Random Japan

FAMOUS FIRSTS

• Japanese researchers have succeeded in using gene therapy to restore the memory of mice suffering from Alzheimer’s disease.
• Scientists led by a professor at Toyama College have found that the internal organs of firefly squids “contain a substance that helps reduce liver fat.”
• Researchers in Mie have discovered a new mineral—called Vanadoallanite-(La), if you must know—that contains rare-earth materials.
• An orchestra from quake-hit Sendai completed its first foreign tour since 3/11. The group visited Russia to show “appreciation for Russian relief activities.”

Teacher Suspended For 

Lying Down On The Job

Golden Week

Is Crushing Us.

Back-up The Car

Flee With The Jewelry 

NATIONAL

Japan tried to buy isles before Soviet collapse: Ozawa

JIJI

Japan tried to buy the four disputed islands off Hokkaido from the former Soviet Union as proposed by an aide to then-President Mikhail Gorbachev, opposition leader Ichiro Ozawa said Saturday.

On an Internet program, Ozawa said that when he was secretary general of the Liberal Democratic Party, then in power at the time, he was approached by an aide to the Soviet leader with an offer to return the islands to Japan for money.

Ozawa, now leader of Seikatsu no To (People’s Life Party), said that he got the Finance Ministry to disburse “some trillion yen” and later visited Moscow.

Six In The Morning

On Sunday

Israel strikes Syrian military research center, US official says


By Robert Windrem, Jim Miklaszewski and Andrea Mitchell, NBC News
Israeli jets bombed a military research facility north of Damascus early Sunday, a senior official told NBC News -- the second Israeli attack on targets in Syria in recent days. Heavy explosions shook the city, and video shot by activists showed a fireball rising into the sky after Sunday's strikes, according to Reuters. Syrian media also reported that the target was the Jamraya military research center, which Israel hit in January, Reuters said. The center is about 10 miles from the Lebanese border. Reuters reported that a Western intelligence source said the operation hit Iranian-supplied missiles that were en route to the Hezbollah militia in Lebanon.

Exclusive: Syrian aid in crisis as Gulf states renege on promises
Food rationing for refugees planned as $650m pledged to UN remains undelivered

JAMES CUSICK SUNDAY 05 MAY 2013
Millions of Syrian refugees face food rationing and cutbacks to critical medical programmes because oil-rich Gulf states have failed to deliver the funding they promised for emergency humanitarian aid, an investigation by The Independent on Sunday has found. Arab states and aid groups, including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Bahrain, have failed to deliver $650m (£420m) in pledges they made at an emergency United Nations conference in Kuwait four months ago.

Expats take their vote home for opposition
May 5, 2013

Lindsay Murdoch South-East Asia correspondent for Fairfax Media
William de Cruz felt a buzz of excitement when he arrived in Kuala Lumpur from Sydney two weeks ago, one of the first in a wave of expatriate Malaysians who have come home to vote. ''There was an expectation of change in the most critical election in my country's history,'' he said. But Mr de Cruz said the mood among supporters of opposition parties led by former deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim has swung to disappointment in the final days of campaigning. ''Overwhelmingly people want change but the odds stacked against the opposition appear insurmountable,'' he said, referring to alleged vote buying, a gerrymander, hundreds of millions of dollars in hand-outs, intimidation, violence, anti-opposition propaganda in the media and the mass movement of voters into tightly contested states.

China's 'master plan' debunked
China has committed $75-billion to aid and development projects in Africa over the past ­decade, research shows.

03 MAY 2013 10:18 - RICH HARRIS, CLAIRE PROVOST
It also reveals the scale of what some have called Beijing's escalating ­soft-power "charm offensive" to secure political and economic clout on the continent. The Chinese government releases very little information on its foreign aid activities, which remain state secrets. In one of the most ambitious attempts to date to chip away at this secrecy, United States researchers have launched the largest public database of Chinese development finance in Africa, detailing nearly 1700 projects in 50 countries between 2000 and 2011.

Hundreds protest against China chemical plant
More than 200 demonstrate in southwestern city of Kunming against proposed factory that will produce toxic chemical.


Hundreds of people have protested against a proposed chemical plant in southwest China, state media said, while residents in another city accused authorities of preventing a similar protest. More than 200 demonstrators gathered in the city of Kunming on Saturday to protest plans for a factory which will produce paraxylene (PX), a toxic petrochemical used to make fabrics, China's official Xinhua news agency reported. About 1,000 people described as "onlookers" surrounded the protesters, some of whom wore face-masks and held banners, the report said, adding that police "dissuaded" a protester from displaying a banner.

Bahrain's medics politicised by crisis


By Bill Law BBC News
A group of Bahraini health workers have found themselves on the frontlines of a battle over medical neutrality as the aftershocks of the Arab Spring continue to rumble through the Gulf island kingdom. In theory, medical neutrality is a simple concept: physicians must be allowed to care for the sick and wounded; soldiers must receive care regardless of their political affiliations; and all parties must refrain from attacking and misusing medical facilities, transport, and personnel. Violations constitute a crime under the Geneva Conventions. But for the medics who have been caught up in the unrest that swept Bahrain since February 2011, what is a simple principle has become a far more complex and sometimes terrifying dilemma.

Desert heat: World Cup hosts Qatar face scrutiny over 'slavery` accusations

Zahir Belounis has spent the best part of the last two years without wages, a club or any prospect of returning home but the French Algerian footballer now faces his immediate future without the most basic of commodities.

Food.

"I will stop food, a hunger strike, I want to do that," explained the 33-year-old striker.

"It's going to start next week. They treat me like a dog but I will fight. I will die here in Qatar," he said in an interview with CNN last week.

Belounis, who had played in the lower reaches of French football, now plays for the Qatari first division club El Jaish, the army club.

The so called Kafala system -- which ties employees to a specific employer -- has, according to Human Rights Watch and the International Trade Union Confederation, been open to systematic abuse and created a de facto form of slavery for the more than one million migrant workers living within its borders.

"Qatar has been quite successful at giving off a progressive image when, in fact, the [labor] system is exploitative," said Nicholas McGeehan of Human Rights Watch.

Bangladesh building collapse: safety fears grow as death toll mounts-video

Clothes workers in Bangladesh say the recent building collapse in Dhaka has made them concerned for their own safety. The accident has also highlighted the low wages many in Bangladesh's clothes industry receive, which one worker says can amount to £33 per month. The death toll from the collapse of the Rana Plaza, which housed factories and clothes merchants, has passed 500 and is still rising

What's difficult to believe is that this a-hole thought it was no problem that those people were killed. After all they live in Bangladesh.

SIx In The Morning

Guantanamo detainee says prison 'shakedown' sparked hunger strike

An Afghan gives a detailed account of prison conditions in a declassified affidavit. He says U.S. guards in a February raid confiscated detainees' personal items and roughly handled Korans.

By Richard A. Serrano, Los Angeles Times

May 4, 2013

WASHINGTON — Obaidullah, an Afghan villager captured with diagrams of improvised bombs, has marked nearly 11 years as a detainee at the U.S. naval base on Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Three months ago, outraged by what he called another prison "shakedown," he joined a hunger strike there, and now is locked in solitary confinement with at least 100 fellow detainees.

"I have seen men who are on the verge of death being taken away to be force-fed," Obaidullah said in a federal court affidavit declassified Friday. "I have also seen some men coughing up blood, being hospitalized, losing consciousness, becoming weak and fatigued."

Self-styled heir to Robespierre hopes to mobilise 100,000 to retake Bastille

Jean-Luc Mélenchon says demonstration will be a ‘show of strength’ against President François Hollande

Lara Marlowe

Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the MEP and founder of the parti de gauche (party of the left), chose tomorrow to stage his “citizens’ march for the sixth republic” because it is the 224th anniversary of the estates-general – the beginning of the 1789 revolution.

Mélenchon is the self-styled modern-day incarnation of the revolutionary leader Robespierre. He hopes to mobilise “more than 100,000 people” on – where else? – the Place de la Bastille. The demonstration will be a “show of strength” against President François Hollande and what Mélenchon calls the “government of thieves”.

SOUTH ASIA

Generators a possible cause of Bangladesh factory collapse

The head of a Bangladeshi government committee investigating last week's factory collapse near Dhaka has said generators may have caused the disaster. Chancellor Merkel, meanwhile, has appealed for improved standards.

Politician Mainuddin Khandkar, who's leading a parliamentary inquiry into how a clothing factory near Dhaka collapsed and killed more than 500 people, said on Friday that four large power generators high in the building might have prompted the tragedy. He said his committee's full report would soon be submitted to Bangladesh's government.

Kenya truth commission 'will recommend prosecutions'

A long-awaited report investigating violence and human rights abuses in Kenya will recommend some prosecutions, one of its authors has told the BBC

Ahmed Sheikh Farah said the Truth Reconciliation and Justice Commission had looked at past injustices going back to independence in 1963.

It was set up following deadly post-election clashes five years ago.

Mr Farah said the report would be published once it was formally handed over to new President Uhuru Kenyatta.

Debate over Easter greetings roil Egypt’s sensitive religious tension

By Nancy A. Youssef | McClatchy Foreign Staff

 CAIRO —  As Egypt prepares to celebrate Orthodox Easter this weekend, controversial comments by a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood have sparked debate over whether supporters of Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi, who rose to prominence through the group, can wish their Christian countrymen “Happy Easter” without being considered un-Islamic.

The latest flare-up between Morsi supporters and Egypt’s minority Christian communities has renewed fears that a democratic Egypt does not welcome its largest religious minority and that Morsi is not a national figure but an Islamist one.

Obama in Mexico: Little talk of human rights

The US has noted Mexico's 'significant human rights-related problems' in the past, but some say it and the Mexican government haven't done enough to encourage change.

By Lauren Villagran, Correspondent

MEXICO CITY

It didn’t appear to get much play in the meeting between presidents, but civil society organizations in Mexico and the United States say they hope human rights will be higher on the bilateral agenda than they have in recent years. 

Making respect for human rights central to the US-Mexico security strategy is a critical issue for those who have suffered at the hands of soldiers, police, investigators, and other authorities here.

Abuses mounted over the past six years, as the Mexican government deployed the military to police communities wracked by drug-related violence. The US has recognized Mexico's shortcomings on human rights, but some say it and the Mexican government haven't done enough to encourage change.

Israel launches airstrikes into Syria, possibly targeting delivery systems for chemical weapons, U.S. officials say

By Jim Miklaszewski and Andrea Mitchell, NBC News

Israeli warplanes launched airstrikes against targets inside Syria on Friday, U.S. officials told NBC News.

It’s believed the primary target was a shipment of weapons headed for Hezbollah in Lebanon, they said. A senior U.S. official said the airstrikes were believed to be related to delivery systems for chemical weapons.

An Israeli spokesman in Washington said that Israel would not comment on the reports but said that “Israel is determined to prevent the transfer of chemical weapons or other game-changing weaponry by the Syrian regime to terrorists, especially to Hezbollah in Lebanon.” 

Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon publicly acknowledged the January airstrike inside Syria in a joint press conference with Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel in Tel Aviv on April 22. Ya’alon said any Syrian delivery of sophisticated weapons to rogue elements like Hezbollah would be a “red line” for Israel and “when they crossed this red line, we operated. We acted.”

China: The Dramatic Rise-video

Although no other country in history has risen so quickly from poverty to prosperity as China has, for many in the world's most populous nation, those advances have come at a price.

The economic reforms that made the People's Republic's rise possible have also led to a harshly divided China. Divisions whose impacts could easily spread from disenfranchised indviduals to threaten the economic growth contemporary Chinese society has come to be based upon.

In the opening episode of this four-part series, we tell the stories behind these divisions, from the rising urban middle class to impoverished rural areas and the precarious existence of hundreds of millions of migrant workers on the fringes of some of the world's fastest growing cities.