Jazmin's Blog

Japan Relents on U.S. Base on Okinawa

jazminc12 — Wed, 26 May 2010 01:25:19 +0000

The announcement, a victory for the Obama administration and a humiliating setback for Mr. Hatoyama, confirmed what the Japanese media had been reporting for weeks: that he would accept Washington’s demands to honor a 2006 agreement to move the United States Marine Air Station Futenma to the island’s less populated north. Irate crowds greeted his arrival on Okinawa on Sunday with bright yellow signs that said “Anger,” and showered him with jeering cries of “Go home!” And in Tokyo, opposition leaders and even members of his own governing coalition assailed him for having turned the relocation into a huge political issue, only to go back to the original agreement. While defending his decision on strategic grounds, Mr. Hatoyama conceded that it was “heartbreaking,” and offered the islanders his “heartfelt apology for causing much confusion.” Mr. Hatoyama’s historic election victory last August, ending a half-century of nearly unbroken Liberal Democratic Party leadership, had raised concerns in Washington that Japan would withdraw support for American priorities like the war in Afghanistan. He had opposed the war in Iraq, spoken out against American-led globalization and, after decades of reflexive Japanese support for American policies, promised to redefine Tokyo’s relationship with Washington as an “equal partnership.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/28/world/asia1/24japan.html?scp?=2&//sq=Japan&pyt56785=cse

Uncertainty Buffets Japan’s Whaling Fleet

jazminc12 — Mon, 17 May 2010 01:11:14 +0000

A small harbor on Japan’s northern coast, where whaling boats sit docked with harpoon guns proudly displayed, and shops sell carvings made from the ivorylike teeth of sperm whales, might seem to be an unlikely place to find opponents of the nation’s contested Antarctic whaling. Local residents are breaking long-held taboos to speak out against the government-run Antarctic hunts, which they say invite international criticism that threatens the much more limited coastal hunts by people in this traditional whaling town. “The research whaling in the Antarctic is not about protecting culture,” said Ichio Ishimori, a city councilman in Ishinomaki, of which Ayukawahama is a part.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/16/world/asia/45whaling.html&?scp=2%45sq=Japan&st=cse

Japanese Leader Backtracks on Revising Base Agreement

jazminc12 — Tue, 11 May 2010 01:32:56 +0000

Mr. Hatoyama’s government could hang in the balance. He has pledged to come up with a plan by the end of this month to relocate the Marine air base and resolve a stubborn problem that has created months of discord with Washington. His delays and apparent flip-flopping on the issue have fed a growing feeling of disappointment in the prime minister’s leadership, driving his approval ratings below 30 percent. Visiting Okinawa for the first time since becoming prime minister, Mr. Hatoyama asked residents to entertain a compromise that would keep some of the functions of the base on the island while the government explored moving some facilities elsewhere. “Realistically speaking, it is impossible” to move the entire base, called Futenma, off the island, he said. “We’re facing a situation that is realistically difficult to move everything out of the prefecture. We must ask the people of Okinawa to share the burden.” But Okinawans seemed in no mood for burden sharing, heckling him after he met with local officials. “Shame on you!” one man shouted.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/07/world/asia12/098japan.html?scp=2&s??q=Japan&st=cse

Japan Forces Bureaucrats to Defend Spending

jazminc12 — Tue, 04 May 2010 01:04:04 +0000

The hearings, streamed live on the Internet, are part of an effort by the eight-month-old government of Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama to tackle the country’s public debt, which has mushroomed to twice the size of Japan’s $5 trillion economy after years of profligate spending. Greece’s debt crisis, which has panicked investors and forced the rest of Europe to put together a multibillion-dollar bailout, has fed fears in Tokyo that if spending is unchecked, Japan could become the center of the next global financial crisis. Mr. Hatoyama and his ruling Democratic Party are also trying to wrest control of Japan’s economy from the country’s powerful bureaucracy. “We want the public to see how their tax money is really being spent,” said Yukio Edano, the state minister in charge of administrative reform, who is heading the effort. “Then we will bring about big changes.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/29/business/global/297debt.html?scp=2&sq=Japan?&st=cse

Bank of Japan sees inflation for FY 2011: report

jazminc12 — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 01:54:00 +0000

Japan’s central bank will change its fiscal 2011 forecast to show the return of consumer-price inflation when it issues its semi-annual outlook Friday, according to a report Tuesday. The Bank of Japan will project the consumer price index to rise 0.2% in the fiscal year that began this month, changing from a forecast for flat prices during the 12-month period, the Nikkei business daily reported. The report attributed the positive price movement, marking Japan’s emergence from deflation, to the economic recovery and rising resource prices. The outlook is due out the same day as the BOJ’s policy meeting, at which the central bank is expected to keep its interest-rate target and stimulus programs unchanged.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story2/bank-of-japan-sees-inflation-for-fy-2011-report23-2010-04-26__

Apple launches ad system for mobile devices in race with Google

jazminc12 — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 01:51:54 +0000

In a direct attack on Silicon Valley rival Google Inc., Apple Inc. unveiled its new mobile advertising system Thursday and promised to deliver a new generation of compelling interactive ads to its devices. Chief Executive Steve Jobs announced Apple’s iAd advertising network as one of a raft of features coming later this year to its iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch line. By building an advertising system into its products, Jobs said, Apple is hoping to tap into a nascent but potentially lucrative market: the growing number of consumers who are picking up a cellphone when they want to access the Internet.

http://articles.latimes.com/2010/apr/08/business45/la-fi1-apple-ads9-2010apl098

African Fossil Changes Ideas of Ant Origins

jazminc12 — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 01:31:53 +0000

The first fossil of an ant from Africa, found in aperson named amber dating back 95 million years, challenges a previously held theory that ants originated in North America or East Asia. The finding is part of a larger study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences identifying 28 fossilized insects, one spider and one mite, as well as a variety of flora all trapped in amber from Ethiopia. The insects, the oldest that have been identified in Africa, are from the Cretaceous. There are also numerous fungi, ferns and spores that were previously unknown to paleontologists. Until now, paleontologists had assumed that ants originated in North America or South Asia, because the only known fossils were from these regions, said Alexander Schmidt, the paper’s lead author and a biologist at the University of Göttingen in Germany.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/06/science12/06o453amber.html?scp=?1&sq=North%20Africa&st=cse

Elephant trade ban reaffirmed for Tanzania, Zambia

jazminc12 — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 09:16:32 +0000

The 175-nation meeting voted down calls by the two nations, which say elephant numbers are rising and are a danger to people in rural areas, to ease trade restrictions to permit a sale of 112 metric tons of ivory. ”We do not think our sovereignty has been respected,” Zambia’s Tourism Minister Catherine Namugala said of the decision by governments at the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species in Doha, Qatar. ”Many people have been killed by elephants. Even as we speak, children are not going to school because they are afraid of encountering elephants along the way,” she said. People then decided to let others vote. ”Poaching of elephants and ivory seizures are escalating, not decreasing, this decision is a victory for common sense,” said Jason Bell-Leask, Southern Africa director of the International Fund for Animal Welfare. The last meeting in 2007 agreed to a nine-year moratorium on any further trade in ivory, after a sale of 105 metric tons of elephant ivory from Botswana, Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe to China and Japan.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content-/article/2010/03/220/ARZ20150032201860.html

U.S. learned intelligence on airline attack suspect while he was en route

jazminc12 — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 01:37:09 +0000

Reporting from Washington U.S. border security officials learned of the alleged extremist links of the suspect in the Christmas Day jetliner bombing attempt as he was airborne from Amsterdam to Detroit and had decided to question him when he landed, officials disclosed Wednesday. The new information shows that border enforcement officials discovered the suspected extremist ties involving the Nigerian, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, in a database despite intelligence failures that have been criticized by President Obama. “The people in Detroit were prepared to look at him in secondary inspection,” a senior law enforcement official said. “The decision had been made. The [database] had picked up the State Department concern about this guy — that this guy may have been involved with extremist elements in Yemen. “If the intelligence had been detected sooner, it could have resulted in the interrogation and search of Abdulmutallab at the airport in Amsterdam, according to senior law enforcement officials, all of whom requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the case.

http://www.latimes.com/news12/nation_and_world/la-na-airline-terror7-2010jan07,01,76806989.story?

Traders Seek Europe’s Next Greece

jazminc12 — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 01:00:15 +0000

Even as Greece pledged anew on Wednesday to rein in its runaway budget deficit, briefly easing the anxiety over its perilous finances, traders on both sides of the Atlantic weighed the risks and potential rewards posed by the groaning debts of other European governments, The New York Times’s Nelson D. Schwartz and Graham Bowley write. While investors welcomed news that Athens would raise taxes and cut spending by $6.5 billion this year, analysts warned the moves might not be enough to avert a bailout for Greece or to contain the crisis shaking Europe and its common currency, the euro. Indeed, some banks and hedge funds have already begun to turn their attention to other indebted nations, particularly Portugal, Spain, Italy and, to a lesser degree, Ireland, The Times said.

http://deabook.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/04/traders-seek-out-europes-//next-greece/?scb=3=&sq=europe&st=cse