JAPAN: Toyota response to complaints takes on a confrontational tone

The accelerator pedal assembly of a Toyota Avalon is connected to monitoring equipment at a demonstration at the company's Torrance headquarters last month. (Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times / March 8, 2010)

9:22 PM PDT, April 8, 2010

By Ralph Vartabedian and Ken Bensinger

Special teams are sent to investigate, and sometimes discredit, reported problems.

When its customers claim their Toyota or Lexus vehicles suddenly accelerate, the company is at the ready with teams of technicians that it can deploy rapidly to examine the reports -- and in some cases discredit them.

The teams, dubbed SMART for "swift market analysis and research team," were publicly unveiled by Toyota on Thursday, but have been deployed at least seven times in the last month.

They scored big successes when they helped undermine a recent claim by a San Diego motorist who said his Prius took him on a 20-minute high-speed ride down the freeway and another by a New York housekeeper who said her Prius flew into a wall even though her foot was on the brake.

Toyota's critics say it has every right to dispute inaccurate claims, and its legions of devoted customers have cheered the rigorous response on Internet forums.

The SMART teams are part of a much broader public relations and legal strategy Toyota is using to confront critics, an approach that has toughened in recent weeks. Toyota is now staking out its position before major scientific investigations into sudden acceleration have gotten started, and before federal officials have completed regulatory reviews. Last week, federal safety regulators enlisted the government's top technical experts to examine the problem.

Critics say the company is acting prematurely and in some cases spreading misinformation.

"It is a very aggressive and misleading campaign," said Clarence Ditlow, executive director of the Center for Auto Safety. "Toyota can't win this battle by slinging mud, but they are trying."

In at least one case, a SMART inspection backfired, adding ammunition to a lawsuit against the company. The team discovered that a repair under the recall campaign for sticking accelerator pedals had not been properly completed.

Toyota's strategy represents a big change in the last six weeks.

In February, Toyota Chief Executive Akio Toyoda told Congress, "As the CEO of the company, I will make sure that we will never ever blame the customers going forward."

Exactly what that meant is not quite clear, because the company said it now intends to dispute the reports of its customers when it sees something questionable.

"When we see something that needs addressing, we're going to respond," company spokesman Mike Michels said. In some cases, customers have claimed sudden acceleration for mechanical behavior that involves "normal functions of a vehicle," Michels said.  He added, "We're getting a lot of stuff coming out of the woodwork."

Auto safety experts said Toyota has every right to defend itself against phony claims, but its approach has led to countercharges that the company is spreading outright falsehoods.

Ditlow is furious over an e-mail Toyota sent to some reporters, a copy of which he provided to The Times, alleging that he was on the payroll of plaintiff attorneys. Ditlow said that neither he nor his organization takes money from lawyers. Ditlow said his funding comes from nonprofit foundations, auto insurers, consumers and its publications.

Congressional investigators, meanwhile, complain that Toyota has sent multiple teams of lobbyists after them to sow discord among committee staffers. Toyota lobbyists are trying to disrupt the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee's investigation, a staffer on the committee said.

Toyota has also taken on several congressional witnesses.
David Gilbert, a professor of automotive technology at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, testified before the House Energy and Commerce Committee in February that his experiments showed potential flaws in Toyota's electronic engine control system.

Two Toyota employees resigned from a board of advisors for Gilbert's academic department.

Toyota then hired testing firm Exponent Inc., which helped the automaker put together a demonstration for the media at Toyota's U.S. sales headquarters in Torrance countering Gilbert's results point by point.

"It is unfortunate they felt the need to do that," Gilbert said. "I didn't expect Toyota would like what I found, but I was surprised by the magnitude of the response. What were they trying to prove, that they could squash me like a bug? Well, I suppose they could."

The attack on Gilbert has worried other academic experts that they could be the next target if they are critical of the company.

"Most of the academics completely support Gilbert," said Michael Pecht, director of an electronics reliability lab at the University of Maryland who has studied sudden acceleration for 10 years. "I think that there is a fear in the Toyota Exponent tactics."

Sean Kane, president of the consulting firm Safety Research and Strategies, has been another Toyota critic who the company has characterized as an operative of law firms.

Kane claims Toyota backed an online consumer poll that attempted to discredit him. The poll, a copy of which was provided by Kane, asks a series of questions about Kane, Gilbert and allegedly inaccurate reporting by ABC News.

Embedded in one question, for example, was the statement, "The American people deserve the truth about the safety of their cars, not biased studies by trial lawyer consultants who stand to make millions suing Toyota."

"We do opinion surveys all the time," Toyota spokesman Mike Michels said. "We were researching the potential for getting messages out, in particular for our advertising."

Meanwhile, the SMART inspections have yielded mixed results.
On March 15, the company drew dozens of reporters to an event at Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego where it was able to cast doubt on claims by James Sikes that his 2008 Prius had suddenly accelerated a week earlier.

The company asserted that the accelerator pedal was working properly and the brake pedal had been repeatedly depressed, implying Sikes did it intentionally to mimic a sudden acceleration event.

Released several days later, the California Highway Patrol report about the incident said nothing about suspected fraud and noted simply that the brakes were burned out. It said Sikes was examined afterward by emergency medical personnel and found to have a "very high" blood pressure and heart rate.

SMART did another inspection last month in Harrison, N.Y., after a woman reported that the Prius she was driving suddenly accelerated into a wall. An inspection of the vehicle electronics by Toyota found that the driver never had her foot on the brake in the moments before impact.

But the SMART team may have helped Toyota's adversaries on March 12, when it inspected a 2007 Camry after an alleged sudden acceleration event.

Linda Tang, an Orange County resident who is suing Toyota over alleged defects in the Camry electronics, said her vehicle suddenly accelerated after she had taken it to a dealership for repairs under recall.

Toyota initially did not inspect the vehicle. It was only after Tang's attorney enlisted congressional investigators to contact the Department of Transportation that the inspection was scheduled.
At a sophisticated Toyota facility in Orange County, a large team of company technicians spent nearly seven hours going over the vehicle. Two federal safety investigators flew in from Washington to oversee the inspection. They were joined by an automotive electronics expert hired by Tang's attorney.

Near the near the end of the day, the Toyota technicians acknowledged a major error.

A shim that was supposed to have been installed in the gas pedal assembly under the recall to prevent sticking was missing, according to federal officials and allegations in Tang's suit.

"It was shocking," said William Rosenbluth, the automotive electronics expert who works for Tang's attorney, Michael Lewis Kelly. "It wasn't there and the paperwork says it was put in."
Toyota officials declined to discuss the inspection.

View Los Angeles Times Article

RUSSIA: For Poland, plane crash in Russia rips open old wounds

Mourners stand amid a flood of candles and flowers outside the presidential palace in Warsaw. (Sean Gallup / Getty Images / April 10, 2010)

April 11, 2010

By Megan K. Stack, Reporting from Moscow

The 97 aboard a Soviet-era plane were heading to Katyn, site of the 1940 massacre of Polish prisoners of war. Now Poland, which hasn't forgotten its tragic past, must grieve the loss of its key leader

The plane crash that killed Polish President Lech Kaczynski on Saturday gutted a nation's leadership and silenced some of the most potent human symbols of its tragic and tumultuous history.
It was, in a sense, a nation colliding with its past: The aircraft ran aground on a patch of earth that has symbolized the Soviet-era repressions that shaped much of the 20th century, near the remote Russian forest glade called Katyn where thousands of Polish prisoners of war were killed and dumped in unmarked graves by Soviet secret police in 1940.

The toll cut a swath through Poland's elite. The 97 dead included the army chief of staff, the head of the National Security Bureau, the national bank president, the deputy foreign minister, the deputy parliament speaker, the civil rights commissioner and other members of parliament.

Also aboard the plane were war veterans and surviving family members of Poles killed by the Soviets. There was 90-year-old Ryszard Kaczorowski, Poland's last "president-in-exile" during the Soviet years. And Anna Walentynowicz, the shipyard worker whose dismissal in 1980 sparked the Solidarity union protests that eventually led to the collapse of Polish communism and made the symbolic first chink in the Berlin Wall.

And of course, Kaczynski, a former Warsaw mayor who had been imprisoned for his opposition to communism.

"The contemporary world has not seen such a tragedy," said Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, who as head of government holds the reins of power in the country. He called for two minutes of silence at noon Sunday.

The pavements of central Warsaw were transformed into a sea of light as late-night mourners burned thousands of candles. On Pilsudski Square, a trail of flickering flames stretched more than 50 yards from the Grave of the Unknown Soldier to the towering white cross marking the site where Pope John Paul II first said Mass to his compatriots in 1979.

Flying on a 26-year-old Soviet-designed plane, the presidential delegation was headed for a Roman Catholic Mass to mark the 70th anniversary of the deaths at Katyn. It was to be a tribute to long-smothered truth.

The massacre was denied for decades by the Soviet Union, and even today Russian reluctance to open the investigation files on the Polish prisoners remains a deeply sensitive topic between Moscow and Warsaw. To many Poles, the very name Katyn is shorthand for decades of secret grief and impotence in the face of Soviet power.

"I just have this feeling that Katyn is a sort of diabolical place in Polish history," said Tomasz Lis, a prominent Polish journalist and author. "It's just unimaginable; it's horrible."

As the news spread, a shiver of repulsion ran through a shocked Poland.

"This is unbelievable; this tragic, cursed Katyn," Kaczynski's predecessor, Aleksander Kwasniewski, said on Polish television. "It's hard to believe. You get chills down your spine."

The tragic irony of the crash was so extreme that it seemed destined for conspiracy theory. Russian officials were careful to pledge in the first hours to closely involve Poland in the investigation. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, rushing to the scene of the crash, announced that he would personally head the inquiry.

Poland was invaded by the Soviet Union during World War II, and lived for decades under Moscow's domination. Long after the fall of the Berlin Wall, ties with Russia remain strained by old anxieties over independence.

As the presidential plane winged toward the western Russian city of Smolensk on Saturday morning, thick cords of fog wrapped the city. On the ground, air traffic controllers urged the crew to land either in Minsk, the capital of Belarus, or in Moscow rather than risk navigating the fog, Russian officials said.

But time was pressing. The crew decided to risk the landing, and ignored the instructions from the air traffic controllers, the Russian air force said.

"The Polish presidential plane did not make it to the runway while landing," Smolensk region Gov. Sergei Antufyev told reporters. "Tentative findings indicate that it hit the treetops and fell apart. Nobody has survived the disaster."

On the ground, about 1,000 people, many of them Poles, were milling around the memorial site. A Polish priest was to say Mass once the presidential delegation arrived.

"We were getting ready for the Mass and everybody was expecting the president to arrive any minute," said Yan Rachinsky of Russia's Memorial human rights group. "Suddenly people started talking quietly about something. There were many concerned faces. . . . Soon people started running around and talking to each other. Everybody was wondering what was going on. It was an atmosphere of tension."

The priest led a prayer. Then the Polish ambassador stepped up to break the news. The presidential plane had crashed, he told the crowd. There were no survivors.

"It was a moment of complete shock," Rachinsky said. "We were standing there speechless. We couldn't believe it."

Tears wetting nearly every face, Rachinsky said, the group went ahead with the Mass.

By late afternoon, 97 bodies were being packed into coffins and flown to Moscow for identification. The flight recorders had been found, and investigators were studying them for clues.

In an address shortly after the crash, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev was careful to emphasize recent improvements in relations between Russia and Poland.

"These days we conducted memorial events in Katyn together grieving over the victims of totalitarian times," Medvedev said. "All Russians share your grief and mourning."

Last week, Tusk, the Polish prime minister, traveled to Katyn to mark the massacre. In what was regarded as a turning point in the often frosty relations between Moscow and Warsaw, Putin also attended the ceremony.

Kaczynski, a frequent and outspoken critic of the Kremlin, was not invited to that ceremony.

Unlike Tusk's visit, which was given prominent news coverage in Russia, Kaczynski's plans to attend Saturday's commemoration were all but unmentioned. A few weeks ago, the Russian Foreign Ministry publicly complained that Kaczynski had not sent official word of his planned visit. The ministry had heard of his intentions from press reports, officials said.

The crash throws Polish politics into uncertainty. Kaczynski was to run for reelection in October; a government spokesman said Saturday night that Poland would hold an early presidential election, but no date had been set.

The leading left-wing candidate, Jerzy Szmajdzinski, was aboard the plane. And Polish law calls for another of the candidates, speaker of the lower chamber of parliament Bronislaw Komorowski, to take over as head of state after the president's death.

Kaczynski, 60, was elected to the presidency in 2005. He and his twin brother, Jaroslaw, were Soviet-era child actors who grew up to cut a prominent path through Polish politics. Kaczynski rose from the ranks of the Solidarity trade union before falling out bitterly with the group's leader, Lech Walesa, who went on to become Poland's first post-Soviet president.

In 2006 and 2007, the early years of Kaczynski's presidency, his twin served as prime minister.

The circumstances of Kaczynski's death carry a particular irony because of his long-standing interest in shedding light on some of the more painful moments of Poland's past. As mayor of Warsaw, he championed the construction of the Museum of the Warsaw Uprising, a tribute to the crushed resistance to the Nazis in 1944.
During his presidency too, Kaczynski frequently hearkened back to the heroic days of Solidarity's struggle against communism.

"Poland needs to reconsider its mistakes," he said in 2005.  "But more than that, it needs a consensus based on truth."

Times staff writer Sergei L. Loiko in Moscow and special correspondent Kate Connolly in Warsaw contributed to this report.

View Los Angeles Times Article

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).

View AFP Article on Google

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

View Time Article

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

View Time Article

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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JAPAN: Man takes flight attendant hostage at Narita airport during deportation

A Nigerian man has been charged after he allegedly took a flight attendant hostage aboard an airplane preparing to depart Narita airport, near Tokyo, when he was to be deported in January, according to an indictment document. The 46-year-old man allegedly grabbed the flight attendant around the neck on the plane Jan. 27, poked her with a key and demanded his release, the document says. The man was immediately overpowered by an immigration officer and was arrested, the police said. (AP)

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JAPAN & N. KOREA: Fee row shines spotlight on Japan's pro-North Korean schools

The framed portraits of North Korea's past and present leaders, the "two Kims", gaze down solemnly from the wall as 30 pupils hunch over their desks in a slightly decrepit classroom. The boys are dressed in dark blue school blazers, and the girls in traditional chima chogori costumes. A map of the Korean peninsula hangs on the wall, and the teacher talks about its troubled history. At first glance, this school could be in Pyongyang. In fact, it is in Japan, where a row over school funding has put a spotlight on this Tokyo school and nine others like it, operated by Chongryon, the pro-Pyongyang organisation that serves as North Korea's de facto embassy. (AFP)

TRAVEL: How I Became a Better World Traveler

Thibault Camus / AP

Published Apr 9, 2010 (From the magazine issue dated Apr 19, 2010)

By Seth Stevenson | NEWSWEEK

The joy of travel is to let different cultures seep into your identity. It's not to bring your own culture with you so you can inflict it on the native populace.

Recently, while circling the earth for a travel book, I experienced one of my greatest thrills as a globe-trotter: I was mistaken for a German. Don't misunderstand. I am no Germanophile. It's just that wherever I journey, I try hard to blend in with the locals. So when a German woman stopped me in the town square in Cologne and asked me for the time—in German! clearly assuming I was also German!—I couldn't help but congratulate myself on a job well done. I'd successfully melted into my surroundings, shedding my Americanness the way a snake sheds a sheath of dead skin.

Now, I can hear you asking: Seth, why would you want to pretend you're not American? Are you ashamed of your country? Far from it. I adore America. The reason I disguise my nationality is mostly anthropological. Think about those nature photographers in the wild who camouflage themselves, not wanting their presence to alter the behavior of the animals they're observing. Now imagine me, people-watching from a table at a café in Antwerp, or Quito, or Cape Town. If I've got my NFL jersey on and my white tube socks pulled up to midcalf, I turn myself into an object of curiosity for the locals. Their behavior changes as their eyes are drawn to my blinding white hosiery. I'm no longer the watcher, but the watched. Remember, as you shake out your duffel bag for a summer on the road, the great joy of travel is to let different cultures seep into your identity. It's not to bring your own culture with you so you can inflict it on the native populace.

So how do you avoid coming off American? In general, you should shun corporate logos, stick to blandly neutral colors, and—I can't emphasize this enough—don't ever wear white tube socks. In particular, don't wear them with knee-length shorts and a pair of overdesigned running shoes. That outfit is a dead giveaway that you hail from the land of the free and the home of the brave. (Also known as the land of the baseball cap and the home of the baggy khaki trousers. Better ditch those, too.)

Of course, no matter how you dress, you will still bear indications of your nationality. Your haircut. Your jewelry. Your American-flag tattoo. Perhaps the biggest tip-off is the way you walk. We walk big—swinging our arms, letting our legs amble wide—in a manner that's fitting for folks from a country with plenty of empty space. Citizens of densely populated Europe exhibit a far more compact posture, with elbows and knees tucked tight and arm swings restrained.

The longer you're on the road, the easier it becomes to disappear into foreign environments. It just happens naturally. If you've packed light—as you always should—you'll end up buying a new shirt or two somewhere along your journey. Maybe a new pair of shoes. Probably some socks. Eventually your wardrobe turns into a hard-to-identify collage of the places you've visited. Over time you'll lose track of what's going on back home and instead start following the local news. And then one day you'll stroll through the town square and a woman will ask you the time in German. But since you don't speak German, you'll just hold your watch up to her face.

Stevenson, a contributing writer for Slate, is the author of  Grounded: a Down to Earth Journey Around the World.

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TAIWAN: Boyle has a Taiwan equivalent

AS a younger man, Taiwan's Lin Yu-chun sang for hours on end, trying to get his mind off the sneers he endured because of his portly figure. The round-faced soprano with the bowl haircut never imagined his voice...

S. KOREA: Birthday Preparations

Ahn Young-joon / AP

A South Korean worker decorates lanterns to celebrate Buddha's upcoming birthday on May 21 at the Chogye Temple in Seoul, South Korea.

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CHINA & JAPAN: China executes three Japanese drug smugglers

China executed three convicted Japanese drug smugglers on Friday, just days after another Japanese citizen was put to death for the same offence -- prompting concerns in Tokyo that ties could suffer. The trio were executed in the northeastern province of Liaoning, Xinhua news agency reported, citing an announcement from China's supreme court. The Japanese foreign ministry confirmed it had been notified by the Chinese side. On Tuesday, China executed 65-year-old Mitsunobu Akano -- the first Japanese citizen to be put to death in the country since diplomatic ties were re-established in 1972. (AFP)

JAPAN: Right-wingers vow to block 'The Cove' in Japan

Dozens of right-wing activists protested Friday outside the office of a Japanese distributor of the Oscar-winning "The Cove," demanding that the gory portrayal of dolphin hunting in Japan not be shown in the country. "The Cove" won this year's best documentary Oscar with its depiction of dolphin hunts in Taiji, a small fishing village in western Japan. The protesters Friday accused the distributor of betraying Japanese national pride by supporting the film, which they see as insulting to traditional village culture of which dolphin hunting is part. (AP)

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JAPAN: Japan's students slacking off, study finds

Japan's high school students, once renowned for their diligence and self-discipline, are slacking off and falling behind their peers elsewhere in the world, a study has found. The Japan Youth Research Institute, a non-profit group, said it found that Japanese students study less regularly and sleep more often in class than those in China, South Korea and the United States. "Japanese students are happy with the status quo and lack vision about their future," the institute's head, Tamotsu Sengoku told AFP Thursday. "Among all the nations studied, Japan is particularly bad." (AFP)

TRAVEL: Interview with Seth Stevenson: ‘Grounded’

04.08.10 | 10:18 AM ET

The author's new book chronicles his surface journey around the world. Frank Bures asks him about it -- and why he thinks air travel isn't really travel.

Seth Stevenson was coasting into his 30s when he began to get that feeling many of us get. You know, the one that makes you want to take your life by the lapels and shake it, to heave all anchors weighing you down. It’s the urge to get out on the road.

Stevenson and his girlfriend gave notice. They tied up loose ends. They turned in the keys to their apartment. Then they packed two backpacks, went down to a harbor on the Delaware River, and got on a boat to begin a circumnavigation of the earth—without leaving its surface.

Stevenson writes about the trip in his new book, Grounded: A Down to Earth Journey Around the World, a great read and a fascinating look at the globe from a perspective few people see it nowadays: from freighters, ferries, bikes, buses and trains.

“We’ve forgotten the benefit of surface travel,” Stevenson concludes. “It forces you to feel, deep in your bones, the distance you’ve covered; and it gradually eases you into a new context that exists not just outside your body, but also inside your head.”

Stevenson is a contributing writer for Slate, has received multiple Lowell Thomas Awards from the Society of American Travel Writers and has been included three times in the “Best American Travel Writing” anthologies. I interviewed him via email.

World Hum: You say in the book that for you, riding in an airplane isn’t really traveling. What do you mean by that?

Seth Stevenson: Flying is like teleporting between two points. The flight itself is an empty, meaningless interlude. Once the flight is over, you never think or speak of it again—unless it’s to complain about the turbulence or the shrieking child sitting behind you. By contrast, being on a ship or a train moving between point A and point B is a journey unto itself, full of ground-level scenery, local culture and moments of quiet contemplation. A surface voyage is often memorable, and on occasion transcendent. 

Freighter travel seems to me like a great way to go. Aside from it taking a long time, why do you think so few people travel that way?

The time factor is a major stumbling block. Not everyone can spare nine days to cross the Atlantic on the way to a European vacation. There’s also no internet access on freighters, no casinos, no trivia contests, no gourmet restaurants, no Broadway shows—all things of interest to the average cruise ship passenger. Above all, though, most people simply aren’t aware of freighter travel as a possibility. It’s not particularly well publicized, and only a few travel agencies and shipping companies can book you passage aboard a freighter.

Still, I’ve been recommending freighters to anyone who’ll listen. It’s an amazing experience to be out on the open ocean on a working ship, chatting with the officers on the navigation bridge, eating with the crew in the mess room, feeling like you’re riding on one of the stallions of the global economy.

What’s the difference between arriving at a place by boat or train, versus through the airport?

Airports are generally built outside cities, as separate holding pens contributing to sprawl. You’re not really in the city until after a taxi ride (sometimes a long one). By contrast, train stations are often built in the middle of thriving city neighborhoods. You arrive as a part of the community. As your train rolls into town, you also frequently get a ground-level introduction, through your seat window, to the look and feel of the place and its inhabitants.

As for arriving by ship: Some cruise ship terminals are actually quite a bit like airports—with duty free shops, clothing boutiques and fast food restaurants. But container ship ports don’t cater at all to passenger arrivals. You get dropped off in a remote, industrial part of a city, and wind up walking past container stacks and rusty machinery. We had to ask the freighter crews how to get anywhere on land. Once, we found a city bus depot next to a port and flagged down an empty bus headed downtown to begin its scheduled route.

I was surprised how, when you got to Japan after going overland from Russia, you said that the world felt smaller than you thought it would. Why was that?

We think of Japan as an impossibly distant place. The other side of the world. Taking a 14-hour flight to Tokyo gives us little understanding of the true distance. But taking a ship across the Atlantic, and then trains across Europe and Asia, makes the distance a comprehensible thing, fixed and finite in your mind. You can feel how far away Japan is, and it turns out to be not nearly as far as you’d imagined. You can roll from the cobblestone streets of Europe to the steppes of Siberia to the glass skyscrapers of Tokyo in not much more than a week. And when you watch each scene melt into the next, they feel more connected and part of the same small world—less like dots on a map to hop between as you sit inside the hermetic cabin of a jumbo jet.

What parts of the journey do you remember most fondly?

There are countless wonderful memories, but here’s one that comes to mind: Driving across the Australian Outback, we stopped for the night at a tiny roadhouse about a million miles from civilization. There we ended up drinking with a trio of jackaroos (Americans would call them “cowboys”) who delighted us with their stories about rounding up cattle on motorcycles, wrestling bulls to the ground, and shooting kangaroos for meat. It was a funny, serendipitous interlude in the dead center of a barren wasteland.

And do you feel now like you know how big the world is?

When I look at a spinning globe now, and trace my finger along its curve, I see myself moving along its surface. Floating on freighters across vast oceans. Rolling on trains across Russian expanses. Road-tripping across the Outback. I have made myself part of the map. I do feel I understand the scope of the world—and the interconnectedness of its civilized outposts—in a way that I never could have before.

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CHINA: Geithner's China Visit May Narrow Currency Difference

April 8, 2010

By Anthony Kuhn and Steve Inskeep

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is in Beijing for talks about economic affairs. Thursday's visit is being interpreted as a sign that the U.S. and China are resolving their contentious dispute over China's currency and that Beijing might allow the yuan to rise against the dollar, as the U.S. has requested.

TRANSCRIPT

STEVE INSKEEP, host:

The American Treasury secretary, Timothy Geithner, stopped in Beijing today, on his way home from India. There are signs that China may be willing to let its currency strengthen against the dollar. In theory, at least, that would help cut the U.S. trade deficit, it would raise the prices of Chinese goods that are sold to the United States, lower the prices of American goods sold in China.

NPR's Anthony Kuhn is following the Geithner visit from Beijing. He's on the line. Hi, Anthony.

ANTHONY KUHN: Hi, Steve.

INSKEEP: One wonders why Geithner would stop in China now. Does this suggest that they really are close to a breakthrough?

KUHN: Well, a lot of people think that Geithner is trying to give the Chinese room to do something on this issue. He's taking a very low-key approach. He's not talking to the press. What Treasury spokesmen have said is that he wants some face time with Wang Qishan, who is the Chinese top official on economic and financial issues.

And Wang and Secretary Geithner are going to be meeting in May at Cabinet-level talks, and these would be the talks that would address bigger issues, which could really help on the currency issue and on the bigger trade imbalance. So, he's trying to, I think, set the stage for further talks down the road.

INSKEEP: Well, let's remember: American officials have complained about China's currency for years. The accusation is that China's currency has been kept artificially low, which makes Chinese goods artificially cheap in the United States and hurts the trade deficit. That, at least, is the accusation. And Secretary Geithner, just a few days ago, could have officially accused China of being a currency manipulator, but he didn't.

KUHN: That's right. He's under big pressure from congressmen and industry people to label China a currency manipulator. And if he doesn't want to do that - he deferred a decision on that, which was originally going to be on April 15th - then he has to show that China is moving on this issue.

Now, a problem with the April 15th deadline for this currency manipulator label, is that Chinese President Hu Jintao will be in Washington and he's going to meet with President Obama. And they're going to discuss the issue, and they didn't want to snub him.

Now, when people start accusing China of manipulating currency, China feels backed into a corner and it cannot back down. So, I think Secretary Geithner has been saying, well, it's in China's interest to do this anyway and it's ultimately China's choice. He knows that people inside China, including, for example, at China's Central Bank, are pushing for this currency appreciation. So, I think he's trying to give them some room to do that.

INSKEEP: Why would the Chinese push for a currency appreciation if they seem to be gaining so much from a cheap currency?

KUHN: Well, they're, you know, the opponents of it, for example, are in the commerce ministry. They're afraid that if Chinese exports get more expensive people will be thrown out of work. But in the Central Bank, for example, they're worried about monetary policy. They're worried about hot money inflows, betting that the Chinese currency will go up.

So, China has said that in the long run, for sure, the Chinese currency is going to get stronger against the dollar; they just don't want it to happen all at once. Now, we've been seeing some signs that China is going to move on this fairly soon. What's most likely, analysts say, is that China will allow the renminbi, the Chinese currency, to trade within a wider band.

INSKEEP: Which means they're still controlling it, but maybe not quite so strictly?

KUHN: That's right. There would be a small appreciation and there will be wider play for market forces.

INSKEEP: But not totally free market. You wonder if this really will help the deficit in a couple of seconds - the trade deficit.

KUHN: Well, that requires a larger rebalancing of consumption and production in both countries, and that takes big changes for both countries. It's not easy.

INSKEEP: Okay, Anthony. Thanks very much. That's NPR's Anthony Kuhn reporting today, from Beijing.

KUHN: Thanks.

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JAPAN: Japan’s players booed after 3-0 loss

Japan's players were booed off the pitch Wednesday after losing 3-0 to Serbia in a World Cup warm-up match. Dragan Mrda's two first-half goals gave Serbia a comfortable lead and midfielder Nemanja Tomic put the game out of Japan's reach on the hour mark with a free kick from 30 meters. Japan coach Takeshi Okada and Serbia counterpart Radomir Antic used the game to give younger players a chance to make their case for World Cup selection. But Japan's fans were not pleased with their team's efforts, jeering the players as they walked off at the final whistle. (AP)

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JAPAN: 2 Japanese in space together for 1st time as shuttle docks at ISS

The space shuttle Discovery docked at the International Space Station on Wednesday, delivering Japanese astronaut Naoko Yamazaki and six other crew members. On the ISS, Yamazaki, 39, met up with Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi, 44, whose six-month mission comes to an end in June. It is the first time that two Japanese astronauts have worked together in space. The shuttle, which lifted off Monday as scheduled from NASA's John F. Kennedy Space Center, is taking some 8 tons of supplies and experimental equipment to the space station during its 13-day mission through April 18. (AP)

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CHINA: Chinese hacking of Indian security data raises alarm

April 7, 2010

By Mark Magnier and Anshul Rana, Reporting from Phnom Penh, Cambodia, and New Delhi

Researchers find no evidence linking the hacking to China's government, but their discoveries may suggest a wider problem of growing espionage in cyberspace.

The world is in a cyber arms race and needs to take steps to reverse it, said the authors of a report released Tuesday that detailed the extensive theft by Chinese hackers of Indian national security information, 1,500 e-mails from the Dalai Lama's office and other sensitive information.

Canadian and U.S. researchers at the University of Toronto monitored the hacking of a "shadow" spy network over eight months, tracking it to computer servers based in China and to individuals in the city of Chengdu in central China.

"The relationship between the Chinese state and the hacking community is quite unclear," said Nart Villeneuve, chief research officer at Canada's SecDev Group, a private think tank, working with the university's Munk Center for International Studies.

"I don't doubt that the information may just find its way to the Chinese government," Villeneuve said in a global webcast for reporters, "but as of now we have no hard evidence to prove that the hackers were backed by the Chinese government or were working for them."

China denied any role, dismissing the report's content as unsubstantiated and little more than rumor.

"I do not know what evidence these people have or what their motives are," said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu. "We resolutely oppose all forms of cyber crime, including hacking."

The authors of the report, titled "Shadows in the Cloud" and involving the Information Warfare Monitor and Shadowserver Foundation groups, said that they weren't surprised by China's reaction but that the evidence speaks for itself.

The report describes a world in which governments are racing to militarize cyberspace, creating an environment ripe for crime and espionage.

The authors said about 700 documents marked restricted, secret or top secret were stolen from India. China's neighbor is one of many developing countries that have not paid enough attention to security in their headlong embrace of new technologies, said Ron Diebert, another member of the team that unveiled the hacking activity.

Among the compromised documents found were presentations in India on the Pechora surface-to-air missile system, the Iron Dome mobile missile defense system and Project Shakti, an artillery combat command and control system.

Researchers said the Dalai Lama allowed the team to carry out its inquiry after his e-mail system was hacked.

They said that neither the Chinese government nor the Chinese hacker community is monolithic, and the researchers are trying to work with that part of the government that wants to fight hacking.

"The attacks we uncovered were not random but very targeted, and it suggests to us that there is a shift from an industrial espionage to political espionage not necessarily backed by a state," Diebert said.

Rana is a special correspondent. Times Beijing Bureau chief Barbara Demick contributed to this report.

View Los Angeles Times Article...

TRAVEL: Expensive Language Lessons? Doesn't Translate

Farah Nosh for The New York Times ChinesePod has language lessons for your iPod.

April 6, 2010, 11:00 pm

By MATT GROSS

At the beginning of this year, I made a resolution to learn to speak Spanish and Mandarin Chinese, two of the most commonly used languages on the planet and the keys to travel over a great swath of the world.

For a couple of weeks, I thought it might actually happen — I was going to San Francisco, after all, and staying in the heavily Latino Mission District. But since my traveling companion was my 1-year-old daughter, Sasha, conversation was generally pretty limited, and though I sang her nursery rhymes in Chinese, I can’t say my language abilities improved at all.

From there on, things have gone downhill. Next I went to Italy, where I had to dredge up all the Italian I’d forgotten in the year since I’d last been there, and as I write this I’m traveling through Austria, Slovakia and Hungary — countries where I hardly speak a single word of the local languages. For the first couple of days in Vienna, I answered everything with “Si” — yes in Italian. But by the time I started walking across the Slovak countryside, I found myself wishing everyone would speak German.

Sure, I have a phrasebook or two, not to mention access to Google Translate — which I’ve used in hotels to plan out phrases I might need later — but what I really need is a dedicated course of study, whether online or in person, to bring my tongue up to speed. Oh, and it has to be frugal, of course.

Unfortunately, learning a new language takes time and, usually, money. Classes, textbooks, tutoring — these add up quickly, and over the months it can take to achieve proficiency, you’ll spend even more. But there are a few ways to learn a language that can save you both time and money.

The most seemingly modern way to learn a language is through one of the CD- or software-based language courses, like Pimsleur, which was recommended by many of my readers, and probably the most famous, Rosetta Stone. They’re not necessarily frugal, but they are popular, so here’s a look at what they do.

The hook for Pimsleur’s CD-based audio courses in more than 40 languages is the so-called Pimsleur Method — the discovery that, according to Pimsleur.com:

“if his students were reminded of new words and information at gradually increasing intervals within a set amount of time, each time they would remember the word or information longer than the time before. Dr. Pimsleur documented that the word would actually move from short-term into long-term, or permanent, memory.”

In other words, while other methods also teach new foreign vocabulary, Pimsleur supposedly helps you remember it better.

I can’t say if this method is more effective than any other, but the prices seem fair enough. An introductory Hungarian course with 10 lessons costs a reasonable $24.95. Shorter courses in other languages can be $11.95, while comprehensive courses are a stretch at $345.

But why pay at all? There are hundreds of free language-lesson podcasts floating around the Internet. There are dozens on iTunes alone: Italian, Japanese, Arabic, Thai and so on. Of particular note is SurvivalPhrases, which offers 3- to 5-minute episodes that cover basics  like “Where is the bathroom?” in 19 languages, including Vietnamese, Russian, Greek and Brazilian Portuguese.

Of course, SurvivalPhrases’ free iTunes downloads, which offer 15 phrases, are there partly to hook you into paying $25 for 45 more at SurvivalPhrases.com.

Another podcast, the nearly five-year-old ChinesePod, has another, more innovative selling point. While many of its 1,300 podcasts are free, access to all of them costs $14 a month, and $249 gets you three months of access to all of them, plus a virtual classroom where you and three other students have — via Skype — weekly hourlong lessons with a Chinese teacher.

That price doesn’t sound too bad, since you’re interacting with someone who can listen to and correct your pronunciation, an aspect missing from most of the other online or audio-based language courses. Praxis Language, ChinesePod’s parent, offers similar courses in Spanish, French, Italian and English.

The close cousins of the language-lesson podcast are the iPhone-based phrasebooks and dictionaries. From Lonely Planet’s Mandarin ($9.99) to the 99-cent Klingon phrasebook, not to mention a ton of free versions, they help you through the basics of a new language, with sections on things like counting (yi, er, san  —1, 2, 3 in Mandarin) and food (“nuqDaq yuch Dapol?” is how a Klingon asks where you keep the chocolate). Often, they have audio components to aid you in pronunciation, and some of the Chinese dictionaries let you practice writing characters.

I’ve been traveling with a couple of these on my iPhone for a while, and frankly, I don’t use them all that often. It’s so much easier to whip out a real, printed phrasebook and flip through it for the words I need. Right now I’m carrying Lonely Planet’s German phrasebook and also its Czech one. (I wanted a proper Slovak one,  but Lonely Planet doesn’t produce one and I couldn’t find another at either my local Barnes & Noble or the independent book store.)

Why Lonely Planet when I could also have chosen Rough Guides or Berlitz? No particular reason. Most of them are pretty similar — they’re all covering the same details —and the prices are uniform, too.

Third graders in Ridgewood, N.J., learn Spanish using Rosetta Stone.  Ozier Muhammad/The New York Times

Ideally, though, you’ll do your language study before you hit the road. And the biggest name in language learning these days is Rosetta Stone, which combines a unique educational philosophy (it purports to immerse you in a foreign tongue as if you were a child) with high-tech software. That is, its packages come equipped with a microphone headset that lets the program evaluate your pronunciation. Of course, this isn’t cheap. An elementary Spanish course is $229, while a full five-level course costs $699, so I haven’t tried it yet.

And for that amount of money, you could learn a language the old-fashioned way – by immersing yourself in a foreign county. For the price of Rosetta Stone’s five-level course, you could do two or three weeks of “super intensive” study at the Casa de Lenguas in Antigua, Guatemala, one of many schools around Latin America that arrange both language lessons and home stays with local families ($85 a week via Casa de Lenguas).

Still, frugal language travelers should pick their destinations wisely, as learning Italian in Florence, or Russian in Moscow, may not be quite so affordable. The Russian courses organized by places like Globus International and Liden & Denz run upward of 260 euros a  week, or about $345 at $1.32 to the euro, and that doesn’t even include accommodation, visa fees and the inevitably higher cost of getting to Moscow.

If you don’t want to travel, but are still seeking one-on-one language lessons, try Craigslist. A recent search on Craiglist’s New York City pages for “language exchange” pulled up a Taiwanese music student looking to trade Mandarin for Italian lessons, and a guy in Chelsea named Tino who wants to improve his heavy accent in exchange for Spanish lessons.

Just the other week, in fact, I found a woman — she teaches Chinese at CUNY, actually — who wants to exchange Mandarin instruction for help with her written English. Since I think I may know a thing or two about writing, I got  back to  her, and while we’re still working out the details, I have high hopes that I can fulfill my New Year’s resolution without spending a cent. Wish me luck — or, as they say in Chinese, 金榜提名!

View New York Times Article...

N. KOREA: North Korea Sentences American To 8 Years

April 6, 2010

by The Associated Press

North Korea said Wednesday it has sentenced an American man to eight years' hard labor and a fine equivalent to $700,000 for entering the country illegally and unspecified hostile acts.

Aijalon Mahli Gomes was fined 70 million won after acknowledging his wrongdoing during a court trial Tuesday, the North's official Korean Central News Agency said in a brief dispatch.

South Korea's Unification Ministry said the official exchange rate in North Korea is 100 North Korean won to $1, which means the fine would equal $700,000.

Representatives of the Swedish Embassy in North Korea, which looks after U.S. interests in the country, witnessed the trial at their request, it said.

The North said last month that it arrested Gomes, 30, of Boston on Jan. 25 for trespassing after he crossed into the country from China.

Gomes is the fourth American detained in communist North Korea on charges of illegal entry in little over 12 months.

Two American journalists, Laura Ling and Euna Lee, were arrested in March last year near the Chinese border and sentenced to 12 years of hard labor for illegal entry and engaging in hostile acts.

They were freed in August after former U.S. President Clinton made a high-profile humanitarian visit to Pyongyang to negotiate their release.

On Christmas, American missionary Robert Park strode into North Korea from China on a self-proclaimed mission to draw attention to North Korea's human rights record and to call for leader Kim Jong Il to step down. He was released in February after more than 40 days in custody.

It was not immediately clear why Gomes, a graduate of Bowdoin College in Maine who taught English in South Korea, went to the North.

The State Department has said the U.S. wants to make sure he is returned to the United States as soon as possible.

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JAPAN: Japan Airlines to cut 16,500 jobs

A passenger (R) tries to use a Japan Airlines' ticket machine as an airlines employee assists him at New Chitose airport, northern Japan January 19, 2010. REUTERS/Issei Kato

Tue Apr 6, 1:56 pm ET

(Reuters) – Japan Airlines Corp (JALFQ.PK) plans to reduce its workforce by a third within the fiscal year to lower labor costs by 81.7 billion yen a year, the Nikkei business daily said.

The restructuring proposal compiled by the carrier and the state-backed Enterprise Turnaround Initiative Corp of Japan suggests to cut 16,500 jobs.

The proposed cuts include 5,405 workers from cargo and other peripheral operations, 2,460 flight attendants, 2,043 sales representatives and 775 pilots. Staffing at Kansai International Airport and Central Japan International Airport will be slashed 70 percent to 642 employees, reflecting reduced flight schedules, the Nikkei added.

Japan Airlines is currently soliciting 2,700 volunteers for early retirement, with two more rounds slated in the coming months, the newspaper said.

The airline had planned to cut 15,700 jobs over three years under the rehabilitation plan submitted with its bankruptcy filing in January. But operating losses of up to 1 billion yen a day have forced the faster restructuring, the Nikkei said.

(Reporting by Vinay Sarawagi in Bangalore; Editing by Don Sebastian)

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CHINA: A man's home is his castle-in-the-air in China

Created: 2010-4-7, Updated: 2010-4-6 22:34:04

Author:Jacob von Bisterfeld

"AN Englishman's home is his castle," or so the saying goes.  For many Chinese people, these days, their coveted future home appears to be priced like a castle, totally out of reach for most young people under their own steam.

Sure, some young couples do manage to move into new digs but more often than not with gargantuan efforts from both parents and/or grand parents who had been lucky enough to raise substantial mortgages on their continuously appreciating real estate.

In China, private property ownership became the norm, albeit hesitatingly, in the 1990s, when the majority of work unit-owned housing was sold for a token sum to all workers who had been employed for a lengthy period of time.

In 2002, it was possible to purchase a nice, new and modern 120-square-meter apartment at the perimeter of Century Park in Shanghai's Pudong for around 200,000 yuan (US$29,300). Newly built apartments in the same area of the same standard now cost easily 2 or 3 million yuan or more.

A more than 10-fold price increase in a mere eight years. Monthly salaries for most office workers in 2002 were about 2,500 yuan and are now, when pushing it a bit, 4,000 yuan.

A less than doubling of income and a 10-fold increase in apartment prices do not match. Building material increases amounted to about 30 percent in the same period. So, what went wrong? Well, a lot, actually.

The economy needed a boost, so bank loans became easy. Besides, there was quite a bit of cash sloshing around, both legitimate and money from the black and gray markets that was looking for investment projects.

And looking for investment projects they came, spearheaded by ultra-wealthy syndicates from the leather and shoe city of Wenzhou, Zhejiang Province, who bought up entire apartment blocks comprising 120 flats of 120 square meters in one fell swoop and, yes, with truckloads of 100 yuan notes (90 euro cents) which, much to many investor's chagrin, is still the largest currency note around.

A most appalling and sickening revelation in Shanghai Daily a few weeks ago showed a picture of some giant circular tower blocks with around 1,000 apartments standing empty since they were constructed in 2006. This calls into doubt that there actually IS a housing shortage. Far from it.

There may well be a frightening oversupply of apartments and houses. This abomination is repeated over and over again in most major cities in China. The result was (and still is) that the market is thus starved of new apartments for sale, driving up the market price beyond any investors' wildest dreams and becoming every prospective house buyer's nightmare.

Especially in the past five years, every man and his dog were buying new and second-hand real estate that was sure to double in price every three years or thereabouts. Several of my colleagues, and they are by no means wealthy people, own three or more (highly leveraged, with easy bank money) empty new houses, and they are awaiting the next doubling in property prices.
Is it thus more than likely that China is in for a repeat of the recent US burst housing bubble, probably only worse? Let's see.

In many Western countries, the income level of the average young couple is such that, with a minimal deposit, a mortgage and decorating loan can be paid off comfortably, within a period of 10 to 15 years.

In China, such repayments would not only consume the lion share of the couples' aggregate earnings, but also require a huge deposit and take 25 years or more to repay or, in many cases, beyond retirement age. China is a people's republic, but some real estate tycoons have spoken loudly that they will never build apartments for the ordinary people, they serve only the rich. What an irony.

No easy solution appears to be in sight yet. There are simply too many vested interests that would be hurt with any drastic change.
What can be done?

Clearly, the land-right sales price should be capped at 2002 levels or below. Taking cognizance of the fact that material prices and salaries have increased only moderately in the past eight years, new property prices resembling those of 2002 should be relatively easy to achieve.

Possessing more than one dwelling house or apartment, in most cases, is obviously for investment purposes and should be subject to progressive tax increases (the more properties, the higher the taxes). The tax structure should be such that affordable rental accommodation remains adequate.

Real estate profits, both for developers as well as individuals should be taxed at prohibitive rates to discourage speculation. En-block sales and sales of more that two units to the same buyer or extended family should be prohibited.

Banks should lower the minimum deposit rate for people with a steady job to 5 percent or 10 percent to make owning a property for most newly married couples a reality, rather than a pipe dream.

(The author is a freelancer in Shanghai. The views are his own.)

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JAPAN: Japan hoping 'endless discovery' catchphrase attracts foreign tourists

The government has decided on a new logo and catchphrase -- "Japan. Endless Discovery." -- to promote tourism in the country, with the aim of more than quadrupling the number of foreign tourists to 30 million at some point in the future, tourism minister said Tuesday. The slogan is aimed at encouraging repeat visitors, while the logo is a red-and-white design evoking the sun and cherry blossoms. The catchphrase replaces "Yokoso! Japan" which some said lacked sufficient impact, as the Japanese word for welcome is not widely recognized by non-Japanese speakers. (AP)

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TOKYO, JAPAN: Tuna auction at Tsukiji market to shut out sightseers for a month

Tokyo's Tsukiji fish market will shut out sightseers from its popular frozen tuna auction from April 8 to May 8 as the excessive numbers of visitors to the auction area obstruct business transactions, market officials said Tuesday. The touring section of the auction is scheduled to reopen on May 10, which falls on Monday. Wholesale sections and eating areas in the market will remain open, they said. On Monday, more than 500 sightseers, mostly foreign, swarmed the visitors' section which has a capacity of only 70 to 80 to see the tuna auction and the excessive numbers disrupted the hauling of tunas, according to the Tokyo metropolitan government. (AP)

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JAPAN & US: Japan says it has no plans to ease US beef restrictions

Japan said Tuesday it has no plans to ease long-standing trade restrictions on US beef imposed over mad cow disease, two days before talks in Tokyo between the two on the issue. US Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack was travelling to Japan Tuesday for a four-day visit in a renewed attempt to settle the long-running dispute that has created friction between the allies. But Japan's Agriculture Minister Hirotaka Akamatsu said he "has no plan to ask the government's food safety commission to review US beef", even if Vilsack demands it during their meeting scheduled for Thursday. (AFP)

JAPAN: Toyota Prius tops Japan's March auto sales

Toyota's Prius hybrid was Japan's top-selling car in March for an 11th straight month despite global recall woes, an industry group said Tuesday. Toyota Motor Corp., reeling after recalls over issues that included braking problems with the Prius, sold 35,546 units of the gas-electric vehicle in Japan last month, according to the Japan Automobile Dealers Association. Consumers were choosing the Prius with the help of tax breaks and government subsidies for environmentally friendly vehicles, Miyake said. (AP)

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