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jp0002571
|
[
"business",
"financial-markets"
] |
2019/04/05
|
Tokyo stocks buoyed by Wall Street rise and weaker yen
|
Stocks were comfortably higher on the Tokyo Stock Exchange on Friday, buoyed by overnight rises in major U.S. shares and the yen’s weakening against the dollar. The 225-issue Nikkei average gained 82.55 points, or 0.38 percent, to end at 21,807.50, after edging up 11.74 points on Thursday. The Topix index of all first-section issues finished up 5.70 points, or 0.35 percent, at 1,625.75, in a turnaround from the 1.72-point drop the previous day. The Tokyo market opened higher after the Dow Jones industrial average extended gains on the New York Stock Exchange Thursday on sustained hopes for progress in the ongoing U.S.-China trade negotiations. Investors remained optimistic thanks in part to U.S. President Donald Trump’s indication that a trade agreement could be announced in about four weeks, brokers said. Stocks lost steam in the afternoon as players held active trading in check to wait for the U.S. jobs report for March. But the yen’s weakening against the dollar underpinned the market, brokers said. “Cyclicals were bought while defensives were sold,” amid receding concerns over a global economic slowdown, said Yoshihiko Tabei, chief analyst at Naito Securities Co. Prior to the release of the U.S. jobs data, some investors took cues from the Nikkei’s advance to around 21,800 for selling on a rally, Tabei added. If U.S. nonfarm payroll growth turns out to be stronger than a market consensus and leads to a Wall Street rally and the dollar’s appreciation, the Nikkei may rewrite its recent high next week, an official of a major securities firm said. Rising issues outnumbered falling ones 1,311 to 729 in the TSE’s first section, while 100 issues were unchanged. Volume dropped to 1.14 billion shares from Thursday’s 1.22 billion shares. Export-oriented issues rose, with industrial robot producers Yaskawa Electric and Fanuc jumping 2.72 percent and 1.21 percent, respectively. Renova, which makes renewable energy systems, shot up 12.84 percent on an upward revision in its earnings estimates for the year that ended last month. Other major winners included technology giant Sony and game-maker Nintendo. On the other hand, retailer Seven & I Holdings dropped 3.27 percent as its operating profit forecast for the year through February 2020 failed to impress investors. Also beaten were daily goods maker Kao and Chugai Pharmaceutical. In index futures trading on the Osaka Exchange, the key June contract on the Nikkei average rose 90 points to end at 21,790.
|
stocks;nikkei;tse;topix
|
jp0002572
|
[
"business",
"corporate-business"
] |
2019/04/05
|
Toyota, GM and Ford join forces on self-driving safety rules
|
NEW YORK - Toyota Motor Corp., General Motors Co. and Ford Motor Co. have decided to join forces to develop standards for the development of self-driving cars. The three said in a statement they are collaborating with automotive industry group SAE International to establish autonomous vehicle “safety guiding principles to help inform standards development.” “Industry collaboration in areas that act as a foundation of automated driving systems and vehicles … is a significant step for us to achieve safe deployment of autonomous vehicles,” said Kelly Kay, Toyota Research Institute’s executive vice president and chief safety officer. Despite the potential of self-driving cars, concerns have been raised with regard to safety since an autonomous vehicle belonging to ride-hailing giant Uber killed a pedestrian in Tempe, Arizona, in March 2018.
|
toyota;carmakers;gm;ford;self-driving
|
jp0002573
|
[
"business",
"corporate-business"
] |
2019/04/05
|
Japan's Mos Burger finds new partner to guide Thai expansion
|
BANGKOK - Japanese hamburger chain Mos Food Services Inc. has taken on a new partner to help expand the number of Mos Burger shops in Thailand to 45 from eight over the next five years. The company said Wednesday that Pitharn Ongkosit, chief executive of printed circuit board maker KCE Electronics Public Co., will privately acquire a 74.3 percent stake in Mos Food Services (Thailand) Co. Mos Food in Japan will retain the remaining 25.7 percent. A Mos Food spokesman in Tokyo, Tadahiro Matsuda, declined to comment on the transaction price. Pitharn also runs apparel and cosmetics retail operations, including the Thai unit of The Face Shop Co., a South Korean maker of skin-care products. Matsuda said Mos Food ended its initial local partnership in 2016 after seeing only six restaurants survive since starting up in Thailand in 2007. The chain is still a newcomer to Thailand’s highly competitive fast-food market. McDonald’s USA LLC opened its first Thai outlet in 1985, the 35th country for the U.S. giant, expanding to 250 nationwide by November 2018, according to the company’s website. Mos Food operates 371 outlets outside Japan, 265 of which are run in Taiwan in partnership with Teco Corp., a major Taiwanese electronics maker.
|
fast food;thailand;mos burger
|
jp0002574
|
[
"business",
"corporate-business"
] |
2019/04/05
|
Japan's imported auto sales hit second-highest level in 2018
|
Sales of imported foreign-brand vehicles in Japan in fiscal 2018 increased 1.2 percent from the previous year to 307,682 units, marking their second-highest level ever, the Japan Automobile Importers Association said Thursday. The figure grew for the fourth straight year and surpassed 300,000 units for the second consecutive year, according to the JAIA. Each automaker’s efforts to bring in new models helped stimulate demand, a JAIA official said. Environmentally friendly models, such as clean diesel vehicles and SUVs, gained in popularity. The share of imported foreign-brand vehicles marked a record high of 9.2 percent of total new vehicle sales in Japan, excluding minivehicles with engine displacements of up to 660 cubic centimeters. Mercedes-Benz was the top-selling foreign brand for the fourth consecutive year, with sales of 66,948 units. Volkswagen came second, with 52,044 units, and BMW third, with 50,886 units. BMW’s Mini was the top-selling model, with sales of 25,794 units.
|
carmakers;volkswagen;bmw;mercedes-benz
|
jp0002575
|
[
"business",
"corporate-business"
] |
2019/04/05
|
Japan Post to sell up to 30% of outstanding shares in its insurance unit
|
Japan Post Holdings Co. said Thursday that it will sell up to 30 percent of its outstanding shares in subsidiary Japan Post Insurance Co. by the end of this month. The value of the sale of up to 185 million shares will reach ¥440 billion based on the insurer’s share price Thursday on the first section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange. Japan Post Insurance said the same day that it will buy back its own shares worth up to ¥100 billion between Monday and April 12. Japan Post Holdings’ stake in the unit is expected to fall to about 65 percent. The company plans to use the proceeds from the share sale for strategic investment to boost the group’s corporate value, officials said. Japan Post Holdings is expected to use part of the funds to acquire a stake in U.S. insurance giant Aflac Inc. later this year, informed sources said. The postal service holding company announced the investment plan in December. Japan Post Holdings plans to sell all of its equity stakes in Japan Post Insurance and another key financial unit, Japan Post Bank, based on the postal privatization law. It initially aims to lower the stakes to about 50 percent. The planned partial sale of Japan Post Insurance shares is also believed to be aimed at demonstrating the progress in the privatization process of the country’s postal services and fending off criticism from the insurance industry that the group is pressuring private-sector businesses.
|
aflac;japan post bank;japan post holdings;japan post insurance
|
jp0002576
|
[
"business",
"corporate-business"
] |
2019/04/05
|
Nomura to reduce outlets in Japan by 20%
|
Nomura Holdings Inc. said Thursday it will reduce the number of its sales outlets in Japan by at least 30, or 20 percent of its 156 domestic outlets, as part of structural reform measures. The brokerage giant aims to cut operating costs by a total of ¥140 billion by the end of March 2022 from the level four years before. Nomura will mainly consolidate outlets in the Tokyo metropolitan region whose sales areas overlap. The company hopes to restore its earning power by reviewing its cost structure. The brokerage industry faces a rapid change in the domestic business environment due to the aging of customers and the development of digital technology. Nomura hopes to improve the efficiency of outlets located close to each other, as well as those sales bases hit by a decline in customer visits, which is due chiefly to the popularity of online trading and other services. Nomura Securities Co., the core unit of the holding company, will review its staffing of some 3,000 sales personnel over several years. As for overseas operations, the Nomura group will focus resources on the United States and the growing markets in China and other Asian countries while scaling down its operations in Europe. Nomura Holdings is trying to improve its profitability after suffering a group net loss of ¥101.2 billion in the April-December period last year, against a profit of ¥196.6 billion a year before. At a briefing for investors, Nomura Chief Executive Officer Koji Nagai said his company is facing an urgent need to become a company that can adapt to a new era.
|
nomura holdings;securities companies
|
jp0002577
|
[
"business",
"corporate-business"
] |
2019/04/05
|
Carlos Ghosn suspected of redirecting Nissan money to himself via Oman
|
Former Nissan Motor Co. Chairman Carlos Ghosn is suspected by prosecutors of having redirected to himself money paid by the automaker to an Omani distributor that had no say over the received funds, sources close to the matter said Friday. Less than a month after being released on bail, Ghosn was arrested again Thursday over a fresh allegation of aggravated breach of trust, this time in connection with the misuse of the funds paid to the distributor. He denied all of the allegations. Hours before his arrest on Thursday, Ghosn vowed to prove he was innocent of the alleged financial misdeeds but raised doubts in an interview with French television that he would receive a fair trial in Japan. The ousted boss of Nissan and Renault, whose case has gripped Japan and the rest of the business world, said in the interview that if he knew his trial would turn out fair, he would not be worried. But he told broadcasters TF1 and LCI: “I have doubts about how this trial is going to play out — these doubts aren’t mine, they’re those of my lawyers.” The Tokyo District Court approved detention for 10 days until April 14 on Friday, prompting criticism from Ghosn’s defense lawyer Junichiro Hironaka, who said he would file an appeal the same day. “The court earlier approved his release because it judged that it had no concern over evidence tampering. But it has again allowed his detention. It’s illogical,” he said. The Omani company received a total of ¥3.5 billion ($31 million) from 2012 as sales incentives paid out of Nissan’s CEO reserve, a pool of funds Ghosn could use at his discretion, the sources said. A large amount of money was then transferred from the personal account of an executive in charge of accounting at the Omani company to Good Faith Investments, a Lebanese investment firm headed by this executive but effectively owned by Ghosn, according to the sources. The executive, who was close to Ghosn, has told people close to him that he did not have the authority to decide how to use the money transferred from Nissan to the Omani distributor, the sources said. Ghosn’s arrest came a day after the 65-year-old made a surprise announcement on Twitter that he would hold a news conference on April 11 to “tell the truth about what’s happening.” Part of the money is suspected to have been channeled from Good Faith Investments to a company represented by Ghosn’s wife and used to purchase a luxury yacht worth ¥1.6 billion for use by Ghosn’s family, they said. Ghosn is now facing a claim that he caused Nissan a loss of $5 million (¥560 million) by having Nissan Middle East F.Z.E., its subsidiary in the United Arab Emirates, pay the Omani distributor $15 million between December 2015 and July 2018, with a third of the sum transferred to a savings account Ghosn effectively controlled. In the interview with the French broadcasters, Ghosn reiterated he was “combative and innocent” but acknowledged “it’s hard.” “A lot of lies have been told and these lies have come one after another,” he said. A few hours after the interview, Ghosn was re-arrested. The businessman, who holds French, Brazilian and Lebanese citizenship, called on the French government during the interview “to defend me” and press the Japanese authorities to respect the presumption of innocence. “I am a citizen caught up in an unbelievable chain of events,” he said. Asked if he would provide evidence in his trial that could clear his name, the 65-year-old said: “Everything needs to be put on the table. Of course, I have names.” “Some of them you have seen in the press, but there are others that haven’t been in the press,” he added. “It has to be shown why these people are playing a dangerous game, not just for me, but dangerous for the alliance as well.” Ghosn had long been lauded as the architect of the alliance involving Renault and Nissan — and later Mitsubishi Motors — before his shock arrest in Tokyo in November. “I pushed hard to make this alliance successful, but never by doing anything illegal,” he said. The tycoon paid around ¥1 billion to win bail on March 6. He already faces three separate charges. The first two relate to the alleged deferring of around ¥9 billion of his income and concealing this in official documents to shareholders.
|
courts;corruption;scandals;nissan;carmakers;carlos ghosn;oman
|
jp0002578
|
[
"business",
"corporate-business"
] |
2019/04/05
|
KDDI set to launch smartphone payment service, joining rivals SoftBank and Docomo
|
Japan’s KDDI Corp. said it will launch a smartphone payment service using QR codes next Tuesday. With the au Pay service, the telecommunications carrier will join rivals SoftBank Corp. and NTT Docomo Inc., which already offer similar services. KDDI’s service will be available through its electronic money app, which users can reload with money from their bank accounts or other sources. To promote the service, the company will offer incentives such as loyalty points for customers who add electronic money to their accounts. The company aims to increase the number of stores accepting the service in cooperation with online shopping mall operator Rakuten Inc. and online flea market operator Mercari Inc.
|
smartphones;softbank;ntt docomo;rakuten;kddi;mercari;cashless
|
jp0002579
|
[
"world",
"social-issues-world"
] |
2019/04/05
|
UNHCR warns of false rumors as migrants gather near Greece's northern border, seeking to cross
|
DIAVATA, GREECE - Dozens of refugees and migrants stuck in Greece gathered in a field near the country’s northern border on Thursday, seeking to travel onward to Northern Europe. Small groups of people including children arrived at the field next to the migrant camp of Diavata near the border with North Macedonia, carrying their belongings on their backs. Others pitched tents on the grass. Brief scuffles broke out with police as more people arrived. The move was apparently spurred by reports on social media of plans for an organized movement to cross Greece’s northwest land border with Albania in early April, and then travel north. “Tomorrow, today, all the people coming here, we will go to the border. Any border. We need to open the borders,” said Dario, an Iraqi Kurd. Life in Greece was “not good, difficult,” he said. The United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) issued a warning against what it described as false information and rumors. “Please be aware that these informal movements, whether by land or by sea, are risky and dangerous,” it said. “Attempts to cross borders irregularly are often unsuccessful, and can bear serious consequences including arrest, detention, family separation and even death.” Tens of thousands of refugees and migrants, mainly from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, became stranded in Greece when Balkan countries shut their borders in 2016. That route was the main passage way to Northern Europe. In 2016, a makeshift camp sprung up in another field near the village of Idomeni and mushroomed into a small community of at least 10,000 people camped in overcrowded, unsanitary conditions. Greek authorities eventually cleared it out.
|
europe;immigration;greece;eu;refugees;albania;unhcr;diavata
|
jp0002580
|
[
"world"
] |
2019/04/05
|
Next of kin demand justice as Ethiopian report says faulty sensor data led to Boeing Max jetliner crash
|
ADDIS ABABA - A doomed Ethiopian Airlines jet suffered from faulty readings by a key sensor, and pilots followed Boeing’s recommended procedures when the plane started to nose dive but could not avoid crashing, according to a preliminary report released Thursday by the Ethiopian government. The findings drew the strongest link yet between the March 10 crash in Ethiopia and an October crash off the coast of Indonesia, which both involved Boeing 737 Max 8 jetliners. All 346 people on the two planes were killed. Both planes had an automated system that pushed the nose down when sensor readings detected the danger of an aerodynamic stall, but it now appears that sensors malfunctioned on both planes. Thursday’s report, based on flight data and cockpit voice recorders on the Ethiopian Airlines jetliner, showed that a faulty sensor on the plane touched off a series of events that caused the pilots to lose control of the plane. The report from Ethiopia’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau said the sensor problems began about a minute after the plane was cleared for takeoff. It said air speed and altitude values on the left side of the 737 Max conflicted with data from the right sensor, causing flight control problems. Eventually the Ethiopian Airlines pilots couldn’t keep the plane from crashing into the ground, killing all 157 people on board. The problems are similar to those reported on the Indonesian Lion Air flight that crashed last October. Investigators found that software on that plane took readings from the sensor and pointed the nose down. Thursday’s revelations raise questions about repeated assertions by Boeing and U.S. regulators that pilots could regain control in some emergencies by following steps that include turning off an anti-stall system designed specifically for the Max, known by its acronym, MCAS. Investigators are looking into the role of MCAS, which under some circumstances can automatically lower the plane’s nose to prevent an aerodynamic stall. The Max has been grounded worldwide pending a software fix that Boeing is rolling out, which still needs to be approved by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration and other regulators. In a statement, Boeing acknowledged the faulty data from the sensor activated the MCAS system, which was similar to circumstances in the Lion Air crash. The company said that to make sure unintended activation of the system doesn’t happen again, Boeing is developing software and “associated comprehensive pilot training” for the Max. The software update, Boeing said in the statement, adds layers of protection and will stop erroneous data from activating the system. Ethiopian investigators did not specifically mention the MCAS, but recommended that Boeing review “the aircraft flight control system related to the flight controllability.” They also recommended that aviation officials verify that issues have been adequately addressed before allowing the planes to fly again. At a news conference, Minister of Transport Dagmawit Moges said the Ethiopian Airlines crew “performed all the procedures repeatedly provided by the manufacturer but was not able to control the aircraft.” However, it wasn’t clear whether the Ethiopian pilots followed Boeing’s recommendations to the letter in dealing with the system repeatedly pointing the nose down. The pilots initially followed Boeing’s emergency steps by disconnecting the MCAS system, but for an unknown reason, they turned the system back on, an official familiar with the crash investigation told The Associated Press on Wednesday, speaking on condition of anonymity because investigators had not yet released their preliminary report. Boeing’s procedures instruct pilots to leave the MCAS system disconnected and continue flying manually for the rest of the flight. Ethiopian investigators did not address that issue at Thursday’s news conference, saying only that the pilots had done what they were supposed to. Family members of crash victims said they were unsettled by the report’s findings. “Today’s preliminary report suggests Boeing could have done better in notifying the problem with the aircraft system early on,” said Konjit Shafi, who lost her younger brother, Sintayehu Shafi, in the crash. “This is causing us a great deal of pain. It is so sad to learn that our loved ones would have been spared if this problem was detected on time.” “We want justice, not a delayed justice but a quick one. I heard the full report may take one year. But that’s too long,” she said, surrounded by her family members in Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa. Meanwhile, the family of a 24-year-old American woman killed in the crash sued Boeing on Thursday. The complaint, which also names Ethiopian Airlines and parts maker Rosemount Aerospace as defendants, alleged negligence and civil conspiracy among other charges. “Blinded by its greed, Boeing haphazardly rushed the 737 MAX8 to market” and “actively concealed the nature of the automated system defects,” the lawsuit filed on behalf of the family of Samya Stumo alleged. Stumo is a great grand-niece of consumer advocate Ralph Nader. Nader called on consumers to boycott the 737 MAX 8 and blasted the FAA for delegating so much responsibility in certifying the plane was safe to Boeing. “Those planes should never fly again,” Nader said. “If we don’t end the cozy relationship between the patsy FAA … and the Boeing Company, 5,000 of these fatally flawed planes will be in the air all over the world with millions of passengers.” Boeing is the focus of investigations by the U.S. Justice Department, the Transportation Department’s inspector general, and congressional committees. Investigations are also looking at the role of the Federal Aviation Administration in the U.S., which certified the Max in 2017, and declined to ground it after the first deadly crash in October. The agency was also reluctant to ground the planes after the Ethiopian Airlines crash and was among the last agencies to do so. The FAA, which must certify the 737 Max is safe before it can go back into the air, said in a statement that the investigation is still in its early stages. “As we learn more about the accident and findings become available, we will take appropriate action,” the agency said.
|
u.s .;faa;ethiopian airlines;737 max;air accidents;mcas
|
jp0002581
|
[
"world"
] |
2019/04/05
|
Social media gets thumbs-down in new U.S. poll
|
WASHINGTON - Americans are fearful about the impact of social media firms such as Facebook and Twitter, with many saying they spread misinformation and divide the country, even though most people still use these networks, a new poll showed Friday. The NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll found 57% of Americans believe social media sites do more to divide the country, and 55% said the networks are more likely to spread “lies and falsehoods” than genuine news and information. “Social media — and Facebook, in particular — have some serious issues in this poll,” said Micah Roberts of the Republican firm Public Opinion Strategies, which conducted the survey with the Democratic firm Hart Research Associates. “If America was giving social media a Yelp review, a majority would give it zero stars.” According to the survey, 61% think social media does more to spread unfair attacks and rumors against public figures and corporations, compared with 32% who say it helps hold those public figures and corporations accountable. And 82% say social media sites do more to waste people’s time, compared with 15% who say time on these networks is well-spent. The survey comes after a wave of scandals about manipulation of misinformation on social media, and with President Donald Trump and his allies attacking internet platforms over what he claims is political bias. Despite the concerns, 69% of those polled said they use social media at least once a day. The poll also found 59% of Americans believe that technology in general has more benefits than drawbacks. The public appeared split about whether the federal government should break up the largest tech companies like Apple, Amazon, Google and Facebook — 47% agreed and 50% disagreed. Some 60% of respondents said they don’t trust Facebook at all to protect their personal information — a finding following a series of revelations on how Facebook collects and shares personal data. That was a far greater percentage of distrust than for Amazon (28%), Google (37%) and the federal government (35%). By a 3-to-1 margin, survey respondents said the practice of social media companies collecting personal data to allow advertisers to target them is not an acceptable trade-off for free or low-cost services. Overall, 36% of adults viewed Facebook positively, while 33% see it negatively. And Twitter’s rating is 24% positive, 27% negative. “If these were political candidates, it would be one thing,” said Democratic pollster Jeff Horwitt of Hart Research. “But for companies, you’d think these ratings would be (more) on the positive side.”
|
politics;social media
|
jp0002582
|
[
"world",
"science-health-world"
] |
2019/04/05
|
43-million-year-old fossil of four-legged whale found in Peru
|
WASHINGTON - Paleontologists have found a well-preserved fossil of a four-legged ancestor of whales that also swam, a discovery that sheds new light on the mammals’ transition from land to the ocean. The ancestors of whales and dolphins walked on Earth about 50 million years ago in the regions that now comprise India and Pakistan. Paleontologists have previously found partial fossils of the species in North America that were 41.2 million years old, suggesting that by this time, the cetaceans had lost the ability to carry their own weight and walk the Earth. The new specimen, described in a study published Thursday in the journal Current Biology, is 42.6 million years old and provides fresh information on the evolution of cetaceans. The fossil was found about a kilometer inland from Peru’s Pacific coast, at Playa Media Luna. Its mandibles lay in the desert soil, and during excavations the researchers also found the lower jaw, teeth, vertebrae, ribs, parts of front and back legs, and even the whale ancestor’s long fingers, which were likely webbed. Based on its anatomy, the scientists say this cetacean, about 4 meters long (13 feet), could both walk and swim. “Part of the tail’s vertebrae showed similarities with that of present-day semi-aquatic mammals like otters,” said lead author Olivier Lambert of the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences . “This would therefore have been an animal that would have started to make growing use of its tail to swim, which differentiates it from older cetaceans in India and Pakistan.” Pieces of four-legged whales were found in Egypt, Nigeria, Togo, Senegal and Western Sahara, but they were so fragmented that it was impossible to decisively conclude whether they could swim. “This is the most complete specimen ever found for a four-legged whale outside of India and Pakistan,” said Lambert. If the whale in Peru could swim like an otter, the researchers hypothesized that it likely crossed the Atlantic from the western coast of Africa to South America. As a result of continental drift, the distance was half that of today, around 1,300 km (800 miles), and the east-west current of the time would have facilitated their travel. This finding would make less likely another hypothesis, according to which whales reached North America via Greenland. The Pisco Basin, off Peru’s southern coast, likely holds numerous fossils, given its excellent conditions for preservation. “We have work for at least the next 50 years,” said Lambert.
|
india;pakistan;dinosaurs;peru;whale;fossil
|
jp0002583
|
[
"world",
"science-health-world"
] |
2019/04/05
|
Air-conditioning system caused Brazil museum fire, say police
|
RIO DE JANEIRO - The fire that devastated Brazil’s National Museum in September was caused by the air-conditioning system and spread quickly because the building lacked the equipment to contain it, federal police said Thursday. Ricardo Saadi, chief of the federal police, made the announcement at a news conference at which he ruled out arson. “The fire broke out in the auditorium and main cause was the installation of air conditioning,” he said, explaining the system did not meet the manufacturer’s recommendations on the use of individual circuit breakers and grounding devices. The auditorium, which is located on the ground floor of the four-story former imperial palace, was the first room destroyed by the fire, which took six hours to contain. With the exception of fire extinguishers, the museum didn’t have the equipment to help contain the blaze, including alarms, fire houses or fire doors, according to the investigation. The National Museum fire on Sept. 2 wiped out much of the collection, dealing a hard blow to the main showcase of Brazil’s anthropological heritage and history. Since then, dozens of anthropologists, archeologists and paleontologists have spent nine hours a day, six days a week combing through the ashes and charred structure. The facade still stands, though all that was inside and most of its roof were destroyed. Among the recovered relics are fragments of “Luzia” — the fossilized, 12,000-year-old remains of a human considered the centerpiece of the museum’s collection. There is also a 5-ton meteorite called Bendego that survived the blaze, as well as some fragments of a dinosaur, Maxakalisaurus topai.
|
archaeology;brazil;fires;paleontology;museums;rio de janeiro
|
jp0002584
|
[
"world",
"science-health-world"
] |
2019/04/05
|
In world first, France bans breast implants linked to rare cancer
|
PARIS - France on Thursday became the first country to ban a type of breast implant that has been linked to a rare form of cancer. The ban covers certain types of implants with a textured surface or polyurethane coating. The National Agency for Medicines and Health Products (ANSM) said the ban was a “precautionary measure” taken in light of the “rare but serious danger” posed by the implants, which have been linked to anaplastic large-cell lymphoma (BIA- ALCL), a rare type of cancer that attacks the immune system. But it did not recommend that the some 70,000 women believed to have received the implants — of an estimated 400,000-500,000 French implant wearers — undergo surgery to have them removed. Silicone implants are used in breast enhancements, or for reconstructive purposes after a mastectomy for breast cancer. They can either be smooth, textured or coated in polyurethane. Textured implants, which are designed to stick to the breast tissue to avoid slipping out of position, are the most popular in France. The Food and Drug Administration in the United States, where the smooth models are more popular, held two days of public hearings last month on the risks posed by implants. The agency, which wrote to health care providers in February warning them of the link between implants and BIA-ALCL, told AFP it would announce a decision “in the coming weeks. The ANSM said it had noted a “significant increase in cases of anaplastic large-cell lymphoma linked to the wearing of breast implants since 2011.” It said it had recorded 59 cases of the cancer among French implant wearers, of whom three had died. “The more the implant is textured and rough the greater the risk of BIA-ALCL,” it said. “We have no scientific explanation for the development of ALCL, all we have are observations,” Thierry Thomas, the agency’s deputy director for health devices, told a press conference. Of the 457 cases of BIA-ALCL recorded in implant wearers worldwide as of Sept. 30, at least 310 were found in wearers of textured implants, according to the FDA. Canada, which has 22 confirmed and a further 22 suspected cases of BIA-ALCL, is also reviewing their safety while in European Union, several national health authorities have formed a working group to exchange information. Some studies suggest that inflammation caused by the textured implants rubbing against breast tissue could cause BIA-ALCL. The ban covers several models from U.S. manufacturer Allergan that had already been withdrawn from sale in December as well as similar models from France’s Arion and Sebbin, Britain’s Nagor and Eurosilicone and German’s Polytech. Several implant wearers have already launched legal action against Allergan, accusing it of “deliberately endangering the lives of others. The president of the French Society for Plastic and Aesthetic Surgery, Sebastien Garson, said the move would “complicate things” for medical practitioners, who would have fewer implant models to offer patients. France was at the center of a major scandal involving implants in 2010 after it emerged that the maker of a popular brand of implants had been filling them with a cheap industrial-grade silicone gel, which was more dangerous for wearers than medical-grade silicone. The French government recommended that women have the implants removed. Jean-Claude Mas, the founder of Poly Implant Prothese (PIP), died on Thursday aged 79, his lawyer said. He was sentenced to four years in prison for fraud but never served jail time after spending eight months in pre-trial detention in 2012. PIP was shut down.
|
france;u.s .;cancer;fda;breast implants;allergan;anaplastic large cell lymphoma
|
jp0002585
|
[
"world",
"science-health-world"
] |
2019/04/05
|
Scientists warn of amphibian pandemic that has already killed 90 species
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SANTIAGO - A deadly disease affecting amphibians has descended into a global pandemic that has already wiped out 90 species, a prominent U.S. biologist warned Thursday at the World Organization for Animal Health Aquatic Conference in Santiago, Chile. Chytridiomycosis is caused by a fungus — Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis — that attacks the skin of frogs, toads and other amphibians. As the creatures use their skin to breathe and regulate their bodies’ water levels, the damage caused by the disease eventually leads to heart failure and death. Jonathan Kolby, co-author of a study published in March on the fungus’ devastating effects, lamented what he described as “the first global wild disease issue.” “It’s over 60 countries right now, and that’s part of the problem,” he said. Over the past five years, the highly contagious disease has already caused nearly 90 species to disappear, with over 500 impacted. The rapid global spread of the fungus is due to a lack of animal trade rules and airport surveillance, which allows wildlife to be imported without examination. “To solve it we have to focus on regulation,” said Kolby, who worked on the study alongside around 40 other international experts. “Globalization is good for people but it has consequences to animals,” he added. In the U.S. alone, 5 million amphibians enter the country every year. Currently, the disease is most widespread in Latin America and Australia, with trade with Asia — where the fungus originated — blamed for the spread. Scientists also believe a genetic mutation of the fungus may have made it more dangerous. Amphibians play a major role in maintaining aquatic environmental quality. They also feed on mosquitoes, which carry human diseases such as malaria and the Zika virus.
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nature;animals;endangered;amphibians
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jp0002586
|
[
"world",
"science-health-world"
] |
2019/04/05
|
Global life expectancy up 5.5 years since 2000; income and access to care play key roles: WHO
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GENEVA - Global life expectancy grew by 5.5 years between 2000 and 2016, the World Health Organization said Thursday, warning though that unequal income and access to health care translates into far shorter lives for many. The U.N. health agency also stressed significant gender differences in life expectancy worldwide. On average, a child born in 2016 can expect to live 72 years, up from 66.5 in 2000, according to the annual World Health Statistics report. The first 16 years of the century saw dramatic drops in deaths among children under five, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, where progress has been made against malaria, measles and other communicable diseases, WHO said. Life expectancy has also increased thanks to advances against HIV/AIDS, which ravaged much of Africa in the 1990s. But despite progress in poorer countries, WHO said there remained significant life expectancy gaps between developed and developing nations. People in low-income countries live 18 fewer years on average than those in high-income nations, statistics showed. In Lesotho, for instance, people on average live to be just 52, or 53 in the Central African Republic, compared to over 83 for Switzerland and over 84 in Japan. While most people who die in rich countries are old, nearly 1 in 3 deaths in poorer countries are children under 5, WHO said. For the first time, WHO broke down its global health statistics by sex, clearly showing that females have better longevity prospects than males. At birth, babies are more likely to be male than female, with some 73 million boys expected to be born this year, compared to 68 million girls, WHO said. But due to greater biological frailty and riskier behaviors, mortality rates tend to be higher among boys and men, and the ratio shifts as the population ages. At a global scale, girls born in 2016 are expected to live to the age of 74.2, while and boys on average will make it to 69.8 years, the report showed. One reason why women appear to live longer is that they tend to be better about using available health care. In countries facing HIV epidemics, for instance, women are far more likely to take HIV tests and access antiretroviral therapies than their male counterparts. Female TB patients are also more likely to seek treatment, WHO said. It is therefore perhaps not surprising that the gap between men’s and women’s life expectancy is narrowest in places where women lack access to health services. In low-income countries with scarcer services, 1 in 41 women die from maternal causes, compared to 1 in 3,300 women in high-income countries. These are “shocking differences,” WHO’s head of data and analytics, Samira Asma, told reporters. Overall, the statistics showed that life expectancy has risen in most countries, including significant jumps in places like Eritrea, where people on average are now expected to live 22 years longer than the 43 years predicted in 2000. In Syria, meanwhile, which has been ravaged by eight years of conflict, life expectancy dropped by a decade, from 73 years in 2000 to 63.8 years in 2016. People in the United States have meanwhile seen their life expectancy slip from 79 years in 2014 to 78.5 years two years later, the WHO numbers showed. Asma said the drop was in part driven by the obesity epidemic.
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africa;u.s .;u.n .;obesity;who;life expectancy;wages;hiv;childbirth;japan
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jp0002587
|
[
"world",
"science-health-world"
] |
2019/04/05
|
Major study debunks myth that moderate drinking can be healthy
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LONDON - Blood pressure and stroke risk rise steadily the more alcohol people drink, and previous claims that one or two drinks a day might protect against stroke are not true, according to the results of a major genetic study. The research, which used data from a 160,000-strong cohort of Chinese adults, many of whom are unable to drink alcohol due to genetic intolerance, found that people who drink moderately — consuming 10 to 20 grams of alcohol a day — raise their risk of stroke by 10 to 15 percent. For heavy drinkers, consuming four or more drinks a day, blood pressure rises significantly and the risk of stroke increases by around 35 percent, the study found. “The key message here is that, at least for stroke, there is no protective effect of moderate drinking,” said Zhengming Chen, a professor at Oxford University’s Nuffield Department of Population Health who co-led the research. “The genetic evidence shows the protective effect is not real.” The World Health Organization estimates that around 2.3 billion people worldwide drink alcohol, with average per person daily consumption at 33 grams of pure alcohol a day. That is roughly equivalent to two 150-ml glasses of wine, a large (750-ml) bottle of beer or two 40-ml shots of spirits. This latest study, published in The Lancet medical journal, focused on people of East Asian descent, many of whom have genetic variants that limit alcohol tolerance. Because the variants have specific and large effects on alcohol but do not affect other lifestyle factors such as diet, smoking, economic status or education, they can be used by scientists to nail down causal effects of alcohol intake. “Using genetics is a novel way … to sort out whether moderate drinking really is protective, or whether it’s slightly harmful,” said Iona Millwood, an epidemiologist at Oxford who co-led the study. “Our genetic analyses have helped us understand the cause-and-effect relationships.” The research team — including scientists from Oxford and Peking universities and the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences — said it would be impossible to do a study of this kind in Western populations, since almost no one there has the relevant alcohol-intolerance gene variants. But the findings about the biological effects of alcohol should be the same for all people worldwide, they said. Europe has the highest per person alcohol consumption in the world, even though it has dropped by around 10 percent since 2010, the WHO says, and current trends point to a global rise in per capita consumption in the next 10 years.
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health;alcohol;strokes
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jp0002588
|
[
"world",
"science-health-world"
] |
2019/04/05
|
Italian explorer to trace flow of plastics down world's 10 most-polluted rivers into seas
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MILAN, ITALY - Italian explorer Alex Bellini plans to travel down the world’s 10 most polluted rivers on makeshift rafts, tracing the routes of plastics that pollute the world’s oceans. Bellini said Thursday that he was inspired by a 2018 study by a German scientist that found 80 percent of plastic in the world’s oceans arrives from just 10 rivers. He began with a voyage down the Ganges River in India on a raft built from garbage last month and intends to complete journeys on all 10 on similarly constructed rafts by 2021, including the Yangtze, the Niger and the Mekong. His final stop will be the Great Pacific Ocean garbage patch. The 40-year-old spoke to The Associated Press on the sidelines of a One Oceans forum. Bellini, who has rowed solo across two oceans for more than 35,000 km (nearly 22,000 miles), said he became aware of pollution in the ocean while rowing from Peru to Australia in 2008. But he said he was surprised to learn that most plastics in the seas arrive by rivers and not from coastal areas. His new journeys are aimed at raising awareness about the source of ocean plastic, which according to the U.N. environment assembly is accumulating in oceans at a rate of 8 million tons a year. The damage to wildlife of ocean plastic was made clear with the death last month of a whale that beached on the northern coast of Sardinia in Italy with 22 kg (48.5 pounds) of plastic in its belly. “The ocean is a no-man’s land, meaning what is found in the ocean belongs to no one, therefore it is no one’s responsibility to go take away that stuff,” Bellini said. “But research brings the problem closer to us, in the rivers. So everyone needs to take his own responsibility.” Bellini is supported by the One Ocean Foundation, founded by the Yacht Club Costa Smeralda in Sardinia, with a mission to safeguard the seas. Closer to home, the foundation has issued a call to clean plastics and other trash that a recent drought has revealed in the Po River, Italy’s longest, which empties into the Adriatic Sea.
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pollution;environment;mekong;yangtze;ganges;alex bellinim plastic
|
jp0002589
|
[
"world",
"crime-legal-world"
] |
2019/04/05
|
Trump's Russia report victory sours as probe team ranks take issue with his attorney general's conclusion
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WASHINGTON - Donald Trump wanted a victory lap after the apparent flop of the Russia collusion probe, but on Thursday, 11 days later, the president instead found himself being chased in circles. Over and over the president has crowed that special counsel Robert Mueller’s massive investigation into the Trump team’s links to Moscow resulted in total “exoneration.” But that claim is based on the conclusions of Trump’s handpicked attorney general, William Barr, who released a four-page summary of the still-secret report. The actual report, running hundreds of pages, has yet to be released publicly. And U.S. media reports have now quoted sources from the previously almost totally leak-proof Mueller team saying that Barr’s characterization glossed over potentially damaging findings. “Members of Mueller’s team have complained to close associates that the evidence they gathered on obstruction was alarming and significant,” The Washington Post said late Wednesday. The New York Times — another mainstay of insider U.S. political reporting — quoted its unnamed sources saying that Barr “failed to adequately portray the findings of their inquiry and that they were more troubling for President Trump than Mr. Barr indicated.” The Justice Department was forced Thursday to defend Barr’s summary, saying “every page” of Mueller’s report was flagged as potentially containing confidential material and insisting it would be released in full once “appropriate redactions” had been made. And in a furious tweet, Trump said the Times “had no legitimate sources, which would be totally illegal, concerning the Mueller Report. In fact, they probably had no sources at all! They are a Fake News paper who have already been forced to apologize for their incorrect and very bad reporting on me!” This is not the way it was meant to be for the Republican as he launches his 2020 reelection fight. For two years Trump loudly, repeatedly excoriated Mueller’s “witch hunt” and dismissed as nonsense the idea he might have colluded with attempts by Russia to tilt public opinion in his favor during the 2016 election. The Barr summary looked like a stunning vindication. According to Barr, Mueller found that no one in the Trump team had “conspired or coordinated with Russia.” On the question of whether Trump had tried to obstruct justice and prevent Mueller from freely investigating the Russia angle, Barr said the special prosecutor did not reach a definitive conclusion. “While this report does not conclude that the president committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him,” Barr quoted Mueller as saying. That sounded perilously ambiguous for the president, but with Barr himself making the judgment that there was in fact no obstruction offense, Trump could call it a win. In streams of tweets, comments to journalists and a celebratory campaign rally, Trump said he had been proven right. He even accused the law enforcement officials and Democratic Party politicians who supported Mueller’s probe of treason. But questioning by Democrats about why the report has not been fully released and now the reported leaks from the Mueller team are turning that victory sour. In a statement on Thursday, Justice Department spokeswoman Kerri Kupec defended Barr’s handling of the report. “Given the extraordinary public interest in the matter, the attorney general decided to release the report’s bottom-line findings and his conclusions immediately — without attempting to summarize the report — with the understanding that the report itself would be released after the redaction process,” she said. Barr “does not believe the report should be released in ‘serial or piecemeal fashion,’ ” she added. In the meantime, it was back to business as usual for Trump on Twitter, with attacks on opponents that could have been written months ago. “According to polling, few people seem to care about the Russian Collusion Hoax, but some Democrats are fighting hard to keep the Witch Hunt alive,” he tweeted Thursday. “They should focus on legislation or, even better, an investigation of how the ridiculous Collusion Delusion got started — so illegal!” Trump’s lawyer, former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, was also refighting the supposedly finished battle. On Fox News Wednesday night, he called the Mueller team “a bunch of sneaky, unethical leakers. And they are rabid Democrats who hate the president of United States.” As for Trump’s actions regarding the murky Russian involvement in the election? “We think we can prove beyond any doubt that there is nothing to collusion,” Giuliani said.
|
congress;robert mueller;donald trump;russia probe;william barr;rudi giuliani
|
jp0002590
|
[
"world",
"crime-legal-world"
] |
2019/04/05
|
Brazil police kill 11 heavily armed suspects out of 25 who tried to blow up two banks' ATMs
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SAO PAULO - Police in Sao Paulo state shot and killed 11 assailants who were preparing to blow up automated bank teller machines simultaneously at two branches early on Thursday, authorities said. Sao Paulo state’s Public Security Secretariat said in a statement that about 25 suspects were involved in the attempts to blow up the machines to get the cash inside, a common crime in Brazil. Along with the 11 killed, another two men were arrested. No money was stolen. One of the banks was located next to a police station. “These criminals were prepared for war,” said Alvaro Batista Camilo, head of Sao Paulo state’s police force. The would-be robbers drove up to the banks in five armored cars and were armed with high-caliber rifles and body armor, authorities said. Police arrived at the banks and confronted the assailants, who fled and led police on a rolling shootout through the city of Guararema, located about 60 km (37 miles) east of central metropolitan Sao Paulo. The suspects broke into a home at one point and held the residents hostage, “but police managed to free them,” the secretariat said, without providing more details. No police were injured during the operation. Police commander Mario Silva told Globo TV that the criminal group was under surveillance, and that “we already knew they were going to carry out an attack in this area. “We did not know exactly where the attack would take place,” Silva said. “But we increased police forces in the area over the past 24 hours.” Far right President Jair Bolsonaro, who has publicly called for Brazil’s already lethal police force to carry out more killings of suspected criminals, praised the action. “Eleven criminals were killed and not a single innocent was injured. Great work!” Bolsonaro tweeted.
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brazil;banks;gangs;sao paulo;atms;jair bolsonaro
|
jp0002591
|
[
"world",
"crime-legal-world"
] |
2019/04/05
|
Man found wandering in Kentucky claiming to be boy missing since 2011 was in fact ex-con pulling hoax: FBI
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CINCINNATI - A young man’s claim to be an Illinois boy who disappeared under tragic circumstances eight years ago was disproved by DNA tests, the FBI said Thursday, dashing hopes that the baffling case had finally been solved. For a day and a half, a breakthrough seemed to be at hand when a young man found wandering the streets of Newport, Kentucky, on Wednesday identified himself as 14-year-old Timmothy Pitzen and claimed he had just escaped from two men who had held him captive for seven years. But DNA tests ruled out that possibility, the FBI said. Newport Police Chief Tom Collins identified the young man to ABC as Brian Rini of Medina, Ohio, a 23-year-old ex-convict. “Law enforcement has not and will not forget Timmothy, and we hope to one day reunite him with his family. Unfortunately, that day will not be today,” FBI spokesman Timothy Beam in Louisville said in a statement. Timmothy’s family members said they were heartbroken over the apparent hoax. “It’s devastating. It’s like reliving that day all over again, and Timothy’s father is devastated once again,” said his aunt Kara Jacobs. The boy’s grandmother, Alana Anderson, said: “It’s been awful. We’ve been on tenterhooks, hopeful and frightened. It’s just been exhausting.” She added, “I feel so sorry for the young man who’s obviously had a horrible time and felt the need to say he was sbomebody else.” State prison records indicate Rini was released from last month after serving time for burglary and vandalism. Timmothy, of Aurora, Illinois, vanished at age 6 in 2011 after his mother, Amy Fry-Pitzen, pulled him out of kindergarten early one day, took him on a two-day road trip to the zoo and a water park, and then killed herself at a hotel. The mother left a note saying that her son was safe with people who would love and care for him, and added: “You will never find him.” After the young man claiming to be Timmothy came forward, police and Timmothy’s family reacted cautiously because of the many false sightings and hoaxes over the years. “We’ve probably had thousands of tips of him popping up in different areas,” Aurora police Sgt. Bill Rowley said Wednesday. Police have said Timmothy’s mother might have dropped the boy off with a friend, noting that the boy’s car seat and Spider-Man backpack were gone. Police also found credit card receipts showing she bought children’s clothing and toys in Wisconsin. Timmothy’s grandmother said her daughter had fought depression for years and was having problems in her marriage to Timmothy’s father. Some news reports suggested she was afraid she would lose custody of the boy in a divorce because of her mental instability. At Greenman Elementary after the boy’s disappearance, Timmothy’s schoolmates, teachers and parents tied hundreds of yellow ribbons around trees and signs. A garden was planted in his memory. The brief but tantalizing possibility that the case had been solved generated excitement in Timmothy’s former neighborhood. Pedro Melendez, who lives in Timmothy’s former home, didn’t know the boy but saved the concrete slab with his name, handprint and footprint etched in it when he redid the back patio. It is dated ’09. “My wife is really excited. She’s been following this story since we moved in the house,” said Melendez, who bought the house from the boy’s father. “Hopefully, it’s him.” Linda Ramirez, who lives nearby and knew the family, said she was “pretty excited” but didn’t “want to have false hopes.”
|
kidnapping;dna;ohio;illinois;kentucky;timmothy pitzen;brian rini
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jp0002592
|
[
"world",
"politics-diplomacy-world"
] |
2019/04/05
|
GOP Sen. Chuck Grassley blasts Democrats for using tax return demand as 'pretext' to get Trump
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WASHINGTON - Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley blasted House Ways and Means Chairman Richard Neal for demanding that the IRS turn over President Donald Trump’s tax returns. Grassley, an Iowa Republican, asserted in a lengthy speech on Thursday that Neal, a Massachusetts Democrat, did not have a genuine legislative purpose for gathering the returns and said the reasoning outlined in his letter to Internal Revenue Service Commissioner Charles Rettig was about “finding a pretext to bring this president down.” “When you strip out all their pretexts, and when you strip out their circular logic, all you have are Democrats who want to go after the president any way they can,” Grassley said. “They dislike him with a passion, and they want his tax returns to destroy him. That’s all this is about, and it’s Nixonian to the core.” Neal on Wednesday sent Rettig a letter requesting Trump’s personal and business tax returns from the past six years. Neal, who demanded a response by next Wednesday, cast his letter as legislative oversight to ensure the IRS was following its policy of auditing every sitting president and vice president’s return. Trump has already said he is “not inclined” to turn over his returns, though the decision is technically left to the U.S. Treasury Department. “Democrats haven’t offered a shred of evidence to suggest that the IRS hasn’t done its job auditing President Trump’s taxes or anybody else’s for that matter,” said Grassley, who has said in the past that he wants his committee to receive the returns as well if Neal receives them. “They’re not concerned about oversight of the IRS enforcement process at all,” Grassley said. “What they are interested in is using their oversight authority to collect as much information about this president’s finances as they can get their hands on.”
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u.s .;congress;taxes;republicans;irs;democrats;donald trump;chuck grassley
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jp0002593
|
[
"world",
"politics-diplomacy-world"
] |
2019/04/05
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Guaido says imprisoning him could be Maduro's final move, and he has contingency plan
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CARACAS - Juan Guaido, newly vulnerable to arrest, says he is prepared to be imprisoned by the autocratic regime of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and has a contingency plan for allies to continue the protest movement he leads. “In the event that they want to, or try to, kidnap me, which they can do without a doubt, there is a complete strategy ready to continue with leadership, but also to intensify pressure,” Guaido said in an interview following a conference on the opposition’s policy plans to remedy Venezuela’s crisis. An arrest “would only catalyze local and international pressure, and I dare say, would be one of the government’s final erratic political actions.” Venezuelan law has afforded Guaido, 35, immunity from prosecution because he is the head of the opposition-dominated National Assembly. But Maduro created a so-called Constituent Assembly to bypass that legislature, making it politically omnipotent and stacking it with socialist-party loyalists. On Tuesday, it stripped Guaido of protection, because he defied a travel ban to tour Latin American countries that support regime change in Venezuela. Guaido has galvanized a fractious opposition and rallied his countrymen and most of the western world behind him. Soon after taking the reins of the toothless legislature in January, he invoked a constitutional provision to launch an interim government after Maduro began another six-year term following 2018 elections widely regarded as rigged. The U.S. and about 50 other nations quickly recognized Guaido as Venezuela’s rightful head of state. But Maduro continues to control the crucial security and military apparatus and receives support from Russia and China. His regime has cracked down on dissent and opened a probe into Guaido, who is accused of inciting violence, lying about his personal finances and was barred from leaving the country. Guaido calls it persecution. “What we see is a government without a response to the crisis,” Guaido said. “They’re trying to dominate a society that’s at a boiling point.” Slipping Out The oil-rich nation is reeling from hyperinflation, hunger and rolling blackouts that make daily life miserable for residents in backwater towns and major cities alike. Thousands of thirsty residents have recently taken to the streets of Caracas after going more than a week without running water. Despite mounting unrest, Maduro continues to insist that the country’s woes are not the result of poor governance, but sabotage orchestrated by opponents at home and abroad. In February, Guaido slipped into neighboring Colombia and then met with half a dozen heads of state to whip up international support. Despite facing arrest, he returned home last month on a commercial flight and continued to call for street action. As Venezuela hurtles toward a complete collapse of basic services, authorities have intensified pressure on Guaido and his inner circle. In March, intelligence police arrested Roberto Marrero, Guaido’s chief of staff, accusing him leading a “terrorist cell.” The ruling Socialists have jailed or forced many of their most prominent opponents into exile, including Leopoldo Lopez, Guaido’s political mentor, who was sentenced to almost 14 years in prison after launching a wave of demonstrations. He was released to house arrest in July 2017 under orders to keep quiet; intelligence police are stationed in front of his home. Although Guaido and his allies have prepared for an arrest, he said he was still coming to terms with what prison would mean for him personally. The regime has been accused of human-rights violations that include torture and extrajudicial killings. “I’ve had to see evil up close,” Guaido said. “But nothing can prepare you for being kidnapped, killed or watching your family suffer.” The U.S., Guaido’s most outspoken international backer, has explicitly warned against harming the opposition leader. Already, the Trump administration slapped sanctions on Venezuela’s crumbling oil industry and top regime officials. But so far America has stopped short of direct action to topple Maduro. Guaido says he has been in touch with representatives of U.S. and other foreign governments, who have expressed concern over the campaign against him and pledged continued support. He’s now hoping to capitalize on widespread anger over the lack of water and electricity, and has called supporters to the streets this weekend for another round of nationwide demonstrations. Repression is bound to backfire, he said. “This strategy will not work for the regime,” Guaido said. “It’s digging its own grave while we’re in complete collapse.”
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u.s .;venezuela;nicolas maduro;juan guaido
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jp0002594
|
[
"world",
"politics-diplomacy-world"
] |
2019/04/05
|
Wind turbines' noise causes cancer? Trump's 'idiotic' theory whips up storm
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WASHINGTON - President Donald Trump has never been shy of sharing his dislike of wind turbines. But by suggesting this week that their noise could cause cancer, he stunned political friends and foes alike. “It’s an idiotic statement,” Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday, echoing an earlier assessment by Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley. Addressing a Republican fundraiser in Washington, the U.S. president — who routinely questions the science of climate change — launched a lengthy attack on wind turbines, which he called “windmills.” “They say the noise causes cancer,” Trump told the gathering — a theory not borne out by scientific research. A staunch supporter of the coal industry, Trump has taken to cracking jokes at his rallies about wind power, which accounted for some 6 percent of U.S. energy generation in 2016, according to the Energy Department. “I’d love to watch a show tonight, darling,” Trump quipped last week to laughs from the crowd in Michigan. “The wind hasn’t blown for three days.” “Darling, please, tell the wind to blow.”
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energy;cancer;renewables;wind;nancy pelosi;donald trump;chuck grassley
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jp0002595
|
[
"world",
"politics-diplomacy-world"
] |
2019/04/05
|
Glaring U.S. absences raise questions about relevance of G7
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PARIS - Foreign and interior ministers from the Group of Seven countries are gathering in France this week to try to find ambitious solutions to world security challenges. Putting a dampener on that are two glaring American absences: U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen. The fact that ranking U.S. officials are skipping the Thursday-Saturday meetings in Paris and the resort of Dinard raises questions about the G7’s relevance and effectiveness at solving the very international issues it has laid out as crucial, including fighting terrorism and human trafficking. The interior ministers’ meetings started Thursday in Paris with a lunch focusing on migration issues, human trafficking and the fight against smugglers. U.S. President Donald Trump has made no secret of his disdain for the G7, especially since Russia was pushed out of the gathering of major world economies after its annexation of Crimea in 2014. The U.S. absences signal that the Trump administration has downgraded the group — which also includes France, Canada, Japan, Germany, Italy and the U.K. — in its list of priorities. Pompeo is in Washington this week, far from French shores, hosting NATO’s foreign ministers to mark the alliance’s 70th anniversary. Nielsen is staying behind to deal with border issues in the U.S. Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland, meanwhile, announced she is attending both the NATO meeting and the G7 summit in Dinard. In fact, alliances are fraying everywhere, even at NATO as Pompeo shines a spotlight on America’s involvement in the military alliance. NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg acknowledged internal NATO disagreements this week on trade, climate change and the Iran nuclear deal, but insisted the 29 allies are united in their commitment to defend each other. France, which took over the G7’s presidency in January, is hosting a summit of interior ministers in Paris on Thursday and Friday, which overlaps with a summit of G7 foreign ministers on Friday and Saturday in Dinard. U.S. Homeland Security official Claire Grady is standing in for Nielsen at the interior ministers’ meetings. Deputy Secretary of State John J. Sullivan will stand in for Pompeo, discussing “a broad range of issues, including the deteriorating situation in Venezuela, destabilizing Iranian behavior in the Middle East, the responsible conduct of states in cyber space, and the final denuclearization of North Korea,” the State Department said. It said these conversations will “set the stage” for the August G7 summit France will host in the southwestern city of Biarritz. Last June, Trump roiled the -7 meeting in Canada by first agreeing to a group statement on trade only to withdraw from it while complaining that he had been blindsided by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s criticism of Trump’s tariff threats at a news conference. In an extraordinary set of tweets aboard Air Force One, Trump threw the G7 summit into disarray and threatened to escalate his trade war just as Canada released the G7’s official communique. France’s Foreign Ministry listed the main issues under discussion this week as cybersecurity, the trafficking of drugs, arms and migrants in Africa’s troubled Sahel region, and fighting gender inequality. That includes ways to prevent rape and violence against women, especially in Africa. The French presidency says the interior ministers’ meeting aims to set joint commitments on security and counterterrorism, including how to deal with citizens who have joined Islamic State militants in Syria and Iraq, or their wives and children. Many IS fighters have been captured and imprisoned in those countries. A top official at the French Interior Ministry stressed that the instability of the region, after U.S.-backed forces declared military victory over the Islamic State group in Syria last month, still poses a challenge. The problem has grown more urgent since Trump announced his intention to reduce the U.S. military presence in Syria. “We need to coordinate our policies to prevent that risk. We must avoid a dispersion of foreign fighters, avoid that they gather together elsewhere,” the official said, speaking anonymously ahead of the meeting in accordance with French government practice. The U.S. has called for countries to take back their citizens and put them on trial, if necessary, but Western countries have largely refused to take back their detained citizens. France says French fighters must be tried wherever they committed their crimes. U.S.-backed Kurdish fighters, who are holding some of the IS fighters, have called for an international tribunal for IS detainees. The G7 interior ministers will also discuss ways to fight terrorism and extremism on the internet, possibly by imposing regulations on internet giants like Facebook, Twitter and Google. Interior ministers from Niger and Burkina Faso are joining Thursday’s lunch on migration to put a focus on Africa’s Sahel region, a source of migration to Europe as well as a transit region and destination for smuggling.
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france;g7;donald trump;mike pompeo;emmanuel macron
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jp0002596
|
[
"world",
"politics-diplomacy-world"
] |
2019/04/05
|
House votes to end U.S. support for Yemen war, rebuffing Trump ahead of expected veto
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WASHINGTON - Rejecting a plank of President Donald Trump’s foreign policy, the House of Representatives on Thursday invoked never-before-used powers to demand that his administration withdraw support from the Saudi-led war in Yemen . The Senate passed the same resolution in March with bipartisan support. Trump is expected to issue a veto of the measure , his second as president, and Congress does not have the votes to override him. But the action was nonetheless a milestone for lawmakers, who have shown a renewed willingness to assert their war-making powers after letting them atrophy for decades under presidents from both parties. “The president will have to face the reality that Congress is no longer going to ignore its constitutional obligations when it comes to foreign policy,” said Democratic Rep. Eliot Engel of New York, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Yemen was plunged into a civil war in September 2014, when rebels known as Houthis swept into the capital and overthrew the country’s internationally recognized government. The Saudi-led coalition began fighting the rebels months later in a campaign that Saudi Arabia said was aimed at curbing Iranian influence. At the time, the Houthis were allied with forces backed by Iran; in the years that followed, Iran’s role in the conflict has grown. The conflict has been a bloody stalemate for years. Thousands have been killed in Saudi airstrikes on civilian infrastructure, and millions are on the brink of starvation. The war has devastated the economy of Yemen, the Arab world’s poorest country. The vast majority of the population cannot afford food to eat. Two lawmakers who have led the charge for the war powers resolution, Sens. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., and Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., have displayed photos of emaciated Yemeni children when they have given speeches on the Senate floor. “This is a moral stain on this nation, every day that we continue to take part in this war,” Murphy said after Thursday’s vote. Utah Sen. Mike Lee, a Republican who championed the measure, said it “is long past time that we end U.S. involvement in this unauthorized, unjustified, and immoral war that has caused immense human suffering.” While the U.S. has trained Saudi soldiers and sold the kingdom arms for decades, direct support to the Saudi coalition began in 2015, during the Obama administration, with intelligence sharing, logistical support and inflight refueling. The Pentagon ordered an end to inflight refueling last November. Support for the coalition carried over into the Trump administration, which has made Saudi Arabia a central ally in efforts to disengage from the Middle East and take a hard line on Iran. On his first international trip as president, Trump visited Riyadh, where he emphasized business ties between the two countries. Home to key American military bases, Saudi Arabia also remains one of the top buyers of American arms and Trump has made it a priority to loosen weapons export controls. As it has done in the past, his administration on Thursday defended the alliance with Saudi Arabia as a foreign policy imperative. Navy Cmdr. Rebecca Rebarich, a Pentagon spokeswoman, warned that curtailing U.S. military support could make the country’s problems worse. “New restrictions on the limited U.S. military support could still increase civilian casualties, jeopardize cooperation with our partners on counterterrorism, undercut UN-led peace negotiations at a critical point, and embolden Iran to increase its support to the Houthis which raises the risk for regional conflict,” Rebarich said. “We need to continue to work with our partners to minimize civilian casualties and expand urgent humanitarian efforts throughout Yemen. The White House statement threatening a veto said the bill raises “serious constitutional concerns.” It also argued U.S. support for the Saudis coalition does not constitute engaging in “hostilities,” meaning the War Powers Act doesn’t apply. Those arguments were echoed by House Republicans. Rep. Michael McCaul of Texas, the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said the measure “does nothing to address the humanitarian crisis in Yemen” and argued the lawmakers were abusing the authority under the War Powers Resolution, which was enacted in 1973. “This radical interpretation has implications far beyond Saudi Arabia,” McCaul said. He warned that the measure could “disrupt U.S. security cooperation agreements with more than 100 countries.” Debate over U.S. support to the military campaign flared late last year after the killing of U.S.-based journalist Jamal Khashoggi by agents of the kingdom. Lawmakers from both parties said Trump had not condemned Saudi Arabia strongly enough, citing the president’s apparent dismissal of assessments from U.S. intelligence agencies that the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered the killing. A resolution to withdraw U.S. support from the war passed the Senate in December, and was revived this year after Democrats took the House majority. Final passage Thursday came despite a procedural gambit from House Republicans related to support for Israel, an issue that has been a point of tension for Democrats in recent months. GOP leaders proposed adding language condemning the international boycott movement against Israel and efforts to delegitimize the country. Democrats called the amendment a ploy to kill the Yemen resolution and rallied against it. “This is about politics, this is about trying to drive a wedge into this caucus where it does not belong,” said Rep. Ted Deutch, D-Fla., to applause from Democrats. As the resolution headed to the White House, supporters in both parties made a final plea for Trump to sign it. A letter signed by Lee, Sanders, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., and members of the House cited Trump’s desire to avoid “costly and never-ending conflicts across the globe.” By signing the resolution, the lawmakers wrote, the president could “set a new precedent” and take on “entrenched opposition to foreign-policy restraint.” Asked about the resolution late Thursday, Trump was noncommittal. “I’ll take a look at it,” he told reporters at the White House.
|
conflict;u.s .;congress;yemen;saudi arabia;democrats;veto;donald trump;jamal khashoggi
|
jp0002597
|
[
"world"
] |
2019/04/05
|
Napoleon love letters to Josephine go for over €500,000
|
PARIS - Three love letters from Napoleon Bonaparte to his wife, Josephine, written between 1796 and 1804, were sold for a total of €513,000 ($575,000) on Thursday, the Drouot auction house said. “No letter from you my adorable friend, you must have very sweet preoccupations since you forget your husband who, though in the midst of business and extremely tired thinks only and desires only you,” the French leader said in one letter written during the Italian campaign in 1796. The historically themed auction run by the French Ader and Aguttes houses also included a rare Enigma encryption machine, used by Nazi Germany during World War II, which went for €48,100. The items were part of a vast sell-off by the French state of the collection amassed by the collapsed investment firm Aristophil. It was shut down amid a scandal four years ago, taking €850 million ($1 billion) of its investors’ money with it. The previous 14 auctions, held last year, brought in €26.4 million.
|
history;auctions;napoleon
|
jp0002598
|
[
"world"
] |
2019/04/05
|
Boeing defends 'fundamental safety' of 737 Max after crash report but admits system error
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WASHINGTON - Embattled U.S. aviation giant Boeing on Thursday insisted on the “fundamental safety” of its 737 Max aircraft but pledged to take all necessary steps to ensure the jets’ airworthiness. The statements came hours after Ethiopian officials said pilots of a doomed plane that crashed last month, leaving 157 people dead, had followed the company’s recommendations. The preliminary findings released Thursday by transportation authorities in Addis Ababa put the American aircraft giant under even greater pressure to restore public trust amid mounting signs the company’s onboard anti-stall systems were at fault in crashes involving its formerly top-selling 737 Max aircraft — incidents that left nearly 350 people dead in less than five months. “We remain confident in the fundamental safety of the 737 Max,” CEO Dennis Muilenburg said in a statement, adding that impending software fixes would make the aircraft “among the safest airplanes ever to fly.” Muilenburg also acknowledged, however, that an “erroneous activation” of Boeing’s Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System had occurred. The system is designed to prevent stalls but may have forced the Ethiopian and Indonesian jets into the ground. In an earlier statement, the head of the company’s commercial aircraft division had said Boeing was ready to perform “any and all additional steps” to enhance the safety of the 737 Max. A report by Ethiopian investigators on Thursday said the crew of the Ethiopian Airlines plane repeatedly followed procedures recommended by Boeing, but were unable to regain control of the jet. The initial probe appears to confirm concerns about MCAS, with data echoing that of the crash of an Indonesian Lion Air 737 Max 8 flight in October that killed 189 people. Ethiopian authorities’ full report has not been publicly released, but according to a draft copy seen by AFP, shortly after takeoff a sensor recording the level of the plane began transmitting faulty data, prompting the autopilot system to point the nose downwards. “The crew performed all the procedures repeatedly provided by the manufacturer, but was not able to control the aircraft,” said Ethiopian Transport Minister Dagmawit Moges, unveiling results of the preliminary probe into the crash. The report recommends “the aircraft flight control system shall be reviewed by the manufacturer,” Dagmawit said. “Aviation authorities shall verify that the review of the aircraft flight control system has been adequately addressed by the manufacturer before the release of the aircraft for operations,” she added. Boeing now says it plans to release a software fix to the anti-stall system used aboard the 737 Max aircraft in the coming weeks. U.S. regulators this week demanded further improvements to a proposed fix before it could be submitted for review and announced a review of the certification of the automated flight control system on the 737 Max. The Ethiopian Airlines flight was headed to Nairobi on a clear morning on March 10 when so-called angle of attack sensors on either side of the nose of the plane began sending conflicting information to the auto pilot system shortly after takeoff. According to the report AFP saw, the nose of the plane pointed down four times without pilot input. The autopilot was switched off at some point and the captain called out “pull up” three times to his first officer as the pair battled to gain control. Three minutes after takeoff and three minutes before the crash, the captain asked the first officer to try the manual trim system, which changes the level of the plane. He replied that it was not working. They asked to turn back, but it was too late. The plane pitched down at a 40-degree angle, smashing into a field outside Addis Ababa at about 500 knots (920 kilometers per hour). Both engines were buried at a depth of 10 meters (32 feet) in a crater 28 meters wide and 40 meters long, with fragments of debris found within a radius of about 300 meters. “This accident was not survivable,” said the report. Citizens from over 30 countries were on board. Shortly after the Lion Air crash last year, Boeing issued a bulletin reminding operators of emergency guidelines to override the anti-stall system, amid indications it had received erroneous information from angle of attack sensors during that disaster.
|
ethiopian airlines;aircraft accidents;lion air;boeing 737 max;dennis muilenburg;mcas
|
jp0002599
|
[
"world"
] |
2019/04/05
|
Floods devastate farms in Iran, causing hundreds of millions of dollars in damage
|
LONDON - Flooding has caused hundreds of millions of dollars of damage to Iranian agriculture, an official said on Thursday, as the parliament speaker questioned whether government funds would be adequate to compensate communities and farmers. About 1,900 cities and villages have been affected by floods and exceptionally heavy rains since March 19. The disaster, which has so far killed 62 people, has left aid agencies struggling to cope and seen 86,000 people moved to emergency shelters. Early estimates put agriculture sector losses at 47 trillion rials (about $350 million), the head of the Agriculture Ministry’s crisis management, Mohammad Mousavi was quoted as saying by state news agency IRNA based on the unofficial exchange rate of 135,000 rials to a dollar. The government has assured citizens, and especially flood-affected farmers, that all losses will be compensated. But the speaker of parliament, Ali Larijani, said on Thursday the new year budget would not suffice to cover the damages and the government should seek other resources. Iran’s operating budget is already stretched under U.S. sanctions on energy and banking sectors that have halved its oil exports and restricted access to some revenues abroad. President Hassan Rouhani, whom critics have accused of mismanaging the response to the disaster, said on Wednesday the sanctions were also hampering aid efforts. The lawmakers have summoned several ministers to parliament on Sunday to explain why preventative measures were not in place. At least 26 of Iran’s 31 provinces have been affected. As waters continue to submerge villages, the government said it had deployed more mobile medical units to southern provinces. Around 1,000 people have been airlifted by emergency helicopters to safety in recent days. The head of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards reiterated that the forces “were using all their power” to minimize damages in oil-rich southwestern Khuzestan province. Iranian drilling companies and other energy firms have been assisting rescue efforts in flooded areas, using pumps to remove water. Rising water, mudslides and rock slides have blocked 36 roads across the country. Many flights and trains have been affected. The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies has released around 500,000 Swiss francs ($500,000) as cash grants for 3,000 Iranian families who have lost homes and livelihoods in the floods. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo criticized Tehran’s handling of the crisis on Tuesday, saying the “floods once again show the level of Iranian regime mismanagement in urban planning and in emergency preparedness.” Iranian Foreign Minister snapped back on Thursday, calling his comments “unprofessional, interventionist and demagogic.” “Apparently Mr. Pompeo has forgotten that the U.S. federal government itself has shown to be incapable of providing sufficient relief in many regions affected by natural disasters, which have claimed the lives of thousands of Americans,” he tweeted.
|
agriculture;iran;floods
|
jp0002601
|
[
"asia-pacific",
"politics-diplomacy-asia-pacific"
] |
2019/04/05
|
There's an app for that, a TV channel and rallies galore: How brand Modi plays in Indian election
|
NEW DELHI - If Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi wins this spring’s general election, as is widely expected, it will also be another massive victory for the marketing machine created to amplify his brand into every Indian living room. Opinion polls regularly show Modi is India’s most popular politician, and to turn that appeal into votes, his ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has pulled out all the stops from the most modern methods of communication to the very traditional. There is the recently launched NaMo TV channel dedicated to the 68-year-old leader, a Narendra Modi mobile app that has been downloaded by 100 million people, and a massive social media following across every major platform in India. Modi and the BJP have a combined 57.5 million followers on Twitter, four times the total for the main opposition Congress party and its president, Rahul Gandhi. Modi is the world’s third-most-followed politician on Twitter, after former U.S. President Barack Obama and current President Donald Trump. The Hindu nationalist BJP itself claims to have more members than any other political party in the world. Polls for the world’s biggest democratic vote open on a rolling basis between April 11 and May 19. Modi is widely expected to be in a position to form a new government after the election, with the big question whether he will win an outright majority or be forced into trying to form a coalition. With the campaign now in full swing, the BJP says Modi physically reaches out to more than 250,000 people a day through the many rallies he addresses. Most of those are then carried live across multiple party platforms and news channels across India, including the nation’s public broadcaster. “He is doing three to four rallies every day. One rally would cover three to four constituencies,” said Vijay Chauthaiwale, who is in charge of BJP’s foreign affairs department. Last Sunday, 10 million people watched a TV program in which Modi interacted with the country’s security guards, he added. Opposition parties have complained the BJP is gaining an unfair advantage by using the state broadcaster and the NaMo TV to air its propaganda. The Election Commission is looking into the complaints. On Wednesday alone, Modi addressed as many as four rallies, starting early in the northeastern state of Arunachal Pradesh and ending late in a constituency 2,300 km (1,400 miles) away in the western state of Maharashtra. Gandhi spoke in three rallies, all in the northeast. Even before the election dates were announced on March 10, Modi went on a spree to launch various public projects across more than 16 states, often using those events to broadcast the achievements of his government. “The opposition is way behind the curve,” said a close aide to Modi. “Even before the official inauguration of the political campaign on March 28, he completed the first phase of campaigning. Now it’s the second phase.” Congress accuses Modi and the BJP of misusing its powers and deep pockets to try and influence voters. “Modi used public projects, government-sponsored events as a vehicle to serve his political campaigning,” said Congress’ chief spokesman, Randeep Singh Surjewala. “We know the voters understand this strategy and they will make the right choice of defeating his party.” Congress also complained in January that it was struggling to find enough helicopters to ferry its leaders because the BJP had reserved most of the available aircraft well in advance. The BJP has indeed substantially increased its income and party membership in the past five years in power. In 2017/18, the BJP’s total income including donations stood at 10.27 billion rupees ($150 million), compared with 1.9 billion rupees for Congress, according to the Association for Democratic Reforms, a Delhi-based advocacy group that examines political funding and candidate disclosure forms. “There’s a huge gap between our campaign and their (Congress) campaign,” BJP spokesman Gopal Krishna Agarwal said. “We’re much ahead in our communication, on organizational structure, outreach schemes etc.”
|
india;rahul gandhi;elections;narendra modi;bjp
|
jp0002602
|
[
"asia-pacific"
] |
2019/04/05
|
U.S. trains with ASDF in Western Pacific as area sees ramped-up military drills by China
|
B-52 bombers from Guam have trained with Air Self-Defense Force and Okinawa-based U.S. fighter jets in the Western Pacific, just days after China sent a total of six bombers and other aircraft through a key entryway into the Pacific for their own military exercises. “Two B-52H Stratofortress bombers took off from Andersen Air Force Base, Guam, and conducted integrated training with Koku-Jieitai (Japan Air-Self Defense Force) fighters and 18th Wing F-15s from Kadena Air Base, Japan, in the vicinity of Western Japan” on Thursday, U.S. Air Force spokeswoman Monica Urias told The Japan Times. The mission made for a busy week in the area, with the Chinese Air Force dispatching a total of six H-6G and H-6K bombers, as well as electronic warfare and surveillance aircraft and fighter jets, through the Miyako Strait, international airspace between the Japanese islands of Okinawa and Miyako in the East China Sea, on Monday and March 30. The Miyako Strait is widely known as the principal entryway for the Chinese Navy into the Pacific Ocean. The ASDF scrambled fighter jets to intercept the Chinese aircraft in response both times, though Japanese airspace was not violated, according to the Defense Ministry in Tokyo. Thursday’s U.S. training mission with the ASDF was the first since similar exercises over the East China Sea on March 20. Both missions were part of the so-called continuous bomber presence operations the U.S. military says have been ongoing since March 2004 and are part of the United States’ long-standing “freedom of navigation” policies. The U.S. and Japanese militaries regularly conduct such exercises in the East China Sea, home to the Japanese-controlled Senkaku Islands, and the Western Pacific. Beijing — which also claims the Senkakus and calls them Diaoyu — often dispatches ships and aircraft to the area surrounding the tiny islets. In November 2013, China declared an air defense identification zone, in which aircraft are supposed to identify themselves to Chinese authorities, in the East China Sea. The United States and Japan have refused to recognize the ADIZ, and many observers have viewed it as an attempt by China to bolster its claims over disputed territories, like the uninhabited Senkakus. Beijing said in 2017 that Washington should respect the ADIZ after Chinese officials warned a U.S. bomber that it was illegally flying inside the East China Sea zone. The Pentagon rejected the Chinese call and said it would continue its flight operations in the region. The United States is obligated to defend aggression against territories under Japanese administration under Article 5 of the U.S.-Japan Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security, and top U.S. officials have said this extends to the Senkakus. Training missions such as Thursday’s have apparently ramped up amid protracted military and trade tensions between Washington and Beijing, with one mission on March 4 and another in January taking bombers over the East China Sea. The U.S. has also sent its B-52s over the disputed South China Sea — including two separate flights near some of China’s man-made islands there within the space of ten days earlier this month. Beijing has blasted the missions as “provocations.” China’s Foreign Ministry has said no military ship or aircraft could scare Beijing away from its resolve to protect what it says is its territory. China has built up a series of military outposts in the strategic waterway, which includes vital sea lanes through which about $3 trillion in global trade passes each year. Washington and Beijing have frequently jousted over the militarization of the South China Sea, where China, Taiwan, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and the Philippines all have competing claims. The U.S. does not maintain any claims there, but says the operations are conducted globally with the aim of promoting freedom of navigation.
|
china;u.s .;military;senkakus;weapons;disputed islands;south china sea;self defense forces
|
jp0002603
|
[
"asia-pacific"
] |
2019/04/05
|
In snub, U.S. won't send warships or senior officials to Chinese Navy's 70th anniversary celebrations
|
The United States has decided not to send warships or senior military officers to celebrations marking the 70th anniversary of the founding of China’s People’s Liberation Army Navy later this month, a snub by Washington even as U.S. allies Japan and South Korea are expected to send their own vessels and officials. Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Dave Eastburn told The Japan Times on Friday that the U.S. Embassy in Beijing’s defense attache office would instead represent the United States at the fleet review and a symposium in the eastern port city of Qingdao from April 22 to 25. “The U.S. government seeks a bilateral relationship that is results-oriented and focused on risk reduction,” Eastburn said. “The U.S. Navy will continue to pursue its primary goal of constructive, risk-reduction focused, discourse with the PLAN.” Eastburn added that this would include continued engagement with the Chinese Navy “through established military-to-military dialogues, such as the Military Maritime Consultative Agreement working groups and Rules of Behavior discussions.” China’s Defense Ministry announced last week that more than 60 countries will send naval delegations to participate in a multinational event on April 23. This will include a fleet review inspection featuring naval vessels from a number of countries such as South Korea, the Philippines and Japan. Japanese Defense Minister Takeshi Iwakya said last month that the Maritime Self-Defense Force would send a destroyer to visit from April 21 to 26, the first visit to the country by an MSDF vessel in seven years amid thawing Sino-Japanese ties. Tokyo is also considering participation by the MSDF chief of staff in the event. Media reports have also said that France and Russia could even send aircraft carriers, though this has not been confirmed by Paris or Moscow. The fleet review parade is expected to be larger than last year’s, the country’s largest since 1949. Last year’s parade was overseen by Chinese President Xi Jinping. Last April’s naval review in the South China Sea featured a total of 48 vessels and 76 planes, including China’s first aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, its Type 094A and 095 nuclear submarines, 052D guided missile destroyers and J-15 fighter jets. The PLA Navy, which has faced growing international scrutiny over its moves in the South and East China seas in recent years, is using this year’s anniversary to reach out to its counterparts across the globe to present a friendlier image. But the U.S. snub, apparently made out of concerns that China could have used the presence of American warships to bolster its international standing, is expected to put a damper on any propaganda victory by Beijing. The decision comes amid a ramped-up pace of so-called freedom of navigation operations (FONOPs) by U.S. warships and aircraft in and over the disputed South China Sea. It also comes less than a year after the Pentagon announced last May that it was disinviting the Chinese Navy from taking part in Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) drills — the world’s largest naval exercise. That announcement specifically pointed to China’s militarization of islands in the South China Sea as a reason for the cancellation. A month earlier, China deployed the first advanced anti-ship and anti-aircraft missiles to some of its fortified islets in the waterway’s Spratly chain. Beijing has built up a series of military outposts in the South China Sea, which includes vital sea lanes through which about $3 trillion in global trade passes each year. Washington and Beijing have frequently jousted over the militarization of the South China Sea, where China, Taiwan, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and the Philippines all have competing claims. The U.S. does not maintain any claims there but says its FONOPs are conducted globally with the aim of promoting freedom of navigation. Zhang Baohui, director of Lingnan University’s Center for Asian Pacific Studies in Hong Kong, said the decision not to send any warships or senior officials to the anniversary “is definitely a sign of tougher policies toward China” by the White House. “In the past, it was the U.S. that tried to establish steady military-to-military relations between the two countries,” Zhang said. This “represented U.S. efforts to engage China and broaden mutual trust. Now, the Trump administration has targeted China as a strategic competitor and the policy is competition rather than engagement. In that context, trust-building falls by the wayside.” The administration of U.S. President Donald Trump has used numerous policy documents, including the Pentagon’s 2018 National Defense Strategy and the White House’s 2017 National Security Strategy, to label China a “strategic competitor,” as part of its harder line in dealing with Beijing. As for the anniversary decision impacting the decisions by Tokyo and Seoul to participate, Zhang said it was unlikely that the two would pull out. “Japan has actually improved relations with China in substantial ways,” he said, noting the ongoing thaw between the two Asian giants under Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. “Its foreign policies, under Abe and in the context of Tokyo’s concerns for Trump’s trade policies and alliance politics, have become more independent,” he said. South Korea, with liberal President Moon Jae-in, also “wants good relations with Beijing,” he said. “So I expect both will send warships to the event.”
|
china;east china sea;conflict;u.s .;military;south china sea;xi jinping;anniversaries;donald trump
|
jp0002604
|
[
"asia-pacific"
] |
2019/04/05
|
Wildfires force thousands to evacuate in South Korea
|
SEOUL - Thousands of firefighters and soldiers are starting to contain wildfires in South Korea on Friday which have killed one person and forced more than 4,000 people to flee their homes, the South Korean government said. The fires broke out in eastern Gangwon Province on Thursday evening and spread to the cities of Sokcho and Gangneung, burning about 525 hectares (1,297 acres) and some 198 homes, warehouses and other buildings by early Friday, the government said. About 2,263 citizens were evacuated to gymnasiums and schools by early Friday, down from about 4,230 citizens earlier. 52 schools were closed. The fire in the Sokcho region has been contained, the government said, while about 50 percent of the fire in the Gangneung region was contained. President Moon Jae-in has ordered the use of all available resources to extinguish the forest fires, the presidential office said. Some 872 fire trucks and 3,251 firefighters from all over the country are currently working to contain the wildfire, the National Fire Agency said. The Ministry of Defense said some 16,500 soldiers, 32 military helicopters and 26 military firetrucks have been deployed as well, and plans to provide meals for 6,800 people. Some 4 billion won ($3.52 million) in special subsidies will be issued for containing the fires and cleaning up debris, along with 250 million won in disaster relief funds for temporary accomodation and daily necessities for evacuees, the Ministry of the Interior and Safety said.
|
fires;south korea
|
jp0002605
|
[
"asia-pacific",
"crime-legal-asia-pacific"
] |
2019/04/05
|
Christchurch massacre gunman Brenton Tarrant charged with 49 more mosque murders
|
CHRISTCHURCH, NEW ZEALAND - Australian Brenton Tarrant appeared in a New Zealand court on Friday where the suspected white supremacist was charged with an additional 49 counts of murder at two mosques last month. In an attack broadcast live on Facebook, a lone gunman armed with semi-automatic weapons targeted Muslims attending Friday prayers in Christchurch on March 15, killing 50 worshippers and wounding dozens of people. Tarrant, who was charged with one murder a day after the shooting attack, was also charged with 39 attempted murders on Friday. The High Court judge overseeing the appearance ordered Tarrant to undergo a mental assessment to determine whether he was fit to stand trial. He was not required to submit a plea. Tarrant, 28, has been moved to New Zealand’s only maximum-security prison in Auckland and appeared at the Christchurch High Court through a video link. Tarrant was then remanded to custody until June 14. High Court Judge Cameron Mander said whether Tarrant would be required to enter a plea at his next appearance depended on his mental health assessment and “any other developments.” Legal experts said two mental health experts would likely assess Tarrant, while police, who have not ruled out further charges, would continue to investigate New Zealand’s worst peacetime mass killing. Prison officials say Tarrant is under 24-hour surveillance with no access to media, according to news reports. He appeared via video handcuffed and seated, wearing a grey prison t-shirt. He listened calmly throughout the hearing, which lasted roughly 20 minutes. Around two dozen family members of victims and some survivors of the attacks were present in the courtroom. “The man had no emotion,” said Tofazzal Alam, a regular at one of the mosques, when asked about seeing the suspect on video. Tarrant would be represented by two Auckland lawyers, one of them, Shane Tait, said in a statement on his website, which did not include any comments on the case. Tait on Friday said he was arranging for his client to receive psychiatric assessment and that the process would take “some months,” according to court minutes. “As I observed at this morning’s hearing, that is a usual and regular step for counsel to take at this point in the proceeding,” said Judge Mander. Media had reported that Tarrant wished to represent himself and legal experts have said he may try to use the hearings as a platform to present his ideology and beliefs. “If he has lawyers, he will be speaking a lot less in court,” said Graeme Edgeler, a Wellington-based barrister and legal commentator. “He can still give evidence…that’s possible, but if he’s represented by lawyers and it goes to trial he won’t be asking questions of people.” Although journalists were able to attend and take notes, coverage of the hearing was restricted, with media only allowed to publish pixelated images of Tarrant that obscure his face. The judge also suppressed the names of people he was alleged to have attempted to murder. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern labelled the massacre an act of terrorism and quickly introduced tough new firearm laws which banned semi-automatic weapons. Muslims worldwide have praised New Zealand’s response to the massacre, with many singling out Ardern’s gesture of wearing a headscarf to meet victims’ families and urging the country to unite with the call: “We are one.” Thousands of visitors to the reopened Al Noor mosque, where 42 people were killed, have offered condolences and sought to learn more about Islam, said Israfil Hossain, who recites the daily call to prayer there. “They are coming from far just to say sorry … although they never did anything to us,” said Hossain, 26. On Thursday, a group of Carmelite nuns stood for the first time inside a mosque, holding back tears as they talked with worshippers about the two faiths. “Everybody has their own problems and they have their own ideas about religions, and that’s fine, and we should all have that, we’re all different,” said one nun, Sister Dorothea. “But we’re all humans and that’s the most important thing, our humanity.”
|
guns;murder;immigration;new zealand;christchurch;mass shootings;brenton tarrant
|
jp0002606
|
[
"national"
] |
2019/04/05
|
Japan's government went online to ensure Reiwa wouldn't clash with 'pachinko parlors or bars'
|
The government relied heavily on the internet when checking that the new era name, Reiwa, was not already in common use as the name of places, companies or organizations. The research method was a world away from the approach taken the previous time the government changed the country’s era name, from Showa to the current Heisei in 1989. A requirement for a new era name is that it is not a commonly used term, but no clear standards have been set out on how to determine whether it is. “We don’t adopt names seen in many places, such as those of pachinko parlors or bars,” a source at the Prime Minister’s Office explained. “Those used widely as personal names aren’t adopted either.” “We were able to check whether candidate era names were commonly used far more extensively than 30 years ago, mainly through the internet,” said Assistant Chief Cabinet Secretary Kazuyuki Furuya, who was in charge of the latest era name selection process. Soon after the Heisei Era began, in 1989, it came to light that a place called Henari, which uses the same kanji characters as Heisei, exists in Gifu Prefecture. Those involved in the selection of Heisei had been unaware. Internet searches were useful for narrowing down proposed era names this time, especially because the selection process was secret. Officials involved in the process were limited in number, and they were not allowed to obtain external advice directly. According to government sources, the names of Chinese places and companies were also examined. The government also knew that the kanji characters for Reiwa are used for Japanese male names Norikazu and Yoshikazu. But when considering the name, the government “attached importance to its good meaning,” Furuya said, and so it was selected to for the era set to begin on May 1, when Crown Prince Naruhito ascends to the throne. Reiwa means “beautiful harmony,” the Foreign Ministry has said.
|
internet;emperor akihito;names;abdication;reiwa;emperor naruhito
|
jp0002607
|
[
"national",
"science-health"
] |
2019/04/05
|
Japan medical panel starts talks on uterus transplants
|
The Japanese Association of Medical Sciences (JAMS) has established a committee to discuss whether uterus transplants should be allowed in Japan, sources with knowledge of the matter have said. The committee comprises 14 members, including executives of the Japan Society of Obstetrics and Gynecology and the Japan Society for Transplantation as well as specialists in bioethics, the sources said Thursday. Chaired by JAMS Vice President Masamitsu Iino, the committee held its first meeting on Wednesday. The surgery in question is aimed at transplanting uteri into women without a womb so they can become pregnant and give birth. The committee will examine the safety of uterus transplants for donors, patients and their babies. It will also discuss ethical issues, such as whether it would be permissible to impose such significant burdens on donors for surgeries that are not needed for the maintenance of life, the sources said. Surrogate delivery is one other option for women without a womb to have a child. The Japan Society of Obstetrics and Gynecology currently bans the practice, but the committee plans to discuss the advisability of surrogate delivery. Babies have been born through uterus transplants in some European countries and the United States. In Japan, a Keio University team submitted a plan in November last year to the Japan Society of Obstetrics and Gynecology to carry out the country’s first clinical trial surgery to transplant wombs into women who do not have a uterus.
|
babies;transplants;uterus;donors
|
jp0002608
|
[
"national",
"science-health"
] |
2019/04/05
|
Japan's Hayabusa2 probe drops explosive payload and blasts crater in asteroid Ryugu
|
A Japanese probe on Friday successfully launched an explosive device at an asteroid to blast a crater in its surface, from which it is planned to scoop up material that could shed light on how the solar system evolved. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) said it was the world’s first such experiment on the asteroid Ryugu, after confirming in images sent from JAXA’s Hayabusa2 probe that blasted debris had risen from the asteroid’s surface. The explosive mission aiming to reveal more about the origins of life on Earth is the riskiest yet attempted by the Hayabusa2 probe. Hayabusa2 released the “small carry-on impactor” (SCI) — a cone-shaped device capped with a copper bottom — as scheduled, as the probe hovered just 500 meters (1,650 feet) above the asteroid Ryugu. The impactor later exploded as planned, propelling the copper bottom toward Ryugu, where it gouged a crater into the surface of the asteroid that spins 300 million kilometers from planet Earth. Hayabusa2 moved smartly away from the area to avoid being damaged by debris from the explosion or by colliding with the asteroid. While doing so it successfully released a camera above the site of the detonation that was able to capture images of the event. The successful release of the camera sparked jubilant applause at Mission Control. At the time it was unclear when the first confirmation of the mission’s success would come. It will take two weeks for the probe itself to return to its “home position” near Ryugu after the detonation and impact. “It is a challenging mission, but we have made thorough preparations for it,” said Takashi Kubota, a professor at JAXA’s Institute of Space and Astronautical Science, during a morning news conference. “I leave the rest to fate,” he added. The size of the crater is yet to be confirmed, but it could be as large as 10 meters in diameter if the surface is sandy or three meters across if it is rocky, according to JAXA scientists. NASA’s Deep Impact project succeeded in creating an artificial crater on a comet in 2005, but only for observation purposes. The aim of the crater on Ryugu is to throw up “fresh” material from under the asteroid’s surface that could shed light on the early stages of the solar system. The asteroid is thought to contain relatively large amounts of organic matter and water from some 4.6 billion years ago, when the solar system formed. In February, Hayabusa2 touched down briefly on Ryugu and fired a bullet into the surface to puff up dust for collection, before blasting back to its holding position. The Hayabusa2 mission, with a price tag of around ¥30 billion ($270 million), was launched in December 2014 and is scheduled to return to Earth with its samples in 2020. Photos of Ryugu — which means “dragon palace” in Japanese and refers to a castle at the bottom of the ocean in an ancient Japanese tale — show the asteroid has a rough surface full of boulders. Hayabusa2 observes the surface of the asteroid with its camera and sensing equipment but has also dispatched two tiny MINERVA-II rover robots as well as the French-German robot MASCOT to assist with surface observation. At about the size of a large fridge, Hayabusa2 is equipped with solar panels and is the successor to JAXA’s first asteroid explorer, Hayabusa, named after the Japanese for falcon. That probe returned with dust samples from a smaller, potato-shaped asteroid in 2010, despite various setbacks during its epic seven-year odyssey, and was hailed as a scientific triumph.
|
nasa;space;jaxa;asteroids;geology;hayabusa2;ryugu
|
jp0002609
|
[
"national"
] |
2019/04/05
|
Application site for Tokyo 2020 Olympic ticket lottery to open in May
|
Tokyo’s Olympic organizing committee said Friday that it will start accepting applications for the 2020 Olympic ticket lottery in May. The application period will begin after the Golden Week holidays end on May 6. The official website is scheduled to go online on April 18 as a “preopening” move, the organizing committee for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics and Paralympics said. The site will provide detailed schedules of the events and an explanation of the application process. The results will not be released until at least June 14, after a new law banning ticket-scalping takes effect. Those wishing to purchase tickets from the official Tokyo 2020 Olympic website are required to register for Olympic IDs. According to organizers, over 2 million people had registered through March 31. The registration site can be found at tokyo2020.org/jp/special/2020id/
|
tokyo olympics;2020 tokyo olympics;olympic tickets
|
jp0002610
|
[
"national"
] |
2019/04/05
|
Crowdfunding campaign aims to help leukemia patients in Japan have children after treatment
|
An organization promoting bone marrow donations has launched a crowdfunding campaign intended to help protect the future fertility of leukemia patients and their ability to have children. The group hopes to collect ¥10 million in about two months through the campaign, which was launched Thursday. The goal is to financially support leukemia patients by storing their sperm and eggs, before their reproductive functions are damaged and possibly lost due to radiation therapy related to bone marrow transplants. Such provision opens up the possibility of having children in the future using those preserved reproductive materials. As sperm and egg storage is not covered under health insurance programs, patients themselves are currently required to bear all costs related to such treatment. According to the organization, collection and storage of sperm costs about ¥20,000 to ¥70,000, while comparable treatment and services for eggs cost from ¥150,000 to ¥450,000. Annual preservation fees stand at about ¥10,000 to ¥60,000. The organization held a news conference in Tokyo on Thursday to announce the launch of the crowdfunding campaign, with speakers including a 42-year-old male public servant from the island of Shikoku who was diagnosed with chronic myeloid leukemia when he was 25. The man, who underwent a bone marrow transplant operation after the diagnosis, had his sperm preserved beforehand. He now has three children. The collection and preservation of his sperm cost more than ¥500,000, with some of the funding covered by his parents. “Many people in their 20s don’t have much money, and costs for treating such diseases are high,” the man said. “Financial assistance (for sperm and egg storage) can reduce patients’ financial and psychological burdens and give them a sense of relief.” A 49-year-old housewife from Yokohama who suffered from aplastic anemia had her eggs stored when she was 35, before receiving a bone marrow transplant. She gave birth to a baby girl five years ago. “I want a system to be created that enables people fighting difficult diseases to receive treatment for their illness while maintaining the hope of having children in the future,” she told the news conference. The campaign is collecting donations through its website .
|
charity;cancer;leukemia;fertility;crowdfunding
|
jp0002611
|
[
"national",
"politics-diplomacy"
] |
2019/04/05
|
Deputy land minister quits after using graft buzzword sontaku to describe his decision to fund project for Abe
|
Deputy land minister Ichiro Tsukada resigned Friday, days after using contentious wording to claim he had influenced the allocation of funds for a major highway project he believed was favored by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Deputy Prime Minister Taro Aso. Tsukada made the remark on April 1 during a campaign rally for a candidate, backed by the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, running in the Fukuoka gubernatorial election set to be held Sunday. The sudden resignation by the senior vice minister at the Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism Ministry appeared to be a damage-control effort aimed at protecting the LDP’s election campaigns. At the rally, Tsukada said he used sontaku — the act of surmising what your boss really wants and taking actions to achieve it without receiving any clear instructions or orders from that person — when allocating research funds to the project, which will link Shimonoseki in Yamaguchi Prefecture with Kitakyushu, in Fukuoka. Yamaguchi and Fukuoka are the home prefectures of Abe and Aso, respectively. “I’m quick to understand. I immediately employed sontaku,” Tsukada told the rally in Kitakyushu. His remark was verified in a voice clip uploaded to the news website of broadcaster TV Asahi. “Of course neither the prime minister nor the deputy prime minister could say things like this. But I use sontaku,” he said. Facing reporters Friday in Tokyo, however, Tsukada denied that he had ever used his political influence to allocate funds to the highway project. He said he would step down anyway, as his remarks “caused great trouble to everybody.” “I’m really sorry for making a remark that was not true during a major rally like that,” he said. Tsukada didn’t clearly explain why he made what he now claims was an erroneous remark. Reporters asked him to explain why many times, but he only said that his comments were “different from facts” because he was “overwhelmed by the atmosphere” of the campaign rally. Tsukada’s remark drew particular public attention partly because sontaku was a buzzword in the cronyism scandal involving Osaka-based school operator Moritomo Gakuen and Abe’s wife, Akie. The scandal has been rocking the Abe administration since 2017. Abe has denied using his influence to favor Moritomo Gakuen, but it is widely believed the Finance Ministry sold a land plot in Osaka to the school operator at a huge discount because the first lady temporarily served as the honorary principal of an incomplete elementary school that was being built there under the Moritomo Gakuen group. The sale, conducted by the Finance Ministry officials, was widely described as an example of sontaku at work. Because of that association, Tsukada’s use of the word at this time carried a particularly bad connotation and has caused quite a stir among the public. Tsukada’s gaffe and resignation are likely to have some adverse affect on LDP campaigning across the country for the unified local elections scheduled this Sunday, including the Fukuoka gubernatorial election. Tsukada himself was expected to become an LDP candidate for Niigata Prefecture in the Upper House election in summer, which is likely to be a key barometer for public opinion on Abe’s administration. Tsukada is also a member of an LDP intraparty faction headed by Aso. “I think the remark was inappropriate,” said Defense Minister Takeshi Iwaya during a news conference Friday. “He probably said that to warm up the rally,” Iwaya said, going on to hint that someone in a vice-ministerial position, overseeing such projects, could have displayed better judgment. Iwaya is also a member of Aso’s faction. “Reactions to his words were much stronger than expected,” Iwaya added. “I think he made a decision (to quit) so that he would not cause any more trouble.”
|
shinzo abe;taro aso;corruption;fukuoka;yamaguchi;sontaku;mlit;ichiro tsukada
|
jp0002612
|
[
"national"
] |
2019/04/05
|
Evacuees can return next week to parts of Okuma, host of Fukushima nuclear plant, but few likely to
|
The government formalized on Friday its decision to partially lift from next Wednesday a mandatory evacuation order for residents of a town that jointly hosts the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant. The town of Okuma — which saw all of its roughly 10,000 residents evacuate after one of the world’s worst nuclear disasters, triggered by a deadly earthquake and tsunami — will allow former residents to return for the first time in eight years, the government decided. The decision was said to be based on the lower radiation levels achieved through decontamination work. Futaba, the other town that hosts the plant, remains a no-go zone. Despite the decision, a very small number of residents are expected to return to Okuma. As of late March, only 367 people from 138 households, or around 3.5 percent of the original population of 10,341, were registered as residents of areas where the order will be lifted. “Lifting the evacuation order is not the final goal. We will strive to restore a habitable environment for the population,” Economy, Trade and Industry Minister Hiroshige Seko said at a news conference. There will be no restrictions in place over approximately 38 percent of the town’s total area, but the rest will remain off-limits due to higher radiation levels. On March 11, 2011, a tsunami engulfed the six-reactor nuclear power plant located on the Pacific Coast, causing core meltdowns at reactors 1, 2 and 3 and hydrogen explosions at units 1, 3 and 4 in the days that followed and leading to the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl in 1986. At the peak of the crisis some 160,000 people were evacuated from their homes in Fukushima Prefecture, and about 40,000 people remained displaced as of the end of March this year.
|
fukushima;fukushima no . 1;radiation;tepco;nuclear energy;okuma;disasters
|
jp0002613
|
[
"national"
] |
2019/04/05
|
Even in retirement, Ichiro still not ready to accept Japan's prestigious People's Honor Award
|
International baseball star Ichiro Suzuki has turned down the nation’s prestigious People’s Honor Award for the third time, a government spokesperson said Friday. Ichiro, who retired from professional baseball last month, instructed his agent to notify the government of his intention to decline the award, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told a press briefing in Tokyo. The 45-year-old former major leaguer said he wishes to “devote himself so he can receive it when he draws a curtain on his life,” according to Suga. “We will respect his thoughts and we will not go forward with (offering him the award) following his retirement,” the top government spokesman said. “He is a superstar who has given many people hopes and dreams, and I look forward to his future endeavors together with the Japanese people.” The government has attempted multiple times to present him with the award for the numerous records he established during his career in Japan and the United States. Ichiro announced his retirement last month following the Seattle Mariners’ season-opening series against the Oakland Athletics at Tokyo Dome. Playing in his 28th professional season, and 19th in the majors, he started in the outfield for the Mariners but was hitless in the two games. Japan’s government first offered the award to the outfielder for his impressive debut season in the United States in 2001, before asking again in 2004 after he set Major League Baseball’s single-season hit record with 262. Ichiro joined the Seattle Mariners in 2001, becoming a fan favorite across two countries with his unique batting style, speed and defense. That year, he won the American League’s Rookie of the Year and MVP awards as he helped lead the Mariners to a record-tying 116-win season. Ichiro, who started his career in 1992 with the Orix BlueWave, now known as the Orix Buffaloes, had more hits in professional baseball than any other player — numbering 4,367 combined across Japan and the major leagues. He signed with the New York Yankees in 2012 before joining the Miami Marlins in 2015. After returning to the Mariners last year, he was cut last May and given a front office role for the rest of the season. Established in 1977, the People’s Honor Award has been bestowed upon individuals and one team for achievements in sports, entertainment and culture, including securing Olympic gold medals. The most recent recipient was two-time Olympic figure skating gold medalist Yuzuru Hanyu, who was handed the award by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in July 2018.
|
baseball;awards;ichiro suzuki;seattle mariners;people 's honor award
|
jp0002614
|
[
"national"
] |
2019/04/05
|
Education ministry panel in Japan drafts rules clarifying that sex discrimination in university entrance exams is improper
|
An education ministry panel has drafted common rules clearly stipulating that any gender-based discrimination in university admission exams is inappropriate. Other inappropriate admission-related practices cited by the rules, included in the panel’s interim report announced Friday, include giving preferential treatment to specific applicants without rational reasons and treating first-time and multiple takers of such tests in a different manner. The panel was set up after unfair admissions practices at Japanese medical schools came to light. The ministry will revise its guidelines for admissions exams in June after receiving the panel’s final report and collecting opinions from related groups, such as the Japan Association of National Universities. The interim report called on universities to clarify the number of applicants to be admitted and give rational explanations when setting up special admission quotas based on regions and other factors. The report also urged universities to make consensus-based admission decisions to prevent arbitrary judgments by any specific person, and to ensure that the score-based rankings of exam takers who may be admitted to fill vacancies are disclosed to such candidates. Last December, the education ministry released the result of its probe into university admissions processes, which found that nine of Japan’s 81 medical schools have manipulated their entrance exams to favor men and relatives of alumni. The nine schools are Tokyo Medical University, Juntendo University, Showa University, Nihon University, Kobe University, Kitasato University, Iwate Medical University, Kanazawa Medical University and Fukuoka University.
|
universities;gender discrimination;entrance examinations
|
jp0002615
|
[
"national"
] |
2019/04/05
|
Japan's land minister voids Okinawa's move to halt construction of U.S. base at Henoko
|
Land minister Keiichi Ishii said Friday that he has decided to nullify a move by the Okinawa Prefectural Government aimed at halting reclamation work for a planned U.S. base off the Henoko district in Nago. Last August, the prefectural government canceled the landfill approval made in 2013 by then-Gov. Hirokazu Nakaima, citing the subsequent discovery of soft ground at the work site and a lack of environmental protection measures such as the preservation of coral reefs. But Ishii told a news conference Friday that there was no reason to void the reclamation approval, because it is possible to carry out the work after stabilizing the soft ground. He also said that environment preservation measures have been implemented based on instructions from experts. Ishii made the decision after screening a nullification request by the Defense Ministry’s Okinawa Bureau under the administrative complaint review law. The decision — made by a member of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s Cabinet, which is promoting the construction of the replacement facility for U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Futenma in Ginowan — may spark strong criticism in Okinawa, where more than 70 percent of voters opposed the work in a February referendum, observers said. Later in the day, Defense Minister Takeshi Iwaya underscored the Abe administration’s resolve to push ahead with the project to relocate the base, saying that the central government aims to realize the full return of land occupied by the current base as soon as possible. Prior to his final decision, Ishii had suspended the revocation of the landfill approval upon receiving the Okinawa Defense Bureau’s complaint. In response, the Okinawa government brought the case to a third-party panel under the internal affairs ministry, claiming that the suspension was illegal. After the panel dismissed Okinawa’s claim, the prefectural government took the matter to the Naha branch of the Fukuoka High Court on March 22. The case is pending.
|
okinawa;u.s. bases;futenma;henoko;keiichi ishii;mlit
|
jp0002617
|
[
"national",
"crime-legal"
] |
2019/04/05
|
Pierre Taki of Japan techno-pop duo Denki Groove out on ¥4 million bail following cocaine charge
|
Pierre Taki, an actor and member of Japanese techno-pop duo Denki Groove, was released Thursday on bail of ¥4 million ($35,900) after he was indicted earlier this week on a charge of using cocaine. “Because of my anti-social behavior, I caused trouble and worry for many people. I’m very sorry,” said Taki, wearing a black suit with a black tie as he appeared in front of the media shortly after being released from police custody. The 51-year-old, whose real name is Masanori Taki, was arrested on March 12 on suspicion of violating the narcotics control law by inhaling a small amount of cocaine at an apartment, which was not his own home, in Tokyo. A lawyer representing him requested his release on bail a day after he was indicted Tuesday. Denki Groove has performed at a number of overseas music and dance festivals. This year, the group, which also includes Takkyu Ishino, took part in a tour to celebrate its 30th anniversary. Taki is also known as the Japanese voice of snowman Olaf in the hit Disney animated film “Frozen” and has appeared in a number of films and TV dramas. Investigators said Taki told them he had been using cocaine and cannabis since his 20s.
|
drugs;cocaine;denki groove;pierre taki
|
jp0002618
|
[
"business"
] |
2019/04/02
|
Renault alerts prosecutors over suspicious Oman dealer payments under Carlos Ghosn
|
PARIS - Renault SA has alerted French prosecutors to payments made to a Renault-Nissan business partner in Oman under former Chief Executive Carlos Ghosn, according to three sources. This follows an internal investigation by the French carmaker after Ghosn’s November arrest in Tokyo for suspected financial misconduct at alliance partner Nissan Motor Co. Renault has established it paid out millions of euros described as dealer incentives to Omani distributor Suhail Bahwan Automobiles (SBA) over five years from around 2011, said the sources, who were briefed on the findings. Nissan previously found that its own regional subsidiary made questionable payments of more than $30 million to SBA. But the information sent to French prosecutors shows that much of the cash was then channeled to a Lebanese company controlled by Ghosn associates, the sources said. The total sum paid by Renault is in the double-digit millions of dollars, one source said. “We categorically deny the allegations of potential embezzlement in Oman,” said Ghosn’s French lawyer, Jean-Yves Le Borgnet. Renault spokesman Frederic Texier declined to comment, while the French financial prosecutor’s office did not respond to requests for comment and SBA could not be reached. Responding last month to earlier reports about the Nissan payments via SBA, a Ghosn family spokesman said: “The dealer incentive payments were directed by regional heads, not the CEO, and rewarded top performing dealers around the world.” Ghosn is awaiting trial in Japan on charges that he failed to report around ¥9 billion in Nissan pay he had arranged to receive after retirement. He has also been indicted for transferring personal investment losses to Nissan and steering $14.7 million (¥1.6 billion) in company funds to Saudi businessman Khaled Juffali. Renault initially sought to avoid being drawn into the investigation initiated by Nissan — which ousted Ghosn as chairman days after his arrest — and for weeks avoided sharing the Japanese partner’s findings with its own board. But Ghosn was eventually forced out as Renault chairman and CEO in January, when Michelin veteran Jean-Dominique Senard was appointed chairman, and the alliance partners embarked on an independent audit of their joint finances the following month. Born in Brazil to Lebanese parents, Ghosn, 65, returned to Lebanon as a child and retains a powerful network of friends and associates there. A Beirut house was among several properties around the world that were purchased by Nissan for his use, as the company’s investigation revealed early on. The joint audit of the Renault-Nissan BV alliance management organization has tallied €1.2 million (¥150 million) in Lebanese donations and other spending of questionable benefit to the carmakers, among preliminary results presented to Renault directors this week, two sources familiar with the matter said. The audit is examining the use of four corporate jets financed by the Dutch-registered subsidiary and payments of around €170,000 (¥21.2 million) annually to Carlos Abou Jaoude, Ghosn’s personal lawyer in Lebanon, over six years, the sources said. There is no suggestion of any wrongdoing by the lawyer. In an earlier complaint filed with French prosecutors in February, Renault turned over evidence that the €50,000 (¥6.2 million) rental cost of Ghosn’s Chateau de Versailles wedding in 2016 had been improperly charged to the company. But the alleged Oman connection may deepen Renault’s exposure to the scandal unearthed by Nissan, which has strained their 20-year-old alliance, and raises questions about governance at the French parent company. Cash from Ghosn’s own “CEO office” budgets at Renault as well as Nissan moved through the regional sales divisions to SBA and on to a Lebanese intermediary, Good Faith Investments Holding, the three people briefed on the findings said. From there it flowed on to privately held entities, including a British Virgin Islands-registered vehicle that paid for a $15 million (¥1.7 billion) yacht, they said. Renault’s findings, delivered to prosecutors late last week, also include evidence suggesting that some of the funds were passed to a California-based company co-founded by Carlos Ghosn’s son, Anthony Ghosn, the sources said. There was no suggestion of any wrongdoing by Anthony Ghosn or that he knew about the origin of the funds invested in his firm, Shogun Investments LLC. The Ghosn family spokesman, who also represents Anthony, declined to comment. Carlos Ghosn has not been charged with any offenses in relation to the findings of either carmaker concerning incentive payments to SBA, the Omani partner, the spokesman added.
|
france;nissan;prosecutors;renault;carlos ghosn;oman;sba
|
jp0002619
|
[
"business"
] |
2019/04/02
|
U.S. airlines back up after second system glitch in a week
|
BANGALORE, INDIA/WASHINGTON - Major U.S. airlines were back up and running on Monday after a system-wide outage delayed hundreds of flights and fired-up customer complaints on social media, the second such disruption in a week. The Federal Aviation Administration said the root of the problem was caused by the program provided by Scottsdale, Arizona-based AeroData Inc. that helps airlines measure and manage weight and balance. The agency released a statement around 8:30 a.m. ET, saying the issue had been resolved and an FAA spokesman said it plans to look into the outage. American Airlines, Southwest Airlines and Delta Air Lines had reported outages. United Airlines said it was unable to create paperwork for some time. “A brief third-party technology issue that prevented some Delta Connection flights from being dispatched on time this morning has been resolved,” Delta said. Other airlines also reported a series of delays. Southwest Airlines was the first carrier to report that the problem had been resolved and it would get travelers moving soon, but added that customers could expect flight delays. A Southwest spokesman could not confirm how many flights were delayed, but said it was safe to say hundreds. FlightAware, an airline tracking website, said Southwest had delayed 775 flights, or 18 percent of its U.S. flights on Monday. American Airlines, JetBlue Airways Corp., United Airlines and other carriers later said the technical issue had been resolved. JetBlue added it was still dealing with residual delays, while United said about 150 flights were delayed. Last week, several airlines had reported issues with Sabre Corp.’s flight reservation and booking system due to which passengers had difficulty accessing flight check-in systems. Just a few minutes of system downtime in AeroData can result in over 100 delayed flights and loss of revenue, according to a 2017 case study by VMware Inc. AeroData could not be immediately reached for comment. Customers barraged Twitter with their complaints over confusion at airports and delayed flights. One Southwest passenger reported waiting on the tarmac in a plane in Dallas for 90 minutes after his 6 a.m. flight to New Orleans was delayed. The airline said after the systems resumed that the flight would arrive at 8:05 a.m. “@SouthwestAir, I get the glitch, but if you could update your flight status times to current status that would help confused travelers from running frantic to catch a flight when the plane is not even waiting at the gate yet. Flight 929 not 8:50 but ‘around’ 10 am,” a passenger tweeted. “My number one traveling pet peeve? Not updating a flight as delayed when you know the prior flight is delayed. How hard is this to get right @AmericanAir?” said another frustrated passenger. Other passengers reported long wait times at airports and missed connections.
|
u.s .;airlines;faa;aerodata
|
jp0002620
|
[
"business"
] |
2019/04/02
|
BMW and Peugeot go ahead with temporary U.K. plant shutdowns despite Brexit delay
|
LONDON - BMW’s Mini plant in Britain closes for four weeks from Monday and Peugeot’s Vauxhall car factory shuts for two weeks in moves planned months ago to help the firms deal with any disruption resulting from Brexit, which has since been delayed. BMW, which builds just over 15 percent of Britain’s 1.5 million cars, moved its annual summertime shutdown to April to “minimise the risk of any possible short-term parts-supply disruption in the event of a no-deal Brexit.” Peugeot parent company PSA, which builds Astra models branded as Vauxhall in Britain and Opel on the continent at its Ellesmere Port factory, has brought forward its shutdown in a decision made at the end of last year, a spokesman said. Britain’s departure from the EU has now been pushed back from March 29 until at least April 12 or potentially much later, ruining some of the contingency plans of certain carmakers. Shutdowns are organized far in advance so employee holidays can be scheduled and suppliers can adjust volumes, making them hard to move. “This is what our company and our workforce have planned for over many months and it is fixed into our business planning,” said a BMW spokesman. It represents the latest headache for Britain’s once roaring car sector which had been on track for record production but since 2017 has posted sharp falls in sales, output and investment. The overwhelmingly foreign-owned industry has become increasingly incredulous as a stable and attractive investment environment descends into one of its deepest political crises, risking the free and frictionless trade the sector relies on. BMW’s Rolls-Royce factory in Goodwood will close for two weeks while Jaguar Land Rover’s (JLR) three car plants and engine facility and Honda’s Swindon facility will also shut for a few days this month as part of Brexit contingencies. It has been a turbulent few months for the sector after Nissan canceled plans to build a new sport utility vehicle at its English Sunderland plant and Honda said it would shutter its plant in 2021 in the biggest blow to the sector for years. Toyota provided a rare boost when it announced plans to build cars for Suzuki at its English car plant. BMW, which is also closing its central English Hams Hall engine facility and Swindon press shop and sub-assembly site for four weeks, has said it could move some engine and Mini output out of Britain if there is not an orderly Brexit. Carmakers face a number of risks if there is a disorderly Brexit, including delays to the supply of ports and finished models, new customs bureaucracy, the need to recertify models and an up to 10 percent tariff on finished vehicles. A series of investment decisions are coming up, including whether Peugeot will keep the Ellesmere Port site open and if it will build electric vans at its southern English Luton facility, which is closed for three weeks as it is retooled for production of the new Vivaro vehicle. Petrochemicals firm Ineos is also due to choose the location for its off-roader whilst a decision is pending on whether JLR will build electric vehicles in its home market.
|
eu;u.k .;toyota;nissan;carmakers;suzuki;bmw;brexit;peugeot
|
jp0002621
|
[
"business",
"tech"
] |
2019/04/02
|
FamilyMart launches facial recognition checkouts at Yokohama outlet amid Japan's labor crunch
|
YOKOHAMA - Major convenience store operator FamilyMart Co. on Tuesday introduced checkouts that use facial recognition technology as the company looks to make adjustments amid a nationwide labor shortage. With the latest facial recognition and image analysis technologies developed by Panasonic Corp., customers at a newly opened store in Yokohama can register their photo and credit card information and then check out items using unmanned registers. Customers simply need to place the items they want to purchase on a surface and cameras at the counter register both their face and the products. Their payment is processed when a passcode linked to the registered credit card is entered. In the trial stage, around 1,000 customers will be given access to the system, all of them workers at nearby Panasonic factories. “I am very excited to open this store with Panasonic’s latest technology. We may face some (technological) difficulties, but we must overcome them,” FamilyMart President Takashi Sawada told reporters. Panasonic, which operates the FamilyMart store as a franchisee, has dispatched an official to serve as the store’s senior manager in order to keep a close eye on the new system. The hope is that the store will be able to effectively operate with a smaller than usual crew. A FamilyMart official said the company would like to introduce the facial recognition system in other stores in Japan if the trial proves successful. Amid a declining population, major convenience store operators have suffered from labor shortages and have struggled to maintain around-the-clock services. Seven-Eleven Japan Co. joined with NEC Corp. to begin a similar experiment using facial recognition tech in December at a Tokyo outlet, with eligible customers restricted to employees of NEC. Lawson Inc. said Friday it will try operating two unmanned stores overnight from July. Customers will be able to use self-checkout machines and a smartphone app to scan product barcodes. Company sources also said Monday that Lawson will introduce self-checkout systems at all its 14,000 stores nationwide by October.
|
convenience stores;familymart;facial recognition
|
jp0002622
|
[
"business",
"tech"
] |
2019/04/02
|
FAA says it expects to receive Boeing 737 Max software fix over 'coming weeks'
|
WASHINGTON - The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said on Monday it expects to receive Boeing Co’s proposed software enhancement package for the grounded 737 Max “over the coming weeks” after the company had previously said it planned to submit the fix for government approval by last week. FAA spokesman Greg Martin said that “time is needed for additional work by Boeing as the result of an ongoing review of the 737 Max Flight Control System to ensure that Boeing has identified and appropriately addressed all pertinent issues.” Southwest Airlines said on Monday it is “publishing a revised schedule for April and May that is built around the currently available Southwest fleet and intends to reduce drastically last-minute trip disruptions and same-day cancellations.” Boeing did not immediately comment on the FAA’s statement. The company said earlier on Monday that it continues to work with the FAA and “other regulatory agencies worldwide on the certification of the software update and training program.” Boeing said last week that it had reprogrammed software on its 737 Max passenger jet to prevent erroneous data from triggering an anti-stall system that is under mounting scrutiny following the two deadly nose-down crashes. The world’s largest planemaker said the anti-stall system, which is believed to have repeatedly forced the nose lower in at least one of the accidents, in Indonesia last October, would only do so one time after sensing a problem, giving pilots more control. It would also be disabled if two airflow sensors that measure the “angle of attack,” or angle of the wing to the airflow, a fundamental parameter of flight, offer widely different readings, Boeing said last week.
|
u.s .;boeing;faa;737 max;air accidents
|
jp0002623
|
[
"business",
"tech"
] |
2019/04/02
|
Google's new external AI ethics council apparently already falling apart
|
SAN FRANCISCO/LONDON/NEW YORK - Google recently appointed an external ethics council to deal with tricky issues in artificial intelligence. The group is meant to help the company appease critics while still pursuing lucrative cloud computing deals. In less than a week, the council is already falling apart, a development that may jeopardize Google’s chance of winning more military cloud-computing contracts. On Saturday, Alessandro Acquisti, a behavioral economist and privacy researcher, said he won’t be serving on the council. “While I’m devoted to research grappling with key ethical issues of fairness, rights and inclusion in AI, I don’t believe this is the right forum for me to engage in this important work,” Acquisti said on Twitter. He didn’t respond to a request for comment. On Monday, a group of employees started a petition asking the company to remove another member: Kay Cole James, president of a conservative think tank who has fought against equal-rights laws for gay and transgender people. In less than two hours after it went live, more than 300 staff signed the petition anonymously. Employee activism on equal pay for women, sexual harassment, AI ethics and doing business in China has roiled Google over the past year. The protests have been effective. The company pulled out of a deal with the U.S. military to build object recognition technology for drones, prompting criticism from politicians including U.S. President Donald Trump. Google changed its policies after thousands of workers walked off their jobs to protest how the company deals with sexual harassment complaints. At the same time, conservative politicians have said the company’s algorithms and content moderators unfairly discriminate against them in search results and YouTube, though there is no proof for these claims. Appointing Cole James, who is the president of influential right-wing think tank the Heritage Foundation, could be seen to conservatives as a sign that Google is hearing their concerns. Some AI experts and activists have also called on Google to remove from the board Dyan Gibbens, the CEO of Trumbull Unmanned, a drone technology company. Gibbens and her co-founders at Trumbull previously worked on U.S. military drones. Using AI for military uses is a major point of contention for some Google employees. Joanna Bryson, a professor of computer science at the University of Bath, in England, who was appointed to the Google ethics council, said she also had reservations about some of her fellow council members. “Believe it or not, I know worse about one of the other people,” she said on Twitter in response to a post questioning James’ appointment. “I know I have pushed (Google) before on some of their associations and they say they need diversity in order to be convincing to society broadly, e.g. the GOP.” AI is core to Google’s future. It’s spent hundreds of millions of dollars acquiring AI startups and paying leading researchers to work at the company. The technology is also key to the sales pitch for its cloud business, which is becoming more important as revenue growth at its core search ads unit slows down. A Google spokeswoman did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The AI council is meant to act as a check on the company’s decisions, meeting regularly and producing reports on developments in the field and in Google’s technology. It does not have veto power but is meant to offer “diverse perspectives to inform our work,” Google’s Chief Legal Officer Kent Walker said in a March 26 blog post.
|
google;drones;lgbt;pentagon;ai;donald trump;heritage foundation;alessandro acquisti
|
jp0002624
|
[
"business",
"financial-markets"
] |
2019/04/02
|
Dollar retains firm tone at around ¥111.35 in Tokyo
|
The dollar Tuesday remained on a firm tone at levels around ¥111.35, while trading was subdued amid a dearth of incentives. At 5 p.m., the dollar stood at ¥111.37-37, up from ¥111.04-04 at the same time Monday. The euro was at $1.1199-1199, down from $1.1238-1238, and at ¥124.73-73, down from ¥124.79-80. The dollar temporarily rose around ¥111.45 in early trading, carrying over its strength in overseas trading brought on by a U.S. manufacturing index reading topping a market consensus, market sources said. But the U.S. currency came under selling pressure as it neared the technical threshold of ¥111.50, they pointed out. The greenback’s topside was capped by the Nikkei 225 stock average’s downturn after a vigorous start, a currency broker said. But investors who were heartened by rises in stock prices and long-term interest rates in the United States on Monday continued to underpin the dollar, an official at a foreign exchange margin trading service firm said. Some participants forecast that a wait-and-see mood would linger until the release of U.S. employment data Friday.
|
forex;currencies
|
jp0002625
|
[
"business",
"financial-markets"
] |
2019/04/02
|
Tokyo stocks turn down on profit-taking
|
Stocks failed Tuesday to keep early gains and ended lower, hit by waves of selling to lock in profits after a two-session rally. The Nikkei 225 average closed down 3.72 points, or 0.02 percent, at 21,505.31 after surging 303.22 points Monday. The Topix, which overs all first-section issues on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, was off 4.12 points, or 0.25 percent, at 1,611.69. It rose 24.17 points Monday. The market surged at the outset after the stronger than expected Institute for Supply Management manufacturing index for March helped lift the Dow Jones Industrial Average to a six-month high Monday, brokers said. The yen’s weakening against the dollar and rises in European equities also contributed to the early morning jump. After the initial round of buying ended, however, profit-taking pressure gradually built up while fresh buying incentives were absent, brokers said. “Given the Nikkei’s 475-point advance in the two successive rallies, investors moved to sell for now,” said Yoshihiko Tabei, chief analyst at Naito Securities Co. Buying momentum was weak with players growing cautious ahead of the start of earnings reporting season in Japan and the United States later this month, Tabei added. The positive ISM index reading, on top of the recent Chinese manufacturing data, has increased investor appetite. But there are many things to watch closely, including developments related to Britain’s exit from the European Union and the U.S.-China trade dispute, brokers pointed out. The Nikkei is unlikely to retake 22,000 anytime soon, many analysts agreed. Falling issues outnumbered rising ones 1,181 to 886 in the first section, while 72 issues were unchanged. Volume decreased to 1.343 billion shares from 1.419 billion Monday. Domestic demand-oriented names met with selling, including Railway operator JR Tokai, down 2.98 percent, daily goods maker Kao, down 1.79 percent, and mobile phone carrier KDDI, down 1.55 percent. Bicycle retailer Asahi plunged 8.34 percent on a disappointing operating profit projection for the business year through next February. Among other losers were cybermall operator Rakuten and technology giant Sony. Meanwhile, semiconductor-related issues rose after U.S. technologies fared well in New York on Monday. Of them, wafer producer Sumco gained by 5.42 percent, semiconductor inspection device maker Advantest by 4.54 percent, and chipmaking gear manufacturer Tokyo Electron by 3.09 percent. Financials attracted buying thanks to a rise in U.S. long-term interest rates, with insurer Dai-ichi Life boosted by 2.78 percent and mega-bank group Mitsubishi UFJ by 1.68 percent. Also on the sunny side were industrial robot producer Fanuc and drugmaker Eisai.
|
stocks;nikkei;tse;topix
|
jp0002627
|
[
"business",
"financial-markets"
] |
2019/04/02
|
Bitcoin's sudden, puzzling surge propels it above $5,000, as other cryptocurrencies rally
|
HONG KONG - Bitcoin climbed suddenly Tuesday to the highest level since November, leading a surge in virtual currencies and ending three months of calm in the $160 billion market. Traders struggled to pinpoint a reason for the rally, which increased the value of digital assets tracked by CoinMarketCap.com by about $17 billion in less than an hour and briefly lifted Bitcoin above $5,000. Rival coins such as Ether, Ripple and Litecoin also jumped, as did cryptocurrency-linked stocks in Asia, including Remixpoint Inc. and Monex Group Inc. While sudden swings in Bitcoin are nothing new, price action in the virtual currency has been relatively subdued this year as investors weighed the prospects for more mainstream adoption after last year’s 74 percent crash. Market participants say big buy or sell orders in Bitcoin can often lead to outsized moves, in part because volume is spread across dozens of venues. Trend-following individual investors can also exacerbate volatility. “The Bitcoin market and crypto-market in general continues to be small relative to the rest of the markets and emotional,” said Jehan Chu, managing partner at blockchain investment and advisory firm Kenetic Capital. “It’s still very much subject to waves of enthusiasm. I don’t think today is anything special other than a temporary enthusiasm.” George Harrap, chief executive officer at cryptocurrency firm Bitspark, said he’s putting “most things on pause” until the market settles down. He said his contacts in the Bitcoin community have yet to come up with a reason for the sudden jump. “The reason why? Anybody’s guess at the moment,” Harrap said.
|
bitcoin;cryptocurrency
|
jp0002628
|
[
"business",
"corporate-business"
] |
2019/04/02
|
35th anniversary helped pull in record crowds at Tokyo Disneyland and DisneySea in fiscal 2018
|
Tokyo Disneyland and Tokyo DisneySea enjoyed a record number of visitors for the first time in four years in fiscal 2018, according to operator Oriental Land Co. The number for the year through March jumped 8.2 percent from the previous year to 32.55 million, supported by events marking the 35th anniversary of the opening of Tokyo Disneyland, Oriental Land said Monday. At Disneyland, a daytime parade that was renewed to celebrate the anniversary and the It’s a Small World attraction were particularly popular with customers. A Christmas event at DisneySea was also popular.
|
tokyo;tokyo disney land;disney;oriental land;theme parks;tokyo disneysea
|
jp0002629
|
[
"business",
"corporate-business"
] |
2019/04/02
|
Japan's big banks to slash hiring of new graduates in 2020 due to automation and low rates
|
Major lender MUFG Bank plans to hire only 530 new graduates next April, down about 45 percent from this year, according to informed sources. Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp. and Mizuho Financial Group Inc. also plan to slash their hiring of new graduates, by about 10 percent and 20 percent respectively, the sources said. The cutbacks reflect a challenging earnings environment for Japanese banks amid prolonged low interest rates, as well as the progress of information technology-based automation of banking services. The combined total of new graduates the three major lenders plan to hire at the beginning of the 2020 business years stands at around 1,700, down nearly 30 percent from this year. This is less than one-third of the peak total of some 6,000 new graduates hired at the start of fiscal 2007. On Monday, the first day of the 2019 business year, 960 new graduates joined MUFG, 667 entered Sumitomo Mitsui and about 700 started working for Mizuho.
|
jobs;banks;smbc;mufg;mizuho
|
jp0002630
|
[
"business",
"corporate-business"
] |
2019/04/02
|
Carlos Ghosn's lawyer asks for trial separate from Nissan's and Kelly's to ensure fair hearing
|
The legal team representing ousted Nissan Motor Co. Chairman Carlos Ghosn asked the Tokyo District Court on Tuesday to hold trials separately for him, his former close associate Greg Kelly and Nissan Motor Co., saying that otherwise Ghosn won’t get a fair trial over his alleged financial misconduct. Also holding his first news conference since Ghosn’s release on bail last month, defense attorney Junichiro Hironaka argued that Nissan cooperated extensively with prosecutors by handing over its internal probe findings on the accused former executive and through plea-bargaining. Ghosn’s legal team also released the names of two Nissan officials who were involved in the plea-bargaining. Though the automaker has also been indicted for underreporting Ghosn’s income, Hironaka said Nissan has been cozying up to prosecutors, jeopardizing Ghosn’s right to “a fair trial.” “As the defense team, we believe that no matter how you look at this issue, having Mr. Ghosn together with Nissan on the same seat and going to trial proceedings together is a peculiar situation which goes against a fair trial,” Hironaka said. “No matter how you think of this, Nissan is not a defendant. They are prosecutors.” Currently, they are expected to stand trial in the 17th Criminal Court Division at the Tokyo District Court, presided over by Judges Kenji Shimozu, Kazunori Fukushima and Kenji Matsushita, Hironaka said. Under the Japanese legal system, separate proceedings are allowed, but in a majority of cases they are handled by the same panel of judges. For this trial, Hironaka said Nissan CEO Hiroto Saikawa, along with his legal team, will most likely appear in court proceedings as the company’s senior representative. Hironaka mentioned several new pieces of information during the news conference at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan in Tokyo. He confirmed that senior Nissan administrator Toshiaki Onuma and Hari Nada, who worked closely with Kelly, were involved in plea-bargaining. They have provided a “significant amount of statements” and other materials to prosecutors, Hironaka said. Since Ghosn’s release March 6 after 108 days in detention, the Nissan-Renault-Mitsubishi Motors Corp. alliance has moved on to building a post-Ghosn structure, announcing a new joint management board and the abolishment of the chairman position to avoid a concentration of power. Ghosn wasn’t allowed to attend a board meeting in March and is expected to be removed from Nissan’s board during an extraordinary shareholders meeting next week. Hironaka said Ghosn remains proud of his contributions to Nissan, but he isn’t thinking of taking any specific action in response to these developments. Reuters reported Monday that Renault SA has notified French prosecutors regarding millions of euros in payments made from the French automaker to Ghosn’s business associate in Oman that was then transferred to a Lebanese company associated with Ghosn. Hironaka declined to comment, saying he had not spoken with Ghosn about the report. Asked when the trial would start, Hironaka said it would be difficult to have it take place in September, as reported in the media. “We cannot rule out the possibility that the prosecutors may add additional charges from now. And if this were the case, then the trial could also take a much longer period from now,” he said. Still, Hironaka stressed that he remains confident Ghosn is innocent based on the available evidence observed by the defense team. The Tokyo District Public Prosecutor’s Office arrested Ghosn last Nov. 19 on suspicion of falsifying his reported income. The prosecutors subsequently arrested him again on two additional counts of financial misconduct, including aggravated breach of trust for the alleged transfer of private investment losses to Nissan during the global financial crisis of 2008. Hironaka said Ghosn can be expected to hold a news conference in “the near future” as he is contemplating what he will tell the public. Reflecting on the legal team’s role in securing their client’s release on bail, Hironaka acknowledged both public opinion and the attorneys’ ability to prove Ghosn did not pose a flight risk and was not at risk of tampering with evidence. “I believe it could be said that at the time the court was somewhat having difficulty in making its decision (over whether to grant him a bail), we were able to put this (request for bail) forward and shift it toward the direction of the release in a very definitive way,” he said.
|
courts;corruption;scandals;nissan;carmakers;mitsubishi motors;renault;carlos ghosn;junichiro hironaka
|
jp0002631
|
[
"business",
"corporate-business"
] |
2019/04/02
|
Made-in-China reactor gains favor at home as U.S. nuclear technology falters
|
BEIJING - China’s homegrown nuclear technology is gaining ground in the battle for that nation’s next generation of reactors, according to a state-owned developer, as it seeks to move on after delays and cost blowouts from imported designs. China’s reactor, known as the Hualong One, will be faster and easier to repair and maintain than competing foreign designs because it will be made domestically, according to Chen Hua, chief executive officer of China National Nuclear Power Co., which builds and operates nuclear power projects in the country. “We prefer the Hualong One,” Chen said in an interview Monday on the sidelines of a nuclear conference in Beijing. The global nuclear industry has been awaiting a revival in China, after cost overruns and stricter regulation following the 2011 Fukushima disaster stalled approvals and construction of new units. China’s expanding energy demand and drive for cleaner sources have been a magnet for Western reactor makers, including Westinghouse Electric Co. from the U.S. and France’s Electricite de France SA. Their marquee third-generation reactors — the AP1000 and the EPR, respectively — started commercial operations in China in recent months. However they face competition domestically, as state-run China National Nuclear Corp., the parent of CNNP, and China General Nuclear Power Corp. promote the production and export of the Hualong One. CNNP operates the Sanmen project in Zhejiang province, which uses Westinghouse’s AP1000 design. After starting commercial operations at the No. 2 reactor in November, it has since been suspended after a problem with its coolant pump was detected near the end of last year. Westinghouse is currently examining the defect at Sanmen No. 2 and will be responsible for the cost of fixing it, as the unit is still under warranty, Chen said, adding that repairs may take as long as eight months. A China-based Westinghouse spokesman declined to comment, and representatives in the U.S. didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment. Curtiss-Wright Corp., the U.S. company that made the pump, is working with Westinghouse to determine the cause of the problem. Its liability, “if any, is limited to the cost of repairing a part,” up to the cost of replacing the entire pump, according to a statement Monday. There are 12 other pumps in operation at three other AP1000 reactors in China. The race to build more reactors in China may now intensify as it ended a three-year freeze on reactor approvals this year, clearing the construction of four Hualong One units. The decision was seen as an indication of China’s future preference, BloombergNEF analyst Hanyang Wei said. The nation may approve as many as 10 units this year, none of which will be AP1000s, according to the China Nuclear Energy Association, an industry group. “The AP1000 is dead in China, and it may very well be dead all over the world,” Chris Gadomski, lead nuclear analyst for BloombergNEF, said in an interview. “I don’t know who would place an order for a new AP1000.” Chen said third-generation designs are similar in costs, but ultimately the choice will boil down to which technology has a better support system and sees costs fall the fastest. That’s not to say the AP1000 is completely out of the race, according to Chen, who said the company may still use it in future reactors. He called the technology an “advanced idea” and forecast it may take another eight years for it to reach commercial scale. China is also developing an upgraded version, called the CAP1400. “It’s like a really good car, super advanced, but what happens if you don’t have enough spare parts,” Chen said. “So you might prefer something more mature. If there are any issues, you’re able to fix it.”
|
china;nuclear energy;westinghouse
|
jp0002632
|
[
"business",
"corporate-business"
] |
2019/04/02
|
Three of Japan's top department store operators report March sales growth
|
Three of the country’s four major department store operators posted year-on-year growth in same-store sales in March, backed by brisk sales of luxury goods to visitors from abroad. Sales at Takashimaya Co. grew 1.2 percent, while figures rose 0.9 percent at both Isetan Mitsukoshi Holdings Ltd. and J. Front Retailing Co., which runs the Daimaru and Matsuzakaya stores. Sogo & Seibu Co., a unit of Seven & I Holdings Co., saw its sales fall 0.7 percent. Isetan Mitsukoshi Holdings posted double-digit growth in sales of duty-free items for the first time in eight months. “Appetite is growing for spring clothing due to a rise in temperatures” after weak clothing sales during a mild winter, an official with the company said. Some chains launched sales of items linked to the country’s next era name, Reiwa, as soon as it was announced late Monday morning. “We expect that the celebratory mood will spark consumption,” a Takashimaya official said. Reiwa will replace the current era, Heisei, on May 1, when Crown Prince Naruhito ascends the Chrysanthemum Throne.
|
takashimaya;department stores;isetan mitsukoshi;daimaru;matsuzakaya;j . front retailing
|
jp0002633
|
[
"world",
"social-issues-world"
] |
2019/04/02
|
Trump declares U.S. census 'meaningless' without citizenship question
|
WASHINGTON/NEW YORK - U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday injected himself into one of the most consequential cases of the current Supreme Court term, saying the nation’s 2020 census would be “meaningless” without adding a citizenship question to the questionnaire. The comment on Twitter came ahead of an expected ruling from the Supreme Court on whether Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross’ decision to add the citizenship question violated federal law. “Can you believe that the Radical Left Democrats want to do our new and very important Census Report without the all important Citizenship Question,” Trump tweeted. “Report would be meaningless and a waste of the $Billions (ridiculous) that it costs to put together!” The citizenship question is among a series of White House policies signaling tighter control over immigration. These include Trump’s declaration in February of a national emergency to obtain funds for a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border, and his threat to close the border as soon as this week, disrupting legal crossings as well as trade. The U.S. Constitution requires a census every 10 years, with results used to draw political boundaries, allocate seats in Congress and at the state and local level, and distribute roughly $800 billion of federal funds. Critics have accused Trump of encouraging an undercount by dissuading immigrants from participating in the census, more likely hurting Democrats than Republicans. When Ross announced the addition of a citizenship question in March 2018, he said it was in response to a Department of Justice request for data to help enforce the Voting Rights Act, which protects eligible voters from discrimination. Only U.S. citizens can vote in federal elections. Noncitizens comprise about 7 percent of the 328.7 million people living in the United States. Census questionnaires have not included a citizenship question since 1950. “The census is the administration’s new front on its war on immigration and, sadly, the president’s tweet today bears out that concern,” said Terri Ann Lowenthal, a former staff director on the House census oversight committee who now advises groups seeking an accurate 2020 count. The Supreme Court is reviewing a Jan. 15 ruling by U.S. District Judge Jesse Furman in Manhattan, finding that the addition of the citizenship question was illegal, and that Ross’ decision to add it was “arbitrary and capricious.” Oral arguments are scheduled for April 23, with a decision expected by the end of June. Furman said Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross broke a “veritable smorgasbord” of federal rules by including the question, and that enforcement of the Voting Rights Act was a “pretexual” rationale for adding it. The judge said adding the question would cause many states to lose federal funding, while Arizona, California, Florida, Illinois, New York and Texas would lose Congressional seats. Furman, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, stopped short of a finding that Ross intended to discriminate against immigrants. The decision came in a lawsuit brought by 18 U.S. states, 15 cities and a variety of civil rights groups. In urging the Supreme Court to overturn Furman’s ruling, Solicitor General Noel Francisco said Ross had discretion to add the citizenship question, and that there was a “long pedigree” in the census for asking about citizenship or country of birth. He also said other democracies including Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Indonesia, Ireland, Mexico, Spain, and the United Kingdom ask about citizenship on their censuses. Another federal judge, Richard Seeborg in San Francisco, on March 6 also declared the citizenship question illegal. Following that ruling, the Supreme Court said it will also decide whether Ross’ actions violated the Constitution’s Enumeration Clause, which sets out terms for counting people. Adding the citizenship question could lead to an undercount of 4.2 million Hispanics alone, the Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy estimated last month.
|
u.s .;congress;immigration;democrats;donald trump;u.s. census;wilbur ross
|
jp0002634
|
[
"world",
"social-issues-world"
] |
2019/04/02
|
Trump camp looks to shift 2,000 U.S. port-of-entry inspectors to Mexico border to deal with migrant crush
|
EL PASO, TEXAS - As many as 2,000 U.S. inspectors who screen cargo and vehicles at ports of entry along the Mexican border may be reassigned to help handle the surge of Central American families coming across, the Trump administration said Monday. The temporary reassignments, up from the current 750 inspectors, threaten to slow the movement of trucks bringing TVs, medical devices and other goods into the U.S. and cause delays for cross-border commuters who come for work or school. The inspectors are instead being put to work processing migrants, taking their applications for asylum and transporting them to holding centers. Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said the reassignments are necessary to help manage a huge influx of migrants that is straining the system and overflowing border facilities. “The crisis at our border is worsening, and DHS will do everything in its power to end it,” Nielsen said. The effects of pulling inspectors from ports of entry were on display in El Paso, where thousands of border crossers lined up Monday, waiting about an hour to cross into the U.S. They included vendors, U.S. citizens and students with visas. Sergio Amaya, 24, a student at the University of Texas-El Paso, is an American citizen who lives in Juarez. He said it normally takes him two minutes to cross the bridge. “The Border Patrol agent said it’s going to get worse,” Amaya said. Meanwhile, business owners and elected officials warned of the economic consequences if President Donald Trump makes good on his threat last week to shut down all ports of entry along the southern border to stem the wave of asylum seekers. The United States and Mexico trade about $1.7 billion in goods daily, according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which said closing the border would be “an unmitigated economic debacle” that would threaten 5 million American jobs. Laredo Mayor Pete Saenz, chairman of the Texas Border Coalition, said a closure would be catastrophic. “Closing the border would cause an immediate depression in border state communities and, depending on the duration, a recession in the rest of the country,” he said. “Our business would end,” said Marta Salas, an employee at an El Paso shop near the border crossing that sells plastic flowers that are used on the Mexican side by families holding quinceaneras, the traditional coming-of-age celebrations. Salas said her whole family would be affected if the president closed the border. “There are Americans who live there. I have nephews who come to UTEP, to grade school, to high school every day,” Salas said. Apprehensions all along the southern border have soared in recent months, with border agents on track to make 100,000 arrests and denials of entry there this month, more than half of them families with children. In addition to reassigning hundreds of inspectors, Nielsen has asked for volunteers from non-immigration agencies within her department and sent a letter to Congress requesting resources and broader authority to deport families faster. The administration is also ramping up efforts to return asylum seekers to Mexico.
|
u.s .;immigration;mexico;refugees;u.s.-mexico border;donald trump
|
jp0002635
|
[
"world",
"social-issues-world"
] |
2019/04/02
|
Trump team heightens effort to return asylum seekers to Mexico
|
WASHINGTON/SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA - The Trump administration is intensifying measures to curb the flow of Central American asylum seekers crossing into the United States from Mexico, officials said on Monday, including sending more people back to Mexico to wait for their asylum claims to be heard by U.S. courts. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency will speed up the reassignment of 750 officers to parts of the border dealing with the largest numbers of immigrants, a shift the administration first announced last week. U.S. President Donald Trump has threatened to close the border if Mexico does not stop a surge of people, often traveling as families from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala. Closing the border would potentially disrupt millions of legal border crossings and billions of dollars in trade. One policy put in place earlier this year to return asylum seekers to Mexico, dubbed the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), will be “immediately” expanded by “hundreds of additional migrants per day above current rates,” Nielsen said in a statement on Monday. The policy is already being challenged in court by civil rights groups. As of March 26, approximately 370 migrants had been returned to Mexico since the program began in late January, a Mexican official said last week. Asked about the numbers, a DHS spokeswoman declined to confirm them and said the policy “is still in the early stages of implementation.” Critics of the administration say the policy hampers asylum cases, by making it far more difficult for those immigrants to obtain legal assistance. People who have been returned to Mexico to wait are struggling to find attorneys and receive notice of their proceedings in U.S. courts, rights advocates said. Trump administration officials say the MPP is a way to address the failings of the current system, which they claim encourages illegal immigration. Families that claim asylum are often released into the United States because of limits on how long children can be held in detention, allowing them to stay for years while their cases move through a backlogged immigration court system even though many claims are ultimately denied. The administration is hoping policies of deterrence will reduce the number of people who turn themselves in to U.S. border agents, overwhelming the capacity of processing centers along the southern border. Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said on Monday that Mexico will help to regulate the flow of Central Americans passing through its territory to the United States. He said the root causes behind the phenomenon, which include violence and poverty in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, must be tackled. In a move Democrats and Republicans in Congress have said would be counterproductive, the U.S. State Department cut aid to the three countries after Trump accused them of having “set up” migrant caravans and sending them north. Last week, a San Diego immigration judge heard from the first Central American families that were returned to Mexico under the MPP policy. The judge, Scott Simpson, had the previous week heard claims from single adults who had been returned, and both times expressed concerns over how the protocol is working. Of four families in court on Wednesday, just one had an attorney. But Yanira Esmeralda Chavez, a Salvadoran fruit seller, accompanied by her three boys did not have a lawyer as she made her case to Simpson. The family had been staying at a shelter in the Mexican border city of Tijuana, and asked to remain in the United States because they feared being sent back to Mexico. “I called the numbers on the attorney list that they provided me, but they said they cannot take my case because I am in Tijuana,” Chavez said in the hearing. “It would be better if I stay in the U.S., where I have family members.” Because she expressed fear of return, Simpson said Chavez and her children would be referred to a U.S. asylum officer, who would assess their claims. The outcome of that request was not known, but in prior cases, two people who had expressed similar fears were nevertheless returned to Mexico. Asylum seekers typically undergo what is known as an interview to assess their “credible fear” of returning to their home country. But the standard of proof for a “reasonable fear” of being returned to Mexico under the MPP is much stiffer. Simpson gave Chavez two more months to obtain an attorney, and said that her family in the United States could perhaps help her find a lawyer. Throughout the day, Simpson expressed his concerns about the policy, saying he was “skeptical” about migrants getting their notices to appear in court, given the court does not have proper addresses for those returned to Mexico. The American Civil Liberties Union and other groups sued the Trump administration over the policy, claiming it violates U.S. law. But following a March 22 hearing on whether to halt the program, U.S. District Judge Richard Seeborg in San Francisco ordered both sides to submit further briefing on the question of whether or not the California court has jurisdiction over the case, likely prolonging any decision on the policy.
|
immigration;mexico;refugees;u.s.-mexico border;donald trump;kirstjen nielsen
|
jp0002636
|
[
"world"
] |
2019/04/02
|
Aid group says 31 died fleeing after Islamic State defeat in Syria's Baghouz
|
DERIK, SYRIA - An international aid group says 31 deaths were recorded in the final week of March among people making their way out of the last sliver of territory held by the Islamic State group and toward a camp for the displaced. The International Rescue Committee says Monday the highest weekly death rate reflects the desperate conditions of the mostly women and children who left the village of Baghouz for al-Hol camp. The U.S-backed Syrian Democratic Forces announced the final defeat of IS on March 23. The IRC says a total of 217 people died while evacuating Baghouz in the final weeks of the battle. Most were toddlers suffering from malnutrition. The camp holds 70,000 people. The IRC figures could not be independently confirmed.
|
syria;refugees;islamic state;international rescue committee;baghouz
|
jp0002637
|
[
"world",
"science-health-world"
] |
2019/04/02
|
Congo Ebola outbreak spreading faster than ever and most deaths occurred outside treatment centers: WHO
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GENEVA - Democratic Republic of Congo’s Ebola outbreak is spreading at its fastest rate yet, eight months after it was first detected, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Monday. Each of the past two weeks has registered a record number of new cases, marking a sharp setback for efforts to respond to the second biggest outbreak ever, as militia violence and community resistance have impeded access to affected areas. Less than three weeks ago, the WHO said the outbreak of the hemorrhagic fever was largely contained and could be stopped by September, noting that weekly case numbers had halved from earlier in the year to about 25. But the number of cases hit a record 57 the following week, and then jumped to 72 last week, said WHO spokesman Christian Lindmeier. Previous spikes of around 50 cases per week were documented in late January and mid-November. More alarmingly, about three-quarters of Ebola deaths last week occurred outside of treatment centers, according to Congo health ministry data, meaning there is a much greater chance they transmitted the virus to those around them. “People are becoming infected without access to response measures,” Lindmeier told Reuters. The current outbreak is believed to have killed 676 people and infected 406 others. Another 331 patients have recovered. In the past two months, five Ebola centers have been attacked, some by armed militiamen. That led French medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) to suspend its activities in two of the most affected areas. Another challenge has been a mistrust of first responders. A survey conducted last September by medical journal The Lancet found that a quarter of people sampled in two Ebola hot-spots did not believe the disease was real. Lindmeier said new approaches to community outreach were showing signs of progress and that some previously hostile local residents had recently agreed to grant health workers access. One treatment center that closed in February after being torched by unknown assailants reopened last week. More than 11,000 people died in West Africa’s 2013-16 Ebola outbreak. Since then, health authorities have worked to speed up their responses and deployed an experimental vaccine and treatments, both of which have been considered effective.
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disease;who;congo;ebola;msf
|
jp0002638
|
[
"world",
"science-health-world"
] |
2019/04/02
|
Ice sheet likely source of methane on Mars, scientists find
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PARIS - The mystery of methane on Mars may finally be solved as scientists Monday confirmed the presence of the life-indicating gas on the Red Planet as well as where it might have come from. In the 15 years since a European probe reported traces of the gas in the Martian atmosphere, debate has raged over the accuracy of the readings showing methane, which on Earth is produced by simple lifeforms. Because methane gas dissipates relatively quickly — within around 12 years on Earth — and due to the difficulty of observing Mars’ atmosphere, many scientists questioned previous studies that relied on a single data set. Now an international team of experts has compared observations from two separate spacecraft, taken just one day apart in 2013, to find independent proof of methane on our neighboring planet. They also conducted two parallel experiments to determine the most likely source of methane on Mars to be an ice sheet east of Gale Crater — itself long assumed to be a dried up lake. “This is very exciting and largely unexpected,” Marco Giuranna, from Rome’s National Astrophysics Institute, told AFP. “Two completely independent lines of investigation pointed to the same general area of the most likely source for the methane.” Europe’s Mars Express probe measured 15.5 parts per billion in the atmosphere above the Gale Crater on June 16, 2013. The presence of methane in the vicinity was confirmed by readings taken 24 hours earlier by NASA’s Curiosity rover. Using the data, Giuranna and the team divided the region around the crater into grids of 250 by 250 sq. km. One study then ran a million computer-modelled emissions scenarios for each section while another team studied images of the planet surface for features associated on Earth with the release of methane. The most likely source was a sheet of frozen methane beneath a rock formation, which the team believes periodically ejects the gas into the atmosphere. Giuranna said that while methane is a sign of life on Earth, its presence on Mars doesn’t necessarily constitute evidence of something similar on the Red Planet. “Methane is important because it could be an indicator of microbial life,” he said. “But life is not required to explain these detections because methane can be produced by abiotic processes.” “Though not a direct biosignature of life, methane can add to the habitability of martian settings, as certain types of microbes can use methane as a source of carbon and energy,” he added. Though there is no liquid water on Mars, the European Space Agency said in February its imaging equipment had shown further evidence of dried up river beds, suggesting the Red Planet may once have been home to simple organisms. Giuranna said that further research was needed to determine the extent of the methane ice sheet near Gale Crater. If founded to be extensive, the methane it contains “could support a sustained human presence” on Mars as a possible source of fuel for industrial processes and a propellant for returning manned missions to Earth, he said.
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nasa;space;curiosity;mars;methane;esa
|
jp0002640
|
[
"world",
"crime-legal-world"
] |
2019/04/02
|
Whistleblower reveals 'grave breaches' in White House security clearances
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WASHINGTON - Some 25 White House officials including top advisers of President Donald Trump were given security clearances despite staff recommendations against it, a whistleblower has told Congress. House Oversight Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings said in a letter Monday that White House security official Tricia Newbold detailed to his panel “grave breaches of national security at the highest levels of the Trump Administration.” None of the 25 were named, but in his letter, addressed to White House counsel Pat Cipollone, Cummings requested information relating to clearances for national security adviser John Bolton, former national security adviser Michael Flynn, Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump and son-in-law Jared Kushner, and several other top security officials. He also said he would subpoena Carl Kline, Newbold’s former superior at the White House Personnel Security Office, to testify to the committee on the clearances, along with other officials. Newbold told the committee that the Personnel Security Office recommended against security clearances — which allow access to top secret materials — for the 25, Cummings said. Two of them were top-level officials in national security. Newbold told the committee that the recommendations for denial were for serious questions involving foreign influence, conflicts of interest, personal conduct issues, financial problems, drug use and criminal acts. But the 18-year veteran of the White House said they were pressured to change their recommendations and overruled by Kline and higher-ups. And when she pressed the issues, Kline and others retaliated against her, she said, including suspending her without pay for two weeks in early February. “I would not be doing a service to myself, my country, or my children if I sat back knowing that the issues that we have could impact national security,” Newbold told the committee. “I want it known that this is a systematic … issue,” she said. Questions about security clearances have been raised ever since Trump took office on January 20, 2017. Flynn was forced out of the White House within weeks after questions were raised about his private discussions with Russia’s U.S. ambassador, as well as other foreign business dealings. Kushner, who with his wife were made top presidential advisers, also raised warning lights due to his overseas business ties and a looming debt problem that was a potential conflict of interest. Asked about the clearance issue on Fox’s “The Ingraham Angle” on Monday night, Kushner declined to “comment for the White House’s process.” “But what I can say is that over the last few years that I’ve been here, I’ve been accused of all different types of things, and all of those things have turned out to be false,” he said. “I disclosed all of my holdings for the Office of Government Ethics, and what I did with them is they told me what to divest, what to keep, what rules to follow. We followed all that,” Kushner said. Last year the White House was also questioned about the security clearance granted to Trump aide Rob Porter despite domestic abuse allegations from two ex-wives. In testimony to the committee, Newbold described the Trump White House as far more lax on security issues that previous presidents she had worked for. An abnormally large number of staffers had interim security clearances for long periods, including several for the highest level of secrecy classification that granted them access to “sensitive compartmented information,” or SCI. Other government agencies, she said, questioned why the White House had so many individuals with interim SCI clearances. A number of those individuals, she told the committee, eventually were denied permanent clearances, including two high-level officials. But in the meantime they had gained access to some of the most restricted intelligence the government has.
|
congress;donald trump;jared kushner;michael flynn;tricia newbold
|
jp0002641
|
[
"world",
"politics-diplomacy-world"
] |
2019/04/02
|
U.K. Parliament rejects four alternatives to May's Brexit deal
|
LONDON - The British Parliament has spoken — and it has said no, again. Lawmakers seeking a way out of the U.K.’s Brexit morass on Monday rejected four alternatives to the government’s unpopular European Union divorce deal that would have softened or even halted the country’s departure. With just 12 days until the U.K. must come up with a new plan or crash out of the bloc in chaos, the House of Commons threw out four options designed to replace Prime Minister Theresa May’s thrice-rejected Brexit deal — though in some cases by just a whisker. The result leaves May’s Conservative government facing difficult and risky choices. It can gamble on a fourth attempt to push May’s unloved deal through Parliament, let the U.K. tumble out of the bloc without a deal, or roll the dice by seeking a snap election to shake up Parliament. Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay said the government would continue to seek support for a “credible” plan for leaving the EU. “This House has continuously rejected leaving without a deal just as it has rejected not leaving at all,” he told lawmakers in the House of Commons after the votes. “Therefore the only option is to find a way through which allows the U.K. to leave with a deal.” May has summoned her Cabinet for a marathon meeting Tuesday to thrash out the options. The prime minister, who is renowned for her dogged determination, could try to bring her Brexit agreement back for a fourth time later this week. Monday’s votes revealed a preference among lawmakers for a softer form of Brexit — but not a majority to make it happen. The narrowest defeat — 276 votes to 273 — was for a plan to keep the U.K. in a customs union with the EU, guaranteeing smooth and tariff-free trade in goods. A motion that went further, calling for the country to stay in the EU’s borderless single market for both goods and services, was defeated 282-261. A third proposal calling for any Brexit deal struck with the EU to be put to a public referendum was defeated 292-280. The fourth, which would let the U.K. cancel Brexit if it came within two days of crashing out of the bloc without a deal, fell by a wider margin, 292-191. May had already ruled out all the ideas under consideration. But the divorce deal she negotiated with the EU has been rejected by Parliament three times, leaving Britain facing a no-deal Brexit that could cause turmoil for people and businesses on both sides of the Channel. Conservative lawmaker Nick Boles, architect of the single-market option, acknowledged he had failed in his attempt to break the deadlock. “I have failed chiefly because my party refuses to compromise,” Boles added, announcing that he was quitting the Conservatives to sit as an independent in Parliament. The April 12 deadline, imposed by the EU, gives British politicians less than two weeks to bridge the hostile divide that separates those who want to sever links with the EU and those who want to keep the ties that have bound the U.K. to the bloc for almost 50 years. Lawmakers have carved out more time on Wednesday for further votes on Brexit options. The impasse has raised expectations that lawmakers or the government could try to trigger a snap election in the hope a new configuration in Parliament would break the Brexit logjam. But the Conservatives are worried that could hand power to the opposition Labour Party. The lack of consensus reflects a Parliament and a government deeply divided over how — and whether — to leave the EU. Justice Secretary David Gauke said leaving the bloc without a deal was “not the responsible thing for a government to do.” But Chief Secretary to the Treasury Liz Truss said it would be better than a soft Brexit. “I don’t have any fear of no-deal,” she said. The Brexit impasse has alarmed businesses, who say the uncertainty has deterred investment and undermined economic growth. The chief executive of industrial manufacturer Siemens U.K. implored lawmakers to unite around a compromise deal, saying “Brexit is exhausting our business and wrecking the country’s tremendous reputation as an economic powerhouse.” Juergen Maier urged lawmakers to keep the U.K. in a customs union with the EU, saying that would allow frictionless trade to continue. In a letter published by the Politico website, Maier said “where the U.K. used to be beacon for stability, we are now becoming a laughing stock.” EU leaders have called a special summit on April 10 to consider any request from the U.K. for a delay to Brexit — or to make last-minute preparations for the country’s departure without a deal two days later. The European Parliament’s Brexit coordinator, Guy Verhofstadt, warned that a no-deal Brexit was looming unless the U.K. changed course. “The House of Commons again votes against all options,” he tweeted. “A hard #Brexit becomes nearly inevitable. On Wednesday, the U.K. has a last chance to break the deadlock or face the abyss.”
|
eu;u.k .;u.k. parliament;brexit;theresa may
|
jp0002642
|
[
"world",
"politics-diplomacy-world"
] |
2019/04/02
|
May grapples with Brexit deadlock as EU warns of no-deal
|
LONDON - U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May held crisis talks with her ministers Tuesday to try to resolve a monthslong Brexit deadlock, as the EU warned of the growing risk of a disorderly departure from the bloc next week. May gathered her divided Cabinet to try to agree on the next steps after MPs failed for a second time on Monday night to agree on an alternative to her unpopular withdrawal deal. Brussels has given the U.K. an April 12 deadline to pass the divorce deal, settle on an alternative or crash out of the European Union, risking huge economic disruption. In reality, the deadline is nearer as the EU has called an emergency leaders summit for April 10. May’s deal has been rejected by the House of Commons three times but she says their failure to agree on anything else means it is the only option, and could bring it back for a fourth vote this week. The EU’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, said an orderly exit was still possible but was becoming less likely. “If the U.K. still wants to leave the EU in an orderly manner, this agreement, this treaty is and will be the only one,” he told a think tank in Brussels. He added: “No deal was never my intended scenario, but the EU 27 is now prepared. It becomes day after day more likely.” May’s deal aims to smooth the country’s EU exit by settling its financial affairs, guaranteeing the rights of expatriate citizens and setting up a transition period until 2022 at the latest in which new trading terms could be agreed upon by London and Brussels. But its proposals to maintain an open border with Ireland by keeping Britain temporarily in a customs union with the EU are strongly opposed by many MPs. Fearful that her refusal to change course is putting Britain at risk of a “no-deal” exit, pro-European MPs last week seized the initiative by holding a round of votes on eight alternative options. After failing to agree on any of them, they refined them down to four choices on Monday night — but once again, there was no majority for any of them. However, the architects of that strategy have refused to give up, and unveiled a fresh plan to introduce legislation on Thursday that could force May to delay Brexit. Conservative former minister Oliver Letwin conceded it would be difficult to get through both Houses of Parliament, but he and co-author Yvette Cooper, a Labour MP, said it was worth trying. “Whatever agreement the government or parliament does or doesn’t reach over the next few days, the U.K. will need more time after 12 April if it is to avoid no deal at that point,” they said in a statement. Britain voted by 52 percent to leave the EU in a 2016 referendum, but the process has been mired in divisions over the terms of the divorce and what kind of future ties to seek. The political chaos forced May to ask the EU to postpone Britain’s exit from the original date of March 29, but she is resisting delaying much longer. She says it would be “unacceptable” to ask British voters to take part in European elections in May, almost three years after they voted to leave the EU in the 2016 referendum. But Barnier warned: “If the U.K. parliament does not vote in favor of the withdrawal agreement in the coming days, then only two options would remain: leaving without an agreement or requesting a longer extension.” A government analysis leaked to the Daily Mail suggests a “no deal” scenario would undermine Britain’s security capabilities, cause a recession, and increase the cost of food by up to 10 percent. On Monday night, a demand for a permanent customs union with the EU after Brexit only fell short by three votes — but May’s office highlighted the failure of MPs to agree. “It is the second time the house has considered a wide variety of options for a way forward and once again failed to find a clear majority in favour of any of those options,” her spokesman said Tuesday. “The government continues to believe that it is in the best interests of the country to leave with a deal.”
|
eu;u.k .;brexit . theresa may
|
jp0002643
|
[
"world",
"politics-diplomacy-world"
] |
2019/04/02
|
Joe Biden aides blast 'right wing trolls' as another woman says he acted inappropriately
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WASHINGTON - Aides to Joe Biden struck a more aggressive tone on Monday as the former vice president faced scrutiny over his past behavior toward women. In a statement, Biden spokesman Bill Russo blasted “right wing trolls” from “the dark recesses of the internet” for conflating images of Biden embracing acquaintances, colleagues and friends in his official capacity during swearing-in ceremonies with uninvited touching. The move came on a day in which a second woman said Biden had acted inappropriately, touching her face with both hands and rubbing noses with her in 2009. The allegation by Amy Lappos, a former aide to Democratic Rep. Jim Hines of Connecticut, followed a magazine essay by former Nevada politician Lucy Flores, who wrote that Biden kissed her on the back of the head in 2014. The developments underscored the challenge facing Biden should he decide to seek the White House. Following historic wins in the 2018 midterms, Democratic politics is dominated by energy from women. The allegations could leave the 76-year-old Biden, long known for his affectionate mannerisms, appearing out of touch with the party as the Democratic presidential primary begins. Lappos told The Associated Press that she and other Himes aides were helping out at a fundraiser in a private home in Hartford, Connecticut, in October 2009 when Biden entered the kitchen to thank the group for pitching in. “After he finished speaking, he stopped to talk to us about how important a congressional staff is, which I thought was awesome,” Lappos said. She said she was stunned as Biden moved toward her. “He wrapped both his hands around my face and pulled me in,” said Lappos, who is now 43. “I thought, ‘Oh, God, he’s going to kiss me.’ Instead, he rubbed noses with me.” Biden said nothing, she said, then moved off. She said the experience left her feeling “weird and uncomfortable” and was “absolutely disrespectful of my personal boundaries.” The Hartford Courant first reported Lappos’ assertion. Russo didn’t directly respond to Lappos, instead referring to a Sunday statement in which Biden said he doesn’t believe he has acted inappropriately during his long public life. The former vice president said in that statement: “We have arrived at an important time when women feel they can and should relate their experiences, and men should pay attention. And I will.” Biden hasn’t made a final decision on whether to run for the White House. But aides who weren’t authorized to discuss internal conversations and spoke on condition of anonymity said there were no signs that his team was slowing its preparations for a campaign. Biden’s potential Democratic rivals haven’t rushed to back him up. Over the weekend, presidential candidates Elizabeth Warren and Kirsten Gillibrand came closest to calling out the former vice president. Warren said Biden “needs to give an answer” about what occurred. Gillibrand said, “If Vice President Biden becomes a candidate, this is a topic he’ll have to engage on further.” Ultraviolet, a women’s advocacy group, tweeted: “Joe Biden cannot paint himself as a champion of women and then refuse to listen and learn from a woman who says his actions demeaned her. Good intentions don’t matter if the actions are inappropriate. Do better, Joe. And thank you @LucyFlores for coming forward.”
|
joe biden;democrats;elizabeth warren;# metoo;2020 u.s. presidential election;beto o'rourke;lucy flores;berney sanders;amy lappos
|
jp0002644
|
[
"world",
"politics-diplomacy-world"
] |
2019/04/02
|
Taking a closer look at the frenetic pace of U.S. Democratic candidates' campaign events
|
WASHINGTON - How many ways can you measure the first quarter of the year? For American Democratic presidential candidates, it’s 300-plus events, 24 states and hundreds of voter questions. The Iowa caucus is still 10 months away, but the Democratic primary campaign is already an all-out sprint — passing eye-popping markers for campaign activity and voter engagement. Voters in Florida and Ohio may not see it, but weekends in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina — not to mention a handful of select states — are a blitz of candidate rallies and local meet-and-greets. For some candidates the frenetic pace is the message, a way of casting themselves as tireless and willing to take every last question. Elizabeth Warren and Beto O’Rourke are trying to make an ambitious schedule and accessibility part of their brands, but Cory Booker and Kirsten Gillibrand have done their parts to keep up with several dozen events each, most in early-voting states. It’s far from clear that the candidate who holds the most events, whether leaping onto tables or addressing big rallies, will emerge as the candidate with the most votes. Still, Democrats watching the display from a distance say the engagement, the activity and the enthusiasm bode well. “Broad picture: This is incredibly good for the Democratic Party,” said Jim Messina, who managed former President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign. The Democrats’ contested 2008 primary and the GOP’s packed 2016 field showed “that enthusiasm in primaries becomes very important in a general election,” Messina said. That’s because engaged backers are “more likely to do two things you need them to do” in order to win, he said: donate money and help persuade their social networks to vote. For all the recent upheaval in politics, the 2020 campaign so far shows some things haven’t changed. Retail campaign stops are still essential to breaking through in early-voting states that will play a central role in choosing the nominee. They are, perhaps, even more important in the social media era. One live-streamed rally that goes viral on social media can reach more voters than dozens of smaller events. Even though no one metric can predict success, a look at the campaigns’ tallies of on-the-ground engagement shows how some of the busiest road warriors are faring at the end of the first quarter. Warren and O’Rourke are logging mileage in areas their party hasn’t always traveled to early on and underscoring their appetite for grassroots interaction, a style Pete Buttigieg is also cultivating. Warren took more than 200 questions from voters and O’Rourke answered more than 350, according to their campaigns’ first-quarter estimates. That’s a notable feat for O’Rourke, who only entered the race last month. The former Texas congressman has logged 55 first-quarter events in nine states where he publicly took voter questions, according to his campaign. Gillibrand held 59 public events in eight states since launching an exploratory committee in January, according to the New York senator’s campaign. Buttigieg has held 35 events in 11 states since the South Bend, Indiana, mayor started an exploratory committee that same month. California Sen. Kamala Harris has emerged as a top-tier contender despite fewer public events than some opponents, clocking in with 26 public first-quarter events in eight states since launching her campaign in January, according to an AP estimate. Harris’ campaign said Monday night that she took more than 100 voter questions during first-quarter events, where total estimated turnout has topped 37,000. Warren, a former law professor whose campaign is keeping detailed statistics, took questions at 48 events in 12 states over all three months, according to the Massachusetts senator’s campaign. Her aides measure her commitment to voter engagement partly in selfies — estimating that she’s taken more than 12,000 with voters so far. The tally of extra time after events is itself a strategic move, an argument that availability can win the day while other candidates spend time on the high-dollar fundraisers she’s sworn off. Other Democrats are consciously mixing up their number and types of public events. Booker is holding a bigger kickoff of a national tour soon after holding smaller events. The New Jersey senator’s campaign estimates that he has held more than 50 public events in seven states since he jumped into the race in February. A handful of other candidates have lagged behind in their total number of first-quarter events. Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar logged 18 events in nine states since forming her campaign in February, according to an AP tally, with former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper and Washington Gov. Jay Inslee each holding 12 events. Former housing secretary Julian Castro has held more than a dozen of his own over the first quarter. All of these candidates tend to fall behind Bernie Sanders in early polling of the Democratic field. Sanders, the runner-up in 2016, has held 17 major events in eight states and Washington, D.C., since declaring his candidacy in early March. Not all of Sanders’ events — nor those of other candidates — feature the sort of real-time voter questions that are a fixture of Warren’s and O’Rourke’s appearances. But Sanders’ crowds illustrate his formidable ability to engage voters on his own terms: The Vermont senator’s campaign projects a total turnout of 74,000 people for all of his events so far. President Donald Trump famously upended the traditional calculus of campaigning in 2016 by making fewer retail visits as he powered past more than a dozen GOP rivals. Whether anyone in the Democratic field can repeat that model remains to be seen. “We want to fall in love like we did with Barack Obama,” Messina said of Democratic voters, “and to do that, you need to do the retail part of this.” Several candidates have made a point of veering off the beaten track, hoping a stop outside the early states will earn them some extra media attention and voter good will. O’Rourke crossed six states in one week on his post-announcement road trip. Warren has made unexpected trips to Puerto Rico and the Deep South, eager to find a way to set herself apart from the pack. When the Massachusetts senator touted her “not traditional” choice to visit Alabama during a rally there last month, a voice from the audience chimed in to note that “Obama did it.”
|
elections;democrats;campaigns;2020 u.s. presidential campaign
|
jp0002645
|
[
"world"
] |
2019/04/02
|
Most trapped in upper deck, 17 perish in Lima bus inferno at illegal terminal
|
LIMA - An inferno swept through a bus at an illegal transport terminal in Lima, killing 17 people trapped inside in one of Peru’s worst fire disasters in over a decade, the state prosecutor’s office said Monday. Most of the victims were trapped on the upper deck of the interprovincial bus in Lima as it prepared to depart the controversial Fiori bus terminal, fire chief Mario Casaretto said. “Everyone became trapped in the stairwell leading to the first level when they wanted to get down from the upper level,” Casaretto said. Onlookers described scenes of panic and cries of terror. Much of the vehicle was reduced to a skeleton and the corpses of some victims could still be seen in the seats. Others asphyxiated on the stairway connecting the upper and lower levels. The tragedy reflected the chaos of Peru’s public transport system, particularly in the capital of 10 million people where authorities are overwhelmed by transport problems. Initial reports said an electrical fault at the rear of the bus triggered the blaze just after 7:30 p.m. (0030 GMT). Initially the fire department said at least 20 people had perished in the fire, but the figure was revised downwards after firefighters had combed through the burnt-out bus. “At 4:00 am local time the team of prosecutors and six doctors concluded the removal of 17 bodies,” the prosecutor’s office said on Twitter. Among the dead were four children. Thirteen adults — five women and eight men — also died. Authorities did not say how many people were on board. One unidentified man, broken by grief, told local television that he had lost six family members, including his wife, children and grandchildren. An AFP photographer witnessed one woman weeping, her face buried in her hands, while paramedics checked her. Lima Mayor Jorge Munoz visited the injured in hospital and announced an investigation to punish those responsible. “I am totally outraged,” he said, recalling that insecurity and other problems had led to the closure of the Fiori terminal last year. The station is in Lima’s populous northern San Martin de Porres district, from where the bus was to depart for the northern city of Chiclayo. Fiori was operating illegally after local authorities closed it in January 2018 for the unauthorized sale of fuel to public buses. The fire was one of the worst in Lima since December 2001, when a fireworks blast caused a market blaze that killed about 300 people.
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accidents;peru;lima
|
jp0002646
|
[
"world"
] |
2019/04/02
|
U.S. halts delivery of F-35 equipment to Turkey over its plans to buy missile defense system from Russia
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WASHINGTON - The United States has halted delivery of equipment related to the stealthy F-35 fighter aircraft to Turkey, marking the first concrete U.S. step to block delivery of the jet to the NATO ally in light of Ankara’s planned purchase of a Russian missile defense system. U.S. officials told their Turkish counterparts they will not receive further shipments of F-35 related equipment needed to prepare for the arrival of the stealthy jet, two sources familiar with the situation said Monday. The Pentagon confirmed the report that the equipment delivery had been stopped. “Pending an unequivocal Turkish decision to forgo delivery of the S-400, deliveries and activities associated with the stand-up of Turkey’s F-35 operational capability have been suspended,” Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Mike Andrews, a Defense Department spokesman, said in a statement. Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan has refused to back down from Ankara’s planned purchase of a Russian S-400 missile defense system that the United States has said would compromise the security of F-35 aircraft. The disagreement over the F-35 is the latest of a series of diplomatic disputes between the United States and Turkey including Turkish demands that the United States extradite Islamic cleric Fethullah Gulen, differences over Middle East policy and the war in Syria, and sanctions on Iran. The sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the next shipment of training equipment, and all subsequent shipments of F-35 related material, had been canceled. The aircraft is built by Lockheed Martin Corp. A Pentagon official told Reuters in March that the United States had a number of items it could withhold in order to send Turkey a signal that the United States was serious about Ankara dropping its ambition to own the S-400. Turkish officials in Ankara were not immediately available for comment. Turkey has said it will take delivery of the S-400s in July. The U.S. decision on the F-35s was expected to complicate Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu’s visit to Washington this week for a NATO summit. On Sunday, Erdogan suffered one of his biggest electoral losses in decades in local elections. “Certain Russian weapon systems are seen as inherently threatening to the United States regardless of who is operating them and for what purpose,” Andrew Hunter, a fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said. “Because Turkey is not just an F-35 purchaser, but an industrial partner, blocking delivery of these systems represents a major escalation by the United States as it threatens to impose serious costs on both sides,” Hunter said. Reuters reported last week that Washington was exploring whether it could remove Turkey from production of the F-35. Turkey makes parts of the fuselage, landing gear and cockpit displays. Sources familiar with the F-35’s intricate worldwide production process and U.S. thinking on the issue last week said Turkey’s role can be replaced. The United States and other NATO allies that own F-35s fear the radar on the Russian S-400 missile system will learn how to spot and track the jet, making it less able to evade Russian weapons. In an attempt to persuade Turkey to drop its plans to buy the S-400, the United States offered the pricier American-made Patriot anti-missile system in a discounted deal that expired at the end of March. Turkey has shown interest in the Patriot system, but not at the expense of abandoning the S-400. Turkey has engaged with U.S. negotiators in recent days about buying the Patriot system, a person familiar with the matter said on condition of anonymity. The system is made by Raytheon Co. Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar in March said that despite some issues, Turkish pilots were continuing their training at an air base in Arizona on the F-35, each of which costs $90 million, and that Ankara was expecting the aircraft to arrive in Turkey in November. By halting jet deliveries, the Pentagon could subsequently delay training of Turkish pilots. Two additional jets are scheduled to arrive in Arizona in April and a significant delay could impact Turkey’s November target date for operations. U.S. lawmakers also have expressed alarm over Turkey’s planned purchase of the Russian system. Four U.S. senators last week introduced a bipartisan bill that would prohibit the transfer of F-35s to Turkey until the U.S. government certifies that Ankara will not take delivery of the S-400 system. Following news of the halt, U.S. Senator Jeanne Shaheen, one of the bill sponsors, said she was glad to hear the administration was “to delay the transfer of F-35 equipment to Turkey to help ensure U.S. military technology and capabilities cannot fall into the hands of the Kremlin.”
|
u.s .;russia;military;turkey;recep tayyip erdogan
|
jp0002648
|
[
"asia-pacific"
] |
2019/04/02
|
Facebook and rights groups hit out at Singapore's planned fake news bill
|
SINGAPORE - Singapore submitted wide-ranging fake news legislation in Parliament on Monday, stoking fears from internet firms and human rights groups that it may give the government too much power and hinder freedom of speech. The law will require social media sites like Facebook to carry warnings on posts the government deems false and remove comments against “public interest.” The move came two days after Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg said governments should play a more active role in regulating the online platform. But Simon Milner, who works on Facebook’s public policy in Asia, said after the law was tabled, the firm was “concerned with aspects of the law that grant broad powers to the Singapore executive branch to compel us to remove content they deem to be false and proactively push a government notification to users.” “As the most far-reaching legislation of its kind to date, this level of overreach poses significant risks to freedom of expression and speech, and could have severe ramifications both in Singapore and around the world,” said Jeff Paine, managing director of the Asia Internet Coalition, an industry association of internet and technology companies in the region. Speaking to reporters Monday, Singapore’s Law Minister K. Shanmugam said the new legislation will not hinder free speech. “This legislation deals with false statements of facts. It doesn’t deal with opinions, it doesn’t deal with viewpoints. You can have whatever viewpoints however reasonable or unreasonable,” he said. Tech giants Facebook, Twitter and Google all have their Asia headquarters in the city-state, a low-tax finance hub seen as an island of stability in the middle of the fast-growing but often-turbulent Southeast Asia region. Singapore, which has been run by the same political party since independence from Britain more than 50 years ago, says it is vulnerable to fake news because of its position as a global financial hub, its mixed ethnic and religious population and widespread internet access. It is ranked 151 among 180 countries rated in the World Press Freedom Index of Reporters Without Borders, a nongovernment group that promotes freedom of information, below the likes of Russia and Myanmar. The new bill proposes that the government get online platforms to publish warnings or “corrections” alongside posts carrying false information, without removing them. This would be the “primary response” to counter falsehoods online, the Law Ministry said. “That way, in a sense, people can read whatever they want and make up their minds. That is our preference,” Shanmugam told reporters Monday. Under the proposals, which must be approved by Parliament, criminal sanctions including hefty fines and jail terms will be imposed if the falsehoods are spread by “malicious actors” who “undermine society,” the ministry said, without elaborating. It added that it will cut off an online site’s “ability to profit,” without shutting it down, if the site had published three falsehoods that were “against the public interest” over the previous six months. It did not say how it will block a site’s profit streams. The bill came amid talk of a possible general election this year. Shanmugam declined to comment when asked if the new legislation was related to a vote. “This draft law will be a disaster for human rights, particularly freedom of expression and media freedom,” said Phil Robertson, deputy director of Human Rights Watch’s , Asia division. “The definitions in the law are broad and poorly defined, leaving maximum regulatory discretion to the government officers skewed to view as “misleading” or “false” the sorts of news that challenge Singapore’s preferred political narratives.”
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media;censorship;rights;press freedom;social media;facebook
|
jp0002649
|
[
"national"
] |
2019/04/02
|
New Japanese era name a boon for Australian property website
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SYDNEY - What links the Japanese Imperial family and the property market in Western Australia? Until Monday’s announcement of the forthcoming Reiwa Era, not much. The Real Estate Institute of Western Australia said it had an unexpected surge in traffic to its website — Reiwa.com — after the era of the next emperor’s rule was named. Seventy percent of the day’s traffic to reiwa.com was from Japan, according to institute spokeswoman Sjanna Sandalova. In Japanese, Reiwa consists of two characters: “ rei ,” which can have meanings related to “order” but also “auspicious,” and “ wa ,” usually translated as “peace” or “harmony.” For the many residents of Perth, REIWA, is synonymous with the hunt for a two-bedroom apartment near the Swan River. Reiwa.com is hoping that Japan’s new era also brings a new era in a market that is shrinking after a decadelong mining-fueled boom. “We want to embrace all of this traction and use it as an opportunity to entice migration and foreign investment back into our state,” said REIWA Chief Executive Neville Pozzi.
|
australia;emperor akihito;real estate;abdication;offbeat;gengo;heisei;era name;new era
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jp0002650
|
[
"national"
] |
2019/04/02
|
In 1988, Japan wanted Crown Prince Akihito to visit South Korea, records show
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SEOUL - A former senior Japanese government official informed the South Korean side in 1988 of hopes that Emperor Akihito, then the Crown Prince, would make a visit to South Korea as soon as possible, according to declassified diplomatic records. The documents were released by the South Korean Foreign Ministry on Sunday. Then-Japanese Vice Foreign Minister Ryohei Murata told former South Korea Ambassador to Japan I Won-gyon that the Japanese Foreign Ministry hoped that the Crown Prince would visit South Korea at an early date, the records show. At the same time, Murata said there were many issues that needed to be considered, such as the health condition of then-Emperor Hirohito, the father of the current Emperor and known posthumously as Emperor Showa, as well as the timing of a South Korea visit by the Crown Prince, according to the records. I reported Murata’s remarks to the South Korean government. Murata made the remarks at a meeting over lunch in September 1988, to which the South Korean envoy was invited, the records show. They exchanged views on the international situation at the time and a plan to visit Japan by Roh Tae-woo, who was the South Korean president at the time. Murata also presented the option of the Crown Prince’s possible South Korea visit being discussed at a Japan-South Korea summit, according to the records. But Murata was also quoted as saying that various approaches, such as making no official announcement, could be studied. He made the statement apparently in consideration of the feelings of South Korean people over the possible visit, experts said. Every March the South Korean Foreign Ministry discloses diplomatic records 30 years after their compilation.
|
south korea;emperor akihito;emperor hirohito;south korea-japan relations;roh tae-woo
|
jp0002651
|
[
"national"
] |
2019/04/02
|
Pachinko parlors in western Japan will hold back from installing new machines before G20 in Osaka
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OSAKA - About 800 pachinko parlors in western Japan have decided to refrain from replacing their game machines with new ones, a measure typically used to attract customers, ahead of the Group of 20 summit in Osaka in June, an industry group said Tuesday. The decision, made after the group discussed with police which pachinko parlors are required by law to apply for the changing or adding of machines, is intended to prevent an extra burden from being placed on police, who will be busy with security-related tasks before and during the summit. According to the national organization of pachinko halls, almost all parlors in the prefectures of Osaka and Ehime will not apply for the introduction of new game machines in the lead up to the summit. Osaka parlors will not make such applications in June, while Ehime establishments will refrain from applying for new machines from late May to late June. The G20 summit will be held in the city of Osaka from June 28 to 29. In addition, those in Ehime, whose capital, Matsuyama, is scheduled to host a G20 meeting of labor ministers from Sept. 1 to 2, will handle the matter the same way from late July through to the summit, the organization said. The group said its Osaka and Ehime chapters have already informed their local members of the policy. “Although some pachinko parlors may voice concern that (the self-restraint) will affect their business, we’d like to cooperate for the success of the G20 summit,” said an official of the national organization. Pachinko parlors have previously taken similar measures for big international events, such as the 2008 Group of Eight summit in Toyako, Hokkaido, and the 2002 FIFA World Cup jointly hosted by Japan and South Korea. The G20 consists of Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey, the U.K., the United States and the European Union.
|
osaka;g20;pachinko;police
|
jp0002652
|
[
"national",
"politics-diplomacy"
] |
2019/04/02
|
What's in a name? Reiwa reflects today's politics, Japan's cultural history and a social philosophy
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Media hype over Reiwa, the newly announced name for the upcoming era, continued unabated Tuesday. At the same time, a majority of people appeared to happily welcome the name, which means “auspicious” ( rei ) and “peace” or “harmony” ( wa ). However, the choice of the era name seems to reflect some important political considerations on the part of the government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe: For the first time, the two kanji chosen for the name were taken from Japanese classical literature, not Chinese. A growing sense of rivalry with China has apparently prompted Abe and other key Cabinet members to distance themselves from Chinese literature, which has long been the traditional source when it comes to choosing a new era name. But ironically, the passage that inspired the new name was apparently influenced by a Chinese classical poem. According to Defense Minister Takeshi Iwaya, Cabinet members “shared the feeling” that the new era name must be chosen from a Japanese classic book, not a Chinese one. “Japan was long under the influence of Chinese civilization, and it enjoyed great benefits from it,” Iwaya told a news briefing Tuesday at the Prime Minister’s Office. “But Japan has cultivated its own unique culture over thousands of years. So it was very meaningful that (kanji) were chosen from a Japanese book this time,” he said. The two kanji used for Reiwa came from the introduction to a set of 32 flower-themed poems included in “Manyoshu,” Japan’s oldest existing anthology of waka poems. Abe praised “Manyoshu,” pointing out that people from a variety of social classes — ranging from emperors, warriors and farmers — all contributed poems to the book. The era name will be a symbol of Japanese people’s love of culture and the country’s rich nature, he said. Tuesday’s editorial in the conservative daily Sankei Shimbun sounded much more upbeat than Abe, saying it welcomes the new era name. “Having its own gengō was a symbol of a state’s independence. Chinese dynasties forced countries under their wings to keep using their Chinese gengō over generations,” it read. “The history of Japanese gengō shows that Japan, whose figurehead is the Emperor , has maintained independence without any interruption.” However, the introduction in question was written only with Chinese grammar and Chinese characters, based on a Chinese classic poem. The sentence of the introduction in question reads: “In an auspicious (rei) month of early spring, winds breeze in a peaceful (wa) manner.” According to experts, this sentence was based on a classic Chinese poem by Zhang Heng (78-139), which was believed to have been widely read by Japanese intellectuals at that time. In fact, Zhang’s poem looks quite similar: “In an auspicious month of mid-spring, the air is pure in a peaceful time.” Many Japanese have the impression that “Manyoshu” is Japanese classic literature, but the introduction in question and some other parts were written only with Chinese characters using Chinese grammar, said Asao Kure, an associate professor at Kyoto Sangyo University. “(Japanese people) were trying to create something original while using Chinese culture as a reference,” said Kure, who specializes in legal history and is also an expert on Imperial era names. Originally Japanese people didn’t have a writing system at all and instead introduced Chinese characters, now called kanji, sometime during the 5th century. Later, Japanese people invented kana phonograms but many Japanese classic works were written only with Chinese characters using Chinese grammar. In some works, like most poems in “Manyoshu,” Chinese characters were used as a phonetic equivalent of Japanese words. Kenji Yamazaki, professor of Japanese literature at Meiji University in Tokyo, said it is probably difficult to find something that is purely Japanese and can be used for gengō given the hybrid nature of the Japanese writing system. Yamazaki also said he feels the hybrid nature of “Manyoshu” may suggest a continuing resonance for people in the upcoming new era: creating something new by absorbing something from the outside world. Meanwhile, Kure of Kyoto Sangyo University also said people shouldn’t focus too much on the meanings associated with one kanji that constitutes the gengō. “The new era name draws on a text about nature, which is unlike the previous era names,” he said. “Past era names have usually posited specific political principles, but Reiwa instead puts forth a new kind of social philosophy inspired by nature — one that aims to achieve harmony among individuals in the same way that harmony and balance is found in natural phenomena,” he explained. “I do feel that the new gengō is aligned with modern ways of thinking, in that it focuses more on harmonious relationships between individuals to create a diverse society, rather than putting forward a specific principle,” Kure said.
|
china;shinzo abe;literature;history;kanji;nihongo;manyoshu;gengo;reiwa
|
jp0002653
|
[
"national",
"politics-diplomacy"
] |
2019/04/02
|
Japan's LDP to get record haul of state subsidies in 2019
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The ruling Liberal Democratic Party will receive a record ¥17.9 billion in state subsidies in 2019, up 2.3 percent from the previous year, the internal affairs ministry said Monday. The subsidies to the party, decided in accordance with the political party subsidies law, will be the largest since the current subsidy system started in 1995. Subsidies for all eligible political parties will total ¥31.8 billion. The amount to be granted to the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan will jump 16.9 percent to ¥3.2 billion, while that to the Democratic Party for the People will drop 3.0 percent to ¥5.4 billion. The ministry sets the amounts of subsidies to political parties based on the numbers of their lawmakers as of Jan. 1 and votes won in the last House of Representatives election and the last two House of Councilors elections. This year’s subsidies, which are distributed quarterly, will be recalculated based on the results of the upcoming Upper House election in the summer. The Japanese Communist Party did not apply to receive subsidies as it opposes the system. Subsidies for this year will stand at ¥3 billion for Komeito, the LDP’s partner in the ruling coalition, ¥1.3 billion for Nippon Ishin no Kai (Japan Innovation Party) and ¥275 million for the Liberal Party. Kibo no To (Party of Hope) and the Social Democratic Party will receive ¥219 million and ¥384 million, respectively.
|
ldp;political parties
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jp0002654
|
[
"national"
] |
2019/04/02
|
Infectious form of African swine fever virus detected for first time in Japan, in meat from China
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The African swine fever virus has been detected in a contagious state on Japanese soil for the first time, the government said Tuesday. The government has in the past detected genes of the African swine fever virus in food brought from overseas, but never before has the virus been confirmed as being at an infectious stage. The Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries said the discovery of an infectious form of the virus has prompted a decision to strengthen measures against illegal imports of livestock products. The virus was discovered in sausages brought into the country from China in January, the farm ministry said Tuesday. The virus only affects domesticated and wild pigs and boars, not humans, but there is no vaccine or effective treatment for the highly lethal virus, the ministry said. The sausages were brought into Japan, apparently as souvenirs, by two passengers arriving separately at Chubu airport near Nagoya on planes from Shanghai and Qingdao on Jan. 12, according to the ministry. So far no African swine fever infections have been reported in Japan and it is unlikely that food infected with the virus would cause an outbreak unless pigs were fed with the infected food. Under the law on infectious disease control for domestic animals, people who bring unauthorized animal products into the country could face a fine of up to ¥1 million or imprisonment for up to three years. To date authorities have only penalized serious violations, such as when unauthorized products were imported for sale, but the government now plans to tighten controls and take action against those who repeatedly import unauthorized livestock products. African swine fever is more lethal than conventional swine fever, also known as hog cholera, with a number of outbreaks having been reported in parts of Japan since September — the first time the virus had been detected in the country for 26 years. An outbreak of African swine fever was reported in China last year and has since spread to Vietnam and Mongolia. As of February, dozens of countries in Africa and Europe have also reported outbreaks.
|
china;disease;virus;meat;african swine fever;swine fever;maff
|
jp0002655
|
[
"national"
] |
2019/04/02
|
Japan approves plan to send SDF officers to Sinai, on first non-U.N. peacekeeping mission
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The government on Tuesday approved sending two Self-Defense Forces officers to a multinational peacekeeping force on Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula later this month, in what would be the first dispatch of SDF personnel to an overseas mission not under the command of the United Nations. Japan will dispatch two Ground Self-Defense Force officers to the command of the Multinational Force and Observers, which is tasked with monitoring the cease-fire between Israel and Egypt on the peninsula, between April 19 and Nov. 30 at the MFO’s request. The GSDF dispatch will be the first case of so-called international peace and security cooperation activity under Japan’s 2015 national security legislation. The dispatch will “expand the scope of our country’s international contributions,” said Defense Minister Takeshi Iwaya. Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga separately told reporters that sending the GSDF officers to the peacekeeping force “will further contribute to peace and stability in the Middle East.” The MFO replaced a U.N. peacekeeping mission in 1982 to monitor the implementation of the 1979 peace treaty between Egypt and Israel after the Arab-Israeli War, with Japan providing financial support since 1988. The international body has a total of some 1,200 personnel from 12 countries including the United States and the U.K. The two GSDF members will be given liaison and coordination duties between the Israeli and Egyptian forces, and will be stationed at the MFO command in Sharm el-Sheikh on the southern tip of the peninsula in eastern Egypt. They will be equipped with guns and rifles at the MFO’s request. The government also plans to send a Cabinet Office official to the Japanese embassy in Cairo for support. Iwaya said the government has no plans to send an SDF unit there. The government gave the go-ahead after Kentaro Sonoura, a special adviser to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, and Parliamentary Vice Defense Minister Takako Suzuki visited the site and judged that the plan meets Tokyo’s requirements for sending SDF members abroad on peacekeeping operations. Japan’s new security law, which came into effect in 2016, loosened the constraints under the postwar pacifist Constitution and allows SDF participation in some overseas peacekeeping operations even if they are not under the control of the United Nations. Five legal requirements, known as the five principles, govern participation by the SDF in peacekeeping operations overseas, whether or not the mission is under U.N. control. The principles include the existence of a cease-fire agreement among warring parties. Japan’s government sent Defense Ministry officials to assess the situation on the Sinai Peninsula in March. The officials determined that the dispatch would not run counter to the five principles.
|
israel;egypt;self defense forces;peacekeeping;sinai;mfo
|
jp0002656
|
[
"national"
] |
2019/04/02
|
International Olympic Committee chief Bach hosts 'reconstruction ambassadors' from disaster-hit Tohoku
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LAUSANNE, SWITZERLAND - International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach on Monday hosted a group of students from the Tohoku region to discuss its recovery from the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami disaster, as well as preparations for the 2020 Tokyo Games. The five teenage “reconstruction ambassadors” from Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima prefectures told the IOC chief about the current situation in the area and the role of sports in its revitalization. One of the students, 14-year-old Keitaro Takano, has been campaigning to repair the image of agricultural products from Fukushima Prefecture. Their reputation has been affected by the nuclear crisis stemming from the earthquake and tsunami disaster. “The Olympics have attracted attention from all over the world. Mr. Bach has given us his backing, so hopefully we can gain even more support,” Takano said. As Fukushima is set to host baseball and softball at the Olympics, Bach invited the youngsters to attend one of the games with him. Bach said he was impressed by the work that the ambassadors had done in their communities and was extending the invitation as a sign of his appreciation.
|
fukushima;tohoku;ioc;3.11;thomas bach;2020 tokyo olympics;2020 tokyo paralympics
|
jp0002657
|
[
"national"
] |
2019/04/02
|
U.S. Osprey makes emergency landing at western Japan airport
|
OSAKA - A U.S. military Osprey aircraft made an emergency landing Monday afternoon at a busy airport in western Japan, causing some commercial flight delays, the Defense Ministry said. An MV-22 Osprey belonging to U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Futenma in Okinawa Prefecture landed at Itami airport, which straddles Osaka and Hyogo prefectures, at around 1:55 p.m. It landed safely and taxied to a parking apron with no injury or structural damage, the ministry added. The tilt-rotor aircraft, which was on its way to the U.S. Navy’s Atsugi base in Kanagawa Prefecture from the Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni in Yamaguchi Prefecture, had sent an emergency message before landing, according to the ministry. It asked the U.S. side to report details of the incident. The emergency landing forced Itami airport, one of the primary airports in the country’s west, to temporarily close one of its two runways, causing a delay of around 20 minutes for several commercial flights, according to the transport ministry.
|
u.s .;accidents;military;weapons;defense ministry;ospreys
|
jp0002658
|
[
"national"
] |
2019/04/02
|
Japan won't grant new residency status to Iranians as Tehran won't take back deportees
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The Justice Ministry has decided not to grant a new type of residency status for foreign workers to people holding Iranian citizenship. The decision, announced Monday in a government gazette, was made because the Iranian government refuses to cooperate in receiving Iranian people deported from Japan for illegal stays and other reasons, officials said. The ministry fears that the number of illegal residents may rise if the new status, which was introduced at the start of the new fiscal year on Monday and is intended to shore up Japan’s workforce, is granted to Iranians. A ministry ordinance requires those subject to the status to have a passport of a country that is cooperative in accepting its own deported citizens. Iran does not receive its deported people if they are unwilling to return, as its constitution guarantees freedom of residence and movement. The ministry also considered leaving out Turkey, which had been uncooperative in accepting its citizens who did not possess valid passports. Turkey was not excluded because it agreed to cooperate in response to Japan’s prompting, officials said.
|
immigration;iran;turkey;justice ministry
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jp0002659
|
[
"national"
] |
2019/04/02
|
Panel urges Japan to set more ambitious goal for cutting greenhouse gas emissions
|
Japan should set a higher goal for cutting greenhouse gas emissions to fight global warming and bring them to effectively zero in the second half of the 21st century, a government panel said Tuesday. The government plans to draft a long-term climate change strategy based on the proposal before Japan hosts the Group of 20 summit in late June. The country has upheld a long-term goal of slashing emissions by 80 percent by 2050 from 2013 levels. But the panel of experts said the country needs to make a “new shift” in its efforts toward fighting global warming. The country should aim to achieve the “ultimate goal of a carbon-free society at the earliest possible time during the second half of this century,” the proposal said. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said at the meeting of the panel, which included professors and corporate executives, “We hope to accelerate the virtuous cycle of taking environmental measures and promoting growth, and trigger a paradigm shift in the world.” In a set of proposals, the panel said Japan should “show contributions” to achieve the goal of the Paris agreement, which is to keep the rise in average global temperatures to less than 2 C compared to pre-industrial levels to mitigate the impact of climate change, which includes droughts, floods and rising sea levels. The panel also called for greater use of renewable energy and to reduce the country’s reliance on coal-fired thermal power generation as much as possible. But the panel stopped short of demanding the end of coal-fired power generation, with Japan building new plants despite international criticism. The proposal instead encouraged the development of technologies to capture and store carbon dioxide emissions. While Japan is striving to promote the use of hydrogen as an alternative energy source to fossil fuel, the panel pointed to the need to reduce production costs. Discussions on putting a price on carbon emissions through such means as carbon taxes have met resistance, mainly from business circles. The panel proposal declined to take sides on the issue, saying it needs further “professional and technical discussions.” Tackling climate change is one of the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals to be achieved by 2030. The goals range from reducing poverty to improving health care and education. Abe has said Japan will lead global discussions toward attaining the goals.
|
global warming;climate change;paris agreement
|
jp0002660
|
[
"national"
] |
2019/04/02
|
Foreign media focus on break in tradition after Reiwa is picked for Japan's new era name
|
WASHINGTON - U.S. and other Western media covering the announcement Monday of the new Imperial era name emphasized the decision by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s government to break with tradition by selecting a name from a Japanese rather than a Chinese work of classical literature. “The break from 1,400 years of drawing era names from Chinese classics was expected from Abe’s conservative government, which is often hawkish toward China,” the Associated Press said in a dispatch from Tokyo. Under the headline, “Japan snubs China at dawn of new imperial era,” British newspaper The Times reported the selection of Reiwa for the new era “reflects the nationalist pride of its prime minister, Shinzo Abe, and its tense relations with China.” The Guardian, another British paper, said the move “represents a break with centuries of tradition as the first era name to have been inspired by a Japanese, rather than Chinese, work of classical literature.” The New York Times quoted Ken Ruoff, a professor of history at Portland State University, as saying Abe made an “unquestionably significant” choice by selecting an era name, or gengō , from Japanese literature. “He went out of his way to emphasize that this is Japanese tradition,” Ruoff, an expert on the Japanese Imperial system, was quoted as saying. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told reporters Monday that it is a “matter of internal affairs of Japan.” “Recently, China-Japan relations have maintained a good momentum of improvement and development. We will continue to promote healthy and stable development of bilateral ties to benefit the two countries,” Geng said. In a Twitter post, U.S. Ambassador to Japan William Hagerty congratulated the country on the start of the new era. “We look forward to strengthening our partnership in the era of #Reiwa!” Hagerty wrote. Speaking at a news conference Monday in Tokyo, Abe said the 248th gengō derives from “Manyoshu,” which was compiled in the eighth century and is the oldest existing collection of Japanese poetry. Reiwa, he said, means that culture is born and nurtured as the people’s hearts are drawn beautifully together. Japan is the only country in the world that uses the era name system, which has its roots in China, although the Gregorian calendar is also in common use. The current Heisei Era, which means “achieving peace,” will end when Emperor Akihito abdicates on April 30. His son, Crown Prince Naruhito, will accede to the throne the following day.
|
shinzo abe;imperial family;abdication;manyoshu;reiwa
|
jp0002661
|
[
"national"
] |
2019/04/02
|
74% happy with Reiwa as name for Japan's next era, with Abe Cabinet approval rate rising to 52.8%
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Nearly 74 percent of the public approve of the name Reiwa selected for the nation’s next era, which will be used for the next Emperor’s reign from May, a survey showed Tuesday. The survey, conducted by Kyodo News, also showed that the support rate for Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s Cabinet has risen 9.5 percentage points to 52.8 percent, since the previous survey was held in March. In a two-day nationwide emergency opinion poll, conducted after the new Imperial era name was unveiled on Monday, 73.7 percent said they liked the name while 15.7 percent did not. Nearly 85 percent, meanwhile, saw the government’s choice of a name from a Japanese classic, rather than a Chinese source, as a positive. The selection drew on Japanese literature for the first time in the history of Imperial era names, which are known as gengō and date back to the 7th century. Reiwa literally means “beautiful harmony,” according to the Japanese government. The new era name is composed of two Chinese characters — “ rei ” meaning “good” or “auspicious” but also denoting “command,” and “ wa ” meaning “harmony” or “peace.” Abe, who held a news conference and appeared on TV programs to explain the new era name, saw his Cabinet’s support rate rise from 43.3 percent in the previous survey, which was conducted in March. The disapproval rate stood at 32.4 percent, down from 40.9 percent. Around 54 percent of those surveyed, meanwhile, said that they opposed the Liberal Democratic Party changing its rules to allow Abe to serve another term as party president after his third term expires in September 2021. The issue came to light last month after some party heavyweights hinted at the possibility, but the prime minister said he would not seek another term.
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shinzo abe;abdication;surveys;gengo;reiwa
|
jp0002662
|
[
"national"
] |
2019/04/02
|
Foreign Ministry may go Gregorian, dropping use of Japan era names in documents when it can
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With the upcoming Imperial era name change, the Foreign Ministry is considering scrapping the use of the era name for calendar years in some of its official documents and switching to the Gregorian calendar, according to informed sources. The new era name, Reiwa, will succeed the current Heisei when Crown Prince Naruhito ascends to the Chrysanthemum Throne on May 1, after his father, Emperor Akihito, abdicates on April 30. While the ministry will keep using the Japanese era calendar in documents, including those that are budget-related, that require consistency with papers of other ministries, it plans to promote the use of the Gregorian calendar for documents without such restrictions. On Monday, a senior Foreign Ministry official said use of the Japanese era calendar may be confusing to other countries. The ministry has started sorting out types of documents that it seems would be acceptable to use with the Gregorian calendar, according to the sources. At a news conference Friday, Foreign Minister Taro Kono pointed to the complexity of calculations needed when converting years between the two era systems. “We’ll make efforts so that there’ll be no mistakes when we go back and forth between the Christian and Japanese era systems,” Kono added. Meanwhile, Koichi Hagiuda, the Liberal Democratic Party’s executive acting secretary-general, said Tuesday that ministries should use the era name in official documents, especially those used within the country.
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foreign ministry;abdication;reiwa
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jp0002663
|
[
"business"
] |
2019/04/20
|
To protect sellers, government working group eyes stricter regulations for tech giants
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A government working group is set to call for placing stricter regulations on technology giants such as Amazon.com and Google LLC to prevent them from taking advantage of vendors, sources with knowledge of the matter said Saturday. In a report to be submitted to the government, emphasizing the need to better protect small businesses who sell their products on online marketplaces, the group of experts suggests drafting a law to enable authorities to reprimand and fine platform operators if they make unreasonable demands and violate rules. The envisioned law will require tech firms to publicly disclose contracts with vendors and by so doing ensure sellers that are wronged have a means of recourse. A working group, formed by the industry ministry, the internal affairs ministry and the Japan Fair Trade Commission, will explain a set of proposals in the interim report to a government panel on Wednesday. The government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is also seeking regulations for the protection of information privacy, and on mergers and acquisitions, by platform operators. Japanese officials are looking into whether an existing law can be used to penalize those operators who mishandle personal data collected from users. Firms such as Amazon.com and Google have thrived by using such data to tailor their services to individuals, but have fanned concerns over a loss of privacy. Also in the making are guidelines aimed at protecting the domestic tech industry by regulating corporate acquisitions by foreign tech firms.
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google;amazon;regulations
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jp0002664
|
[
"business",
"economy-business"
] |
2019/04/20
|
Government coordinates response to potential market volatility during Japan's 10-day holiday period
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A meeting involving representatives of the Finance Ministry, the Financial Services Agency and the Bank of Japan was held Friday to discuss how to a respond if the upcoming 10-day holiday period linked to the Imperial succession leads to wild fluctuations in financial markets. The foreign exchange monitoring system will maintain operations, while departments responsible for overseeing banks and the Tokyo Stock Exchange will take steps to be prepared for swift communications. Many major overseas economic indicators, such as U.S. jobs data for April, are slated to be announced while Japan is in the holiday period from April 27. “We confirmed our responses in the event of financial market volatility,” Vice Finance Minister for International Affairs Masatsugu Asakawa told reporters after the meeting Friday. The FSA asked banks to put 30 percent more cash per day in their ATMs than during the normal Golden Week holiday period, which runs from late April to early May. Regulators will beef up surveillance against any questionable stock market activities during the period immediately before the holidays, when trading volume is expected to be low. The TSE will increase the number of personnel for monitoring market activities. Asakawa also said Finance Minister Taro Aso is planning to visit the Unites States next week to meet with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.
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boj;stocks;forex
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jp0002665
|
[
"business",
"economy-business"
] |
2019/04/20
|
Japanese firms likely to expand year-round hiring of university graduates
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Keidanren, the nation’s top business lobby, and Japanese universities are expected to agree to let more companies introduce year-round hiring of new graduates, sources have said. Officials from the two sides, set to meet on Monday, are likely to agree to review the current practice of focusing graduate hiring in spring. Hiroaki Nakanishi, chairman of Keidanren — which is also known as the Japan Business Federation — was positive about the idea. “Diversity is important for global companies,” he said Friday. Year-round hiring enables companies to take in workers flexibly based on their needs while allowing students more freedom in their job-hunting process. Firms in Japan that currently use year-round hiring are mainly in the technology sector, including wireless operator Softbank Corp. and online flea market operator Mercari Inc. A survey by Recruit Works Institute of 3,596 firms showed that 10.7 percent plan to use year-round hiring for university students who are set to graduate in 2020.
|
jobs;keidanren
|
jp0002666
|
[
"business",
"tech"
] |
2019/04/20
|
CIA says spies fund Huawei: newspaper
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BANGALORE, INDIA - U.S. intelligence has accused Huawei Technologies of being funded by Chinese state security, The Times said on Saturday, adding to the list of allegations faced by the Chinese technology company in the West. The CIA accused Huawei of receiving funding from China’s National Security Commission, the People’s Liberation Army and a third branch of the Chinese state intelligence network, the British newspaper reported, citing a source. Earlier this year, U.S. intelligence shared its claims with other members of the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing group, which includes Britain, Australia, Canada and New Zealand, according to the report. Huawei dismissed the allegations in a statement cited by the newspaper. “Huawei does not comment on unsubstantiated allegations backed up by zero evidence from anonymous sources,” a representative from Huawei told The Times. The company, the CIA and Chinese state security agencies did not respond immediately to requests from a reporter for comment. The accusation comes at a time of trade tensions between Washington and Beijing and amid concerns in the United States that Huawei’s equipment could be used for espionage. The company has said that such concerns by governments are unfounded. Authorities in the United States are also probing Huawei for alleged violations of sanctions. Meng Wanzhou, Huawei’s chief financial officer and daughter of its founder, Ren Zhengfei, was arrested in Canada in December at the request of the United States on charges of bank and wire fraud in violation of U.S. sanctions against Iran. She denies wrongdoing, and her father has previously said that the arrest was “politically motivated.” Amid such charges, top educational institutions in the West have recently severed ties with Huawei to avoid losing federal funding. Another leader Chinese technology company, ZTE Corp., has also been at the center of similar controversies in the United States. U.S. sanctions forced ZTE to stop most business between April and July last year after Commerce Department officials said it broke a pact and was caught illegally shipping U.S.-origin goods to Iran and North Korea. The sanctions were lifted after ZTE paid $1.4 billion in penalties. Reuters reported earlier in the week that the United States will push its allies at a meeting in Prague next month to adopt shared security and policy measures that will make it more difficult for Huawei to dominate next-generation 5G telecommunications networks.
|
china;u.s .;internet;smartphones;cia;computers;espionage;huawei;5g
|
jp0002667
|
[
"business",
"tech"
] |
2019/04/20
|
Expert credited with stopping WannaCry attack admits malware charges
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BANGALORE, INDIA - A British cybersecurity researcher hailed as a hero for neutralizing the global WannaCry ransomware attack in 2017 has pleaded guilty to U.S. charges of writing malware. Marcus Hutchins, who was charged on 10 counts in the United States, pleaded guilty to two of them, with the U.S. government agreeing to move towards dismissing the remaining counts at the time of the sentencing, according to a filing at the U.S. District Court in the eastern district for Wisconsin. “I’ve pleaded guilty to two charges related to writing malware in the years prior to my career in security,” Hutchins, also known online as MalwareTech, said in a statement. He did not give details. Hutchins had risen to overnight fame within the hacker community in May 2017 when he helped defang the global “WannaCry” ransomware attack, which infected hundreds of thousands of computers and caused disruptions at factories, hospitals, shops and schools in more than 150 countries. He was arrested later that year in Las Vegas on unrelated charges that he had built and sold malicious code used to steal banking credentials. U.S. prosecutors had claimed that he and a co-defendant advertised, distributed and profited from malware code known as Kronos between July 2014 and 2015.
|
internet;hacking;computers;wannacry
|
jp0002668
|
[
"world",
"social-issues-world"
] |
2019/04/20
|
Runaway Saudi sisters in Georgia hope to move to third country for safety
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TBILISI - Two runaway Saudi sisters said on Friday they have applied for asylum in Georgia but still feared they could be reached by their family and forced back to the ultra-conservative Islamic kingdom. Immigration authorities in the former Soviet republic offered the siblings assistance and security on Thursday, days after the two made international headlines by pleading online for protection. But the sisters, Maha al-Subaie, 28, and Wafa al-Subaie, 25, said they would rather move to another country where Saudi Arabians cannot visit without a visa. “We are not safe here and we need to leave as soon as possible,” they told the Thomson Reuters Foundation from their shared Twitter account @GeorgiaSisters. Georgian authorities placed them in a safehouse guarded by police but the sisters said they feared revenge from relatives whom they accused of beating and abusing them, posting photos of bruises and scratches on social media. “We can’t live a normal life. My brothers, my big family, cousins, uncles — anybody can come here,” said Wafa. “We are a big shame for my country, for my family, for all,” said Maha, referring to their escape and appearance in social media videos without wearing headscarves. On Thursday, Georgia’s interior ministry said there were no relatives in the country who posed a danger to two women. The case is the latest to draw attention to Saudi Arabia’s strict social rules, which force women to obtain the permission of a male “guardian” if they want to work, marry or travel. Human rights groups say the system can trap women and girls as prisoners of abusive families. The sisters are not the first Saudi women to seek refuge outside their homeland, which is one of the world’s most gender-segregated nations. “Women and girls in Saudi Arabia who attempt to flee from the control of their families can face very grave consequences,” said Suad Abu-Dayyeh, Middle East consultant for women’s rights group Equality Now. “They are in danger of being locked at home for the rest of their lives, severely punished, and may even be killed.” Earlier this year a Saudi teen holed up in a Thai airport hotel to escape her family and won asylum in Canada. In March two other Saudi sisters who spent six months hiding in Hong Kong were granted humanitarian visas to travel to a third country. The al-Subaie sisters said they evaded family monitoring and flew from Riyadh to Istanbul at the beginning of April. In a tweet, Maha said she had to leave her son behind, which was “devastating,” but she had no other option. Upon arriving in Turkey, the sisters made their way to Georgia by land, fearing their father could find them in Turkey using Absher, a Saudi Arabian government app allowing men to monitor and control female relatives’ travel. They bought a flight to Belarus — another visa-free destination for Saudis — via Amsterdam hoping to seek asylum in transit, but airport staff in Tbilisi grew suspicious of their convoluted travel plan and did not let them leave, they said. After an attempt to get a visa for Australia failed due to passport issues, they took to Twitter to appeal for help, they said. Saudi Arabia denied it had suspended the sisters’ passports. The country’s embassy in Tbilisi did not immediately reply to a further request for comment. The sisters said Georgian authorities have been treating them well but they hoped they would be allowed to move on. “We hope that in the future will live a real life without fear or repression in a safe country, where we can choose what we want to do and try everything that is possible and natural for women to do,” said Maha.
|
saudi arabia;rights;women;maha al-subaie;wafa al-subaie
|
jp0002669
|
[
"world"
] |
2019/04/20
|
Fire-ravaged Notre Dame now stabilized as investigators probe cause
|
PARIS - Architects and construction workers have stabilized the damaged structure of the Notre Dame Cathedral, four days after a fast-spreading fire ravaged the iconic Paris building, and firefighters were leaving the site Friday night, a fire service official said. The promising development came as Notre Dame’s parishioners celebrated Good Friday in a nearby church, praying for the damaged monument and celebrating its rescued relics such as the Crown of Thorns believed to have been worn by Jesus at his crucifixion. “There is no more risk the edifice’s walls could fall down,” said Lt. Col. Gabriel Plus, chief spokesman for the Paris fire service. Plus said firefighters have been able to cool down the walls and debris from the roof inside the cathedral, and there are no more “hot points” inside. “It’s a miracle that the cathedral is still standing, and that all the relics were saved,” he said. Investigators believe the fire was an accident and are studying multiple factors that could have contributed. The cathedral’s rector said a “computer glitch” may have played a role in the rapidly spreading blaze that devastated the 850-year-old architectural masterpiece. Rector Patrick Chauvet did not elaborate on the exact nature of the glitch. “We may find out what happened in two or three months,” he told local business leaders and construction workers. Newspaper Le Parisien reported that a computer bug could have misdirected firefighters responding to the initial fire alarm. The unsourced report said investigators are also looking into whether the fire was linked to temporary elevators being used in a renovation that was underway at the time the cathedral caught fire. The fire burned through the network of enormous centuries-old oak beams supporting the monument’s vaulted stone ceiling, dangerously weakening the building. Chauvet said there were fire alarms throughout the building, which he described as “well protected.” Firefighter spokesman Plus said there could have been “a smoldering fire inside the frame” of the Notre Dame roof that was fueled by the wind. Paris police investigators said they believe an electrical short-circuit most likely caused the fire. It’s believed to be one of multiple leads being investigated. “Is it linked to the renovation work? A human error? The investigation will say,” Plus said. He warned that “the central nave remains dangerous” but said the stones are drying out from the water sprayed from hoses during nine hours of firefighting efforts. The last artworks were taken out of the cathedral Friday and taken to the Louvre for safekeeping pending renovation, he said. Catholic worshippers carried out the Way of the Cross ritual near the cathedral to mark Good Friday, and the Crown of Thorns relic saved from the fire was presented to worshippers at the nearby Saint-Sulpice Church. A public veneration of the crown is normally part of the ceremonies leading up to Easter at Notre Dame. But because of the fire, the crown was shown at a service Friday evening at Saint-Sulpice instead. Judith Kagan, a conservation official at France’s Culture Ministry, said Friday the artworks inside Notre Dame had suffered no major damage from the fire. French President Emmanuel Macron met Friday with officials from the United Nations cultural agency, UNESCO. UNESCO representatives have offered their technical expertise to help with the reconstruction. Macron is moving quickly on the fire-ravaged monument’s reconstruction, which is being viewed both as a push to make it part of his legacy and a way to move past the divisive yellow vest protests over social inequality in France. Notre Dame’s reconstruction is prompting widespread debate across France, with differing views over whether it should involve new technologies and designs. Macron hasn’t offered any specifics on his vision for the roof or whether the frame should be wood, metal or concrete, according to his cultural heritage envoy, Stephane Bern. He has named a general, Jean-Louis Georgelin, former chief of staff of the armed forces, to lead the reconstruction effort. Over $1 billion has already poured in from people from all walks of life around the world to restore Notre Dame. According to an opinion poll by BVA institute published Friday — the first carried out since the fire — Macron has gained three points in popularity in the past month with an approval rating of 32 percent. That puts him back at the support level of September, before the yellow vest crisis, BVA said. Although all French polls show that Macron’s popularity has remained low since a tax increase on retirees last year, they suggest his party may be ahead in France’s May 26 European Parliament election, with Marine Le Pen’s far-right party, the National Rally, close behind. Despite the destruction of Notre Dame dominating the news in France, a new round of nationwide yellow vest protests was planned for Saturday. Interior minister Christophe Castaner said 60,000 police officers were being mobilized and demonstrations near Notre Dame would be be banned as he expects some protests to turn violent. In a hopeful development Friday, 180,000 bees being kept in hives on Notre Dame’s lead roof were discovered alive. “I am so relieved. I saw satellite photos that showed the three hives didn’t burn. I thought they had gone with the cathedral,” said Nicolas Geant, the monument’s beekeeper. Geant has looked after the bees since 2013, when they were installed as part of a city-wide initiative to boost declining bee numbers. Geant said the carbon dioxide in the fire’s heavy smoke put the bees into a sedated state instead of killing them, adding that when bees sense fire they “gorge themselves on honey” and protect their queen. European bees never abandon their hives, he said.
|
france;religion;history;fires;paris;architecture;disasters;notre dame
|
jp0002670
|
[
"world",
"crime-legal-world"
] |
2019/04/20
|
California 'House of Horrors' couple jailed for torture and abuse of their children
|
RIVERSIDE, CALIFORNIA - A California couple were jailed for at least 25 years on Friday after admitting to imprisoning and torturing 12 of their 13 children in a grisly “House of Horrors” case that shocked the world. David Allen Turpin, 57, and his wife, Louise Anna Turpin, 50, had pleaded guilty to 14 felony counts — including cruelty, false imprisonment, child abuse and torture of their children aged three to 30. In an emotionally wrenching hearing, several of the children professed continued love for their parents, from Perris, in Riverside County, 70 miles (110 kilometers) southeast of Los Angeles. “I never intended for any harm to come to my children,” David Turpin told the court in the city of Riverside. The case came to light last year when one of the children escaped through a window from the couple’s home and called the emergency services. According to excerpts of the call released during court proceedings, she told the dispatcher that two of her siblings were chained to their beds so tightly that their skin was bruised and she struggled to tell the operator the home address. “I’ve never been out. I don’t go out much,” the teen said in the call. She told responding officers that the house was so dirty she couldn’t breathe and that she and her siblings never took baths. “They chain us up if we do things we’re not supposed to,” she said. “Sometimes, my sisters wake up and start crying (because of the pain).” An officer who interviewed the teen after her escape said she was so emaciated that he first thought she was a child. He said the girl described a routine in which the children were forced to sleep 20 hours a day and in the middle of the night ate a combination of lunch and dinner that most often consisted of peanut butter sandwiches, chips and microwaved food. One of the older children also told investigators that the couple would lock him and his siblings in cages as punishment and beat them with paddles. Since their rescue, the children have been in the care of child and adult protective services. The Turpins moved from Texas to California in 2010. Investigators have said it is unclear what prompted the abuse. Under California law, both will be eligible for parole in 25 years because of their age.
|
children;torture;child abuse;david allen turpin;louise anna turpin
|
jp0002671
|
[
"world"
] |
2019/04/20
|
Solemn service marks 20th anniversary of Columbine High School massacre in which 13 victims were slain
|
LITTLETON, COLORADO - A weeklong series of events commemorating the 20th anniversary of the Columbine High School massacre was to culminate Saturday with a remembrance ceremony celebrating the lives of the 13 victims slain in the rampage. On April 20, 1999, two Columbine students, just three weeks shy of graduation, stormed the suburban Denver school armed with shotguns and semiautomatic weapons, fatally shooting 12 students and a teacher before committing suicide. For the relatives of those they killed, April 20 evokes a mix of emotions from sorrow and anguish to fond memories of loved ones. Betty Shoels, the aunt of murdered student Isaiah Shoels, said her 18-year-old nephew was a fun-loving athlete who was always smiling, despite feeling out of place as one of the school’s few African-American students. “What I miss most is his laugh,” Shoels said. “He was just a great kid who loved to joke.” This year’s remembrances were marred earlier this week when a Florida teenager, who authorities said was “obsessed” with Columbine, traveled to Colorado where she died of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot. Evan Todd was a sophomore at Columbine two decades ago when he was wounded in the school library, where 10 of the students were killed. He said whenever he hears of school shootings or other tragedies somehow linked to Columbine, it reminds him that he was “part of something so gruesome and so public.” He often recalls Matt Kechter, his football teammate, who was shot dead just a few feet away from him. “Sometimes I wonder what Matt would be doing now, what is life would be like,” said Todd, 35, who is the father of a 1-year-old son. He credits his family and Christian faith for getting him through the months following the tragedy. “I’m just thankful that I survived,” he said.
|
guns;u.s .;colorado;shooting;colombine
|
jp0002672
|
[
"world",
"politics-diplomacy-world"
] |
2019/04/20
|
Robert Mueller's report strengthens resolve on both sides of U.S. political spectrum
|
LAS VEGAS/CLEARWATER, FLORIDA - After months as volunteer activists demanding that U.S. President Donald Trump be impeached, Eileen and Michael O’Brien sat on their couch on Thursday, cracked open a laptop and began to read the 448-page special counsel report that liberals have dreamed would make impeachment a reality. “Hmm, seems like there’s a lot of gray area here,” said Eileen O’Brien, 65, of Clearwater, Florida, reading aloud a line about the findings falling short of a criminal case. “Legally wrong and morally wrong are two different things.” The release of the long-anticipated report by special counsel Robert Mueller on his inquiry into Russia’s role in the 2016 election landed in a stridently divided America: one side convinced Trump acted improperly, the other adamant that the investigation was a politically driven farce. Mueller built an extensive case that Trump committed obstruction of justice but stopped short of concluding he had committed a crime, though he did not exonerate the president. For those like the O’Briens who have been pining for impeachment, the report renewed resolve to oust the president. For those who want to see the president re-elected, there was a sense of vindication. “The White House is going to put out their own version of things, which is basically fish wrapper,” said Michael O’Brien, formerly a service technician who now works on houses. His wife, who a day earlier delivered a can of “impeaches” peaches to a lawmaker, looked up with a quizzical expression. “It’s worthless,” he explained. “You can use it to wrap fish.” Lee Mueller and his wife, Michele Mueller, no relation to Robert Mueller, also paused their Thursday to read through the special counsel’s report. They printed out the table of contents for both volumes along with the executive summaries. “I view the Mueller report as being one battle in a war against the United States of America’s founding principles and against Donald Trump,” Michele Mueller, 61, said in a suburb of Las Vegas. After Attorney General William Barr released his four-page summary of the Mueller report late last month, Americans were dug in on their views. So far, the full report does not appear to have convinced many to change their opinions about the president’s conduct. A Reuters/Ipsos public opinion poll conducted Thursday afternoon to Friday morning found among those respondents of who said they were familiar with the Mueller report, 70 percent said the report had not changed their view of Trump or Russia’s involvement in the U.S. presidential race. Only 15 percent said they had learned something that changed their view of Trump or the Russia investigation, and a majority of those respondents said they were now more likely to believe that “Trump or someone close to him broke the law.” Trump’s approval ratings, however, dipped 3 percentage points after the release of the report, the poll found. Ahead of Thursday’s release of the Mueller report, Trump ramped up his insistence that he was the victim, not the perpetrator, of crimes. James Stratton, 65, also of Clearwater, caught snippets of the news about the report from conservative commentators Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity. He looked up Barr’s news conference, held Thursday morning before the report was released online, on YouTube. “Nobody on our side is going to change,” the Republican president of the local Tampa Bay Trump Club said in a phone interview, adding that liberals will grow tired of hearing predictions about Trump’s downfall that never materialize. “We stay focused on the issues. How do we stop socialism? How do we protect our borders?” For the most invested, though, Mueller’s report offered hope for further investigation, but by Democrats in Congress this time. Tom Steyer, a billionaire activist who has spent millions of his own dollars directing pressure at Congress to impeach Trump, said while he thinks the contents of the report implicate the president, he acknowledges the findings alone are unlikely to convince Americans to change their minds. “I think the only way to get voters to notice is to directly publicize, televised hearings,” Steyer said. “We’re all for public hearings so the American people can see and can react themselves.” In Florida, Margo Hammond, 69, who considers herself an independent voter, gleaned highlights by toggling through the coverage of MSNBC, CNN and Fox News. She was unimpressed with Barr. “It’s kind of an insult to the American people that we can’t decide for ourselves,” she said while in an art class. She planned to read as much as she could of the report. “I think it will only affirm what I originally thought,” she said. Then she repeated something she had heard earlier from a news commentator: “There was a whole lot of cheating going on.”
|
u.s .;congress;russia;robert mueller;donald trump;2016 u.s. presidential election;russia probe
|
jp0002673
|
[
"world",
"politics-diplomacy-world"
] |
2019/04/20
|
Democrats make legal bid for all Russia probe evidence as Trump poll numbers drop
|
WASHINGTON - Congressional Democrats took legal action on Friday to gain access to all of U.S. special counsel Robert Mueller’s evidence from his inquiry into Russian meddling in the 2016 election. The number of Americans who approve of President Donald Trump dropped by 3 percentage points to the lowest level of the year following the release of a redacted version of Mueller’s report on Thursday, according to a Reuters/Ipsos online opinion poll. Mueller did not establish that the Trump campaign coordinated with Russians but did find “multiple acts by the President that were capable of exerting undue influence over law enforcement investigations.” While Mueller decided not to charge Trump with a crime such as obstruction of justice, he also said the investigation did not exonerate the president. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler, a Democrat, issued a subpoena to the Justice Department to hand over the full Mueller report and other relevant evidence by May 1. “My committee needs and is entitled to the full version of the report and the underlying evidence consistent with past practice. The redactions appear to be significant,” Nadler said in a statement. The Justice Department called the request “premature and unnecessary,” but spokeswoman Kerri Kupec said in a statement the department would work with Congress “to accommodate its legitimate requests consistent with the law and long-recognized executive branch interests.” The report provided extensive details on Trump’s efforts to thwart Mueller’s investigation, giving Democrats plenty of political ammunition against the Republican president but leaving them with no consensus on how to use it. The document has blacked-out sections to hide details about secret grand jury information, U.S. intelligence gathering and active criminal cases as well as potentially damaging information about peripheral players who were not charged. Six top congressional Democrats led by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer rejected U.S. Attorney General William Barr’s offer to give them access to a less redacted version of the report. In a letter to Barr, they repeated their request for the full report but said they were open to “a reasonable accommodation.” Democratic leaders have played down talk of impeachment of Trump just 18 months before the 2020 presidential election, even as some prominent members of the party’s progressive wing, notably Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, promised to push the idea. Sen. Elizabeth Warren became the first major contender for the Democratic presidential nomination to call for the start of impeachment proceedings, saying on Twitter that “the severity of this misconduct” demanded it. Trump, who has repeatedly called the Mueller probe a political witch hunt, lashed out again on Friday. “Statements are made about me by certain people in the Crazy Mueller Report … which are fabricated & totally untrue,” Trump wrote on Twitter. He seemed to be referring to former White House counsel Don McGahn, who was cited in the report as having annoyed Trump by taking notes of his conversations with the president. “Watch out for people that take so-called ‘notes,’ when the notes never existed until needed,” Trump wrote. “It was not necessary for me to respond to statements made in the ‘Report’ about me, some of which are total bulls—- & only given to make the other person look good (or me to look bad).” Phone conversations between the president and McGahn in June 2017 were a central part of Mueller’s depiction of Trump as trying to derail the Russia inquiry. The report said Trump told McGahn to instruct the Justice Department to fire Mueller. McGahn did not carry out the order. According to the Reuters/Ipsos poll of 1,005 adults conducted Thursday afternoon to Friday morning, 37 percent of people approve of Trump’s performance in office — down from 40 percent in a similar poll conducted on April 15, which matches the lowest level of the year. The poll has a credibility interval, a measure of precision, of 4 percentage points. Rep. Doug Collins, the top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, said the Democrats’ subpoena “is wildly overbroad” and would jeopardize a grand jury’s investigations. While most Republicans have stood by Trump, 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, now a U.S. senator from Utah, criticized Trump and those around him as portrayed in the report. Romney, an on-and-off Trump critic, said on Twitter it was “good news” there was insufficient evidence to charge Trump with a crime. “Even so, I am sickened at the extent and pervasiveness of dishonesty and misdirection by individuals in the highest office of the land, including the president,” said Romney, who lost the White House race to President Barack Obama in 2012. The Mueller inquiry laid bare what U.S. intelligence agencies have described as a Russian campaign of hacking and propaganda to sow discord in the United States, denigrate 2016 Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton and boost Trump. Russia said on Friday that Mueller’s report did not contain any evidence that Moscow had meddled. “We, as before, do not accept such allegations,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. Asked on Friday about Russian interference in 2016, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in Washington that “we will make very clear to them that this is not acceptable behavior.” Half a dozen former Trump aides, including former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, were charged by Mueller’s office or convicted of crimes during his 22-month-long investigation. The Mueller inquiry spawned a number of other criminal probes by federal prosecutors in New York and elsewhere. One reason it would be difficult to charge Trump is that the Justice Department has a decades-old policy that a sitting president should not be indicted, although the U.S. Constitution is silent on whether a president can face criminal prosecution in court. Nadler told reporters on Thursday that Mueller probably wrote the report with the intent of providing Congress a road map for future action against the president, but the Democratic congressman said it was too early to talk about impeachment. But the House Oversight Committee’s Democratic chairman, Elijah Cummings, said impeachment was not ruled out. “A lot of people keep asking about the question of impeachment. … We may very well come to that very soon, but right now let’s make sure we understand what Mueller was doing, understand what Barr was doing, and see the report in an unredacted form and all of the underlying documents,” he told MSNBC.
|
u.s .;congress;russia;robert mueller;donald trump;2016 u.s. presidential election;russia probe
|
jp0002674
|
[
"world"
] |
2019/04/20
|
An ancestor of Paris' Notre Dame still stands in war-torn Syria
|
QALB, LOZEH SYRIA - An arched entrance flanked by two towers, elaborate carvings and a broad-aisled nave: A fifth-century limestone church in northwestern Syria is the architectural forerunner of Paris’ Notre Dame Cathedral. Standing in the village of Qalb Lozeh (Heart of the Almond), the cathedral is widely hailed as Syria’s finest example of Byzantine-era architecture. And it is believed to have been the source of inspiration for Romanesque and Gothic cathedrals in Europe, including Notre Dame in Paris. “It is the earliest known example of the twin-tower facade flanking a highly elaborate arched entrance, the precursor to what became known as the Romanesque style,” said Middle East cultural expert Diana Darke. Romanesque architecture evolved into the Gothic style that defines Notre Dame, she said. The layout of the church in northwestern Syria has many similarities with Notre Dame, she said. “The specific similarities between Notre Dame and Qalb Lozeh are, first and foremost, the twin-tower design flanking the elaborate arched portal,” said Darke. Inside, “the similarities are in the pillars dividing the church into three broad aisles — the nave and side aisles — a deliberate echoing of the Holy Trinity, with three sweeping arches resting on broad capitals to spread and distribute the weight which carried the clerestory windows and the original wooden roof over the nave,” she added. The abandoned church is within a cluster of 40 “Ancient Villages of Northern Syria” that UNESCO has included on its World Heritage List since 2011. Two years later, as fighting ravaged Syria and its cultural heritage, the villages were placed on UNESCO’s list of endangered sites. UNESCO says the villages, including Qalb Lozeh — home to pagan temples and ancient churches — illustrate “the transition from the ancient pagan world of the Roman Empire to Byzantine Christianity.” Qalb Lozeh was built by Syrian Christians whose wealth was based on production of wine and olive oil, said Darke. The church was frequented by pilgrims and is thought to have been a key stop on the way to the nearby basilica of St. Simeon the Stylite. “Merchants, pilgrims and monks moved constantly between this area and Europe over the centuries,” she said. “So it’s not surprising that the design ideas found their way gradually back to Europe, even before the crusaders of the 12th century.” Syrian historian Fayez Kawsara said crusaders brought Qalb Lozeh’s architectural style to Europe in the 12th century. “Anyone who delves deep in the study of Gothic art, and especially Gothic churches, will find that this architectural style traveled to Europe” from Syria, he said, pointing to the cathedral’s soaring arches, its detailed sculpting and its squared towers. “The biggest proof of this is … Notre Dame Cathedral,” added Kawsara. Qalb Lozeh — which is much smaller in size than the Paris landmark — lies in the jihadi-held region of Idlib. Children used the abandoned church as a playground, and graffiti has been scrawled on the outside and inside walls of the cathedral. Caretakers who guarded the church quickly left after Syria’s conflict erupted in 2011. Since then it has fallen into neglect, said villager Issam Ibrahim. “It was not being protected and as village residents, we took it upon ourselves to protect the site,” he said. Wissam Mohammad, another resident, said the church holds important significance for the local community. “It is not just a pile of old stones. It is a symbol of Syria’s culture,” he said.
|
france;religion;history;syria;fires;paris;architecture;disasters;notre dame
|
jp0002675
|
[
"world",
"offbeat-world"
] |
2019/04/20
|
Paranormal investigator Lorraine Warren dies at 92
|
MONROE, CONNECTICUT - Paranormal investigator and author Lorraine Warren, whose decades of ghost-hunting cases with her late husband inspired such frightening films as “The Conjuring” series and “The Amityville Horror,” died. She was 92. The Warrens founded the New England Society for Psychic Research in Monroe, Connecticut, in 1952 to investigate suspected hauntings. During their 61 years of marriage, Lorraine and Ed Warren investigated more than 10,000 cases in the U.S. and abroad, often writing about their experiences. Their unusual profession has been credited with sparking popular interest in the paranormal, as well as the television shows and films now dedicated to the subject. “When nobody was really even talking about ghosts, they were just two people from Bridgeport, Connecticut, who came together and fell in love and Ed happened to have had a lot of paranormal instances when he was growing up and Lorraine was always the sensitive clairvoyant,” said Larry Dwyer, a staff writer at the Horror News Network, a website that covers the horror film industry. He said the couple realized they could use their “gifts” and Catholic faith to help people who believed they were being tormented by ghosts or demons. Ed Warren died in 2006, and son-in-law Tony Spera now oversees the New England Society for Psychic Research. The organization’s website said Lorraine Warren had “decided to retire from active investigations regarding the areas of haunted homes and demonic infestations/possessions” but was still a consultant to the organization at the time of her death. The Warrens’ work did receive criticism from doubters over the years. The New England Skeptical Society in 1997 said the Warrens’ “copious anecdotal evidence” of reports of hauntings vastly outnumbered their “low-grade physical evidence.” Warren told The AP in a 2013 interview that she understood it was very difficult for people to accept she could see ghosts if they had never seen one themselves. “I hope you never will,” she said. “I really don’t.” The 2013 film “The Conjuring” is based on the couple’s investigation into alleged events at a Rhode Island farmhouse in the 1970s. Lorraine Warren visited the set during the filming. She also spent time at her Connecticut home with actress Vera Farmiga, who portrays Warren in the movie and its sequels.
|
obituary;supernatural
|
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