The United Nations' expert panel of climate scientists is to lose the services of one leading researchers, with a second considering his future with the body. Japan's environment minister resigned towards the end of the Kyoto climate conference only to withdraw his resignation one hour later. Despite a struggling economy, overall research spending in Japan grew by 3.4 per cent during the fiscal year 1996.
Missile hits Japanese equipment in Utah.
A network of life scientists in the Asia-Pacific region that aims to boost biomedical research and biotechnology in the region has begun to take shape. Taiwanese astronomers have won approval for a small but ambitious international project to carry out the first survey of the outer regions of the solar system looking directly for comets and small objects. Officials at a US naval air base in Atsugi, Japan, plan to install an infrared sensor to monitor gases from a nearby waste incinerator which they claim is discharging toxic pollutants. The United States has made a significant policy shift that could pave the way for an agreement on targets to reduce man-made greenhouse gas emissions that are causing global warming. Two days of talks between environment ministers in developed and developing countries failed to break the stalemate on legally binding targets for greenhouse gas emissions.