S. KOREA: Foot-and-mouth outbreak

File photo shows soldiers burning barns following a a foot-and-mouth scare close to Seoul

SEOUL — South Korea on Sunday began culling almost 30,000 farm animals in a bid to contain the highly contagious foot-and-mouth disease following its outbreak two days ago, officials said.

The disease hit a cattle farm in Ganghwa, some 40 kilometres (25 miles) west of Seoul, last Friday and has since infected four more farms nearby, they said.

Ganghwa county spokesman Bae Hung-Kyu said animals on 227 farms within three kilometres of contaminated farms would be killed.

The planned cull was much bigger than the agriculture ministry's Saturday announcement that about 16,000 livestock at 140 farms would be slaughtered.

Bae said the rapid spread of the disease meant the cull had to be larger than originally planned.

Foot-and-mouth disease affects animals such as cattle, pigs, deer, goats and sheep. The virus can be spread between animals, through the air and on clothing. However, it is rarely transmitted to humans.

South Korea ordered a halt to pork and beef exports in January this year when an outbreak of the disease was confirmed in Pocheon, northeast of Seoul.

Outbreaks in 2000 and 2002 cost South Korea an estimated 450 billion won (400 million dollars).

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JAPAN: Japanese reporter for Reuters killed amid Bangkok chaos

A Japanese man working for Reuters news agency has been shot dead amid clashes between protesters and security forces in the Thai capital, a hospital doctor said late Saturday evening. The doctor told Kyodo News that the slain man had a bullet hole in his chest, with an exit wound on the other side, and carried identification that showed him to be Hiroyuki Muramoto, an employee of Reuters. (AFP)

JAPAN: Military handguns clear Narita customs, mistakenly brought into Japan

Apr 10 01:50 PM US/Eastern

NARITA, Japan, April 11 (AP) - (Kyodo)—A cargo shipment of roughly 350 military handguns that was meant to be transported from Germany to Turkey was mistakenly allowed into Japan after clearing customs at Narita airport last year, sources with knowledge of the matter said Saturday.

Customs officials successfully recovered all of the handguns after a hardware vendor in Chiba Prefecture, who received the mislabeled cargo, reported the matter to local police, according to the sources at the airport.

The handguns arrived at the airport in March last year in three wooden boxes bearing labels issued for items bound for the Japanese vendor. The boxes were treated as duty-free and cleared customs after only document screening.

The vendor had ordered duty-free hardware items and the labels for them were apparently attached to the boxes containing the handguns, they said.

The handguns were returned to the sender last November after customs officials determined there was no danger of the weapons reaching the domestic underground market or potential criminals in the future.

A customs official at Narita airport, which handled about 1.8 million tons of cargo last year, said it is virtually "impossible to check every single cargo item." The airport deployed two gun-sniffing dogs and a large-scale X-ray screening device in April last year as part of measures to prevent smuggling.

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JAPAN: Miyuki Hatoyama: Japan's First Lady in Outer Space?

Kyodo / Reuters

Monday, Sep. 07, 2009

By Coco Masters / Tokyo

With hair that sometimes reveals a shock of white, sometimes goes all black, Miyuki Hatoyama, 66, is striking enough in person. That she is visible at all is a surprise. In Japan, the wives of politicians are often neither seen nor heard. But Miyuki Hatoyama has become something of an international media phenomenon because of remarks in a book she once wrote — and, oh yes, because her husband, Yukio Hatoyama, 62, is assuming the office of Prime Minister after what many are calling one of the most important elections in post-war Japanese history.

After his Democratic Party of Japan displaced the Liberal Democrats from more than half-a-century in power, her words in a 2008 book entitled Most Bizarre Things I've Encountered made it around the world and momentarily overshadowed his victory. In the book, she claimed that in her sleep aliens took her soul to the planet Venus, which she described as being very green. The headlines around the world were shocked, shocked, in a predictable way, with bad puns from London to New York, and even in neighboring South Korea, China and Taiwan. (See the top 10 colorful first spouses.)

But the Japanese weren't surprised. They know her as a regular contributor to Mu Magazine, a publication that explores such subjects as UFOs, the possibility that the world may end in 2012 and the esoteric mysteries of the giant heads of Easter Island and the lost sun-worshipping civilizations of South America. (She speaks openly of "eating" the morning sun for energy.)  She is sometimes referred to as "Mrs. Occult," because she wrote a monthly spiritual column in Mu,. Never shy about her opinions, she propagates them with gusto on television, discussing everything from religion to cooking, with the authority of a lifestyle guru or "life composer," as she describes herself. One day, she has said, she would like to direct an Oscar-award winning film starring Tom Cruise, whom she claims to have known in a previous life, when the actor was Japanese.

Her husband approaches her beliefs with support and measured skepticism.

"I can understand to a degree [ the existence of UFOs]," the incoming Prime Minister has said, according to a Japanese blog. "But being told by your wife 'I've gone and returned from Venus,' still bewilders me."

But he is clearly devoted and has also said in interviews how much he is invigorated by being with her (allowing her, it is said, to style his hair, which, with its pompadour-like height, defies the slicked-down look Japanese politicians are used to sporting.) (See pictures of Japan from 1989 to today.)

Already unconventional with her outspokenness, Miyuki Hatoyama can claim a background uncommon for most Japanese women: she was born abroad and has lived overseas for more than 10 years in her adulthood, she has had more than one career, and she is in her second marriage. Born in Japanese-occupied Shanghai, she returned when she was one year old and grew up in Kobe. By 18, under the name Miyuki Waka, she was acting with the all-female Takarazuka Theater troupe, a traditional Japanese revue with a style somewhere between a glitzy Las Vegas spectacle and a Pyongyang parade to celebrate Kim Jong Il's birthday. (See pictures of the rise of Kim Jong Il.)

After moving to the U.S. with her first marriage, she was working in a Japanese restaurant in San Francisco when she met Yukio Hatoyama, who is a veritable Japanese Kennedy (his grandfather, Ichiro Hatoyama, was Prime Minister and his father served as Foreign Minister). At the time, Hatoyama was getting his graduate degree in engineering at Stanford University. In a recent interview in the weekly Japanese magazine Aera, Miyuki said Hatoyama was surprised by his own passionate side when he met her; she said that he stayed on in America to do his Ph D. because of her. After she divorced her first husband, the two married in San Francisco in 1975. They have a son, Kiichiro.

In her interview with Aera, she recalled the time when Hatoyama first won public office, in 1986 to represent a constituency in the northern island of Hokkaido:

"People seemed surprised to see flashy clothes and shoes, but I don't like to change myself."

Indeed, she has her own flair when it comes to fashion: from a jacket made with her husband's old ties cut and sewn at the cuffs and hemline; to a hemp sackskirt of her own design. When she and her husband cast their votes on Aug. 26, he wore a suit, she wore jeans. (See the fashion looks of Michelle Obama.)

Meanwhile, Japanese reaction to her burst of global fame has been overwhelmingly positive, if low-key. (There had already been one unofficial fan site for her even before the UFO quote got out.) And, in the afterglow of her husband's epoch-ending victory, there is talk about how her honesty and outspokenness are symbolic of what many hope will be a new, less constricting era. She certainly believes his ascension to power is a sign of change in Japan, one that she is happy to be a part of.

"I think he will be a completely new style of leader..." she told Aera. "I think that the time has arrived and that his ideas are understood."

As they await his formal assumption of office, the Hatoyamas live in the affluent Denenchofu neighborhood in western Tokyo, appears idyllic. The two are often seen taking walks together. In the Aera interview, she says that her husband always dons rubber gloves and washes the dishes after dinner.

"No matter how busy he is," she says. "He says 'I feel bad if you make something and you also have to wash the dishes.'"

She indicates she will still watch over his style and appearance, perhaps dressing him a little more conservatively dressed than before. She told the magazine that she won't make him wear what the Japanese call "cool biz," a casual summer look that she finds inappropriate for the role of Prime Minister. Nevertheless, when she becomes Japan's next first lady, she has said that nothing much else will change about how she goes about her life.

"I'll take trains just like I used to."

She may refrain, however, from mentioning any future voyages on UFOs.

— With reporting by Yuki Oda

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RUSSIA: Plane Crash Kills Polish President: A Blow to Russia-Poland Relations

A firefighter walking near some of the wreckage at the crash site where Polish President Lech Kaczynski, his wife and some of the country's most prominent military and civilian leaders died Saturday April 10, 2010. APTN / AP

Saturday, Apr. 10, 2010

By Simon Shuster / Moscow

The president of Poland was killed in a plane crash on Saturday in western Russia, setting off a new cycle of grievances between Russia and Poland on a day that was supposed to serve the cause of reconciliation between them.

President Lech Kaczynski, his wife and some of his top security officials were among the 96 people killed in the crash. As the fuselage of the Soviet-made Tupelov airplane (operated by a Polish airliner) still smoldered in forest near the city of Smolensk, the grim irony of their deaths became clear to the stunned Polish nation: Their president had been on his way to Russia to commemorate the massacre of tens of thousands of Poles, who had been executed on the order of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin in 1940 in those same forests in the region of Smolensk. (Read a TIME story on Poland and Russia.)

Blame for the crash has fallen on the pilot, who reportedly ignored warnings from air traffic control and tried to land on Saturday morning in dense fog, snagging the tail of his plane on a tree about a mile from the airport.

"The pilot was advised to fly to Moscow or Minsk because of heavy fog, but he still decided to land. No one should have been landing in that fog," an air traffic control official told Reuters, indicating that recklessness may be behind the tragedy.

Russian law enforcement officials said they had opened an investigation, and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin called to express his condolences to Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, who reportedly wept upon hearing of the catastrophe on Saturday.

Kaczynski, who became Poland's president in 2005, had been a dogged critic of Putin and Russia's efforts to restore influence over the former Soviet Union. He sparred with the Kremlin over the bans Russia imposed on Polish food imports in recent years, calling them part of a strategy of political blackmail and manipulation. In 2006, he even proposed that the European Union impose sanctions on Russia for its economic bullying in Eastern Europe. His animosity had deep roots. In 1980, he spent nearly a year in prison for "anti-socialist" activities when the Moscow-backed communist government imposed martial law in Poland. After his release, he became a leader of the underground Solidarity movement that campaigned for democratic reform, helping to topple the communist regime.

One of the key initiatives of his career was to achieve greater openness and recognition from Russia about the massacre of Polish officers by the Soviet secret police in 1940. He insisted that the two countries could not build normal ties without achieving reconciliation over these crimes. On Wednesday, Putin made an unprecedented gesture of good will on this issue, becoming the first Russian leader ever to commemorate Stalin's mass executions of Poles alongside a Polish leader. Prime Minister Tusk had flown in to Smolensk that day for the ceremony in the village of Katyn, where most of the 22,000 political murders were carried out by Stalin's NKVD secret police, a forerunner to the KGB.

After the ceremony, which marked the 70th anniversary of the killings at Katyn, Putin gave a controversial explanation of why Stalin had ordered them. He said Stalin was seeking revenge for the death in 1920 of Red Army soldiers in Polish prisoner of war camps, where around 32,000 troops under Stalin's command who had been captured by the Poles died of hunger and disease.

"It is my personal opinion that Stalin felt personally responsible for this tragedy, and carried out the executions [of Poles in 1940] out of a sense of revenge," Putin said at a press conference.

He also disappointed many in Poland by failing to call the massacres a war crime or to pledge that the perpetrators' names, which are now sealed in Russia's secret archives, would finally be opened to the Poles.

But for most people in Poland and in Russia, Wednesday's ceremony with Tusk was still seen as a remarkable step forward in the process of reconciliation. President Kaczynski was due to arrive on Saturday for another ceremony along with a delegation of more than 80 Polish officials and relatives of the victims of the Katyn massacres. "I hope I get a visa," Kaczynski had joked when announcing the visit. As part of the ceremony, he was due to receive an urn of soil from the forests were the thousands of Polish officers had been executed with a bullet to the base of the neck.

The horrific irony of the crash that cut short this visit was not lost on officials in Russia, who expressed their shock and grief over the incident.

"The soul can only shudder from the realization that Katyn has claimed more victims," said Konstantin Kosachyov, head of the foreign affairs committee of Russia's parliament.

Mourners in Warsaw had already begun to gather by the presidential palace on Saturday to lay flowers and light candles. The political impact of the crash will likely be felt in Poland for years to come.

Under the constitution, new presidential elections will have to be held, and replacements will also need to be found for the chief of Poland's military and the deputy minister of foreign affairs, as well as scores of other officials who were on that flight. How the tragedy will effect relations between Poland and Russia will depend a lot on how Russia handles the investigation of the crash alongside Polish authorities. For his part, Putin is traveling to Smolensk on Saturday to help oversee the inquiry and meet with Tusk, who has also said he is coming to the scene of the crash. But whatever the investigators find among the wreckage, Poles will now have yet another tragic reason to mourn their countrymen in the forests around Katyn.

Polish President Lech Kaczynski Katarina Stoltz / Reuters

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JAPAN: Japan rebels launch new opposition party

Japan's former finance minister Kaoru Yosano and four other political veterans on Saturday launched a new party ahead of July polls as their conservative opposition camp struggles to regain power. Former trade minister Takeo Hiranuma assumed head of the party, named "Stand up Japan" and consisting of former members of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which lost its half-century grip on power in last year's lower house election. (AFP)e

RUSSIA: Week In Review With Daniel Schorr

April 10, 2010

TRANSCRIPT EXCERPT

SCOTT SIMON, host:

This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. Two major stories we're following today. The president of Poland has been killed in a plane crash in western Russia. He was traveling with his wife and several of Poland's top military and civilian leaders to an event to mark the 70th anniversary of a massacre of Polish officers by Soviet secret police. The plane crashed in thick fog with 96 people aboard. Apparently no survivors.

And also today, sad news from West Virginia, where rescuers have found the bodies of four missing miners. They've been missing since Monday, when an explosion tore through the Upper Big Branch Mine. And coming up we'll have a report from Raleigh County, West Virginia.

First, a look back at some of the week's other news. We're joined by NPR senior news analyst Dan Schorr.

Hi, Dan.

DAN SCHORR: Hi, Scott.

SIMON: And, Dan, a critical week for U.S./Russian relations, seemingly.

SCHORR: Oh, yes.

SIMON: President Obama just returned from signing a new nuclear treaty with Russia. Is this what he once referred to, I guess, last year as a reset of that relationship?

SCHORR: Well, a reset button, yes. I'll tell you. The relations with Russia seem to be proceeding now on two tracks - the good side and the not so very good side. The good side is they had this summit meeting with President Obama, who does very well in such meetings. They began calling each by their first names. They came out and announced that they have agreed to a treaty now to reduce by one-third the stockpiles of nuclear weapons, which are in wretched excess anyway.

And then there is the other side. They made a point of saying that Russia still does not accept the idea of having an American defense against missiles based partly in East European countries, and if they go ahead with that, that's about the end of everything.

Also, there's the latest uprising in Kyrgyzstan, where it turns out that the president, who now has been installed by Russia, is probably planning to ask the United States to vacate the Air Force base that we have in Kyrgyzstan, which is very important because we need it now to begin moving troops to Afghanistan.

SIMON: Well, some people would submit that the relationship has been reset to the disadvantage of the U.S.

SCHORR: I am not sure - the U.S. can take care of itself. I don't see why it's to the disadvantage of the U.S. They agree on what they agree on. And they don't agree on what they don't agree on.

SIMON: The administration also released what's called the, in fact, the NPR review - Nuclear Posture Review.

SCHORR: Yes.

SIMON: Announcing that America...

SCHORR: Are they allowed to do that?

SIMON: You'd think it'd be copyrighted. I'm sure we have lawyers working on it, right, right? But the government can't afford to pay any kind of settlement, so I guess they figured that NPR would just look the other way.

America won't use its nuclear arsenal against non-nuclear states. What does this mean?

SCHORR: Well, for many, many years, ever since there's been a nuclear race, the question has been how to govern it, how to make sure people know what we'll fight for, what we won’t fight for. Back in 1953, I remember, the Eisenhower Secretary of State John Foster Dulles came out with what he called the Doctrine of Massive Retaliation. Because the Russians had so many troops massed along the Iron Curtain, they were saying, okay, you got a lot more conventional forces than we have. However, just so you'll know, that we will respond if necessary with a massive retaliation, meaning including nuclear, against a conventional attack.

Well, that went on and they've been trying to get off that for a long time. And now (unintelligible) how about the idea that the United States promises not to use nuclear weapons against a non-nuclear state. This, of course, is preparing to hit the meeting on non-proliferation, which is coming this next week as a next big event where they agreed to do something about proliferation of weapons.

There remains that there are nuclear weapons. The danger of nuclear weapons probably becomes mainly today from terrorists or rogue states than it does from Russia and the United States, and we're fitting into the new mold of where the threat comes from.

SIMON: But is this also a means of saying to - I'll be this specific - North Korea, if you don't develop a nuclear weapon, you're in no danger of a nuclear attack from the United States, but if you do develop a nuclear weapon, that bet is off the table?

SCHORR: Well, exactly. And that goes double for Iran.

SIMON: Next week, there's a big summit of world leaders in Washington to discuss nuclear security around the world and specifically the threat of nuclear terrorism. What do you foresee coming out of that meeting?

SCHORR: Statements of how they're going to work together. They'll establish probably some international body to keep track of what is known in the world. I mean, we have now about nine countries with nuclear weapons. U.S. has 90 percent of all of them, but they're there. Some that we don't know where they are.

And I think the organization has to be created. And apparently that is what they have in mind at this great summit meeting in which there is an international effort directly devoted to finding out who is trying to develop nuclear weapons and how to slow them down.

SIMON: Question I feel moved to ask you this week: Based on your vast historical experience and your lifetime as a reporter, what do disarmament treaties accomplish or not really?

SCHORR: Well, there is a school of thought that if you have a disarmament treaty, that the answer's going to be that it opens up for anybody who doesn't want to go into disarmament and makes an opening for him and it does more harm than good. That's been argued in the past.

On the other hand, if states can get together to take in concert what they're going to do about weapons now that we're in the nuclear age, then there is no hope at all.

. . .

SIMON: NPR's senior news analyst Dan Schorr. Thanks so much.

SCHORR: All right. My pleasure.

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