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jp0003543
|
[
"national"
] |
2019/04/15
|
Quake-hit Kumamoto pledges more housing help three years after disaster
|
KUMAMOTO - The governor of Kumamoto Prefecture said Monday that greater efforts would be made to help resettle those displaced in two powerful earthquakes that struck three years ago in the prefecture and its vicinity, causing disasters that claimed 273 lives. “We will speed up our efforts so everyone can secure housing,” said Kumamoto Gov. Ikuo Kabashima at a meeting of the prefectural government’s reconstruction task force, noting that over 16,000 people remain in temporary housing in disaster-hit areas. On April 14, 2016 a magnitude 6.5 quake struck the region, followed by a magnitude 7.3 temblor two days later. Fifty people were killed when buildings collapsed on top of them and 223 others died in the aftermath of the disaster, while more than 200,000 residences were destroyed or damaged in Kumamoto and Oita prefectures. A ceremony marking the third anniversary of the first quake was held Sunday at the prefectural government offices, with some 350 people attending. “There is no end to my sorrow, but I would like to live an independent life and help reconstruct our village,” said Keisuke Masuda, 81, from Minamiaso, Kumamoto, at the ceremony, representing families of the disaster victims. Masuda temporarily lived with his son in Tokyo after losing his wife, 79-year-old Fumiyo, and their home in the disaster, but returned to Kumamoto thinking he should be close to her. He now lives alone in temporary housing. By the end of last year, the prefecture had finished demolishing more than 35,600 damaged buildings with public funds, and processing some 3.11 million tons of waste left by the disaster. Still, 16,519 people remain in temporary housing and homes rented out by the private sector, the cost of which is being shouldered by local governments, according to the prefecture.
|
earthquakes;kumamoto;disasters;anniversaries
|
jp0003544
|
[
"national"
] |
2019/04/15
|
Chick hatches on Sado Island from egg of crested ibis gifted to Japan by China
|
NIIGATA - A chick has hatched from an egg laid by a crested ibis, an internationally protected species, which was given by China to a conservation center on Sado Island off Niigata Prefecture, the facility said Monday. The Sado Japanese Crested Ibis Conservation Center confirmed that one of the eggs laid by 3-year-old Guan Guan had hatched for the first time since she arrived in Japan last October. Officials at the conservation center said they saw the chick Monday morning, adding that the center is trying to hatch the eggs through both artificial and natural incubation. Guan Guan and Lou Lou, a male bird, are crested ibises that were gifted by China for the first time in about 11 years, amid signs of improving relations between Tokyo and Beijing. Guan Guan laid her eggs after mating with another male in Japan, according to the center. Currently, all crested ibises released in Sado are descendants of the birds provided by China. The last Japan-born crested ibis died in 2003, after the country succeeded in the artificial breeding of the rare birds using a pair donated by China for the first time in 1999. The conservation center hopes to diversify the gene pool of the protected birds by artificially breeding them with the involvement of Guan Guan and Lou Lou.
|
china;niigata;animals;endangered;sado island;creasted ibises
|
jp0003545
|
[
"national"
] |
2019/04/15
|
First exam held in Japan for foreign nationals seeking new working visas
|
Gearing up to accept more foreign workers under a pair of new visas launched earlier this month, Japan held its first qualifying exam Sunday for applicants in the country. The exam, which took place at several locations across Japan, focused on checking the knowledge and skills required to work in the country’s hotel industry. The first exam to be conducted overseas, for candidates hoping to work in the nursing care business, was held in Manila on Saturday. Japan created the new visas on April 1 to bring more foreign workers into the country, which is struggling with an acute labor shortage. The step marked a major policy shift from the nation’s traditionally strict immigration rules. Over the next five years, the government expects up to 345,150 foreign migrant workers to acquire a newly created resident status called Specified Skilled Worker No. 1 and work in 14 labor-hungry sectors such as accommodation, nursing care, construction and farming. The visa will enable them to stay for up to five years. About 390 people sat Sunday’s exam, which was held at seven test sites including locations in Tokyo, Nagoya and Osaka. The results will be announced on May 25. The exam involved a paper test concerning knowledge of the service industry and a customer service skill test. Many of the applicants are believed to be students who have experience of working at hotels in Japan as part-time staff. Elma Sulistia Ningrum, a 24-year-old Indonesian living in Saitama Prefecture, said she can speak Japanese and English but that the knowledge test was difficult because she was not familiar with the hotel business. Job seekers will also have to clear a Japanese language proficiency test before applying for the new visa. For the hotel industry, successful candidates will likely be granted visas in the summer at the earliest, according to the Japan Tourism Agency. The government hopes the anticipated influx of foreign workers will ease manpower shortages at hotels — especially those in rural areas — which could lead to a further increase in tourists. Exams for the food service industry are scheduled to be held in Tokyo and Osaka later this month. In the past, Japan limited the issuance of working visas to people with a certain degree of professional knowledge and high-level skills, such as doctors, lawyers and teachers. But it decided to loosen restrictions on the entry of foreign workers from April to tackle serious labor shortages amid the graying of the country’s population and its falling birthrate.
|
visas;foreign workers;exams
|
jp0003546
|
[
"national",
"science-health"
] |
2019/04/15
|
Joint study finds curry spices can suppress inflammation in airway cells caused by PM2.5 particles
|
OSAKA - Spices commonly used in curry may be able to curb inflammation caused by pollution-causing fine particles in the air, according to a joint study by Japanese curry roux maker House Foods Corp. and a Kyoto University professor. The study found cloves, turmeric, cinnamon and coriander had the ability to suppress inflammation caused by air pollutant PM2.5 during laboratory experiments using human airway cells, although the study did not involve any humans eating curry containing the spices. “We were able to achieve positive results on a cellular level. There’s a good possibility that consuming the spices will also produce a desired outcome,” said Hirohisa Takano, a professor of environmental medicine at the state-run university. “We have to conduct further research into it.” House Foods, a unit of House Foods Group Inc., said it will conduct additional studies into the health benefits of curry to boost consumption. PM2.5, or particles measuring 2.5 microns in diameter or smaller, pose great risks to health as they are capable of penetrating people’s lungs and entering their bloodstream, causing strokes, heart disease, lung cancer, pneumonia and other diseases.
|
pollution;kyoto university;pm2.5;curry;spices;house foods corp .
|
jp0003547
|
[
"national"
] |
2019/04/15
|
LGBT couples speak of their suffering in lawsuit seeking marriage for all in Japan
|
In the first oral argument of an unprecedented trial challenging the constitutionality of Japan’s same-sex marriage ban, LGBT couples spoke Monday of their experiences, aiming to highlight the social stigma and discrimination affecting their lives, and called for the government to recognize their right to marry. Thirteen couples of various age groups, from their 20s to 60s, are participating in the suit against the central government, brought simultaneously to district courts nationwide on Valentine’s Day. They are each seeking ¥1 million in compensation, with an additional payment worth 5 percent of the damages sought for each year until the damages payment is complete, as well as funds to cover litigation costs incurred during the process. The couples argue the same-sex marriage ban is in violation of Article 24 of the Constitution, which guarantees the freedom to marry, as it states that “Marriage shall be based only on the mutual consent of both sexes.” In Monday’s hearing, two plaintiffs spoke of the legal issues faced by LGBT couples, such as the lack of rights guaranteed in opposite-sex marriages and the social stigma keeping them from revealing their sexuality. Haru Ono, a breast cancer survivor in her 40s and who has been in a relationship with her partner for 14 years, highlighted the legal problems she faced while undergoing treatment for cancer and a mastectomy surgery three years ago. She recalled that the hospital she attended had denied her partner the right to participate in the hospitalization procedure. Having faced the possibility of death, Ono also worried about parental custody and inheritance issues. She and her partner have been raising three children from previous marriages. Ikuo Sato, 60, who is gay and HIV-positive, complained that the government’s ban on same-sex marriage may deprive lesbian and gay couples of their rights to assist their partners in their final moments, or to attend funerals. “I’m aware I have only 10 years, or even less, to live. And it would be the happiest thing in my life if my partner and I were accepted as a real married couple while I’m still alive,” Sato said. His partner did not appear in the courtroom as he keeps his sexuality a secret due to fear of social stigma, Sato said. The plaintiffs’ lawyers argued that the same-sex marriage ban and the social stigma associated with it affects the mental health of LGBT people and has led many to take their own lives, adding that protection of human rights is the court’s primary responsibility. They also stressed that gender and sexual diversity is respected worldwide and that Japan is the only country in the Group of Seven nations that denies LGBT couples the right to marry. Shigenori Nakagawa, one of the attorneys representing the plaintiffs, suggested that the trial could continue for five years or longer but said he was determined to win the case. Due to court congestion, the date for the next session has yet to be decided.
|
courts;rights;lgbt;sexuality;marriage;same-sex marriage;parenthood
|
jp0003548
|
[
"national",
"politics-diplomacy"
] |
2019/04/15
|
Candidates nationwide kick off campaigns for unified local elections
|
Campaigns started Sunday for elections for 86 mayors and 294 city assemblies across the country, as well as 11 ward mayors and 20 ward assemblies in Tokyo, as part of unified local polls set for April 21. The voting will follow an earlier set of unified elections, on April 7, for governorships and prefectural assemblies. A total of 161 people have filed candidacies for the mayoral elections. Candidates in 27 mayoral races, or 31.4 percent of the total, have won uncontested because no rivals came forward. The uncontested mayoral races included those in two prefectural capitals — Tsu, Mie Prefecture, and Takamatsu, Kagawa Prefecture. In Tsu, Yasuyuki Maeba won a third term, while Hideto Onishi clinched a fourth term in Takamatsu. The contested votes will be held together with elections for town and village mayors and assemblies across the country, as well as by-elections for the House of Representatives in Osaka and Okinawa prefectures. Major campaign issues in the second leg of the unified local elections include ways to address falling populations and reinvigorate local economies. Three other prefectural capitals — Mito, Nagasaki and Oita — will also have mayoral elections on April 21. In Tokyo, a total of 31 people filed candidacies in elections to lead assemblies in 11 wards, including Chuo and Kita.
|
elections;mayors;campaigns;assemblies
|
jp0003549
|
[
"national",
"politics-diplomacy"
] |
2019/04/15
|
Xi Jinping to attend Osaka G20, says Taro Kono, in China leader's first visit to Japan since 2013
|
BEIJING - Chinese President Xi Jinping plans to visit Japan in June to attend this year’s summit of the Group of 20 major economies, in what will be his first trip to the nation since coming to power in 2013, Foreign Minister Taro Kono said Monday. “His attendance is scheduled,” Kono told reporters in Beijing after meeting separately with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang and Kono’s Chinese counterpart Wang Yi. It is also hoped that the visit will be an opportunity for Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to hold his first meeting with Xi since a summit in Buenos Aires in November. Kono said he agreed with Wang to work toward the success of the summit, set to be hosted in Osaka, and boost cooperation between the two countries on various global issues. “To stabilize Japan-China relations in the truest sense, positive action by China in the East China Sea is necessary,” Kono added. A dispute over the Japanese-controlled and uninhabited Senkaku Islands, which China claims and calls Diaoyu, remains a source of tension between the two countries. At the outset of the meeting, held at the Zhongnanhai government compound, Li had said, “As neighbors, China and Japan should deepen economic cooperation and cultivate third-country markets for the benefit of not only our two countries but also to ensure a stable recovery in the global economy.” The Japanese minister said he also asked China to lift restrictions on imports of Japanese food that were put in place after the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster. In November, China removed a ban on rice grown in Niigata Prefecture, more than 200 kilometers away from the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, and has shown willingness to ease restrictions on other Japanese food proven to be safe based on scientific evaluations. In a blow to Japan’s fishery industry, the World Trade Organization ruled Thursday that South Korea could maintain its import ban on Japanese seafood, reversing an earlier decision that had called for the prohibition to be lifted. Kono and Wang are also believed to have discussed the resumption of talks on a joint gas development project in the East China Sea based on a 2008 bilateral accord that has since stalled. On Sunday, the two co-chaired a high-level economic dialogue aimed at deepening cooperation at a time when global growth is slowing. At the meeting, which was attended by a dozen ministers from both sides, Japan voiced concern over lax protection of intellectual property rights in China. Beijing, meanwhile, called on Tokyo to invest in infrastructure projects as part of its Belt and Road initiative. Kono told reporters Sunday that the two countries broadly agreed to sign a quarantine pact that is a precondition to bringing an end to China’s import ban of Japanese beef, imposed in 2001 when the first case of mad cow disease was detected in Japan. “It’s an important step” toward lifting the ban, Kono said, noting that the pact would be signed “soon,” but without giving a concrete timeline. Kono said at the meeting, “It goes without saying it’s important that the second- and third-largest economies in the world hold constructive discussions on economic ties.” Six ministers from each country sat together for nearly four hours in a bid to find ways to create a more favorable environment for firms doing business in one another’s country. They dealt with a range of economic issues, including intellectual property theft that has developed into a tit-for-tat tariff war between the United States and China. “We have voiced Japan’s concerns over forced technology transfers and over the protection of intellectual property rights,” Kono told reporters after Sunday’s ministerial meeting. According to the Chinese Foreign Ministry, Beijing encouraged Tokyo to invest in infrastructure projects under Xi’s “One Belt, One Road” development initiative that stretches across Asia, the Middle East, Europe and Africa. China also expressed concern over decisions by Japanese telecommunications firms to exclude Huawei Technologies Co. and ZTE Corp. from contracts, amid concerns among some developed countries over security breaches, Kono said.
|
china;china-japan relations;xi jinping;wang yi;li keqiang;taro kono
|
jp0003550
|
[
"national",
"politics-diplomacy"
] |
2019/04/15
|
Youth turnout a worry in Japan's first quadrennial elections under new voting age of 18
|
The first quadrennial unified local elections to be held after the voting age was lowered to 18 in June 2015 are being hampered by concerns about the youngest voters’ low voting rate. Since most are going through important life changes in April, such as entering college, starting work and moving to new homes, they tend to have little interest in the local elections. In the most recent national elections — the Upper House poll in 2016 and the Lower House poll in 2017 — the turnout for 18-year-olds was higher than for 19-year-olds, apparently thanks to high school efforts to teach the importance of voting. Turnout was tallied at 51.3 percent for the Upper House poll and 47.9 percent for the Lower House poll for 18-year-olds, but 42.3 percent and 33.3 percent, respectively, for 19-year-olds. But because the local elections this year are taking place during spring vacation, after 18-year-olds graduate, many aren’t getting the encouragement from their teachers to go out and vote. The first wave was held on April 7 and will be followed by a wave of municipal elections on April 21. At Nagoya University’s entrance ceremony on April 5, 18-year-old medical student Kiyotaka Matsui said it would be difficult to cast his ballot for the Nagoya Municipal Assembly election two days later. “I am busy now, attending welcome parties for first-year students and deciding which clubs to join,” he said. Regardless of age, average turnout for the unified prefectural assembly elections in both 2015 and 2011 was below 50 percent, compared with 54.7 percent for the 2016 Upper House election and 53.7 percent for the 2017 Lower House election. While candidates for national elections tend to emphasize the policy differences between themselves and their rivals, such differences are less conspicuous in municipal and other local elections. “It is even more difficult for young people, who have less experience voting, to understand the differences,” said Tadashi Mori, professor of politics at Aichi Gakuin University in Nagoya. Furthermore, those who have moved to a different prefecture and changed their resident registration don’t have the right to vote in the new prefecture unless they registered three months before campaigning began. If they leave their resident registration documents in their hometowns, they can cast ballots there. But an 18-year-old from Hyogo Prefecture who entered Chukyo University in Aichi said it’s not worth the trouble. “It’s a hassle to go back to my hometown just for that,” the freshman said. Chiryuhigashi High School in Chiryu, Aichi Prefecture, offers classes to raise political awareness, but the last class for those who graduated this spring was held in November. “I was wondering if they would go to the polls,” said Tsuyoshi Masui, the 50-year-old teacher in charge of the class. On the same day that the graduation ceremony was held at Usui High School in the city of Fukui in March, officials from the Fukui prefectural election administration commission paid a visit. They explained the details of how to participate in early voting for the gubernatorial and prefectural assembly elections before any of the students could move out of the prefecture. In the end, however, it is often the candidates themselves who influence youngsters’ minds and get them to go to the polls. “I was listening to a candidate speaking in front of a train station and I liked the speech,” said Nana Ueno, an 18-year-old from Suzuka, Mie Prefecture, who entered Nagoya University’s School of Humanities earlier this month. “I plan to vote.”
|
nagoya;teens;elections;local government;students
|
jp0003551
|
[
"national"
] |
2019/04/15
|
Preparations for 2020 Tokyo Olympics transforming capital into 'global standard' city
|
Foreign-language signs are increasingly common along streets, cashless payment is becoming available at more shops and restaurants and ashtrays are vanishing from public spaces. Change is afoot in Tokyo. The capital is rapidly transforming into a “global standard” city with these moves ahead of the 2020 Olympics. The use of digital signs is spreading at train stations and commercial facilities in the capital. A Mitsukoshi department store in the Ginza district has adopted two digital sign units that can display information for visitors in four languages. East Japan Railway Co., better known as JR East, has experimented with a digital sign system combined with artificial intelligence, with the view to its full-fledged introduction in time for the 2020 Games. On a trial system installed at Tokyo Station, an AI-based female character called AI-Sakura who is fluent in Japanese, English, Chinese and Korean answered visitors’ questions with a smile. The introduction of smartphone-based payment systems, including those from overseas, is also progressing. Department and convenience store chains have been leading the way, and public transportation companies and businesses at major tourist spots are catching up. On Feb. 21, major subway stations run by Tokyo Metro Co. started accepting Alipay, the mobile payment system of China’s Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., for sales of subway passes to foreign visitors. In line with the International Olympic Committee’s push to hold a smoke-free Olympics, in the meantime, the government is working to curb indoor smoking under a health promotion law. The Tokyo Metropolitan Government is making similar efforts under its own ordinance. Family restaurant chain Saizeriya Co. plans to impose a smoking ban at all outlets by September. Convenience store chain Seven-Eleven Japan Co. asked some 1,000 franchise stores in Tokyo last year to remove ashtrays from storefronts. About 70 percent have already complied or said they are willing to do it. Some restaurant chains that have declined to gear up for smoking restrictions are concerned about ruining sales in a country long considered a smoking haven. “It’s uncertain whether a smoking ban would lead to higher sales or an increase in family visitors or simply cause a fall in the number of visitors who smoke,” a senior official with an izakaya (traditional Japanese pub) said. In another move triggered by the 2020 Olympics, major convenience store chains are slated to stop selling pornographic magazines at most stores by this summer.
|
tech;smoking;rail;tourism;retailers;2020 tokyo olympics;cashless
|
jp0003552
|
[
"national"
] |
2019/04/15
|
Tepco begins removing fuel rods from Unit 3 reactor pool at crippled Fukushima nuclear plant
|
FUKUSHIMA - The operator of the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant started removing nuclear fuel on Monday from the Unit 3 storage pool, located at one of the reactor buildings damaged by hydrogen explosions in the 2011 disaster at the site. It is the first fuel removal operation by Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc. (Tepco) from the storage pools for the Nos. 1 to 3 units, which suffered meltdowns after losing power following a powerful earthquake and tsunami. The start of the work was delayed by more than four years due to a series of malfunctions of the devices necessary for the operation, and high-level radiation observed in the area also posed a significant challenge, the operator said. Tepco said it plans to remove seven unspent fuel rods from the reactor’s pool, where a total of 566 spent and unspent fuel rods are stored, and transfer them to another storage pool on the premises later this month. The work is planned to be completed by the end of March 2021. There are a total of 1,573 fuel rods, including unspent ones, inside the storage pools at the Nos. 1 to 3 units, and the large amount of spent fuel is a huge obstacle to scrapping the crippled reactors as they will continue to generate heat and high levels of radiation for an extended period. After removing the seven unspent fuel rods that pose a relatively low risk, removal work will be intensified — possibly in June, when the storage pool to which the fuel will be transferred undergoes a regular check as is required by law. The fuel removal was originally scheduled to start in late 2014 but it has been pushed back multiple times. In 2014, Tepco completed fuel removal work from the pool linked to the No. 4 unit, which was offline for regular checks at the time of the accident and had all of its fuel stored in the pool. Unlike the Nos. 1 to 3 units, it did not suffer a meltdown. The utility said it aims to start fuel removal work from pools at the Nos. 1-2 units in fiscal 2023, and has been assessing their surroundings. Among the Nos. 1 to 6 units at the plant, the reactor buildings of the Nos. 1, 3 and 4 units suffered hydrogen explosions after the disaster. On Sunday, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe toured the Fukushima plant complex and nearby areas to check on reconstruction progress since the 2011 crisis. His visit came after Olympics minister Yoshitaka Sakurada stepped down last week when remarks made by Sakurada were deemed offensive to people affected by the March 2011 disasters. “The government will do its utmost to rebuild (this area), engraving in our heart once again that each minister is in charge of reconstruction,” Abe said following his visit to the nuclear complex — his first since September 2013. Abe said he confirmed “steady progress” in the decommissioning work at the plant but noted that “many challenges” remain. “The state will continue to stand at the forefront of the decommissioning work and the containment of radioactive water (that is accumulating at the plant),” he said.
|
fukushima;fukushima no . 1;radiation;tepco;nuclear energy;nuclear waste;3.11
|
jp0003553
|
[
"national"
] |
2019/04/15
|
Tateyama Kurobe Alpine Route featuring massive snow walls opens for season in Toyama
|
TOYAMA - A sightseeing route that includes massive walls of snow running through the Tateyama mountain range in central Japan opened Monday for this year’s tourist season. The Tateyama Kurobe Alpine Route, which is closed for most of the winter, connects the town of Tateyama, in Toyama Prefecture, with the city of Omachi in Nagano Prefecture in the Northern Alps by bus and cable car. The sightseeing route is open through Nov. 30 each year, and for a while after it opens in the spring visitors can witness the impressive volume of snow as they walk through the “ Yuki no Otani, ” or “large ravine of snow,” which is created after snow that fell during the winter is removed from the route. Kansai Electric Power Co. said it has started using new battery-powered buses instead of trolley buses to run through one of the tunnels that form part of the sightseeing route. The pathway for tourists walking below the snow walls, which this year extend up to 16 meters high on each side of the road, was closed Monday due to snowstorms. Also on Monday buses linking Bijodaira, at an altitude of 977 meters, and Murodo terminal, at an altitude of 2,450 meters, both in Tateyama, did not run due to bad weather. The operator of the route said it is aiming to attract 1 million visitors this year, an increase of around 20,000 from last year, as the number of foreign tourists in Japan continues to grow.
|
nagano;snow;tourism;tateyama;northern alps;tateyama kurobe alpine route;omachi
|
jp0003554
|
[
"national",
"crime-legal"
] |
2019/04/15
|
Woman arrested for leaving baby in toilet bowl after giving birth in Saitama convenience store bathroom
|
SAITAMA - A woman was arrested Monday for attempted murder over the abandonment of a newborn baby in a toilet bowl, after giving birth in a convenience-store bathroom in Saitama Prefecture, police said. Yuria Moriizumi, 24, delivered the baby girl in the bathroom of the store in Niiza, Saitama Prefecture, on Jan. 24, before leaving her in the bowl with the lid shut. The baby was suffering from hypothermia when found, and was taken to hospital soon after. She is now in a stable condition. “I couldn’t raise the child on my own, and I hadn’t told my parents about the pregnancy,” the unmarried woman said, according to police. Moriizumi was in a car with her family when she complained of stomach pains, so they stopped at the convenience store. The family had not noticed her pregnancy and only became aware of the situation when they took her to a hospital after seeing blood on the car seat once they got back home. The convenience-store manager called police after the discovery of the baby girl, while the hospital treating Moriizumi also notified police.
|
pregnancy;saitama
|
jp0003555
|
[
"national",
"crime-legal"
] |
2019/04/15
|
Okinawa police knew of problems between woman and U.S. serviceman before she was murdered
|
NAHA, OKINAWA PREF. - The U.S. military had informed local police in Okinawa in January of concerns about the relationship between a U.S. serviceman and a Japanese woman, and police had apparently been trying to confirm her safety, before both of them were found dead at the weekend. The U.S. Marine Corps on Monday revealed that the dead U.S. serviceman was 32-year-old Gabriel Olivero from North Carolina. According to Japanese authorities, the U.S. military police contacted them in late January and told them there were problems in the relationship between the 44-year-old woman and the man. Police officers met her multiple times in January and February to ensure her safety. When they called her in mid-March, she said there were no issues between the two at that time and that she was doing alright. Olivero and the woman were found dead on Saturday at an apartment in the town of Chatan in Okinawa Prefecture, which hosts the bulk of U.S. military facilities in Japan. The Foreign Ministry said the same day he fatally stabbed the woman and then killed himself. U.S. Forces Japan has said the Naval Criminal Investigative Service was working with local police to probe the deaths. “This is an absolute tragedy and we are fully committed to supporting the investigation,” it wrote in a statement Saturday. On Saturday, Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Takeo Akiba telephoned U.S. Ambassador William Hagerty, asking for cooperation with the investigation and to make efforts to prevent a recurrence, and expressed “extreme regrets,” the Foreign Ministry said.
|
okinawa;murder;suicide;u.s. military;u.s. bases;stabbings;chatan
|
jp0003556
|
[
"reference"
] |
2019/04/15
|
Everything you need to know about this one-of-a-kind Golden Week in Japan
|
Japan is poised to celebrate the Imperial succession and the start of a new era on May 1 with a festive extra-long 10-day Golden Week from April 27 through May 6. The string of consecutive holidays, at first glance, appears to be a miniature spring break for children out of school and a summer and winter vacation merged into one for employees who get permission to go. More people will be traveling, eating and shopping during the break, which is expected to benefit businesses. But it is also expected to be a headache for traders in Japan who are concerned the prolonged shutdown of Japan’s financial markets will unsettle the yen. Here is a look at how the rare 10-day break could impact businesses and people’s daily lives. What prompted the government to set up a 10-day Golden Week? It is intended to create a celebratory mood for the Imperial succession, which will see Crown Prince Naruhito ascend the throne on May 1 the day after his father Emperor Akihito abdicates. The annual holiday period dubbed Golden Week normally starts at the end of April and lasts through early May, with some normal working days interspersed throughout. This year, however, most of the days fall on a weekend or national holiday. Starting on April 27 (Saturday), Golden Week will include April 29 (Showa Day), May 3 (Constitution Day), May 4 (Greenery Day), May 5 (Children’s Day) and May 6 (a substitute holiday). That only left April 30 and May 1 and 2 as working days. Therefore the Diet enacted a law in December to designate May 1, enthronement day, as a one-off holiday this year. Since the holiday law stipulates that a weekday sandwiched between national holidays automatically becomes a public holiday, the entire span from April 27 to May 6 became a consecutive 10-day holiday. Why are investors and traders concerned? Because the extra-long Golden Week will cause Japan’s longest stock market shutdown ever, which is expected to cause more turbulence than usual when it reopens on May 7. The Financial Services Agency issued a statement warning market participants to be aware that stock prices might fluctuate and trading volume may substantially increase if major market-moving events occur during that time. Hideo Kumano, executive chief economist at Dai-ichi Life Research Institute, said many are concerned that currency trading will become volatile during the long holiday because Japanese traders will either be absent or fewer in number. He recalled the Jan. 3 flash crash this year, when the yen soared nearly 4 percent against the dollar in a matter of minutes after Apple Inc.’s earnings warning triggered stop-loss sales of the dollar in thin trading on the last day of the New Year holidays in Japan. Will the longer holiday benefit businesses? Yes, especially those in tourism-related industries, such as travel agencies, hotels, restaurants and airlines. Dai-ichi Life Research Institute estimates the extra long Golden Week will push up domestic travel by ¥332.3 billion, or 28.9 percent, to ¥1.48 trillion compared with ¥1.15 trillion last year. JTB Corp., the nation’s leading travel agency, projects that around 24.67 million people will be travelling in Japan or abroad during Golden Week and spend around ¥1.06 trillion between April 27 and May 6. JTB spokeswoman Risa Ogata said more people than in 2018 apparently want to take advantage of the extended holiday. According to a recent online survey conducted by Synchro Food Co., a research company for the food and beverage industry, 63.6 percent of restaurants and other eateries plan to operate as usual during the extended Golden Week. Furthermore, 17 percent said they would operate even on their regular holidays during the period, according to the survey, which was conducted in March and is based on answers from 442 respondents. Is it all cheery news for those businesses? No. Increased demand may lead to problems securing manpower. One izakaya (Japanese pub) chain in Aichi Prefecture cited in the online survey said it was worried that sales will drop if they fail to secure enough part-time workers for this year’s special Golden Week. Will the banks be closed? Yes, but their ATMs will remain in operation. Kumano of the Dai-Ichi Life Research Institute believes that since the banks will be closed, more people than usual are likely to line up to withdraw cash from ATMs before Golden week begins. Will there be any impact on hospitals and their patients? Some medical institutions plan to accept patients during the holidays but many small clinics are expected to close. According to a survey by Global Health Consulting, around 85 percent of the 123 hospitals that responded across Japan said they will provide outpatient services or consider staying open during Golden Week. But 8.9 percent said they will be closed throughout the entire period, with another 6.5 percent considering doing the same, the survey said. Of the 110 hospitals that will partially be open, 69.1 percent said they would be open for just two or three days. In Tokyo, for instance, Juntendo University Hospital has announced it will be open on April 30, May 1 and May 2 for outpatients but accept emergency patients 24 hours a day. Tokyo Metropolitan Hiroo Hospital will also accept outpatients on those days. The decisions came after the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry in January urged prefectural governments nationwide to ensure emergency medical treatment and access to health services will be available during the extended holidays. The ministry urged medical institutions to prepare intensive care units for situations in which they need to send patients elsewhere if no beds are available, as well as to set up a system to secure adequate supplies of medicine. Municipalities nationwide are rushing to update their websites on which clinics and pharmacies will be accessible during the holidays. It is worth noting, however, that those who decide to undergo checkups during this special edition of Golden Week might incur an additional fee.
|
holidays;tourism;emperor akihito;hospitals;imperial family;golden week;abdication;reiwa
|
jp0003557
|
[
"business"
] |
2019/04/12
|
G20 broadly agrees world economy will pick up in second half of 2019
|
WASHINGTON - Finance chiefs of the Group of 20 major economies broadly shared the view that the world economy will pick up in the second half of this year before posting higher growth next year, a Japanese delegation source said Thursday. But some G20 members cited the U.S.-China tariff war, high levels of debt incurred by China and other emerging countries, and a potentially disorderly exit by the United Kingdom from the European Union as risk factors for global growth, the source told reporters after the first day of a two-day meeting in Washington. Finance Minister Taro Aso and Bank of Japan Gov. Haruhiko Kuroda led the meeting under Japan’s first presidency of the group, which will culminate in a G20 summit hosted by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in late June in Osaka. Speaking to reporters after Thursday’s session, Aso said that despite a slowdown in the second half of 2018, the world economy is likely to gather steam in the latter half of 2019. Aso attributed the optimism to easing global financial conditions propelled by the U.S. Federal Reserve’s recent decision to pause its credit-tightening cycle, and an improved outlook for the trade negotiations between Washington and Beijing. Aso briefed his G20 counterparts about Japan’s plan to raise consumption tax by 2 percentage points to 10 percent in October as part of efforts to ensure a sustainable social security system amid the rapid graying of the population. Kuroda referred to a similar global economic outlook and expressed hope that the U.S.-China talks will lead to a deal to end the dispute, which has involved tit-for-tat tariffs on each other’s imports. “Such protectionist moves would not be a plus for both sides,” he told reporters separately. Kuroda called for promotion of free trade as a driver of global growth, saying that trade under World Trade Organization rules has made significant contributions to world economic growth. “All G20 members, including both countries, need to make efforts to that end,” he said, referring to the United States and China. In its latest outlook, released Tuesday, the International Monetary Fund forecast that the world economy will grow 3.3 percent in 2019 — down 0.2 percentage point from its January estimate. The projected growth rate for 2020 was unchanged at 3.6 percent. IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde said Thursday that the global economy is “at a delicate moment,” and that the expected rebound to 3.6 percent “is precarious and is subject to downside risks” such as trade tensions and issues involving Brexit. “We need to better address unfair trade practices and distortions in the system, including through a WTO system reform,” Lagarde said at a news conference. “We need to avoid self-inflicted wounds, including tariffs and other barriers.” On Friday, the G20 finance ministers and central bank governors will discuss global imbalances, the aging society, quality infrastructure, debt sustainability and international taxation, but they have no plan to issue a post-meeting communique, according to the Japanese delegation source. The delegates gathered in the U.S. capital for spring meetings of the IMF and the World Bank. The G20 groups Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Britain, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey, the United States and the European Union.
|
trade;g20;tariffs
|
jp0003558
|
[
"business"
] |
2019/04/12
|
Monsanto loses appeal in French farmer's poisoning case
|
LYON, FRANCE - A French court on Thursday upheld a guilty verdict against chemicals giant Monsanto over the poisoning of a farmer who suffered neurological damage after using one of its weedkillers, the latest legal setback for the company over its controversial pesticides. Cereal farmer Paul Francois has been fighting Monsanto, a formerly U.S. company that was bought by Germany’s Bayer last year, for the past 12 years. In the first ruling of its kind against Monsanto anywhere in the world, a French court in 2012 found it guilty of poisoning Francois. He said he began experiencing symptoms including blackouts, headaches and loss of balance and memory after inhaling fumes while using the now-banned weedkiller Lasso. Monsanto appealed and lost in 2015 but decided to go a third round. “I won, and I’m happy, but at what cost?” Francois told reporters after the verdict. He denounced what he called years of “legal harassment” by Monsanto, which can still appeal Thursday’s ruling by the Cour de Cassation, a top French appeals court. The ruling, he said, was “a message to the government,” which he urged to ban other toxic pesticides that contain glyphosate, used in Monsanto’s top-selling Roundup. “History will judge them for not acting,” he said, referring to a campaign pledge by President Emmanuel Macron to phase out glyphosate in France, which he backed down on last year. Monsanto is facing thousands of U.S. lawsuits over glyphosate exposure, and last month was ordered by a San Francisco court to pay around $80 million to a retiree suffering from non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Francois said he fell ill in 2004 after accidentally inhaling fumes from a vat containing Lasso, a monochlorobenzene-based weedkiller that was legal in France until 2007 but which had already been banned in 1985 in Canada and in 1992 in Belgium and Britain. He argued that Monsanto was aware of Lasso’s dangers long before it was withdrawn from the French market, and sought damages of more than €1 million ($1.13 million) for chronic neurological damage that required long hospital stays. The court in Lyon, southeastern France, rejected the company’s appeal but did not rule on how much Monsanto might have to pay, which will be determined in a separate ruling. It did order the company to pay €50,000 immediately for Francois’s legal fees. In its ruling, the court found that Monsanto should have clearly indicated on Lasso’s labeling and instructions for use “a notice on the specific dangers of using the product in vats and reservoirs.” “The plaintiff’s assumed technical knowledge does not excuse the lack of information on the product and its harmful effects — a farmer is not a chemist,” it added. Speaking after the verdict, a lawyer for Monsanto France, Jean-Daniel Bretzner, said it would probably appeal, since the ruling applied to Lasso’s producer — in this case, Monsanto Europe. Parent company Bayer confirmed it was weighing an appeal. “Supposing that Paul Francois was accidentally exposed to Lasso, by definition such exposure is rare,” it said in a statement. It was the latest conviction against Monsanto involving its weedkillers and pesticides, which have been widely used around the world for years. Last month, a San Francisco court ordered the $80 million pay-out to a retiree who blames its popular Roundup weedkiller, which contains glyphosate, for causing his non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. The company said it would appeal as it faces thousands of similar lawsuits in the United States. It had already been ordered last year to pay $78.5 million to a California groundskeeper who attributed his non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma to using Roundup as well as Monsanto’s Ranger Pro. Monsanto denies that Roundup causes cancer and has challenged findings by the International Agency for Research on Cancer, an arm of the World Health Organization (WHO), which classified glyphosate as a “probable carcinogen” in 2015. But Bayer, which paid $63 billion for Monsanto last year, has seen its stock plunge some 40 percent since the takeover was completed last June, largely reflecting fears of Monsanto’s exposure to lawsuits.
|
france;u.s .;cancer;monsanto;roundup;bayer;emmanuel macron;paul francois;lasso
|
jp0003559
|
[
"business"
] |
2019/04/12
|
India's stricken Jet Airways scrubs international flights and grounds more planes
|
MAHARASHTRA, INDIA - India’s Jet Airways canceled several international flights on Thursday and grounded another 10 aircraft after failing to pay lessors, deepening the woes of the beleaguered carrier. “We have canceled all long-haul west-bound international flights from India from tonight until tomorrow (Friday) morning,” a Jet Airways spokesperson told AFP late Thursday. The cancellations affected five flights, to London, Paris and Amsterdam. Thursday and Friday services to Colombo and Singapore were also canceled but a flight to Kathmandu did run. The west-bound flights were scheduled to start again from Friday afternoon but services to Asian countries were expected to remain suspended on Friday, the spokesman added. The development comes as a consortium of lenders led by the State Bank of India tries to sell a majority stake in the debt-laden airline to keep it flying. Jet Airways was until recently India’s second-biggest airline but is on the brink of collapse with debts of more than $1 billion. The carrier has been forced to ground the majority of its fleet as it struggles to pay aircraft lessors and staff. On Thursday, it told the Bombay Stock Exchange that it had grounded 10 more planes due to nonpayment. The airline now operates just 16 planes out of a fleet of 119. Its operational fleet is now thought to be below the number required by Indian aviation regulators to fly overseas. Thousands of customers have been stranded in recent weeks after hundreds of flights were canceled, in some cases with little or no notice. The Mumbai-based airline has also defaulted on several loan payments. Last month, creditors injected $218 million of “immediate funding support” into Jet Airways as part of a debt resolution plan. The move saw the State Bank of India-led consortium take control of the struggling airline from founder Naresh Goyal, who stepped down as chairman. The consortium started a stake sale process on Monday, giving prospective bidders until Friday to submit expressions of interest. Any interested parties will then have until April 30 to make a formal bid. A collapse would deal a blow to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s pragmatic pro-business reputation during a mega six-week-long election that started on Thursday. Alarm bells for Jet Airways first rang in August when it failed to report its quarterly earnings or pay staff, including pilots. It later reported a loss of $85 million. In February, it secured a $1.19 billion bailout from lenders to bridge a funding gap, but its crisis has deepened. The carrier has been badly hit by fluctuating global crude prices and a weak rupee, as well as fierce competition from budget rivals.
|
india;airlines;narendra modi;bankruptcy;jet airways
|
jp0003560
|
[
"business",
"economy-business"
] |
2019/04/12
|
U.S. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue seeking 'very quick' deal on tariff reductions with Japan
|
WASHINGTON - U.S. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue said Thursday he was seeking a “very quick agreement” with Japan on tariff cuts for agricultural goods as part of efforts to reach a bilateral trade deal. “I hope we can come to a very quick agreement with Japan over maybe some temporary … provisions and hash out the many other issues that take longer in this area,” Perdue told reporters ahead of the first round of talks next week on what the United States says will be a bilateral free trade agreement. The remark indicates that President Donald Trump’s administration hopes to pursue a deal in stages, leaving services and other sectors for later negotiations. The Trump administration has grown concerned that the recent enforcement of the revised Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement — an 11-member FTA including Japan and Australia — as well as the FTA signed between Japan and the European Union, have put American farmers and ranchers at a disadvantage in the Japanese market. U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer “understands the criticality with implementation of the TPP and the other 11 countries — he understands that our producers will be at a disadvantage,” Perdue said. According to Japanese government data, the nation’s beef imports from Australia, Canada, Mexico and New Zealand — four members of what is formally called the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership — jumped more than 50 percent in January from a year earlier after the pact took effect on Dec. 30. The Trump administration withdrew the United States from the TPP in 2017 in light of its preference for bilateral trade deals. In the first round of talks, slated for Monday and Tuesday in Washington, Lighthizer and Toshimitsu Motegi, Japan’s economic revitalization minister, plan to discuss the scope of their future negotiations. While the United States is calling for a comprehensive pact that would cover a range of areas such as goods, services, investment and currency, Japan is insisting the two governments aim for a trade agreement on goods only. Motegi said in Tokyo that Perdue’s proposal of negotiating tariff cuts for farm products first is “in line with a Japan-U.S. joint statement” issued in September, in which the two countries agreed to start the trade negotiations. The first trade talks are set to be followed by a meeting between Trump and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on April 26 in Washington.
|
u.s .;agriculture;trade;tariffs;imports;u.s.-japan relations;sonny perdue
|
jp0003561
|
[
"business"
] |
2019/04/12
|
On heels of Lyft's lackluster IPO, Uber files documents for U.S. public share offering
|
LOS ANGELES - Uber filed documents Thursday for its much-anticipated public share offering expected to be the largest in the tech sector in years, and a bellwether for other venture-backed start-ups eying Wall Street listing. The filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission contained no specific pricing or timing for the market debut for Uber, which according to media reports was expected to raise some $10 billion. Uber’s valuation in its latest private investment round was more than $70 billion, but reports said the ride-hailing giant was likely to seek a market value of close to $100 billion. The filing noted that Uber offers ride-sharing in some 700 cities but has bolder ambitions to reshape how people and goods are transported with operations such as meal deliveries, freight, and electric bikes and scooters. “Our mission is to ignite opportunity by setting the world in motion,” the document filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. “We revolutionized personal mobility with ride-sharing, and we are leveraging our platform to redefine the massive meal delivery and logistics industries. While we have had unparalleled growth at scale, we are just getting started.” Uber said it operates on six continents with some 14 million trips per day and has totaled more than 10 billion rides since it was founded in 2010. The filing contained a “placeholder” amount of $1 billion to be raised but that figure is expected to increase ahead of the initial public offering (IPO) expected in May. The move comes after a lackluster market debut for Uber’s U.S. rival Lyft, which has lost more than 10 percent of its value since its IPO last month. Chief executive Dara Khosrowshahi, who took over in 2017 as part of an effort to reform a corporate culture marred by misconduct and other scandals, said Uber has taken steps to restore its brand and credibility. “Taking this step means that we have even greater responsibilities — to our shareholders our customers and our colleagues,” Khosrowshahi said in a letter announcing the IPO.
|
u.s .;ipos;uber;lyft;dara khosrowshahi
|
jp0003562
|
[
"business"
] |
2019/04/12
|
SpaceX's Falcon Heavy conducts first commercial flight
|
NEW YORK - The most powerful operational rocket in the world, SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy, launched its first commercial mission on Thursday from Florida in a key demonstration for billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk’s space company in the race to grasp lucrative military launch contracts. The 23-story-tall Heavy, which previously launched Musk’s cherry red Tesla roadster to space in a 2018 debut test flight, blasted off from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center carrying its first customer payload. “T plus 33 seconds into flight, under the power of 5.1 million pounds of thrust, Falcon Heavy is headed to space,” SpaceX launch commentator John Insprucker said on a livestream. Roughly three minutes after clearing the pad, Heavy’s two side boosters separated from the core rocket for a synchronized landing at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. The middle booster, after pushing the payload into space, returned nearly 10 minutes later for a successful landing on SpaceX’s seafaring drone ship 400 miles (645 km) off the Florida coast. In the 2018 test mission, Heavy’s core booster missed the vessel and crashed into the Atlantic Ocean. Liftoff with Heavy’s new military-certified Falcon 9 boosters was crucial in the race with Boeing-Lockheed venture United Launch Alliance and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin as Musk’s SpaceX, working to flight-prove its rocket fleet one mission at a time, aims to clinch a third of all U.S. National Security Space missions — coveted military contracts worth billions. The U.S. Air Force tapped SpaceX in 2018 to launch for $130 million a classified military satellite and in February added three more missions in a $297 million contract. Falcon Heavy carried a communications satellite for Saudi-based telecom firm Arabsat, which will beam internet and television services over Africa, Europe and the Middle East.
|
u.s .;space;pentagon;elon musk;spacex;falcon heavy;arabsat;boeing-lockheed
|
jp0003563
|
[
"business",
"tech"
] |
2019/04/12
|
Rocket is just NASA's first headache in rush to get boots on the moon in 2024
|
DENVER - In the shadow of the Rocky Mountains, Alan Campbell, a project manager for space systems at the famed Draper Laboratory that built the computer which took astronauts to the moon 50 years ago, is waiting for news from NASA. His firm has continued to specialize in the advanced technology required for space travel and is a natural candidate to help the U.S. space agency in its quest to return to the moon by 2024 — once final requests for proposals go out. “We don’t know when those are going to be because NASA is all thrown into a loop right now,” Campbell told AFP from Draper’s booth at the 35th Space Symposium, which is being held in Colorado Springs. “They’re still trying to figure it out,” he said. “We can’t really work on their problems until they tell us, ‘These are the problems we want people to work on.’ ” It’s a similar wait for hundreds of other companies, ranging from aerospace giants to the most specialized of subcontractors, many of whom are at the annual space industry event. Until March 26 of last year, American boots were set to return to the moon in 2028 following the last such mission by Apollo 17 in 1972. Last month though, the administration of President Donald Trump said it was speeding up that timetable by a full four years, throwing NASA into overdrive. The first problem is linked to the super heavy rocket required for the lunar mission, the skyscraper-sized Space Launch System (SLS). Boeing, the prime contractor, is years behind and isn’t certain it will be ready for its first test flight, without humans, in 2020. At its booth, the U.S. aerospace giant had relegated a model of the SLS to a corner. The Orion capsule that will transport the astronauts, built by competitor Lockheed Martin, should be ready, program manager Michael Hawes assures AFP, and it will be delivered in January to the Kennedy Space Center. Lockheed Martin has proudly displayed a lifesize model of the Orion outside the conference hall. But walking on the moon will require more than a rocket and a capsule: NASA wants to assemble a mini-station in lunar orbit, called the Gateway, where the astronauts will make a stopover before their descent to the lunar surface. Sierra Nevada Corporation envisions an inflatable space habitat to house the astronauts while in moon-orbit. At this stage, the company does not know when NASA wants it delivered. Kimberly Schwandt, a spokeswoman for the company, is unperturbed. “Whatever NASA decides for the timetable, we are ready and willing,” she said at the company’s booth. Europeans are also here in large numbers and ready to pitch in with a communications module. “Technically, we know that we can do it,” said Johann-Dietrich Worner, director general of the European Space Agency (ESA). “And we hope that we can do it in time. “It depends a little bit also on the calendar of the Americans,” Worner said. The heads of European space agencies attending the symposium told NASA chief Jim Bridenstine they need a plan to be finalized before the fall because the ESA budget will be approved in November. “I’d be happy to make a trip out to Europe in order to give their political leadership the assurances necessary,” said Bridenstine, aware that Trump’s abrupt shift in the moon timetable was done without consultation with international partners. The most urgent priority, according to industry executives, is for NASA to come up with the full requirements for the lander that would take the astronauts from the Gateway to the moon. Some of the more experienced firms caution that it may already be too late to build one in keeping with the accelerated timetable. “We need to be bending metal next year, which means tooling already has to be in house,” said Rob Chambers, director of Human Space Exploration Strategy at Lockheed Martin Space. “And I hope somebody ordered a bunch of aluminium.” Others warned that NASA will need to loosen its legendary bureaucracy to move things ahead. Lookheed Martin’s Hawes, the Orion program manager, pointed to development of the capsule to illustrate the point. “Just to give you an example, on the Orion program we have 400 regularly scheduled meetings a week between the NASA team and the Lockheed Martin team,” Hawes said. “Does that speak urgency to you?” Another issue is spacesuits. “If you’re going to do something on the moon, you need spacesuits,” said The Aerospace Corporation’s Dean Eppler, who has spent 20 years testing prototypes. The current calendar calls for delivery of a new spacesuit prototype to NASA in 2023 — for testing.
|
nasa;space;boeing;lockheed martin;moon;orion;donald trump;esa;gateway
|
jp0003564
|
[
"business",
"tech"
] |
2019/04/12
|
China's top image provider shuts website and says sorry after putting logo on first photo of black hole
|
SHANGHAI - China’s largest provider of stock images, Visual China Group, shut its website and apologized on Friday after it falsely claimed copyright of images such as the first photo of a black hole and China’s national flag. The company, which partners with U.S. photo agency Getty Images, said in a post on its official Weibo account the incident revealed its weak management and that it was cooperating with authorities investigating the matter. Shares in the company slumped by the maximum 10 percent allowed. The topic “Visual China apologizes” was among the most-read items on China’s Twitter-like Weibo platform on Friday, with over 250 million views. According to its website, Visual China has over 40 million editorial images and 1.25 million videos. Criticism of the company mounted earlier this week after Visual China put its logo over the first photo of a black hole, which was the work of a team of 200 scientists known as the Event Horizon Telescope project. The company said it had obtained a nonexclusive editing licence from the project for media use. Other users also questioned why the company was asking for payment for the use of images like China’s flag and logos of Chinese companies such as Baidu. The Tianjin city branch of China’s internet watchdog said on Weibo that it had met the company’s leaders on Thursday evening and ordered them to rectify its website. Visual China acknowledged that its website had issues with noncompliant pictures that it said had been provided by contractors, and pledged to “learn from these lessons.” Political control of the internet has tightened under President Xi Jinping, with demands that companies tighten oversight of “harmful information,” which could range from vulgar to politically sensitive content. The country’s leaders have also pledged to do more to protect intellectual property rights amid complaints by the United States and other key trading partners about the theft of such assets. Elliot Papageorgiou, the Shanghai-based head of the IP practice at law firm Clyde & Co., said Visual China’s use of the black hole image was embarrassing due to the photo’s high profile. “It comes at an inconvenient time because China is trying hard to get recognition for some positive steps it is taking to protect intellectual property,” he said.
|
space;astronomy;copyright;black holes;visual china group
|
jp0003565
|
[
"business",
"financial-markets"
] |
2019/04/12
|
Nikkei hits four-month high of 21,870, dressed up by Fast Retailing
|
The benchmark Nikkei average gained further ground and hit a four-month closing high Friday, led by the strength of index heavyweight Fast Retailing. The 225-issue average gained 159.18 points, or 0.73 percent, to close at 21,870.56 on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, its highest finish since Dec. 5. On Thursday, the key market gauge rose 23.81 points. On the other hand, the Topix index of all first-section issues ended down 1.12 points, or 0.07 percent, at 1,605.40, after declining 1.14 points the previous day. After moving sluggishly in early trading following a strong start, the Nikkei firmed gradually due mostly to hefty purchases of clothing chain Fast Retailing triggered by rosy earnings announced Thursday for the half ending in February, market sources said. The Nikkei maintained its strength in afternoon trading, bolstered mainly by continued buying of Fast Retailing shares, the sources said. In the meantime, the Topix remained in negative territory for most of the session as buying was held in check ahead of the release of Japanese and U.S. corporate earnings next week, the sources said. Fast Retailing alone pushed up the Nikkei by about 160 points on a closing basis, a market source said. The yen’s drop against the dollar prompted futures-linked purchases, said Masahiro Ichikawa, senior strategist at Sumitomo Mitsui DS Asset Management Co. Ryuta Otsuka, strategist at the investment information department of Toyo Securities Co., said the Nikkei’s rise was driven by “buying by speculators, such as hedge funds.” But “the Topix showed the reality” of the Tokyo market, Otsuka noted. Most market players “failed to move before the earnings reporting season as well as the 10-day holiday” due to start in late April in Japan, he added. Falling issues outnumbered rising ones 1,219 to 809 in the TSE’s first section, while 113 issues were unchanged. Volume inched down to 1.101 billion shares from Thursday’s 1.111 billion shares. Fast Retailing closed 7.89 percent higher. Technology investor SoftBank Group was also buoyant after U.S. ride-hailing company Uber Technologies Inc., in which SoftBank is the top shareholder, filed for an initial public offering on Thursday. Employment information service firm Recruit Holdings and automaker Toyota were among other major winners. By contrast, convenience store chain Lawson tumbled 12.21 percent, with investor sentiment battered by its weak operating and net profit estimates for the year ending in February 2020. Also sold were optical equipment maker Olympus, daily goods maker Kao and mobile phone carrier KDDI. In index futures trading on the Osaka Exchange, the key June contract on the Nikkei average rose 190 points to end at 21,860.
|
stocks;tse;nikkei 225;equities
|
jp0003566
|
[
"business",
"financial-markets"
] |
2019/04/12
|
Strong Chinese trade data sees dollar hit one-month high of ¥111.86 in late Tokyo trading
|
The dollar was firmer above ¥111.80 in Tokyo trading late Friday, hitting the highest level since March 15, buoyed by strong Chinese trade data for March. At 5 p.m., the dollar stood at ¥111.86-86, up from ¥111.08-09 at the same time Thursday. The euro was at $1.1288-1288, slightly up from $1.1281-1281, and at ¥126.27-27, up from ¥125.32-33. The dollar moved around ¥111.60-70 in early trading, carrying over its strength in overnight trading overseas stemming from purchases inspired by a robust U.S. economic indicator. Later in the morning, the greenback rose further to around ¥111.80 briefly on the back of the benchmark 225-issue Nikkei stock average’s continued advance and real demand-backed purchases, traders said. After fluctuating around ¥111.70-80 in afternoon trading, the U.S. currency climbed above ¥111.80 in late hours as China’s trade data for March showed healthy growth in exports. Large-lot purchases of the euro contributed to the yen’s drop, which in turn helped the dollar to advance against the Japanese currency, a currency broker said. “Dollar purchases gained slight momentum after the U.S. currency rose above a technical threshold at around ¥111.50,” an official of an asset management firm said. The official also noted that market players became cautious about buying the dollar when it approached ¥112.
|
forex;currencies
|
jp0003567
|
[
"business",
"corporate-business"
] |
2019/04/12
|
Tokyo court extends Ghosn's detention to April 22; lawyers for ousted Nissan boss appeal
|
A Tokyo court decided Friday to extend the detention of former Nissan Motor Co. Chairman Carlos Ghosn to April 22, following his rearrest last week over fresh allegations of financial misconduct. Ghosn, 65, was served a fourth arrest warrant on April 4 over a new allegation that his misuse of Nissan funds led the automaker to sustain a $5 million loss. The new allegation came less than a month after he was released on bail. The latest decision by the Tokyo District Court came as the Sunday deadline for his release from his latest detention was approaching. His lawyers appealed the decision the same day. Ghosn has already been indicted on charges of violating Japan’s financial instruments law by allegedly underreporting his remuneration to regulators, and aggravated breach of trust in relation to the alleged transfer of private investment losses to Nissan. The new arrest warrant was served for a different allegation — aggravated breach of trust over payments made to a distributor in Oman that totaled $15 million between December 2015 and July 2018. Tokyo prosecutors suspect that $5 million of this was transferred to a bank account owned by Good Faith Investments — a Lebanese investment firm that Ghosn effectively owns — before part of it was channeled to his wife’s company based in the British Virgin Islands, a tax haven. Some of the money may have been spent to cover the costs of purchasing a luxury yacht worth ¥1.6 billion ($14 million) mainly for use by the family and a water scooter, according to sources familiar with the matter. Ghosn, whose nearly two decades of charismatic leadership at the automaker came to a sudden end after his initial arrest in November, has denied any wrongdoing. The handling of Ghosn’s case has brought Japan’s criminal justice system under international scrutiny for practices including long detention periods for suspects and interrogations conducted without a lawyer present. Critics have dubbed the system “hostage justice.” Ghosn’s wife, Carole, was questioned by prosecutors at a Tokyo court Thursday, where she is believed to have answered questions about the alleged transfer of Nissan funds to her company based in the British Virgin Islands.
|
corruption;scandals;nissan;carmakers;carlos ghosn
|
jp0003568
|
[
"business",
"corporate-business"
] |
2019/04/12
|
Yoshinoya reveals first annual net loss in six years, citing cost of new tablet device order system
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Yoshinoya Holdings Co. incurred an annual net loss for the first time in six years for the year ended in February, the fast-food restaurant group said Thursday. The red ink came as the company, known for its mainstay gyūdon beef-on-rice bowls, booked an impairment loss related to the introduction of a new order-taking system using tablet devices — a move designed to lower labor costs. The company posted a consolidated net loss of ¥6 billion, compared with a profit of almost ¥1.5 billion a year before. Two executives, including President Yasutaka Kawamura, will take pay cuts of up to 20 percent for three months to take responsibility for the poor financial performance. At a news conference, Kawamura said the company’s gyūdon restaurants in Japan, totaling some 1,200 outlets, will offer 2 percent of the value of cashless payments as reward points once the consumption tax is raised to 10 percent from 8 percent in October. The move is designed to prevent a decline in gyūdon sales. The company is concerned that customers will shift to convenience stores, whose operators plan to provide reward points equivalent to 2 percent of the amount of cashless payments to cushion the impact of the tax increase. The cost for Yoshinoya’s point program can be considered as “something like sales promotion expenses,” Kawamura said. The company expects to swing back into profitability in the year ending in February 2020, projecting a net profit of ¥100 million.
|
restaurants;fast food;yoshinoya;financial results
|
jp0003569
|
[
"business",
"corporate-business"
] |
2019/04/12
|
Amazon Japan raises cost of Prime membership for first time in 11 years, by 26% to ¥4,900
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U.S. e-commerce giant Amazon.com Inc. has raised the price of its Prime membership service in Japan for the first time since launching the service 11 years ago, citing rising costs. The annual price for shipping, video-streaming and an array of other services rose by 26 percent to ¥4,900 ($44) starting from Friday, the Seattle-based company said in a statement the same day. Fees for monthly users were raised by ¥100 to ¥500 per month. Prime membership prices differ by country, and the cost in Japan still pales in comparison to the United States, where the annual fee is $119. Amazon has built Japan into one of its biggest overseas markets even as the government estimates e-commerce penetration at less than 6 percent and a graying population remains wary of shopping online. In the past five years, the company has bolstered its offerings in the nation, rolling out services such as music, video, Amazon Fresh and Prime Wardrobe. Amazon follows a slew of other companies in Japan that have raised prices on goods such as ice cream, cup ramen and bottled drinks, all citing increased costs for logistics and personnel as the labor market remains tight. Parcel carrier giant Yamato Holdings Co. said in 2017 it would negotiate higher prices with business customers, including Amazon, as the increase in demand for its delivery services took a toll on its workers. Meanwhile, the Fair Trade Commission said Thursday it had terminated an antitrust investigation into Amazon Japan G.K.’s planned reward point program. The move followed a decision by the unit of Amazon.com Inc. to withdraw a plan that would have obliged all sellers using its online shopping platform to provide reward points. The FTC judged that Amazon Japan’s decision resolved concerns over potential abuse of its dominant bargaining position. The probe began after Amazon Japan said in February it would offer customers reward points worth at least 1 percent of purchase amounts for all items from late May. Under the program, sellers using the company’s platform would have shouldered the costs for the reward points. On Wednesday, Amazon Japan said it will allow each seller to decide a reward point policy on its own.
|
streaming;amazon;e-commerce;amazon japan;home delivery
|
jp0003570
|
[
"business",
"corporate-business"
] |
2019/04/12
|
Nissan, Renault and Mitsubishi Motors hold first meeting of new management body in France
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PARIS/LONDON - The new management body of Nissan Motor Co., Renault SA and Mitsubishi Motors Corp. held its first meeting Friday and began discussing ways to strengthen the alliance in the wake of former Chairman Carlos Ghosn’s multiple arrests. Nissan CEO Hiroto Saikawa, Renault CEO Thierry Bollore and Mitsubishi Motors CEO Masuko Osamu attended the meeting, which was chaired by Renault Chairman Jean-Dominique Senard at the French carmaker’s headquarters in Boulogne-Billancourt, in the suburbs of Paris. “The potential of the alliance must now be valued properly and that’s in our hands. It’s up to us to define our future,” Renault said in a statement, though it did not elaborate further. The three carmakers said last month they would establish the new body and operate it in a “consultative” manner after criticizing the previous management structure, where power was concentrated in Ghosn’s hands. Ghosn was chairman of the three companies and CEO of Renault and Nissan-Renault B.V. He was initially arrested by Japanese prosecutors for alleged financial misconduct at Nissan in November but has denied all charges despite spending months in detention. Under the new organization, the three partners aim to enhance the synergistic effects of an alliance that became the world’s second-largest auto group in terms of global vehicles sales last year. Talks of a possible review of their capital structure — a potential source of tension — have been shelved for now. Senard said in a news conference last month that the board has nothing to do with the review of capital structure. Some Nissan executives view the partnership as unfair, while the French government, Renault’s largest shareholder, has sought to merge the two companies, according to sources familiar with the matter. Renault holds a 43.4 percent stake in Nissan, which has a 15 percent stake in its French partner without voting rights and a 34 percent share in Mitsubishi Motors. In a video message released Tuesday, Ghosn said his arrest was the result of “backstabbing” by Nissan, saying that a “few executives” there felt threatened by what might happen to the company’s autonomy in a potential convergence or merger with Renault. The message was recorded shortly before his fourth arrest last week. Nissan and Renault said separately Friday it has established a new research and development center in Shanghai to speed up development of technology needed to launch autonomous driving and internet-connected and electric vehicles in the world’s largest auto market.
|
nissan;carmakers;mitsubishi motors;renault
|
jp0003571
|
[
"business",
"corporate-business"
] |
2019/04/12
|
China's ENN Ecological pulls out of plan to buy Toshiba's LNG business in U.S.
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Chinese chemicals maker ENN Ecological Holdings Co. is scrapping a plan to buy Toshiba Corp.’s liquefied natural gas operations in the United States, the Japanese firm has said. The Chinese company notified Toshiba of its decision, citing “considerable uncertainty” partly caused by the delayed completion of the purchase, Toshiba said late Thursday. The deal, initially planned to be wrapped up by the end of March, has yet to be completed due to the prolonged approval process of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States. Toshiba said last November it would sell Toshiba America LNG Corp. to ENN Ecological for $15 million as part of its restructuring measures and would pay about ¥93 billion ($836 million) to the Chinese company, given the risk the business would be unprofitable with a future drop in LNG prices. Toshiba had planned to book the payment as a special loss in the fiscal year that ended March 31 but will now estimate the impact of the cancellation of the deal on its earnings. The company is in the midst of efforts to restore its footing after suffering huge losses in the U.S. nuclear power industry. In 2013, the firm said it had signed a deal with a U.S. firm to secure rights to process U.S.-produced natural gas into 2.2 million tons of LNG annually over 20 years from 2019. Toshiba aimed to procure the LNG for Japanese utility companies for power generation but LNG prices have since declined, making it difficult to make the operation profitable.
|
china;gas;lng;toshiba;enn ecological holdings co .
|
jp0003572
|
[
"business",
"corporate-business"
] |
2019/04/12
|
Daihatsu to recall 1.9 million cars in Japan over brake problem
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Daihatsu Motor Co. said Thursday it will recall about 1.92 million cars in Japan due to faults that can affect the vehicles’ braking system. The recall affects 1,916,973 cars across 22 models, including the Move and Tanto minivehicles manufactured between December 2010 and September 2018. It also covers the Stella and Pixis Mega minicars, which were built by Daihatsu and sold by Subaru Corp. and Toyota Motor Corp., respectively. The minicar maker reported a total of 416 cases involving two types of problems affecting the brake system, according to the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism. No accidents have been reported due to the problem. In the cars subject to the recall, Daihatsu said that improper waterproofing of the cowl panel can cause rusting or perforation of the brake booster, resulting in a longer braking distance. It also warned that improper greasing work on a strut set can cause the brakes to malfunction.
|
toyota;carmakers;daihatsu;subaru;recalls;mlit
|
jp0003573
|
[
"business",
"corporate-business"
] |
2019/04/12
|
Fast Retailing cuts profit estimate as slowing Uniqlo sales in Japan offset brisk business abroad
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Fast Retailing Co. said the brisk performance of its Uniqlo casual clothing brand in overseas markets helped lift the group’s profits in its first half, but the firm also downgraded full-year estimates due to slowing sales at home. For the six months through February, its consolidated net profit rose 9.5 percent from a year earlier to a record-high ¥114.03 billion ($1.02 billion) on robust Uniqlo sales in China and Southeast Asian countries. Operating profit grew 1.4 percent to ¥172.94 billion on sales of ¥1.27 trillion, up 6.8 percent, both record highs. But for the year ending in August the company lowered its operating profit forecast to ¥260 billion from the ¥270 billion it had projected in January due to a slump in domestic Uniqlo sales for the first half, in which relatively warm weather dented demand for autumn clothing, the company said Thursday. It maintained its outlook for a net profit of ¥165 billion and sales of ¥2.30 trillion for the 12 months. “I believe our sales will not decline in China because of its very thick layer of middle-income households and we can achieve our target of opening 1,000 stores (in the country by fiscal 2021),” President and CEO Tadashi Yanai told a news conference in Tokyo. The company said sales at more than 600 stores in China increased about 20 percent in the first half despite a slowdown in the world’s second-largest economy. Overseas stores helped Uniqlo post ¥88.49 billion in operating profit, up 9.6 percent, on sales of ¥580 billion, up 14.3 percent. Domestic operating profit in Uniqlo operations, however, fell 23.7 percent to ¥67.74 billion on sales of ¥491.34 billion, down 0.5 percent, the company said. “Overseas sales continued to surpass those in the domestic market. We have established a firm basis as a global firm and reached a new stage of growth,” said Yanai, adding that the company would open its first Uniqlo store in India later this year. As of the end of February, the company operated 825 stores in Japan and 1,311 abroad.
|
uniqlo;retailers;fast retailing;financial results;fast fashion
|
jp0003575
|
[
"business",
"corporate-business"
] |
2019/04/12
|
Nissan informs ministry it will recall 740,000 Note cars and fix problems in microbuses
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Nissan Motor Co. informed the transport ministry on Thursday that it will recall a total of 745,372 Note subcompact vehicles. The affected cars were manufactured between July 2012 and February this year. According to the ministry, a front-wheel suspension spring could break because of a problem with its shape. A total of 120 incidents concerning problems related to the defect had been reported as of Thursday. Nissan also informed the ministry that it will perform improvement measures for a total of 16,864 microbuses of two models — its Civilian and the Journey, which is manufactured for Isuzu Motors Ltd. The vehicles were produced between January 1999 and December 2013. Injuries have been reported because of the defect in the microbuses, in which a grip used as a support to help people get in the driver’s seat can fall off. Also Thursday, Subaru Corp. filed with the ministry to recall a total of 33,181 Legacy vehicles, citing the possibility of a fire from the speedometer due to a short circuit. According to the ministry, 17 cases of related problems have been reported and in 14 of those incidents fires occurred.
|
accidents;nissan;carmakers;traffic accidents;subaru;recalls;mlit
|
jp0003576
|
[
"business",
"corporate-business"
] |
2019/04/12
|
Suzuki to log ¥80 billion loss over recall of 2 million cars
|
Suzuki Motor Corp. said Friday it will book a special loss of around ¥80 billion ($714 million) for the business year ended last month over a recall of 2 million vehicles affected by improper product inspections. The automaker also submitted to the transport ministry an investigation report compiled by its lawyers regarding inappropriate checks on brakes and fuel economy.
|
carmakers;suzuki;financial results;recalls
|
jp0003577
|
[
"world",
"social-issues-world"
] |
2019/04/12
|
U.S. medical association blasts military's transgender policy that calls for correcting 'deficiencies'
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SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA - A new Trump administration regulation set to go into effect Friday directs military secretaries to kick out transgender service members who refuse to serve in their birth sex after being “given an opportunity to correct those deficiencies.” The American Medical Association told The Associated Press on Thursday the policy and its wording mischaracterizes transgender people as having a “deficiency” and defies science by classifying the need to transition to another gender among “administratively disqualifying conditions” that include those the Pentagon has labeled as a “congenital or developmental defects.” The new regulation strips transgender troops of rights they only recently secured under the Obama administration to serve openly and receive care if they choose to transition to another gender. The Defense Department said its use of the words “deficiencies” is military lingo for when an individual fails to meet standards to maintain a lethal force. It is not a reference to gender dysphoria, a condition of extreme distress from not identifying with one’s biological gender, Lt. Col. Carla Gleason said. The department says transgender people can serve if they remain in their biological sex. “The only thing deficient is any medical science behind this decision,” American Medical Association President Dr. Barbara L. McAneny said. Decorated Army helicopter pilot Lindsey Muller was a plaintiff in one of four lawsuits that tried to block the policy from taking effect. But the final legal injunction was lifted in March, though new legal challenges are expected. Muller said she and other transgender troops feel demoralized. “Under our ethical standards, we can’t say anything derogatory against the administration, while we are being presented in a disparaging and derogatory light,” said Muller, 37, who is based in Fort Carson, Colorado. Troops like Muller, who began openly identifying as a woman in 2016, are worried they will be discharged. The administration says it will not boot current service members who transitioned before the Pentagon issued its directive, though the government has also said it retains the right to eliminate that protection. Muller said the policy will cost the armed forces far more in terms of losing experienced personnel like herself and training replacements than any costs associated with specialized health care for trans service members. She plans to retire from the military next year after serving 20 years. Under the new policy, a service member can be discharged based on a diagnosis of gender dysphoria if he or she is “unable or unwilling to adhere to all applicable standards, including the standards associated with his or her biological sex, or seeks transition to another gender.” It said the discharge should come after an individual “has been formally counseled on his or her failure to adhere to such standards and has been given an opportunity to correct those deficiencies.” The policy calls for troops diagnosed with gender dysphoria to be medically evaluated before discharging them to see if they qualify as having a disability. Otherwise gender dysphoria can be considered a “condition that interferes with military service” like sleep walking, bed wetting, motion sickness, and personality disorders. “They can dress it up in whatever words they want, but when you carefully look at this it’s total disrespect for these human beings by saying a core piece of them is not acceptable,” former acting U.S. Army Surgeon General Gale Pollock said. Pollock signed a statement with two former U.S. surgeons general and two other former military surgeons general, saying they are “troubled by the Defense Department’s characterization of the need to undergo gender transition as a ‘deficiency,’ and by the addition of gender dysphoria to official lists of ‘congenital or developmental defects’ that include bed-wetting and ‘disturbances of perception, thinking, emotional control, or behavior.’ ” An estimated 14,700 troops identify as transgender. Military chiefs testified before Congress last year that they found no problems with transgender troops on morale or unit cohesion. Many have received medals since the armed forces welcomed them in 2016. Transgender troops say the regulation mirrors the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy that prohibited gay men and women from serving openly in the armed forces before Congress repealed it in 2010.
|
u.s .;lgbt;pentagon;transgender;ama;donald trump;gender dysphoria
|
jp0003578
|
[
"world",
"social-issues-world"
] |
2019/04/12
|
Three million pasta meals and counting, California chef feeds poor and homeless kids
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LOS ANGELES - For thousands of poor or homeless children in California, you could say that chef Bruno Serato is a real super-hero, vanquishing hunger by the plateful — 3 million meals in 14 years, to be exact. His powers lie in the pasta topped with tomato sauce that he prepares on weekdays for some 5,000 underprivileged kids living in the region of Anaheim, in Southern California. “With the pasta, I can win the war against hunger,” jokes the 62-year-old during a recent interview at his famed restaurant The White House, located some 25 miles (40 km) south of Los Angeles. “I don’t need missiles, I don’t need guns, I don’t need stuff like that,” he adds. “I just need pasta to win the war.” Every week, from Monday through Friday, Serato faithfully boils nearly 800 pounds (350 kg) of spaghetti and potfuls of sauce to feed hungry children through his Caterina’s Club foundation, named after his mother. The genesis for his project dates to April 18, 2005, when Serato, who was born in France to Italian parents and who moved to the United States in 1980, toured a children’s center near his restaurant. He was accompanied by his mother, who was visiting from Italy and who was horrified by what some of the children were eating for dinner because their families couldn’t afford a proper meal. One 6-year-old boy, who lived in a motel and whose parents had no money or even a kitchen in which to cook, was munching on chips. “Like all Italian mothers, she said: ‘If he’s hungry, he can eat pasta’ and we immediately headed to the restaurant kitchen to make him some,” recalled Serato. “I haven’t stopped making pasta since,” he added. Serato has since served 3 million meals to hungry children in nearly 90 sites, including schools and community centers, throughout Los Angeles and Orange counties. On Thursday, he and his foundation are celebrating that milestone with 200 children invited to his restaurant. He recently decided to shut down his upscale restaurant at lunch to focus on the meals for the children. “We were busy at lunch before but never fully booked,” he said. “So I made a choice.” Giving has become a way of life for Serato. Born in 1956 in Laon, in northern France, he fondly recalls his bucolic childhood with six brothers and sisters. His parents were agricultural workers, and though they were poor and he often wore hand-me-downs, Serato says he never lacked for anything. “I ate spaghetti with marinara sauce every day because it didn’t cost anything, and I never went hungry!” He says people love to help others, but often don’t know how to get started. “Just start with one small thing,” he advises. “You can start with a ‘hello,’ a ‘good morning.’ Do one plate of pasta, give a hug, give a little jacket that you don’t use to someone who needs it. “Start low-key, don’t start with a big deal. I mean, I didn’t start with 5,000 pasta (meals). Start very low-key,” he said.
|
u.s .;california;poverty;homeless;pasta;bruno serato
|
jp0003579
|
[
"world",
"social-issues-world"
] |
2019/04/12
|
Italy warns of Libya humanitarian and migration emergency as fighting rages in Tripoli
|
ROME - Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte warned Thursday that the deteriorating situation in Libya could create a humanitarian crisis and increase the number of migrants crossing the Mediterranean. “Ongoing fighting and a rising number of dead, now estimated at several hundred, as well as the wounded and displaced, signals the real risk of a humanitarian crisis that must be quickly resolved,” Conte told parliament. “The humanitarian emergency, with its consequences on the flow of migrants … requires determination and rapid action,” Conte said. Dozens of people are confirmed dead in Libya since military strongman Khalifa Haftar’s forces launched an offensive last week to capture the capital Tripoli, which is controlled by a U.N.-backed government and an array of militias. U.N. chief Antonio Guterres has warned that Libya is on the brink of “a very dangerous situation” as the rival forces battle for control of Tripoli. Thousands of people have fled heavy fighting on the outskirts of the capital. Former colonial power Italy’s far-right deputy prime minister and Interior Minister Matteo Salvini has taken a hard line against immigrants, particularly those making the perilous journey across the Mediterranean from Libya.
|
conflict;italy;u.n .;libya;refugees;tripoli;antonio guterres;giuseppe conte;matteo salvini
|
jp0003580
|
[
"world"
] |
2019/04/12
|
WikiLeaks designed 21st century model for leak-based journalism in a wired age
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WASHINGTON - Using cryptography and virtual drop boxes, Julian Assange’s WikiLeaks created a revolutionary new model for media to lure massive leaks from whistleblowers, exposing everything from U.S. military secrets to wealthy tax dodgers’ illicit offshore accounts. Assange’s arrest in London Thursday on a U.S. extradition request to face computer crime charges could spell the end of 13-year-old WikiLeaks. But his legacy will live long in the world’s media. News outlets and journalists everywhere can now offer potential sources encrypted apps and secure virtual mailboxes to receive secrets that were once divulged by discreet whispers, furtive phone calls and unmarked manila envelopes. Skilled at hacking and cryptography — and motivated by a deep distrust of traditional institutions — Australia-born Assange applied his libertarian streak to the challenge of breaking government secrecy. In 2006 he built an online platform that offered an anonymous, encrypted path for leaking computerized files without fear of exposure. Leaks have forever been crucial currency in journalism. But no one had before created a convenient, relatively easy-to-use electronic drop box that could almost instantly, with absolute secrecy, take delivery of gigabytes of documents. And he did it at a ripe time, when the wired world was emerging and social media were taking off. For Assange, it was the opportunity to democratize powers previously the domain of governments alone that drove his exploits. “Cryptography was then the exclusive property of states,” he wrote in 2013. “By writing our own software and disseminating it far and wide we liberated cryptography, democratized it and spread it through the frontiers of the new internet.” WikiLeaks’ first release in December 2006 was an apparent assassination order by a Somali rebel leader that may or may not have been authentic. But it drew attention. Over the next year, WikiLeaks obtained documents exposing the Kenyan leader’s corruption, the secret operating rules for the U.S. Guantanamo Bay prison camp, and offshore banking records from a Swiss bank. It began scooping mainstream media on stories ranging from secret climate-change discussions to Iran’s nuclear activities and Icelandic banking fraud. In 2010, U.S. Army intelligence official Chelsea Manning — a transgender woman then known as Bradley Manning — began secretly feeding hundreds of thousands of classified files to WikiLeaks. They showed evidence of possible war crimes by U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, including a never-before-seen video of a U.S. helicopter attack in Iraq that killed 18 people, including civilians and two Reuters journalists. The stunning leak could not have been carried out in the old days of faxes and printers, and put WikiLeaks into the mainstream. Assange partnered with The New York Times, The Guardian, Der Spiegel and others to help sort through and make sense of the Manning material. WikiLeaks won awards and Assange was put on the cover of Time magazine. “What WikiLeaks demonstrated was the potential for a stateless transparency organization to get around the ability of the most powerful governments in the world to suppress information,” said Micah Sifry, author of a 2011 book on WikiLeaks. Almost as soon as he hit that peak, Assange’s star began to fade. Political pressure to counter WikiLeaks was huge. A multicountry effort got major credit card and payment firms to cut WikiLeaks’ financial lifeline of donations. And he began to fall out with collaborators, a victim of a domineering personality that made WikiLeaks a one-man show and his insistence that leaked material be published unedited, even if doing so could harm people ranging from soldiers in the field to human rights activists and others. But by 2012 others were already adopting his model of setting up encrypted, anonymous paths for leakers to contribute documents. WikiLeaks copycat sites opened in different countries. Journalists became trained in the use of encryption and secret file transfers. “Exposing the secrets of the U.S. government was a powerful signal that nobody could keep information under control in the internet age,” said Sifry. Though U.S. whistleblower Edward Snowden did not deliver his trove of top-secret intelligence and military documents to a media drop box in 2013, he used the encrypted communications Assange helped popularize to communicate with the journalists who collaborated with him. In 2013 the Freedom of the Press Foundation, which had aided WikiLeaks with financing, developed a new anonymous drop box free for anyone to use: SecureDrop. The New Yorker, an early adopter, explained its value to leakers: “As it’s set up, even we won’t be able to figure out where files sent to us come from. If anyone asks us, we won’t be able to tell them.” SecureDrop is important to the most successful WikiLeaks-like operation, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. In recent years it has obtained from leakers millions of financial account files detailing money laundering and tax avoidance from offshore banking centers — digital troves that became known as the “Panama Papers” and “Paradise Papers.” The top of the ICIJ’s web page offers links to SecureDrop and other encrypted tools for sharing information. And it has one simple invitation: “Leak to us.”
|
media;censorship;privacy;julian assange;wikileaks;surveillance
|
jp0003581
|
[
"world",
"science-health-world"
] |
2019/04/12
|
Plumbing the depths and scouring shores, clues emerge in 'missing' ocean plastics conundrum
|
VIENNA - Humanity dumps millions of tons of plastics into the world’s oceans annually, yet only a tiny fraction remains visible on the surface, and scientists don’t know why. Now an international team of researchers believe they may be closer to determining where Earth’s “missing plastics” end up, using an unprecedented global effort to track and draw down one of the most polluting materials ever invented. As images of plastic-clogged beaches and swirling gyres of debris bobbing on the high seas are prompting governments and cities to curb their throwaway culture, a growing body of evidence suggests a deeper problem of plastic permeating all ocean depths. Of the between 4 million and 12 million tons that enter the oceans each year, just 250,000 tons are thought to stay at the surface. Overall, more than 99 percent of plastic dumped at sea over several decades are unaccounted for. As plastics degrade through erosion, UV light and microbial decay, their density changes, putting them at the mercy of ocean currents — and, once they get pulled lower in the water, much harder for experts to track. “It’s quite difficult to decide where it all is because there are so many processes at work,” said Alethea Mountford, from Newcastle University’s School of Natural and Environmental Sciences. “Even plastic at the surface can sink down and go back up again — it’s moving between different possible sinks in different areas of the ocean at any time.” In a potential breakthrough, Mountford used a computer model of ocean currents for plastics of three different densities to project where most of the world’s fragments collect once they start to sink. The model showed significant build-ups at various depths in the Mediterranean Sea, Indian Ocean and the waters surrounding Southeast Asia. Much of the plastic ends up on the seabed, as researchers outlined earlier this year in a separate study that found microplastic fibers in the guts of tiny shrimp that live at the bottom of the Mariana Trench. While Mountford stressed that her research was preliminary, the results could help focus further investigations on the ocean areas identified and enable better studies of the damage plastics cause to marine life. Mountford’s work draws on that of Eric van Sebille, associate professor in oceanography and climate change at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. He said that most plastic pollution research had traditionally focused on the fragments that stay on the surface — and with good reason. “We know the most about the garbage patches so it makes sense to focus on them and if you look at the impact, the surface plastic probably does have the most because most organisms live there,” he said. “But if you want to understand the complete problem then we need to get a deeper view.” Van Sebille’s current research is based on the fact that plastic pollution is now so prolific that monitoring the waste fragments themselves can provide valuable insight into how oceans circulate. His hunch — which should be borne out as modeling gets more sophisticated — is that the vast majority of plastics dumped in the oceans wash back ashore. This would account for the huge disparity in the volume entering the oceans and the smaller amounts that can be seen today. “Plastic gets out of a river, it stays within the coastal zone for a while and it has the opportunity to wash back to shore and quite a lot of it might do that,” he said. Van Sebille added that while the problem of plastic pollution today may seem insurmountable, focusing clean-up efforts in coastal areas could save much more widespread plastic contamination in the long run. “More and more we think that plastic spends a lot of time in that coastal zone so you don’t need to do that much clean up to get rid of 10 million tons,” he said. In a series of studies on plastic waste unveiled Tuesday at the European Geosciences Union in Vienna, one paper showed plastic contamination on the Forni Glacier, a vast body of frozen water high up the Italian Alps. A team of Italian experts found between 28 and 74 items per kilogram of sediment analyzed — meaning that the entire glacier is home to 131 million to 162 million plastic items. “From marine trenches to glaciers we have now found microplastics,” said Roberto Sergio Azzoni, from the University of Milan, who led the research.
|
pollution;oceans;plastic;plastic waste
|
jp0003582
|
[
"world",
"science-health-world"
] |
2019/04/12
|
Mission failure: Contact lost with Israeli spacecraft moments before it crashed on the moon
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YEHUD, ISRAEL - An Israeli spacecraft lost contact with Earth and crashed just moments before it was to land on the moon late Thursday, failing in an ambitious attempt to make history as the first privately funded lunar mission. The spacecraft lost communication with ground control as it was making its final descent to the moon. Moments later, the mission was declared a failure. “We definitely crashed on surface of moon,” said Opher Doron, general manager of the space division of Israel Aerospace Industries. He said the spacecraft was in pieces scattered at the planned landing site. Doron said that the spacecraft’s engine turned off shortly before landing. By the time power was restored, he said the craft was moving too fast to land safely. Scientists were still trying to figure out the cause of the failure. “One of the inertial measurement units failed. And that caused an unfortunate chain of events we’re not sure about,” he said. “The engine was turned off. The engine was stopped and the spacecraft crashed. That’s all we know.” The mishap occurred in front of a packed audience that included Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and was broadcast live on national television. The small robotic spacecraft, built by the nonprofit SpaceIL and state-owned Israel Aerospace Industries, had hoped to match a feat that has only been achieved by the national space agencies of three countries: U.S., Russia and China. “If at first you don’t succeed, try try again,” Netanyahu said. He vowed to put an Israeli spacecraft on the moon “intact” in the next two years. Scientists, who were giddy with excitement only second earlier, were visibly distraught, and celebrations at viewing centers across the country were dashed. President Reuven Rivlin hosted dozens of youngsters at his official residence. The children, some wearing white spacesuits, appeared confused as the crash unfolded. “We are full of admiration for the wonderful people who brought the spacecraft to the moon,” Rivlin said. “True, not as we had hoped, but we will succeed in the end.” The failure was a disappointing ending to a 6.5 million km (4 million mile) lunar voyage, almost unprecedented in length, that was designed to conserve fuel and reduce price. The spacecraft hitched a ride on the SpaceX Falcon rocket, launched from Florida in February. For the past two months, Beresheet traveled around the Earth several times before entering lunar orbit in hopes of joining the exclusive club of countries that have made it to the moon. The U.S. space agency NASA broadcast the landing attempt live on its dedicated TV channels, as well as online. While NASA regrets the end of the SpaceIL mission without a successful lunar landing of the Beresheet lander, we congratulate SpaceIL, the Israel Aerospace Industries and the state of Israel on the incredible accomplishment of sending the first privately funded mission into lunar orbit,” said NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine. “Every attempt to reach new milestones holds opportunities for us to learn, adjust and progress,” he added. “I have no doubt that Israel and SpaceIL will continue to explore and I look forward to celebrating their future achievements.”
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nasa;space;israel;benjamin netanyahu;spacex;moon;beresheet
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jp0003583
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[
"world",
"science-health-world"
] |
2019/04/12
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3D laser imaging shines new light on 'Last Supper' site
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JERUSALEM - The arched stone-built hall in Jerusalem venerated by Christians as the site of Jesus’ Last Supper has been digitally re-created by archaeologists using laser scanners and advanced photography. The Cenacle, a popular site for pilgrims near Jerusalem’s walled Old City, has ancient, worn surfaces and poor illumination, hampering a study of its history. So researchers from Israel’s Antiquities Authority and European research institutions used laser technology and advanced photographic techniques to create richly detailed three-dimensional models of the hall built in the Crusader era. The project helped highlight obscure artwork and decipher some theological aspects of the second-floor room, built above what Jewish tradition says is the burial site of King David. “We managed, in one of the … holiest places in Jerusalem, to use this technology and this is a breakthrough,” Amit Re’em, Jerusalem district archaeologist at the Israel Antiquities Authority, told Reuters of the project, which began in 2016. Re’em pointed to reliefs of what he described as the symbols of the “Agnus Dei,” a lamb that is an emblem of Christ, and the “Lion of Judah” on keystones in the hall’s vaulted ceiling. “It tells the story of this room,” Re’em said. “It delivers the message of the Last (Supper) Room, Christ as a Messiah, as victorious, as a victim — and the lion, the lion is a symbol of the Davidic dynasty. They combine together in this room.” Some archaeologists have questioned whether the room is the actual venue of the Last Supper, the final meal, which the New Testament says Jesus shared with disciples before his crucifixion. Ilya Berkovich, a historian at the INZ research institute of the Austrian Academy of Sciences who worked on the project, said the endeavor opens “incredibly new horizons” with enormous potential.
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christianity;israel;jerusalem;3d;jesus;cenacle;last supper
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jp0003585
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[
"world",
"crime-legal-world"
] |
2019/04/12
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Trump's silence on Russia's election hack is inviting another attack, says James Comey
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SAUSALITO, CALIFORNIA/WASHINGTON - Former FBI Director James Comey said the U.S. remains unprepared for another attack on its elections and faulted the attorney general for suggesting that the government was “spying” on Donald Trump’s presidential campaign in 2016. Echoing the findings of U.S. intelligence agencies, Comey said Russia intervened in the 2016 election to damage American democracy, undermine Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and bolster Trump. Russian officials have denied the accusations. But Comey said Trump’s “denial of a fundamental attack” on the U.S. means “we’re inviting it to happen again with our president’s silence.” The former FBI leader also said he was concerned by Attorney General William Barr’s comments on Wednesday that he’s starting his own inquiry into counterintelligence decisions that may have amounted to political espionage, including actions taken during the Russia probe in 2016. “I really don’t know what he’s talking about when he talks about spying on the campaign,” Comey said. “The FBI and Department of Justice conduct court-ordered surveillance. If the attorney general has come to the belief that that should be called spying, wow, that’s going to inspire a whole lot of conversations in the Department of Justice.” Barr told a Senate panel that he wasn’t saying improper spying occurred but that he was going to look into that allegation, which is frequently advanced by Trump and House Republicans. Barr said there was “was probably a failure by a group of leaders there at the upper echelon” of the FBI. The comments come after Trump renewed his criticism of Comey, whom he fired in 2017 amid the FBI’s probe of Russia’s role in the 2016 election. On Tuesday, Trump accused Comey of “an attempted coup” as he continued his attacks on the probe that was taken over by Special Counsel Robert Mueller shortly after the then-FBI director was fired. “Everything about it was crooked, every single thing about it,” Trump said of the Russia investigation on Tuesday. “There were dirty cops. These were bad people. If you look at McCabe and Comey, and you look at Lisa and Peter Strzok, these were bad people. And this was a — an attempted coup. This was an attempted takedown of a president.” According to Barr, Mueller has said his probe didn’t “exonerate” Trump on the question of whether he obstructed justice in the investigation after finding evidence “on both sides of the question.” Read More: Barr Says He’s Starting Inquiry Into ‘Spying’ Against Trump. Comey admitted to what he said were his own shortcomings as head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, saying he wished he had done more to beef up U.S. defenses against cybersecurity threats. “I failed to push us to the decision point of how do we want to deploy against this threat effectively,” he said. “We failed to do an adequate job of pushing the information flow across the semi-permeable barrier across the government and the private sector. We’re nowhere near where we need to be.” He also joked about what he would do differently if he could go back to 2013, the year he was sworn in to what was expected to be a 10-year term. “Going back to 2013?” Comey said. “Can I decline to accept the appointment as FBI director?”
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u.s .;russia;cybersecurity;fbi;james comey;donald trump;william barr
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jp0003587
|
[
"world",
"politics-diplomacy-world"
] |
2019/04/12
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Some in EU imagine there could be another Brexit delay after Halloween deadline
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BRUSSELS - The ink was not yet dry on EU leaders’ deal to give Britain a hard-fought, second delay to Brexit until November when some diplomats and officials in the bloc grudgingly conceded: This may well not be the last extension. The Wednesday evening European Union summit ran into the wee hours of Thursday after staunch opposition from French President Emmanuel Macron to a longer postponement of Brexit swung the balance in favor of the Oct. 31 compromise. European Commission Secretary-General Martin Selmayr coined a new Twitter tag: #29MarchMeans12AprilMeans31Oct — a quip on how Britain had been due to leave the EU last month, then got a reprieve recess until Friday and now a new delay, months longer than London had sought. Selmayr’s line seemed to be a play on British Prime Minister Theresa May’s now-mothballed slogan, “Brexit means Brexit.” And what will come after Oct. 31? More delays are on the cards, depending on developments in Britain, according to EU officials and diplomats. “If Britain decides to hold a second Brexit referendum, we will extend again, even in June. That would make absolute sense. You cannot cut the maximum term. You can only extend it,” said a senior EU official who was present at the summit talks. ‘Everything is possible’ Another one echoed that: “The legal situation is that everything is possible. A week is a long time in politics and we have now given 29 weeks. That is a very, very long time and a lot could happen.” To be sure, the political price Britain would have to pay for any further recess would spike, the sources said, and it is by far not a foregone conclusion that all the 27 states staying on together after Brexit would endorse another extension. But, despite Macron’s impassioned resistance to prolonging the Brexit uncertainty to no end, there is precious little appetite in the EU for the most damaging “no-deal” Brexit. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has made it clear repeatedly that she wants an orderly British departure and is ready to exercise her patience to achieve that. European Council President Donald Tusk, who Thursday confessed again that the best way forward would be to cancel Brexit altogether, is seen as trying to drag out the process in the hope that Britain could eventually change its mind. Britain’s promises In exchange for the Oct. 31 extension, Britain had to commit to holding elections for the European Parliament on May 23-26 and promise not to undermine EU policymaking. But even Jean-Claude Juncker, the head of the European Commission — the term of which ends Oct. 31 — said fears that Britain could alone stall the bloc’s agenda were overblown as majority backing was enough to pick replacements for himself and Tusk, while the EU’s 2021-27 budget was not yet up for approval. “We have heard voices coming from Britain that Britain wants to be a very difficult partner for the others,” Juncker said after the summit, alluding to prominent hard-line euroskeptics in May’s Conservative Party. “That’s nothing new.” Beyond France, Austria was among a few EU states more amenable to a shorter Brexit lag. Any delay for London would have to be approved unanimously by the other 27 capitals. While no single EU member country would be keen to shoulder a veto on its own, a small group of reluctant capitals could block any further Brexit delay. “It cannot be ruled out. Though it cannot be taken for granted either,” a third senior EU official said when asked if the rolling Brexit timeline would have another sequel. Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte — whose country is traditionally a close ally of Britain, would be among those hardest hit by any abrupt split and hence favors kicking Brexit into the long grass — admitted it might be hard. “I would expect this is the last delay,” Rutte said after the EU summit wrapped up. “On Oct. 31 the British will either have agreed to a deal, have decided to cancel Brexit or leave without a deal.”
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eu;u.k .;brexit
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jp0003588
|
[
"world",
"politics-diplomacy-world"
] |
2019/04/12
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After ousting of Algerian and Sudanese heads of state, other longtime leaders could be next
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PARIS - Strongmen in the Middle East and North Africa will be warily eyeing popular protests, fed by frustration with living standards and an elite perceived as corrupt, that helped push veteran Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika and now Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir from power. While recent events in those two countries have been unique, analysts say the rapid downfalls of Bouteflika and Bashir are a warning to authoritarian leaders in the region that they ignore popular anger, especially over economic grievances, at their peril. The Sudanese Army said Thursday that al-Bashir had been removed from power and detained after 30 years in power following four months of protests. Last week, mass protests led Algeria’s ailing Bouteflika to step down after 20 years. Protesters against al-Bashir’s iron-fisted rule denounced the military “coup,” and thousands rallied outside army headquarters, demanding a civilian-led transition. In both situations, longtime rulers were pushed aside by existing security structures on the back of mass protests, in a sign for authoritarian leaders that an army can be a foe as well as a friend. But this also dashed popular hopes for a true revolution, leaving a potential for further instability. And as populations surge in the region, with the demographic switching toward a younger, more digitally savvy generation, discontent may deepen further. “The Algerian and Sudanese contexts are very different indeed. But at the same time, there is a lesson here for autocrats and dictators, that the craving for justice, democracy and equal opportunities is universal,” said Marc Pierini, visiting scholar at Carnegie Europe. “In both countries, people are fed up by seeing the people sitting in power, calling all the shots, and pocketing the money,” said Pierini, a former EU ambassador to Tunisia and Libya, Syria, Morocco and Turkey. “It is also interesting that armed forces are not necessarily solidly behind these autocrats anymore and perhaps have a longer view,” he said. Algeria’s neighbor Morocco is run by a monarchy, while heavyweight Egypt is headed by strongman President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, a former army general. He came to power after the ousting of Mohammed Morsi, an Islamist who himself was elected into power after the uprising that felled longtime autocrat Hosni Mubarak. Sharan Grewal, a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution, said it is difficult to predict whether the latest convulsions will trigger a repeat of the 2010-11 Arab Spring protests that ousted regimes in Egypt and Tunisia and led to war in Syria and Yemen. “That said, revolutions do tend to occur in waves,” he said, citing the Arab Spring and the so-called color revolutions in post-Soviet states like Ukraine and Georgia in the previous decade as well as the fall of communism in Eastern Europe in 1989. Noting that the demands of the protesters to beat corruption and improve living standards resonate beyond Sudan and Algeria, he added, “You can be sure that dictators across the region are looking at these uprisings with worry.” Haim Malka, senior fellow and deputy director of the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said regimes have been “slow to grasp and adjust to a combination of demographic, technological and economic shifts.” “The region will face more turbulence as citizens and regimes attempt to renegotiate the contours of the social contract,” he said. “It will take years” for a new equilibrium to emerge. The tremors in Algiers and Khartoum will reverberate well beyond the Middle East. Another strongman to leave the stage this spring was Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev, who stepped down in what analysts saw as a bid to ensure a controlled power transition at a time of increased economic uncertainty. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose ruling party lost control of Turkey’s two biggest cities in March polls and is now contesting the results in Istanbul, will be watching events in Sudan particularly closely after hosting al-Bashir on multiple occasions in defiance of an International Criminal Court arrest warrant. And even when a leader is removed from power, it is far from the end of the story. Anthony Skinner, director at Verisk Maplecroft risk assessment firm, said Bouteflika’s interim successor, Abdelkader Bensalah, was “between a rock and a hard place” as he sought to cater to the demands of protesters while ensuring stability. “I expect protesters to sustain pressure on the political elite,” he said, even as police resort more to water cannons, tear gas and truncheons. “The administration wants to stick to the current road map without having to make further concessions,” he said.
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algeria;egypt;protests;turkey;sudan;omar al-bashir;morocco;abdelazia bouteflika
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jp0003589
|
[
"world",
"politics-diplomacy-world"
] |
2019/04/12
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Sudanese protesters defy curfew to demand new military rulers quit
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KHARTOUM - Sudanese protesters angry that army commanders have taken control after removing veteran president Omar al-Bashir in a palace coup defied a night-time curfew to keep up four months of mass demonstrations on Friday. Protest leaders dismissed the transitional military council formed by top brass after they toppled al-Bashir on Thursday, as the “same old faces” from the old regime, which had ruled the country with an iron fist for three decades. Demonstrators demanded a civilian body to lead the transition to democracy and bring an end to the multiple conflicts that have pushed the country into worsening poverty. Most shops and offices were closed on Friday, which is the day of prayer and rest in Sudan. Vast crowds were expected to throng the streets of Khartoum and its twin city, Omdurman, after the main weekly Muslim prayers at noon raising fears of confrontation. Washington called on the military council “to exercise restraint and to allow space for civilian participation within the government.” The European Union urged the army to carry out a “swift” handover to civilian rule. Sudan’s last elected prime minister, opposition Umma party leader, Sadiq al-Mahdi, who was overthrown by al-Bashir in a military coup in 1989, was expected to address supporters after prayers at one of Omdurman’s most revered mosques. Since returning to Khartoum from self-imposed exile, Mahdi has allied his party with the grass-roots who were the driving force behind the mass protests that preceded Thursday’s coup. The Sudan Professionals Association — a well organized umbrella group of doctors, teachers and engineers — has called for a huge turnout at Friday’s turnout as has the wider opposition Alliance for Freedom and Democracy. Despite warnings from the new military council to respect the night curfew, the soldiers posted outside army headquarters made no move to disperse the protesters who camped out there for a sixth straight night on Thursday, demonstrators said. Protesters were seen chatting with soldiers. They said their quarrel was with the commanders who had led the coup, not the rank and file. “There was no difference between last night and previous days and nights for us,” said one protester who gave his name as Abu Obeida. “This is now our square. We have taken it and won’t leave until victory is achieved. “We broke the curfew. We will continue doing it until we have a civilian transitional government.” Ibnouf said a transitional military council would replace the president for two years, adding that the country’s borders and airspace were shut until further notice. He said the council was also imposing a 10 pm (2000 GMT) to 4:00 am (0200) GMT curfew. State television later broadcast footage of him taking the oath to become head of the council, alongside his new deputy, army chief of staff Lieutenant General Kamal Abdelmarouf. State television said there would be a fresh announcement from the military council on Friday. Al-Bashir, who swept to power in a 1989 coup, was one of Africa’s longest-serving presidents and is wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) on charges of genocide and war crimes. Ibnouf apologized for “the mismanagement, the corruption and the injustice” that had led to mounting social inequality. He also apologized for the regime’s resort to strong-arm tactics to attempt to crush the protests, which had led to the “loss of people’s lives.” But his apology fell on deaf ears among the protesters, who had repeatedly defied bullets and tear gas to keep up their sit-in before the army stepped in. Thursday’s announcement meant “we have not achieved anything,” said another protester who gave his name only as Adel. “We will not stop our revolution. We are calling for the regime to step down, not only al-Bashir.” It was a far cry from the scenes of celebration that had initially greeted the army’s announcement it would intervene on Thursday, when demonstrators cheered and hugged soldiers on the streets, some of whom joined the demonstrations. The opposition Sudanese Congress Party called for the establishment of a joint military and civilian council to rule for a four-year transitional period. It also urged the army to give executive powers to civilians. UN chief Antonio Guterres called for a transition that would meet the “democratic aspirations” of the Sudanese people and appealed for “calm and utmost restraint by all,” his spokesman said. That came after the African Union decried al-Bashir’s military ouster, saying it was “not the appropriate response to the challenges facing Sudan and the aspirations of its people.” The military council said it was declaring a cease-fire across the country, including in war-torn Darfur. But the rebel Sudan Liberation Army (SLA-AW) fighting government forces in Darfur denounced what it called a “palace coup.” Sudan’s feared National Intelligence and Security Service (NISS) said it was freeing all the country’s political prisoners, state media reported. But in the eastern cities of Kasala and Port Sudan, the releases failed to materialise, prompting protesters to storm NISS buildings, according to witnesses. Protesters have otherwise largely heeded the calls of organizers to refrain from attacking government official or buildings as they press their campaign for sweeping reform.
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protests;sudan;coups;omar al-bashir
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jp0003590
|
[
"world"
] |
2019/04/12
|
Boeing makes 96 flights to test software on troubled Max jet and gives pilots simulator time
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DALLAS - Boeing’s CEO says crews have made 96 flights to test a software update for its troubled 737 Max jet and will make more in coming weeks as the company attempts to convince regulators to let the plane fly again. Dennis Muilenburg also said Thursday that the company has met with pilots and airline officials in the U.S. and abroad, holding flight-simulator sessions to demonstrate the software changes. The Federal Aviation Administration, which will consider whether the plane can resume flying in the U.S., plans to meet Friday with safety officials and pilots from American, Southwest and United, the three U.S. carriers that were using the Max jet. An FAA spokesman said the agency wants to hear from the airlines and pilots before deciding what Boeing must do before the plane is allowed to fly. Regulators around the world grounded the Max last month after deadly crashes involving the plane in Indonesia and Ethiopia. In both cases, faulty information from a sensor caused anti-stall automation to kick in when it wasn’t needed and push the plane’s nose down. Pilots struggled to counter the plane’s actions but were unable to avoid crashing. Regulators in Europe and China are conducting their own reviews of the plane, and company insiders and analysts expect foreign regulators to take longer than the FAA to approve the Max’s return to service. Boeing representatives have visited the United Kingdom, Singapore and China to discuss its work on the Max with pilots and airline officials, including demonstrating the software update in flight simulators, Muilenburg. The Boeing CEO spoke during a leadership forum at the George W. Bush Presidential Center in Dallas, as the former president sat in the front row. Muilenburg did not take any questions, and left immediately after his remarks. Separately, Sen. Edward Markey and other Senate Democrats introduced a bill that would require aircraft makers to provide airlines with all safety equipment now considered optional and to do it at no extra charge. The planes that crashed in Indonesia and Ethiopia did not have two optional displays that might have alerted the pilots to the malfunctioning sensors suspected of playing a role in the crashes. Markey said if they had been installed, the crashes might have been avoided. The Air Line Pilots Association endorsed the legislation. A Boeing spokesman said the company’s planes are equipped with “all critical features” necessary for safety. Boeing has said it will provide the two displays free of charge in the future.
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boeing;aviation;ethiopian airlines;737 max;lion air;air accidents;dennis muilenburg;mcas
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jp0003591
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[
"world"
] |
2019/04/12
|
Ethiopia inquiry shows Boeing Max hurtling uncontrolled to disaster
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ADDIS ABABA - Ethiopia Airlines’ doomed 737 Max jet hit excessive speed and was forced downward by a wrongly triggered automation system as pilots wrestled to regain control, a preliminary report into the crash that has shaken the aviation world showed on Thursday. Three times Capt. Yared Getachew cried “pull up” before the Boeing jetliner plunged into a field 6 minutes after takeoff from Addis Ababa last month, killing all 157 passengers and crew, said the report by Ethiopian investigators. The disaster — and parallels with another 737 Max crash in Indonesia where 189 people died last October — has led to the grounding of Boeing’s flagship model. It has also brought uncomfortable scrutiny over new software, pilot training and regulatory rigor. While the Ethiopian Civil Aviation Authority’s Accident Prevention and Investigation Bureau had a remit to investigate rather than blame, it implicitly pointed the finger at Boeing by defending the pilots, recommending the U.S. company fix its control systems, and saying regulators must be certain before allowing the Max back in the air. “The crew performed all the procedures repeatedly provided by the manufacturer but was not able to control the aircraft,” Transport Minister Dagmawit Moges told a news conference. “Since repetitive uncommanded aircraft nose down conditions are noticed … it is recommended that the aircraft control system shall be reviewed by the manufacturer.” Boeing, the world’s biggest plane-maker and one of the United States’ most important exporters, with a $500 billion order book for the Max, says a new software fix for its anti-stall system will enable pilots to always override if necessary. According to the report by the Ethiopian investigators, an alarm indicating excess speed was heard on the cockpit voice reporter as the jet reached 500 knots (575 mph) — well above operational limits. The plane had faulty “angle of attack” sensor readings, its nose was pushed down automatically, and the crew lost control despite following recommended instructions, it said. “Most of the wreckage was found buried in the ground,” the report said, indicating the strength of the impact on an arid field in an agricultural zone. No bodies were recovered, only charred fragments among the debris in a crater. Boeing has seen billions wiped off its market value since the crash, but its shares actually rose 2.4 percent on Thursday. Morgan Stanley said the report of flight control problems, which Boeing was already trying to fix, meant a “worst case scenario” of a new cause was probably off the table. Families of the victims, regulators and travelers around the world have been waiting to find out to what extent Boeing technology or the pilots’ actions played a role. A final report is due within a year. The preliminary report into the Lion Air disaster in Indonesia suggested pilots also lost control after grappling with so-called MCAS software, a new automated anti-stall feature that repeatedly lowered the nose based on faulty sensor data. “It had to take a second disaster to wake up the major players to pay attention to something that could’ve been resolved after the first disaster,” said one woman, who lost her father in the Ethiopian crash, asking not to be named. “Whatever the issues were, they better be 110 percent sure about their resolution, otherwise the 157 lives lost would have been for nothing if something like this happens again. This is a lesson to not take shortcuts in order to try and save bucks.” U.S. regulator the Federal Aviation Administration, under fire for its certification of the Max, cautioned the inquiry was not over. “As we learn more about the accident and findings become available, we will take appropriate action,” it said. Boeing may press to know how crew members responded to problems triggered by the faulty data. Questions on whether the pilots had leveled out the plane before disengaging MCAS and how many times MCAS activated were not answered at the news conference in Addis Ababa that lasted about 40 minutes. The New York Times quoted Dagmawit as saying pilots turned MCAS off and on, which is not the step recommended in published Boeing procedures telling crew to leave it off once disabled. With bereaved families angry and confused, relatives of one woman killed in the Ethiopian crash filed the first lawsuit on behalf of a U.S. victim in Chicago. The complaint accused Boeing of putting “profits over safety” and also targeted Rosemount Aerospace, the manufacturer of the angle of attack sensor. U.S. consumer activist Ralph Nader, whose grand-niece died in Ethiopia, called for consumers to boycott the Max. Pilots around the world were watching closely too. “If the preliminary report from the Ethiopian authorities is accurate, the pilots quickly identified the malfunction and applied the manufacturer’s checklist,” said Capt. Jason Goldberg, spokesman for Allied Pilots Association, which represents American Airlines pilots. “Following this checklist did not appear to allow the pilots to regain control of the aircraft.”
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u.s .;boeing;faa;aviation;ethiopian airlines;737 max;lion air;air accidents;mcas
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jp0003592
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[
"world"
] |
2019/04/12
|
Assange: Cooped up in embassy for years
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LONDON - During his nearly seven years holed up in the Ecuadoran embassy in London, devoid of sunlight, exercise and companions, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange lived like a recluse. Visibly aging and suffering from deteriorating physical and psychological health, the 47-year-old Australian adopted a subsistence lifestyle, with just a cat for daily company. That ended on Thursday when police dragged the whistleblower from his diplomatic home — his worn face now framed by a bushy white beard and his signature silver hair worn in a ponytail. Assange sought asylum in the embassy in June 2012 after a British judge ruled he should be extradited to Sweden to face allegations of sexual assault. He was last seen in public in May 2017, giving a clenched fist salute from the cramped flat’s balcony after Swedish prosecutors dropped the rape investigation against him. ‘My mind is not confined’ In the first year of his stay, Britain had maintained a 24-hour police guard at the doors of the embassy — reportedly costing British taxpayers millions of pounds. Stuck inside, the former computer hacker was forced to call home a room measuring 18 square meters (190 square feet) and comprising a bed, computer, shower and microwave. He reportedly divided the space into an office and a living area, exercising on a small running machine and using a sun lamp to make up for the lack of natural light. He would occasionally entertain visitors, ranging from diplomats and journalists to celebrities like Vivienne Westwood and Pamela Anderson. The whistleblower only very rarely emerged onto the balcony, citing concerns for his personal safety. He compared his plight to living on a space station — despite being just around the corner from luxury department store Harrods. “My mind is not confined,” Assange told AFP in 2013. “The physical circumstances are difficult. However, I’m working every day.” He spent much of his time working on his computer and online, tweeting and taking part in media conferences and campaigns via video link. At times he also contributed to RT, a Russian state-owned television channel. ‘Akin to imprisonment’ But the years of captivity eventually took their toll on Assange’s physical and mental health. His lawyers repeatedly went to court to ask unsuccessfully for British prosecutors to remove the arrest warrant hanging over him for breaching bail. They argued his conditions were “akin to imprisonment.” Noting a 2016 U.N. panel ruling that he was being detained arbitrarily, they said that without access to adequate medical care or sunlight, his continued confinement imperilled his life. In one hearing they complained he was suffering from a bad tooth, a frozen shoulder and depression. Cat fight Meanwhile, relations with his Ecuadoran hosts also began to suffer. Quito cut his internet and mobile phone access last year, accusing him of breaking “a written commitment” not to interfere in its and allies’ foreign policies. The move infuriated Assange, who sued the government for violating his “fundamental rights” by limiting his access to the outside world. He also complained the embassy was requiring his visitors — including journalists and lawyers — to disclose “private or political details such as their social media usernames.” Another point of friction became a cat given to Assange in 2016 — for which he soon created a spoof Twitter account with the handle @EmbassyCat. A Quito memo leaked to the country’s media showed officials had concerns for the “well-being, food, hygiene, and proper care” of the cat, and warned it could be removed to a shelter.
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julian assange;wikileaks
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jp0003593
|
[
"world"
] |
2019/04/12
|
White House reportedly considered releasing detained migrants in sanctuary cities as retaliation
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WASHINGTON - White House officials have tried to pressure U.S. immigration authorities to release migrants detained at the border into so-called sanctuary cities such as San Francisco to retaliate against President Donald Trump’s political adversaries, the Washington Post reported on Thursday . The Post, which reviewed emails on the issue and spoke to unnamed officials at the Department of Homeland Security, said the White House proposed the measure at least twice in the past six months. Sanctuary cities are those where local officials decline to hand over illegal immigrants for deportation. The White House did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment on the report. A DHS spokesman told Reuters in a statement the plan was “a suggestion that was floated and rejected, which ended any further discussion.” The Post quoted a White House official as saying the same thing. Trump administration officials proposed the measure in November as a caravan traveled through Mexico with mostly migrants from Central American countries toward the southern U.S. border. The proposal emerged again in February during a standoff with Democrats over funding the president sought to build a wall on the border, one of the signature issues of his 2016 election campaign and presidency. The Post said a Nov. 16 email broached the proposal, asking officials at different agencies whether members of the migrant caravan could be detained at the border, then bused to “small- and mid-sized sanctuary cities,” where local officials refuse to hand over illegal immigrants for deportation. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s district in San Francisco was one of those the White House considered targeting, the Post cited the DHS officials as saying. Ashley Etienne, a spokeswoman for Pelosi, denounced the administration for its “cynicism and cruelty” over the plan. “Using human beings — including little children — as pawns in their warped game to perpetuate fear and demonize immigrants is despicable, and in some cases, criminal,” she said, adding that Americans had “resoundingly rejected this administration’s toxic anti-immigrant policies.”
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immigration;refugees;donald trump
|
jp0003594
|
[
"asia-pacific"
] |
2019/04/12
|
Magnitude 6.8 quake temporarily triggers tsunami warning for eastern Indonesia
|
JAKARTA - Indonesia’s geophysics agency said it has ended a tsunami warning that was triggered by a strong earthquake Friday east of Sulawesi island. The U.S. Geological Survey said the quake, which struck at a relatively shallow depth of 17 km (10.5 miles), had a magnitude of 6.8. The warning was in effect for about 40 minutes. The epicenter was far from the central Sulawesi city of Palu, which was devastated by a 7.5 magnitude quake and subsequent tsunami in September, but it was felt there anyway and people ran into the streets in panic. More than 4,400 people were killed in the Palu disaster. Disaster agency spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho said the quake was felt in different areas for 4 to 6 seconds. He said authorities in some eastern coastal areas and islands had ordered residents to go to higher ground. The quake hit off the coast of eastern Sulawesi, on the other side of the island from disaster-hit Palu. “I ran straight outside after the earthquake — everything was swaying,” 29-year-old Palu resident Mahfuzah said. Thousands in Palu were still living in makeshift shelters six months after the late September disaster, which displaced at least 170,000 residents in the city and surrounding districts. Entire neighborhoods still lay in ruins, despite life returning to normal in other areas of the tsunami-struck city. The force of the September quake saw entire neighborhoods leveled by liquefaction — a process where the ground starts behaving like a liquid and swallows up the earth like quicksand. Apart from the damage to tens of thousands of buildings, the disaster destroyed fishing boats, shops and irrigation systems, robbing residents of their income. Indonesia has said the damage bill in Palu topped $900 million. The World Bank has offered the country up to $1 billion in loans to get the city back on its feet.
|
indonesia;earthquakes;natural disasters;sulawesi;palu
|
jp0003595
|
[
"asia-pacific",
"politics-diplomacy-asia-pacific"
] |
2019/04/12
|
Trump says no to eased sanctions, but South Korea's Moon keeps nuclear talks with Kim alive
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South Korean President Moon Jae-in, on a mission to Washington on Thursday to kick-start nuclear diplomacy by persuading U.S. President Donald Trump to ease crushing sanctions on North Korea and gain an OK for inter-Korean projects, fell short in talks with Trump. But is there a path forward for the U.S. and North Korea? And if so, what role could Moon play? Trump rejected Moon’s calls for planned confidence-building economic projects with Pyongyang, dealing a blow to his efforts to restart nuclear talks with Kim Jong Un after Trump’s summit with the North Korean leader broke down in Hanoi in late February, in part over Kim’s demands for immediate sanctions relief. Trump, speaking ahead of closed-door talks at the White House with Moon, said it “isn’t the right time” for signing off on sanctions exemptions for inter-Korean projects, including the reopening of the Kaesong industrial facility and Mount Kumgang tourism site, which Moon and Kim agreed to during their third summit in September last year. Still, Trump did offer a qualified answer to a question on whether he would be willing to accept “smaller deals” to keep negotiations alive. “I’d have to see what the deal is,” he said. “There are various smaller deals that maybe could happen. Things could happen. You can work out, step by step, pieces.” But, he added, “At this moment, we’re talking about the big deal. The big deal is we have to get rid of the nuclear weapons.” During the summit in Hanoi, Trump insisted on what officials described as “a big deal” that called for trading sanctions relief for Kim relinquishing all the North’s nuclear and other weapons programs — a bridge too far for the North Korean leader, who had instead offered to dismantle the Yongbyon nuclear facility in exchange for the easing of some sanctions. Frank Aum, a former senior Pentagon adviser on North Korea now with the United States Institute of Peace in Washington, said Trump appeared “open to any reasonable North Korea proposal and wouldn’t turn down a good deal just because it was a small one.” “Trump’s apparent openness to a smaller deal is significant in the sense that President Moon can take this indication of flexibility to Chairman Kim as a way to entice North Korea back to talks,” Aum said, cautioning, however, that a smaller deal would have to be considerably in Trump’s favor — something the North Koreans would be unlikely to go for. Vipin Narang, a North Korea expert and professor of international relations at MIT, said this interpretation is possible, but noted that Trump’s “intuition is that a small deal cannot by definition be a ‘good deal’ ” for Trump the businessman. “My interpretation was more pessimistic than others perhaps — that he meant, ‘I’ve heard this suggestion about small step-by-step deals, but nah, I’m going to go big or go home and try to get all the nukes.’ At least for now,” Narang said. Whatever the case, the two sides’ diplomatic outreach is now likely to gain at least some momentum after weeks of silence, with Trump reiterating Thursday that “the door remains open to dialogue,” and saying that a third summit with Kim “could happen.” Indeed, the U.S. leader reportedly asked Moon to “contact” North Korea, likely via inter-Korean summit talks, and to let him know of Pyongyang’s current stance on negotiations. South Korea’s Yonhap news agency, quoting an unidentified senior Moon administration official, said that Moon would aim to meet with Kim at an early date, returning to the role of mediator after meeting Kim three times last year — in April and May at the truce village of Panmunjom and in September in Pyongyang — and helping Trump realize his two summits with Kim. “At this point, I think President Moon will arrange a call or meeting with Chairman Kim in the near future to convey President Trump’s desire to continue negotiations and willingness to demonstrate flexibility,” Aum said. “Given that the relationship between Trump and Kim is still good, I think Kim will be willing to give diplomacy another shot,” he said, adding that another visit to Pyongyang by U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to discuss potential compromises would not be out of the question. But Aum cautioned that the Trump administration and Kim regime would need to do their homework before any meeting because “this third summit, if it happens, will be the last shot.” The Moon-Trump summit came as details of a meeting this week of the North’s rubber-stamp parliament emerged Friday. That event saw changes in the pecking order of its cadres and the elevation of one official who has been the target of U.S. sanctions. North Korea replaced its longtime nominal head of state, Kim Yong Nam, 91, with Choe Ryong Hae, a senior figure in both the military and ruling party. Choe was named Thursday to the role of president of the Presidium of the Supreme People’s Assembly, the official Korean Central News Agency reported. The promotion solidifies Choe’s status as Kim’s No. 2 official, giving him more authority to enforce Kim’s rule over the state’s most powerful bodies. He has led departments “that perpetrate the regime’s brutal state-sponsored censorship activities, human rights violations and abuses, and other abuses in order to suppress and control the population,” according to the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, which has targeted Choe with sanctions. Even though there is no doubt about Kim’s position as the country’s supreme leader — Kim was also re-elected to his seat of power as the chairman of the State Affairs Commission on Thursday — the reclusive state has used a figurehead for decades to carry out routine functions such as receiving diplomats, with only the most important guests gaining an audience with the country’s real leader.
|
u.s .;north korea;kim jong un;nuclear weapons;south korea;north korea nuclear crisis;donald trump;moon jae-in;kim-trump summit
|
jp0003596
|
[
"asia-pacific",
"politics-diplomacy-asia-pacific"
] |
2019/04/12
|
Pushing the envelope: Money politics undermines democracy in Indonesia
|
JAKARTA - Shanti Ramchand learned quickly what was expected when she began campaigning in Jakarta for Indonesia’s national parliament; distribute envelopes of cash at a small campaign event, and give a motorcycle or an air-conditioning unit to the community leader. Ramchand — an aspiring politician from the National Democrat Party, part of President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo’s coalition — is trying a novel approach to getting elected. She is not only eschewing the cash and gifts that are traditionally given out on the campaign trail, but making that the centerpiece of her pitch to voters. Indonesia is the world’s third-largest democracy, but researchers say it has some of the worst money politics in Southeast Asia. According to both politicians and anti-graft advocates, handouts of cash and gifts lead to rampant corruption in its national legislature as successful candidates recoup their election expenses, and more, once elected. Envelopes, usually stuffed with cash ranging from 20,000 to 100,000 rupiah ($1.42 to $7.08), are commonly doled out to voters. These are small amounts, but the overall cost can be huge over a six month campaign. Earlier this month, Indonesia’s Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) seized six storage chests in a concealed basement owned by Bowo Sidik Pangarso, a parliamentarian seeking re-election and a member of the Golkar Party, another party in Widodo’s ruling coalition. The chests contained 400,000 envelopes each believed to contain 20,000 rupiah — a total of 8 billion rupiah (over $566,000). Bowo, who has been detained but not formally charged, told reporters last week after leaving an interview with the anti-corruption body that the envelopes were for the national parliament election, not the presidential election, both due next Wednesday. While illegal, politicians and analysts say it is relatively rare to see prosecutions for election-time bribery. Two politicians from the National Mandate Party, part of the opposition coalition headed by former Gen. Prabowo Subianto, were sentenced to three months in prison in December for giving voters coupons for the umrah pilgrimage to Mecca. They will not be disqualified from running for office again. In 2017, the speaker of parliament, Setya Novanto, was arrested for orchestrating a scheme to plunder $173 million from a government contract for a national electronic identity card. The KPK alleged most of the money was to be funneled to up to 60 lawmakers. Novanto was sentenced to 15 years in prison, underscoring why Indonesia’s national parliament rates in surveys as among the most corrupt institutions in the country. In a south Jakarta neighborhood Ramchand is working the courtyard crowd, engaging in discussions as she tries to convince constituents to vote for her. “We don’t choose the envelope, right?” she says, receiving scattered approval from the crowd of about 40 congregating in a shady courtyard to ward off the midafternoon sun. “That’s right. Check the background of the candidate. Ask them about their programs. Your voice can’t be bought.” In an interview, Ramchand said that at 3 out of 10 planned appearances, community leaders would demand gratuities to allow her to talk to the voters in her South Jakarta electorate. “Sometimes people bluntly ask for money. Others ask for air-conditioning units or a motorbike,” she said. Ramchand, a policy consultant to corporations and governments who has lived overseas for most of the past decade, presented WhatsApp messages sent to her by village chiefs and officials from religious organizations demanding money to let her speak at gatherings. Ramchand said she has also declined to pay the usual political “dowry” required by political parties to endorse candidates. The going rate for a serious run for one of 560 seats in the national legislature is about 10 billion rupiah ($708,000), according to the former deputy chief of the KPK, Busyro Muqoddas. “We live in a kleptocracy, not a democracy,” said Busyro. A spokesman for the campaign team of Widodo, Ace Hasan Syadzily, said his own party, Golkar, does not demand a political dowry but conceded “vote buying does happen.” The president was against money politics, he added. A spokesman for the opposition coalition led by Prabowo, Dahnil Anzar Simanjuntak, declined to comment on whether candidates had to pay parties to be endorsed. “The cost of running for political office is expensive and can potentially be the cause of corruption,” he said. “We are pushing for political parties to be funded by the state and, if they are corrupt, they should be disbanded.” Ramchand said she was met with broad skepticism that her campaign strategy could work. She admits that she has had to cancel many events. A poll of voters in three Jakarta constituencies by the Charta Politika agency in January found support for cash and other gratuities at 58.2 percent, 47 percent and 42.6 percent. Edward Aspinall, a professor at Australian National University who has researched money politics across Southeast Asia, said the practice of cash handouts is deeply entrenched in Indonesia. He blamed the deterioration on the introduction of the “open list” electoral system in 2009, in which voters choose candidates rather than a party, and it is the candidates who bear most of the costs of the campaigns. “The incentive is for individual candidates to maximize their personal vote,” he said. “Very often they do this with money. How else can you differentiate yourself from rivals from the same party when you have the same policies?” Cash for votes reaches its peak during the “dawn attack,” the morning of the election when candidates blitz voters. “It’s high drama at the last minute,” said Aspinall. “Candidates see this is really inefficient and ineffective but they feel if they don’t do it, they won’t stand a chance.” Ramchand said, “I’ll be sleeping in.”
|
indonesia;corruption;elections
|
jp0003597
|
[
"asia-pacific"
] |
2019/04/12
|
Dalai Lama released from New Delhi hospital, says he feels 'almost normal' after treatment
|
NEW DELHI - The Dalai Lama was released from an Indian hospital on Friday, saying he felt “normal, almost normal” after being treated for a chest infection. The 83-year-old Tibetan spiritual leader looked pale but strong and spoke cheerfully as he walked out of the New Delhi hospital after being discharged. The Dalai Lama was hospitalized on Tuesday after coming to the capital to consult with doctors. He is likely to return this week to the north Indian hill town of Dharmsala, which has been his headquarters since he fled Tibet in 1959 following a failed uprising against Chinese rule. The Dalai Lama usually spends several months a year traveling the world to teach Buddhism and highlight Tibetans’ struggle for greater freedom in China. But he has cut down on travel in the past year in order to take care of his health. China doesn’t recognize the Tibetan government-in-exile and accuses the Dalai Lama of seeking to separate Tibet from China. The Dalai Lama denies being a separatist and says he merely advocates for substantial autonomy and protection of the region’s native Buddhist culture. At an event with educators in New Delhi earlier this month, the Dalai Lama said he was not seeking independence for Tibet, but rather a “reunion” with China under mutually acceptable terms. The Dalai Lama also predicted that the political impasse with China could change if he lived for at least another decade.
|
china;religion;buddhism;tibet;dalai lama
|
jp0003598
|
[
"asia-pacific",
"social-issues-asia-pacific"
] |
2019/04/12
|
South Korea's instant 2-year-olds: Lawmaker looks to put an end to 'Korean age'
|
DAEJEON, SOUTH KOREA - Just two hours after Lee Dong-kil’s daughter was born on New Year’s Eve, the clock struck midnight, 2019 was ushered in, and the infant became 2 years old. She wasn’t alone: Every baby born in South Korea last year became 2 on Jan. 1. According to one of the world’s most unusual age-calculating systems, South Korean babies become 1 on the day of their birth and then get an additional year tacked on when the calendar hits Jan. 1. A lawmaker is working now to overturn the tradition amid complaints that it is an anachronistic, time-wasting custom that drags down an ultramodern country. For parents whose babies are born in December, it can be especially painful. One hour after his daughter’s birth in the central city of Daejeon at 10 p.m., Lee posted the news on social media. His friends showered him with congratulatory messages. “An hour later, when the new year began, they phoned me again to say congratulations for my baby becoming 2 years old,” said Lee, who is 32 internationally but 34 in South Korea. “I thought: ‘Ah, right. She’s now 2 years old, though it’s been only two hours since she was born. What the heck!'” The origins of this system aren’t clear. Being 1 upon birth may be linked to the time babies spend in the womb or to an ancient Asian numerical system that didn’t have the concept of zero. Becoming a year older on Jan. 1? That is even harder to explain. It could be that ancient Koreans cared a lot about the year in which they were born in the Chinese 60-year cycle but, without regular calendars, didn’t care much about the specific day they were born, so they mostly ignored the day of their birth and instead marked another year of age on the day of the lunar new year, according to senior curator Jung Yon-hak at the National Folk Museum of Korea. This may have then shifted to the solar new year on Jan. 1 as the South began embracing the Western calendar. North Korea uses the Western age calculating system, but they follow their own calendar, which is based on the birth of national founder and president-for-life Kim Il Sung. The year of your birth is still incredibly important in South Korea, and lumps those linked children together for life. Other Asian countries, including Japan and Vietnam, abandoned the Chinese-style age system amid an influx of Western culture. Officially, South Korea has used Western-style calculations since the early 1960s. But its citizens still embrace the old-fashioned system in their daily lives because the government has done little to get people to change over to the Western style. Most South Koreans are simply accustomed to living with two ages. People don’t hold massive joint birthday parties on New Year’s Day; they just celebrate their birthday on the days they were born. Young people consider themselves another year old on New Year’s Day, while older people often use the lunar new year’s day. Many family restaurants don’t charge babies if they are 36 months old or younger, so parents often calculate their babies’ ages under the Western method when they are dining out. Some South Koreans still worry that the practice makes their nation look odd on the international stage. Some feel confusion when meeting with foreigners. Foreign journalists in Seoul must ask Koreans what year and month they were born to calculate their Western age for news stories. There are also some who say the concept of “Korean age” encourages a fixation on age-based social standing in this seniority-based country. In South Korea, those born in the same year often treat each other as equals, while people must use honorific titles to address those born earlier, rather than directly using their names. Ahn Chang-gun, from the southeastern city of Gimhae, said he felt “empty” when his first child became 2 on Jan. 1, 2013, about two weeks after his wife delivered him after eight years of marriage. “He was this precious baby that we finally had, but I felt that all of a sudden two years had just gone by and yet I hadn’t done anything for my baby,” said Ahn. Parents whose babies are born in December often worry about their kids falling behind other children born earlier in the same year, though worries gradually disappear as their children age. When Seo Hyo-sun from Bucheon, just west of Seoul, was taken to the hospital to get a cesarean section on Dec. 29, she couldn’t stop weeping because her baby’s due date was supposed to be Jan. 7. “Tears kept flowing. … My doctor told me the baby wanted to come out today so let’s just celebrate,” said Seo, 31 in international age. “When I awoke from my anesthesia, I felt really grateful … because my baby was born healthy. That was enough.” In January, lawmaker Hwang Ju-hong submitted a bill aimed at requiring the government to put international ages in official documents and encouraging general citizens to go with their international ages in everyday life. It’s the first legislative attempt to abolish “Korean age.” “It is aimed at resolving confusion and inefficiency caused by the mixed use of age-counting systems,” Hwang said in the proposed legislation. Hwang’s office said a parliamentary committee discussion and a public hearing on the issue are expected in coming months. Surveys in recent years showed more South Koreans supported international age, though it wasn’t clear how seriously they wanted a change. “If we use international age, things could get more complicated because it’s a society that cares so much about which year you were born,” said Lim Kyoung-jae, 46, head of the Seoul-based Miko Travel agency. “We should also definitely count the time of a baby being conceived and growing in its mother’s womb.” Lim’s employee Choi Min-kyung, who is 26 internationally and 28 in South Korea, disagreed. “It’s good to be 2 years younger … (especially) when you meet men” on blind dates, Choi said with a laugh. “There is a big difference between 26 and 28.”
|
children;south korea;parenthood;tradition
|
jp0003599
|
[
"asia-pacific",
"social-issues-asia-pacific"
] |
2019/04/12
|
Chinese youth 'volunteers' to be sent back to villages in Mao-style move
|
BEIJING - China is planning to send millions of youth “volunteers” back to the villages, raising fears of a return to the methods of Chairman Mao’s brutal Cultural Revolution of 50 years ago. The Communist Youth League (CYL) has promised to despatch more than 10 million students to “rural zones” by 2022 in order to “increase their skills, spread civilization and promote science and technology,” according to a Communist Party document. The aim is to bring to the rural areas the talents of those who would otherwise be attracted to life in the big cities, according to a CYL document quoted in the official Global Times daily Thursday. “We need young people to use science and technology to help the countryside innovate its traditional development models,” Zhang Linbin, deputy head of a township in central Hunan Province, told the state-run Global Times. Students will be called upon to live in the countryside during their summer holidays, although the CYL did not say how young people would be persuaded to volunteer. Former revolutionary bases, zones suffering from extreme poverty and ethnic minority areas will receive priority, according to the CYL. Relations are often fraught between the Han majority, who make up more than 90 percent of the population, and ethnic minorities like the Tibetans and Muslim Uighurs. Users on the Twitter-like Weibo social platform reacted warily. Many evoked the chaos of the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution, when Mao sent millions of “young intellectuals” into often primitive conditions in the countryside, while universities were closed for a decade. “Has it started again?” wondered one user named WangTingYu. “We did that 40 years ago,” wrote Miruirong. “Sometimes history advances, sometimes it retreats,” noted KalsangWangduTB. Current President Xi Jinping, known for his nostalgia for the Mao era, himself spent seven years in a village in the poor northern province of Shaanxi from the age of 16.
|
china;tibet;uighurs;xinjiang;mao zedong;cultural revolution;communist youth league
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jp0003600
|
[
"national"
] |
2019/04/12
|
WTO upholds South Korea ban on some Japan seafood imports over Fukushima nuclear disaster
|
GENEVA/SEOUL - The World Trade Organization on Thursday ruled in favor of a South Korean ban on imports of some Japanese fishery products introduced in the wake of the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster, reversing an earlier decision against the restrictions. The decision, delivered by the WTO’s appellate body for dispute settlements, the highest judicial entity of the organization’s mechanism to resolve disputes, leaves Japan with no legal recourse in a battle that has dragged on for years. The appellate body invalidated the conclusions of a dispute settlement panel that made the earlier decision because, it said, the panel “erred in its interpretation and application” of WTO rules on food safety. The appellate body, however, did not look at the details of the amount of contaminants in Japanese food products or how much protection South Korean consumers should have. Farm minister Takamori Yoshikawa on Friday reiterated that Japanese food products are safe. “I find (the WTO decision) regrettable when I think about recovery efforts made by those affected by the disaster,” he told a news conference. Foreign Minister Taro Kono told South Korean Ambassador Lee Su-hoon on Friday that Tokyo will continue to push for the measures to be scrapped in bilateral talks. The South Korean government welcomed the decision Friday, saying it will maintain the current import ban on fishery products from Fukushima Prefecture and surrounding areas. The ban will remain in place unless it is officially proven that there is no problem with importing fishery products from the areas concerned, Yoon Chang-ryeol, head of the Office for Government Policy Coordination, said during a press briefing. The situation will continue to weigh on Japan, which aims to achieve the early reconstruction of areas affected by the March 2011 disasters. The ruling could also have an impact beyond South Korea. At present, 23 countries and regions have import restrictions on Japanese food products. China, which last year started easing its own restrictions on importing Japanese food items, may become more cautious going forward. Taiwan, which has been in a political bind after voters in a referendum last year approved keeping its import ban, will likely feel it has renewed justification to do so despite pressure from Japan. In the wake of the ruling, Tokyo is expected to find it even more difficult to improve its relations with Seoul. The relationship has deteriorated partly due to a series of South Korean court rulings that ordered Japanese companies to pay compensation to South Koreans requisitioned to work for them during World War II, as well as the issue of “comfort women,” pundits said. The term refers to women who provided sex, including those who did so against their will, for Japanese troops before and during the war. Last year a WTO dispute panel supported Japan, saying South Korea was wrong to keep its initial trade restrictions in place. But Thursday’s ruling overturned several key points of that verdict, saying South Korea’s measures were not overly restrictive and did not unfairly discriminate against Japan. After a powerful earthquake and tsunami triggered a meltdown at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant on March 11, 2011, South Korea imposed a partial ban on fishery products from Fukushima and seven other prefectures due to fears of radioactive contamination. The other seven are Aomori, Iwate, Miyagi, Ibaraki, Tochigi, Gunma and Chiba. South Korea widened its initial ban on Japanese fishery imports in 2013 to cover all seafood from the eight prefectures, and tightened testing requirements. While dozens of countries imposed some sort of import restrictions on Japanese food products following the Fukushima crisis, Japan argued that the South Korean restrictions were far too strict. After bilateral consultations reached a dead-end, Tokyo filed a complaint with the WTO in August 2015 over the restrictions, which covered 28 species of fish and mollusks. Japan argued that radioactive levels were safe and that a number of other nations, including the United States and Australia, had lifted or eased Fukushima-related restrictions. The dispute settlement panel said in February 2018 that the testing requirements and blanket ban were “more trade-restrictive than necessary” and broke WTO rules barring measures that “arbitrarily or unjustifiably discriminate” between members. The panel recommended that the restrictions be lifted on the 28 species of fish and mollusks, including Alaska pollock and blue mackerel, as requested by Japan. Seoul appealed the decision in April that year. South Korea imported ¥10.9 billion ($102 million) worth of Japanese seafood in the year to August 2013 before it broadened its restrictions. Those imports fell to ¥8.4 billion the following year, according to the Japanese government.
|
fukushima;fukushima no . 1;food;radiation;trade;south korea;nuclear energy;wto;seafood;radioactive water
|
jp0003601
|
[
"national"
] |
2019/04/12
|
Japan's working ranks are still thinning, despite accelerating growth in foreign population
|
Japan’s working-age population shrank further last year, bringing its ratio to the overall population to a record low as the growth of the foreign population accelerated, government data showed Friday. The annual data release by the Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry reflects the nation’s deepening labor crunch, which prompted the government to introduce a new visa system this month to bring in more foreign labor mainly for blue-collar jobs. The overall population as of last October declined by 263,000 to 126.44 million, falling for the eighth straight year. The working-age population of those 15 to 64 shrank 512,000 to 75.45 million, or 59.7 percent of the total, tying the low recorded in 1950, when comparable data became available. The number of foreign people increased 167,000 to 2.23 million, growing for the sixth straight year. A different survey by the Justice Ministry showed earlier in the month that the number of foreign residents in Japan has grown due largely to the rise in students and technical trainees. Japan, which has a very stringent immigration policy, now expects to accept up to 345,000 foreign laborers under the new visa program. The data reflect Japan’s rapidly graying population. People 70 or above accounted for 20.7 percent of the population, surpassing 20 percent for the first time. Among countries with a population of more than 40 million, the ratio of people 65 or older in Japan was the highest at 28 percent, while the ratio for people under 15 was the lowest at 12.2 percent, according to the internal affairs ministry. Japan’s population has been on the decline since peaking at 128.08 million in 2008. The National Institute of Population and Social Security Research predicts Japan’s population will fall below 100 million in 2053.
|
population;jobs;expats;internal affairs ministry
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jp0003602
|
[
"national"
] |
2019/04/12
|
Japan won't consider revising F-35A procurement plans while cause of crash still not known
|
The Defense Ministry is not considering a revision to its plan to procure a total of 105 F-35A stealth fighters despite the crash Wednesday of one of the jets into the sea off Aomori Prefecture, Defense Minister Takeshi Iwaya said Friday. “We don’t know the cause (of the crash) yet, so we are not thinking of revising the procurement plan now,” Iwaya told a news conference Friday morning. Given the depth of the water in the area, it is “probably possible” to recover the jet, which is believed to have sunk to the bottom of the sea, if it is ever found, Iwaya added. “But first we need to confirm the situation.” The F-35A, one of the first 13 jets of this model deployed in Japan, is believed to have crashed into the sea Tuesday night. The pilot, Maj. Akinori Hosomi, who has 3,200 hours of flight experience, including 60 hours in the F-35A, was still missing as of Friday afternoon. The depth of the sea area in question, about 135 kilometers east of the Misawa Air Base in Aomori Prefecture, is about 1,500 meters, according to the public relations office of the Air Self-Defense Force in Tokyo. The crash of the jet has drawn particular attention from media outlets and military analysts across the globe because it was a first for the F-35A. The Maritime Self-Defense Force has dispatched the Chiyoda, a submarine rescue ship, to search for the wreckage of the stealth fighter, which is made by Lockheed Martin and is full of top-secret military technologies. The Chiyoda is equipped with powerful sonar systems to determine the topography of the ocean floor, as well as two deep-sea probe vessels equipped with a remotely controlled camera. Experts believe China and Russia would be keen to obtain the wreckage of the state-of-the-art stealth jet. “Not only America but also China and Russia must be interested (in the crash) very much,” said former Defense Minister Gen Nakatani during “Prime News” on BS Fuji on Thursday evening. “It’s a race against time. … If ever some technologies are leaked to other countries, its impact would be immeasurable,” Nakatani said. The stealth fighter was jointly developed by nine countries including the U.S., the U.K., Italy, Netherlands, Turkey and Canada. During the news conference, Iwaya said the Self-Defense Forces are staying “on alert 24 hours a day” to monitor the situation in the area of the crash. But the SDF has yet to detect the military presence of any countries other than Japan and the U.S., Iwaya said. In October 2017, a salvage ship hired by the Maritime Self-Defense Force retrieved an SH-60J anti-submarine helicopter from the sea floor off Aomori Prefecture at a depth of about 2,600 meters. The helicopter crashed into the sea, leaving three crew members dead.
|
china;russia;self defense forces;f35;misawa air base;takeshi iwaya;air accidents
|
jp0003603
|
[
"national"
] |
2019/04/12
|
After university loses contact with hundreds of foreign students, Japan plans penalties for schools
|
The government plans to penalize universities with many foreign students whose whereabouts are unknown, it was revealed Thursday. The move is included in a draft of the government’s response to the issue, which came to light following the recent revelation that about 700 foreign students from Tokyo University of Social Welfare have been missing since April 2018. According to the draft, the education ministry will hold hearings with or inspect universities with many dropouts among foreign students, if necessary. If the universities fail to meet its instructions for improvement, the ministry will label them as “lacking the proper management of students.” The education ministry will also report such universities to the Justice Ministry. Following the reports, the Immigration Services Agency will apply tougher standards in screenings of visa applications from the universities’ prospective students. The agency will also consider shortening the length of visas for the universities’ students to one year. Normally student visas are valid for four years and three months. Furthermore, students at the problematic universities will be required to present documents including scholarship and bank balance certificates. The government aims to implement the planned measures at an early date. It is also considering taking measures against students at Japanese language schools, demanding the schools report on their students’ part-time work, which is limited to 28 hours a week or less. The government aims to implement the measures on such students after hearing public comments later this month.
|
immigration;education;foreign students;schools;students;mext;tokyo university of social welfare
|
jp0003604
|
[
"national",
"science-health"
] |
2019/04/12
|
Japan to draft law to tighten control on gene editing of fertilized human eggs
|
Japan plans to create a law to restrict gene editing of fertilized human eggs to basic research and ban such eggs from being returned to the uterus, sources close to the matter said Friday. Deeming that penalties are necessary to prevent abuse of the controversial procedure, the Cabinet Office is expected to propose the legislation at a bioethics panel’s meeting on April 22. The science and health ministries will discuss the specifics before making a decision in the fall, the sources said. The move comes after a Chinese researcher announced in January that a twin had been born with edited genomes, igniting international debate over the ethics of the procedure and calls within Japan for a law restricting use of such technology. Japan had sought to tighten control of the procedure with an ethics guideline introduced on April 1 that allows gene editing of fertilized human eggs for medical purposes but bans their return to the uterus. No penalties for violators are included in the guideline. The Science Council of Japan proposed creating such a law in 2017, but the government had been reluctant to do so, fearing that restricting the move with a law — which takes time to revise — could make it difficult for the nation to cope with advancements in technology. But it decided an additional measure was necessary given that the incident in China took place even though the country had its own guidelines. While gene editing has stirred hopes that it will help people overcome genetic disorders, it is also feared it may pave the way to the creation of “designer babies,” with people selecting or altering the gene makeup of their babies to match their preference, which could also affect later generations in the family. After CRISPR-Cas9, a method for easily cutting, replacing and inserting genes, was developed in 2012, gene editing became widely used in the agricultural and medical sectors, although its application to fertilized human eggs remains controversial and is banned in many countries outside of basic research. Germany and France ban gene-editing research that could lead to the birth of a child, while the United States bans government funding for such studies on fertilized eggs.
|
pregnancy;genetics;in vitro;gene editing;crispr
|
jp0003605
|
[
"national"
] |
2019/04/12
|
Record 35.4% of new hires for Japan's civil service are women, exceeding government target
|
The central government said Friday that women accounted for a record 35.4 percent of newly hired civil servants in fiscal 2019, in line with its target to keep the ratio above 30 percent for the fifth straight year. The government hired a total of 8,123 individuals for fiscal 2019, of whom 2,876 were female. The ratio of women rose 1.4 percentage points from a year earlier and surpassed the previous high of 34.5 percent in fiscal 2016, according to the Cabinet Bureau of Personnel Affairs. Of the overall new recruits, 708 were hired as career-track bureaucrats, including 245 women, or 34.6 percent of the total, another record high. By ministry and agency, the Foreign Ministry had the highest proportion of female recruits, at 50.0 percent, followed by the farm ministry at 43.4 percent and the health ministry at 42.5 percent. However, the proportion of female recruits at the land ministry and the National Public Safety Commission was 25.7 percent and 27.0 percent, respectively, falling short of the national goal of 30 percent. “We’d like to provide a working environment friendly to women and continue our efforts to increase female recruits,” said Mitsuhiro Miyakoshi, minister in charge of civil service reform. Ministries and agencies have been taking measures to promote female employment, such as offering seminars for job-hunting women, officials of the bureau said.
|
women;jobs;bureaucracy
|
jp0003606
|
[
"national"
] |
2019/04/12
|
Japan 'Nuclear Energy Village' website pulled after critics say it plumbed 'new level of insensitive'
|
A website created by the Japan Atomic Industrial Forum to educate the next generation on nuclear energy was taken down Friday after drawing criticism on social media, with some Twitter users calling the effort “inappropriate” given that the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear disaster happened “just a few years ago.” The website, published Monday by JAIF, which is a nuclear energy lobby group, was called “Atsumare! Genshiryoku Mura,” which roughly translates to “Come gather! Nuclear Energy Village” and its homepage was adorned with warlords, ghosts and clowns along with a slew of colorful characters and other comical touches. The site came down on Friday, to be replaced by an apology message from JAIF saying the site had been pulled due to “inappropriate language.” The lobby group added, “We apologize for any inconvenience or unpleasantness you may have experienced.” The page featured pop-ups that read “Excuse me, what village?” and an image of a pirate ship being steered by foreign nationals that linked users to interviews with employees from overseas that were taking part in the project. “We understand that various opinions are being expressed,” said a JAIF representative before the site was pulled, adding that the purpose of the website was to “provide support for young people involving themselves in nuclear energy in spite of adversity, and to respond to students who have questions and concerns about it.” It was the JAIF’s decision to use the name “Nuclear Energy Village,” the term which has been used in the past to satirize the industry’s vested interests and lack of transparency, that caused particular discomfort to many who expressed their concern on Twitter. “I’m taken aback,” one user wrote. “I’m not interested in something that seems to mock citizens.” The website contained links to pages with titles like “ rokuhara tandai, ” a name that refers to secret police working under the Kamakura Shogunate in Kyoto during the 14th century, and “ goyoūda !,” a phrase used by police centuries ago that can be roughly translated to “you are under arrest.” Many of the page’s links were broken. The strangeness of it all led some to describe the site as a “complete mystery.” Some users wondered if it was a bad joke while others called it a “new level of insensitive” — pointing to the many evacuees who still haven’t returned to their homes since the Fukushima No.1 nuclear disaster that was caused by the Great East Japan Earthquake in March 2011. Before the website was published, the JAIF posted on Twitter that people “should look at the website before criticizing it.” “By just being polite, we’re not reaching our target audience,” the representative said. In October, Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc. roiled the Twittersphere when it posted a picture of the inside of No. 4 reactor at the Fukushima No.1 nuclear power plant with a controversial caption. At the time, a flood of users criticized the company, saying it hadn’t taken responsibility for its role in the March 2011 nuclear disaster.
|
fukushima;fukushima no . 1;social media;nuclear energy;twitter;japan atomic industrial forum
|
jp0003609
|
[
"national",
"crime-legal"
] |
2019/04/12
|
Man takes gun from Yokohama police officer and fires it; no one injured
|
YOKOHAMA - A police officer in Yokohama became the latest officer to have his weapon stolen Friday morning when one of two men involved in a violent dispute disarmed him and fired a shot before being subdued, the police said. No one was injured. Toshitaka Suzuki, 31, was arrested for allegedly obstructing police duties after firing the officer’s pistol at an apartment complex at around 11:30 a.m., they said. The incident took place when two officers responded to an emergency call about someone kicking a vehicle. When the officers arrived, two men were fighting and the officers tried to break it up. A brief struggle ensued, resulting in the suspect grabbing one of the officers’ guns and firing it. He was quickly restrained. It was the latest in a spate of incidents where Japanese police officers either misplaced their guns or had them taken away. In June last year, a former member of the Self-Defense Forces fatally stabbed a senior officer at a police box in Toyama Prefecture before taking his handgun and fatally shooting a security guard at a nearby school. Earlier this year, the National Police Agency said it would introduce new holsters designed to make it more difficult for police officers to be disarmed during hostile situations.
|
guns;yokohama;police
|
jp0003610
|
[
"business",
"economy-business"
] |
2019/04/13
|
G20 agrees to take 'timely' action to mitigate risks to global economy, BOJ Gov. Haruhiko Kuroda says
|
WASHINGTON - Finance chiefs of the Group of 20 major economies on Friday affirmed the need to take “timely” policy action to better cope with downside risks in the global economy, Bank of Japan Gov. Haruhiko Kuroda said. Speaking after a two-day meeting in Washington, Kuroda said each G20 nation “needs to ensure it will take steps to mitigate risks, not to heighten them,” citing such policy uncertainties as an escalation in trade tensions between the United States and China, as well as a deterioration in corporate sentiment. While the G20 broadly agreed the global economy is likely to rebound in the second half of this year from a slowdown that began in the latter half of 2018, Kuroda said, “We shared the recognition that each country needs to take timely policy action depending on their own circumstances.” The BOJ chief led the meeting with Finance Minister Taro Aso. Japan has the presidency of the group for the first time, and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will host the G20 leaders summit on June 28 and 29 in Osaka. Aso said the balance of risks to growth “remains skewed to the downside,” alluding to the possible escalation of trade tensions, the U.K.’s potentially disorderly exit from the European Union, and the chance of a sudden sharp tightening of global financial conditions. The G20 finance ministers and central bank governors “reaffirmed that all policies choose to support strong, sustainable, balanced and inclusive growth to be used in a timely fashion,” Aso said at a joint news conference with Kuroda. Aso also said global current account imbalances — a source of trade friction — pose risks to the world economy, and that they should be dealt with multilaterally, rather than bilaterally. “Given the global and macroeconomic nature of this issue, we need to tackle it in a multilateral and macroeconomic context, rather than (through) a bilateral trade perspective,” he said in a veiled counter to U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration, which prefers a bilateral approach. Aso indicated Tokyo wants Washington to shift its focus from bilateral goods trade deficits with Japan, China and other countries to the balance of services trade and returns on overseas investments as part of efforts to address global imbalances. The G20, meanwhile, attributed the expected rebound to easing global financial conditions propelled by the U.S. Federal Reserve’s recent decision to pause its rate-hike cycle, the effects of stimulus measures by China and other countries, and an improved outlook on the trade negotiations between Washington and Beijing, according to Japanese officials. The G20’s forecast was in line with the projected 3.6 percent growth for the world economy in 2020, up from an estimated 3.3 percent in 2019, in the latest outlook released Tuesday by the International Monetary Fund. The 2019 figure was down 0.2 percentage point from the IMF’s estimate in January. IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde said Thursday the global economy is “at a delicate moment,” and the expected rebound to 3.6 percent “is precarious and is subject to downside risks” such as trade tensions and issues involving Brexit. The G20 met on the sidelines of the annual spring meetings of the IMF and World Bank to pave the way for a gathering from June 8 to 9 of the G20 finance ministers and central bank chiefs in Fukuoka.
|
boj;taro aso;haruhiko kuroda;g20
|
jp0003611
|
[
"business"
] |
2019/04/13
|
Tokyo and Washington finally set to kick off trade talks as American farmers fume over poor Japan access
|
This week, negotiators from Japan and the United States will meet in Washington to address something that U.S. President Donald Trump considers to be long overdue: trade negotiations to open the Japanese market to more American goods. Since the 1980s, Trump has argued that Japan greatly benefits from what he says are unfair trade deals and he vocally pledged to start trade talks with Japan during his 2016 presidential campaign. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Trump met in New York in September and agreed to launch talks on a free trade pact; the negotiations were expected to start as early as January. But the launch has been delayed by the U.S. government shutdown and Washington’s ongoing trade negotiations with Beijing. On Monday and Tuesday, economic and fiscal policy minister Toshimitsu Motegi is finally set to meet with U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer in Washington to kick off talks on a deal. In the first round, Motegi and Lighthizer are likely to discuss which areas they want to change in general, rather than focus on specifics, a senior Foreign Ministry official said recently. “I don’t think (the two countries) are ready to organize a specific agenda. The two will first decide the scope of the talks,” the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity. Takahide Kiuchi, executive economist at Nomura Research Institute, said Japan probably arranged the Motegi-Lighthizer meeting ahead of Trump’s planned visit to Japan next month so Abe and Trump won’t directly clash over trade when the summit takes place. Trump is reportedly scheduled to visit Japan from May 26 to 28. “If you want to avoid a situation where Trump might suddenly and strongly start criticizing Japan over trade issues, you need to persuade Trump to leave the matter to ministerial-level talks that have been already launched,” Kiuchi wrote in an analysis published Thursday on NRI’s website. “This tactic is similar to the one Japan adopted in its previous economic dialogue to buy time. At that time, (Japan) had Deputy Prime Minister (Taro) Aso and U.S. Vice President (Mike) Pence discuss trade issues excluding Trump,” he wrote. In the first round, Japan is likely to try to limit the scope of the negotiations to trade in goods, while the U.S. will try to expand that to services, such as those related to the telecoms, financial and intellectual property industries, according to Kiuchi. Washington is also strongly demanding the removal of what U.S. officials call “nontariff barriers” in Japan, Kiuchi said. In the meantime, the Foreign Ministry official said U.S. trade officials have felt pressured to take a tough stance against Japan, given strong demands from U.S. lobby groups in the farm sector, particularly producers of pork and beef. “U.S. farmers have been very frustrated, and it’s clear if you look at their press statements,” the official said. Ironically, industry sources say it was Trump himself who put American farmers at a huge disadvantage in regards to the Japanese market. In January 2017, Trump, who was apparently grandstanding to emphasize his own trade initiatives, declared he would withdraw the U.S. from the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement, a Pacific trade pact that would have greatly lowered Japanese tariffs on agricultural products. For example, under the revised TPP, which was renamed the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) after the U.S. left it, Japan’s tariff on beef for member countries is set to drop to 9 percent from 38.5 percent in 16 years. Japan recently struck a similar deal with the European Union that locked American farmers out of favorable trade conditions. That FTA took effect on Feb. 1. “U.S. pork producers are losing market share in Japan to international competitors that have recently negotiated more favorable trade terms in our most valuable market,” said David Herring, president of the National Pork Producers Council, which represents 42 affiliated state associations of the U.S. pork industry, in a press statement issued April 1. “Six countries — Canada, Australia, Mexico, New Zealand, Singapore and Vietnam — have implemented the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) and gained more favorable access to Japan,” he said. In the statement, the NPPC cited an estimate from a U.S. economist that said American pork will see exports to Japan grow from $1.6 billion in 2018 to more than $2.2 billion over the next 15 years if the U.S. quickly gains access on a par with its international competitors. The same estimate said that U.S. pork shipments to Japan will drop to $349 million if a trade deal is not quickly reached. “The NPPC welcomed reports that the United States and Japan will commence trade negotiations and urged the Trump administration to expeditiously complete and deliver for ratification to Congress a trade deal that puts U.S. pork producers back on a level playing field in Japan,” the statement read.
|
shinzo abe;tpp;free trade;donald trump;cptpp
|
jp0003612
|
[
"business",
"tech"
] |
2019/04/13
|
Breaking the internet: New regulations imperil global network
|
WASHINGTON - Is the dream of one global internet still alive? Increasingly, moves by governments to filter and restrict content are threatening to fragment the system created with the promise of connecting the world with a largely unified body of content. China for years has walled off some Western services, and the fragmentation may be accelerating with regulations being imposed elsewhere, say analysts. This is leading to a “splinternet,” a term circulated for a decade or more but gaining more traction in recent months. “The internet is already fragmented in material ways, but each regulator around the world thinks they know how to fix the internet,” said Eric Goldman, director of the High Tech Law Institute at Santa Clara University. “I think we will see a tsunami of regulations that will lead to a further splintering of the internet.” The massacre at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, livestreamed online, heightened the sense of urgency in some countries, with debates in the U.S. and EU on curbing incitement to violence. A new Australian law could jail social media executives for failing to take down violent extremist content quickly. And a proposal unveiled in Britain could make executives personally liable for harmful content posted on social platforms. Similar ideas have been discussed by lawmakers in Washington. These moves come as Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg has called for a “common global framework” of internet rules. But defenders of free speech warn that it would be dangerous to allow governments to regulate online content, even if social media outlets are struggling. The U.K. proposal “is a very bad look for a rights-respecting democracy,” said R. David Edelman, a former White House technology adviser who now heads the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s project on technology, the economy and national security. “It would place the U.K. toward the far end of the internet censorship spectrum.” Elsewhere, critics pounced on a bill in Singapore to ban “fake news,” calling it a thinly veiled attempt at censorship. “It is not up to the government to arbitrarily determine what is and is not true,” said Daniel Bastard of the media watchdog group Reporters Without Borders. “In its current form, this Orwellian law establishes nothing less than a ‘ministry of truth’ that would be free to silence independent voices and impose the ruling party’s line.” According to human rights watchdog Freedom House, at least 17 countries approved or proposed laws to restrict online media in the name of fighting “fake news” and manipulation, and 13 countries prosecuted internet users for spreading “false” information. Goldman argued that the European Union’s General Protection Data Regulation, aimed at improving online privacy, “has been a major milestone in splintering the internet.” It has led to numerous websites including news sites cut off from Europe, he said. The EU copyright directive approved last month, aimed at protecting creators, could also result in fragmentation of online information, said Danny O’Brien of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “Whatever internet companies and organizations do to comply with 27 or more national laws — from dropping links to European news sites entirely … will be challenged by one rights-holder faction or another,” O’Brien said in a blog post. The multitude of proposed rules around the world raise the prospect of varying versions of the internet depending on location, with small services potentially blocking out some countries. In addition to online content measures, several countries, including India and Brazil, are enforcing “data localization” requirements that could limit the availability of services such as e-commerce and banking. “More nation-states are trying to territorialize information flows and assert control of those services,” said Milton Mueller, a Georgia Institute of Technology professor and co-founder of the Internet Governance Project of analysts. The fragmentation could have profound consequences both in terms of economics and human rights, according to Mueller. “The bypassing of these national boundaries when the internet got started was what was revolutionary and led to the expansion of new services,” he said. “There is now an assertion of national sovereignty and national control, going against globalization and the ability of people to freely interact with each other.” The “data nationalization” movement gained momentum after the 2013 revelations on surveillance from national security contractor Edward Snowden. This gave some governments “an excuse to impose far greater state control” of their networks, said Edelman. Edelman maintained the Snowden revelations represented a turning point because they “ruptured some of the faith in a global consensus” about the internet. Australia’s efforts to curb content and require access to encrypted devices could prompt some firms to think twice about doing business there, said Edelman. “The potential is there for companies to simply exit the Australian market,” he said. Amy Webb, a New York University professor and founder of the Future Today Institute, said the trend toward Balkanization is growing, posing challenges for online services. “Compliance is going to become more and more difficult for companies who do business in more than one location, which could stifle growth and restrict the flow of meaningful, credible information,” Webb said. Ira Magaziner, a former policy adviser to President Bill Clinton who helped negotiate deals to bring the internet around the world, said he is optimistic that countries will find ways to keep the internet from fragmenting. “We are going through a period where there are a lot of questions and a lot of forces for disintegration,” Magaziner said, while noting that countries cutting off data will be hurting themselves. “If the advantages are large enough, it will hang together,” he said.
|
internet;censorship;terrorism;smartphones;rights;computers;social media;mass shootings
|
jp0003613
|
[
"business",
"corporate-business"
] |
2019/04/13
|
Japan Display inks deal for ¥80 billion bailout by Chinese and Taiwanese firms
|
Japan Display Inc. has signed a deal to receive an ¥80 billion ($715 million) capital injection from a group of Chinese and Taiwanese firms, leaving its revival, initially planned under a Japanese government-backed fund, in the hands of foreign companies. Japan Display, a key supplier to Apple Inc., said Friday China’s Silk Road Fund and Harvest Tech Investment Management, as well as Taiwan’s TPK Holdings and Fubon Financial Holdings, will together own 49.8 percent of its shares once the payment, due by Dec. 30, is made. In addition, state-backed INCJ Ltd. will convert part of its commitment lines and other debts in Japan Display to preferred shares, boosting the display-maker’s capital by ¥117 billion in total. The ailing manufacturer, created in 2012 by the government-sponsored merger of the display operations of Sony Corp., Hitachi Ltd. and Toshiba Corp., has tried to expand with support from INCJ. Japan tried using public funds to support the manufacturer as one of its prominent technology firms, but failed amid fierce price competition with rivals in South Korea and China. While the Tokyo-based company’s delay in developing technologies for organic light-emitting diodes (OLED) also dented its competitiveness, it remained vulnerable to changes in market conditions due to its heavy reliance on business with Apple and limited success in nurturing new clients other than smartphone-makers. The company expects to have booked a group net loss for the fifth straight year in fiscal 2018. Among other Japanese display-makers, Sharp Corp. sought help from Taiwan’s Hon Hai Precision Industry Co. in 2016, becoming the first major Japanese electronics maker to be acquired by a foreign company. Japan Display’s capital injection and refinancing plan still needs to be approved by more than two-thirds of its shareholders at their meeting on June 18, the company said. “Our products have been dependent too much on smartphones, and recently shrinking demand in them hit our business,” Japan Display President Yoshiyuki Tsukizaki said at a Tokyo news conference. Tsukizaki said he aims to build new factories in China to produce OLED displays and will consider closing some production based in Japan. He said no decisions have been made on reviewing its management team. INCJ’s holdings in Japan Display will eventually sink to 12.7 percent from the current 25.3 percent.
|
china;taiwan;japan display;incj;silk road fund;harvest tech investment management;tpk holdings;fubon financial holdings
|
jp0003614
|
[
"business",
"corporate-business"
] |
2019/04/13
|
Construction defects discovered in Daiwa House homes and apartment buildings
|
Construction defects have been found in some houses and apartment buildings made by Daiwa House Industry Co., the company has said. The major home-builder said Friday the defects include failures to meet fire-resistance standards and foundation work that does not meet government-set specifications. Some 2,000 houses and apartment buildings in 30 prefectures, including Miyagi, Fukushima, Tokyo, Ishikawa, Nagano, Kyoto, Osaka and Fukuoka, are affected by the defects. A total of about 7,000 households are affected. At a news conference Friday in Osaka, Kazuto Tsuchida, senior managing executive officer at Daiwa House, said the defects occurred because the company’s designers did not fully understand changes made to related laws in 2000. The company said an internal investigation led to the discovery of the defects. Among the 2,000 houses and apartment buildings, Daiwa House judged that 73 need work to increase fire resistance. The company said the work is underway and that it will be complete by the end of this month.
|
scandals;daiwa house industry
|
jp0003615
|
[
"business",
"corporate-business"
] |
2019/04/13
|
Supreme Court rejects appeal from Carlos Ghosn's lawyers over latest detention
|
Japan’s top court has rejected an appeal filed by lawyers for former Nissan Motor Co. Chairman Carlos Ghosn against his detention following his rearrest last week over fresh allegations of financial misconduct, sources familiar with the matter said Saturday. The lawyers made the appeal to the Supreme Court on Wednesday after the Tokyo District Court rejected their objection to its approval for an initial 10 days’ detention for Ghosn through Sunday. The district court also decided Friday to extend the detention period to April 22, but for two days less than what was requested by prosecutors. The 65-year-old was served a fourth arrest warrant on April 4 following an allegation he misused company funds for personal purposes. His return to detention came after he was released on bail in early March, having been held for 108 days since his initial arrest last November. The former chairman has already been indicted on charges of violating Japan’s financial instruments law by underreporting remuneration to regulators, and aggravated breach of trust in relation to the alleged transfer of private investment losses to Nissan. Ghosn, whose nearly two decades of leadership of the automaker came to a sudden end after his initial arrest, has denied any wrongdoing. The handling of Ghosn’s case has brought Japan’s criminal justice system under international scrutiny, with practices such as detaining a suspect for long periods and conducting interrogations without a lawyer present likened by critics to “hostage justice.”
|
nissan;detention;carlos ghosn
|
jp0003616
|
[
"world",
"social-issues-world"
] |
2019/04/13
|
U.K.'s Daily Star last to drop topless women photos that were hallmark of British tabloids
|
LONDON - Britain’s Daily Star newspaper has stopped showing topless women on page three, becoming the last daily national newspaper to drop the regular soft-core porn feature that for years had been a staple of the country’s tabloid press. The paper’s editor confirmed on Friday the women will remain, but in response to reader feedback, they will no longer be bare-breasted, a change women’s groups hailed as long overdue and which a media expert said reflected a sea change in culture. “Its astonishing that a national newspaper has found space for this dated content for so long,” said Rachel Krys, the co-director of the End Violence Against Women Coalition. “But the sexualization and objectification of women and girls in the tabloid press continues, in both the images used and the way serious issues affecting women are reported. “Lets hope this is a sign of progress.” The Sun newspaper was the first British title to introduce a daily tradition of topless models on page three in the 1970s, with other tabloid titles following suit. But the feature was gradually dropped by newspapers in the face of increasing scrutiny and criticism by those who argued it was demeaning and encouraged the objectification of women. The Daily Star had been the last British daily newspaper to keep printing topless page three photos after they were quietly ended by the Sun in 2015. “I think it has become an anachronism because we live in different times from when it started,” media commentator Roy Greenslade said. “Women no longer think it is amusing to be objectified and as the #MeToo movement has shown, this is a new world we live in and women are not about to put up with that nonsense.” He noted that when the Sun dropped page three it did not cause any noticeable difference in sales, suggesting the feature may have become “counterproductive” for owners. The growth of digital media also meant those seeking out such images were more likely to turn to the internet, he added. The Daily Star’s online home page still largely consists of women in suggestive poses. The paper’s announcement came months after it was sold by Richard Desmond, who had owned a number of pornographic titles, to Daily Mirror publisher Reach PLC. “The Daily Star is always looking to try new things and improve,” said Daily Star editor Jonathan Clark in a statement. “In that spirit, we’ve listened to reader feedback and are currently trialing a covered-up version of page three.”
|
media;rights;u.k .;women
|
jp0003617
|
[
"world",
"science-health-world"
] |
2019/04/13
|
M87*? Powehi? There are no rules on naming black holes
|
WASHINGTON - The supermassive black hole featured in a photographic first Wednesday is a beast with no name — at least not an official one. And what happens next could be cosmically confusing. The team of astronomers who created the image called it M87* (the asterisk is silent). A language professor has given it a name from a Hawaiian chant — Powehi — meaning “the adorned fathomless dark creation.” And the international group in charge of handing out astronomical names? It has never named a black hole. The black hole in question is about 53 million light-years away in the center of a galaxy called Messier 87, or M87 for short. On Wednesday, scientists revealed a picture they took of it using eight radio telescopes, the first time humans had actually seen one of the ultramassive celestial objects, which suck in everything near them, even light. The International Astronomical Union usually takes care of names, but only for stuff inside our solar system and stars outside it. It doesn’t have a committee set up to handle other objects, like black holes, galaxies or nebulas. The last time there was a similar situation, poor Pluto somehow got demoted to a dwarf planet, leading to a public outcry, said Williams College astronomer Jay Pasachoff, a member of the star-naming committee. Technically, our own galaxy — the Milky Way — has never been officially named by the IAU, said Rick Fienberg, an astronomer and press officer for the American Astronomical Society. He said, “That’s just a term that came down through history.” “Virtually every object in the sky has more than one designation,” Fienberg said. “The constellations have their official IAU-sanctioned names, but in other cultures they have other names.” When it comes to the black hole in question, University of Hawaii-Hilo Hawaiian professor Larry Kimura stepped up even before the photo was unveiled. Powehi (pronounced poh-veh-hee) is the black hole’s Hawaiian name, not its official name, explained Jessica Dempsey, who helped capture the image as deputy director of the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope on Mauna Kea, Hawaii’s tallest mountain. Hawaii Gov. David Ige proclaimed April 10 as Powehi Day, she said. “This isn’t astronomers naming this,” she said. “This is coming from a cultural expert and language expert. This is him coming to the table and giving us a gift of this name. It’s a gift from Hawaiian culture and history, not the other way around.” When asked about Kimura’s idea, IAU naming committee member Pasachoff said, “That’s the first I heard of it.” Eric Mamajek, chairman of the IAU working group on star names, called it a “wonderful, thoughtful name.” But Mamajek said his committee may not be the right one to grant the black hole a name. It only does stars. “This is exactly the Pluto situation,” Pasachoff said. In 2006, astronomers at the IAU were discussing naming a large object in our solar system that eventually got called Eris. It wasn’t considered a planet, so it wasn’t the job of the planet committee. But some experts pointed out that it was bigger than Pluto, which added some confusion. The conference decided to reclassify planets, kicked Pluto out of the club of regular planets and made it join the newly established dwarf planets category with Eris, Pasachoff said. The same day the photograph of the black hole was unveiled, the IAU asked the public to choose one of three names for an object astronomers call 2007 OR10. It is an icy planetesimal that circles the sun but gets 100 times farther from our star than Earth does. The three proposed names are Gonggong, a Chinese water god with red hair and a serpent tail; Holle, a European winter goddess of fertility; and Vili, a Nordic deity and brother of Odin. The IAU is trying to bring in more languages and cultures into the naming game, Pasachoff and Fienberg said. And soon the IAU will ask the public to help name 100 planets outside our solar system. As astronomers gaze farther into the cosmos, Pasachoff said, “we will need more names.”
|
u.s .;space;astronomy
|
jp0003618
|
[
"world",
"crime-legal-world"
] |
2019/04/13
|
Man hospitalized after lighting jacket on fire outside White House
|
WASHINGTON - A man in a wheelchair-type electric scooter lit his jacket on fire outside the White House fence on Friday and was hospitalized with what appeared to be non-life threatening injuries, the U.S. Secret Service said. Secret Service officers responded to the incident on the north side of the executive mansion, extinguished the fire and provided first aid, the agency said on Twitter. Daniel Kingery, a 57-year-old voter rights activist, said the man was holding up his burning jacket and recording the incident, which appeared to be a demonstration. “He wasn’t obeying their order to put it down, so it was definitely some sort of a protest,” Kingery said. The Secret Service put out the fire, knocked him out of the scooter, and dragged him to a statue in nearby Lafayette Square where other officials were waiting, he added. The Secret Service closed Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House to pedestrian traffic, and a nearby block of 17th Street was closed as well. At least portions of the White House complex were locked down. News video showed emergency medical personnel arriving to tend to a person who police had surrounded on the ground. A CNN reporter on Twitter cited a Secret Service spokeswoman as saying there was no threat to U.S. President Donald Trump. The incident occurred shortly after Trump spoke at the White House about the nation’s 5G network.
|
u.s .;violence;donald trump
|
jp0003619
|
[
"world"
] |
2019/04/13
|
U.S. has two months to finalize extradition case against WikiLeaks' Assange
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WASHINGTON - U.S. prosecutors have just under two months to present British authorities with a final and detailed criminal case to justify the possible extradition of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, a U.S. government official said on Friday. The official, who asked for anonymity when discussing the case, said U.S. authorities had already sent Britain a provisional arrest warrant regarding Assange’s extradition to the United States. But within 60 days from Thursday, when British police bundled Assange out of the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where he had taken refuge seven years ago, U.S. authorities must submit a formal request outlining all the legal charges Assange would face if he is transferred into U.S. custody. According to a criminal indictment against Assange that prosecutors in Virginia secretly obtained more than a year ago but only unsealed after Assange’s arrest, Assange is charged with conspiring with former army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to gain unauthorized access to a government computer. The U.S. indictment filed in March 2018 said Assange, in March 2010, engaged in a conspiracy to help Manning crack a password stored on Defense Department computers connected to the Secret Internet Protocol Network (SIPRNet), a U.S. government network used for classified documents and communications. Assange’s contacts with Manning led to one of the biggest ever leaks of classified information as WikiLeaks published hundreds of thousands of U.S. military reports and diplomatic communications. The U.S. official said that within the 60-day period, U.S. authorities could modify or add to the current charges they have filed against Assange. The official declined to say whether further charges were likely, but legal experts have said they are certainly possible. A witness who prosecutors were seeking to interview and an associate of Assange based in Europe who also requested anonymity said that before his arrest Assange had expressed concern that U.S. prosecutors would also bring charges against him related to WikiLeaks’ publication of CIA computer hacking tools, which the website described as its “Vault 7” cache. U.S. officials have said that as far leaks go, the disclosure of details about the U.S. spy agency’s abilities to perform electronic surveillance and cyber warfare was potentially far more damaging to U.S. government activities than anything Manning made available to WikiLeaks. In a Friday interview with CNN, U.S. Vice President Mike Pence said the United States was “going to bring Julian Assange to justice.” Pence denied that statements by President Donald Trump, in which he praised WikiLeaks during the 2016 U.S. election campaign, were in any way “an endorsement of an organization that we now understand was involved in disseminating classified information.”
|
media;censorship;privacy;julian assange;wikileaks;surveillance
|
jp0003620
|
[
"world",
"politics-diplomacy-world"
] |
2019/04/13
|
Want to beat Trump? Do a balancing act, says Hillary Clinton
|
NEW YORK - Presidential hopefuls must walk a fine line to defeat U.S. President Donald Trump, presenting their own views while fending off his attacks, said former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who lost to Trump in a bitter 2016 race. Speaking on Friday, the fourth anniversary of the day she declared her bid for president, Clinton said in a New York appearance she was “delighted” about the diverse Democratic field, with a record six women, vying to challenge Trump in the 2020 election. Clinton, who is also a former U.S. senator and former first lady, lost to Trump in November 2016 in a stunning upset. The defeat of the heavily favored Clinton, a Democrat, by the Republican Trump was largely unexpected by polls and political observers. Candidates looking to oust Trump next year face a “balancing act,” she said, speaking at a “Women in the World” conference of leaders, activists and others. “You do have to present what you want to do — what is your vision, what is your hope for our country, how do you see the future,” she said. “At the same time, you have to be able to counter and ignore where possible, respond where necessary to the diversion and distraction that we see unfortunately working by the current incumbent in the White House,” she said. With national political sentiment deeply divided under Trump, she urged candidates to aim high and mount positive campaigns. “Anger, resentment, prejudice are not strategies. They stop people from thinking,” she said. “The job of a leader is to appeal to us to be more than we could be on our own.” She described the 2016 race against Trump as “dark” and “negative.” Looking to the 2020 election, the largest Democratic field in the modern U.S. political era is lining up to seek the party’s presidential nomination. The hopefuls include six women as well as black, Hispanic and openly gay candidates who would make history as the nominee. Since losing her presidential bid, Clinton has written a memoir entitled “What Happened.”
|
u.s .;elections;hillary clinton;2016 presidential election;donald trump
|
jp0003621
|
[
"world",
"politics-diplomacy-world"
] |
2019/04/13
|
Brexit chaos leaves Scotland on independence tightrope
|
EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND - With the U.K. tearing its hair out over Brexit confusion, Scotland’s government is biding its time as it prepares for the ultimate prize — independence. Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, a strong opponent of Brexit, has said she will set out her thinking on independence plans later this month. The issue presents voters and leaders north of the border with another source of dispute, something that this week’s decision to delay Britain’s departure from the European Union has done little to resolve. The government is “absolutely committed to an independent Scotland in the European Union,” Scottish Minister for Europe, Migration and International Development Ben Macpherson said while out campaigning in Leith, east of Edinburgh. But even independence backers are divided over Brexit — five years on from Scotland’s own referendum in which 55 percent opted to remain a part of the U.K. A retiree, enjoying the sunshine in a central Edinburgh park, said he wanted “complete independence.” He said Sturgeon’s Scottish National Party had “done a lot of good but I don’t agree with them on Brexit.” He said he would even consider voting for Nigel Farage’s new Brexit Party — much to the consternation of his companion. “I’m Scottish first, then European,” she said. Some pro-EU voters who wanted to stay in the United Kingdom in the 2014 referendum are now in favor of independence, but the issue risks pushing away those who want a clean break from both London and Brussels. Former SNP deputy leader Jim Fairlie said the government’s policy of independence within the EU was an “oxymoron,” and that tying the two issues together meant “they’re not going to get the votes of traditional nationalists like me.” “All the SNP has to do to keep the independence movement together is to decouple it from membership of the EU,” he added. But over 60 percent of Scots voted to stay in the EU, and some are being won over to the independence cause. “I know quite a lot of people … who voted to stay with the U.K. … who now say because they’re sick of all the Brexit, they’ve changed their minds,” said local resident Mary Cryan amid the hubbub of Edinburgh’s Royal Mile, in the shadow of the city’s centuries-old castle. The shifting blocs have largely canceled themselves out so far, with polling stuck at around 55 percent versus 45 percent in favor of staying in the United Kingdom, according to polling expert John Curtice, from the University of Strathclyde. But independence supporters think that the chaos in Westminster could shift the balance. “It certainly makes the democratic case easier because it really does throw into stark relief this democratic deficit problem,” Kevin Pringle, a former director of strategic communications for the SNP, said during an interview in his Edinburgh office. Independence supporters still face a stiff challenge in winning over more conservative voters, who wanted to stay in both the EU and the U.K. “The SNP should concentrate on the day job rather than looking at independence,” a 50-year-old public servant said in the city’s Scots Guards Club, as pipers and other folk musicians played in the background. Complicating the task for the SNP, Brexit has become something of a moving target since the terms of the withdrawal and the date are far from certain. “It’s a bit like a mirage in the desert,” Pringle said. Key to the calculations will be whether U.K. will remain in the European customs union after Brexit or not, which would take any volatile “hard border” debate out of a future independence campaign. Campaigners must also soon find a united position on a raft of economic issues, including what currency an independent Scotland would adopt. Pringle added: “It’s a challenge that can be achieved but I don’t think anybody underestimates the scale of it.”
|
eu;u.k .;scotland;brexit
|
jp0003622
|
[
"world",
"politics-diplomacy-world"
] |
2019/04/13
|
British lawmakers handed 11-day break to ruminate over ways to break Brexit deadlock
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LONDON - Britain’s overwrought members of Parliament have been sent home for 11 days, to rest and reflect on how to get the country out of the Brexit deadlock. As they ponder the future of the divorce talks, which now look like dragging on until the end of October, here are some scenarios they will be weighing: Cross-party talks Prime Minister Theresa May’s government has been holding private talks with Jeremy Corbyn’s opposition Labour Party since the start of April, in the hope of finding a Brexit option that both parties can support. In theory, there is a lot of common ground in terms of a desired outcome, but there are strong political incentives for Corbyn not to rescue May and give up his ability to criticize her Brexit policy. Likewise many Conservatives are outraged that May is talking to him at all, and she has little room to give ground. On the other hand, neither party wants to be the unreasonable one that walks away. Indicative votes May’s stated strategy, if the cross-party talks are inconclusive, is to move to a series of votes on different Brexit options. The structure of these will make a big difference to their prospects of success, as will the extent to which the parties try to influence the outcome. The idea of such votes, when they were first floated in the Cabinet last year, was not to find a new solution so much as to demonstrate the unpopularity of alternatives to May’s deal. The problem is that even if they achieve this, MPs are unlikely to feel obliged to follow through and vote for the deal that they have rejected three times already. They could well reveal that there is no outcome that MPs support — that is what the previous rounds of indicative votes showed. Local elections: May 2 This is one date that can’t be avoided. Nearly 9,000 local government seats in England and Northern Ireland are up for election. These council elections are supposed to be about locally controlled services, such as refuse collection, but are often used to register protest at national issues. To further complicate matters, they happen in different places each year. More than half of this year’s seats are currently held by the Conservatives, so even in a calm year, the party would struggle to hold them all. A bad night for the party will inevitably spur calls for May to quit. European elections: May 23 The fight that May didn’t want to have, these elections for the European Parliament are likely to generate far more interest than they usually manage in the U.K. Both supporters and opponents of Brexit will use them as a proxy referendum. That could see the U.K.’s main parties, the Conservatives and Labour, squeezed. The Tories will be challenged by Nigel Farage’s old outfit, the U.K. Independence Party, and his new one, the Brexit Party. Labour, meanwhile, will be accused of being too supportive of Brexit by the Liberal Democrats and Change U.K., the new pro-EU party formed by Labour and Tory defectors. After the vote, both pro- and anti-Brexit campaigners will seek to argue that the result shows the nation is behind them. Meanwhile, the Labour and Conservative leaders will be urged to adopt harder stances for or against the divorce from the EU. New prime minister? May has said that she will go once Brexit is delivered. She could struggle to last that long though. Cabinet members openly undermine her, the government’s central policy is in chaos, and Parliament no longer trusts her. Many see replacing her as essential to breaking the Brexit deadlock. But the paradox of May is that, although she can’t get anything through Parliament, it is hard to see any successor getting anything through, either. They would either continue to pursue her deal, for which there is no support, offer a softer Brexit, which risks outraging Conservatives without winning Labour votes, or go for a harder Brexit, losing those Tories who want a close relationship with the EU. Chancellor of the Exchequer (finance minister) Philip Hammond said Friday that May will stay on as prime minister to get Brexit done, even if that means remaining in the job until the end of October. “As far I know she doesn’t have any intention of leaving until that deal is done,” Hammond said in an interview at the International Monetary Fund meetings in Washington. “She’s a person with a strong sense of duty, she’s a person who feels she has an obligation to the British people to deliver Brexit, and she will certainly want to make good on that obligation.” General election? If the problem isn’t the prime minister, maybe the problem is Parliament. Tories would be reluctant to let May fight an election for them, but it is possible a new leader might fancy their chances at getting a public mandate for their position. One possible outcome would be a Conservative majority, which might then be able to deliver Brexit. But recent months have surely dented the public’s confidence in the Conservatives, who have now been in office for nine years. If they lost only three seats, they would be unable to form a government. That would open the way to Prime Minister Corbyn. Second referendum? If a general election doesn’t resolve the problem, then perhaps the question should be sent back to the people to answer in another referendum. The likeliest route to a plebiscite is under a Labour government. Although Corbyn only supports the idea of a referendum on a Conservative Brexit, he could well find himself forced to accept one as Labour policy in an election. Even if he didn’t, a majority of his MPs want one, as would any of the parties he would be likely to form a coalition with. But there is another route to a referendum: It is the one thing May could offer Labour MPs that would definitely make them pass her deal. The only problem is how her own side would react.
|
eu;u.k .;brexit
|
jp0003623
|
[
"world",
"politics-diplomacy-world"
] |
2019/04/13
|
Sudan erupts with joy as successor to Omar al-Bashir steps down a day after he was sworn in
|
KHARTOUM - Crowds of Sudanese waving flags and chanting “we toppled two presidents in two days” celebrated in the capital late Friday after the country’s military council chief stepped down a day after he was sworn in. “We have done it, we have done it,” shouted young men and women as they drove across Khartoum after Gen. Awad Ibn Ouf announced his resignation on state television. On Thursday, he was sworn in as the chief of a ruling military council that replaced long-time President Omar al-Bashir, who was ousted by the army following months of deadly protests. Before quitting, Ibn Ouf appointed Lt. Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan as his successor, setting off a wave of jubilation across the city. “I am confident he will steer the ship to safe shores,” he said of Burhan, adding he was stepping aside to “preserve unity” of the armed forces. Burhan was one of the generals who reached out to protesters at a weeklong encampment near the military headquarters, meeting with them face to face, and listening to their views. Car horns sounded on the streets as jubilant crowds streamed out of their homes to cheer the departure of Ibn Ouf, considered a regime insider and close aide of Bashir. Chants like “It fell again, it fell again” reverberated across the capital’s squares and neighborhoods, onlookers said. “This was our second uprising, first against Bashir and then against Ibn Ouf,” said Mohamed, a protester, whistling and clapping in an upscale Khartoum neighborhood. Dozens of members of a paramilitary group stood at the sidelines, many atop pick-up vehicles loaded with machine-guns, as cheering crowds drove past, witnesses said. Protest organizers however warned Burhan that if he failed to transfer powers to a civilian transitional government he would face their fury too. They called on Burhan to reverse decisions announced by Ibn Ouf such as canceling the suspension of the constitution and also implored him to end the state of emergency and night-time curfew. Thousands of protesters have massed outside the army headquarters in the capital since April 6. Earlier on Friday, throngs of Sudanese chanting “it will fall again, it will fall again” flocked there to hunker down for a second night defying the curfew, witnesses said. Dressed in white traditional clothes, men and women headed to the military complex to join thousands of others camped there. “We did it once, we can do it again,” said a protester, who had been at the site of the demonstration since Tuesday night. Since the appointment of Ibn Ouf as military council chief, the protesters had turned their anger against him. “We don’t want Ibn Ouf, we don’t want any military government,” said one protester. “This entire group is from Bashir’s regime. We want a civilian leader.” Several soldiers were however seen chatting and mingling with protesters at the complex on Friday, witnesses said. As the evening approached, buses full of protesters headed to the protest site with plans to defy the curfew again, a witness said. A mass of people flooded two bridges that connect the capital with suburbs. At the protest site itself thousands offered Friday prayers earlier in the day. An imam dressed in a white robe with a Sudanese flag draped over his shoulder led the weekly prayer. “This is the first time that I’m coming here in response to calls that today’s prayers will be performed here,” said Hussein Mohamed, an elderly man who came to the site from Omdurman, Khartoum’s twin city across the Nile. Groups of Coptic Christians served food and drinks to worshippers ahead of their prayers. Many offered mats to protesters who had been camping at the site since last night. “Protesters reject the announcement, protesters reject the announcement,” chanted women, raising their hands in the air, after praying under a makeshift tent at the complex. Witnesses said the entire area reverberated with the sound of singing. Protesters were chanting in circles, with one leading the song and others dancing in circles around him repeating it. Groups like this are everywhere, said one demonstrator as behind him musicians played traditional Sudanese and African tunes. Later in the night when Ibn Ouf quit, demonstrators at the complex burst into joy, many kissing photographs of those killed in protests, an onlooker said. Demonstrators chanted “What happened? It fell again,” he said. Protest organizers have called on the demonstrators to continue with the sit-in until their demands are met.
|
military;rights;protests;sudan;omar al-bashir
|
jp0003624
|
[
"world",
"politics-diplomacy-world"
] |
2019/04/13
|
U.K. finance chief says Theresa May won't quit until Brexit is delivered
|
LONDON - Theresa May will stay on as U.K. prime minister to get Brexit done, even if that means remaining in the job until the end of October, Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond said Friday. May promised to step aside once the divorce agreement has been passed in Parliament, so a new leader can take charge of the next phase of Brexit talks focusing on the future partnership with the European Union. Many politicians in the ruling Conservative Party want to force her out sooner, but Hammond suggested they’ll be disappointed. “As far I know she doesn’t have any intention of leaving until that deal is done,” Hammond said in an interview with Bloomberg TV’s Francine Lacqua at the International Monetary Fund meetings in Washington. “She’s a person with a strong sense of duty, she’s a person who feels she has an obligation to the British people to deliver Brexit, and she will certainly want to make good on that obligation.” Britain was due to leave the EU on March 29, but has twice had to ask the bloc’s other 27 leaders for an extension. The latest plan, in an agreement finalized this week at a summit in Brussels, is for the U.K. to depart the bloc by Oct. 31. Back in Westminster, May’s government is holding talks with the opposition Labour Party to see if they can agree on a compromise deal that Parliament would support. Hammond said the government is open to discussing a customs union with Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn as it is one of the party’s key demands. However, he said the government may not back the idea in the end. “We’re prepared to discuss all of these things with them,” he said. “Just because they’ve put it on the table, it doesn’t mean we’re going to accept it or we’re going to do it. But we are prepared to talk about it.” He also said if voters had wanted economic security, they would have chosen to stay in the EU in the 2016 referendum; instead they made a political and emotional choice to leave. He said the government was trying to limit the economic fallout of that decision. “This is not an economic debate,” he said. “Bluntly, if we were only driven by economics, the British people would have decided to stay in the European Union. The reason for voting to come out were not economic reasons, they were emotional reasons, political reasons.” In the interview, Hammond also said that Tory leadership rivals are already jockeying for position to succeed May, but that a Conservative Party leadership election before Brexit concludes would be a mistake: “Starting the leadership process before we have resolved the question would not be helpful, it would look self-indulgent.” “It’s a very open question” for the Labour party at the moment about whether they should back a second referendum, Hammond added.
|
eu;u.k .;brexit;theresa may
|
jp0003625
|
[
"world"
] |
2019/04/13
|
Hoping to help young people, centenarian runs for office in German town
|
KIRCHHEIMBOLANDEN, GERMANY - For most people, reaching 100 would be reason enough to put one’s feet up and take things easy, but Lisel Heise has other ideas. The German centenarian, a former sports teacher, has started a new chapter in her life by running for election to the council in her hometown of Kirchheimbolanden. She is focusing her campaign on reopening the town’s outdoor swimming pool, which closed in 2011. Heise has long been vocal in her efforts to resurrect it — she dislikes its replacement on the outskirts of town — but has found that, as an older woman, her opinions have often been ignored. Now that she has reached three figures, she hopes to turn age to her advantage. “The microphone was often turned off when I started to speak about the swimming pool, and then of course you stop, there’s no point,” she said. “But now that I’m 100, I’m in a different position. Now I have the chance to open my mouth and say something.” The ballot is on May 26 and voters in Kirchheimbolanden, a town of some 8,000 in the southwestern state of Rhineland-Palatinate, are starting to listen. A well-known figure locally, Heise is running as a candidate for grass-roots group “Wir fuer Kibo” (“Kirchheimbolanden is Us”), which campaigns for sustainable development and more civic engagement. “We’re very happy to have Lisel Heise on board. She’s brought us publicity so we can communicate our goals better and get our message across,” said group board member Helga Buermann. A grandmother and great-grandmother many times over, Heise’s main hope in running for office is that she can “finally do something for young people.” And what of her wider political views? “Brexit should never have been given a platform. And I find it splendid that young people are trying to tackle climate issues. One can only wish them every success in that venture.” Whatever the result next month, Heise has some tips for anyone wanting to follow in her footsteps. “To reach the age of 100, I tell everybody: Live healthily when you’re young, do lots of sport, eat well and train your mind,” she said.
|
germany;politics;centenarian
|
jp0003626
|
[
"world"
] |
2019/04/13
|
Syria's air defenses intercept Israeli missiles near city of Hama
|
CAIRO - Israeli planes targeted a military position near the province of Hama in Syria on Saturday, but Syrian air defences intercepted and downed some of the rockets, Syrian state television said on Saturday. Citing military sources, SANA news agency and Syrian state television said that Israeli aircraft had targeted “one of our military positions towards the city of Masyaf.” “The enemy missiles were dealt with and some of them were shot down before reaching their target, resulting in the damage of a few buildings and the injury of three fighters,” SANA added. Since the civil war started, Israel has carried out scores of military strikes in Syria during against suspected arms transfers and deployments by Iranian forces and their Lebanese Hezbollah allies which are backing Syrian President Bashar Assad.
|
conflict;u.s .;vladimir putin;terrorism;russia;syria;bashar assad;syrian civil war;islamic state;donald trump
|
jp0003627
|
[
"world"
] |
2019/04/13
|
Jair Bolsonaro says Brazil rainforest reserve may be opened to mining
|
RIO DE JANEIRO/BRASILIA - Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro said on Friday the country could open a vast reserve in the Amazon rainforest to mining, a move that his predecessor attempted before backtracking due to an international outcry by environmentalists. The National Reserve of Copper and Associates (Renca) occupies roughly 17,800 square miles (46,100 square km), an area slightly larger than Denmark, that is thought to be rich in gold, copper, iron ore and other minerals. “Let’s talk about Renca. Renca is ours,” Bolsonaro said at a televised event in Amapa state, home to part of the reserve. “Let’s use the riches that God gave us for the wellbeing of our population,” Bolsonaro said. “You won’t get any trouble from the Environment Ministry, nor the Mines and Energy Ministry nor any other.” Mining has been off-limits in the Renca, located in the northern states of Para and Amapa, since it was established in 1984 to protect against perceived threats from foreign miners. The reserve was established by a presidential decree and therefore can be revoked by the president without congressional approval. Bolsonaro’s predecessor, Michel Temer, abolished the reserve in 2017, only to reinstate it the following month after global backlash from environmentalists who said it would lead to a spike in deforestation. “Brazil already had the chance to express its views on the opening of Renca to development, and public opinion was not favorable,” said Adriana Ramos, legal and policy adviser at the Brazilian nongovernmental organization Instituto Socioambiental (ISA), in a statement. “But the government prefers to announce controversial and outdated initiatives instead of new ideas for sustainable development in the Amazon,” she said. The Amazon, about 60 percent of which lies in Brazil, is the world’s largest tropical rainforest. It is a bulwark against global warming and is sometimes called the “lungs of the world” because of the vast amounts of carbon dioxide its trees absorb.
|
nature;brazil;mining;endangered;jair bolsonaro
|
jp0003628
|
[
"world",
"offbeat-world"
] |
2019/04/13
|
Vulture flies home to Syria from Turkey — by plane
|
BELGRADE - A young vulture that got stranded last year in Turkey, more than 2,000 km from her nest, flew home to Serbia on Friday — by plane. Dobrila, a young female griffon vulture, is part of a protected colony of around 70 pairs in western Serbia’s Uvac Gorge. She was found injured and exhausted last year over 2,200 km (1,370 miles) away near the Turkish city of Diyarbakir, where authorities intervened to get her repatriated. She returned to Belgrade to a celebrity welcome, flown back on a Turkish Airlines commercial plane in a special crate and met on arrival by Serbian environmental protection minister Goran Trivan and Turkey’s ambassador, Tanju Bilgic. “I am happy our operation was a success. … Dobrila will now go back to Uvac and if she ever returns to Turkey we would be glad … to take care of her,” Bilgic told reporters. Dobrila (“The Good One” in Serbian) will now undergo health checks before be returned to the Uvac Gorge, where she will be initially placed in a cage to adapt and learn how to feed on her own. Griffon vultures nest on steep cliffs and feed on animal carcasses. The young birds often start wandering until they reach maturity and choose a colony. They can fly great distances, and birds marked in Serbia have been spotted as far away as Israel and near Basra in Iraq, ornithologists say.
|
syria;animals;turkey
|
jp0003629
|
[
"asia-pacific",
"politics-diplomacy-asia-pacific"
] |
2019/04/13
|
North Korea's Kim willing to meet Trump a third time but gives U.S. an end-of-year deadline
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North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said he is willing to meet with U.S. President Donald Trump for a third time for nuclear talks — if Washington comes to the table with the “correct posture” — but laid down a year-end deadline “for a bold decision from the U.S.” In a dispatch carried by the official Korean Central News Agency on Saturday, Kim said he wouldn’t welcome a repeat of the Hanoi summit in February, when Trump walked out without securing a nuclear disarmament deal. While hailing his relationship with Trump, Kim also said the U.S. has been making “gangster-like” unilateral demands and should abandon that approach. “If the U.S. adopts a correct posture and comes forward for the third DPRK-U.S. summit with a certain methodology that can be shared with us, we can think of holding one more talks,” Kim said in a speech at North Korea’s rubber-stamp legislature, according to the KCNA report. “Anyway, we will wait for a bold decision from the U.S. with patience till the end of this year,” he said, “but I think it will definitely be difficult to get such a good opportunity as the previous summit.” The North Korean leader’s comments suggest he is eager to restart stalled negotiations despite his cryptic threat earlier to explore a “new path” if crippling sanctions remained in place. That threat, as well as warnings by senior North Korean officials after the Hanoi breakdown, stoked fears of a return to missile launches and nuclear tests. Trump, for his part, said Thursday that the door to dialogue remains open and that a summit “could happen,” but he also continued to maintain a hard line on the easing of sanctions and rejected calls to revive economic projects between North and South Korea. Kim also said he wouldn’t necessarily be focused on a summit to obtain sanctions relief and wouldn’t hesitate to reach an agreement if the U.S. brings up an idea that is acceptable to both sides, the report said. But, in an ominous note, Kim also touted his “treasured sword for defending the sovereignty of the country,” an allusion to his nuclear weapons program. “What is clear is that if the U.S. persists in its present political calculation method, the prospect of settling the issues will be gloomy and very dangerous,” Kim said. “Self-reliant national defense capabilities constitute a powerful treasured sword for defending the sovereignty of the country,” he added. “We have to always keep in mind that peace can be ensured only by powerful military capabilities, and firmly maintain the principle of self-defense and keep increasing the defense capabilities of the country.” Kim’s remarks were released just a day after South Korean President Moon Jae-in met with Trump in Washington. At that meeting, Trump said the time was not right for easing sanctions and inter-Korean projects, dealing a blow to a push by Moon, who has gambled much of his political capital on breaking fresh life into the U.S.-North Korea nuclear talks. However, Trump did offer a qualified answer to a question about whether he would be willing to accept “smaller deals” as part of a larger process. “I’d have to see what the deal is,” he said. “There are various smaller deals that maybe could happen. Things could happen. You can work out, step by step, pieces.” But, he added, “at this moment, we’re talking about the big deal. The big deal is we have to get rid of the nuclear weapons.” Despite Moon’s gambit, Kim — who has held three summits with the South Korean leader — blasted Seoul for acting like “an officious ‘mediator’ and ‘booster,'” saying it should instead “be a party advocating the interests of the (Korean) nation with its own spirit and voice.” Asked about Kim’s comments, media reports quoted South Korea’s presidential office as saying Seoul is committed to keeping the atmosphere of dialogue alive and helping negotiations between Washington and Pyongyang resume at an early date. Moon is reportedly seeking to hold another summit soon with Kim, possibly to lay the groundwork for a third meeting of the U.S. and North Korean leaders.
|
u.s .;north korea;kim jong un;nuclear weapons;south korea;north korea nuclear crisis;donald trump;moon jae-in;kim-trump summit
|
jp0003630
|
[
"asia-pacific"
] |
2019/04/13
|
100th anniversary of Amritsar massacre remembered in India
|
AMRITSAR, INDIA - India on Saturday marked the 100th anniversary of the Amritsar massacre, one of the worst atrocities of British colonial rule and one for which London has yet to apologize. The Jallianwala Bagh massacre, as it is known in India, saw British troops fire on thousands of unarmed people in Amritsar on April 13, 1919. The number of casualties is unclear, with colonial-era records showing about 400 deaths, while Indian figures put the number at closer to 1,000. In 1997, Queen Elizabeth II laid a wreath at the site, but her gaffe-prone husband, Prince Philip, stole headlines by reportedly saying Indian estimates for the death count were “vastly exaggerated.” This past week, British Prime Minister Theresa May told the House of Commons that the massacre was “a shameful scar on British Indian history.” “We deeply regret what happened and the suffering caused,” May said — but she, too, avoided saying she was sorry. Amarinder Singh, the chief minister of Punjab state, said May’s words were not enough. He said “an unequivocal official apology” is needed for the “monumental barbarity.” Singh was using Twitter, where pictures showed him greeting opposition Congress party leader Rahul Gandhi in Amritsar on the eve of the centenary. British High Commissioner Dominic Asquith, a descendant of Herbert Asquith, prime minister from 1908 to 1916, on Saturday followed suit at the Jallianwala Bagh walled garden, where bullet marks are still visible. “You might want to re-write history, as the queen said, but you can’t,” Asquith said. “What you can do, as the queen said, is to learn the lessons of history. I believe strongly we are. There is no question that we will always remember this. We will never forget what happened here.” In the memorial’s guest book Asquith called the events “shameful.” The prelude In March 1919, the British colonial government passed the Anarchical and Revolutionary Crimes Act, or the Rowlatt Act, extending repressive measures in force during World War I (1914-18). These included incarceration without trial, and caused widespread anger, particularly in the northern Punjab region, with Mahatma Gandhi calling for a nationwide general strike. In Amritsar, news that prominent Indian leaders had been arrested and banished from the city sparked violent protests on April 10. Soldiers fired upon civilians, buildings were looted and burned, and angry mobs killed several foreign nationals and attacked a Christian missionary. High walls Brig. Gen. Reginald Edward Harry Dyer was tasked with ensuring order, and imposed measures including a ban on public gatherings. On the afternoon of April 13, some 10,000 people gathered at the Jallianwala Bagh, an area in Amritsar surrounded by high walls with only one exit. People were angry in particular about the arrests of two local leaders. April 13 was also Baisakhi, a harvest festival in northern India. The crowd included men, women, children and pilgrims who were visiting the nearby Golden Temple, one of the holiest sites in Sikhism. Some estimates put the crowd at 20,000. Enter Dyer Dyer, later dubbed “The Butcher of Amritsar,” reached the spot with dozens of soldiers and sealed off the exit. Without warning, he ordered the soldiers to fire on the unarmed crowd. Many tried to escape by scaling the walls but failed. Some jumped into a well at the site. Reportedly the troops fired until they ran out of ammunition, letting off hundreds of rounds into the crowd before withdrawing. The Indian Express this past week shared eyewitness accounts compiled by two historians. They included Mani Ram, whose 13-year-old son Madan Mohan used to play in the square with his friends. “On the 13th April, 1919 he went there as usual and met his tragic end, having been shot in the head which fractured his skull, he bled and died instantaneously,” he told the newspaper. “I, with eight or nine others, had to search for about half an hour till I could pick up his corpse as it was mixed up with hundreds of dead bodies lying in heaps there.” Dyer said later that the firing was “not to disperse the meeting but to punish the Indians for disobedience.” The aftermath The event marked a nadir in Britain’s occupation of India, and served to boost Indian nationalism and harden support for independence. Reaction in Britain varied, with Dyer receiving support in the House of Lords and not least from Rudyard Kipling, who is said to have called him “the man who saved India.” Winston Churchill, then secretary of state for war, called the massacre “monstrous,” and Prime Minister Asquith called it “one of the worst outrages in the whole of our history.” “The crowd was unarmed, except with bludgeons. It was not attacking anybody or anything …pinned up in a narrow place considerably smaller than Trafalgar Square,” said Churchill. Dyer was removed from command into enforced retirement. He died in 1927. No apology Demands by several past Indian leaders and politicians for Britain to apologize for the massacre have fallen on deaf ears. In 2013 David Cameron became the first serving British prime minister to visit Jallianwala Bagh. He described the episode as “deeply shameful” but stopped short of a public apology. “We must never forget what happened here. And in remembering we must ensure that the United Kingdom stands up for the right of peaceful protest around the world,” Cameron wrote in the visitors’ book. He later defended his decision not to say sorry, explaining that the massacre happened 40 years before he was born and saying: “I don’t think the right thing is to reach back into history and to seek out things you can apologize for.”
|
india;history;u.k .;anniversaries;amritsar
|
jp0003631
|
[
"asia-pacific",
"crime-legal-asia-pacific"
] |
2019/04/13
|
Malaysia to free Vietnamese woman charged in Kim Jong Nam killing on May 3
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KUALA LUMPUR - A Vietnamese woman accused of killing the half-brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un will walk free on May 3, her lawyer said Saturday. Following diplomatic pressure from the Vietnamese government, Malaysian prosecutors dropped the murder charge against Doan Thi Huong on April 1. Subsequently, the 30-year-old former hair salon worker pleaded guilty to “causing injury” and was handed a three-year-and-four-month jail term effective from the date of her arrest in February 2017 and later reduced for good behavior. The brazen killing of Kim Jong Nam with a toxic nerve agent at Kuala Lumpur’s international airport in broad daylight shocked the world. Seoul accused Pyongyang of plotting the Cold War-style hit as Malaysia allowed the two women’s suspected North Korean handlers to leave in the days after the murder. “We have been told by prison authorities that Huong will be freed on May 3,” lawyer Salim Bashir said. “Huong is in a jovial mood. The young woman is expected to be immediately flown to Hanoi.” Huong’s stepmother was overjoyed with the news her stepdaughter would be coming home. “So great to know that she will be back soon,” Nguyen Thi Vy said Saturday. Last month the charge against a co-accused 27-year-old Indonesian suspect, Siti Aisyah, was dropped. During the women’s long-running trial, which began in October 2017, the court was shown CCTV footage of them approaching Kim as he waited for a flight, one of them placing their hands on his face, and then both of them running to bathrooms before fleeing the airport. But the pair always maintained they were innocent pawns in a plan hatched by North Korea and believed they were carrying out pranks for a reality TV show. The women would have been sentenced to death by hanging if convicted of murder. The women’s lawyers said the real masterminds were four North Koreans who were seen at the airport on the day of the murder meeting the pair, and who fled after the assassination. The four were charged in absentia along with the women over the killing. “Obviously Huong deserves this freedom after her long incarceration. She is looking forward to being with her family and friends,” her lawyer Salim said.
|
malaysia;north korea;vietnam;kim jong un;crime;kim jong nam
|
jp0003632
|
[
"asia-pacific",
"crime-legal-asia-pacific"
] |
2019/04/13
|
One man killed, three injured in latest Indian cow-lynching case
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NEW DELHI - In the latest case of so-called cow lynching, Indian police said Saturday one man was killed and three injured in an attack by a mob while they were skinning a dead ox. The animal is revered by Hindus and according to Human Rights Watch, 44 people died in cow-related violence between May 2015 and December last year by Hindu vigilantes. Opponents of Prime Minister Narendra Modi say that such groups have become emboldened since his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party swept to power in 2014. The latest incident happened in the eastern state of Jharkhand late Thursday when men from a local Christian community were skinning the carcass of an ox in a field. “The men were armed with iron rods and sticks and attacked the group of skinners brutally,” said M.L. Meena, a senior Jharkhand police official. The three men injured in the attack were sent to hospital. Two men have been arrested for alleged murder and five more are on the run, Meena said. It is unclear whether the accused are part of a Hindu vigilante group or acted on their own initiative, he added, saying the four men attacked were from a local tribal group and had been charged with illegal cow slaughter. Meena said the charges were based on a complaint by a Hindu villager who said he witnessed the slaughter of the ox. “So far the investigation has showed the ox died naturally. We are doing a thorough probe,” he said. The slaughter of cows and the consumption of beef is illegal in mineral-rich Jharkhand — and in 19 other states — but restricted slaughter of other bovines like buffalo and ox is allowed. Modi, who is running for a second term in elections that began Thursday and run until May 19, has condemned cow-related violence. Under his government, laws relating to the slaughter of cows are now applied more strictly and punishments have increased. In 2017 his government tried to ban the cattle trade for slaughter nationwide, only for it to be rejected by the Supreme Court. Aside from the violence, which is mostly directed at India’s minority Muslim community and low-caste Dalits, the number of stray cows in India has also risen sharply. This is because the fear of prosecution or violence has led to farmers abandoning old and sick cows instead of selling them for slaughter. Last year a top minister in Modi’s Cabinet was criticized for celebrating eight people convicted of lynching a Muslim cattle trader after they were released on bail. Last week a Muslim man was brutally assaulted by a mob in northeastern Assam state over allegations he was selling beef. There is no prohibition on cow slaughter or beef consumption in the state.
|
india;religion;narendra modi;caste
|
jp0003633
|
[
"national"
] |
2019/04/13
|
Wartime laborer statue removed from near Japanese Consulate in Busan
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SEOUL - Authorities in South Korea’s port city of Busan on Friday removed a controversial statue that was erected near the Japanese Consulate by a civic group to symbolize Korean laborers who were forcibly taken to Japan during its colonial rule. Dozens of labor union activists had earlier this year tried to install the bronze statue of an emaciated man in front of the consulate itself, beside an existing statue dedicated to wartime “comfort women,” but were prevented from doing so by police. Police and consulate officials said the wartime labor statue was forcibly removed Friday from a sidewalk in front of a nearby park. The labor union activists and the government of the Dong-gu district, in which the consulate and park are located, had earlier agreed the statue could be temporarily erected in the park. But that idea was subsequently opposed by the municipal government on the grounds that the park is contiguous to the consulate. It suggested they consider another site. Tokyo and Seoul have been clashing over compensation issues related to wartime labor, while the issue of the comfort women remains unresolved despite a 2015 bilateral pact designed to settle it once and for all. Comfort women refers to those who worked in wartime brothels, including those who did so against their will, to provide sex to Japanese soldiers Japan has urged South Korea not to allow the installation of such statues, saying Seoul is obligated under the Vienna Convention to prevent any disturbance of the peace at a diplomatic mission or the impairment of its dignity. The comfort women statue in front of the consulate was installed by a different civic group in 2016 and led Japan to temporarily recall its ambassador in protest. A similar statue also exists near the Japanese Embassy in Seoul.
|
busan;wartime labor;statues
|
jp0003634
|
[
"national",
"science-health"
] |
2019/04/13
|
Japanese scientists play a role in capturing first photo of black hole
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Japanese researchers made a significant contribution to an international team that enabled humanity to take its first look at a black hole. The researchers helped visualize data collected by a network of radio telescopes scattered around the world, which effectively worked as a giant, Earth-sized telescope, and they were also a part of the team managing one of the telescopes. A day after the image was released, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga called the achievement “epoch-making.” “It represents a new step forward in learning the characteristics of black holes,” he said, adding, “I hope research that leads us to learn more about the universe continues to make progress.” Black holes, theorized by Albert Einstein about a century ago, have been confirmed through indirect evidence but never before through an image. The picture of the supermassive black hole in a galaxy called Messier 87, revealed Wednesday by a team led by Sheperd Doeleman of Harvard University, eliminated any doubts about the existence of black holes and reinforced theories founded on their existence. “It visually captured what had been said to exist but never been seen by anyone. This is undoubtedly worthy of a Nobel Prize,” said Yoshiaki Taniguchi, a professor of galactic astronomy at the Open University of Japan, shortly after the announcement. Capturing the black hole some 55 million light-years away was a monumental task, likened to looking for a tennis ball on the Moon with the naked eye. While a radio telescope with a larger dish antenna can collect more data and depict a more accurate picture of a black hole, there is a limit to how big the dish can be. The international team created a network of eight radio telescopes across the world, using a method known as very-long-baseline interferometry, to overcome that limitation. But as some radio waves are beyond the reach of the network, the team used statistics to estimate the missing data. Mareki Homma from the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan and other Japanese researchers used what is known as sparse modeling to develop a data processing method for putting together images. Kotaro Moriyama, a researcher with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said the Japanese team made sure of the credibility of the data they obtained by generating images in 60,000 different ways. Japan also contributed as a member of an operation team of ALMA, a giant telescope in Chile, which is one of the eight telescopes taking part in the network. Combining some 40 antennas with a diameter of 12 meters each, the researchers in Chile effectively created a large radio telescope with a diameter of 70 meters. As the telescope is located in a desert at an altitude of 5,000 meters, where low atmospheric pressure prevents the operation team from using hard discs to read out data, the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan also provided technologies necessary for sending data to a facility at a lower altitude using light fiber cables.
|
space;astronomy;black holes;mareki honma
|
jp0003635
|
[
"national",
"politics-diplomacy"
] |
2019/04/13
|
Abe mulls forgoing talks with South Korean leader Moon Jae-in during Osaka G20 summit
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Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is considering forgoing bilateral talks with South Korean President Moon Jae-in on the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit to be held in Japan in June, government sources said Saturday. The move underscores the deteriorating ties between the two neighbors mainly due to disputes over wartime compensation issues related to Japan’s 1910-1945 colonization of the Korean Peninsula. It is highly unlikely that Abe can have a “constructive” dialogue with Moon, who has shown no signs of eagerness to improve chilled relations, one of the sources said. During the G20 summit to be held for two days from June 28 in Osaka, Abe is arranging face-to-face meetings with U.S. President Donald Trump, Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Abe and Moon last held talks in September in New York. Since then, they have not even talked on the phone, according to a senior Foreign Ministry official in Tokyo. The two countries are in a standoff over a row stemming from a ruling by a top South Korean court last October ordering Nippon Steel and Sumitomo Metal Corp. to pay compensation for what was recognized as wartime forced labor, among other issues.
|
shinzo abe;south korea;g20;moon jae-in
|
jp0003636
|
[
"national",
"politics-diplomacy"
] |
2019/04/13
|
LDP Secretary-General Toshihiro Nikai to visit China in late April
|
Toshihiro Nikai, secretary-general of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, has said he will visit China from April 24 to 29 as a special envoy of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. Nikai is scheduled to give a speech at an international conference in Beijing on China’s “Belt and Road” regional development initiative, he said Friday. He is also planning to hold talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping and give him a letter from Abe. Speaking to reporters at the LDP’s headquarters in Tokyo, Nikai called for increased exchanges between Japan and China. During his trip, Nikai will also participate in an event at Tsinghua University, from which Xi graduated, and attend the opening ceremony of a horticulture exposition. Nikai is also considering a visit to Shanghai.
|
shinzo abe;ldp;china-japan relations;toshihiro nikai
|
jp0003637
|
[
"national",
"politics-diplomacy"
] |
2019/04/13
|
Trump may present trophy at Tokyo sumo tournament as officials weigh security concerns
|
Japan and the United States are considering a plan for U.S. President Donald Trump to present a trophy to the winner of the Summer Grand Sumo Tournament in Tokyo in May, Japanese government sources have said. Trump is scheduled to visit Japan as a state guest for three days starting on May 26, which coincides with the final day of the 15-day Summer Basho at the Ryogoku Kokugikan. Under the plan, Trump and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe would enter the sumo ring together after watching the matches. Trump would then present the 40-kilogram Prime Minister’s Cup or another special trophy to the winner. A major challenge is security at the venue. The ring is surrounded by rows of seats, making security more difficult than in locations with no seats behind the stage. “It is very hard to guard. Some people may throw seat cushions,” a Japanese government source said. While some within the Japanese government are pushing to give Trump a seat near the ring, others insist that he should use a VIP seat on the second floor for security reasons. During his visit to Japan, Trump is also slated to play golf with Abe. Trump is due to become the first foreign leader to meet with the new Emperor. Crown Prince Naruhito is scheduled to ascend to the throne on May 1.
|
shinzo abe;u.s.-japan relations;donald trump;sumo
|
jp0003638
|
[
"national"
] |
2019/04/13
|
Public advised to check schedules of local hospitals and clinics before 10-day Golden Week holiday
|
The government and medical institutions are calling on people to check which hospitals and clinics will be open during the upcoming longer Golden Week holiday as some outpatient departments will be closed. People with chronic conditions such as hypertension and diabetes are particularly advised to make sure they are prescribed sufficient amounts of medicine ahead of the holiday, which has been extended to 10 days to celebrate the Imperial succession. During a normal Golden Week holiday, local clinics take turns to treat patients. According to a survey by the Japan Medical Association, mostly comprising self-employed doctors, 60 percent of responding local medical associations said they are planning to do the same during the 10-day-long holiday. As for general hospitals, 24-hour emergency care will be provided as usual, but many of them expect to provide outpatient services for just two to three days during the holiday period from April 27 until May 6. A survey conducted by a medical consulting firm on 123 general hospitals across the country showed 80 percent plan to provide outpatient services and perform operations on certain days during the holiday, but few will be open every day for outpatients. Many general hospitals will treat outpatients on April 30 and May 2, the survey showed. Some, however, have chosen to halt all services except emergency care to allow doctors some time off. At Kanazawa University Hospital in Ishikawa Prefecture, outpatient services will be closed for the entire holiday. However, 24-hour emergency care, radiation therapy and dialysis will be available as usual. “There is a chronic shortage of doctors at local hospitals, so many are unable to take a day off to make up for having worked on a holiday,” said hospital chief of staff Toshifumi Gabata. If the university hospital were to maintain its regular services treating an average 1,500 outpatients per weekday, about 1,800 personnel including doctors, nurses and administrative staff would have to come to work, according to the hospital. The hospital has allocated two days to perform operations during the holiday as the total suspension of surgeries can be life-threatening for some patients. “People can visit ER and if it’s necessary, we will summon physicians” who are on leave, Gabata said in addressing worries of some patients and their families.
|
hospitals;golden week;medical care
|
jp0003639
|
[
"national",
"media-national"
] |
2019/04/13
|
Social media weighs in on design and purpose of Japan's new bank notes
|
Social media has been awash with posts following the public unveiling of Japan’s new era name, Reiwa, at the beginning of April. The announcement was almost the complete opposite of an April Fools’ Day joke and yet every detail has been picked apart online, from the way the name was officially unveiled to the actual name itself . On April 9, netizens jumped on a related topic after Finance Minister Taro Aso unveiled new designs for the ¥10,000, ¥5,000 and ¥1,000 bank notes that will be put in circulation from 2024. The bills feature industrialist Eiichi Shibusawa, educator Umeko Tsuda and physician Shibasaburo Kitasato, respectively. Considering the new bank notes will eventually be a part of daily life, it’s not surprising people had plenty to say about the announcement. Many criticized the font that appears on the new bills, suggesting it looked a little janky . A number of people complained that the design on the new notes is inconsistent with older versions, some even presenting the differences side by side . Others pointed out that the font on the new notes is similar to a number of currencies around the world , which reduces their novelty factor somewhat. Whatever the reason, debate on the font used on the new bills trended on Twitter rather quickly. Putting design aside for a second, how did social media react to the historical figures that were selected for the new notes? BuzzFeed Japan was quick to publish snack-sized introductions of the trio before later focusing its attention on Kitasato’s name . Huffington Post Japan produced similar explainers , as did a number of other sites. Many, however, had fun imagining who (or what) could have appeared on the new bills instead. Twitter user @mochiunagi hit retweet pay dirt by saying that they would have preferred to see “Sailor Moon” characters on the notes. 新札がどんなに素晴らしくてもどうせセーラームーンお札メモには敵わないよ。 pic.twitter.com/Tt49CooTPC — 飯島モトハ (@mochiunagi) April 9, 2019 Others came up with their own designs. Twitter user @PonkichiM saw that someone had suggested that a shiba dog should be included — and so they created a detailed rendition of what that might look like, with a flying squirrel thrown in for good measure. This inspired another artist to make a cat version as well . ぽん吉さんの柴犬紙幣の柴部分を（ぽん吉さんに許可もらって背景の絵使わせて頂きました）私が描いた猫絵に入れ替えてみました！猫紙幣も素敵ですね！ 元ツイート https://t.co/MWfN4CvRGn pic.twitter.com/m6lQ0mhyNu — 瞬く🍎 絵のお仕事募集中🍏 (@bokoyai) April 9, 2019 And then there’s the inevitable discussion surrounding other candidates who might have been better suited for the role. Such conversations typically aren’t so interesting but this particular case produced one exchange that was certainly amusing. Many imagined a bank note that featured revered manga and anime artist Osamu Tezuka . Tezuka’s daughter, Rumiko, then chimed in on Twitter , saying how weird it would be to constantly see her dad’s face while shopping. Fans of Tezuka’s work loved Rumiko’s tweet, with one even going so far as to capturing her horror in a quick sketch . Much of the discussion online was pretty light-hearted but eventually the conversation turned to more serious matters. Some sectors have been calling for Japan to embrace digital currency , and so the unveiling of a new physical form of cash from 2024 seems to contradict such moves. It became a major talking point on social media , with many arguing that the redesign reflects a step back at a time when the country should be adopting new technology. Even traditional media outlets such as the Nikkei Asian Review honed in on the issue, giving it greater exposure. The start of the Reiwa Era already looks to be fraught with discussion on social media. Compared to the beginning of the Heisei Era (1989-2019), it seems that people are going to endlessly pick apart issues that crop up online during the next Imperial reign.
|
osamu tezuka;umeko tsuda;japan pulse;reiwa era;eiichi shibusawa;shibasa kirasato
|
jp0003640
|
[
"national",
"media-national"
] |
2019/04/13
|
Japan's news outlets toe the line over Aegis Ashore anti-missile system
|
On March 21, a female student at the Akita University of Art in Araya Okawamachi, Akita Prefecture, was slated to give a valedictory speech at the college’s graduation ceremony. According to the Asahi Shimbun on March 31, the unnamed woman wanted to talk partly about the proposed installation of an Aegis Ashore anti-missile system at the nearby Ground Self-Defense Force (GSDF) training area in Araya Okawamachi. Some locals are opposed to its installation because it is near a residential area. In her original text, the student touched on the controversy without offering an opinion, saying it was a matter that “couldn’t be ignored.” However, she never got to say those particular words, because after she sent the draft to the head of student affairs, they asked the student if she didn’t mind removing the part about the anti-missile system, since it was a “politically delicate issue.” Thinking her qualification to discuss the matter was insufficient, she decided to leave out any mention of Aegis. Later, the school denied it had pressured her to do so. The head of the university told the Asahi Shimbun that they would never censor anyone. They simply wanted the student to understand there was a wide range of viewpoints in the community. This story illustrates how the media often addresses controversies in an indirect manner. The Aegis Ashore system has been contentious ever since it was proposed by the Defense Ministry and pushed on to two communities — one in Akita Prefecture, the other in Yamaguchi Prefecture — that don’t seem to want it. The government argues that North Korea and China have the ability to strike Japan, so an anti-missile system is needed. However, the discussion in the mainstream media hasn’t gone much further than reports on progress and the occasional pushback from locals. Even when that pushback is covered, it tends to be balanced with uninterrogated reassurances from the authorities. On March 12, the Yamaguchi Shimbun reported on a Defense Ministry survey to measure the amount of electromagnetic radiation given off by the Aegis radar system planned for the GSDF training area in Mutsumi near the town of Abu in Yamaguchi Prefecture. An official from the Chugoku-Shikoku Defense Bureau told the newspaper they wanted to assure residents that the system would cause no health problems. Local opposition was not satisfied with the results of a previous, simulated survey, and the article went into detail about how the field survey would be conducted. Although the newspaper quoted one community leader as saying the survey had “no meaning” and didn’t answer the opposition’s questions, most of the article simply reported the survey results. In contrast, a Tokyo Shimbun story on March 18 about the radiation surveys approached the matter from a public interest perspective, since it was written in the context of taxes and implied that the government has already decided to install the Aegis systems. As a result, the government’s main problem in realizing the project is convincing the media and local residents of its safety. According to the March 18 report in the Tokyo Shimbun, the survey was presumably carried out to show that the government took residents’ concerns seriously. Local opposition was not mollified. The financial aspect of the Aegis Ashore system was discussed in more detail on March 12 by veteran military journalist Shunji Taoka on J-Wave. After denuclearization talks between North Korea and the United States stalled in Hanoi, the government indicated that Aegis Ashore is more necessary than ever, but Taoka said that activity recently detected at a North Korean military site had nothing to do with ballistic missiles. It was about launching satellites, but the media haven’t challenged the government on this point. Taoka dismisses the need for Aegis Ashore, as Japan already has Aegis capabilities on four destroyers in addition to four more on order. These are more effective than land-based deterrence because the ships are moving and thus difficult to attack. However, sea-based Aegis is more expensive than land-based and so the Defense Ministry can sell the Aegis Ashore system to the public by saying it’s cheaper, but that’s not necessarily true. In addition to the Aegis Ashore system, the government has to guarantee GSDF forces to protect the installation. Moreover, the initial cost quoted by the U.S. government, which is selling the system to Japan, doesn’t include the missiles themselves, and what good is an anti-missile system without missiles? The United States is developing new radar technology and Taoka thinks it wants Japan to pay for it. That much is suggested by the terminology used by both sides of the deal. To the U.S. Defense Department, the Aegis Ashore system comes under the heading of “foreign military sales.” In Japan, it’s classified as enjo , or “aid,” which is how you would qualify the anti-missile systems the U.S. supplied to South Korea and Romania for free. Also, there still hasn’t been a clear explanation for why Akita and Yamaguchi were chosen as candidate locations for Aegis Ashore. Taoka argues these locations benefit the United States, since they are directly below the flight paths for missiles launched by North Korea that target Hawaii and Guam, respectively. If Japan wanted to defend Tokyo from incoming missiles, it would make more sense to install the system on the Noto Peninsula in Ishikawa Prefecture. Taoka doesn’t claim the United States demanded these locations, only that the government chose them in order to please its U.S. counterparts, which have demanded that Japan buy more defense systems. Taoka is only one journalist, but he has covered defense issues closely for years from a practical standpoint. Like many government programs, sometimes defense spending is less about national security than about bureaucrats justifying their existence and satisfying vested interests and, until the media considers the Aegis Ashore controversy from that perspective, it will never tell the whole story.
|
defense;akita;yamaguchi;aegis ashore anti-missile system
|
jp0003641
|
[
"national",
"media-national"
] |
2019/04/13
|
Japan searches for remedies at the dawn of the Reiwa Era
|
Japan’s weekly magazines do not consider their primary role to be reporting cheery news. It would be more correct to say their practice is to proceed from a pessimistic perspective and then, after readying readers to rude realities, encourage searches for sustenance and survival, if not salvation. To celebrate the advent of the Reiwa Era from May 1, the government has extended the traditional Golden Week string of holidays and weekends, beginning this year from April 27, to 10 days. Masashi Omuro, an occupational health physician, warns in an interview with Weekly Playboy (April 22) that this celebratory act may not bode well for the nation’s salaried workers. Omuro predicts that the dreaded “May disease” ( gogatsu-byō in Japanese) — the name for a malaise that often strikes weeks after the typically frantic month of April — is likely to be “the worst ever recorded.” May disease, Omuro says, affects both new hires who begin their jobs from the start of the government’s fiscal year in April, as well as regular staff, whose careers may be disrupted by promotions or job transfers. It seems that an extended holiday to come so soon after the start of the new business year can lead to a “collapse” of workers’ physical and mental equilibrium, resulting in anxiety, fatigue and a whole host of physical and psychological ailments. “In past times, while people at Japanese companies may have felt symptoms similar to May disease, they were sustained by various activities on the job and afterward, such as going out together for drinks or playing golf on weekends, or even engaging in matchmaking to help a younger colleague find a prospective marriage partner,” Omuro says. “So while perhaps people confronted pressures or annoyances, at least they didn’t feel lonely. “Now, however, it’s become easy for a new worker to resign just by tapping out a short message via Line or some other SNS app.” With the current worker shortage in Japan, Omuro concedes that people in their 20s who walk away from jobs will face fewer problems to find new ones. “So if they are under the impression that a new job wasn’t what they expected, they just stop going to work.” Last month, American Alex Kerr, a longtime Kyoto resident and author, in collaboration with Yumi Kiyono, published a 220-page book with the Chuo Koron imprint titled “Kanko Bokoku-ron” (“The Theory of National Decline Due to Tourism”). In a wide-ranging interview in the Nikkei Marketing Journal (April 3), Kerr denounced the impact mass tourism is having on Japan’s environment. In 2018, the number of foreign visitors to Japan surpassed 30 million. The annual figure is projected to approach or even exceed 40 million in 2020. Kerr has no problem with France’s Michelin Guidebook rating Tokyo the world’s best in terms of quality dining facilities. On the other hand, he feels tourism is generating distortions and the residents are left to deal with the mess. “The overcrowding at Kyoto’s temples has come to resemble Tokyo’s Yamanote loop line during the rush hour,” he complains. “This is cultural pollution. And, unless controls are enforced, ruin will result. “Look at Japanese manufacturing industries, which were once terrible polluters,” Kerr says. “But they got that under control, and still manage to churn out high-quality products. Japan’s water and air are clean. Tourism should be the same. We have got to impose controls on forms of cultural pollution.” As one means of keeping the number of visitors manageable, Kerr stresses “quality over quantity.” “The fees for museums in Japan are too low,” he remarked. “The best facilities should charge ¥4,000, even ¥5,000 per person. There are lots of people who would even be willing to pay ¥10,000 to climb Mount Fuji.” Now imagine, if you will, patronizing a restaurant that may not only get your order wrong, but may even overlook that you’ve ordered something in the first place. Its name is “Restaurant of Mistaken Orders,” and the eponymous NGO’s English website ( www.mistakenorders.com ) states: “You may think it’s crazy. A restaurant that can’t even get your order right. All our servers are living with dementia. They may, or may not, get your order right.” Shukan Asahi (April 12) carried a two-page report on a one-day operation at the establishment, part of the movement to spread awareness about dementia “and make society … more open-minded and relaxed.” It was held March 10 in the town of Yugawara, Kanagawa Prefecture, at a cafe terrace attached to an art museum. An all-female staff of 18, ranging in age from 71 to 94 years, were residents of care facilities in the town or in the neighboring city of Odawara, and suffer from varying degrees of dementia. Organized in teams of five, they worked 90-minute shifts, serving tofu-based dishes developed offsite by a local specialty restaurant. Each member of the restaurant staff was assigned a worker and a volunteer. To avoid mistakes, the staff reconfirmed orders bearing check marks placed on the menus by customers. This, however, appears to be no assurance that the order will be delivered correctly. Three customers — themselves welfare workers who learned about the event from a locally circulated flyer — were upbeat over their experience nonetheless. “At care facilities, you never see this kind of happy smile,” one remarked, adding “Just being here is enough to cheer us up.” More than 250 patrons came to dine during the one-day event, a larger than anticipated turnout credited to dissemination via social media. Yuji Kawaii, operator of the group home where some of the restaurant workers reside, admits that the name of the establishment may invite misunderstandings. “But once they see the atmosphere and faces of the workers, you can tell the customers become captivated by their warmth,” he told Shukan Asahi.
|
tourism;reiwa era
|
jp0003642
|
[
"national"
] |
2019/04/13
|
Cairo wants to boost its cooperation with Tokyo to aid Africa, Egyptian ambassador says
|
Egypt is hoping to deepen its cooperation with Japan to help African countries improve access to medical care, Ayman Aly Kamel, Cairo’s ambassador to Tokyo, said in a recent interview. Egypt is keenly anticipating its chance to make the proposal as Japan gears up to host the Group of 20 summit in June and the Tokyo International Conference on African Development in October, which Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi will attend, Kamel said. “We have a very close relationship with Japan which allows us to engage in more productive projects that could benefit a great deal our African brothers,” Kamel said on Friday in Tokyo. Just as Egypt has learned from Japanese expertise, Egypt would like to communicate its success story to Africa, he said. Japan is “one of the leading countries” regarding universal health care coverage and medical expertise, Kamel said, while Egypt has a successful track record of combatting tropical and neglected diseases. “We will try to use our experience and knowledge in this field with the help of Japan to benefit other African countries,” he said, noting that they could particularly benefit from close cooperation in promoting health education and the training of professionals to provide medical services. He also suggested establishing mobile hospitals in some remote areas and providing them with necessary equipment and staff training, while expressing his hope that the nations could work together to improve access to pharmaceuticals in underdeveloped areas. Japan’s motivation to provide assistance to Egypt, and African nations more widely, is in some part driven by a wish to rival China’s increasing influence in the continent, facilitated by massive investment programs. The TICAD gathering goes some way to achieving this through its basic principles of “transparency, consistency, and follow-ups,” as outlined by Foreign Minister Taro Kono at a meeting with representatives of 52 African nations last October in Tokyo. However, Kamel said security challenges in some parts of the region may make Japan think twice about its commitment. He stressed that Egypt can provide know-how Tokyo may need when it endeavors to provide financial and technical assistance. With Egypt chairing the African Union this year, Kamel said it is in a good position to coordinate with Japan to foster greater relations with Africa. As strategic partners, Egypt can be Japan’s “gateway” to the region, he said. “The potential of cooperation is very high and we have high hopes in the nature of the coordination that we enjoy,” he said. Kamel is already seeing some of the fruits of the relationship in the education sector. He said educational model developments will also be spread to other African countries, mentioning the Egypt-Japan University of Science and Technology in Alexandria, built through a partnership between the two countries, as a platform to transfer Japanese expertise and technology to Africa and the Middle East.
|
africa;egypt;ticad;interviews;ayman aly kamel
|
jp0003643
|
[
"national",
"crime-legal"
] |
2019/04/13
|
Man arrested in Tokyo for allegedly robbing over 100 cabs by asking for change in advance
|
Tokyo police have arrested a man for allegedly robbing over 100 taxis throughout Japan by asking for change from drivers before paying and then fleeing with the money. The police said Friday that Ryusei Tamayose, a 23-year-old unemployed man with no fixed address, is suspected to have told a cab driver on the night of Oct. 20, upon their arrival in Tokyo’s Shibuya Ward, that he wanted to pay with a ¥10,000 bill but that he wanted to receive his change before exiting the cab to withdraw the money. He also allegedly asked for smaller bills to exchange ¥10,000 and ¥5,000 notes, which he did not have at the time, robbing the driver of a total of ¥20,000 without paying the fare that amounted to ¥5,000. The suspect admitted to the theft, saying he has swindled money out of taxi drivers for the past three years and lived off the cash, according to the police. In order to gain the drivers’ trust, Tamayose often asked them to stop at convenience stores on the way to his destinations and then returned to the cabs, a tactic meant to make them believe he wouldn’t cheat the fare, the investigators said. The police identified him in footage taken from a taxi after a similar incident was reported in February.
|
transportation;theft;taxis;police
|
jp0003644
|
[
"national",
"crime-legal"
] |
2019/04/13
|
Foreign Ministry says U.S. serviceman in Okinawa allegedly stabbed woman to death, then killed himself
|
A U.S. serviceman has fatally stabbed a Japanese woman and then killed himself in Okinawa, according to the Foreign Ministry in Tokyo, amid growing resentment about the presence of American troops in the prefecture. U.S. Forces Japan says the Naval Criminal Investigative Service is working with local police to look into the deaths Saturday of a U.S. Navy sailor assigned to a marine unit, and an Okinawa resident. In a statement it said: “This is an absolute tragedy and we are fully committed to supporting the investigation.” It said more information will be released later. A U.S. Marine Corps official in Okinawa told Kyodo News the man is believed to be a member of the 3rd Marine Division headquartered in the prefecture. According to local police, the 32-year-old marine was believed to be in a relationship with the 44-year-old woman. The police received an emergency call at around 7:25 a.m. and found the two lying on a bed at the woman’s apartment in the town of Chatan. Their deaths were confirmed later at the scene. Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Takeo Akiba telephoned U.S. Ambassador William Hagerty, asking for cooperation with the investigation and efforts to prevent a recurrence, and expressed “extreme regrets,” according to the ministry. Okinawa hosts the bulk of U.S. military facilities in Japan. Local residents have long been frustrated with noise, accidents and crimes linked to the bases there.
|
okinawa;u.s. military;stabbings;police
|
jp0003645
|
[
"business"
] |
2019/04/14
|
Currency manipulation rule to be included in any U.S.-Japan trade talk agreement, treasury secretary says
|
WASHIINGTON - With U.S.-Japan trade talks set to begin Monday in Washington, U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Saturday any agreement will include a requirement to refrain from manipulating currencies to gain an advantage in international trade. But he said there is no arbitrary deadline for completing the talks. The U.S. priority is that countries “don’t in any way manipulate their currency for purposes of competitive advantages,” Mnuchin told reporters on the sidelines of the spring meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer is set to hold two days of talks with economic revitalization minister Toshimitsu Motegi on Monday and Tuesday. Mnuchin said the talks will focus on a “broad agenda.” The U.S. has long argued that China kept its currency artificially low to make its exports cheaper, and negotiators have insisted on a provision on exchange rates in the ongoing trade talks with Beijing. And a clause was included in the revised free trade pact with Mexico and Canada, dubbed United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA). “I think we’ll want to make sure whatever trade agreements there are, that there are currency provisions that reflect that in the agreement similar to USMCA and as we’ve alluded to in our China discussions,” Mnuchin said Saturday.
|
currency;trade talks;u.s.-japan relations;steven mnuchin
|
jp0003646
|
[
"business"
] |
2019/04/14
|
Japanese and Chinese ministers discuss key issues at Beijing economic dialogue meeting
|
BEIJING - Amid a dimming global growth outlook, Japan and China on Sunday held an expanded ministerial meeting focusing on key economic issues ranging from trade and investment to better protection of intellectual property rights. The so-called high-level economic dialogue, co-chaired by Foreign Minister Taro Kono and his Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi, took place in Beijing at a time when the Asian powers are seeking to boost cooperation following years of political tensions. “Economic cooperation between China and Japan is continuously progressing and having a profound impact on the world,” Wang, who is also a state councilor, said at the outset of the meeting. “We should exchange wisdom for the peaceful and stable development of the region and the world.” Kono, who is leading a delegation comprising five other ministers, said, “It goes without saying it’s important that the second- and third-largest economies in the world hold constructive discussions on economic ties.” The dialogue, the first to be held in China since 2010, comes about two months before Chinese President Xi Jinping’s possible visit when Japan hosts this year’s summit of the Group of 20 major economies in Osaka. If realized it will be Xi’s first visit to the country since coming to power in 2013. About 10 ministers from both countries sitting together will search for ways to create a more favorable environment for companies doing business in each other’s country amid worries about an economic slowdown, triggered in part by the ongoing trade war between China and the United States. The trade conflict prompted the International Monetary Fund to say Tuesday that global growth is projected to decline further to 3.3 percent in 2019, down from the 3.5 percent it estimated in January. Japan plans to call on China to crack down on intellectual property theft and forced technology transfers, which Chinese companies have long been accused of by foreign competitors, Japanese officials said. Intellectual property theft was one of U.S. President Donald Trump’s reasons for imposing tariffs on imports from China. Japan is also expected to ask China to lift restrictions on imports of Japanese food, introduced after the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster due to concerns over radioactive contamination. In a blow to Japan’s fishing industry, the World Trade Organization ruled Thursday that South Korea could maintain its import ban on some kinds of Japanese seafood, reversing an earlier decision that called for the prohibition to be lifted. Meanwhile, China may ask Japan to invest in infrastructure projects under Xi’s “One Belt, One Road” development initiative stretching across Asia, the Middle East, Europe and Africa. China could also push Japan to reconsider its decision to exclude telecommunications equipment makers Huawei Technologies Co. and ZTE Corp. from government procurement contracts, amid concerns among some developed countries over security breaches. Trade is also likely to be on the agenda, as economic growth in China slows amid the tariff war with the United States, and with Japan slated to begin trade negotiations in Washington over the next several days, according to the officials. Japan and China have held the economic dialogue since 2007, though there was an eight-year hiatus as relations sank to a low due to a dispute over the Japan-controlled Senkaku Islands and wartime issues. Japan placed the uninhabited islets in the East China Sea under state control in 2012, drawing the ire of China which claims sovereignty over them and calls them Diaoyu. With relations having since improved, the dialogue restarted with the fourth round last April in Tokyo. For the fifth round, Japan is fielding a larger delegation, featuring six members of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s Cabinet. Besides Kono, they are industry minister Hiroshige Seko, farm minister Takamori Yoshikawa, transport minister Keiichi Ishii, Environment Minister Yoshiaki Harada and regulatory reform minister Satsuki Katayama. The Chinese team includes Commerce Minister Zhong Shan and Miao Wei, minister of industry and information technology. Kono is scheduled to hold separate meetings with Premier Li Keqiang and Wang on Monday.
|
trade;china-japan relations;foreign minister taro kono
|
jp0003647
|
[
"world",
"crime-legal-world"
] |
2019/04/14
|
Julian Assange's lawyer says WikiLeaks founder will cooperate with Sweden, but fight extradition to U.S.
|
LONDON - WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange would cooperate with Swedish authorities if they reopen a rape case against him but will continue to resist any bid to extradite him to the United States, his lawyer said Sunday. “We are absolutely happy to answer those queries if and when they come up,” Jennifer Robinson told Sky News television about the rape claims. “The key issue at the moment is U.S. extradition, which we have warned about for many years,” she added. Assange is in custody in London awaiting sentencing for breaching his British bail conditions in 2012 by seeking refuge in Ecuador’s London embassy to avoid extradition to Sweden. He was arrested at the embassy last Thursday after Ecuador gave him up, and is now also fighting a U.S. extradition warrant relating to the release by WikiLeaks of a huge cache of official documents. The Australian has always denied the claims of sexual assault and rape in Sweden. The first expired in 2015 and the other was dropped in 2017, but the alleged rape victim has now asked for the case to be reopened. If Stockholm makes a formal extradition request, the British government will have to decide whether to consider it before or after that of the United States. Robinson said Assange would seek assurances from Sweden that he would not be sent on to America, saying: “That is the same assurance we were seeking in 2010 and the refusal to give that is why he sought asylum.” She added: “He’s not above the law. Julian has never been concerned about facing British justice or indeed Swedish justice. This case is and has always been about his concern about being sent to face American injustice.” The U.S. indictment charges Assange with “conspiracy” for working with former U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to crack a password stored on Department of Defense computers in March 2010. He faces up to five years in jail. Manning passed hundreds of thousands of classified documents to WikiLeaks, exposing U.S. military wrongdoing in the Iraq war and diplomatic secrets about scores of countries around the world. The conspiracy charge against Assange seems intended to sidestep limits on prosecution potentially arising from the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment guarantee of press freedom. But Robinson insisted: “This indictment clearly engages newsgathering activities and the kinds of communications that journalists have with sources all the time.” The lawyer condemned as “outrageous” claims made by Ecuador about Assange’s behavior in the embassy, including that he smeared his feces on the wall, saying, “That’s not true.” Quito also accused him of failing to care for his cat. WikiLeaks said Assange had asked his lawyers to “rescue him (the cat) from embassy threats” in October, adding: “They will be reunited in freedom.” Assange’s father, John Shipton, on Sunday urged Australia to bring his son home.
|
u.s .;u.k .;ecuador;julian assange;wikileaks
|
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