 Max 8s, then Southwest, American, and United Airlines should really do something to reassure the American people that its 737 Max 8 airplanes are airworthy or ground them too,” Maryland resident Eugene Gu said on Twitter. A growing number of Americans are expressing similar doubts on social media, and some are canceling or rebooking flights on this single-aisle aircraft, which accounted for one-third of Boeing’s profits in 2018. The European Union, Britain, Germany, France and China are among the governments that have banned the plane from their airspace, and the Twitter hashtag #GroundBoeing737max8 was created to urge the U.S. authorities to do the same. The company’s share price continued to lose ground, dropping more than 6 percent on Tuesday after the 5 percent loss on Monday. Southwest Airlines and American Airlines have been swamped with calls since the crash of an Ethiopian Airlines 737 MAX 8 on Sunday shortly after takeoff, which killed all 157 passengers and crew. In the wake of a similar crash in October of a Lion Air flight in Indonesia, many American passengers are not waiting for the investigations to conclude. “We are fielding some questions from customers asking if their flight will be operated by the Boeing 737 MAX 8,” Southwest spokeswoman Michelle Agnew said, adding that, as usual, the airline allowed re-booking at no charge. That is not the case at American Airlines, which charges a fee for any change or cancellation, a spokesman said. The cost ranges from $200 for domestic flights to $750 for international flights. And “fear” is not recognized by travel insurance as a reason to reimburse passengers for a flight cancellation. Pilots and flight crew also have grown increasingly cautious. The Airline Personnel Union (APFA), which represents American Airlines employees, has told its members not to board a 737 MAX 8 if they do not feel safe. The Association of Flight Attendants formally called for an investigation by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration. “In the wake of a second accident, regulators, manufacturers, and airlines must take steps to address concerns immediately,” it said. Like the Airline Pilots Association, the AFA warned against jumping to conclusions. But U.S. politicians were less hesitant after Britain, China, Australia, Indonesia and others pulled the planes out of service. Sen. and presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren said, “The FAA should follow their lead, reverse their decision, and immediately ground this plane in the United States until its safety can be assured.” And Sen. Mitt Romney said on Twitter, “Out of an abundance of caution for the flying public, the @FAANews should ground the 737 MAX 8 until we investigate the causes of recent crashes and ensure the plane’s airworthiness.” President Donald Trump weighed in with a blistering tweet, saying “Airplanes are becoming far too complex to fly.” The FAA said Tuesday the investigation of the latest crash continues, and it “will make decisions on any further steps based on the evidence.” In the wake of the Lion Air crash, the FAA ordered Boeing to update its manual and training requirements and complete “flight control enhancements,” including to its stall prevention systems, no later than April. Boeing chief Dennis Muilenburg lamented the latest tragedy but had no doubts about the safety of the plane. “We are confident in the safety of the 737 MAX,” he said in an email to Boeing workers.
|
u.s .;boeing;american airlines;ethiopian airlines;southwest airlines;donald trump;lion air;air accidents;737 max 8
|
jp0002308
|
[
"world"
] |
2019/03/13
|
Beleaguered Bashar Assad's war winding down but Syria is split, poor and at mercy of foreign powers
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BEIRUT - Bashar Assad has won his war for political survival but as Syria’s conflict enters its ninth year, his country is fractured, cash-strapped, and prey to both friend and foe. The civil war reaches its eighth anniversary this month with more than 360,000 people killed, millions more displaced, and devastation worth $400 billion. As the war winds down, Syrians in regime-held areas may no longer have to worry about bombardment, but they face fuel shortages, frequent power cuts, unemployment and rampant poverty. From the brutal repression of anti-Assad protests in 2011, the war spiraled into a complex conflict involving jihadis. Syria’s president may have reversed the initial gains of the armed opposition and jihadis, but foreign powers have entered his turf. “The Syrian conflict is more complicated because there are now powerful foreign actors that control large zones inside Syria,” said Nicholas Heras, an analyst at the Centre for a New American Security. “And these foreign actors are not likely to leave Syria any time soon.” Backed by Russia and Iran, Assad’s forces now control almost two-thirds of the country. But key areas remain beyond his control, including a swathe of the oil-rich northeast held by U.S.-backed Kurdish-led forces fighting the Islamic State group. The northwestern region of Idlib, held by Syria’s former al-Qaida affiliate, is protected by a cease-fire deal, which has seen Turkish troops deployed to the area. And Ankara’s Syrian rebel proxies hold several northern cities near the border. Joshua Landis, of the University of Oklahoma, painted a grim picture. “The Syrian map is one of division and despair,” he said. “Over 30 percent of the country is occupied by foreign governments who have built and funded local militaries.” Various foreign powers are competing to reap a return on years of military investment, or protect their interests. Russia has backed Assad with troops and airstrikes since 2015, while Iran has dispatched advisers as well as Shiite fighters from Lebanon and Iraq. “Russia wants to stabilize Assad to keep a steady local partner to guard its expanding bases in Syria” and project power region-wide, Heras said. Iran wants a foothold in Syria, in case of a war between its Lebanese ally Hezbollah and Israel to the southwest, he said. Both allies hope to play a key role in reconstruction and have signed deals including for electricity, oil and infrastructure projects. Turkey and the United States, who have traditionally backed non-state actors, have other interests. President Recep Tayyip “Erdogan wants to rip the Kurds out of America’s embrace” and impose Turkey in northern and eastern Syria, Heras said. Washington backs Kurdish-led fighters who control a large and oil-rich northeastern swathe, and has U.S. troops in Syria as part of the anti-IS fight drawing to a close near the Iraqi border. Turkey views Kurdish fighters as “terrorists” and has long threatened to attack the Kurds south of its border. Washington is to dial down its presence to 200 “peacekeeping” troops after IS is expelled from its last pocket. As well as shielding the Kurds from Turkey, a U.S. presence piles pressure on Assad. “Assad needs the water and wheat that the United States controls in eastern Syria,” Heras said. But “it is U.S. policy to keep these resources from him and force the economy of Assad’s statelet to collapse around him,” he added. Along with the European Union, the United States has ramped up sanctions on Syrian officials and companies, including by seeking to prevent oil shipments to the country. Landis said those measures were compounding post-war challenges, chief among them relaunching a devastated economy. “The U.S. is imposing one of the strictest sanctions regimes on Syria which will continue to deepen the misery of the people,” he added. Plus “the worst characteristics of the regime have been strengthened in the struggle to win the civil war: corruption, violence, and the absence of the rule of law,” he said. Shadi Abbas, 40, is struggling to return to a normal life after a routine military service lasted a whole eight years. “I feel I have to work three jobs” to make ends meet, he said. “Even if I found some money and work, who will give me back my youth,” he said. But after years of war, Assad has secured his capital, regained control of key commercial arteries, and started a timid comeback on the Arab scene. Much to the despair of the fragmented opposition, several countries have called for Syria to be reintegrated into the Arab League, from which it was suspended as the death toll mounted in 2011. Remaining rebels and jihadis are largely confined to Idlib after being ferried out of other parts of the country retaken by the regime. The political opposition is scattered abroad and has failed to end the bloodshed in numerous rounds of abortive peace talks. Whatever the challenges, “revolution is on low flame, and that is a win for Assad,” Heras said.
|
conflict;russia;syria;iran;iraq;al-qaida;bashar assad;islamic state
|
jp0002310
|
[
"world"
] |
2019/03/13
|
U.S. military retrieves possible World War II GI remains from Myanmar
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MANDALAY, MYANMAR - The United States on Tuesday retrieved the possible remains of service members who went missing in Myanmar during the Second World War, marking the first such mission to Myanmar carried out by U.S. military aircraft, American officials said. After a brief ceremony, the remains were taken from Myanmar’s second-largest city, Mandalay, to a laboratory in the United States for further analysis and identification. “We remember. You are not forgotten,” said the U.S. ambassador to Myanmar, Scot Marciel, at the ceremony. He said the mission was meant to honor the memory of the fallen service members and to show appreciation for their service. From 1942 to 1945, the airspace over Myanmar, then called Burma, served as an important supply corridor from India to China after the Japanese captured the northern town of Lashio, severing the last major Allied supply route over land into China. During the period, American transport planes made daily flights over the eastern Himalayas, a perilous route called the Hump, according to the website of the U.S. Embassy in China. The remains are believed to be from a B-25G aircraft with seven crew members aboard that crashed in February 1944 in Myanmar’s northwestern Sagain region, U.S. officials said. More than 82,000 Americans remain missing from past conflicts, and 632 U.S. service members, mostly air crews, disappeared in Myanmar during World War II, U.S. government data show. Relations between the two countries have chilled after Washington last year sanctioned some Myanmar military and police commanders and army units, accusing them of ethnic cleansing against the Rohingya Muslim minority. Myanmar has rejected the charges, saying it was fighting Rohingya “terrorists. About 730,000 Rohingya fled Myanmar after August 2017 following what a U.S. government investigation described as a “well-planned and coordinated” campaign of mass killings, gang rapes and other atrocities against the Rohingya by the Myanmar military.
|
wwii;u.s .;myanmar
|
jp0002311
|
[
"world"
] |
2019/03/13
|
At age 30, World Wide Web has deviated from original vision
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Geneva - At the ripe old age of 30 and with half the globe using it, the World Wide Web is facing growing pains with issues like hate speech, privacy concerns and state-sponsored hacking, its creator says, calling to make it better for humanity. Tim Berners-Lee on Tuesday joined a celebration of the web and reminisced about his invention at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, starting with a proposal published on March 12, 1989. It opened the way to a technological revolution that has transformed the way people buy goods, share ideas, get information and much more. It has also become a place where tech titans scoop up personal data, rival governments spy and seek to scuttle elections, and hate speech and vitriol have thrived — taking the web far from its roots as a space for progress-oriented minds to collaborate. As of late 2018, half of the world was online, with the other half often struggling to secure access. Speaking at the Web@30 conference at CERN, Berners-Lee acknowledged that a sense among many who are already on the web has become: “Whoops! The web is not the web we wanted in every respect.” His World Wide Web Foundation wants to enlist governments, companies and citizens to take a greater role in shaping the web for good under principles laid out in its “Contract for the Web.” Under the contract, governments are called upon to make sure everyone can connect to the internet, to keep it available and to respect privacy. Companies should make the internet affordable, respect privacy and develop technology that will put people — and the “public good” — first. Citizens should create and to cooperate and respect “civil discourse,” among other things. “The Contract for the Web is about sitting down in working groups with other people who signed up, and to say, ‘OK, let’s work out what this really means,'” Berners-Lee said. It was unclear how such rules would be enforced. Berners-Lee cautioned it was important to strike a balance between oversight and freedom but difficult to agree what it should be. “Where is the balance between leaving the tech companies to do the right thing and regulating them? Where is the balance between freedom of speech and hate speech?” he said. The conference, which brought together internet and tech experts, also gave CERN the chance to showcase its reputation as an open-source incubator of ideas. Berners-Lee worked there in the late 1980s, and had been determined to help bridge a communications and documentation gap among different computer platforms. As a young English software engineer at CERN, Berners-Lee, who is now 63, came up with the idea for hypertext transfer protocol — the “http” in web addresses — and other building blocks for the web. The HTTP system allowed text and small images to be retrieved through a piece of software — the first browser — that Berners-Lee released in 1990 and is considered the start of the web. Browsers on home computers made the internet easily accessible to consumers for the first time. Speaking to reporters on Monday, Berners-Lee recalled how his research was helped by his former boss at CERN, Mike Sendall, who wanted a pretext to buy a then-new NeXT computer, made by a company created by Steve Jobs after Apple fired him. Berners-Lee said Sendall told him to “‘pick a random program to develop on it. … Why don’t you do that hypertext thing?'” Berners-Lee has since become a sort of father figure for the internet community, been knighted by Queen Elizabeth II and named as one of the 100 most important people of the 20th century by Time magazine. While he now wants to get the debate going, other panelists expressed concerns like the increasing concentration of control of the internet by big corporate players, and fretted about a possible splintering of cyberspace among rival countries. “The challenges come from the same things that make it (the web) wonderful, and that’s the difficulty,” said conference panelist Zeynep Tufekci, an associate professor at the University of North Carolina’s School of Information and Library Science. “The openness is wonderful, the connectivity is wonderful, the fact that it was created as a network for academics who are kind of into trusting each other,” she said. Now with the web, “there’s an enormous amount of centralization going on, with a few big players becoming gatekeepers. Those few big players have built, basically, surveillance machines,” she said. “It’s based on surveillance profiling us and then targeting us for ads — which wasn’t the original idea at all.”
|
internet;privacy;computers;tim berners-lee
|
jp0002312
|
[
"world"
] |
2019/03/13
|
U.S. aviation regulator says review shows 'no systemic performance issues' with Boeing 737 Max 8
|
WASHINGTON/ADDIS ABABA - The U.S. aviation regulator said on Tuesday it would not ground Boeing 737 Max 8 planes after a crash in Ethiopia killed 157 people, bucking a trend of countries around the world that have suspended the aircraft’s operations. The Federal Aviation Administration’s acting administrator, Dan Elwell, said a review by the body “shows no systemic performance issues and provides no basis to order grounding the aircraft.” The European Union’s aviation safety regulator on Tuesday suspended all flights in the bloc by the Max 8, and a U.S. senator who chairs a panel overseeing aviation suggested the United States take similar action following Sunday’s fatal crash, the second since October involving that type of plane. But Elwell said no foreign civil aviation authorities had provided data that would warrant action. If any safety issues are identified during an ongoing urgent review of the Ethiopian Airlines crash, the FAA will “take immediate and appropriate action,” he said. Britain, Germany and France joined a wave of suspensions of the aircraft following the crash, followed by a similar decision by India, piling pressure on the United States to follow suit. Boeing, the world’s biggest plane-maker, whose market value has lost billions of dollars since the crash, said it understood the countries’ actions but retained “full confidence” in the 737 Max 8 and had safety as its priority. The three U.S. airlines using the Max 8 — Southwest Airlines, American Airlines Group and United Airlines — stood by the aircraft, although many potential passengers took to social media to express concerns, asking if they could change flights or cancel. United Airlines’ union pilots said they had found no mechanical deficiencies in the plane in more than 23,000 flying hours. The cause of Sunday’s crash, which followed a disaster with a Max 8 that killed 189 people five months ago in Indonesia, remains unknown. On Monday, the FAA released details of a series of design changes and training requirements mandated from Boeing on the Max 8 fleet after the Indonesia crash. There is no evidence yet whether the two crashes are linked. Plane experts say it is too early to speculate on the reason for the latest crash. Most crashes are caused by a unique chain of human and technical factors. European suspension In an unusual move, the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) said it was suspending all flights in the bloc of Boeing’s 737 Max 8 and 9 jets. “Based on all available information, EASA considers that further actions may be necessary to ensure the continued airworthiness of the two affected models,” it said in a statement. It shied away, however, from the even rarer step of pulling the safety certification for the plane itself, focusing instead on the softer process of restricting its use by airlines. The move leaves some leeway for the U.S. FAA to decide its own approach. Flight ET 302 came down in a field soon after takeoff from Addis Ababa, creating a fireball in a crater. It may take weeks or months to identify all the victims, who include a prize-winning author, a soccer official and a team of humanitarian workers. Of the top 10 countries by air passenger travel, all but the United States and Japan have halted flights of the Max 8. China, Indonesia, Singapore, New Zealand, Australia, Malaysia, Fiji and others have temporarily suspended the plane. Canada has no plans to ground Max 8 aircraft but is ready to act immediately to suspend flights if new information emerges indicating there is a problem, Transport Minister Marc Garneau said. Argentina and other South American nations are evaluating closing their airspace to Max 8 airplanes, Argentina’s state-run news agency, Telam, reported on Tuesday. U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, a Republican who chairs the Senate subcommittee on aviation and space, said on Tuesday it would be “prudent” for the United States “to temporarily ground 737 Max aircraft until the FAA confirms the safety of these aircraft and their passengers.” Cruz said he intended to convene a hearing to investigate the crashes. U.S. President Donald Trump also fretted over modern airplane design. “Pilots are no longer needed, but rather computer scientists from MIT,” Trump tweeted, lamenting that product developers always sought to go an unnecessary step further when “old and simpler” was superior. “I don’t know about you, but I don’t want Albert Einstein to be my pilot. I want great flying professionals that are allowed to easily and quickly take control of a plane!” he added. He did not refer to Boeing or recent accidents, but his comments echoed an automation debate that partially lies at the center of a probe into October’s Lion Air crash in Indonesia. Investigators are examining the role of a software system designed to push the plane down, as well as airline training and repair standards. Boeing says it plans to update the software in the coming weeks. Trump spoke to Boeing Chief Executive Dennis Muilenburg on Tuesday and received assurances that the aircraft was safe, two people briefed on the call said. Victims from 30 nations Given problems of identification at the charred disaster site, Ethiopian Airlines said it would take at least five days to start handing remains to families. The victims came from more than 30 nations, and included nearly two dozen U.N. staffers. “We are Muslim and have to bury our deceased immediately,” said Noordin Mohamed, a 27-year-old Kenyan businessman whose brother and mother died. “Losing a brother and mother in the same day and not having their bodies to bury is very painful,” he said in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, where the plane had been due. If the black box recordings found at the Ethiopian crash site are undamaged, the cause of the crash could be identified quickly, although it typically takes a year for a full probe. The new variant of the 737, the world’s most-sold modern passenger aircraft, is viewed as the likely workhorse for global airlines for decades, and 4,661 more are on order. Over 40 percent of the Max 8 fleet has been grounded, Flightglobal said, although many airlines still use older jets.
|
u.s .;boeing;u.k .;germany;ethiopian airlines;donald trump;aircraft accidents;737 max 8
|
jp0002313
|
[
"world"
] |
2019/03/13
|
Ties between Boeing and Trump run deep
|
WASHINGTON - When U.S. President Donald Trump spoke with Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg on Tuesday to get assurances about the safety of the 737 Max 8 plane that crashed in Ethiopia, he wasn’t talking to a stranger. Trump, who owned his own airline, Trump Shuttle, from 1989 to 1992, is an aviation enthusiast. Before becoming president he had his own private jet, and since his inauguration he has taken visible delight in the presidential aircraft, Air Force One. His aviation connections have expanded during his presidency to include relationships with powerful executives in the defense industry, including Muilenburg, with whom he has talked several times. Muilenburg told Trump in Tuesday’s morning call that the aircraft was safe and did not need to be grounded, two people briefed on the conversation said. Later in the day, aviation officials repeated that U.S. flights of the plane would continue. That leaves the United States as an outlier in its response to Sunday’s Max 8 crash that killed 157 people. The European Union’s aviation safety regulator on Tuesday suspended all flights by the plane in the bloc; of the top 10 countries by air passenger travel, all but the United States and Japan have halted flights. U.S. officials, including a bipartisan group of five senators, are asking why the FAA is not doing the same. Sen. Ted Cruz, a Republican who chairs the Senate subcommittee on aviation and space, said he intends to convene a hearing to investigate. The Ethiopian crash follows one of a Max 8 five months ago in Indonesia that killed 189 people. There is no evidence yet that the two disasters are linked. Plane experts say it is too early to speculate on the cause of the crash. Trump personally negotiated with Muilenburg to try to lower the cost of a future version of Air Force One after complaining the price tag was too high. “He cares about business and he creates open communication lines, and we will have differences from time to time; we may not agree on every topic,” Muilenburg said in a radio interview last month. But while the relationship hasn’t all been cozy, ties between Boeing and the Trump administration run deep. Trump has used Boeing products and sites as a backdrop for major announcements over the course of his presidency. In March 2018 he touted the impact of his tax overhaul bill as he visited a plant in St. Louis. Before joining the Pentagon, acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan, who is expected to be named to the post, worked for 31 years at Boeing, where he was general manager for the 787 Dreamliner passenger jet. Boeing has nominated Nikki Haley, Trump’s former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations who continues to be a close ally, to join its board of directors at the company’s annual shareholders meeting on April 29. Trump has also put pressure on U.S. allies to buy products from Boeing, the country’s second-largest defense contractor; it received $104 billion in unclassified defense contracts between 2014 and 2018. U.S. officials and defense industry sources said that weeks after Trump pressed the Emir of Kuwait in 2018 over a long-delayed deal for Boeing’s F/A-18 Super Hornet fighter jets, Kuwait said it would proceed with the order. Boeing is also one of the largest U.S. exporters to China, and Muilenburg told an aviation summit in Washington that purchases of its U.S.-made aircraft by China could be part of a sweeping trade deal currently being negotiated. Aircraft exports have thus far been spared from retaliatory Chinese tariffs.
|
boeing;donald trump;aircraft accidents
|
jp0002314
|
[
"asia-pacific",
"science-health-asia-pacific"
] |
2019/03/13
|
South Korea labels air pollution a 'social disaster' in move that could unlock emergency funds
|
SEOUL - South Korea on Wednesday ramped up its firepower as it battles pollution, passing a set of bills that designate the problem a ‘social disaster’ and which could unlock emergency funds to tackle the issue. Pollution in Asia’s fourth-largest economy has been driven up by factors including coal-fired power generation and high vehicle emissions, sparking widespread concern among the public and weighing on President Moon Jae-in’s approval ratings. Designating the issue a ‘disaster’ allows the government to use parts of its reserve funds to help respond to any damage or emergency caused by polluted air. The country’s reserve funds stand at up to 3 trillion won ($2.65 billion) this year. Other bills that were passed included mandating that every school classroom should have an air purifier and removing a limit on sales of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) vehicles, which typically produce less emissions than gasoline and diesel. The latest bills follow previous steps to battle pollution such as capping operations at coal-fired power plants. South Korea’s air quality was the worst among its peers in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development as of 2017, according to data from the group. Its average annual exposure to fine particulate matter (PM) of less than 2.5 micrometers was 25.1 micrograms per cubic meter, slightly more than double the OECD average of 12.5. The World Health Organization recommends that air quality standard should be no more than 10 micrograms in terms of PM 2.5 levels. For six consecutive days in early March, high levels of concentrated pollutants enveloped most parts of South Korea. According to a weekly poll by Gallup Korea released on March 8, Moon’s approval rating was down by 3 percentage points from a week earlier at 46 percent. Unless any objections are raised, it should take around 15 days for the bills to become law. The nation’s regional neighbor China has also been fighting pollution as it tries to reverse damage from over three decades of untrammeled economic growth.
|
pollution;south korea;emissions
|
jp0002315
|
[
"asia-pacific",
"politics-diplomacy-asia-pacific"
] |
2019/03/13
|
Kim Jong Un might not want the risks that come with the riches Trump is promising North Korea
|
U.S. President Donald Trump has spent a lot of time trying to convince Kim Jong Un that great wealth awaits if he gives up his nuclear weapons and opens North Korea’s economy. Yet that carries big risks for the young leader. While Kim’s calls for relaxing the sanctions cutting off North Korea from the global economy helped sink talks with Trump last month, it remains unclear whether he wants to follow other “Asian tigers” like Singapore and Vietnam and welcome a rush of foreign investment. That’s especially true if that means giving up his nuclear weapons — the regime’s so-called treasured sword. “North Korea sees foreign businesses as the carrier of a highly contagious germ that could infect workers,” said Andrei Lankov, a director at the Korea Risk Group consulting firm who has studied in North Korea and written extensively about the country. Openness could bring in a flood of outside information that finally loosens Kim’s grip, Lankov added. The failure of Trump’s second summit with Kim shows the limits of the United States’ economic appeal in nuclear talks. Test-launching a rocket or missile — something satellite imagery suggests Kim may be planning — would only drive home the point that he still sees his nuclear deterrent as more valuable than the investment opportunities on offer. North Korea became one of the world’s poorest countries after decades of economic mismanagement, an island of futility in a region comprised of powerhouses China, Japan and South Korea. The country’s annual car production equals the amount that South Korea churns out in about 7.5 hours. In Hanoi, Trump touted Vietnam as an economic example of what North Korea could become. Both a communist nation and a former U.S. adversary, Vietnam now boasts one of Asia’s fastest growth rates. U.S. national security adviser John Bolton said last week that North Korea had a choice between a “bright economic future” if it disarmed or tighter sanctions if it didn’t. But Kim wants to develop North Korea’s economy on his own terms, without giving up a nuclear deterrent that took generations to build or loosening his grip over one of the most repressive regimes on Earth. Even foreign investment on a level tolerated by North Korea’s socialist peers could prove too destabilizing for Kim. “It’s about control,” said Mike Green, a former Asia director at National Security Council under President George W. Bush who’s now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “There’s no evidence to support the assertion that Kim Jong Un wants to become the next Vietnam or China any more than his father or grandfather.” Kim has promised to eliminate his nuclear weapons program on at least six occasions, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said, telling Houston broadcaster KRIV in an interview Tuesday the North Korean leader has repeatedly made the pledge directly to him. Pompeo added that “talk is cheap” and “what we’ll need to see is action, and that’s what we’re counting on.” North Korea has long enticed investors with its cheap workforce, vast untapped mineral resources and a strategic location near rich neighbors. The challenge of rebuilding North Korea’s aging infrastructure would be huge: Its rail lines are in disrepair, its highways are scant and it can’t produce enough electricity to light the country at night. Still, North Korea’s business landscape is littered with foreign ventures gone bad. An Egyptian telecommunications giant doing business there can’t repatriate its profits. Even companies from the country’s economic patron, China, have been burned. Whether U.S. businesses could eventually profit, as Trump has speculated, is another matter. More likely, firms from adjacent countries South Korea and China would be the first on the ground. China was the only country South Korean President Moon Jae-in mentioned when cautioning about the need to get in fast if North Korean sanctions are relaxed. “It’s extremely important for South Korea to not miss its timing,” Moon told a news conference in January. Moon had been hoping the Hanoi talks would achieve progress on two frozen inter-Korean projects: a mountain resort and a factory park in the North Korean border city of Kaeseong operated by South Korean firms. The complex, which was supposed to be a model of economic cooperation for a unified Korea, was shut down due to political acrimony about three years ago. Kim wants it open again, providing his government with hard currency. The sanctions imposed to punish Pyongyang for its pursuit of nuclear weapons and missiles severely restrict commerce with North Korea, the import of technology and oil as well as access to global capital. One model that might be more attractive to Kim is the Middle East, where families enrich themselves while still opening up to international investment, according to Richard Fenning, chief executive officer of Control Risks Group. “What the North Koreans understand above all else is that countries are at their most vulnerable when they start the process of reforming,” Fenning said. “He knows that what he wants to achieve economically is a baby step compared with what President Trump is trying to demonstrate to him is on offer.”
|
north korea;kim jong un;nuclear weapons;sanctions;north korea nuclear crisis;donald trump;_asia
|
jp0002316
|
[
"asia-pacific"
] |
2019/03/13
|
Landmark court ruling could spark land compensation claims for indigenous Australians
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DARWIN, AUSTRALIA - Australia’s High Court on Wednesday ruled that Aboriginal owners stripped of land rights should be compensated for “spiritual harm,” in a landmark ruling that could spark a slew of cases countrywide. The court ruled that the Ngaliwurru and Nungali peoples in the Northern Territory were entitled to compensation for being disconnected from their lands by the government. Portions of the land in the isolated northern town of Timber Creek were used by the state government to build infrastructure, impinging, the court said, on “native title” rights and interests. The court upheld a ruling that the group was entitled to compensation not only for the value of the land and lost interest, but “compensation for cultural loss.” The government had claimed the award for cultural loss was “manifestly excessive.” Awarding 1.3 million Australian dollars ($920,000) for “cultural loss” the court said it assessed the groups’ “spiritual relationship” with the land and “spiritual hurt” by the disconnection. The court indicated that the assessment of compensation could vary according to the identity of the native title holders and their connection with the land or waters. In advance of the ruling, legal experts at the University of Queensland said it would have “huge implications” for indigenous peoples. “For Queensland and Western Australia in particular, the outcome will likely provide clarity on the significant amounts of compensation they may be liable for in the future,” they wrote. Both states are rich in resources and a vast amount of land could be affected. Government officials have reportedly put the cost of potential compensation claims at more than A$1 billion. The case “will have strong implications for the more than 2.8 million square kilometers of native title land holdings across the rest of Australia,” said Tony Denholder, a partner at law firm Ashurst. It “will likely trigger compensation applications from many of the hundreds of native title holder groups around Australia, who finally have clarity — albeit limited — on how they might quantify the compensation owed to them.” “It is likely that nationally, the liability for native title compensation will run into the billions of dollars.” But according to Denholder there would be more legal complexities ahead and more case law would be needed to give a clear picture of how compensation will be assessed for mining projects, pastoral leases and agricultural development.
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australia;northern territory;high court ruling;aboriginal land;spiritual harm
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jp0002317
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[
"national"
] |
2019/03/13
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Japan to opt out of U.N. motion condemning North Korea's rights abuses in apparent bid for talks on abductions
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For the first time since 2007, Japan will not take part in the submission of a draft joint resolution condemning North Korea’s human rights abuses to a U.N. panel, the government said Wednesday, in a conciliatory gesture apparently aimed at convincing Pyongyang to hold talks with Tokyo. The turnaround reflects Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s desire to settle the issue of Pyongyang’s past abductions of Japanese nationals — a top priority of his administration, according to government sources. Tokyo has jointly presented such a motion with the European Union to the 47-member U.N. Human Rights Council for the last 11 years. “We have reached this decision based on a comprehensive examination of the outcome of the second U.S.-North Korean summit and the situations surrounding the abduction and other issues” related to the North, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told a news conference. “There is no change in (Japan’s) stance to closely work together with the international community, including the United States, and fully implement U.N. Security Council resolutions” imposed over the North’s nuclear and missile programs, the top government spokesman said. The decision “would not hamper Japan’s effort to keep in step with the international society” and Tokyo will continue to urge Pyongyang to improve its human rights situation, Suga added. Abe has led the campaign with U.S. President Donald Trump to put “maximum pressure” on Pyongyang over its nuclear weapons program and other issues. But after the Trump-Kim summit in Hanoi ended without any agreement, the prime minister began to stress the need to seize every opportunity to sit down with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to break the impasse over the abductions by the North in the 1970s and 1980s. Trump has said he raised the abduction issue in the meeting with Kim, but the official newspaper of North Korea’s Workers’ Party slammed Abe for asking the U.S. president to take up the issue. The Foreign Ministry has told senior lawmakers of the ruling bloc comprising Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party and its partner, Komeito, that Tokyo’s softer position on Pyongyang at the U.N. committee would signal its intention to resume bilateral talks, especially when the North has shown signs of being nervous over international criticism of its human rights record, the sources said. Abe’s government hopes to alleviate concerns among ruling bloc members and conservative supporters over the softening of its policy by stressing its resolve to make progress on the long-standing issue, they said. The European Union is highly likely to unilaterally submit a resolution during the ongoing ordinary session of the panel, which opened Feb. 25 and is expected to continue for about a month. Atsuhito Isozaki, an associate professor and a North Korea expert at Keio University, agreed that the latest move by Tokyo is a thinly veiled overture for dialogue with North Korea, reflecting Abe’s desperation as he sees Washington drift further away from the hard-line policy of heaping pressure on the regime. Japan could confidently claim it was “100 percent” in lockstep with Washington, its biggest ally, when Trump was unerringly committed to piling pressure on the regime. But “now that Trump is unmistakably moving away from pressure toward solving problems through dialogue, Japan is left no option but to head in this direction, too,” according to Isozaki. Whether this strategy will work as Tokyo wishes, he said, remains to be seen. In a meeting with Abe on Tuesday, Yasushi Chimura, 63, who was repatriated in 2002 along with his wife after both were abducted in 1978, urged the prime minister to settle the issue through direct talks with Kim. Tokyo officially recognizes 17 citizens as having been kidnapped by North Korea and suspects the country’s involvement in many more disappearances. Among them, five, including the Chimuras, returned to Japan in 2002 after Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi held talks with Kim’s father, Kim Jong Il, in Pyongyang earlier that year. Abe accompanied Koizumi as deputy chief Cabinet secretary. Japan’s latest decision “is a tactical shift to recalibrate and possibly gain some needed momentum on the issue of kidnapped Japanese in North Korea,” said Stephen Nagy, a senior associate professor at Tokyo’s International Christian University. “The Abe administration may be taking a page out of former Prime Minister Koizumi and President Donald Trump’s diplomatic playbook by forgoing international criticism and move to a tête-a-tête with top leaders to make some needed progress,” he said. “Koizumi’s approach yielded the release of several hostages and while no progress has been made on denuclearization, President Trump’s meetings with Kim garnered the remains of U.S. soldiers,” Nagy said. “While this approach does not ally Japan’s security concerns with the (North), it does open up a window of opportunity to (possibly) repatriate or at least learn of the fate of those kidnapped Japanese,” he added.
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shinzo abe;north korea;rights;kim jong un;u.n .;abductions;north korea-japan relations
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jp0002318
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[
"national",
"social-issues"
] |
2019/03/13
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Nearly half of LGBT graduates in Japan report having uncomfortable experiences in job interviews
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Over 40 percent of lesbian, gay and bisexual students and over 80 percent of transgender students in Japan had uncomfortable experiences during job interviews, a survey by a nonprofit organization showed Wednesday. “Company officials in charge of personnel affairs should be aware that job-hunting students include a certain percentage of sexual minorities,” said Tokyo-based ReBit. “Assuming that job-seeking students are not LGBT could lead to harassment,” said Mika Yakushi, head of ReBit, which supports job hunting by sexual minorities. ReBit conducted the online survey in July-September, targeting people who see themselves as LGBT and hunted for jobs as new graduates in a 10-year period through 2018. It analyzed answers from 241 respondents. The result showed 42.5 percent of lesbian, gay and bisexual people and 87.4 percent of transgender people answered that they had uncomfortable experiences during job interviews. Some of them said interviewers’ questions were based on assumptions that applicants are heterosexual, and others said interviewers were negative toward LGBT people. Many applicants were required to state their gender. According to the survey, 78.0 percent of respondents did not come out as LGBT to companies, with 70.8 percent saying they were afraid of possible discrimination and harassment and 68.9 percent saying they were concerned about a possible negative impact on employers’ decisions. The survey also showed that 95.9 percent did not consult job assistance service providers about gender issues. Some of them said they had no idea where to receive consultations, while others said they thought such organizations would not provide solutions. “Universities need to support LGBT students’ job hunting,” Yakushi said. Major domestic firms started explanatory sessions on March 1 for job-seeking college students expected to graduate in spring 2020.
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gender;jobs;lgbt;students;surveys
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jp0002319
|
[
"national",
"social-issues"
] |
2019/03/13
|
Ibaraki principal's plan to launch school esports club ahead of Japan Games tourney stokes controversy
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The principal of a school in Ibaraki Prefecture who proposed establishing an extracurricular esports club has faced criticism from his teachers. In January, Takahiro Inose, principal of Oarai High School, proposed setting up a competitive gaming club. “After-school club activities are one of the catalysts for students to come to school. It’s good to see students enjoy themselves,” Inose said. His proposal came ahead of an interprefectural esports competition, as part of the Japan Games national sports event, which Ibaraki is due to host later this year. Inose held an esports trial session for students and teachers last month in an effort to rally support for his proposal. But the idea is facing strong opposition from the school’s educators. “I feel uncomfortable with doing gaming as part of school education. I’m strongly opposed,” one teacher said of the principal’s proposal. Several teachers are strongly against using public money to purchase game titles. Satoru Kaneko, principal of Johoku Tsubasa High School in Aichi Prefecture, which launched an esports club last year, gave a positive assessment of its effects. Esports activities “led to increased communication among students, especially during competitions,” Kaneko said. There are roughly 100 million esports players worldwide, according to the Japan Esports Union. Esports will be an official medal event at the 2022 Asian Games in Hangzhou, China. Esports is being touted as a new growth industry in Japan.
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teens;schools;high schools;video games;esports
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jp0002320
|
[
"national",
"politics-diplomacy"
] |
2019/03/13
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Reinforcing soft seabed at Henoko in Okinawa could delay U.S. Futenma base move by years
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NAHA, OKINAWA PREF. - Construction of a facility to replace the controversial Futenma air base in Okinawa Prefecture may be delayed further due to seabed reinforcement work at the Henoko site after engineers discovered areas of the surrounding ocean floor were softer than originally determined, a source said Wednesday. Completion of the base in the Henoko coastal area of Nago, where reclamation work is underway, could be pushed beyond the fiscal 2022 target due to the additional work needed. The Defense Ministry now estimates it could take three years and eight months to improve the seabed at the planned landfill site for the construction of the facility that would replace U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Futenma in Ginowan, according to the source. The new findings make the chance of achieving the targeted timeline even more difficult and the return of the current Futenma site to Japanese control could be pushed back to the mid-2020s or later. Tokyo and Washington agreed in April 2013 that the land used for the Futenma base would be returned to Japan in “fiscal 2022 or later,” but the Defense Ministry has said it will be difficult to keep to the schedule due to the wrangling between the central and local governments over the issue. Many residents have long been frustrated with noise and crime linked to the heavy U.S. military presence in the prefecture and want the Futenma base moved outside of Okinawa. In the reinforcement work, the Defense Ministry is planning to drive piles of sand into the sea bottom up to a depth of 70 meters below the sea surface. The ministry, which plans to reclaim some 160 hectares of land in waters off the Henoko area and construct two 1,800-meter runways in a V-shape, has said the total base relocation costs would amount to at least ¥350 billion ($3.14 billion). But the Okinawa Prefectural Government led by Gov. Denny Tamaki, an opponent of the base transfer plan, has unveiled its own estimate that they could reach ¥2.65 trillion, including ¥150 billion for the seabed reinforcement alone. The local government has also insisted that it will take 13 years for the new base to start operation, saying it will take five years each for the completion of the seabed improvement and reclamation work before new base facilities can be built. The central government has been pushing ahead with the base relocation plan as “the only solution” for eliminating the dangers posed by the Futenma base without undermining the deterrence provided under the Japan-U.S. security alliance. In a nonbinding prefectural referendum in February, more than 70 percent of Okinawa voters rejected the relocation plan.
|
okinawa;u.s. bases;futenma;environment;henoko;u.s.-japan relations
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jp0002321
|
[
"national",
"politics-diplomacy"
] |
2019/03/13
|
Journalists get tour of Japan's Izumo amid debate over equipping ship with aircraft carrier capabilities
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YOKOSUKA, KANAGAWA PREF. - Journalists on Wednesday were given a guided tour of the Izumo — Japan’s largest flat-topped helicopter carrier — for the first time since the Defense Ministry revealed a controversial plan late last year to convert it so that it could handle fixed-wing aircraft — which critics and some opposition lawmakers say could make it capable of offensive operations. The pacifist postwar Constitution bans the possession of “attack aircraft carriers,” and calls for an exclusively defense-oriented posture. However, under a five-year defense build-up plan adopted in December, the 248-meter, 19,500-ton vessel will be undergoing a major remodeling to accommodate jet fighters, likely U.S.-developed F-35B stealth planes, which are capable of short take-offs and vertical landings. The Defense Ministry has refused to call a remodeled Izumo “an aircraft carrier,” saying it would not regularly carry jet fighters and would also be used for missions including anti-submarine missions and rescue operations. “My understanding is that aircraft carriers are designed specifically for the operation of aircraft only, like U.S. aircraft carriers,” Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said in mid-February at a Lower House budget committee meeting. “The Izumo is not designed for this purpose, and therefore is not an aircraft carrier.” According to the ministry’s definition, “attack aircraft carriers” are those “to be used only for the carrying out of missions of mass destruction in other countries.” A remodeled Izumo would not fall within this category and thus would not be unconstitutional, according to the ministry. Following the 2016 Kumamoto earthquakes, the Izumo was used to transport over 300 ground self-defense force troops to central Kyushu for disaster relief. In the press tour on Wednesday, MSDF officers guided reporters around the Izumo, docked at the Yokosuka base in Kanagawa Prefecture, including a 170-meter-long cavernous hangar that experts say can accommodate about 10 F-35B fighters and two anti-submarine patrol helicopters. The reporters were also allowed access to the ship’s deck, complete with its two gigantic elevators designed to carry aircraft that can weigh up to 30 tons from the hangar below. Designed for a crew of up to 470, the Izumo can travel up to a speed of 30 knots. The ship also accommodates a medical room with 34 makeshift beds and an ICU. When asked, MSDF officials declined to comment on the details of the planned remodeling, saying officers operating the ship are not in a position to do so. Still, at a Lower House meeting on defense issues held Friday, Defense Minister Takeshi Iwaya didn’t deny the possibility that U.S. fighter jets may be allowed to land on the Izumo for refueling before launching attacks. “Legally speaking, that sort of scenario is possible, so I’m not going to outright deny that it’s a possibility,” he said in response to a question from Toru Miyamoto, a lawmaker with the Japanese Communist Party. “So you’re saying it’s legally possible for a F-35B from the U.S. military to take off for an attack from Izumo — doesn’t this mean that the remodeled Izumo will be an ‘attack’ aircraft carrier, something banned under the Constitution?” Miyamoto asked Iwaya during the session. The defense minister denied Miyamoto’s suggestion, saying that providing fuel to U.S. planes would not be considered a “use of force” situation with offensive intentions by Japan, thus would not violate the Constitution. Some experts also say carrying out viable offensive attack operations would be difficult from the Izumo as it can only support about 10 F-35B fighters. According to the five-year defense plan, the changes to the Izumo’s capabilities will raise the “overall improvement of anti-air defenses” in the airspaces over the Pacific Ocean and elsewhere in the waters around Japan.
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self defense forces;msdf;defense ministry;izumo;aircraft carriers
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jp0002322
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[
"national"
] |
2019/03/13
|
Is flashing the peace sign in front of the Hiroshima A-bomb memorial appropriate?
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The newsroom of the Chugoku Shimbun recently received a letter of complaint from a 76-year-old whose daily ritual is to take a stroll around the Hiroshima Peace Memorial every morning. His complaint: tourists flashing the peace sign in front of the memorial. “Tourists are posing with the peace sign when they’re taking pictures. Aren’t they lacking sensitivity?” The peace sign, or V-sign, can mean may things — a wish for peace, a sign of triumph after a victory or even a spontaneous sign. It is common practice in Japan to make the sign when having a photo taken, but is it inappropriate in front of Hiroshima’s Atomic Bomb Dome? A Chugoku Shimbun reporter observed tourists in front of the A-Bomb Dome and noticed that Japanese visitors — especially the younger generation — have a tendency to show the peace sign. The reporter asked 50 people, both men and women as well as Hiroshima residents and tourists, whether they are disturbed by people making the sign in front of the solemn site. Thirty-five people, 70 percent, said “yes.” Twelve said “no,” and three responded “not sure.” Many who thought it was inappropriate said the sign is intended to be shown on a happy occasion. “I feel horrible thinking about the people who died in pain,” said Yuriko Ubukata, an 84-year-old tourist from Gunma Prefecture. “The sign isn’t appropriate here.” On the other hand, many who responded “no” to the reporter’s question argued that it’s a reflexive thing to do when having a camera pointed at them and that there’s no bad intent. A 32-year-old female office worker from Kanagawa Prefecture said she made the sign because the A-Bomb Dome is “a Hiroshima tourism destination.” “I just made the sign spontaneously,” she said. The majority of people surveyed, regardless of their responses, noted they hadn’t thought about the problem until being questioned. When a reporter asked a 22-year-old college student from the city of Kyoto why he was making the sign, the man appeared startled and looked at his friend. “Now that you mention it, it might have been inappropriate,” he said. How does all this sit among survivors of the atomic bombing? Masaaki Tanabe, an 81-year-old filmmaker whose house was standing next to the dome at the time of the bombing, is disappointed. “Those who show the V-sign perhaps can’t imagine that there had been a town where people lived their lives until the bomb was dropped,” he said. Posting a sign reminding people of the solemnity of the site might be one way to deter visitors from flashing the hand sign. But Seiji Horie, a 46-year-old representative director of an educational nonprofit organization, said he is skeptical of such an idea. “Forcing people not to make the V-sign won’t help them think deeper,” Horie said. Through experience, Horie feels that students who’ve been instructed to listen to the survivors’ stories may have a solemn expression on their face, but do not necessarily understand the deeper meaning. “What’s important is for them to think on their own,” he said. “The role of Hiroshima is to make younger people realize that war is not a story about the elderly, and to provide opportunities to contemplate about peace on more contemporary terms.” On Aug. 8, it will be 74 years since the U.S. dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. As survivors age, what is the significance of visiting the A-Bomb Dome? The V-sign tourists make spontaneously could be an opportunity to think about the question. While the journalist was at the memorial, something unexpected happened. The college student from Kyoto who had been interviewed came back to the reporter half an hour later and confided he regretted his action. He said he had a change of heart after reading the description of the dome. “I want to learn and know more about atomic bombs when I go back to Kyoto,” the student said.
|
wwii;hiroshima;atomic bombings
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jp0002323
|
[
"national"
] |
2019/03/13
|
14% of medical students in Japan asked personal questions, including on marriage and childbirth, during entrance interviews
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A total of 14 percent of medical students said they were asked personal questions on topics including marriage and childbirth during their entrance examination interviews, a survey showed Tuesday. Some female students were asked whether they thought being pregnant was an advantage or a disadvantage, according to interim results of the survey announced by a nationwide association of student unions at medical schools. The ongoing survey, which is set to close at the end of this month, began in November last year in response to revelations over unfair admissions at medical schools. The survey covers students, both male and female, enrolled in the department of medicine at 81 universities throughout Japan. The interim results were based on answers collected by Feb. 1 from 2,186 respondents at 50 universities. According to the results, most personal questions focused on whether applicants would be able to juggle family and work if they got married or had children. Some respondents, however, said they were asked questions that did not sound tolerant of diverse career paths. For example, one female respondent was asked if female doctors actually want to focus on housework or child-raising, rather than medicine. According to the results, 5 percent of all respondents were asked questions that focused on their age. Among those who did not go to medical school straight after graduating from high school, 8 percent were asked questions about their age, and for those who took medical school entrance exams after changing majors, the proportion rose to 25 percent. A respondent said he was asked whether he really intends to become a doctor if he was granted admission to the school, while another older applicant was questioned whether he had the ability to contribute to the university over a shorter number of working years. “There is still a sense of discrimination toward women and older people, seen as less valuable in the labor force,” association head Sakura Yamashita, who is in the fifth year at the University of Miyazaki, told a news conference. Yamashita expressed a wish for improvement to the work environment and reform so that diverse work styles can be accepted.
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women;entrance exams;doctors;medical schools
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jp0002324
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[
"national"
] |
2019/03/13
|
Two 12-year-old girls jump to their deaths from building in Aichi, leaving notes hinting at bullying
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NAGOYA - Two 12-year-old elementary school students apparently jumped to their deaths from an apartment building in Aichi Prefecture on Tuesday, leaving notes suggesting that they were being bullied, according to investigative sources. The two girls have been identified as sixth-graders who attended the same elementary school in the city of Toyota. The city’s education board told a news conference Wednesday that it had not received any reports about the two being bullied. A woman in the neighborhood made an emergency call at around 7 p.m. Tuesday, saying she had found two girls lying on the ground and bleeding next to the building. The two, who did not live in the complex, were confirmed dead at a hospital. Suicide notes addressed to the school’s principal and a few friends were found in the building. They included accounts of verbal abuse, according to the sources. The apparent suicide came just a week before their graduation ceremony. The two, who were in different classes, had gone to school on Tuesday. According to the city’s education board, the school surveyed the students about bullying several times during the academic year, which started last April. The two did not indicate they were being bullied. The board sent counselors to the school to provide emotional support to children who may experience shock over the deaths. It also said it will consider whether to conduct hearings with students in connection with the incident.
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children;suicide;bullying;toyota;schools;aichi
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jp0002325
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[
"national",
"crime-legal"
] |
2019/03/13
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Man with intellectual disabilities wins damages after Japanese police collected his DNA without a warrant
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KOBE - A local court ordered Hyogo Prefecture on Wednesday to pay ¥110,000 in damages to a man with intellectual disabilities, saying the prefectural police illegally took his DNA without proper consent in 2015. The police had said they received written permission from the man before conducting the swab at a police station in the city of Nishinomiya. But the Kobe District Court said the man did not have the ability to give consent. The court ruled that the 41-year-old, who is also autistic and has difficulty communicating with others, “did not have the ability to comprehend what giving his DNA (to the police) meant.” The plaintiff had demanded ¥1.65 million in damages for a human rights violation. Presiding Judge Koji Yamaguchi said the police should have obtained a warrant for collecting the DNA sample from his mouth. According to the ruling, the man burned plastic bags near a park in Nishinomiya in October 2015 after lighting a candle and incense while his caretaker was not around. The police were alerted to the incident and took the man to the police station.
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kobe;hyogo;dna testing;police
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jp0002326
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[
"national",
"crime-legal"
] |
2019/03/13
|
Denki Groove's Pierre Taki arrested in drug bust and reportedly admits to using cocaine
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Pierre Taki, a member of techno-pop duo Denki Groove and the voice of snowman Olaf in the Japanese-language version of the hit Disney movie “Frozen,” was arrested Tuesday on suspicion of using cocaine, investigators said. The 51-year-old, whose real name is Masanori Taki, has admitted to using a small quantity of cocaine in Tokyo and its vicinity earlier this week, according to a regional bureau of the health ministry’s narcotics control department. Authorities searched Taki’s car and home in Tokyo’s Setagaya Ward shortly after 6 p.m. on Tuesday based on several tip-offs. He was then arrested at around 11 p.m., after his urine sample tested positive for cocaine. Early Wednesday morning, Taki was transferred to a police station in Koto Ward, where he is currently being detained. Investigators will check his cell phone to find out how he obtained the cocaine and how often he used it. Possession or use of cocaine carries a prison sentence of up to seven years. Taki — a native of Shizuoka Prefecture — is currently playing a supporting role in the NHK drama “Idaten” and has appeared in many film and TV productions. Denki Groove, made up of Taki and Takkyu Ishino, has performed at a number of overseas music and dance festivals. This year, the duo took part in a tour to celebrate its 30th anniversary.
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drugs;cocaine;denki groove;pierre taki
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jp0002327
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[
"national",
"crime-legal"
] |
2019/03/13
|
Owners of TV-capable cellphones must pay NHK public channel fees, Japan's top court rules
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The Supreme Court has finalized high court rulings ordering owners of cellphones with TV functions to pay a subscription fee to NHK, it was learned Wednesday. The broadcast law obliges anyone who has a TV signal receiver to sign a contract with the public broadcaster. Presiding Judge Toshimitsu Yamasaki ruled Tuesday in two cases that the broadcast law applies to individuals who own a cellphone with TV capabilities, rejecting appeals by the plaintiffs. One of the lawsuits was filed by a member of the assembly for the city of Asaka, Saitama Prefecture, who does not own a TV set. The Saitama District Court decided in August 2016 he was not obliged to pay the subscription fee because possessing such a cellphone was not necessarily equivalent to installing a TV signal receiver. The Tokyo High Court overturned the ruling in March last year, saying the possession of a cellphone with a TV function should be regarded as the same as installing a TV receiver, and that owners of such devices and people that own TVs need to be treated equally. In another lawsuit, both the Tokyo District Court and the Tokyo High Court ruled that the owner of a cellphone capable of receiving TV signals who doesn’t have a TV set at home still needs to pay a subscription fee to the public broadcaster. NHK issued a statement and said the top court made a “reasonable” ruling in line with its assertions.
|
television;smartphones;taxes;nhk;supreme court
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jp0002328
|
[
"national"
] |
2019/03/13
|
Japan shelves bill on stricter copyright control after academics, manga artists and fans air concerns
|
The government on Wednesday decided to forgo submitting to the Diet a bill that would make it illegal to download literary materials without the permission of copyright holders, as concerns grew that it would impose excessive restraints on internet use. With Japan seeing a rise in the number of piracy websites, some of which are estimated to have caused damage worth hundreds of billions of yen, the government had sought to broaden the criminalization of downloads of copyrighted materials from videos and music to cover all types of content. But academics, manga artist groups and others have said the envisioned expansion to also cover materials including manga, computer games and literary pieces could affect freedom of expression by fans and hinder legitimate activities, such as research. In a meeting held last month in the Diet by manga artist groups and researchers, cartoonist Ken Akamatsu said he collects work online as part of his research and said that the bill that bans downloads of all kinds of copyrighted materials “goes too far.” Keiko Takemiya, head of the Japan Society for Studies in Cartoons and Comics, said at the same meeting that the bill could have an adverse impact on the creation of fan fiction, in which people create stories based on existing works that they like. “Fan fiction represents a love for manga,” Takemiya said. “We don’t want the close relationship between artists and fans to collapse.” Their concerns have prompted some members of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party to voice the need to hear further opinions from such copyright holders. “We have yet to eliminate the worries of both copyright holders and (internet) users,” said House of Councilors lawmaker Masaaki Akaike, who heads the LDP culture panel, after its executives failed to approve the bill. “We should work on it anew.” The bill, which the government had sought to put into effect on Jan. 1 next year, targeted not just piracy websites but also downloads and screenshots of individual blogs and posts on social networks. It called for punishing serious offenses, such as repeating illegal downloads of pirated content, with a prison term of up to two years or a fine of up to ¥2 million, or both. The envisioned legislation also targeted “leech sites” and “leech apps” that list hyperlinks to piracy websites and criminally punishes the operators of such services. Damage caused to publishers by a Japanese piracy site called Mangamura, which became inaccessible last April, was estimated at about ¥300 billion. The website, which once had over 100 million hits a month, hosted unauthorized copies of popular manga titles, including “Attack on Titan” and “One Piece.”
|
internet;manga;ldp;books;copyrights;fan fiction
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jp0002329
|
[
"business"
] |
2019/03/14
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Volkswagen pulls truck unit IPO in setback to CEO's revamp
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MUNICH, GERMANY - Volkswagen AG canceled plans to sell a share of its Traton SE division due to weak market conditions, dealing a setback to the automaker’s plan to generate fresh funds for the heavy-truck unit’s expansion outside Europe. “We regret that we have to refrain from a stock listing of Traton SE,” Chief Financial Officer Frank Witter said Wednesday. “The management board continues to aim for a stock listing in a better market environment.” VW decided to delay after a difficult start to the new year for the global automotive industry. In Europe, Traton’s biggest market, the economy is forecast to grow this year at the slowest rate since 2013. Activity has declined in part due to uncertainty surrounding the U.K.’s departure from the European Union and U.S. President Donald Trump’s threats to increase tariffs on European-made cars. Carmakers including VW are also suffering in China, the world’s biggest auto market and the top region for the company’s sales. A slowdown there has worsened in the first two months of the year, and VW this week said that its growth forecast for the year would depend on improvements in the second half. VW was up 1 percent at €145.38 euros at 5:28 p.m. in Frankfurt, after earlier gains of as much as 1.8 percent. The truck unit decision was disappointing, said Arndt Ellinghorst, an Evercore analyst. The announcement came a day after the VW Chief Executive Officer Herbert Diess and Witter, the CFO, updated investors on the company’s strategy. “VW certainly takes it responsibility to maximize shareholder value seriously, which we think has been the rationale behind pulling the IPO on current valuations,” Ellinghorst said. VW on Monday said a listing, valued at as much as €30 billion ($34 billion), would be “highly desirable,” while warning of volatile markets and economic uncertainty. The planned minority share sale would have been the biggest in Europe this year. The IPO, which has been in the works for more than two years, is VW’s most tangible effort thus far to become less centralized and boost efficiency as part of a strategy overhaul through 2025. Gaining fresh funds would help Traton challenge global leaders Daimler AG and Volvo AB in markets outside Europe. The decision is a setback for Diess, who’s under pressure to keep up the pace on a revamp to ready the world’s biggest carmaker for the industry’s transformation to electric cars. VW seeks to gain speed and lower costs to deliver on a plan for 70 electric models by 2028 and keep up profitability.
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china;ipo;ipos;trucks;vw;herbert diess
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jp0002330
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[
"business"
] |
2019/03/14
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Britain eyes Brexit 'no-deal' trade shift to China from EU
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LONDON - Britain on Wednesday unveiled a contingency trade policy that favors global giants such as China over EU countries in case of a messy divorce from the bloc. London is bracing for the worst as it races toward the March 29 Brexit deadline without a plan for unwinding its 46-year involvement in the European project. A “no-deal” split would bring an end to the current free trade arrangements between Britain and its EU partners overnight. In a tentative first step toward ending months of deadlock, Parliament on Wednesday opened the door to delaying Brexit and radically re-writing the terms of the divorce. The House of Commons voted 321 to 278 to reject leaving the EU with no deal and is now expected to seek to delay Brexit in the hope of securing a better deal. The vote had political but not legal force. Speaking in the Commons, Prime Minister Theresa May announced that if a deal can be agreed to in the coming days, she would ask the EU for a short “technical” extension to the deadline. If there is no deal, the delay will be much longer, she said. The government said Wednesday it would mitigate the damage on businesses and consumers by eliminating customs duties on 87 percent of the imports into the United Kingdom. The measure would have to apply to all countries — both in the European Union and those farther overseas — because of global trade rules. Analysts said the current figure stands at around 80 percent — much of it enjoyed by the 27 EU nations. An increase in the total amount of tariff-free imports “will probably mean EU producers lose out to Chinese and other lower-cost producers,” said David Hening of the European Center For International Political Economy. Hening predicted a “trade diversion from the EU. But the proposals for tariff-free imports contained exceptions for sensitive industries — particularly farming and the automotive industry. Here is a look at how three of Britain’s most important sectors would fare in the 12-month window over which the measures would be rolled out initially: Fair to farmers? Most nations protect their farmers to at least some extent because of their social importance. Britain would keep “tariffs and quotas on beef, lamb, pork, poultry and some dairy to support farmers and producers who have historically been protected through high EU tariffs,” according to a U.K. government statement. This sparked an immediate outcry from Ireland — a U.K.-focused food producer in which almost 1 in 10 people work in the agri-food sector. Its agriculture ministry warned that Dublin might respond through “traditional market support” — a euphemism for reciprocal tariffs and quotas — and “increased flexibility under state aid regulations.” Steel spat Britain’s shift of attention to China is most vividly displayed by the complete elimination of tariffs on its massive aluminum and steel mills. The benefits would also stretch to big metals producer Russia — a potentially sensitive issue considering the chilly state of London’s affairs with Moscow. U.K. steel producers would suffer in manufacturing cities that voted for Brexit and disproportionately feel the impact of the new trade approach. These factors could compound May’s political problems in the first weeks of a full-blown “no-deal Brexit” crisis. Wheel woes Cheaper metals are a boon for Britain’s troubled car producers. The sector is a vital employer in smaller cities and would get the additional help thanks to tariff-free imports of components. But any boost could be countered if the EU reacts with protectionist tariffs of its own, as is likely although Brussels has set out no official “no-deal” trade policy. Analysts said they expected the price of German and French cars in Britain to jump by 10 percent as a result of the new tariff plan. Britain’s proud bike producers, meanwhile, complained they would lose out as the government proposals would reduce tariffs on bicycle imports. Britain’s Bicycle Association says the industry employs twice as many people as the steel sector and is worth three times more. “U.K. bike makers are particularly badly hit as anti-dumping duties and tariffs have been removed, and they will face tariffs in overseas markets,” said Hening.
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china;russia;trade;eu;u.k .;steel;brexit;theresa may;no-deal
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jp0002331
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[
"business"
] |
2019/03/14
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Climate protesters ejected from Houston energy conference
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HOUSTON - Protesters tried to interrupt the biggest U.S. energy conference, holding signs and using a microphone to shout “Climate Change is Genocide.” It’s the first time in recent memory that environmental activists have made their presence felt at the CERAWeek by IHS Markit conference in Houston, an event that has armed uniformed city police officers stationed on several floors of the Hilton Americas hotel, who ask people entering the event to show their badges. About half a dozen protesters managed to enter the downtown hotel before being quickly removed by police. They were carrying a sign that said, in part: “TELL THE TRUTH.. FRACKING DISPROPORTIONATELY AFFECTS COMMUNITIES OF COLOR.” The incident occurred as U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry finished a luncheon speech at the conference. The protesters didn’t interrupt the speech or make it to the room where the secretary was speaking. “We’re here to protest the extraction industry again,” a 29-year-old protester named Danny, who refused to give his last name, said in an interview. “Climate change affects the global south, the places with black and brown people.” Meeting attendees Tuesday night heard from Bob Dudley, chief executive officer of London-based BP PLC, who said oil and natural gas producers are operating “in a world that is not on a sustainable path.” He called for the industry to engage with policymakers around the world, “including those behind the Green New Deal.” Two weeks ago, oil executives gathered in London for IPWeek were confronted by environmental protesters who glued themselves to the doors of the venue.
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bp;climate change;environment;rick perry;fracking;houston;ceraweek by ihs markit
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jp0002332
|
[
"business",
"economy-business"
] |
2019/03/14
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Brokerages brace for Japan's longest market shutdown since WWII
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Brokerages are taking steps to help relieve at least some investors worried about getting trapped by the country’s unusually long holiday next month related to the Emperor’s succession. Markets in Japan are scheduled to be closed from April 27 through May 6 because the government has designated national holidays around the abdication of Emperor Akihito, in addition to the annual Golden Week days off over that period. In total, markets will be shut for six trading sessions, sparking concerns of volatility. Brokerages have started implementing measures that may alleviate trouble for investors in overseas stocks at least. Daiwa Securities Group Inc. plans to make trading in U.S. and Europe-listed stocks available for its Japanese clients on April 30 and May 2, said Yuji Kamioka, a spokesman for the Tokyo-based firm. SMBC Nikko Securities Inc. is considering setting up a call center to handle transactions from clients looking to sell U.S.-listed equities, NHK reported. Rakuten Securities Inc. earlier this week cautioned investors of possible post-holiday volatility. These actions may alleviate some problems for investors who otherwise may not have had a way out of positions for more than a week. Extended holiday closures bring back memories of January’s “flash crash,” when Japan’s four-day New Year holiday exacerbated liquidity constraints in the currency market, sending the yen soaring against the dollar. The impact for domestic stocks from the break planned for April-May remains to be seen. The total 10-day market closure will be Japan’s longest since the end of World War II, a spokesman at Japan Exchange Group Inc. said.
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holidays;brokerages;golden week;daiwa securities;nikko securities
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jp0002333
|
[
"business",
"economy-business"
] |
2019/03/14
|
Bank of Japan's never-ending monetary stimulus offers lessons for the world's central banks
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Central bankers searching for options to fight the next downturn should look to Japan, where policymakers are gathering for a regular review of the world’s most epic monetary stimulus program. The Bank of Japan’s two-decade journey from zero interest rates to massive asset purchases, negative rates and yield-curve control demonstrates a combination of tools that can be used to sustain stimulus — along with the huge damage that piles up when it drags on too long. As global economic growth wanes, Europe doles out a fresh round of easing and the U.S., Canada, Britain and Australia put rate hikes on hold, economists are asking what more can be done with scant room to lower borrowing costs and already swollen balance sheets. “Whether central banks like it or not, there is little choice than to venture further with ‘creative’ new strategies to reflate inflation expectations,” said Ben Emons, managing director of global macro strategy at Medley Global Advisors in New York. Yield targeting, interest-rate ceilings, deeper fiscal and monetary coordination and various forms of asset purchases should be on the radar of policymakers around the world, according to Emons. Economists are unanimous in forecasting that BOJ Gov. Haruhiko Kuroda and his Policy Board will maintain the current monetary settings at their two-day meeting beginning Thursday in Tokyo. Few see any change this year, and the majority expect Kuroda’s next move will be tightening, but a rising minority now project more easing. Many of the underlying problems confronting the BOJ — slowing growth, tepid wage increases, lackluster productivity gains and an aging population — are becoming more pronounced in other developed economies. This increases the likelihood of more drawn-out stimulus, pushing others down the same road as Japan. “When Japan first confronted the problem of very low inflation, monetary economists pooh-poohed the problem, saying there was an easy fix,” said Raghuram Rajan, former governor of the Reserve Bank of India and now a professor at the University of Chicago. “After confronting the same issue in their own countries and showing an inability to deal with it, there seems to be a general consensus that the problem is harder.” Its latest experiment in yield-curve control involves pinning short-term borrowing costs at minus 0.1 percent and holding long-term rates around zero percent by operations in the bond market. The tool has drawn the attention of Federal Reserve Deputy Chair Richard Clarida amid an examination of strategy at the U.S. central bank. Clarida has noted that yield-curve control could be helpful when there is little scope for conventional rate cuts, but that it also carries the threat of expanding the balance sheet too much. But for the BOJ, which has already swallowed up 43 percent of Japanese government bonds, this tool has actually let it slow the pace of purchases and extend the life of stimulus. Its huge holdings of JGBs relative to other investors now allow it to guide rates with relative comfort. The strategy has relieved a little pressure on Japanese commercial banks by allowing interest rates on longer maturity debt to rise a smidgen, providing a sliver of a margin for lending. But it does little to change the long-term trend for the nation’s regional banks, which are struggling with declining business as the population falls. In a worrying sign, Mizuho Financial Group, one of Japan’s three biggest banks, this month reported a ¥680 billion charge that was due in part to chasing higher yields on bonds overseas as opportunities dry up at home. JGB traders aren’t faring much better either. Trading volumes have fallen dramatically in the bond market, which no longer serves Japan as an arbiter of economic risk, and jobs in the industry are declining. Years of low interest rates have also meant cheap loans are keeping unproductive companies alive, slowing efforts to revitalize the economy. Central banks that fail to revive inflation over many years could also face what Kuroda describes as a “deflationary mindset.” After two decades of stagnation, Japanese consumers and businesses now look to the past as a better predictor of future prices than anything the BOJ does to nudge up inflation, undermining the effectiveness of monetary policy. There is no telling when the BOJ may be able to provide its peers with lessons on exiting such a momentous stimulus program, but the path looks perilous. Current central bank policy is keeping a lid on the yen, to the great benefit of exporters, and is allowing the hugely indebted Japanese government to keep borrowing cheaply. Jerome Jean Haegeli, chief economist at the Swiss Re Institute in Zurich, said yield-curve control could turn out to be the “best of bad options” for other central banks that get in a bind and need to contain asset purchases, but at another cost. “The downside of yield-curve control is an unholy marriage of the fiscal authority getting together with the monetary authority, and that in the end won’t go well,” he said.
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boj;abenomics;haruhiko kuroda;monetary policy;interest rates;zero interest rates
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jp0002334
|
[
"business"
] |
2019/03/14
|
Verdict due in Mt. Gox bitcoin case after prosecutors lay out claims of lavish spending by CEO Karpeles
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The former high-flying head of collapsed bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox will learn his fate Friday as a Tokyo court hands down its verdict on charges of faking digital data and embezzling millions of dollars. Prosecutors have called for a 10-year jail sentence for French-born Mark Karpeles, 33, who denies the charges. Karpeles is alleged to have repeatedly manipulated computer data over several years while embezzling a total of ¥341 million ($3 million) of clients’ money deposited at the company. Prosecutors claim he splashed the embezzled money on a 3D-printing software business unnecessary for Mt. Gox, as well as on personal expenses, including some ¥6 million ($54,000) for a canopy bed. He also spent millions of yen on arranging overseas trips for his estranged wife, as well as utility bills and cleaning services at his luxury apartment, prosecutors allege. Mt. Gox was shut down in 2014 after 850,000 bitcoins, worth an estimated ¥48 billion at the time, disappeared from its virtual vaults, a mystery that remains unsolved. The disappearance left a trail of angry investors, rocked the virtual currency community and dented confidence in the security of bitcoin. At one point, Mt. Gox claimed to be handling around 80 percent of all global bitcoin transactions. The spectacular failure of the exchange caused a dramatic slump in the value of bitcoin, but the cryptocurrency rallied to an all-time high above ¥2 million in December 2017 before dropping off sharply. Japan issued new regulations after the Mt. Gox case, but the exchange Coincheck was forced last year to refund customers more than ¥46.6 billion in virtual currency that disappeared from its holdings. During the trial, Karpeles apologized to customers for the company’s bankruptcy but denied both data falsification and embezzlement. “I swear to God that I am innocent,” Karpeles, speaking in Japanese, told the three-judge panel hearing when his trial opened. Karpeles has said the bitcoins were lost due to an external “hacking attack” and later claimed he had found some 200,000 coins in a “cold wallet” — a storage device not connected to other computers. “Most people will not believe what I say. The only solution I have is to actually find the real culprits,” he told reporters after the hearing. The charges against the former CEO are not directly related to how the Mt. Gox losses came about. Satoshi Mihira, chief attorney at Mizuho Chuo law firm, said, “If it was an outside hacker who stole the currency, it’s a problem. But if he stole even part of the money, it would be embezzlement.” “His defense counsel needs a high level of evidence to win an innocent verdict,” he said. “If he’s found guilty, it is possible he will get a jail term considering the significant money losses (suffered by customers),” said the lawyer, an expert on cryptocurrency issues. The odds are stacked against Karpeles as the vast majority of cases that come to trial in Japan end in a conviction. The Frenchman was first arrested in August 2015 and, in an echo of another high-profile case against former Nissan chief and compatriot Carlos Ghosn, was re-arrested several times on different charges. Karpeles eventually won bail in July 2016 — nearly a year after his arrest — reportedly paying ¥10 million to secure his freedom pending a trial, which began in July 2017. During his time on bail, Karpeles has been active on social media — notably voicing doubts about bitcoin and replying to some media questions about conditions in Japanese detention centers. However, he has largely avoided commenting on his case in detail. The court is expected to issue a verdict Friday and, if it finds Karpeles guilty, will likely hand down a sentence at the same time. However, even if he were to lose the case, he has the right to appeal, which would keep him on bail.
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courts;scandals;bitcoin;mt . gox;mark karpeles;cryptocurrency
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jp0002335
|
[
"business"
] |
2019/03/14
|
U.S. and India commit to building six nuclear power plants
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WASHINGTON - The United States and India on Wednesday agreed to strengthen security and civil nuclear cooperation, including building six U.S. nuclear power plants in India, the two countries said in a joint statement. The agreement came after two days of talks in Washington. The United States under President Donald Trump has been looking to sell more energy products to India, the world’s third-biggest buyer of oil. The talks involved Indian Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale and Andrea Thompson, the U.S. undersecretary of state for arms control and international security. “They committed to strengthen bilateral security and civil nuclear cooperation, including the establishment of six U.S. nuclear power plants in India,” the joint statement said. It gave no further details of the nuclear plant project. The two countries have been discussing the supply of U.S. nuclear reactors to energy-hungry India for more than a decade, but a long-standing obstacle has been the need to bring Indian liability rules in-line with international norms, which require the costs of any accident to be channeled to the operator rather than the maker of a nuclear power station. Pittsburgh-based Westinghouse has been negotiating to build reactors in India for years, but progress has been slow, partly because of India’s nuclear liability legislation, and the project was thrown into doubt when Westinghouse filed for bankruptcy in 2017 after cost overruns on U.S. reactors. Canada’s Brookfield Asset Management bought Westinghouse from Toshiba in August 2018. Last April Westinghouse received strong support from U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry for its India project, which envisaged the building of six AP1000 reactors in the state of Andhra Pradesh. The agreement to build the reactors, announced in 2016, followed on from a U.S.-India civil nuclear agreement signed in 2008. India plans to triple its nuclear capacity by 2024 to wean Asia’s third-largest economy off polluting fossil fuels. Last October, India and Russia signed a pact to build six more nuclear reactors at a new site in India following summit talks between their leaders in New Delhi.
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india;u.s .;nuclear energy
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jp0002336
|
[
"business"
] |
2019/03/14
|
Ford fears double-whammy from May's no-deal Brexit tariffs
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LONDON - Ford Motor Co. said it will be hit twice by U.K. tariffs to be imposed in the event of a no-deal Brexit. The U.S. company, which only makes engines in Britain, would be taxed on exporting them to assembly plants in mainland Europe and then face import duties for bringing finished vehicles back to the U.K. for sale, it said in a statement Wednesday. Competitors that manufacture engines elsewhere and then ship them to the U.K. for assembly, by contrast, would incur no charges thanks to a tariff-free regime that Prime Minister Theresa May’s government plans to offer for auto-component imports. And the same companies could then satisfy the demands of the local market direct from their British plants, also tariff free. “These tariffs would deal a devastating blow to much of the complex and integrated automotive industry, and would damage the competitiveness of Ford’s engine manufacturing in the U.K.,” the U.S. firm said, adding that the proposed levies were drawn up without detailed consultation with automakers. Dearborn, Michigan-based Ford stopped making cars in the U.K. in 2002 after seven decades of production, but still employs more than 10,000 people in the country, many of them at plants in Bridgend, Wales, and Dagenham, near London, that make engines for gasoline- and diesel-engine vehicles, respectively. The company, which last month said a hard Brexit would be “catastrophic” for the U.K. auto industry and its own production facilities, also counts Britain as its biggest European market, representing 6 percent of global sales in 2017. The Ford Fiesta and Focus were the country’s two best selling models in the first two months this year, according to figures from the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders. Ford added that it’s imperative that a no-deal split is ruled out as soon as possible to avoid the imposition of such a draconian tariff regime. That’s something that is expected to happened later when the British Parliament votes on outlawing the scenario.
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trade;u.k .;carmakers;tariffs;ford;brexit;theresa may
|
jp0002337
|
[
"business",
"tech"
] |
2019/03/14
|
Facebook considers paying back advertisers as system outages persist around globe
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NEW YORK/SAN FRANCISCO - Facebook is undergoing one of its most widespread and persistent system outages, with users across the globe unable to access its social network and services from Instagram to Messenger for much of Wednesday. From about noon New York time, users encountered only partially loaded pages or no content at all, accompanied by a message saying an error had occurred. Several brand marketers tweeted that Facebook’s advert buying system was down as well. As of about 6:30 p.m., Facebook said it was still investigating the overall impact, “including the possibility of refunds for advertisers.” Ad sales are the company’s lifeblood and persistent difficulties could be costly. Based on 2019 sales estimates, Facebook Inc. is projected to generate average daily revenue of about $189 million. Reports on Downdetector, a website for reporting problems on applications and websites, have ranged from troubles logging into accounts to an inability to post comments or photos. Regions affected include the New York area, parts of California and the Seattle region, according to Downdetector. Other problem locations include Japan, the Philippines, Peru and major cities in Australia. Users cited snags not only with Facebook, but also its photo-sharing site Instagram, the messaging tools Messenger and Whatsapp, as well as Oculus virtual reality devices. Some users encountered a message indicating the site was down for maintenance. “We’re aware that some people are currently having trouble accessing the Facebook family of apps. We’re working to resolve the issue as soon as possible,” according to a Facebook spokesperson. The timing of a major outage is sub-optimal for Facebook, which is already embattled by revelations it failed to safeguard user data or stanch the spread of hate speech, fake news and other forms of disinformation. Facebook’s reputation was tarnished after its platform was used by Russian trolls to interfere in the U.S. presidential election in 2016. A U.S. Justice Department investigation into the company’s data-sharing practices broadened to include a grand jury, a person with knowledge of the matter said Wednesday. The stock had climbed less than a percent to $173.37 as of the close of U.S. trading, and it has lost more than 20 percent since reaching a peak on July 25.
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internet;smartphones;computers;social media;facebook;instagram;cyberattacks
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jp0002338
|
[
"business",
"financial-markets"
] |
2019/03/14
|
Tokyo stocks end slightly lower
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Stocks closed marginally lower on the Tokyo Stock Exchange on Thursday, after erasing healthy early gains under the pressure of profit-taking. The 225-issue Nikkei average lost 3.22 points, or 0.02 percent, to end at 21,287.02. On Wednesday, the key market gauge shed 213.45 points. The Topix index of all first-section issues finished down 3.78 points, or 0.24 percent, at 1,588.29, after retreating 13.41 points the previous day. The Tokyo market got off to a firmer start, with the Nikkei briefly gaining over 230 points, thanks chiefly to buybacks, market sources said. But the market’s topside grew heavy in midmorning trading, hit by selling to lock in gains, according to the sources. In afternoon trading, the Nikkei gradually cut gains and fluctuated around the previous day’s closing level toward the close. The Topix showed directionless movements for most of the afternoon session. Hiroaki Hiwada, strategist at Toyo Securities Co., suggested that profit-taking was prompted by “sluggish Chinese stocks.” Chihiro Ota, general manager for investment research and investor services at SMBC Nikko Securities Inc., said selling apparently by nonresidents weighed on the market. Investors “largely ignored” the rejection on Wednesday by the U.K. Parliament of U.K.’s no-deal exit from the European Union, as the vote result came as no surprise, Ota said. Falling issues outnumbered rising ones 1,257 to 783 in the TSE’s first section, while 94 issues were unchanged. Volume dropped to 1.132 billion shares from 1.225 billion shares on Wednesday. Daiwa House Industry Co. fell 2.58 percent, with investor sentiment battered by suspected fund misappropriation at an affiliate in China. Also on the minus side were mobile phone carrier KDDI Corp., electronic parts maker TDK Corp. and daily goods manufacturer Kao Corp. By contrast, higher crude oil prices lifted oil companies JXTG Holdings Inc., Idemitsu Kosan Co., Showa Shell Sekiyu KK and Cosmo Energy Holdings Co. Among other major winners were clothing store chain Fast Retailing Co., employment information service firm Recruit Holdings Co. and technology conglomerate Softbank Group Corp. In index futures trading on the Osaka Exchange, the key June contract on the Nikkei average climbed 70 points to end at 21,120.
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stocks;nikkei;tokyo stock exchange;topix
|
jp0002339
|
[
"business",
"financial-markets"
] |
2019/03/14
|
Dollar firms to around ¥111.60 in Tokyo as long-term rates climb in U.S.
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The dollar was stronger around ¥111.60 in Tokyo trading late Thursday, helped by higher long-term interest rates in the United States. At 5 p.m., the dollar stood at ¥111.58-61, up from ¥111.32-32 at the same time on Wednesday. The euro was at $1.1323-1323, up from $1.1279-1280, and at ¥126.36-36, up from ¥125.56-57. After moving around ¥111.10-20 in early trading, the dollar rose to around ¥111.50 later in the morning on the back of the benchmark 225-issue Nikkei stock average’s rebound and higher long-term U.S. interest rates. The U.S. currency gained further ground to around ¥111.60 in afternoon trading owing partly to stop-loss buy orders before its topside was somewhat limited in the late hours due to profit-taking. A currency broker noted that “sluggish movements of Asian stocks in the afternoon put pressure” on the dollar’s topside. In late trading, currency market players retreated to the sidelines to see the outcome of a British parliamentary vote later on Thursday on postponing the March 29 deadline for Britain’s exit from the European Union, according to an official of a major securities firm. An official of a foreign-exchange margin trading service firm pointed to the possibility of the dollar having been bought against the yen “amid speculation that the Bank of Japan may implement additional monetary easing steps.” The BOJ’s two-day policy-setting meeting will end on Friday.
|
forex;currencies
|
jp0002340
|
[
"business",
"corporate-business"
] |
2019/03/14
|
Japan's Daiwa House suspects massive $211 million embezzlement at Chinese joint venture
|
OSAKA - Home builder Daiwa House Industry Co. said Wednesday it suspects 1.42 billion yuan ($211 million) may have been embezzled by three employees at its joint venture in China. The suspected embezzlement at the housing development firm, Dalian Dahezhongsheng Estate Co., by two executives and an accounting staffer surfaced after a different employee reported Tuesday that the amount of the company’s funds in the bank and that logged in its books did not match, Daiwa House said. The three employees could not be reached, and the joint company in the northeastern port city of Dalian is preparing to file a criminal complaint, Daiwa House said. The two executives sent from a joint venture partner in Dalian and the accounting staffer are related, according to Daiwa House. The home builder said it will book half of the missing money as a loss if the company fails to collect it. Daiwa House suspects the missing money was transferred using internet banking from around 2015. Daiwa House has been considering dissolving the company in Dalian after the joint venture partner sold a property developed with Daiwa House without giving any notice last summer, according to officials of the firm.
|
china;scandals;embezzlement;daiwa house
|
jp0002341
|
[
"business",
"corporate-business"
] |
2019/03/14
|
'Judgment' delayed as Sega halts shipment after drug arrest of Pierre Taki, who plays gangster in game
|
Entertainment company Sega has canceled shipments of its video game “Judgment,” also known as “Judge Eyes,” after one of its voice actors was arrested on drug charges. The health ministry’s drug division said actor and musician Pierre Taki, 51, was arrested in Tokyo earlier this week on suspicion of using cocaine. The game made by Tokyo-based Sega Games Corp., creator of the “Sonic the Hedgehog” games, depicts a detective fighting crime in a fictitious town. It went on sale in December in Japan and was set to ship overseas in June. Sega spokesman Hajime Oshima said Thursday that what’s already been sold and shipped to retailers will remain unchanged. The company has apologized. It said it was still studying what further action to take on the game. Taki plays a gangster in the game, both as a computer graphic and voice actor. He has appeared in various movies, including the 2013 crime drama “The Devil’s Path,” and leads a techno band. The maximum penalty for using cocaine is seven years in prison.
|
drugs;sega;cocaine;denki groove;pierre taki
|
jp0002342
|
[
"business",
"corporate-business"
] |
2019/03/14
|
SoftBank and Toyota in talks to invest $1 billion in Uber's self-driving unit: sources
|
A group of investors led by SoftBank Group Corp. and Toyota Motor Corp. is in talks to invest $1 billion or more into Uber Technologies Inc.’s self-driving vehicle unit, which would value the unit at $5 billion to $10 billion, said two people familiar with the talks. The investment would provide a cash injection for Uber’s self-driving program, which is costing the money-losing startup hundreds of millions of dollars without generating revenue. It could also help underscore Uber’s value as the ride-hailing firm prepares for a stock market debut in which its value could top $100 billion. Uber and SoftBank declined to comment. A Toyota spokesman said the automaker “constantly reviews and considers various options for investment” but does not have anything to announce. News of investment talks was first reported by The Wall Street Journal, which said a deal could be reached next month. Toyota, Japan’s largest automaker, injected $500 million into Uber last year to work on self-driving cars, where both companies are seen as lagging rivals such as Alphabet Inc.’s self-driving unit Waymo. Uber, which last year lost about $3.3 billion, is betting on a transition to self-driving cars to eliminate the need to pay drivers. The nascent technology came under greater scrutiny last year after one of Uber’s self-driving cars struck and killed a pedestrian in Arizona. Prosecutors last week declined to pursue criminal charges. The challenge of developing the technology is leading to previously unlikely alliances, with SoftBank and Toyota partnering up in Japan. SoftBank has invested $2.25 billion in General Motors Co.’s self-driving unit Cruise, which has also received funds from Honda Motor Co.
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toyota;softbank;uber
|
jp0002343
|
[
"business",
"corporate-business"
] |
2019/03/14
|
Japan trading house Itochu partners with Singapore's Halcyon to join sustainable rubber trade
|
SINGAPORE - Japanese trading house Itochu Corp. will aim to promote sustainable trade in natural rubber under a capital tie-up with a Singaporean market platform operator. Itochu acquired a 19 percent stake in HeveaConnect Pte. Ltd. for $2.2 million earlier this month through private share placement, Itochu spokesman Kenji Katsumoto said Wednesday. HeveaConnect is a digital marketplace operation established by Singapore’s global natural rubber firm Halcyon Agri Corp. last August. The online marketplace operator issues HeveaPro certifications — standards based on the screening of more than 1,200 items such as quality assurance, environment and health and safety, Itochu said in a recent statement. HeveaConnect’s service is currently being operated on a trial basis and will be fully launched next month, Katsumoto added. PT. Aneka Bumi Pratama, Itochu’s wholly-owned natural rubber processer in Indonesia, will obtain HeveaPro certification and join the platform, the statement said. Itochu is a founding member of a global platform for sustainable natural rubber that was established last October to improve the socioeconomic and environmental impact of the natural rubber value chain.
|
singapore;trade;itochu;rubber;heveaconnect;halcyon agri
|
jp0002344
|
[
"business",
"corporate-business"
] |
2019/03/14
|
For China drone-maker DJI, the real money in labor-starved Japan is in the industrial sector
|
Amid severe labor shortages, the use of unmanned aerial vehicles to perform human tasks is sure to grow, and DJI, the world’s biggest drone-maker, is ready to respond, the firm’s Japan head said. Drones for industrial uses ranging from agriculture to infrastructure maintenance and security are becoming more popular, said Allen Wu, DJI’s head of Japan operations. But he said he is doubtful about the potential for drone-based product delivery. “For quite some time, we’ve figured that our main market in Japan is industrial, so our team has been focusing on it more,” Wu said in an interview Wednesday. Shenzhen-based SZ DJI Technology Co. dominates the global drone market and according to reports is estimated to have a market share of more than 70 percent. Wu said sales of drones for general consumers in Japan hardly grew in 2018 compared with 2017, but sales of drones for industrial use jumped by 40 percent. Sales of multicopters for agricultural use, such as spraying pesticide from the air, saw an 80 percent surge, while demand for other tasks including surveying, security and infrastructure maintenance are also rising, according to Wu. Although the outlook for industrial drone use is bright, it will take some time to set rules or standards for each task, he said. Tunnels, towers and dams are all infrastructure, but standards for maintenance using drones are different for each one, said Wu, who was interviewed on the sidelines of the three-day Japan Drone expo, which kicked off Wednesday at Makuhari Messe in Chiba Prefecture. At the business-oriented expo, DJI is displaying business solutions in collaboration with other companies. For instance, it is showcasing a service jointly developed with Microsoft Corp. and Nippon Systemware Co. to check cracks in buildings via drones. “To provide value for (industrial) customers, we can’t do it alone after all,” said Wu, adding that DJI plans to work with various firms to facilitate business applications. Given that Japan has a graying society and is plagued by labor shortages, more companies, particularly in the construction sector, will replace jobs that do not have to be handled by humans with drones, Wu said. But when it comes to logistics, he said drones are not fit for the task in Japan. The government is hoping to kick-start product delivery not only in rural areas but also in cities sometime in the early 2020s. Companies such as Japan Post Co. and Rakuten Inc. have been experimenting with drone delivery recently. “Drones can’t fly when it rains or if strong wind blows. In that case, you have to eventually hire people to deliver packages,” he said. He added that drones are unlikely to carry heavy items while their batteries are expensive. On top of that, Japan’s logistic services are already convenient enough. “In Tokyo, you can get an item delivered in one day. There is no point in using drones,” he said, adding that developing safety and flight infrastructure would be especially hard in busy cities. As for the consumer market, Wu said the ratio of drone sales among general customers is quite low compared with other territories. Globally, 80 percent of DJI’s sales comes from the consumer segment, with the ratio being 50 percent or less in Japan. That’s probably because general users in Japan follow drone flight rules more strictly than those in other countries, Wu said. Yet sales of other imaging devices, such as the Osmo Pocket, an ultra-compact handheld video camera equipped with a stabilizer, have been robust in Japan, he said.
|
china;population;drones;jobs;dji
|
jp0002345
|
[
"business",
"corporate-business"
] |
2019/03/14
|
Nissan may invite ex-Keidanran chief Sakakibara to chair meetings, leaving Ghosn's seat unfilled
|
Nissan Motor Co. is considering asking ex-Toray Industries chief and Japan Inc. heavyweight Sadayuki Sakakibara to chair its board meetings while leaving vacant the chairman post previously held by Carlos Ghosn, a source said on Thursday. Japan’s No. 2 automaker is considering nominating Sakakibara, a former head of the powerful business lobby Keidanren, to become an external director at the general shareholders meeting in June, said the source, who has direct knowledge of the matter. The person declined to be identified because the decision is not final. Nissan has tasked an external committee with helping to improve corporate governance after the arrest and ouster of Ghosn, who faces charges of financial misconduct including understating his compensation by about ¥9 billion over nearly a decade. Ghosn has denied the charges. A spokeswoman for the external committee declined to comment on the possible selection of Sakakibara. A Nissan spokesman declined to comment. Sakakibara is already a co-chair of that committee, which is due to make recommendations this month on corporate governance including procedures for executive appointments and compensation. Nissan, along with partners Renault and Mitsubishi Motors, this week announced a major retooling of their alliance through the creation of a three-way board meeting to put themselves on a more equal footing. Renault Chairman Jean-Dominique Senard would chair the alliance board, but — in a critical sign of the rebalancing — not become chairman of Nissan. Before his arrest in November, Ghosn had been chairman of all three individual companies while also leading the alliance. Meanwhile, Nissan is sending out notices to shareholders asking them to dismiss Ghosn as a director at an April 8 shareholders meeting, the company said Wednesday. The notice, signed by Nissan President Hiroto Saikawa, will be sent out Thursday, Nissan said. The notice says the agenda also includes the election of Renault Chairman Jean-Dominique Senard as a Nissan director, on the condition that Ghosn is ousted. Although Ghosn has been dismissed as chairman at Nissan, he remains on the board. Shareholders’ approval is needed to remove him from the board. Nissan is part of an alliance with Renault SA of France, and more recently with Japan’s Mitsubishi Motors, that was largely cobbled together by Ghosn, who led Nissan for two decades. The notice from Nissan says its investigation also found Ghosn used company money for personal expenses. The notice did not give specifics, but sources familiar with the investigation have pointed to fancy homes in Lebanon and Brazil, as well as expensive furnishings such as a chandelier. The date for his trial has not been set. In Japan, preparations can take months. He was released on ¥1 billion bail last week. It is unclear whether he will try to attend next month’s shareholders meeting. Ghosn owns more than 3 million Nissan shares, or somewhat less than 0.1 percent of total shares, according to the most recent disclosure. Senard appeared with Saikawa at Tuesday’s board meeting at Nissan’s Yokohama headquarters to drive home the message that the French-Japanese auto alliance remains strong. Also on the shareholders’ agenda is the dismissal of Greg Kelly, a director who was arrested with Ghosn and accused of working with Ghosn in the alleged misconduct.
|
scandals;nissan;carmakers;mitsubishi motors;renault;carlos ghosn;sadayuki sakakibara
|
jp0002346
|
[
"world"
] |
2019/03/14
|
Dozens of children trapped among scores of others in collapsed Lagos 'illegal school' building
|
LAGOS - Dozens of children were among scores of people feared trapped on Wednesday after a four-storey building collapsed in Nigeria’s economic capital Lagos, rescuers told AFP, with at least four dead bodies pulled from the rubble. The children were attending an “illegal school” inside the residential building when the structure collapsed, officials said. “Dozens of children were trapped inside,” said Adesina Tiamiyu, head of Lagos state emergency management agency (SEMA), which is supervising the rescue operation. So far, emergency workers had pulled 40 people alive from the rubble, some of them badly injured, he said. But they had also recovered “more than four dead bodies,” Tiamiyu said without giving an exact figure. Police said they believed scores of people were trapped under the rubble of the building which collapsed mid-morning in an area near Itafaji market on Lagos Island. “We are getting additional cranes to be able to go deeper than where we are now to rescue more lives,” said Lagos state governor Akinwunmi Ambode in a statement. And he promised a full investigation, pledging there would be “punishment” for anyone found responsible for the building’s collapse. In chaotic scenes, panicked parents, local residents and shocked onlookers rushed to the area as police, firemen and medics staged a massive rescue operation. It was not immediately clear how many people were inside when the building foundered. Rescuers stressed there were no exact figures for the dead or injured, but one health official said 20 people had been taken to hospital. “We are still trying to find out how many are trapped inside,” said police officer Seun Ariwyo, who said there were probably scores. A young man helping rescue efforts who gave his name only as Derin said “at least 10 children” were trapped inside but “thought to be alive. An AFP reporter at the scene saw at least eight people pulled from the wreckage, including a small boy with blood on his face. Covered in dust, he was alive but unconscious and appeared to be badly hurt. One local resident who witnessed the moment of collapse said there was no warning. “We were smoking outside when the building just collapsed,” Olamide Nuzbah told AFP in pidgin English. As rescuers worked furiously to reach those inside, distraught parents begged them to find their children. “Please, save my child, save my child!” wept one traumatized mother whose 7-year-old daughter was trapped inside, as people tried to console her. School bags, toys and clothes could be seen among the piles of rubble as a bulldozer tried to clear a path through some of the wreckage to help the rescue efforts. As the day wore on, an AFP correspondent saw several children being brought out, at least one of whom appeared to be dead. Elsewhere, hundreds of local residents tried to help, passing water and helmets through to dust-covered rescuers working tirelessly to sift through the rubble, some of whom appeared to be distressed. Many locals told AFP that the building, which was in an advanced state of disrepair, had been “earmarked” for demolition by the authorities in Lagos state. “It is a residential building that was actually accommodating an illegal school,” said Ambode, the state governor, confirming that most buildings in the area had been marked for demolition but saying some landlords had defied the move. “We get resistance from landlords but we must continue to save lives,” he said, pledging to step up measures against all structures that failed to meet the correct standards, saying they would be “quickly evacuated” and demolished. Lagos, which has a population of 20 million people, is made up of a collection of islands. One of them is Lagos Island, a densely populated area which is one of the city’s oldest neighborhoods. It is characterized by its Afro-Brazilian architecture, a style brought over by thousands of freed slaves who headed back home after decades working the plantations in Brazil. Despite efforts to renovate the area, a large number of abandoned buildings have been taken over by families or businesses, despite being dilapidated and unsafe. Building collapses are tragically common in Nigeria, where building regulations are routinely flouted. In September 2014, 116 people died — 84 of them South Africans — when a six-story building collapsed in Lagos where a celebrity televangelist was preaching. An inquiry found it had structural flaws and had been built illegally. And two years later, at least 60 people were killed when the roof collapsed at a church in Uyo, the capital of Akwa Ibom state, in the east of the country.
|
nigeria;schools;lagos
|
jp0002347
|
[
"world",
"social-issues-world"
] |
2019/03/14
|
Admissions bribery scandal lays bare divide over class in America, and how elite reap the spoils
|
PROVIDENCE, RHODE ISLAND - The families ensnared in the college bribery scandal embody wealth and privilege in America: CEOs, Hollywood stars, Wall Street millionaires. A California vineyard owner. A prominent Manhattan lawyer. If they’re villains, they’re villains made to order for a time preoccupied with deep divisions of class, privilege and race — a time when many regular Americans often feel they have no chance of getting ahead in a system that’s engineered in favor of the richest of the rich. For those Americans, the corruption in the college admission system exposed by Tuesday’s indictments further shatters any notion that hard work, good grades and perseverance are the way to get into a prestigious school. “For most people outside the elite, these institutions might as well be on the moon. This story just reinforces that, the way in which money buys opportunity in America,” said Richard V. Reeves, whose book “Dream Hoarders” argues that the American upper middle class hoards opportunities. Prosecutors said dozens of parents paid bribes to alter their children’s test scores or get them into colleges like Yale, Georgetown, Stanford and USC as athletic recruits, fraudulently. In court papers, the ringleader explained the realities of getting into top colleges in America in stark terms: There’s the front door, which involves getting in legitimately through academic achievements. There’s the back door, which involves donating huge sums of money to a university to influence admissions decisions. His scheme — much easier and cheaper — was through the side door. The back door was common knowledge, and bad enough. The description of a side door — a corrupt advantage on top of the advantages already accorded the rich — has set off outrage, especially for hard-working kids trying to get in on merit. Lalo Alcaraz’s son is a Los Angeles high school senior who is waiting to hear back from over a dozen schools that he’s applied to, including some in the top tier. “It really infuriates me right now. These people jumped ahead in line of my kid, I mean, literally my kid, this year,” he said. For Alcarez, there’s also outrage at seeing wealthy, white families try to cheat the system, especially when many minorities have experienced being questioned over whether they got their spots because of their race. “They had all the advantages but they had to cheat,” he said. The scandal resonated largely because it’s hard to avoid conversations these days about the wealth gap, the 1 percent and a “rigged system,” a term used by Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren — and by President Donald Trump, though the billionaire developer-turned-politician and his administration exemplify that system to many. Wealthy parents can pay for a stellar K-12 education, athletic coaches and test prep, as well as donations to the Ivy League schools — all legal ways to influence admissions decisions. They have personal or legacy connections at elite schools that they can use to gain admission. They understand how to navigate the complicated admission system. In his 2006 book, “The Price of Admission,” journalist Daniel Golden detailed how the real estate developer father of Jared Kushner — Trump’s son-in-law — pledged $2.5 million to Harvard in 1998. Kushner was later admitted, even though his high school administrators told Golden they didn’t think he was qualified. There are other impediments to the nonelite. Research has shown that the all-important college admissions tests are biased and not a good predictor of college success for black students, said Darrick Hamilton, a professor of economics and policy at Ohio State University. Hamilton said social movements led by the young are contesting the notion that we live in a meritocracy where Americans can improve their standing by working hard and playing by the rules. “We’ve had over 50 years of accumulation among the elite and stagnation among everyone else, and the millennial generation is beginning to feel it the worst,” he said. Reeves cited the work of a group of researchers led by a team now based at Harvard that found that children whose parents are in the top 1 percent are 77 times more likely to attend top elite schools than those whose parents are in the bottom 20 percent. Most colleges targeted in the admissions scandal took more kids in the top 1 percent than they did from all of the bottom 60 percent, he said. Students at Brown University recently reported for The Providence Journal about exclusive dinners that were held for students whose parents are big-money donors and other prominent people. The former trustee who hosted the events reportedly told attendees he wanted them to get to know each other and that perhaps they would end up marrying one another. Brown’s president later insisted the Ivy League school was “committed to equitable access to opportunities for all students,” but the story set off a furious debate on campus, with calls for less elitism among Brown students. “College is the way to escape poverty and the working class and to do well. And the fact that the system is so stacked against regular people is highly disturbing,” said Richard Kahlenberg, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation, a New York-based think tank, who edited the 2010 book “Affirmative Action for the Rich,” about legacy preferences. Irene Sanchez, who teaches Latino studies in a high school near Los Angeles, said most of her students who are considering higher education at all are looking at community college, even though she teaches a college prep class. The situation has hit her hard, she said. Sanchez has a PhD; frequently, people question her qualifications, suggesting she got her spot only because she is Latina. She said the idea of the meritocracy is a myth, but one that the elites need everyone else to believe “to protect their advantages in society.” “They need people like my students to believe that, in meritocracy, that they didn’t work hard enough and that’s why they’re in the situation that they’re in,” she said. “But in reality, this meritocracy myth I feel teaches people that we’re not good enough or we’re not smart enough.”
|
u.s .;universities;scandals;wealth
|
jp0002349
|
[
"world"
] |
2019/03/14
|
U.S.-backed Syria force says Islamic State defeat looms after 3,000 jihadis are blitzed into surrender
|
BAGHOUZ, SYRIA - U.S.-backed forces said Wednesday the Islamic State group was living its “final moments” after thunderous shelling on its last scrap of land in eastern Syria prompted 3,000 jihadists to surrender. But the die-hard IS fighters who stayed to defend the remnants of their “caliphate” struck back with a wave of suicide bombings, said the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces. IS once ruled over millions in a swath of Syria and Iraq, but it has since lost all that territory except for a riverside slither in the village of Baghouz near the Iraqi border. Thousands of men and women have poured out of the pocket in recent weeks, hampering an advance by the U.S.-backed SDF, which has paused its offensive multiple times to allow evacuations. Supported by airstrikes by the U.S.-led coalition against the jihadis, the SDF resumed artillery shelling on Sunday after warning holdout IS fighters their time was up. For three nights in a row, the Kurdish-led SDF has unleashed a deluge of fire on jihadi outposts, engulfing their makeshift encampment in a ravaging blaze. “IS’s final moments have started,” SDF official Jiaker Amed told AFP. Clashes continued Wednesday as the SDF worked to thwart IS counterattacks. Jihadis “launched two counterattacks today — one in the morning and another in the afternoon,” an SDF official told AFP. “The second one was much stronger” and was launched under the cover of smoke caused by bombing, he said. The official said jihadis were using suicide bombers but his force intercepted them before they reached their target. The jihadis “made no progress and they were stopped,” he said. Inside Baghouz, the crackle and thud of gunfire and shelling rang out from the encampment as plumes of thick black smoke rose over the bombed-out IS bastion. Amid the rubble, three SDF fighters lobbed a salvo of mortar shells toward the IS pocket, hours after the jihadi counterattack at daybreak under the cover of a dust storm. On a rooftop near the front line, an AFP correspondent saw a warplane fire two missiles at IS positions. Delil, an SDF fighter, said: “Today, the sandstorm is to their benefit but all coming days are ours.” Outside the village, dozens of evacuees sat in clusters on a field dotted with yellow flowers, a day after thousands of the last survivors of the “caliphate” handed themselves over to U.S.-backed forces. After a night of heavy bombardment on Tuesday, SDF spokesman Mustefa Bali said about 3,000 jihadis had handed themselves over to the SDF in the past 24 hours. “The battle is ongoing and the final hour is now closer than ever,” he said on Twitter. But an SDF official said on Wednesday that “it appears as though many fighters remain inside” the last pocket. Near the front line on Tuesday night, AFP correspondents saw bright, long streaks of light in the night sky as U.S.-backed forces bombed jihadi outposts. Explosions shook the IS pocket as large fires ravaged a cluster of tents and buildings. Coalition spokesman Sean Ryan on Wednesday said IS has no room to maneuver. “There is no freedom of movement at night for the enemy,” he told AFP. “Combined with the SDF ground movement against the final enclave, progress is being made and their capabilities are being severely destroyed.” Since December, about 60,000 people have left the last IS redoubt, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, around a tenth of them suspected jihadis. The outpouring has sparked a humanitarian crisis in Kurdish-run camps for the displaced further north, which are struggling to accommodate the mass influx of women and children. The U.N.’s food agency on Tuesday appealed for urgent funding for the Al-Hol camp, which is receiving the bulk of evacuees. At the height of its brutal rule, IS controlled a stretch of land in Syria and Iraq the size of the United Kingdom. The total capture of the Baghouz camp by the SDF would mark the end of the cross-border “caliphate” it proclaimed more than four years ago. But beyond Baghouz, IS retains a presence in eastern Syria’s vast Badia desert and sleeper cells in the northeast. The jihadis have continued to claim deadly attacks in SDF-held territory in recent months, and the U.S. military has warned of the need to maintain a “vigilant offensive. Baghouz is the latest major battlefront in Syria’s complex civil war, which has killed more than 360,000 people since 2011.
|
conflict;u.s .;terrorism;syria;islamic state;syrian democratic forces;baghouz
|
jp0002350
|
[
"world"
] |
2019/03/14
|
Assad and Russian forces intensify attacks on last Syria rebel bastion, despite truce
|
AMMAN - The Syrian army aided by Russian warplanes shelled rebel-held towns in northwestern Syria in the most extensive bombardment in weeks against the last remaining rebel bastion in the country, rebels, rescuers and residents said on Wednesday. Rebels who have fought to topple President Bashar Assad for eight years are now largely confined to the enclave in the northwest near the Turkish border. Around 4 million people now live there, including hundreds of thousands of opponents of Assad who fled there from other parts of the country. The enclave is protected by a “de-escalation zone” agreement brokered last year by Assad’s main international backers Russia and Iran, and Turkey, which has supported the rebels in the past and has sent troops to monitor the truce. Since early last month, the Syrian army has escalated its shelling of the enclave. The attacks have killed dozens of civilians and injured hundreds, and led to tens of thousands of people fleeing front-line areas to camps and towns closer to the Turkish border, rescuers and aid agencies said. The Syrian army denies targeting civilians and says the army is responding to stepped-up attacks staged by al-Qaida-inspired fighters who aim to wreck the truce and control the area. Residents along the border area with Turkey could hear heavy overnight aerial strikes that covered a wide stretch of territory from rebel-held areas near government-held Latakia province on the Mediterranean to Idlib city toward the east and extending to adjoining opposition-held parts of northern Hama. “They burnt the land … the sounds were heard very clearly,” said Ibrahim al Sheikh, a father of five in the border town of Atmeh. He quoted relatives as saying the shelling was the heaviest yet in the two weeks of escalation. The escalation in the northwest is taking place as a U.S.-backed Kurdish-led militia has launched a separate assault on the final bastion of Islamic State fighters on the opposite, eastern end of the country, creating turning points on both major fronts of Syria’s multisided civil war. In the northwest, residents said white phosphorous munitions were fired overnight on the town of al Tamana in northwestern Idlib countryside, where rescue workers on Wednesday said they put out several fires caused by more than 80 rocket strikes. Among the targets of the aerial campaign was a makeshift tent camp in Kfr Amim, east of Idlib city, that shelters displaced families, where two women were killed and at least 10 children injured when bombs landed after midnight. “Whoever did this is a beast, truly a beast. It’s a camp with only women and children. There is nothing we can say except that this Russian beast is coming to kill,” said Laith al Abdullah, a civil defence worker in Sarqeb town who helped in the rescue effort, reached by mobile phone. Rocket shelling from a major army base in Joreen, in Hama province, escalated a week-long bombardment of rural areas near the town of Jisr al Shaqour, said Ahmed Abdul Salam, a rebel commander in the Turkey-backed National Liberation Front. A Russian army base, south of government-controlled Halafaya town, also targeted Kafr Zeita in northern Hama countryside while cluster bombs hit several rebel-held towns in southern Idlib, rebels said. The stepped up bombardment has depopulated opposition-held towns in the buffer zone that straddles parts of Idlib to northern Hama and parts of Latakia province. The opposition-held city of Khan Sheikhon had become a ghost city with most of its more than 70,000 people fleeing, said Yousef al Idlibi, a former resident who moved to Idlib city. Turkey, which began patrols in the buffer zone on Friday, has condemned what it said were increasing provocations to wreck the truce, and warned that a bombing campaign by the Russians and the Syrian army would cause a major humanitarian crisis. Many residents are exasperated by the failure of Turkish forces to respond to the shelling. The Syrian army has called for Turkish forces to withdraw.
|
conflict;russia;syria;turkey;al-qaida;bashar assad;idlib;hama
|
jp0002351
|
[
"world",
"science-health-world"
] |
2019/03/14
|
Delays with Boeing rocket lead NASA to consider other commercial options
|
DALLAS - A further delay with a Boeing rocket has NASA considering other options for launching the agency’s future deep-space exploration craft. The Space Launch System “is struggling to meet its schedule,” NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said at a U.S. Senate hearing Wednesday. The rocket won’t be ready for a launch in June 2020, when NASA had planned the Exploration Mission-1 flight of its Orion spacecraft around the moon. The agency is now exploring options for meeting that deadline using “commercial capabilities,” Bridenstine said. He stressed that the agency remains committed to Boeing’s SLS, the largest rocket in U.S. history and a “critical capability” for future deep-space missions. NASA will decide how to proceed for an unmanned test flight as soon as this month, he said. An October 2018 audit by NASA’s inspector general found multiple management flaws in the SLS program and said Boeing was likely to spend at least $8.9 billion for the rocket — double the original budget. A test flight of the Orion capsule was launched in early 2015 aboard a Delta IV rocket built by United Launch Alliance, a joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed Martin. Without the SLS, NASA would be forced to purchase two heavy-lift vehicle launches and then integrate the Orion with an upper stage in orbit, adding to the cost. Bridenstine told the Senate panel that NASA may need further financial assistance from Congress. After the hearing, Bridenstine told the industry publication Space News that he hadn’t spoken with ULA or Elon Musk’s SpaceX about using their heavy-lift vehicles for the EM-1 mission. A subsequent flight, EM-2, would launch with the SLS in 2023 and carry crew members.
|
nasa;space;boeing;moon
|
jp0002352
|
[
"world",
"crime-legal-world"
] |
2019/03/14
|
Trump fights impeachment talk ahead of looming Robert Mueller report
|
WASHINGTON - No one even knows when it will come out, but Robert Mueller’s top secret probe into possible collusion between Donald Trump and Russia has Washington on edge — and the president mounting preemptive attacks against impeachment. “How do you impeach a man who is considered by many to be the President with the most successful first two years in history, especially when he has done nothing wrong,” Trump asked Wednesday in a stream of tweets laying out the case for his innocence. Urgent predictions that Mueller’s report is just about to drop have come out all year, only to be proven wrong, leaving the country grasping for clues. Every passing week with no news raises the tension. Will the special counsel’s nearly two-year investigation exonerate Trump? Or will it link him to a Kremlin influence operation in what would be one of the biggest political scandals in U.S. history? Trump is far from the only one biting his nails. National Public Radio made waves last week with a report about elderly people near death’s door fighting to hang on so that they too can see what Mueller uncovers. Almost everyone agrees that whatever Mueller finds, he will abide by Justice Department policy that he does not have authority to indict a sitting president. That job, if this worst case scenario occurred, would fall to Congress and a possible impeachment trial. But impeachment is a political, rather than purely judicial battle, and Trump — Mueller report or no Mueller report — is already fighting back. He got an unexpected assist from the de facto Democratic leader, Nancy Pelosi, on Monday when she effectively took impeachment off the table for now — much to the annoyance of more gun-ho members of her party. “Impeachment is so divisive to the country that unless there’s something so compelling and overwhelming and bipartisan, I don’t think we should go down that path, because it divides the country,” Pelosi, who is speaker of the House of Representatives, told The Washington Post. Trump leaped on that Wednesday, tweeting “I greatly appreciate Nancy Pelosi’s statement. “Everyone must remember the minor fact that I never did anything wrong, the Economy and Unemployment are the best ever, Military and Vets are great — and many other successes!” he continued. Once Mueller finally hands in his findings, today’s skirmishes will turn into battles on an rarely seen scale. The first clash will be simply over how much of the report is even made public. Trump-appointed Attorney General William Barr gets to make that decision. However, if Democrats don’t get what they want, they will force Mueller to testify before Congress — a hearing that would turn into a political spectacle for the ages. And only then would the final showdown — the fight over Trump’s future — begin. Incredibly for a city submerged in leaks to the media, Mueller’s most stunning known achievement so far has been to keep everyone guessing. Republicans predict the Mueller report will be a bust, giving Trump, who has repeatedly called the whole thing a “witch hunt,” an open route to reelection in 2020. But Democrats see judgment day approaching. “Here’s my rule on this one,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren, one of an array of Democrats seeking nomination as Trump’s 2020 opponent, told MSNBC news Wednesday. “Let’s wait until we get the Mueller report. Combine it with everything else we’ve seen. Then we’ll know what to do.”
|
congress;robert mueller;impeachment;nancy pelosi;donald trump;russia probe
|
jp0002353
|
[
"world",
"crime-legal-world"
] |
2019/03/14
|
Trump says Paul Manafort pardon not 'on my mind' after sentencing
|
WASHINGTON - President Donald Trump said a possible pardon for Paul Manafort “is not something on my mind” after his former campaign chair’s prison sentence was raised to 7½ years on Wednesday. “I feel very badly for Paul Manafort,” Trump told reporters at the White House. “On a human basis, it is a very sad thing.” When asked about a possible pardon, Trump said: “I haven’t even given it a thought as of this moment. It is not something on my mind.” U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson in Washington ordered that Manafort must serve an additional 43 months for illegal lobbying and witness tampering beyond the 47 months he already received last week from a judge in Alexandria, Virginia, for financial crimes. Just minutes after his federal prison sentence was raised, Manafort was charged by New York state prosecutors with residential mortgage fraud, conspiracy and falsifying business records. Trump has no pardon powers over state crimes, and the move by Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. raises the prospect of a third criminal conviction for Trump’s one-time campaign manager.
|
pardon;donald trump;paul manafort
|
jp0002354
|
[
"world",
"crime-legal-world"
] |
2019/03/14
|
U.S. lawmakers emerge from meeting with Trump ally Matt Whitaker with conflicting accounts
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WASHINGTON - U.S. lawmakers on the House Judiciary Committee emerged from a closed-door meeting with former acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker on Wednesday with conflicting accounts of their conversation with the controversial Trump ally. Whitaker was called to Capitol Hill to clarify his testimony at a combative Feb. 8 committee hearing, during which he denied speaking with President Donald Trump about a federal case involving Trump’s former attorney, Michael Cohen. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler, who met for two hours with Whitaker and the panel’s top Republican, Rep. Doug Collins, said Whitaker no longer denied speaking to Trump about Cohen or about the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of New York. “Unlike in the hearing room, Mr. Whitaker did not deny that the president called him to discuss the Michael Cohen case and personnel decisions in the Southern District,” the New York Democrat told reporters. Nadler also said Whitaker told the lawmakers that he was involved in conversations about U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman’s recusal from the Cohen investigation in the Southern District of New York and about whether its campaign finance case involving hush money payments to two women who claim they had affairs with Trump had gone too far. Nadler’s committee is seeking evidence that Trump may have urged Whitaker to put the investigations under the supervision of Berman, a Trump donor and former law partner of Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani who is recused. But Collins, a Georgia Republican, contradicted much of Nadler’s account. “He (Whitaker) said that he had not talked with the president about Mr. Cohen at all,” Collins told reporters. Collins described Whitaker’s conversations about Berman and the campaign finance case as questions for his personal staff. “(Whitaker) had no conversations with the Southern District of New York,” he said. Collins also dismissed a Nadler statement that Whitaker was involved in conversations about firing one or more U.S. attorneys as “normal personnel issues.” Whitaker, who left the Justice Department after Attorney General William Barr’s arrival last month, caused alarm among Democrats when Trump appointed him acting attorney general without Senate confirmation in November, after ousting former Attorney Jeff Sessions last November. Democrats warned that he could interfere with U.S. special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election and possible collusion with the Trump campaign. In his February testimony, Whitaker denied interfering in the Mueller probe. The campaign finance case in New York mentioned by Nadler involves hush money payments made to adult film actress Stephanie Clifford, known as Stormy Daniels, and former Playboy model Karen McDougal, just before the 2016 election. Both women have claimed they had affairs with Trump. Trump has denied those claims. Whitaker refused to answer questions about the topic during the hearing. He also denied media reports that Trump had lashed out at him after learning that Cohen would plead guilty for lying to Congress about a proposed Trump tower in Moscow. Cohen was sentenced in December to three years in prison after pleading guilty to campaign finance violations, including making the hush money payments. Cohen said he made the payments at the direction of Trump.
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u.s .;doug collins;robert mueller;democrats;donald trump;russia probe;michael cohen;matthew whitaker;jerrold nadler
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jp0002355
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[
"world",
"crime-legal-world"
] |
2019/03/14
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Judge doubts Paul Manafort's remorse and hands him over 3½ years of extra prison time as NYC charges loom
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WASHINGTON - Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort was sentenced to a total of seven and a half years in prison Wednesday after a federal judge rejected his appeal for no additional time and rebuked him for his crimes and years of lies. Within minutes of the sentencing, prosecutors in New York brought state charges against Manafort — a move that appeared at least partly designed to guard against the possibility that President Donald Trump could pardon him. The president can pardon federal crimes, but not state offenses. U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson sentenced Manafort to nearly three-and-a-half years in prison on charges that he misled the U.S. government about his foreign lobbying work and encouraged witnesses to lie on his behalf. That punishment is on top of a roughly four-year sentence he received last week in a separate case in Virginia. He is expected to get credit for the nine months of jail time he’s done already. The sentencing hearing was a milestone moment in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into possible coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia in the 2016 election campaign. Manafort was among the first people charged in the investigation, and though the allegations did not relate to his work for Trump, his foreign entanglements and business relationship with a man the U.S. says has ties to Russian intelligence have made him a pivotal figure in the probe. Though the judge made clear that the case against Manafort had nothing to do with Russian election interference, she also scolded Manafort’s lawyers for asserting that their client was only charged because prosecutors couldn’t get him on crimes related to potential collusion with the Trump campaign. “The no-collusion mantra is simply a non sequitur,” she said, suggesting that those arguments were meant for an audience outside the courtroom — presumably a reference to the president, who has expressed sympathy for Manafort and not ruled out a pardon. Jackson also harshly criticized Manafort for years of deception that extended even into her own courtroom and the grand jury. She said much of the information he provided to prosecutors after pleading guilty couldn’t be used because of his history of deceit. “It is hard to overstate the number of lies and the amount of fraud and the extraordinary amount of money involved” in the federal conspiracy charges related to his foreign lobbying work and witness tampering. Reading from a three-page statement, Manafort asked for mercy and said the criminal charges against him have “taken everything from me already.” He pleaded with the judge not to impose any additional time beyond the sentence he had received last week in a separate case in Virginia. “I am sorry for what I have done and all the activities that have gotten us here today,” Manafort said in a steady voice. “While I cannot undo the past, I will ensure that the future will be very different.” The 69-year-old, who arrived in court in a wheelchair, said he was the primary caregiver of his wife and wanted the chance for them to resume their life together. “She needs me and I need her. I ask you to think of this and our need for each other as you deliberate,” Manafort said. “This case has taken everything from me already — my properties, my cash, my life insurance, my trust accounts for my children and my grandchildren, and more.” His plea for leniency followed prosecutor Andrew Weissmann’s scathing characterization of crimes that the government said spanned more than a decade and continued even while Manafort was awaiting trial. The prosecutor said Manafort took steps to conceal his foreign lobbying work, laundered millions of dollars to fund a lavish lifestyle and then, while on house arrest, coached other witnesses to lie on his behalf. “I believe that is not reflective of someone who has learned a harsh lesson. It is not a reflection of remorse,” Weissmann said. “It is evidence that something is wrong with sort of a moral compass, that someone in that position would choose to make that decision at that moment.” Defense lawyer Kevin Downing suggested Manafort was being unduly punished because of the “media frenzy” generated by the appointment of a special counsel. “That results in a very harsh process for the defendant,” Downing said. After the hearing, Downing criticized Jackson’s sentencing as “callous”, “hostile” and “totally unnecessary” as he was shouted down by protesters. “I think the judge showed that she is incredibly hostile toward Mr. Manafort and exhibited a level of callousness that I’ve not seen in a white-collar case in over 15 years of prosecutions,” Downing told reporters, noting that he was “disappointed” by the sentence. Wednesday’s sentencing comes in a week of activity for the investigation. Mueller’s prosecutors on Tuesday night updated a judge on the status of cooperation provided by one defendant, former national security adviser Michael Flynn, and are expected to do the same later in the week for another. Mueller’s investigation has shown signs of coming to a close and he is expected to soon deliver a report to the Justice Department.
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u.s .;prison;corruption;donald trump;paul manafort;money laundering probe
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jp0002356
|
[
"world",
"politics-diplomacy-world"
] |
2019/03/14
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U.K. Parliament votes against no-deal Brexit, paving way for delay in hopes of a better agreement
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LONDON - Britain’s Parliament voted to avoid an economically disastrous no-deal split from the European Union, opening the door to delaying Brexit and radically re-writing the terms of the divorce. The House of Commons voted 321 to 278 to reject leaving the EU with no deal and is now expected to seek to delay Brexit in the hope of securing a better deal, which markets would welcome. Speaking in the Commons, Prime Minister Theresa May said Parliament must now face up to the consequences of its decisions. She announced that if a deal can be agreed to in the coming days, she would ask the EU for a short “technical” extension to the March 29 exit day deadline. If there’s no deal, the delay will be much longer, she said. It is almost three years since Britain voted to cancel its 40-year membership of the EU and with just 16 days to go until exit day, Theresa May’s government has failed to get an agreement that can win the support of Parliament. The prime minister’s preferred deal, which took two years to negotiate, was resoundingly rejected by the Commons for the second time in a vote on Tuesday night. Now, MPs have decided to avoid leaving the bloc without a deal. The question is, what kind of deal will Parliament vote for, and how much longer do Britain’s politicians need to make up their minds? On Wednesday, the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier, warned that postponing Brexit won’t be straightforward. “It could be a tactical, a political prolongation,” Barnier told Euronews TV. “In that case, I know the answers and the reaction of the EU side, the EU leaders, the EU Parliament: ‘What for? Why do you need a prolongation? Is it for organizing a new referendum, new elections or not?”‘
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eu;u.k. parliament;brexit;theresa may
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