N. KOREA: Nimble Agencies Sneak News Out of North Korea

Sohn Kwang-joo, chief editor of Daily NK, in his office in Seoul.  Jean Chung for the International Herald Tribune

Published: January 24, 2010

By CHOE SANG-HUN

SEOUL — For a journalist who helped break one of the biggest stories out of North Korea in the past year, Mun Seong-hwi keeps an extremely low profile. The name he offers is an alias. He does not reveal what he did in North Korea before his defection in 2006, aside from mention of a “desk job,” in order to protect relatives left behind.

Ha Tae-keung, president of Open Radio for North Korea, talked to a North Korean refugee stringer in China from his office in Seoul.  Jean Chung for the International Herald Tribune

He also maintains a wall of secrecy around his three “underground stringers” in North Korea, who he says do not know he works for Daily NK, an Internet news service based in Seoul and reviled by Pyongyang.

On Nov. 30, quoting Mr. Mun’s and other anonymous “sources inside North Korea,” Daily NK reported that, starting that day, the North Korean government would radically devalue its currency, requiring people to exchange their old bank notes for new at a rate of 100 to 1. Furthermore, there would be limit on how much of this old money people could turn in for new.

The report, which made headlines around the world and was later confirmed by South Korean officials, had far-reaching implications. It meant, among other things, that the North Korean government was cracking down on the country’s nascent free markets, wiping out much of the wealth private entrepreneurs had accumulated by trading goods at a time when the Communist government’s ration system was failing to meet its people’s basic needs.

“I take pride in my work,” Mr. Mun, a man in his early 40s with brooding eyes and a receding hairline, said in an interview. “I help the outside world see North Korea as it is.”

Daily NK is one of six news outlets that have emerged in recent years specializing in collecting information from North Korea. These Web sites or newsletters hire North Korean defectors and cultivate sources inside a country shrouded in a near-total news blackout.

While North Korea shutters itself from the outside — it blocks the Internet, jams foreign radio broadcasts and monitors international calls — it releases propaganda-filled dispatches through the government’s mouthpiece, the Korean Central News Agency.

But, thanks to Daily NK and the other services, it is also possible now for outsiders to read a dizzying array of “heard-in-North Korea” reports, many on topics off limits for public discussion in the North, like the health of the country’s leader, Kim Jong-il.

The reports are sketchy at best, covering small pockets of North Korea society. Many prove wrong, contradict each other or remain unconfirmed. But they have also produced important scoops, like the currency devaluation and a recent outbreak of swine flu in North Korea. The mainstream media in South Korea now regularly quote these cottage-industry news services.

“Technology made this possible,” said Sohn Kwang-joo, the chief editor of Daily NK. “We infiltrate the wall of North Korea with cellphones.”

Over the past decade, the North’s border with China has grown more porous as famine drove many North Koreans out in search of food and an increasing traffic in goods — and information — developed. A new tribe of North Korean merchants negotiates smuggling deals with Chinese partners, using Chinese cellphones that pick up signals inside the North Korean border.

These phones have become a main tool of communication for many of the 17,000 North Korean defectors living in the South trying to re-establish contact with their families and friends in the North.

Mr. Sohn, a former reporter with the mainstream daily newspaper Dong-A in Seoul, has South Korean “correspondents” near the China-North Korea border.

These volunteers, many of them pro-democracy advocates during their student years, secretly meet North Koreans traveling across the border and recruit underground stringers. The volunteers use business visas, or sometimes pretend to be students or tourists.

“It’s dangerous work, and it takes one or two years to recruit one,” Mr. Sohn said.

In the past year, the quality of the information these news services provide has improved as they have hired more North Korean intellectuals and former officials who defected to the South and still have friends in elite circles in the North, said Ha Tae-keung, a former student activist who runs Open Radio for North Korea and a Web site.

“These officials provide news because they feel uncertain about the future of their regime and want to have a link with the outside world, or because of their friendship with the defectors working for us, or because of money,” said Mr. Ha, who also goes by his English name, Young Howard.

All these news outlets pay their informants. Mr. Ha pays a bonus for significant scoops. Daily NK and Open Radio each have 15 staff members, some of them defectors, and receive U.S. congressional funding through the National Endowment for Democracy, as well as support from other public and private sources.

Recently, they have been receiving tips from North Koreans about corrupt officials.

“The fact that news comes out through civic groups like ours means that North Korean society is changing fast,” said Pomnyun Sumin, a Buddhist monk and chairman of Good Friends, a relief group based in Seoul whose newsletter broke the swine flu story last month.

Some informants have become so adept with technology that they send text-messages, audio files and photos to Seoul by cell phone, said Kim Heung-gwang, a former North Korean computer scientist who heads North Korea Intellectuals Solidarity, a group of defectors that runs a news Web site.

Bringing news out of North Korea is risky. Mr. Kim said that one of his informants was stopped last May while trying to smuggle out a video in a small camera hidden in a cosmetics bottle. She is believed to have killed herself in police detention, he said.

“You wonder whether they should let their sources take such risks,” Chang Yong-hoon, who covers North Korea for the mainstream news agency Yonhap, said at a recent forum on the news services. “They’ve produced as many erroneous reports as they have real scoops.”

Kang Chol-hwan, a former North Korean prison camp inmate who now writes for the mainstream daily Chosun, said there are “information brokers” in North Korea who sell exaggerated and fake news to outside media. Lee Chan-ho, a chief analyst at the South Korean government’s Unification Ministry, warned that the “flood of raw, unconfirmed reports” complicates the effort to understand the North.

Mr. Ha, of Open Radio for North Korea, conceded that point: “Because our sources have never been trained in journalism, exaggeration is a problem for us. Some demand more money for information. We try to cross-check our reports as much as possible.”

Mr. Mun of Daily NK sends his stringers 1,000 Chinese renminbi, or about $150, every two or three months. They call him once a week at a designated time. They find a place where they feel safe from the North Korean police patrolling with equipment that detects cell phone users, and dial. In Seoul, Mr. Mun hears the ring tone, then calls back and talks for about half an hour. After the call, his stringers hang up and hide their phones until the next call.

Recently, with so many developments in the North, they have been calling him at unscheduled times, for instance, when he was in the subway.

“I have to rush off and call back quickly,” Mr. Mun said. “If I don’t within five minutes, he’ll turn off and I’ll lose him.”

There is another strict rule.

“We don’t know, and never ask, each other’s real name,” Mr. Mun said. “That’s safer for them. Their safety is my biggest concern.”

A version of this article appeared in print on January 25, 2010, in The International Herald Tribune.

View Article in The New York Times

CHINA: Countdown to Shanghai World Expo begins

A worker is dwarfed by the Chinese pavilion at the World Expo 2010 site in Shanghai

By Pascale Trouillaud (AFP) – 22 hours ago

SHANGHAI — Less than 100 days before the World Expo opens in Shanghai, armies of workers wearing yellow and orange hard-hats are buzzing around a huge muddy site where the pavilions are far from finished.

But officials say preparations are on track for the massive six-month event, which is due to bring at least 70 million visitors streaming into China's biggest city from May 1.

"We're confident as we've been working on this for eight years," said Xu Bo, assistant commissioner general at the World Expo.

"Right now 90 percent of the structural work is finished and now we're starting interior work."

Less than two years after China successfully hosted the Beijing Olympics, Expo 2010 will offer the Asian giant a new opportunity to impress the world, and organisers promise the event will be record-breaking.

The site is the biggest ever for an Expo and it will welcome a record 192 participating countries and 50 international organisations, along with the mammoth number of visitors, most of them Chinese.

A worker walks past a structure of the expo boulevard at the World Expo 2010 site in Shanghai

"The Expo is a sign of power, and for us it's a very strong symbol," Xu said about the first Expo to be held in a developing country, funded by a budget of more than four billion dollars.

China has also allocated 14 billion dollars for new highways, subway lines, road repairs and the renovation of many districts in Shanghai -- a figure that does not even include the expansion of the city's Pudong airport.

"Shanghai has become a permanent building site," said Xu.

Authorities also shut down 272 "very polluting" factories, one shipyard and relocated 60,000 residents to make way for the vast Expo site on the banks of the Huangpu River.

Welders, masons, electricians and plumbers are now stepping up their efforts to transform the site still full of mounds of earth, bricks and cables into a field of Expo dreams, full of national pavilions with bold designs.

Countdown to Shanghai World Expo begins

The British pavilion looks like a giant ball of acrylic rods, Poland's construction brings to mind intricately cut paper and Germany's is built at sharp angles.

The French pavilion opposite is cloaked in a concrete fishnet, while Switzerland's will see visitors ride chair lifts on the building's grassy roof.

Japan, meanwhile, has chosen a kind of purple turtle, the Netherlands a bright yellow tulip, Romania a big green ball and Finland a huge white bowl.

The biggest of all is China's main national pavilion -- a large, red inverted pyramid that can be seen from far away and which Xu says represents "wisdom, wealth and harmony."

And China's Expo performance centre, which looks like a flying saucer, can house an audience of up to 18,000 people.

"Better city, better life" -- organisers hope the Shanghai Expo will allow for reflection on the idea of long-lasting and green urbanisation and are putting the emphasis on energy-saving.

Buildings are demolished in Shanghai as the city is developed

On the as-yet-unfinished "Expo Boulevard," huge trumpet-shaped structures will soak up the sun's rays to light up galleries and catch the rain to water the green areas.

The separate Chinese theme pavilion, which will host exhibitions during the Expo, is covered in solar panels, visitor shuttles are electric and all the lighting used to illuminate the building at night is energy-efficient.

As the start of the Expo nears, 18 million tickets have already been sold -- more than expected at this stage.

With organisers planning for peaks of 800,000 to one million visitors a day, security is a major headache for authorities -- more than it was for the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing as the Expo will last six months.

"We will try to limit the number of visitors some days," said Xu, who added that China "wants foreigners to come" when asked about the possibility of visa restrictions such as those implemented during the Beijing Games.

Foreigners are expected to account for five percent of total visitors, or at least 3.5 million people.

At the French pavilion, marketing director Franck Serrano said he hoped to attract 10 percent of visitors.

View AFP Article

JAPAN: Suicides in Japan above 30,000 for 12th year in 2009

Jan 25 09:39 PM US/Eastern

Associated Press

TOKYO, Jan. 26 (AP) - (Kyodo)—The number of suicides in Japan increased again in 2009, staying above 30,000 for the 12th straight year, the National Police Agency said Tuesday in a preliminary report.

The tally totaled 32,753 in the reporting year, the fifth largest on record and up 504 from 2008 when it fell by 844 from the year before. It has remained over 30,000 since 1998.

Men accounted for 23,406 of the total and women 9,347.

The rise apparently reflected the economic slump as the number of monthly suicides topped 3,000 from March to May in line with the tendency of people with economic problems to commit suicide around the time a business year ends. Most Japanese companies close books on March 31.

View Article on Breitbart

RUSSIA: Russia museum of democracy more mausoleum

Museum director Olga Bozhchenko shows a photo of Putin comforting Sobchak's widow. The museum, formally the Anatoly Sobchak Museum of the Foundation of Democracy in Modern Russia, is punctuated with glimpses of Putin at various events. (Sergei Loiko / Los Angeles Times / January 23, 2010)

January 24, 2010

Dedicated to a late St. Petersburg mayor, Anatoly Sobchak, and the 'foundation of democracy,' the museum in effect is a chronicle of its dismantling at the hands of his protege, Vladimir Putin.

By Megan K. Stack

Reporting from St. Petersburg, Russia - Bring up the topic of democracy in modern Russia with the director of the Anatoly Sobchak Museum of the Foundation of Democracy in Modern Russia, and she blanches.

"I'm not a connoisseur of politics," Olga Bozhchenko says apologetically.

And then, "I emphasize the past, not the present. It's more interesting for me. It's not that it's inappropriate. It's just -- I -- I have nothing to say."

She is a young woman, dressed all in black, with thick black-framed glasses, a gold cross at her throat and a blond ponytail down her back, presiding over a museum about current events that exists detached from current events.

The museum was created, Bozhchenko says, "to overcome the negative attitudes of society toward democracy."  "What's happening now in the country, people don't like democracy and they connect it to negative things."

What negative things are those? She stammers for a moment.

"They blame democracy for a lot of things," she finally says.

"They blame it for the lack of correct laws. Now, as for the museum. . . ." And with that, she readjusts her posture and her heels begin to click over the floors once more.

Democracy in Russia: Subject of scholars, dream of reformers, bane of traditionalists. Sought, claimed and tussled over for the last two decades.  And, finally, relegated to a museum.

Buried in the depths of a gloomy palace, wedged alongside offices of state-controlled television, this modest collection of artifacts named with trademark Russian brevity somewhat inadvertently sketches a startlingly keen picture of civic affairs in the great sprawl of Russia.

A trickle of visitors (fewer than two dozen a day) are confronted with a documentary trail of the great shaking-off of communism and the emergence of the little-known men who would grab the country in their hands and fashion, piece by piece, the features of a fledgling democracy.

The walls and display cases groan with newspaper clippings, telegrams and black-and-white snapshots. Campaign posters and speeches. The empty wine bottle from the dark night of some forgotten crisis. Slogans and more slogans.

"Better death than slavery."

"We don't need paradise at gunpoint."

"Let's hit communism with perestroika."

On the surface, it's a museum about Sobchak, the iconic late mayor of St. Petersburg who saw the Soviet Union crumble, helped write Russia's constitution and ran the country's second city into the mid-1990s.

But the exhibits are punctuated with glimpses of Vladimir Putin, who has presided at the head of Russian power for a decade. It was Sobchak, after all, who groomed and mentored Putin, and delivered him to the Russian public.

And so it is, in a sense, a democracy museum about Putin, the man whose ascent to power was marked by the loss of a free press, the unsolved killings of political critics and harsh crackdowns on antigovernment protests.

Part of Putin's mythology is that he is the man who came from nowhere, an obscure KGB officer laboring in the anonymous offices of East Germany; a faceless bureaucrat in the bowels of City Hall.

The pictures here tell a different story. In scene after scene, Putin is there -- never at the center of the action, but hovering on the edges, that unreadable half-smile on his lips, his eyes just visible over somebody's shoulder. Just some unremarkable guy in a plain suit, standing off to the side and drawing little attention.

There is Putin campaigning for Boris Yeltsin; Putin standing red-eyed and slack-faced at Sobchak's graveside, clutching red flowers; Putin opening a synagogue.

There are other images: The columns of tanks groaning in defeat from Afghanistan; the throngs of people massed on Palace Square in protest of the Soviet state; the smoke pouring from the Russian White House after it was shelled by tanks during clashes in 1993.

There are tokens of a cracking empire, like the first yellowing newspapers that dared to print stories about Soviet dictator Josef Stalin's repressions. (Under Putin, Stalin's reputation has undergone a certain renaissance.)

And there are people. The walls are papered with photos of fiery, hard-driving reformers. By now, they have died, been marginalized or summoned the pragmatism to drop their politics and get rich.
Lawmaker Galina Starovoitova, gunned down outside her apartment building.

Andrei Sakharov, dead.

Yuri Boldyrev, marginalized by today's Kremlin.

Nikolai Travkin, drifted into obscurity.

Pyotr Aven, one of Russia's richest bankers, living abroad.

These were the heroes of a revolution. Looking at their pictures, you begin to consider that this is a museum to something that is dead, which is, after all, what usually ends up in a museum.

Sobchak eventually narrowly lost a reelection campaign in 1996 and decamped to France amid a criminal investigation on corruption charges. He stayed overseas until Putin grew more powerful and was greeted by his former protege at the airport upon return; the charges were dropped after Putin became president. (These incidents go unmentioned in the museum.)

Putin repaid his former boss, decreeing the establishment of this museum after Sobchak's death in 2000. It was inaugurated in 2003 by the man who was then Putin's chief of staff: President Dmitry Medvedev, another former employee of Sobchak's who was guided into the Kremlin when term limits forced Putin out of the presidency for a few years.

On the other side of massive windows thrums Nevsky Prospect, the Dostoevsky backdrop that's been the haunt of every notorious Russian (or Soviet) from Anna Karenina to Stalin.

Today a dismal freezing rain falls over the city; traffic slides over the slushy streets. Russia is rushing on.

View Article in The Los Angeles Times

CHINA: Tibet talks resume after a year

Page last updated at 03:43 GMT, Tuesday, 26 January 2010

The Dalai Lama may represent China's best chance of compromise

Envoys of Tibet's Dalai Lama in new China talks

By Shirong Chen
BBC China Editor

Talks are to resume between envoys of exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, and the Chinese government after a break of more than a year.

The relationship has been tense since the last round of discussions about Tibetan demands for more autonomy.

One of the Dalai Lama's representative in Europe, Mr Thubten Samdup, told the BBC that Beijing might have done some rethinking about the Tibetan position.

The Dalai Lama said last year that his people had suffered "hell on earth".

It is more than 14 months since the two sides sat down for talks to solve the Tibetan issue.

Best chance

In the last round of discussions, Beijing completely rejected the Tibetan demand for more autonomy, accusing the Tibetan spiritual leader of being bent on splitting Tibet from China.

We have some hope in the past three, four years there has been some more awareness within the Chinese citizens that perhaps the Dalai Lama is the best chance that Beijing has.

Thubten Samdup, Tibetan Representative for Northern Europe

Now two special envoys of the Dalai Lama, Lodi G. Gyari and Envoy Kelsang Gyaltsen, together with three senior aides from the Tibetan Task Force on Negotiations, are in Beijing to try and move closer to a solution.

"We feel that the only way we could really solve this between the Tibetans and the Chinese is through open and sincere dialogue," said Thubten Samdup is the Tibetan Representative for Northern Europe.

"We have some hope in the past three, four years there has been some more awareness within the Chinese citizens that perhaps the Dalai Lama is the best chance that Beijing has.

"While he's alive, this is the time to talk and resolve the situation, because post-Dalai Lama is a big question mark," said Mr Samdup.

The resumption of talks follows a rare high level conference on Tibet last week attended by all the nine standing members of the politburo in Beijing and officials from the Tibetan communities.

Beijing takes the Tibetan problem as a matter of national security.

It is increasing economic development in the region to raise the living standards of Tibetans close to the national average by 2020.

But in the battle for the hearts and minds of the Tibetans, Chinese leaders seem to have realised they must also engage with the Dalai Lama.

View Article in the BBC News

JAPAN: Facts about Japan

Published: 3:32PM GMT 21 Jan 2010

Find out all the information you need to plan your holiday in Japan, from how to get there to when to go.

Geishas in Kyoto

Getting there

British Airways, Virgin Atlantic, Japan Airlines and All Nippon Airways all offer direct flights from London to Tokyo. From UK regional cities it’s possible to get connecting flights with airlines including Air France, KLM, Lufthansa and Finnair.

The direct flight time from the UK to Japan is 12 hours.

Do I need a visa?

No. UK and Irish passport holders can stay for up to six months without a visa. All that is required is that your passport is valid throughout your holiday in Japan.

Language

Japanese is the official language. However, English is widely spoken.

Currency

The Japanese currency is yen. You can easily exchange money for your holiday in the UK or Japan and British bank cards can be used at 7-11 and Post Office ATMs in Japan.

When to go

Spring is when Japan's famous trees burst forth into blossom, beginning with plum trees in March and continuing to May, when the last cherry blossoms drift to the ground in northern Japan. It is a beautiful time to visit, particularly for garden-lovers.

Summer is a great time for beach holidays to Japan's subtropical Okinawa islands, whilst the autumn leaf season in October and November is a beautiful time to see Japan's temple gardens.

For snow lovers, the Japanese ski season runs from December into May. Whenever you visit and whatever your interests – you are sure to love Japan.

Find out more

For more information on Japan visit www.seejapan.co.uk or call 020 7398 5678.

View Article in the Telegraph

TAIWAN: U.S. Close To Arms Sale To Taiwan

January 25, 2010

by The Associated Press

The Obama administration has notified Congress that it has decided to sell weapons to Taiwan, senior congressional aides said Monday — a move expected to worsen already tense ties between China and the United States.

China considers Taiwan a renegade province and will vehemently object to the arms package, which is likely to include UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters, Patriot Advanced Capability-3 missiles and material related to Taiwan's defense communications network.

The aides said the administration has been consulting with Congress about Taiwan's defense needs ahead of a formal announcement of the sale. Meetings began last week and are continuing this week.

The aides, who have direct knowledge of the meetings, spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of arms sales to Taiwan and because the notification is not yet official.

The package appears to dodge a thorny issue: The aides say the F-16 fighter jets that Taiwan covets are not likely to be included.

The sale would satisfy parts of an $11 billion arms package originally pledged to the self-governing island by former President George W. Bush in 2001. That package has been provided in stages because of political and budgetary considerations in Taiwan and the United States. The aides say it is unclear when an official announcement will come but that it could be soon.

The sale has been widely expected, and Beijing has already warned of a disruption in ties with Washington.

Taiwan is the most sensitive matter in U.S.-China relations, with the potential to plunge into conflict two powers increasingly linked in security and economic issues. Many in Washington expect that a temporary break in military ties is inevitable.

China vows to eventually bring Taiwan under its control and aims more than 1,000 ballistic missiles at the island; the U.S. government, on the other hand, is bound by law to ensure the island is able to respond to Chinese threats.

The arms sale package will test the Obama administration's China policy, which U.S. officials say is meant to improve trust between the countries, so that the inevitable disagreements over Taiwan or Tibet don't reverse efforts to cooperate on nuclear standoffs in Iran and North Korea, and attempts to deal with economic and climate change issues.

It was only in November that President Obama met with Chinese leaders in an attempt to secure cooperation on global hotspots. Since then, tensions have spiked, with the United States criticizing Chinese Internet freedom and China worrying over a possible meeting next month between Obama and the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan spiritual leader China accuses of pushing for independence.

The United States also faults China's double-digit annual percentage increases in defense spending. Washington has said that China's massive defense spending would spur continued U.S. arms sales to Taiwan to maintain a military balance in the potentially dangerous Taiwan Strait.

In 2008, China suspended most military dialogue with Washington after the Bush administration approved a $6.5 billion arms package to Taiwan that included guided missiles and attack helicopters.

View Article on NPR

TRAVEL: Repositioning cruises fit the (modest) bill

I will be taking my third repositioning cruise across the Pacific on the Diamond Princess the first half of May:  Alaska and Far East - Beijing to Anchorage 16 Days.  So far, the crossings have been smooth sailing with no rough seas of any significance.  -HHC

January 24, 2010

By Jay Jones

Reporting from The Norwegian Jewel - Colin Markland relishes the feel of an ocean breeze as it musses his white hair. The 80-year-old retired doctor lives in Charleston, S.C., not far from his beloved Atlantic Ocean, a sea he has crossed by ship more times than he can remember.

His first sailing -- from Liverpool to Boston -- was in 1953, when the young Englishman immigrated to America for an internship. Cunard charged him 50 pounds -- the equivalent of $140 back then -- for a bunk in steerage.

Fifty-six years later, I met Markland on another transatlantic crossing. We were among 2,110 passengers traveling from Miami to Dover, England, aboard the Norwegian Jewel. I was on board to report on my experiences, but Markland was there for a very different reason: to brag about how little the 11-night cruise had cost him.

"I paid $219," he told people. Of course, that's per person in a double-occupancy stateroom. But at less than $20 a night for a cabin -- with unlimited meals, an array of activities and, of course, transportation included -- this was a bargain worth boasting about.
"I couldn't believe my eyes," he said of opening an e-mail about a month before last April's sailing and reading the offer. "I never could have imagined crossing at this price."

Many people find repositioning cruises fit the bill for a vacation, because of price and because of what the cruise does -- and does not -- offer.

When I booked early last February, the going rate for an inside cabin was $389. NCL needed to move the Jewel from its winter home in Florida to a summer base in England. Rather than cross the ocean with empty rooms, the cruise line offered great deals to entice us to join the crew on this one-way journey.

A novice at this sort of trip, I found myself in a sea of "repositioning" veterans. For them, the ship is the destination.  "They've pretty much seen it all, done it all. They know what they want," cruise director Rick Schwartzenburg told me.

This isn't the typical many ports/many stops trip. "We like the transatlantics because it gives us more time to use the ship's facilities," said Pat Lonergan, who with her husband, Chris, was returning home to Britain. "On a normal cruise, you're on and off."
For travelers like the Lonergans, the big waves -- much more common in the mid-Atlantic than in the relative shelter of the Caribbean -- are old hat. For first-timers like me, they were unsettling.

At dinner on the sixth night, television monitors reported "rough seas" of 7 1/2 to 12 feet. After eating a light meal, I clung to the handrails on my way to the Stardust Theatre for a show.
"I know why most of you are here," announced the cruise director. "[It's] because the seas are rough and you want to see how this will go."

Indeed, many of us were curious to see whether that night's performer -- a German juggler named Hilby -- could pull it off. He amazed us by keeping two clubs, a knife and a toilet plunger in midair while pedaling a unicycle across the stage.

Later, the shaking and the creaking kept me awake. I switched on the TV to discover we were in a Force 11 "violent storm." The winds were 58 mph. The sea was full of fury. Eventually, I lapsed into fitful sleep.

"I just want to get to Dover," a fellow first-timer said after that rocky night. Actually, she might have said, "I just want to get it over with." Either way, the sentiment was the same.
After nearly a week of gray seas and white foam, we see land on the horizon. We were approaching our first port of call: Ponta Delgada in the Azores.

Living on islands more than 900 miles west of the European continent, the locals welcome visitors from the cruise ships that occasionally stop for a few hours. Sure, there are shops selling cheap souvenirs, but there are also delightful cathedrals and squares to visit. The Jewel's passengers seemed to outnumber residents in the narrow streets.

After two more nights at sea, we arrived in Vigo, Portugal, a bustling port that, on a Sunday morning, was much quieter than usual. Having "been there, done that," many people chose to stay on board for an aerobics class or a poolside barbecue.
Underway again, there were whispered warnings about the typically rough seas as we approached the Bay of Biscay.

Thankfully, on this trip, the waters were unusually calm.
When we reached Dover at the end of our 5,100-mile voyage, Chris and Pat Lonergan were just 150 miles from home. They had spent the trip reading, playing trivia games and catching up on sleep.

Colin Markland later told me the cruise was "the best holiday I've ever had." Then, he quickly added, "That's probably because it was such a steal."

travel@latimes.com

View Article in The Los Angeles Times

CHINA: Stitching the Narrative of a Revolution

Beijing Journal

Peasants recited quotations from Mao's “Little Red Book” before toiling in the fields in a village near Beijing in July of 1967.  Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Published: January 25, 2010

By XIYUN YANG and MICHAEL WINES 

BEIJING — It was the height of the Cultural Revolution, but in the heart of China’s capital, in range of the prying eyes of foreign embassies, young Beijingers had embraced the tenets of capitalism.

Corrupted by dreams of profit, crowds of 500 or more were gathering every Sunday on a street in the city’s embassy district to ply a shameful trade. “They are learning how to do business and raise money,” one city official wrote darkly. “This is seriously harmful to the healthy growth of the successors of the proletariat revolution.”

Such was the state of affairs in 1966, when selling pigeons at an impromptu street market was seen as an obstacle to the triumph of socialism — and, the official added, as a waste of bird feed, too.

The records on the Beijing pigeon market, like thousands of other Cultural Revolution documents, lay silent for decades, deemed state secrets by a government hardly eager to highlight Mao’s excesses. But last year, China quietly opened the archives of selected declassified government files from that era, in Beijing, Shanghai and Xi’an.

And so a veil has begun to lift on this and other prosaic stories of the Cultural Revolution — some sad, some funny, most humdrum to an extreme.

The files of the Cultural Revolution, which raged from 1966 until Mao’s death in 1976, make up a mere 16 of the 21,568 volumes that the Beijing Municipal Archives has made public in four separate releases — in 1996, 1997, 2001 and 2009. (The other files cover periods of Chinese history from 1906.) Stored in thick binders on library-style stacks, they can be viewed in the Municipal Archives building, a spacious, modern structure with overstuffed chairs and a scholarly atmosphere on the south side of the city.

The yellowing files give scant insight into those days’ atrocities: the denunciations of parents by children; the humiliation of intellectuals; the millions of lives ruined by Red Guards ordered to remake society through upheaval. Mao’s personality cult made him a living god, and armed violence broke out over his affections. Everything was politicized. Many committed suicide.

Today, that era has been all but obliterated from the official history of the People’s Republic, its horrors glossed over in history books. While many younger Chinese know that the country passed through a period of turmoil, scholars say, few have any idea of its wild extremes. Events that were “earth shattering have now turned into words with vague and sketchy meanings,” Chen Xiaojing, a Communist Party official from the time, wrote in a carefully hedged account of his experiences, “My Cultural Revolution Years.”

Why the government is releasing some documents from the era is unclear. Archive officials declined repeated requests for interviews. Experts say the files contain little if any material that government censors would regard as incendiary.

“For people like me who have been studying the Cultural Revolution as a profession, it’s better than having nothing at all,” said Xu Youyu, a historian and former researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. “But the things I want to know are, for example, how many homes the Red Guards had gone to raid and what they took out of each home. There’s not a chance of finding those things in these documents.

“If you air these things out, people may start asking why it happened. And this is not a question that is directed only at 1966, but may be turned around and asked about the current situation in China.”

Yet a picture of Chinese life 40 and 50 years ago does emerge from the archives. The files, some nearly transparent and thin as one-ply tissue paper, include handwritten drafts of speeches, lists of production quotas, song lyrics, government regulations and minutes of groups that studied Mao’s words. The texts embrace the political rhetoric of the day, in which all problems were succinctly rendered into rhyming epithets.

The files apparently have been filtered for anything dealing with deaths and imprisonment, and they describe a country still fervently Communist, and unrecognizable today. They narrate the story of a country in the throes of madness, when “Mao Zedong thought” cured everything from truancy to traffic jams to agricultural chemistry to illegal pigeon sales.

Consider: records from 1972, taken at a grade school outside Beijing, show that math students were made to sing two revolutionary songs and study and discuss six Mao quotations for 25 minutes of each class. The remaining few minutes were spent doing math.

In 1967, a report urged forming special groups at the provincial and city levels to “use every conceivable means to guarantee production” each year of 13,000 tons of specially formulated red plastic — required for the covers of Mao’s “Little Red Book” of quotations.

“The Conference on the Situation of the Special Plastic Used by the Works of Chairman Mao” proclaimed that producing the plastic was “our glorious political responsibility.” To hold everyone accountable, the conference produced a chart with a month-by-month breakdown of production levels.

At times, the files veer perilously close to black, or perhaps red, comedy. In 1970, the annual Representative Conference of the Enthusiasts of Chairman Mao’s Works from the City Transportation Bureau studied rush-hour bottlenecks created because workers were required to arrive early to study Chairman Mao’s works. The bottlenecks, the workers concluded, were the work of “conservative rightists and selfish departmentalism and other mistaken ideas.”

Yet there are also oblique hints of more sinister processes at work.

Many reports began with anecdotes of selfless revolutionary fervor. In one of them, Liu Chunnong, a transportation security guard, recounted in 1968 how his dozen pet goldfish had been his pride and joy. After a party meeting, he said, he took the fish outside and buried them alive. Raising goldfish, he wrote, had been criticized as a petit bourgeois practice.

In a handwritten series of 1972 speeches, many of them heavily edited in pen, a teacher from Beijing’s outskirts recalled how his comrades “patiently and delicately” sought to reform a teacher who was not a worker, but a member of the wealthy class. Rounds of criticism had little effect, so the group chose to help him realize his mistakes through physical labor, by weeding farmland.

“He pulled grass,” the speech read. “At first, he was squatting, but he couldn’t handle it after two days. Then he pulled the grass while kneeling. Finally, he did it while crawling.”

Party censors excised the tale of the exhausted teacher from the final draft of the speech.

A version of this article appeared in print on January 26, 2010, on page A5 of the New York edition.

View Article in The New York Times

JAPAN: In Okinawa, Elections Renew Debate Over U.S. Bases

 

Local residents protest against a U.S. military base in Kadena on Japan's Okinawa island, Nov. 5, 2009. Most U.S. bases in Japan are on the southern island and have been the source of tensions for decades.  Kazuhiro Nogi/AFP/Getty Images

January 25, 2010

by Anthony Kuhn

The U.S.-Japan alliance is showing strains once again over the issue of American military bases on Japanese soil. Most of the bases are on the southern island of Okinawa.

On Sunday, voters in the small town of Nago challenged the policies of the U.S. and Japan by electing Susumu Inamine as mayor in a race that hinged on the location of an American air base.

In 2006, Tokyo and Washington agreed to relocate U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Futenma to Nago from the crowded southern city of Ginowan.

Inamine opposes the relocation and says that is why voters picked him over the incumbent.

"Seventy-five percent of U.S military bases in Japan are on Okinawa," says Inamine, a former civil servant. "Moving a base within Okinawa is unreasonable. Right now, people are discussing reducing armed forces and bases. Relocating doesn't make sense when we should be reducing."

Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama said Monday that he would reconsider the relocation plan in light of Inamine's win and resolve the issue by May as promised. Before becoming prime minister, Hatoyama had said he wanted to relocate the base out of Okinawa or out of Japan.

Washington is loath to admit that local politics could derail national policies. But officials are apparently aware that the relocation could be delayed for some time. Earlier this month, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell insisted that the relocation should go ahead.

"But at the same time," he added, "we do not wish to appear intransigent, and indeed, we've tried to be very clear that our door is open for dialogue and discussions on a whole host of matters."

Voters in the small Okinawan town of Nago have elected a mayor who opposes the relocation of the U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Futenma (shown here in November 2009) from Ginowan, Okinawa Prefecture, to Nago.  Kazuhiro Nogi/AFP/Getty Images

Local Resentments

Inamine's win was welcomed in Nago's Henoko district. The new air base would be built on reclaimed land there, where sea turtles and marine mammals called dugongs now swim around coral reefs in turquoise blue waters.

Sakai Toyama is one of a band of residents who have maintained a beachside vigil for more than eight years, just to make sure construction on the base doesn't start while no one is looking.

"I'm worried about two things," he says. "One is that the bases are close to residential areas, and I'm afraid of a plane crash and loud noise. The other is that it could damage nature here."

The deafening roar of U.S. Air Force fighter jets is a fact of life for residents near the Kadena Air Base in southern Okinawa. Bombers took off from Kadena for missions during the Korean and Vietnam wars. More recently, they have been used to launch missions to collect signals intelligence from China.

Local anger at the U.S. military presence has occasionally exploded into protest, such as during a 1995 rape case when two U.S. Marines and a sailor were accused of abducting and sexually assaulting a 12-year-old Okinawan girl. The American servicemen were handed over to Japanese law enforcement officials. They pleaded guilty to charges of rape and conspiracy and served time in Japanese prisons.

U.S. troops have a degree of extraterritoriality: U.S. authorities may hand them over to Japanese police, but Japanese police cannot enter bases to arrest them.

The former governor of Okinawa, Masahide Ota, warns that if locals are killed in accidents or incidents involving U.S. troops, it could undermine the U.S.-Japan alliance.

"We would say that the U.S.-Japan alliance has been maintained at the sacrifice of the Okinawan people," he says.

For The Greater Good?

As a high school student in 1945, Ota witnessed the Battle of Okinawa, in which nearly one-third of the island's population perished. Today, he runs a peace center with the aim of ridding Okinawa of U.S. military bases.

Ota says that most Japanese actually want the bases — just not in their backyard on the Japanese mainland. Okinawans would fight for a better deal in the legislature, Ota says, but they have only nine representatives, out of 732. This is part of a legacy of discrimination against Okinawans that he says dates back to the Meiji era in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

"[In a democracy] ... majority rules," Ota says. "Nine people would say, 'We don't want military bases,' but [the] majority says, 'Oh, we want military bases.' In the name of democracy, we cannot solve the problem. Forever. It's a very cynical thing."

The U.S. administered Okinawa from 1945 to 1972. During that time, Ota says, U.S. and Japanese officials showered supporters of the military bases with money and pork barrel construction projects.

Previous mayors in Nago have supported the bases, saying it's both in the national interest and good for the local economy.

Yasunari Yamashiro, a retired cement company manager, is an adviser to Yoshikazu Shimabukuro, the former mayor of Nago who lost in Sunday's election.

"Look at Nago, it's so rural," Yamashiro says. "Jobs are few and incomes are low. Young folks all move to the cities and never come back. We are increasingly isolated. Our former mayors have always tried to develop this small city, which is why I support the incumbent."

These debates are likely to continue throughout the year as Okinawan citizens go to the polls to elect several mayors and a new governor.

View Article on NPR

JAPAN: Britain, Japan to help reintegrate Taliban foot soldiers

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

By Karen DeYoung

Washington Post Staff Writer

Britain and Japan have agreed to head an international fund, expected to total up to $500 million over the next five years, as part of a broad plan to help lure Taliban fighters away from the insurgency with the promise of jobs, protection against retaliation, and the removal of their names from lists of U.S. and NATO targets.

Establishment of the fund will be announced Thursday at a high-level international conference on Afghanistan in London, according to U.S. and British officials. Representatives from nearly 70 nations, including Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, will attend.

The fund will help support a proposal by Afghan President Hamid Karzai, to be announced at the conference, to begin the reintegration of low-level fighters. Karzai will also outline his strategy for reconciliation with amenable insurgent leaders.

Reintegration is a key component of the Afghanistan strategy President Obama outlined last fall. U.S. officials have said that they believe that up to 80 percent of Taliban foot soldiers are fighting for money and because of local grievances rather than in support of an ideology. Earlier reintegration efforts have failed, officials have said, because of poor planning, inadequate security and insufficient financial support.

Japan is expected to provide the largest contribution to the new fund, out of a $5 billion aid commitment made in November. Britain and the United States also plan to make sizable contributions, officials said.

The administration is looking to the one-day conference for policy commitments in support of Obama's new strategy -- including his deployment of more than 30,000 additional U.S. troops -- from governments whose backing has often been tentative in the face of widespread opposition from their publics. Although several other nations, including Britain, have promised to send more forces, early commitments of up to 7,000 troops include some who had been previously scheduled to be rotated into Afghanistan. Both Germany and France have resisted calls to send more troops, and Canada and the Netherlands have set dates for the withdrawal of their combat forces.

Karzai is also expected to present the conference with new economic development proposals and plans to stem the corruption that plagues his government.

U.N. diplomats said Monday that Secretary General Ban Ki-moon plans to announce at the conference the appointment of a new U.N. special envoy to Afghanistan to play a leading role in overseeing often-overlapping and uncoordinated development efforts by the United States and NATO. The current envoy, Norwegian diplomat Kai Eide, is scheduled to depart Afghanistan in March. The leading candidate to replace him, U.S. and allied officials said, is Sweden's Stephan de Mistura, a career U.N. diplomat who previously served as head of the U.N. mission in Iraq.

Most attention in the lead-up to the conference, however, has focused on the reintegration and reconciliation plans. Until recently, Obama's administration, like George W. Bush's, had expressed interest in the reintegration of low-level Taliban fighters while resisting suggestions that senior insurgent leaders could be wooed toward reconciliation with the Afghan government.

More recently, however, U.S. officials have said that anyone, with few exceptions, who agrees to lay down arms and respect the Afghan constitution can potentially be reconciled. When Eide suggested last month that the United Nations reconsider some of the names on its "blacklist" of terrorists, Richard C. Holbrooke, the administration's special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, said he was not opposed.

In an interview Monday with MSNBC, Holbrooke said he saw no reason to take senior Taliban leaders such as Mohammad Omar off the list. "But we can revisit that list," he said. "Some of the people on it are dead. Some probably are innocent. We ought to reexamine it."

But with insurgent forces inflicting heavy losses on U.S., NATO and Afghan troops, and leaders of the Taliban and several related groups showing little inclination to negotiate, U.S. and international efforts have focused on the reintegration of lower-level insurgents.

"The people out there we are talking about are not the ideological leaders," Holbrooke said. "And isn't it a lot better to invite them off the battlefield through a program of jobs, land, integration, than it is to have to try to kill every one of them?"

Although some Afghanistan experts have called U.S. assessments of Taliban foot soldiers naive, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the head of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, has called reintegration a key component of U.S. counterinsurgency strategy.

In guidance to commanders in October, McChrystal instructed them to open dialogues to "determine local grievances and reasons for fighting" and then try to address them; establish assimilation plans with sympathetic community leaders; and use military funds to create "employment opportunities" for willing insurgents.

"Do not offer any rewards or promises of immunity or amnesty" from Afghan government prosecution, the guidance said, "but consider placing the individual(s) on a restricted target list pending determination of reliability."

In an interview with the Financial Times published Monday, McChrystal said that "a political solution to all conflicts is the inevitable outcome" and that "reintegration of fighters can take a lot of the energy out of the current levels of the insurgency."

In the meantime, McChrystal said, he expects a rough year ahead. "I think what the insurgents are going to do this year is keep the violence as high as they can," he said. "They have got to create the perception that Afghanistan's on fire. They have to create the perception that the government of Afghanistan and coalition partners can't deal with it, that it's getting to the point geographically and intensiveness that we can't do it."

McChrystal said he anticipated increased Taliban use of roadside and suicide bombs that will further alienate the population, while increased coalition forces continue to defeat the insurgents in direct military engagements.

"I think in a year, they could look pretty desperate," he said.

Staff writer Greg Jaffe contributed to this report.

View Article in The Washington Post

MACAU: Macao Gets New Science Center

2010-01-25 19:40:37    

Xinhua, Web Editor: Liu Donghui

With the unveiling of a special exhibition that showcased ancient Chinese science and technology, the Macao Science Center opened its doors to the public on Monday.

Designed by world-renowned architect I.M. Pei and the Pei Partnership Architects, and funded by the government of Macao Special Administrative Region (SAR), the Science Center, consisting of a 5,800-square-meter exhibition area, a planetarium and a conference center, is part of the SAR government's efforts to promote popular science education in Macao.

Upon the Center's opening, the Ancient Chinese Science and Technology Exhibition was also unveiled in the Center's exhibition area, which was co-organized by the Chinese Science and Technology Museum and Macao Science Center.

Selected artifacts from 10 classic scientific and technological inventions in ancient China, including astronomy, compass, gunpowder and weapons, bronze, paper-making, printing and mechanics were exhibited at the Center. The exhibition will last from Jan. 25 to June.

Aside from the exhibitions, the Science center also offers a Planetarium equipped with a tilted semi-dome screen nearly 15 meters in diameter and supported by high resolution three- dimensional digital projectors, where audiences can enjoy their journey traveling into space.

HONG KONG: Hong Kong Authorities Deny Visas to Shen Yun Performing Arts, Force Cancellation of Sold-Out Shows

2010-1-25 12:6131

Shen Yun was set to perform seven shows to sold-out crowds in Hong Kong later this week. But now they’ve been canceled because Hong Kong authorities refused visas to six of the show’s key production staff.

According to a statement on the Shen Yun website, the staff applied for visas in October last year, but they were denied on January 21—just three days before the Shen Yun Performing Arts International Company was set to depart.

[Ms. Xu Qixian, Hong Kong Falun Dafa Association Secretary]:   “Usually the immigration department’s general procedure for visa application takes about four weeks to complete. However, this was delayed until Jan 21, that’s 14 weeks after we submitted the first batch of visa applications.”

Hong Kong immigration told the show’s presenters that the visas were denied because the positions could be filled locally. But public figures in Hong Kong say it’s because of political pressure from the Chinese regime.

[Albert Ho Chun-yan, Chairman of Hong Kong Democratic Party]: “This is a decision from the top down, most likely a decision from Beijing. It suppresses [Shen Yun] until the last minute, so that you do not have time to complain, and do not have time go to court for judicial review. For this type of behavior, I can only use the word, ‘shameful,’ or another word, ‘mean.’”

Shen Yun is known for showing traditional Chinese culture—culture that has been suppressed by the Chinese Communist Party. Some of the songs and dances also depict the Communist Party’s persecution of Falun Gong, a spiritual practice that’s been suppressed for more than 10 years.

[Huang Haodong, Hong Kong Cultural Worker]:
“I feel very shocked and angry, because Shen Yun is a legal and well-loved performing arts group. The Hong Kong immigration department is unreasonably making things difficult for them. I think the Hong Kong government is very shameful.”

All of the tickets for Shen Yun’s Hong Kong shows had sold out within one week of the box office opening.

Shen Yun organizers are requesting a reevaluation of the visa denials by Hong Kong’s Immigration Department.

View Article & Video in NTDTV

CHINA: China to Move Against Local Lobbyists

Published: January 25, 2010

By MICHAEL WINES

BEIJING — Addressing a facet of political life all too familiar to Americans, China’s government is reported to have ordered the closure of thousands of “regional liaison offices” — in essence, lobbying firms — that local governments and companies operate in Beijing to curry favor with high officials.

Echoing another facet of political life all too familiar to Americans, not everyone is convinced that the effort will succeed.

The government-affiliated magazine Outlook Weekly reported that Beijing officials have vowed to shutter the liaison offices within six months in an effort to stanch what some analysts call a culture of unalloyed corruption surrounding the institutions.

Liaison offices recently were featured in less-than-flattering light after it was reported that two local governments from Henan Province last February spent more than $96,000 to buy 777 bottles of expensive Chinese liquor to entertain high officials.

That is but the latest in a string of scandals surrounding the offices, which have produced a number of indictments in recent years on charges including bribery and embezzlement.

Chinese wags often refer to the liaison offices as “pao bu, xing jin,” which ostensibly means “run forward,” but also can be translated as “go to the ministry and give money.”

By some calculations, Beijing boasts more than 5,500 local-government provincial offices, and perhaps 5,000 more offices representing state-run corporations, associations and other entities.

The provincial-level offices alone employ close to 8,000 workers, housed in impressive bureaus designed to convey the power and prestige of the areas they represent.

The central government directive would close the offices of state-run firms and governments at or below the county level. The survivors, Outlook said, would be strictly regulated.

But the central government could be in for a fight. “This is serious,” Russell Leigh Moses, a Beijing-based analyst of central government affairs, said in a telephone interview on Monday. “These offices are strong symbols of provincial sovereignty, and by seeking to shut them down, the central government is trying to keep regional officials from lobbying too hard for local interests.”

China’s leaders have used increasingly dire language in recent years to inveigh against government corruption, which they liken to a disease that is eroding the strength of Communist governance. Local government corruption is a common subject of attack by local journalists and internet surfers. But with some exceptions, higher-level corruption has largely been excluded from government campaigns.

The South China Morning Post, a Hong-Kong based newspaper, stated Monday that Beijing is awash in liaison offices because state power is so concentrated that virtually anyone seeking influence needs a representative in the national capital.

“In a democratic country, there is a fairly transparent regime in place to decide where a government project goes and how much expenditure it will receive, even with some lobbying,” Ren Jianming , deputy director of Tsinghua University’s Anticorruption and Governance Research Center, was quoted as saying. “But in China, it often comes down to networking and even some shady ways to court higher authorities. So the liaison offices are indispensable in this sense.”

But the success of the government directive is anything but guaranteed. The Outlook article noted that China’s central government has been talking since at least 2006 about reining in the offices, with little success.

One problem is that the offices represent China’s provinces, which are also represented on the nation’s principal governing body, the central committee of the Chinese Communist Party. Provincial officials at the national level are hardly enthusiastic about curtailing the power of officials in their home regions.

Xiyun Yang and Li Bibo contributed research from Beijing.

View Article in The New York Times

RUSSIA: Russian students paint the town red on their saint’s day

Published 25 January, 2010, 09:35

After weeks of hard work and sleepless nights for their mid-year exams, millions of Russian students get to pack away their books to celebrate their patron saint.

St. Tatyana's Day marks the end of the winter term – and the start of some heavy partying. It is also the 255th anniversary of Russia's main university.

Thousands of students will gather on Red Square, where they will skate, partake in competitions and attend a concert with Russian pop stars. The Moscow mayor officials will congratulate them on the holiday too.

On the day the leading Russian educational establishment Moscow State University (MGU) is also celebrating its birthday. On January 25, 1755, Empress Elizabeth of Russia signed a decree to open the university on the request of Count Ivan Shuvalov and academic Mikhail Lomonosov.

The day of the decree coincided with Shuvalov’s mother Tatyana’s name day. On this day the Russian Orthodox Church remembers Russian martyr Tatyana, who is considered to be a patron saint of all students.

MGU celebrations will start off with a mass served by the Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia Kirill at the university’s church and continues with several forums and meetings.

On the second day of celebration, January 26, Moscow’s mayor traditionally brings a barrel of the honey drink “medovukha” to treat the university students, who will host informal concerts.

This year the day will conclude with a gala concert of “Tatyana’s day” which is in honour of the best students of the university.

Student’s day on January 25 is one of the seven memorable dates in Russia. Former Russian President Vladimir Putin introduced it officially in January of 2004.

View Article on Russia Times

JAPAN: Japan 'will rethink US presence'

 

A deal to move the US bases from Okinawa has hit strong opposition

Page last updated at 03:55 GMT, Monday, 25 January 2010

Japan's Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama has said the result of a weekend mayoral poll will fuel a major rethink about US military bases in Japan.

Residents of the Japanese city of Nago, on Okinawa, chose a candidate opposed to the hosting of an American air base.

The Futenma base was originally scheduled to move to Nago from a more crowded part of Okinawa.

Talk of moving the base out of Japan altogether has threatened the long-standing US-Japan security alliance.

Mr Hatoyama said the results of Sunday's election reflected the will of the people, and that Japan would completely re-examine its accord with the US.  "The country will start from scratch on this issue and take responsibility to reach a conclusion by the end of May," he told reporters.

'Post-war strategy defeated'

The new mayor of Nago, Susumu Inamine, had campaigned against any expansion of US military presence in the area. He beat the incumbent, Yoshikazu Shimabukuro, who supported the base, by winning 52.3% of the vote.

Mr Inamine, an independent, ran with the support of Mr Hatoyama's ruling Democratic Party.

Correspondents said his victory will make it increasingly difficult for the prime minister to resist pressure to shelve the deal.

"I fought this campaign vowing to resist the base. I intend to keep that promise as we move forward," Mr Inamine said.

National daily newspaper Asahi said in a front-page editorial on Monday:

"It wasn't just Shimabukuro that was defeated in the election. The biggest loser was Japan's post-war military base strategy."

Correspondents said the prime minister's comments highlighted the difficulties involved in fulfilling an agreement with the US to relocate the base against strong local opposition.

Japan signed a deal with the US four years ago that was part of a broader realignment of American troops.

A key part of the plan was to relocate the Futenma air base, home to about 2,000 Marines, to the smaller city of Nago.

Okinawa is home to most of the 47,000 American troops based in Japan.

View Article on BBC

OLYMPICS: S. Korea aims for top-10 finish at Vancouver Winter Olympics

2010/01/26 09:17 KST

By Kim Boram

SEOUL, Jan. 26 (Yonhap) -- With the Winter Olympics scheduled to kick off in less than three weeks in the Canadian city of Vancouver, South Korea, which is bidding to host the winter games 2018, is setting its sights on a top-10 finish and at least six gold medals.
  

"At the Vancouver Olympics, we set the goal of winning at least six golds for a 10th-place finish in the medal tally," said Kim Jong-deok, head of administrative affairs at the national training center.
  

The games are scheduled to be held from Feb. 12-28.
  

South Korea ranked seventh in the medal standing at the 2006 Turin Winter Games, with a record six golds, three silvers and two bronzes, its biggest haul since the country won its first Olympic medals at the Albertville Winter Olympics in 1992.
  

The South Korean team is trying to enhance its medal standing as well as improve its sports diplomacy, as Vancouver may affect its bid to host the 2018 Winter Olympics. PyeongChang, a mountain resort city located some 180km east of Seoul, has already lost to Canada's Vancouver and Russia's Sochi in its two previous attempts.
  

So far, South Korea has made four top-10 finishes at five previous Olympic Games, thanks to gold medal rushes led by the short track speed skating teams.
  

The short track squad has brought home 29 medals, including 17 golds out of 31 overall medals South Korea has earned on the Olympic stage. It swept all 11 short track medals at the Turin Winter Olympics four years ago, lifting South Korea to seventh.
  

The 10 short track skaters on the national squad are hoping to repeat the feat in Vancouver, but are expected to face keen competition from other countries, including China. With three-time gold medalists Ahn Hyun-soo and Jin Sun-yu out due to injuries, they are aiming at three golds in Vancouver to maintain their status as the country's biggest gold medal provider.
  

In addition to the short track speed skaters, athletes playing other sports are expected to participate in the medal race at the upcoming Olympics.
  

Reigning world champion Kim Yu-na is favored to win gold in the women's figure skating event.
  

After winning the Four Continents Figure Skating Championships and the World Championships in early 2009, she opened the 2009-2010 season with record-breaking performances in the Grand Prix series.
  

Her overall score of 210.03 set at the Trophee Eric Bompard in October is far higher than her competitors' season bests, including Japanese Miki Ando's score of 185.94.
  

Kim is expected to break the decades-old gold medal drought in South Korea's figure skating, one of the most popular sports at the Winter Olympics.
  

Meanwhile, speed skaters are also determined to stand on the top of the podium next month.
  

Lee Kang-seok and Lee Kyou-hyuk are in peak condition after undertaking six World Cup series competitions. As they hold first and second in the men's 500 meter World Cup rankings, their sprint races in Vancouver will be another rich vein of gold at the upcoming Olympics.
  

South Korea's squad is varied compared to previous Winter Games, with a total of 45 South Korean players competing in alpine skiing, cross country, ski jumping, free style skiing, snow board, biathlon, bobsled, and skeleton, as well as speed skating, short track speed skating, and figure skating.
  

Notably, the bobsled team piloted by four-time Olympian Kang Kwang-bae will compete in both four-man and two-man events for the first time in the country's winter sports history.
  

With the traditional Lunar New Year holiday coinciding with the opening weekend of the Winter Olympics, South Koreans are sure to be lured to their televisions with a sense of excitement and anticipation.

View Article in Yonhap News

CHINA: GM eyes new China factory

2010-1-25 

By Fang Yan and Edmund Klamann

GENERAL Motors expects it will need to build a new greenfield manufacturing facility in the near future in China to accommodate strong growth in the world's largest auto market, but it will not be building a plant this year, its China president said on Saturday.

The United States auto maker sold a record 1.83 million vehicles in China in 2009, up 66.9 percent from 2008 and outpacing a 46 percent rise in the overall vehicle market, and it anticipates further growth this year. "We expect to sell more than 2 million units this year," Kevin Wale told Reuters on the sidelines of a ceremony to launch the Buick Excelle XT in Shanghai.

GM has been adding new shifts and expanding its existing assembly lines to meet robust market demand since last year, but a greenfield plant could also be an option, Wale said.

"We have enough capacity to build the cars we need to sell this year, and we need to continue to look for ways of increasing our capacity. That will mean we will have to add a new plant some time in the near future," he said.

Wale, also managing director of GM's China operations, nevertheless ruled out building a new plant this year. "It is physically impossible to do that so quickly," he said.

The auto maker makes cars, minivans and pickup trucks in China in partnership with SAIC Motor Corp. It also operates a light commercial vehicle venture with FAW Group.

SAIC aims to sell 3 million vehicles in 2009, its Chairman Hu Maoyuan said.

View Article in Shanghai Daily

JAPAN: Okada seeks to hasten talks on Russia isle row

Monday, Jan. 25, 2010

Kyodo News

Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada says he wants to accelerate negotiations with his Russian counterpart on the long-running territorial dispute involving isles off Hokkaido.

"I would like Foreign Minister (Sergei) Lavrov to visit Japan in the first half of this year as much as possible and I would like to visit Russia in the latter half (of this year,)" Okada said Saturday during a speech in Yokkaichi, Mie Prefecture.

Okada also expressed his intention to seek a resolution to the oil and natural gas development project in Sakhalin that involves Japanese companies.

"I believe that Russia needs Japan's funds and technology. We'd like to resolve the issue" by bringing the economy and politics closer together, he said.

On resolving the territorial row, Okada emphasized that Japan seeks the return of the contested Russian-held islands off Hokkaido.

"Japan is insisting that all four islands should be returned," Okada said, adding the issue will not be resolved by having two of the islands returned, an idea that has been floated via diplomatic channels.

The dispute has prevented the two countries from signing a post-World War II peace treaty. Moscow in the past has said it will only hand over two of the islands after a peace treaty is signed, but the current leadership has backed away from that offer.

The islands are referred to by the Japanese government as the Northern Territories, while in Russia they are known as the Southern Kurils.

On deepening the Japan-U.S. alliance, Okada said he hopes Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama and President Barack Obama will meet at the summit of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Yokohama in November.

View Article in the Japan Times

TAIWAN & CHINA: U.S. Arms Sales To Taiwan Threaten China Relations

Jan 25, 2010 7:40 pm US/Pacific

U.S. Arms Sales To Taiwan Threaten China Relations

WASHINGTON (AP) ― The Obama administration has notified Congress that it has decided to sell weapons to Taiwan, a move expected to worsen already tense ties between China and the United States, senior congressional aides said Monday.

China considers Taiwan a renegade province and will vehemently object to the arms package, which is likely to include UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters, Patriot Advanced Capability-3 missiles and material related to Taiwan's defense communications network.

The aides said the administration has been consulting with Congress about Taiwan's defense needs ahead of a formal announcement of the sale. Meetings began last week and are continuing this week.

The aides, who have direct knowledge of the meetings, spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of arms sales to Taiwan and because the notification is not yet official.

The package appears to dodge a thorny issue: The aides say the F-16 fighter jets that Taiwan covets are not likely to be included.

The sale would satisfy parts of an $11 billion arms package originally pledged to the self-governing island by former President George W. Bush in 2001. That package has been provided in stages because of political and budgetary considerations in Taiwan and the United States. The aides say it is unclear when an official announcement will come but that it could be soon.

The sale has been widely expected, and Beijing has already warned of a disruption in ties with Washington.

Taiwan is the most sensitive matter in U.S.-China relations, with the potential to plunge into conflict two powers increasingly linked in security and economic issues. Many in Washington expect that a temporary break in military ties is inevitable.

China vows to eventually bring Taiwan under its control and aims more than 1,000 ballistic missiles at the island; the U.S. government, on the other hand, is bound by law to ensure the island is able to respond to Chinese threats.

The arms sale package will test the Obama administration's China policy, which U.S. officials say is meant to improve trust between the countries, so that the inevitable disagreements over Taiwan or Tibet don't reverse efforts to cooperate on nuclear standoffs in Iran and North Korea, and attempts to deal with economic and climate change issues.

It was only in November that President Barack Obama met with Chinese leaders in an attempt to secure cooperation on global hotspots. Since then, tensions have spiked, with the United States criticizing Chinese Internet freedom and China worrying over a possible meeting next month between Obama and the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan spiritual leader China accuses of pushing for independence.

The United States also faults China's double digit annual percentage increases in defense spending. Washington has said that China's massive defense spending would spur continued U.S. arms sales to Taiwan to maintain a military balance in the potentially dangerous Taiwan Strait.

In 2008, China suspended most military dialogue with Washington after the Bush administration approved a $6.5 billion arms package to Taiwan that included guided missiles and attack helicopters.

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CHINA: China now world's second largest diamond market

24 Jan 2010, 1417 hrs IST, REUTERS

BEIJING: China last year overtook Japan to become the world's second largest diamond market behind the United States with trade on the Shanghai diamond exchange rising 16.4 percent to more than $1.5 billion, state media said.

The official Xinhua news agency said on Sunday the year-on-year rise, when much of the rest of the world was mired in deep recession, was due to China's boisterous economic growth in 2009, which reached 8.7 percent.

"As the economy continued to develop in a stable manner, consumer demand for jewellery continued to grow, especially for diamonds for the wedding market," Xinhua said on its website (www.xinhuanet.com).

"In this year, China overtook Japan to become the world's second largest diamond market for consumers behind the United States," it added.

China's increasingly affluent middle class and vast pool of customers are seen as key factors for the rise in diamond sales in the world's most populous country.

Demand for diamonds only really started to develop in the 1990s when De Beers brought its global advertising campaign to China, tapping into the Chinese desire for conspicuous consumption and pursuit of Western lifestyle trends.

De Beers is 45 percent-owned by mining group Anglo American.

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JAPAN: Tokyo is fourth best city in the world

Tokyo (photo / Joshua Williams)

October 23, 3:25 AM

By Joshua Williams

Tokyo has taken the honor of being the fourth best city in the world, after only New York, London, and Paris, according to a comprehensive Japanese worldwide-city indexing. The Global Power City Index, released on October 22nd (JST) by the Institute for Urban Strategies at The Mori Memorial Foundation in Tokyo, looked at six different objective factors to determine the overall rank, as well as separately ranking cities from the subjective viewpoint of five different types of people.

According to the study of 35 major world cities, while taking fourth place overall, Tokyo achieved second place for the “Economy” and “Research & Development” categories, after only New York. “Economy” includes factors such as economic vitality and business environment, whereas “Research & Development” focuses on points such as readiness for accepting and supporting researchers, and achievement.

Tokyo was fourth in “Ecology & Natural Environment,” a category that the top three cities fared poorly in; Paris was 11th, London 16th, and New York 30th. The category ranks the city’s ecology, pollution, and natural environment.

Tokyo came in sixth for “Cultural Interaction,” which deals with things such as resources for attracting visitors and trendsetting potential.

The two areas where Tokyo needs work are “Accessibility” at 11th place, and “Livability” at 19th. “Accessibility” is based on ranking both inner-city and international transportation, while “Livability” factors in work environment, cost of living, security and safety, and life support functions.

For individual types of people, Tokyo was a respectable third for “Researchers,” fourth for “Residents,” fifth for “Artists,” and seventh for “Managers” and “Visitors.”

View Article in the Japan Headlines Examiner