No image available
/ 16 January 2008
The anti-whaling group Sea Shepherd scored a victory on Wednesday in its high-seas campaign to obstruct a Japanese whale hunt in the Antarctic, forcing the fleet to a standstill while officials tried to unload two protesters who had boarded a harpoon vessel from their rubber boat.
Japan’s capital braced for a powerful typhoon on Sunday that killed five people and forced tens of thousands to evacuate across the country. Authorities warned that Typhoon Man-Yi, packing sustained winds of 108km/h and gusts of up to 162km/h, could continue to wreak havoc as it moved up the Pacific coast toward Tokyo.
The chief architect of Sony’s PlayStation game console stepped down on Tuesday as the Japanese company struggles to defend its dominance in the video-game industry and revive its reputation as an electronics pioneer. Ken Kutaragi (56) stepped down as Sony Computer Entertainment’s chairperson and group chief executive.
Disgraced Japanese dot-com tycoon Takafumi Horie slammed his conviction and harsh sentence for securities fraud on Sunday, insisting he had committed no crimes and that he had more than paid for any mistakes by losing his company. ”I did not intentionally attempt to pad earnings, and there was no false accounting,” he said.
Japan and the United States announced a plan on Wednesday to deploy advanced Patriot interceptor missiles and boost troop numbers at US bases in Japan as a top government spokesperson called for more action on North Korea over its recent missile tests.
No image available
/ 10 October 2005
Japan’s ruling coalition is expected to achieve a key ambition of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi this week by passing legislation to privatise the country’s sprawling postal service and create the world’s largest private bank. Parliament’s lower house may take up the Bills and approve them as early as Tuesday, setting up a vote in the upper house by week’s end.
A powerful magnitude-7,2 earthquake struck north-eastern Japan on Tuesday, injuring at least 56 people, triggering small tsunamis and shaking skyscrapers as far away as Tokyo, 300km to the south. A caved-in roof at an indoor pool in the coastal city of Sendai injured 14 people, national broadcaster NHK reported.