A proposed return to Formula One tyre change pitstops next season is likely to meet with strong opposition from the teams, McLaren boss Ron Dennis warned on Sunday. The suggestion was included in a list of possible changes to the draft sporting regulations for 2006 sent to all the team chiefs by the sport’s governing body, the FIA.
Six-time Japanese Grand Prix winner Michael Schumacher suffered a setback in preparation for this weekend’s race here at Suzuka on Saturday when he crashed in the morning practice session. Persistent overnight rain soaked the track and limited running in both 45-minute practice sessions but Schumacher was the first to brave the weather spun into the barriers in the opening session.
Kimi Raikkonen suffered a disaster ahead of this weekend’s Japanese Grand Prix when his McLaren failed halfway through opening practice as his teammate Pedro de la Rosa topped the times here on Friday. Finn Raikkonen has become accustomed to problems with his rapid but unreliable McLaren this year.
New world champion Fernando Alonso insisted on Thursday that seven-time title winner Michael Schumacher can make a comeback next season despite his nightmare year in 2005. Schumacher saw his five-year reign dramatically concluded this season after his Ferrari team slumped behind Alonso’s Renault team and current championship runner-up Kimi Raikkonen’s McLaren outfit.
In a new twist to the battle over next-generation DVDs, United States movie giant Paramount Home Entertainment said it will support Sony’s Blu-ray format while also making DVDs for Toshiba’s rival technology. Paramount will begin releasing content in North America, Japan and Europe suitable for the Blu-ray hardware after its launch.
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/ 30 September 2005
Japanese carmaker Nissan on Friday unveiled a car of the future which only goes forward — with a cabin able to revolve 360°, eliminating the need to reverse. The three-seater electric concept car, nicknamed Pivo, will be put on display at the 2005 Tokyo Motor Show to be held in Chiba, outside Tokyo, from October 22 to November 6, Nissan Motor Company said in a statement.
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/ 26 September 2005
Sony shares tumbled almost five percent on Monday as investors fretted that with a big loss looming this year, a plan to overhaul the struggling Japanese electronic icon may not be radical enough. Sony fell by as much as 4,8% in early trade as dealers gave their first response to the restructuring plan, which was announced after the close of trade on Thursday ahead of a long holiday weekend.
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/ 22 September 2005
Sony boss Howard Stringer, under pressure to reverse a slump at the electronics icon, announced 10 000 job cuts on Thursday but renewed his vision of the group as an electronics-to-entertainment colossus. Sony also issued its second profit warning this year, forecasting a net loss of 10-billion yen (-million).
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/ 21 September 2005
Japan’s Parliament went to work on Wednesday on breaking up the massive post office after the landslide election victory of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, whose popularity keeps on rising. Hours before the 42-day special session opened, Koizumi’s Cabinet resigned, a formality in the wake of the September 11 general election, in which reforming the Japanese economy was the key issue.
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/ 16 September 2005
Nintendo thinks it has the answer for people scared off by all the complex switches and buttons on home video-game controllers — a simpler device that looks like a TV remote control and can be waved like a wand — or a baseball bat. The Japanese game maker showed the gadget planned for its next-generation home machine called Revolution at the Tokyo Game Show outside Tokyo on Friday.
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/ 16 September 2005
Toshiba said on Friday it has developed two small fuel cell prototypes that can dramatically increase the playing time for mobile music players. A fuel cell unit the size of a pack of chewing gum can power a flash-memory-based player for about 35 hours on a single charge, using highly concentrated methanol as its fuel, the Japanese technology giant said.
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/ 16 September 2005
Japan on Friday carried out its first execution in a year, hanging a man who was convicted of killing two women in robberies, an official and reports said. Japan, the only major industrialised nation other than the United States to practice capital punishment, gives inmates little advance notice before they are hanged and does not release their names to the public.
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/ 15 September 2005
Japan’s largest opposition party is looking both at veteran leaders and fresh young faces to help it recover after it lost to Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi in a record drubbing. The Democratic Party of Japan is set to elect a new leader on Saturday after Katsuya Okada, a dour former civil servant, quit over the election rout in which the party lost one third of its seats.
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/ 14 September 2005
Sony is aiming for a comeback in the global television industry with a new range of flat-screen televisions that it hopes will boost its share of a market now dominated by domestic and overseas rivals. The Japanese electronics giant will begin selling eight new televisions — both liquid crystal display (LCD) screen and rear-projection — under a new brand, "Bravia," on October 1 in Japan.
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/ 12 September 2005
Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, fresh from a historic election victory, plans to go to New York this week for a United Nations summit due to take up Tokyo’s cherished UN reform bid, the government said on Monday. It has been a long-time diplomatic goal of Tokyo to get a permanent seat on the Security Council.
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/ 12 September 2005
Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi went back to work on Monday with a powerful mandate to transform the nation’s economic and political landscape after racking up a historic election victory. Fresh from the triumph which even many of his supporters had doubted was possible, a confident-looking Koizumi, clad in an open-neck striped shirt, waved to reporters as he entered his official residence.
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/ 8 September 2005
Wanting to be as punctual as possible, Japan will next year move its clocks ahead — by one second. Japan will head one second into the future on January 1 2006 when it adjusts the high-precision atomic clock that keeps Japan Standard Time using advanced physics.
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/ 8 September 2005
Powerful Typhoon Nabi left Japan on Thursday after criss-crossing north to south in a path of destruction that left 32 dead or missing in Japan and South Korea and flooded thousands of homes. The worst-hit area remained Miyazaki province on the southern island of Kyushu, where rice fields were deluged by a powerful downpour.
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/ 6 September 2005
Powerful Typhoon Nabi hit Japan on Tuesday, leaving at least 13 people dead or missing and injuring 19, as 100 000 people were ordered to flee their homes to escape violent winds and mudslides. Hundreds of flights were cancelled and Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi called off campaign stops in Kyushu.
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/ 5 September 2005
The Japanese election campaign may have spawned an ingenious new marketing tactic: take a relatively unknown product, have it berated in public by an unpopular politician, and watch sales soar. Sales of the French cheese Mimolette have taken off since the former prime minister, Yoshiro Mori urned his nose up at it in a bizarre television interview.
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/ 5 September 2005
One person was killed and at least six injured as a powerful typhoon heading on Monday toward Japan’s mainland lashed Tokyo with torrential rains, flooded homes and cut off power to thousands. A 61-year-old man was found dead late on Sunday on a flooded road in Saitama outside Tokyo after he rushed to help his son whose car was stuck.
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/ 2 September 2005
Five people have been questioned for allegedly shooting footage for a pornographic film inside a cable car at the World Exposition, a showcase of technology under way in Japan, police said on Friday. The five suspects, who include an actress, could get up to 30 days in jail or a fine of up to 10 000 yen () for indecent exposure, police said.
Powerful Typhoon Mawar hit central Japan early on Friday, bringing heavy rain and fierce winds that left at least one person dead, two people missing and four injured, officials said. Transportation was also disrupted by the storm, leaving tens of thousands stranded.
A powerful typhoon was closing in on Japan on Thursday, grounding planes and bringing warnings of torrential rain, landslides and high waves in large areas of the country. Typhoon Mawar, packing winds of up to 144kph near its centre, was approaching Japan’s main island of Honshu at a speed of 15kph.
At a forest shrine lined with incense-burning urns, Japanese pilgrims enter a small cave where they stoop to wash coins and notes in trickling spring water. Cleanse your money here, the tradition goes, and it will multiply. The ritual dates back perhaps 700 years, and it says something about the Japanese view of money: an attitude far different from that of many Americans.
Just what is a bureaucrat to wear? Months after Japanese government staff were told to dress down for summer they are now being warned to wrap up for the autumn and winter in the country’s latest bid to save energy and cut greenhouse gas emissions.
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.
The Japanese prime minister on Monday apologised for atrocities committed by his country during World War II, on the 60th anniversary of the end of the conflict. In a written statement, Junichiro Koizumi expressed his ”deep reflections and heartfelt apology” for Japan’s colonisations and invasions in Asia during the war.
Originally marketed for medical students, a life-sized skeleton paper doll has proved a hit in Japan among people who have time on their hands and want to piece together the human body. Like a human, "Bony" has about 200 bones and it takes a grown-up three days to finish reconstructing the doll.
Nagasaki paid tribute to its dead yesterday, 60 years to the day after the city was levelled by an atomic bomb in one of the last acts of World War II. Politicians and survivors of the bomb that killed an estimated 80 000 people after it exploded above the city on August 9 1945 laid wreaths to the victims in a ceremony at the city’s peace memorial park.
McDonald’s said on Tuesday that a 100-yen burger-and-drink combo is bringing Japanese back to the United States fast-food chain — but has eaten more than half-a-billion yen into its profits. In April, the Japanese unit of the US burger giant launched a set menu of a hamburger and a drink for 100 yen, or just less than (R6,46).
Japan was plunged into political turmoil on Monday when the Prime Minister, Junichiro Koizumi, was pushed into calling a snap election that risks destroying his party. The crisis was prompted by radical plans to privatise the post office, which Koizumi has put at the heart of a structural reform programme.