French guns on Iraq border aim to pin down Islamic State holdouts inside Syria

Abstract: AL-QAIM, IRAQ - French howitzers deployed in the Euphrates Valley desert just inside Iraq stand ready to pour fury on Islamic State group die-hards in their last holdout across the border in Syria. Warplanes flash through the sky, followed seconds later by explosions on the Syrian side that send up a mushroom cloud. “We’re less than 10 km (6 miles) from the front line here,” points out Col. Francois-Regis Legrier. He is the commander of Task Force Wagram, a French artillery group within the U.S.-led military coalition that backs up Iraqi soldiers and the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) against the jihadis. Dozens of 155-mm shells are lined up ready to be loaded onto three green-and-black Caesar gun-howitzers with a range of 40 km (25 miles). The SDF, a coalition of Kurdish and Arab fighters, announced a final push to retake the jihadist pocket in and around the village of Baghouz near the Iraqi border late Saturday, after a pause of more than a week to allow civilians to flee. “The end is near,” is the message from French Defense Minister Florence Parly who visited the Task Force Wagram site in Al-Qaim from Baghdad aboard an American V-22 Osprey military aircraft. “The terrorists are leaderless, without communications, in disarray, on the verge of collapse. So let’s finish off this fight,” the minister tells a group of some 40 French soldiers manning the outpost alongside 100 U.S. troops. Legrier, whose 68th regiment took part in the 2016 recapture from IS of the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, says there are “a few hundred fighters left in Baghouz, not more. “Mosul, that was a nine-month battle and 10,000 shells. On this front, it’s been four months and we’re at 3,500 rounds,” he says. He points to challenges caused by frequent sandstorms and heavy rains. Weather conditions have often grounded warplanes but artillery has been largely unaffected. “At the end of last year, the pace was intense, we didn’t get much sleep,” explains Valentin, a 27-year-old lieutenant on his maiden overseas deployment. The lieutenant and his comrades are being rotated out next week, probably for the last time, as the mission winds down. “The territorial caliphate, which has not yet been wiped out, is being defeated,” Parly had said in the Iraqi capital last week, referring to the swathes of territory straddling Syria and Iraq seized by a rampant IS in 2014. “We must continue the fight against IS and terrorism in the region because IS is probably in the process of reorganizing underground and spreading out,” she said on her visit. Since the launch of its Al-Qaim operations, codenamed Chammal, French forces have fired off more than 18,000 shells and conducted 1,500 airstrikes in support of anti-IS fighters on the ground. “Our forces have been playing their part in full,” Parly says in the desert. But “the fight is not completely over,” she warns. “What we want to avoid at all costs is for Daesh (IS) to regroup in clandestine forms, threaten the region, disrupt its stabilization, and also menace our countries.”

iraq
islamic state
syria
terrorism
france
u.s .
kurds
syria democratic forces


Climate change seen as top threat, but U.S. power a growing worry, poll finds

Abstract: BERLIN - Climate change is the top security concern in a poll conducted by the Washington-based Pew Research Center, followed by Islamist terrorism and cyberattacks while respondents in a growing number of countries worried about the power and influence of the United States. In 13 of 26 countries, people listed climate change as the top global threat, with the Islamic State militant group topping the list in eight and cyber attacks in four, the non-profit, nonpartisan Pew Research Center said in its report. Worries about climate change have increased sharply since 2013, with double-digit percentage point increases seen in countries including the United States, Mexico, France, Britain, South Africa and Kenya, according to the poll of 27,612 people conducted between May and August 2018. North Korea’s nuclear program and the global economy were also significant concerns, while respondents in Poland named Russian power and influence as the top threat. The largest shift in sentiment centred on the United States, it said, with a median of 45 percent of people naming U.S. power and influence as a threat in 2018, up from 25 percent in 2013, when Barack Obama was U.S. president. In 10 countries, including Germany, Japan and South Korea, roughly half of respondents or more saw U.S. power and influence as a major threat to their nation, up from eight in 2017 and three in 2013, the poll showed. In Mexico, where those concerns have spiked since the election of U.S. President Donald Trump, the percentage jumped to 64 percent, the poll showed. Trump has railed against illegal migration and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and is pressing to build a wall between the two countries. In 2018, a median of 61 percent of respondents across all countries represented viewed cyber attacks as a serious concern, up from 54 percent in 2017. The number of countries that saw Islamic State as a threat fell by double-digit percentage points in Israel, Spain, the United States and Japan.

climate change
terrorism
islamic state
donald trump
u.s .
environment


Thailand faces escalating political risk as divisions flare

Abstract: BANGKOK - Thailand’s political divisions are erupting again with just over a month to go to the first general election since a coup almost five years ago. The spotlight is now on the fate of a party linked to exiled former leader Thaksin Shinawatra. The party, Thai Raksa Chart, saw a stunning bid to make Princess Ubolratana Rajakanya its prime ministerial candidate rapidly unravel Feb. 8 when her brother, King Maha Vajiralongkorn, publicly opposed the move. The Election Commission on Monday disqualified the princess from running, ending a stunning, short-lived candidacy. Members of the royal family should be “above politics” and therefore cannot “hold any political office,” the commission said in a statement, echoing the wording of a public statement from the king on Friday. Calls have grown for Thai Raksa Chart to be dissolved in a country used to treating top royals as semi-divine and apolitical. Those calls also show Thaksin remains a polarizing figure: While he has repeatedly won millions of rural votes with expanded welfare programs, he also clashed with certain royalist military leaders who view him as a threat to their hold on power. Disbanding Thai Raksa Chart could anger Thaksin’s supporters, and boost junta leader Prayuth Chan-ocha’s push to stay as prime minister after the election. Prayuth led the coup in 2014 that ousted Yingluck Shinawatra, Thaksin’s sister, and is expected to have the support of the military-appointed Senate. “It’s a scary time ahead,” said Punchada Sirivunnabood, assistant professor at Mahidol University’s Faculty of Social Science and Humanities near Bangkok. “Recent events prove that the political polarization is still there, and is more deeply rooted in the country than before.” Thaksin or his allies have won every election since 2001, only to be unseated by the courts or the military. Street protests, sometimes bloody, accompanied the cycle of unrest. Activist group the Constitution Protection Association plans to petition the Election Commission about disbanding Thai Raksa Chart for violating rules that prohibit using the monarchy for election campaigning. A member of the party, in turn, intends to submit a letter to the commission against Prayuth’s candidacy because he continues to have powerful executive powers as the current premier. Prayuth on Friday agreed to be the prime ministerial candidate for a new party seen as supportive of the military government. The events of the past few days may spur more of his supporters to vote, said Titipol Phakdeewanich, a politics lecturer at Ubon Ratchathani University in northeastern Thailand. ‘They will feel that they need to do it to keep Thaksin and Yingluck out of the country,’ Titipol said. The spike in political risk looms over an economy that’s already feeling the effects of the trade tension between the U.S. and China. It also comes ahead of major events, including the king’s coronation in May and summits of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations due in Thailand this year.

thailand
elections
coups
thaksin shinawatra
prayuth chan-ocha


U.S. destroyers sail in disputed South China Sea as trade tensions simmer

Abstract: The U.S. sent two warships close by islands claimed by Beijing in the disputed South China Sea on Monday, the U.S. Navy’s 7th Fleet said, as American negotiators arrived in the Chinese capital for talks aimed at resolving a trade spat between the two powers. A spokesman for the 7th Fleet told The Japan Times that the guided-missile destroyers USS Spruance and USS Preble had “conducted freedom of navigation operations (FONOPS) in the South China Sea,” with the two vessels sailing “within 12 nautical miles” (22 km) of the Spratly Islands. The mission was conducted “in order to challenge excessive maritime claims and preserve access to the waterways as governed by international law,” 7th Fleet spokesperson Lt. Joe Keiley said. While the 7th Fleet was not specific about what features the two destroyers had sailed near, Reuters, quoting an unidentified U.S. official, reported that they had passed by Mischief Reef, which is occupied by China but also claimed by Taiwan, Vietnam and the Philippines. Mischief Reef has undergone a massive land reclamation project and is home to a military-grade airfield. Recent reports have also said the islet has emplacements for missiles, extensive storage facilities and a range of installations that can track satellites, foreign military activity and communications. Beijing has constructed a series of military outposts throughout the waterway, which includes vital sea lanes through which about $3 trillion in global trade passes each year. The Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Taiwan and Brunei have overlapping claims in the waters, where the U.S., Chinese, Japanese and some Southeast Asian navies also routinely operate. China says its facilities are for defensive purposes, but some experts say this is part of a concerted bid to cement de facto control of the waters. China’s Foreign Ministry reacted angrily to the latest FONOP, blasting the U.S. ships for entering what it called its “territorial seas … without permission.” Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said that the Chinese had side immediately identified the U.S. ships and warned them to leave, adding that China would continue to take necessary measures to safeguard itself. Meanwhile, the U.S. and China remain locked in a trade war, with the two sides attempting to reach a deal ahead of a March 1 deadline, when U.S. tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese imports are scheduled to increase to 25 percent from 10 percent. Preliminary discussions by lower-level U.S. negotiators were to be held in Beijing on Monday, before U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin step in for the main event on Thursday and Friday. Some observers say the ramped-up pace of U.S. FONOPs could be intended to heap pressure on Beijing amid the ongoing trade talks. The U.S. has denied this is the case. “We conduct routine and regular freedom of navigation operations, as we have done in the past and will continue to in the future,” the 7th Fleet’s Keiley said. “FONOPs are not about any one country, nor are they about making political statements.” He noted that U.S. forces operate in the Indo-Pacific region “on a daily basis,” including in the South China Sea, and that the United States “will fly, sail and operate wherever international law allows. That is true in the South China Sea as in other places around the globe.” In mid-January, U.S. and British warships conducted military exercises in the South China Sea for the first time since China fortified its islands there. The U.S. has also ramped up its solo FONOPs, including an operation early last month that saw one of its destroyers pass near the Paracel Island chain, north of the Spratlys, in the South China Sea. Just a day after that operation, Chinese state-run media announced that Beijing’s so-called carrier killer anti-ship missile had been deployed to the country’s northwest — a move that it appeared to link to missions in the South China Sea. The missile, known as the DF-26, reportedly has a range of 3,000-4,000 km, and the report alluded to the U.S. operations, quoting an unidentified expert as noting that it served as “a good reminder that China is capable of safeguarding its territory.” “Even when launched from deeper inland areas of China, the DF-26 has a range far-reaching enough to cover the South China Sea,” the expert said.

south china sea
china
vietnam
philippines
military
u.s .
disputed islands
south china sea ruling


Meth 'disaster' for Asia-Pacific region as seizures surge tenfold in Thailand

Abstract: BANGKOK - Seizures of high-purity crystal methamphetamine have surged more than tenfold in Thailand over the past two years, statistics show, a stark indicator of the growth in industrial-scale production of the stimulant in neighboring Myanmar. Thailand is a major trafficking route for crystal meth manufactured in Myanmar’s Shan and Kachin states, where police say Asian organized crime groups have allied with local pro-government militias and armed rebels to set-up “superlabs.” The drug syndicates have distributed the meth across the Asia-Pacific region, from South Korea to New Zealand and most countries in between, authorities say. Some 18.4 tons of crystal meth, also known as ice, was seized in Thailand in 2018, according to preliminary statistics from the country’s Office of the Narcotics Control Board (ONCB) reviewed by Reuters. The final data is expected to be released publicly next month. That is up from 5.2 tons in 2017 and 1.6 tons in 2016. It’s more than treble the amount captured across all of Southeast Asia five years ago. Myanmar’s illicit labs also pump out tablets of meth mixed with caffeine, commonly known as yaba (crazy pill) in the Thai language. The tablets are popular with low-paid workers in gruelling jobs and poor recreational drug users across Southeast Asia. Thai authorities seized 516 million meth tablets in 2018, more than double the previous year and 4½ times the 114 million pills captured in 2016. Niyom Termsrisuk, secretary-general of the ONCB, said that despite the rising seizures, prices for meth are falling, suggesting far more is eluding authorities than being stopped. The average price of a meth tablet was 200 baht ($6.33) in 2013. The latest data, for 2017, showed a yaba pill can be bought for as little as 80 baht ($2.50), he said. By flooding Thailand and other countries with meth, organized crime groups have “generated new users” by enticing them with lower prices, Niyom said. The users then become dependent on the highly addictive drug, creating a bigger market for the product. Southeast Asia’s Golden Triangle — which encompasses northern Myanmar and parts of Laos and Thailand — has long been a hub of illicit drug trafficking. While opium cultivation and heroin refining has fallen in the past decade, methamphetamine production has more than filled the breach. “It’s hard to say anything other than 2018 was a disaster for the meth supply coming out of Myanmar,” said Jeremy Douglas, the Asia representative for the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. Law enforcement agencies were overwhelmed while “health authorities are seriously underresourced and have limited capacity to offer treatment,” he added. Regional police and analysts said organized crime groups exploit the semilawless northern Myanmar borderlands, doing deals with the multitude of ethnic armed gangs and state-sponsored militias who control territory there. The ONCB’s Niyom said 8 tons of crystal meth had been captured en route to southern Thailand and the border with Malaysia in 2018. From there, “it was on its way to other markets,” he said. In the past year, police have intercepted boats laden with meth that left the Malaysian city of Penang. Syndicates also use “motherships” that pick up the drugs in the Andaman Sea and distribute them as far afield as Australia and New Zealand. Meth from Myanmar has also been found smuggled in shipping containers in the Philippines and Malaysia. According to regional anti-drug police, who spoke on condition of anonymity, chemists are brought in from Taiwan and China to run the meth labs in Myanmar, while the precursors and lab equipment mostly come from China. Last month, Myanmar’s military intercepted state-of-the-art laboratory equipment near Muse, a city in Shan state on the Chinese border. Regional police say the crystal meth produced in Myanmar is the purest they have seen. According to an ONCB briefing document reviewed by Reuters, 99.92 percent of the crystal meth seized in Thailand in the first six months of 2018 was 90 percent pure or higher.


Malaysia delays ex-leader Najib Razak's first trial for 1MDB-linked charges

Abstract: KUALA LUMPUR - The trial of Malaysia’s former leader Najib Razak has been delayed indefinitely, after previously being set to start on Tuesday. The trial will remain on hold pending an appeal from Najib, said his lawyer Muhammad Shafee Abdullah. Najib was set to face seven of the 42 counts of corruption and embezzlement over his role in state fund 1MDB on Tuesday, before the Monday ruling by the Court of Appeals to delay the trial. He has pleaded not guilty to all the charges. The proceedings were already running behind schedule. Criminal trials in Malaysia should start no later than 90 days since charges were laid, but it has been seven months since Najib were presented with the allegations that will be debated in the trial on Tuesday. His legal team applied last week to further delay the proceedings. “Malaysians are anxiously awaiting for the trials of the respective cases to start,” Mohamad Hanafiah Zakaria, a solicitor general at the Attorney General’s Chambers said in a Sunday statement. Attorney-General Tommy Thomas agreed that the 1MDB cases should be “expeditiously settled,” Mohamad wrote.

malaysia
najib razak
corruption
scandals


The art and science of Japan's cherry blossom forecast

Abstract: As spring approaches, the country’s weather forecasters face one of their biggest missions of the year: predicting exactly when the famed cherry blossoms will bloom. The nation’s sakura (cherry blossom) season is feverishly anticipated by locals and visitors alike. Many tourists plan their entire trips around the blooms, and Japanese flock to parks in droves to enjoy the seasonal spectacle. “People pay more attention to the cherry blossom season than any other flower in Japan,” said Ryo Dojo, an official of the statistics unit at the Meteorological Agency. The most basic element of predicting when the delicate pink and white petals will begin to unfurl is a large data set of temperatures. That’s because the flowers will come earlier if temperatures rise quickly in spring, Dojo said. Conversely, if temperatures in the autumn and winter period are higher than usual, the blooms can end up being delayed. Extreme weather can affect the trees too, with unusual patterns in 2018 prompting some blossoms to appear in October, well before the usual season. In general, blooms begin as early as March in southern Kyushu and appear as late as May in Hokkaido. In a bid to improve its forecasts, some outfits have started crowdsourcing data, including Weathernews Inc., a firm based in the city of Chiba. It relies on photos of buds sent in regularly by 10,000 citizens across the country who are registered on the company’s website and app. “Cherry blossom forecasting is impossible for us without this system,” spokeswoman Miku Toma said. Two million reports The company launched what they call the “sakura project” in 2004, signing up members who choose their own cherry tree and send pictures of its buds to the firm at regular intervals. “We realized we could see the details of how buds grow thanks to the pictures sent to us,” Toma said. “So we decided to incorporate the project to help predict blossoms.” Just observing the bud can give surprisingly accurate information about how far the flower is from full bloom. A sakura bud still a month from blossoming will be small and firm, but after 10 days, the tip turns slightly yellow-green, and then a darker green part emerges. When the tip of the bud turns a faint pink, it’s just a week until bloom. Thanks to the project, Weathernews has accumulated data from 2 million reports on cherry flower buds in the past 15 years, which it uses to increase the accuracy of its forecasting. It also incorporates weather data collected from its own observation devices across Japan — 13,000 locations in total, 10 times more than the official weather agency has. Weathernews employees also call around 700 parks regularly to check the growth of buds, and the company and other forecasters employ mathematical models and algorithms. Otenki Japan, a forecaster run by a subsidiary of precision-equipment manufacturer Shimadzu Corp., even began using artificial intelligence to predict cherry blossoms in 2018. The firm uses big data, compiled over the past 10 years from 1,000 sites nationwide, on when the cherry blossoms have bloomed, and uses AI to make predictions based on that information. Blooms on beer The forecasts are not only for flower fans, but reflect the fact that sakura season is big business in Japan. Cherry blossoms symbolize the fragility of life in Japanese culture as full blooms only last about a week before the petals start falling off trees. And in that period and the preceding weeks, shops will pack their shelves with sakura-themed merchandise. Pink and white blossoms seem to decorate everything from beer cans to sakura-flavored chips and flower-themed candy. The season is traditionally celebrated with hanami (flower viewing parties) in cherry blossom hotspots, with picnics organized beneath the trees. The season is also considered one of change, as it marks the start of the new business year, with many university graduates starting their first full-time jobs and older colleagues shifting to new positions. The Meteorological Agency stopped forecasting cherry blossoms in 2010, after more than five decades, saying other organizations were now making predictions with sufficient accuracy. The agency does however still declare the official start of cherry blossom season by monitoring 58 so-called barometer trees. The trees are at locations across the country, and the precise locations are considered a closely-guarded secret. One of them in Tokyo, however, is known to be at the Yasukuni Shrine. From the beginning of March, inspectors visit the barometer trees once a day, with the trips increasing to twice daily as blossoming nears, Dojo said. “We check flowers with our own eyes. And we announce the blossoming if five or six flowers appear,” he added.

cherry blossoms
meteorological agency
weathernews


Japan's Taro Kono warns South Korean speaker after call for Emperor to apologize to 'comfort women'

Abstract: Foreign Minister Taro Kono cautioned South Korea’s top legislator against making divisive remarks after the lawmaker urged the Japanese Emperor to make a personal apology to women forced to work in the country’s military brothels. Kono was responding to a question Sunday about South Korean National Assembly Speaker Moon Hee-sang’s comments in a Bloomberg News interview last week. In it, Moon said he wanted Emperor Akihito, 85, to hold hands with the elderly former “comfort women” and apologize as “the son of the main culprit of war crimes.” “I want him to be careful about his statements,” Kono told reporters during a visit to the Philippines, according to a transcript posted on the Foreign Ministry’s website. Kono said the comfort women dispute was resolved “fully and finally” by a 2015 agreement, in which Prime Minister Shinzo Abe offered victims “most sincere apologies” and created a compensation fund. “South Korea is not seeking a renegotiation or anything else,” Kono said. “I would like him to make statements based on a correct perception in the future.” The South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a separate statement Monday that Moon’s remarks were intended to emphasize the suffering of the victims and that the country was committed to “future-oriented” ties. “Japan needs to show sincerity for honor, dignity and to heal the emotional pain of the victims based on a victim-centered approach,” the ministry said. Moon’s remarks drew widespread criticism in Japan, which was already sparring with South Korea over a host of disagreements stemming from its 1910-45 occupation of the peninsula. South Korean President Moon Jae-in has moved to undo the comfort women pact, which was agreed to by his predecessor, and vowed to do everything in his power to “correct the history” for the 23 surviving victims. The comments by Moon Hee-sang — South Korea’s No. 2 elected official and a former presidential envoy to Japan — came in response to a question about how the two U.S. allies could resolve the feud. He’s not related to the president. “It only takes one word from the prime minister, who represents Japan — I wish the emperor would do it since he will step down soon,” the speaker said. “Isn’t he the son of the main culprit of war crimes? So, if a person like that holds the hands of the elderly and says he’s really sorry, then that one word will resolve matters once and for all.” Many in Japan believe the country has apologized enough, with less than 8 percent of respondents surveyed by the Seoul-based Hankook Daily and Tokyo-based Yomiuri Shimbun in July agreeing that another statement was necessary. That compared with 90 percent of South Koreans who wanted another apology. Moon Hee-sang’s remarks represented a direct challenge to the Emperor, a revered figure, whose father, wartime Emperor Hirohito — who is posthumously called Emperor Showa — was once considered a living god. “If these remarks are true, I can’t tolerate them at all, no matter how you put them,” lawmaker Masahisa Sato, a member of the Liberal Democratic Party and a former commander of peacekeeping forces in Iraq, wrote on Twitter.

taro kono
south korea
comfort women
emperor akihito
history
wwii
south korea-japan relations


Nissan and Renault to prevent next leader from having too much power over auto alliance

Abstract: Nissan Motor Co. has agreed with partner Renault SA to improve the governance of their alliance by preventing a top executive from having too much power, apparently reflecting the arrest of their former boss Carlos Ghosn. Nissan CEO Hiroto Saikawa and new Renault Chairman Jean-Dominique Senard held their second day of talks in Japan on Friday, discussing the future of the alliance after Ghosn was ousted from Nissan and resigned from his post at Renault in the wake of his arrests for alleged financial misconduct at the Japanese automaker. The meeting came amid underlying tensions over who will become Nissan’s chairman, the post Ghosn had held prior to his jailing in November. Nissan hopes to avoid a repeat of the Renault chairman also assuming its chairmanship, as had been the case with Ghosn, while Renault apparently wants to lead the alliance by having Senard double as Nissan chairman, sources close to the matter said. “We agreed that the management should focus on doing jobs that continuously improve the value (of the alliance),” Saikawa told reporters after the meeting at Nissan’s headquarters in Yokohama. Also Friday, Nissan’s governance committee concluded that the system that allowed Ghosn to have too much power is to blame for his alleged misconduct, the sources said, in a move that indicates Nissan’s willingness to block Renault’s plans. Nissan has said it intends to appoint its new chairman based on proposals by the seven-member committee, which will submit a report by the end of next month. Senard is expected to be appointed to Nissan’s board at an extraordinary shareholders meeting in April.

nissan
renault
carlos ghosn
scandals
carmakers


Japanese comedian Teruyoshi Uchimura and TV presenter Asami Miura top ideal boss rankings

Abstract: Japanese comedian Teruyoshi Uchimura topped the list of this year’s ideal male bosses selected by new graduates set to start working this spring, an annual survey by Meiji Yasuda Life Insurance Co. has shown. He received support for his friendliness. After Uchimura, who topped the list released Friday for the third straight year, was actor Tsuyoshi Muro, a new entry to the rankings. Joint third place went to comedians Daikichi Hakata and Osamu Shitara, up together from a joint 13th placing last year. In the ideal female boss category, television presenter Asami Miura ranked first, followed by actress Yuki Amami and Saori Yoshida, who announced her retirement from wrestling in January. The top three remained unchanged in the rankings for the third consecutive year and received strong support from female respondents. The survey was conducted online in January and covered 1,100 people.


U.S.-China trade talks to resume next week as Trump hints at extension

Abstract: BEIJING/WASHINGTON - The United States and China will resume trade talks next week in Washington with time running short to ease their bruising trade war, but U.S. President Donald Trump repeated on Friday that he may extend a March 1 deadline for a deal and keep tariffs on Chinese goods from rising. Both the United States and China reported progress in five days of negotiations in Beijing this week. Trump, speaking at a White House news conference, said the United States was closer than ever before to “having a real trade deal” with China and said he would be “honored” to remove tariffs if an agreement can be reached. But he added that the talks were “very complicated.” White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said in a statement on Friday the two economic superpowers “will continue working on all outstanding issues in advance of the March 1, 2019, deadline. “These detailed and intensive discussions led to progress between the two parties. Much work remains, however,” Sanders said about the Beijing talks. She added that the two countries agreed to state any commitments they make in a memorandum of understanding. China’s Vice Premier and chief trade negotiator Liu He and U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer would be leading the talks in Washington, a White House source said. U.S. duties on $200 billion in imports from China are set to rise to 25 percent from 10 percent if no deal is reached by March 1 to address U.S. demands that China curb forced technology transfers and better enforce intellectual property rights. Trump, asked whether he would grant Beijing a 60-day extension to the deadline, said: “There is a possibility that I will extend the date. But if I do that — if I see that we’re close to a deal or the deal is going in the right direction — I would do that at the same tariffs that we’re charging now, I would not increase the tariffs.” Trump also said he would consider bringing top U.S. Democrats — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer — into the final stages of the talks to minimize their dissent with the deal. Spokespersons for the two lawmakers did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The conclusion of the Beijing talks prompted optimism on Wall Street, where major stock indexes ended higher. The U.S.-China Business Council, which represents American companies doing business in China, applauded the announcement that the two sides would put specific language in a memorandum of understanding and said its existence could cause the Trump to push back deadline. “It does appear that enough progress has been made to possibly extend the deadline,” said Craig Allen, president of the Washington-based group. “The memorandum of understanding might not finish all the details, but if it contained the final picture … that would be a huge step forward.” China’s official Xinhua News Agency said Friday that China and the United States had reached a “consensus in principle” on some key issues, adding they had a detailed discussion on a memorandum of understanding on trade and economic issues. It gave no details. The countries focused this week on technology, intellectual property rights, agriculture, services, non-tariff barriers and currency, and discussed potential Chinese purchases of U.S. goods and services to reduce a “large and persistent bilateral trade deficit,” Sanders said. Chinese President Xi Jinping met Lighthizer and U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on Friday after a week of talks at senior and deputy levels, and called for a deal both sides could accept, Chinese state media said. After talks on Thursday, Mnuchin said on Twitter that he and Lighthizer had held “productive meetings” with Xi’s top economic adviser, Liu He. “The consultations between the two sides’ teams achieved important step-by-step progress,” Xi said, according to state television. “I hope you will continue efforts to advance reaching a mutually beneficial, win-win agreement,” Xi said at Beijing’s Great Hall of the People. He added that China was willing to take a “cooperative approach” to settling bilateral trade frictions. Lighthizer told Xi the senior officials had “two very good days” of talks. “We feel that we have made headway on very, very important, and very difficult issues. We have additional work to do but we are hopeful,” Lighthizer told Xi in a pool video shown to foreign media. Neither country has offered new details on how they might de-escalate the tariff war that has roiled financial markets and disrupted manufacturing supply chains. Although Trump said this week that an extension of the tariff deadline was possible if a “real deal” was close, Larry Kudlow, director of the U.S. National Economic Council, has said the White House had made no such decision. But several sources informed about the meetings told Reuters there was little indication negotiators had made major progress on sticking points to pave the way for a potential meeting between Xi and Trump in coming weeks to hammer out a deal. “Stalemate on the important stuff,” said one source. All of the sources requested anonymity because the talks are confidential. “There’s still a lot of distance between parties on structural and enforcement issues,” said a second source. “I wouldn’t quite call it hitting a wall, but it’s not a field of dreams either.” A third source told Reuters the White House was “irate” over earlier reports that the Trump administration was considering a 60-day extension of the tariff deadline.


Nissan asked Japanese government for help avoiding merger with Renault: WSJ

Abstract: NEW YORK - Nissan Motor Co. asked the Japanese government for help in fending off a proposal to merge with Renault SA, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday. The request by the Japanese automaker was made months before the arrest of former Nissan and Renault Chairman Carlos Ghosn in Japan in November, the paper said. The unusual request for government help “indicated the level of pressure that Nissan executives sensed coming from the French side” to merge, the paper said. The French government is the biggest shareholder of Renault. In response to the request, the Japanese Economy, Trade and Industry Ministry drafted an agreement that would allow it to oversee talks between Nissan and Renault, a role Nissan considered invasive, the paper said. Some senior Nissan officials discussed whether the draft accord promised the Japanese government too much involvement in Nissan’s internal affairs, according to the paper. The paper said Tokyo’s direct involvement “stands in contrast with the Japanese government’s public stance that the alliance’s future is for the companies to decide.” The paper quoted a ministry official as saying he was unaware of any draft document. The official added that in general, Japan has called on the parties to communicate well and share information, according to the paper.


A year in space put U.S. astronaut's disease defenses on high alert

Abstract: WASHINGTON - Nearly a year in space put astronaut Scott Kelly’s immune system on high alert and changed the activity of some of his genes compared with his Earth-bound identical twin, researchers said Friday. Scientists don’t know if the changes were good or bad, but results from the unique NASA study of twins are raising new questions for doctors as the space agency aims to send people to Mars. Tests of the genetic doubles gave scientists a unique opportunity to track details of human biology, such as how an astronaut’s genes turn on and off in space differently than at home. One puzzling change announced Friday is that Kelly’s immune system was hyperactivated. “It’s as if the body is reacting to this alien environment sort of like you would a mysterious organism being inside you,” said geneticist Christopher Mason of New York’s Weill Cornell Medicine, who helped lead the study. He said doctors are now looking for that in other astronauts. Since the beginning of space exploration, NASA has studied the toll on astronauts’ bodies, such as bone loss, which requires exercise to counter. Typically they are in space about six months at a time. Kelly, who lived on the International Space Station, spent 340 days in space and set a U.S. record. “I’ve never felt completely normal in space,” the now-retired Kelly said in an email, citing the usual congestion from shifting fluid, headaches and difficulty concentrating from extra carbon dioxide, and digestive complaints from microgravity. But this study was a unique dive into the molecular level, with former astronaut Mark Kelly on the ground for comparison. Full results haven’t yet been published, but researchers presented some findings Friday at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. A number of genes connected to the immune system became hyperactive, Mason said. This was not a change in DNA but in gene expression — how genes turn on and off, increasing or decreasing their production of proteins. Mason also spotted a spike in the bloodstream of another marker that primes the immune system. Yet at the same time, Kelly’s blood showed fewer of another cell type that is an early defense against viruses. It is not a surprise that gene activity would change in space — it changes in response to all kinds of stress. “You can see the body adapting to the change in its environment,” Mason said. Almost everything returned to normal shortly after Kelly got back on Earth in March 2016, but those immune-related genes “seemed to have this memory or this need to almost be on high alert” even six months later, Mason said. “On the whole it’s encouraging,” said Craig Kundrot, who heads space life and science research for NASA. “There are no major new warning signs. We are seeing changes that we didn’t necessarily anticipate” but don’t know if those changes matter. From four Russians living in space for more than a year, NASA already knew prolonged time off Earth is possible, Kundrot said, adding, “We also aim for more than just possible. We want our astronauts to do more than just survive.” Ultimately, the twin study gives NASA a catalog of things to monitor on future missions to see if other astronauts react the same way. Astronauts on future missions will be able to do some of this testing in space instead of freezing samples for scientists back home, Mason said. Immune issues sound familiar to Dr. Jerry Linenger, an American astronaut who spent more than four months on the Russian space station Mir. He said he was never sick in orbit, but once he came back to Earth “I was probably more sick than I was in my life.” Astronauts launch into orbit with their own germs and get exposed to their crew mates’ germs. Then, after a week with nothing else new in the “very sterile environment” of a space station, “your immune system is really not challenged,” Linenger said. A human mission to Mars, which NASA hopes to launch in the 2030s, would take 30 months, including time on the surface, Kundrot said. Radiation is a top concern. The mission would expose astronauts to galactic cosmic radiation levels higher than NASA’s own safety standard. It is “just a little bit over,” he said. On Earth and even on the space station, Earth’s magnetic field shields astronauts from lots of radiation. There would be no such shielding on the way to Mars and back, but tunnels or dirt-covered habitats could help a bit on Mars, Kundrot said. Kelly, who will turn 55 in the coming week, said he would go to Mars. He said a trip that long “wouldn’t be worse than what I experienced. Possibly better. I think the big physical challenge, radiation aside, will be a mission where you are in space for years.”


Legal challenges to Trump's emergency declaration face uphill battle

Abstract: NEW YORK/WASHINGTON - Analysis Democratic lawmakers, states and others mulling legal challenges to U.S. President Donald Trump’s declaration of a national emergency in order to obtain funds to build a border wall face an uphill and probably losing battle in a showdown that is likely to be decided by the conservative-majority Supreme Court, legal experts said. After being rebuffed by Congress in his request for $5.7 billion to help build the wall along the Mexican border, a signature 2016 campaign promise, Trump on Friday invoked emergency powers given to the president under a 1976 law. The move, according to the White House, enables Trump to bypass lawmakers and redirect money to wall construction. Peter Shane, a professor at Ohio State University’s Moritz College of Law, said challenges to the emergency declaration could end up as a replay of the legal battle against Trump’s travel ban targeting people from several Muslim-majority nations. The Supreme Court last year upheld the travel ban after lower courts ruled against Trump, with the justices giving the president deference on immigration and national security issues. Trump has painted illegal immigration and drug trafficking across the border as a national security threat. “Courts are reluctant to second-guess the president on matters of national security,” Shane said. Democrats, state attorneys general and at least one advocacy group have vowed to take the Republican president to court over the declaration. “I’ll sign the final papers as soon as I get into the Oval Office and we’ll have a national emergency, and then we’ll be sued,” Trump said at the White House. The National Emergencies Act of 1976 has been invoked dozens of times by presidents without a single successful legal challenge. Congress never defined a national emergency in the law. The legal experts said Trump’s declaration could be challenged on at least two fronts: that there is no genuine emergency, and that Trump’s action overstepped his powers because, under the U.S. Constitution, Congress — not the president — has authority over federal appropriations. Trump made the declaration after asking Congress to appropriate $5.7 billion for wall construction and lawmakers gave him nothing. The Supreme Court has a 5-4 conservative majority, which includes two justices appointed by Trump: Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch. Chief Justice John Roberts has emerged as the court’s swing vote, and the decision on the legality of Trump’s action could come down to him. “The handwriting is on the wall here,” said Steven Schwinn, a professor at the John Marshall Law School in Chicago. “The Supreme Court is almost certain to uphold President Trump’s emergency.” Legal experts said the 1976 law gives presidents vast discretion. Trump plans to redirect $6.7 billion in federal funds to pay for a wall, money that would come from a U.S. treasury forfeiture fund, a defense counterdrug program and the military construction budget. “The odds favor the president by a significant majority,” George Washington University Law School professor Jonathan Turley said. “He has the authority to make the declaration, and he has the money.” But other legal experts said the facts are powerfully arrayed against the president. They include government statistics showing a long decline in illegal border crossings as well as Trump’s rejection of a deal last year that would have provided more than the nearly $1.4 billion he got for border security in the budget agreement he signed Thursday. Opponents of the declaration also are certain to use Trump’s own words at his Rose Garden news conference Friday to argue that there is no emergency on the border. “I could do the wall over a longer period of time,” Trump said. “I didn’t need to do this, but I’d rather do it much faster.” Republican Rep. Justin Amash of Michigan said Congress made a conscious choice not to give Trump what he wanted. “A prerequisite for declaring an emergency is that the situation requires immediate action and Congress does not have an opportunity to act,” Amash said on Twitter. ACLU executive director Anthony Romero said Trump’s remarks are an admission that there is no national emergency. “He just grew impatient and frustrated with Congress,” Romero said in a statement. It also said the rights group would file a lawsuit in the coming week. Whatever the case, the administration’s defense of Trump’s action may not be a smooth ride. Lawsuits could delay the use of funds the president is planning to tap, and legal experts said the bulk of funds may be tied up for years. Trump is running for re-election next year. A loss would mean his presidency would end in January 2021. It is possible the legal fight over the emergency declaration might not be resolved by then. “My guess is the money, the significant amount of money, won’t flow before the 2020 election,” Harvard Law School professor Mark Tushnet said. Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic speaker of the House of Representatives, and Chuck Schumer, the Republican-led Senate’s top Democrat, said Trump’s actions “clearly violate the Congress’ exclusive power of the purse.” Congress is unlikely to muster a veto-proof majority to vote down Trump’s emergency move. The Democratic-led House could try to sue, but courts generally do not allow Congress to litigate after lawmakers fail to legislate, the legal experts said. States may lead the fight. California Gov. Gavin Newsom and state Attorney General Xavier Becerra, both Democrats, said they anticipated they would sue, saying the state would be harmed because Trump’s action could drain money from its drug-fighting efforts, endangering its residents. One possible advantage for California is that its case likely could at some point go to the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which has dealt Trump setbacks on previous policies, including the travel ban, and potentially could impose or uphold an injunction against the emergency declaration. Legal experts said landowners along the border could sue because they face the imminent threat of land seizure by the federal government to build the wall. Opponents may have more traction arguing that the president is unlawfully trying to tap funds Congress appropriated for the Pentagon, the experts said. The Defense Department construction money that Trump wants has almost never been used for domestic construction. In addition, Congress required the money to be spent supporting military operations, and opponents could argue the border wall fails to qualify.

donald trump
border wall
supreme court
congress
budgets
u.s .


Mueller says searches yielded evidence of Stone-WikiLeaks communications

Abstract: WASHINGTON - U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller disclosed for the first time Friday that his office has evidence of communications between Roger Stone, a longtime adviser to President Donald Trump, and WikiLeaks related to the release of hacked Democratic Party emails. In a court filing on Friday, Mueller’s office said it had gathered that evidence in a separate probe into Russian intelligence officers who were charged by Mueller of hacking the emails during the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign and staging their release. In an email criticizing media coverage of Mueller’s filing on Friday, Stone said the evidence was “innocuous Twitter direct messages” that have already been disclosed to the House Intelligence Committee and “prove absolutely nothing.” Stone was indicted last month for lying to Congress about his communications with others about the hacked emails. Mueller did not say at the time that he had evidence of communications with WikiLeaks. Stone, an ally of Trump for 40 years, has pleaded not guilty to the charges. Stone has previously acknowledged brief exchanges with both WikiLeaks and Guccifer 2.0 but maintains he never had advance knowledge about the release of hacked emails. But Friday marked the first time Mueller indicated he had obtained related evidence, although it remained unclear if the evidence is more substantial than what is publicly known. “The government obtained and executed dozens of search warrants on various accounts used to facilitate the transfer of stolen documents for release, as well as to discuss the timing and promotion of their release,” Mueller’s team wrote in a filing to the U.S. District Court in Washington. “Several of those search warrants were executed on accounts that contained Stone’s communications with Guccifer 2.0 and with Organization 1.” Organization 1 is a reference to WikiLeaks, while Guccifer 2.0 is a hacker persona U.S. intelligence agencies say was a cover name used by Russian military intelligence. WikiLeaks and Guccifer 2.0 each published emails and other documents from the Democratic Party in 2016 in an operation that Mueller alleges was part of a Kremlin-backed effort to tip the election in favor of then Republican nominee Trump. WikiLeaks has previously denied any ties to or cooperation with Russia.

wikileaks
robert mueller
roger stone
donald trump
russia
vladimir putin
espionage
scandals
2016 u.s. presidential election
russia probe


Trump hails China's use of death penalty for drug dealers

Abstract: WASHINGTON - President Donald Trump on Friday praised China’s use of capital punishment for drug dealers, suggesting that the United States would deal better with narcotics trafficking if it put offenders to death. In China, drug dealers get “a thing called the death penalty. Our criminal drug dealer gets a thing called ‘how about a fine?’ ” Trump told reporters at the White House. “So if we want to get smart, we can get smart. You can end the drug problem. You can end it a lot faster than you think.” It is not the first time that Trump has advocated capital punishment for drug related crimes. Last March, he suggested the United States could bring in the death penalty for drug dealers. Officials indicated there would be no attempt to change the law to make the death penalty mandatory for trafficking alone, a move that would could well run afoul of Supreme Court rulings on proportional punishment. In those rulings, the high court suggested that nothing other than murder can be considered a capital offense.

china
death penalty
drugs
donald trump
u.s .
rights


Nigeria delays election — just hours before its start — until Feb. 23 over unspecified 'challenges'

Abstract: KANO, NIGERIA - Nigeria’s electoral commission delayed the presidential election until Feb. 23, making the announcement a mere five hours before polls were set to open Saturday. It cited unspecified “challenges” amid reports that voting materials had not been delivered to all parts of the country. Residents of Africa’s most populous nation and largest democracy will soon wake up to outrage. Many had relocated for the chance to vote. “This was a difficult decision to take but necessary for successful delivery of the elections and the consolidation of our democracy,” commission chairman Mahmood Yakubu told reporters in the capital, Abuja. He said more details would be released later. A review of logistics, along with the determination to hold a credible vote, led the commission to conclude that going ahead with the election as planned was “no longer feasible,” he said. Nigeria also postponed the previous presidential election in 2015 because of deadly insecurity in the northeast, which remains under threat from Islamic extremists. As word filtered out after midnight of a possible election delay at least in some regions, the Situation Room, a civil society collective monitoring the vote, said in a statement that “any suggestion that the election be held in a staggered manner will be totally unacceptable, and would be a recipe for a disastrous election.” More than 84 million voters in this country of some 190 million had been expected to head to the polls in what is seen as a close and heated race between 76-year-old President Muhammadu Buhari and top challenger Atiku Abubakar, a billionaire former vice president. Both have pledged to work for a peaceful election even as their supporters, including high-level officials, have caused alarm with vivid warnings against foreign interference and allegations of rigging. “This is truly disappointing but … Nigeria will prevail,” the spokesman for Vice President Yemi Osinbajo said on Twitter, noting that Buhari was already in his hometown where he had been set to vote. When Buhari came to power in 2015 he made history with the first defeat of an incumbent president in an election hailed as one of the most transparent and untroubled ever in Nigeria, which has seen deadly post-vote violence in the past. Now Buhari could become the second incumbent to be unseated. His term has been marked by a crash in global oil prices that spun Nigeria’s heavily crude-dependent economy into a rare recession, from which it only emerged in 2017. Unemployment shot up. The country passed India as the nation with the most people living in extreme poverty. More than 13 million children are said to be out of school. Insecurity on multiple fronts has seen little improvement, worrying neighbors of the West African regional powerhouse and beyond. While the military pushed Boko Haram extremists out of many communities in the country’s northeast, claims of the group being “crushed” have withered in the face of continuing violence. A new offshoot pledging allegiance to the Islamic State group has surged in recent months, attacking military bases — and this past week, a governor’s convoy — sending tens of thousands of people fleeing anew. On top of that, banditry in the northwest, oil militants in the south and deadly fighting in the central region between farmers and herders over increasingly precious land keep security forces stretched and the population on edge. On Friday, authorities reported at least 66 deaths in a single community this past week in what one resident blamed on farmer-herder clashes. “We love our country and we need our country to be safe from all the violence … and all the nonsense that takes place during election time,” worshipper Amin Muhammad Khalif said as he emerged Friday from prayers in Kano, Nigeria’s second-largest city in a nation largely evenly split between Muslims and Christians. Even in the fight against corruption, in which Buhari could claim some progress, many in Nigeria have expressed concern that those targeted are mostly opposition figures.. Meanwhile, many Nigerians worry about Buhari himself after he spent more than 150 days outside the country for still-unspecified medical treatment. Spare in both charisma and physique, Buhari spoke for just a few minutes at his final campaign rally on Thursday and struggled to hear or grasp a number of questions in a recent televised town hall. Borrowing a page from President Donald Trump’s playbook, top challenger Abubakar has campaigned on the theme of “Let’s Make Nigeria Work Again,” while vowing to apply his business acumen to privatize Nigeria’s all-important state oil company and lift 50 million people out of poverty by 2025. Despite such proclamations, Abubakar has never managed to shake years of corruption allegations. And, as Buhari grumbled in his final pre-election address to the nation on Thursday, one “cannot simply proclaim jobs into existence.” In the end, the now-delayed vote could come down to the sorry state of Africa’s largest economy and people’s empty pockets, and stomachs. In Abuja, 56-year-old Bako Sharibu was wrist-deep in a dumpster as he fished out pieces of plastic for recycling. His shy smile disappeared as he recalled that he once had good work as a janitor. Now he struggles to make his target of 300 naira (83 cents) a day. “Everybody suffers too much. Hungry everywhere,” he said, adding that if he could save a few thousand naira he would send the money to his three children in northern Kaduna state. Then he shook his pocket. It was near sunset. He had just 50 naira in hand. He will be voting for Abubakar, he said. Nigeria needs change.

nigeria elections military corruption terrorism


American women detained for speaking Spanish in Montana sue border agency

Abstract: LOS ANGELES - Two American women detained by a border patrol agent in Montana after he heard them speaking Spanish in a grocery store have sued the national border protection agency. Video of the incident — which took place last May in the small town of Havre — showed Agent Paul O’Neal tell Ana Suda and Martha Hernandez that he had asked to see their identification as it was unusual to hear Spanish speakers in the state, which borders Canada. “It has to do with you guys speaking Spanish in the store in a state where it’s predominately English speaking,” he said. “It’s not illegal, it’s just very unheard of up here,” he told the women. The American Civil Liberties Union on Thursday filed suit against U.S. Customs and Border Protection on behalf of the women, who live in Havre. Suda and Hernandez say in the lawsuit that O’Neal detained them for 40 minutes. California native Hernandez and Suda, who was born in Texas, said they were standing in line to buy milk and eggs when the agent — who was standing behind them — commented on Hernandez’s accent, and asked the women where they were born. “I asked, ‘Are you serious?'” Suda said, according to the lawsuit. “Agent O’Neal responded that he was ‘dead serious.'” The two women say they were then asked to show identification and questioned outside the store, before eventually being released. “The incident itself is part of a broader pattern that we’ve seen of abusive tactics by border patrol which has gotten worse since the Trump administration, which has left border patrol officers feeling emboldened to take actions like this,” said Cody Wofsy, an attorney with the ACLU. “This has been devastating for (Suda and Hernandez),” he added. “Havre is a small town, they felt ostracized and humiliated and made to feel unwelcome in their own town and in their own country.” He noted the United States has no official language, with Spanish by far the most common language spoken after English. A Customs and Border Protection spokesman declined to comment on the case. “As a matter of policy, U.S. Customs and Border Protection does not comment on pending litigation,” he said in a statement. “However, lack of comment should not be construed as agreement or stipulation with any of the allegations.”

montana language immigration discrimination


North Korea's Kim ready to accept inspections of nuclear plant, South Korean presidential adviser says

Abstract: SEOUL - North Korean leader Kim Jong Un was ready to accept the dismantlement and inspection of a high-profile nuclear plant, a South Korean presidential adviser said, suggesting a possible point of compromise in upcoming talks with President Donald Trump. Moon Chung-in, a special adviser for foreign affairs and national security, said in an interview Friday that the verified destruction of the regime’s Nyongbyon nuclear complex was an achievable goal during Trump’s planned Feb. 27-28 summit with Kim. Moon said it was his “understanding” that South Korean President Moon Jae-in got Kim’s personal assurance on that when they met in Pyongyang in September. “Kim Jong Un said ‘Yes’ and will accept verification,” Moon Chung-in told Bloomberg in Seoul on Friday. “I hope President Trump can nail it down that verification should be part of the permanent dismantling of nuclear facilities in Nyongbyon.” While Kim expressed a willingness to accept the “permanent dismantlement” of Nyongbyon during the South Korean leader’s visit, his public statements stopped short of committing to “verification,” which would allow inspectors insight into his weapons capabilities. Moon Chung-in, who participated in the trip, declined to say where he got the information. He’s not related to the president. Nyongbyon was at one point the crown jewel of North Korea’s nuclear arms program, with its reactor and reprocessing plant turning out enough plutonium for about one bomb a year. That role has decreased since North Korea switched to uranium enrichment for the bulk of its fissile material, carrying out the work in secret, according to anti-proliferation experts. Talks between the U.S. and North Korea have made little visible headway since Trump and Kim signed an agreement in June to “work toward complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula,” without defining the phrase or setting deadlines. North Korea argues the deal implied a step-by-step approach, with each action met by a U.S. response, while Trump administration officials assert that Kim accepted his country’s “final, fully verified denuclearization.” In remarks at the White House on Friday, Trump said “I’m in no rush for speed — we just don’t want testing.” He said he hopes for “the same good luck” as the first summit when he meets again with Kim, citing signs of North Korean restraint including a halt to missile tests and Americans freed by the regime. Last month, U.S. nuclear envoy Stephen Biegun said that Kim had committed to the dismantlement of enrichment facilities “beyond Nyongbyon” in conversations with U.S. Secretary of State Michael Pompeo and South Korean leaders. Still, Biegun told visiting South Korean lawmakers earlier this week that it would be hard to resolve the remaining issues between the two sides before the summit planned for Hanoi. Moon Chung-in said the U.S. should agree to allow economic projects between the two Koreas to proceed in exchange for inspections of Nyongbyon — something the U.S. has so far been reluctant to do. Kim has railed against the international sanctions regime choking his moribund economy and called for resuming the projects, including a industrial park and a mountain resort. “Those will be doable,” Moon Chung-in said. Such an exchange would advance talks, “without undermining the overall sanctions regime by the U.N. Security Council, yet giving some kind of incentives to North Korea in a way the U.S. can come up with some sort of compromise.” Moon Chung-in, a strong advocate of South Korea rapprochement with North Korea, said the success of the Hanoi summit hinges on how North Korea proceeds with its nuclear arms program. Satellite-imagery analysis and leaked American intelligence suggest that North Korea has been churning out rockets and warheads as quickly as ever. “If North Korea continues to produce nuclear materials even after the Hanoi summit, I would say that’s the most important indicator that the Hanoi summit failed,” Moon Chung-in said.

north korea
south korea
kim jong un
donald trump
moon jae-in
u.s .
nuclear weapons
north korea nuclear crisis
kim-trump summit


Models and posters of missiles 'not necessary' as North Korea marks birthday of late leader weeks before Trump-Kim meeting

Abstract: PYONGYANG - North Korea on Saturday marked the birthday of late leader Kim Jong Il with no outward provocation against the United States, in the run-up to a second summit between the two countries later this month. National flags and placards have been placed along major thoroughfares of Pyongyang in celebration of the father of the current leader, Kim Jong Un, who has recently pledged to revitalize the nation’s economy hit hard by international sanctions. Ahead of Kim Jong Un’s planned summit with U.S. President Donald Trump on Feb. 27-28 in the Vietnamese capital Hanoi, political slogans in public spaces made no mention of the country’s ballistic missile and nuclear weapons programs. To commemorate the anniversary, known as “the Day of the Shining Star” in North Korea, various cultural and sports events, including a flower festival, a figure skating show and an artistic swimming performance, have taken place in Pyongyang. The Day of the Shining Star is one of the most important holidays in North Korea, along with April 15, called the “Day of the Sun,” which marks the birth of the nation’s founder Kim Il Sung, Kim Jong Un’s grandfather. At an annual exhibition featuring more than 30,000 roots of “Kimjongilia,” a red blossom of the begonia family named after the former leader, there were no replicas of satellite-carrying rockets or missiles, unlike on previous anniversaries. Missiles and rockets are “not necessary” for the festival to celebrate the birth of the late leader, Kim Ji Sung, a 25-year-old Japanese-speaking guide, told Kyodo News. In the past, replicas of satellite-carrying rockets, which other countries suspected North Korea had used for ballistic missile technology tests, were on display along with the flowers at the festival, sources familiar with the situation in Pyongyang said. While such replicas and items promoting nuclear development have been absent, banners and placards emphasizing the significance of economic construction have been installed in many places in the city. Following an intercontinental ballistic missile test on Nov. 29, 2017, Kim Jong Un declared North Korea had “finally realized the great historic cause of completing the state nuclear force.” The country has since suspended ballistic missile tests. In April last year, the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea, led by Kim Jong Un, made a commitment to concentrate more on building a “powerful socialist economy,” while promising to discontinue nuclear and ICBM tests. At their historic first summit in Singapore on June 12, 2018, Kim Jong Un and Trump agreed that the United States would provide security guarantees to North Korea in return for “complete denuclearization” of the Korean Peninsula. Negotiations between the two nations, however, have shown little sign of moving forward against a backdrop of the Trump administration’s skepticism about North Korea’s commitment to abandoning its nuclear arsenal. Pyongyang, meanwhile, has urged Washington to relax international economic sanctions aimed at preventing it from pursuing ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons, arguing that North Korea has already started to implement concrete steps toward denuclearization. Kim Jong Il died of a heart attack on Dec. 17, 2011, at age 69. He ruled the country for 17 years after his father Kim Il Sung died on July 8, 1994.

north korea
kim jong il
kim jong un
anniversaries


Hong Kong proposes extradition pact with China and Taiwan

Abstract: HONG KONG - The Hong Kong government on Friday proposed an amendment to allow the extradition of fugitives to jurisdictions including mainland China and Taiwan. The proposal comes in the wake of a murder case in Taiwan in which the prime suspect could not be extradited from Hong Kong to face murder charges. Secretary for Security John Lee said in the legislature that the Taiwan murder case highlights the need to plug a loophole in existing extradition laws. Concerns were raised by lawmakers in the pro-democracy camp over the blanket arrangement, pointing out that it could facilitate China’s political persecution in the territory by giving Beijing the power to seek the transfer of wanted individuals. Hong Kong man Chan Tong-kai, then 19, fled Taiwan after allegedly killing his Hong Kong girlfriend Poon Hiu-wing, 20, while the pair were traveling in Taipei in February last year. After returning to Hong Kong, Chan was arrested for theft after using Poon’s stolen bank card to withdraw money from her account in both Taiwan and Hong Kong. Taipei has sought Chan’s extradition, but to no avail because Hong Kong cited a lack of such an arrangement. “We must not isolate Taiwan in amending the laws,” Lee said. “This is a legal deficiency that we have to fix once and for all so that similar cases do not happen in the future.” He said the fact that China has signed fugitive-surrendering deals with 54 foreign countries is proof that the country’s human rights protection to extradited suspects is widely recognized. Under the amendment, extradition requests will be examined on a case-by-case basis, and the chief executive of Hong Kong will have to issue an “authority to proceed” before a court vets the case in an open hearing. It will apply to 46 types of crimes including murder, with allegations related to politics, religion and race not valid reasons for extradition. Supporting the amendment, lawmakers in the pro-establishment camp blamed the opposition side for politicizing the issue and said the Hong Kong court can be trusted in safeguarding human rights concerns. An amendment bill is expected to be introduced within months.


Osaka in the spotlight ahead of G20 and elections

Abstract: OSAKA - January and early February in Kansai, and Japan as a whole, is a busy time for local leaders. New Year’s greetings are exchanged by (mostly) elderly men at stuffy buffet parties in luxury hotels. Their job is to stand around holding a white paper napkin-covered drink and toast to, well, something, after interminably long mumbled speeches. It’s also a time when proposing solutions for local and regional political and economic issues is officially encouraged. But when it comes to Osaka this year, what’s noticeable is not only what politicians and business leaders have talked about, but also what they’ve played down. 2019 is being called, locally, the “Year of Osaka.” Over the next six months, Osaka faces local elections that could make or break the political careers of the governor and mayor; the hosting of the Group of 20 Leaders’ Summit on June 28 and 29, one of the largest gatherings of world leaders ever seen in Japan; an Upper House election; preparations for the 2025 World Expo; and contentious debates over a possible casino resort. Let’s start with where local media attention is focused: the 2025 World Expo. At a recent gathering of nearly 700 business leaders in Kyoto, all manner of suggestions for the expo were offered. While many people, including Osaka Gov. Ichiro Matsui, see a high-tech paradise, Takuya Nomura, a Cabinet Office policy adviser, said one area Osaka needed to consider was international media coverage. Nomura suggested that Kansai’s leaders talk to the Tokyo-based Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan about an “FCCJ Osaka branch” prior to and during the Expo. There is a precedent: FCCJ’s official history states a lot of foreign journalists set up camp in Osaka prior to and during the 1970 Expo. As an FCCJ member myself, I’m all for that idea. But at a meeting where most attendees were mainstream corporate men over 60 years old, it was perhaps not surprising, but still disappointing, that nobody also suggested reaching out to the many talented Kansai-based foreign writers, bloggers, videographers and photographers who contribute to Japan-based foreign language publications or freelance for various international media. Yet it’s the G20 summit where the rhetoric seems a bit muted. One might think Osaka’s leaders would be shouting about the event at every opportunity. Instead, it’s often mentioned in passing, almost in an offhanded manner. Why? Well, that depends on who you talk to. While there are fears too much publicity increases the odds of a terrorist attack, skeptics also wonder if local politicians and their supporters don’t want too much attention on the summit because it might increase local concerns about tight security in the form of closed subway stations, roads and perhaps even airports prior to and during the meeting — concerns that could lead to angry voters in April during the Osaka municipal and prefectural assembly elections. Another reason floated by some local media and foreign diplomats is that with the May 1 accession of the new Emperor, Tokyo is devoting fewer resources than it would otherwise to the G20 summit preparations. So, the logic goes, Osaka cannot really say much because Tokyo is not saying much, although that will likely change after May 1. A final theory also has to do with local politics. With ongoing budget negotiations in the Diet for fiscal 2019, which includes funding for the expo, some speculate the strategy of Osaka’s leaders is to not push Tokyo on G20 in exchange for hopefully receiving as much expo funding, their real concern, as possible. One Chinese horoscope suggests 2019 will be a turbulent year and that it’s best to just stick it out. Given how busy the Year of Osaka is set to be, that prediction is starting to feel like the unofficial policy in certain quarters of the local political and business establishments. View from Osaka is a monthly column that examines the latest news from a Kansai perspective.


Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz visits Hiroshima peace park and A-bomb museum

Abstract: HIROSHIMA - Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz visited Peace Memorial Park in Hiroshima on Saturday and laid flowers at the cenotaph for atomic bomb victims. Kurz also visited the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum and listened to a briefing by Yasuyoshi Komizo, chairman of the Hiroshima Peace Culture Foundation, about the atomic bombing of the city in August 1945. The chancellor wrote in a visitor’s message book that he will continue to fight for nuclear disarmament. On Friday, Kurz held talks with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in Tokyo and agreed to expand tourism cooperation and promote trade between the two countries.

sebastian kurz
hiroshima
shinzo abe
wwii
nuclear weapons
austria


Trump claims Abe nominated him for Nobel Peace Prize

Abstract: Did Prime Minister Shinzo Abe nominate U.S. President Donald Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize? Trump seems to think so. The U.S. leader said Friday in a wide-ranging speech from the Rose Garden of the White House that Abe had sent a “most beautiful” “five-page letter” to the Nobel committee to nominate him for the prize for his work to denuclearize North Korea. “Prime Minister Abe of Japan gave me the most beautiful copy of a letter that he sent to the people who give out a thing called the Nobel Prize,” Trump said. “He said, ‘I have nominated you, respectfully on behalf of Japan, I am asking them to give you the Nobel Peace Prize.’ “ Trump said he thanked Abe at the time, but added that he did not expect to win the prize and that that was “OK.” The Japanese government has not made such an announcement and did not immediately respond to the claim. Contacted by Kyodo News, the Japanese Embassy in Washington said it would refrain from commenting on the issue. The White House also did not immediately respond to a request for further comment. Trump alluded to 2017, when North Korea lobbed two longer-range missiles over Hokkaido, stoking concern in the country and with Abe, who characterized the launches as “unprecedented.” “He had rocket ships and he had missiles flying over Japan, and they had alarms going off. … Now all of a sudden they feel good, they feel safe. I did that,” Trump claimed. Abe has long worked to forge strong personal ties with Trump, with some observers saying he has one of the closest relationships with the mercurial U.S. president out of all world leaders, having met and spoken with Trump over the telephone dozens of times. Still, Trump has railed against Japanese economic policies, including Washington’s trade deficit with Tokyo, while pushing Abe to negotiate a bilateral trade deal more favorable to U.S. exporters of beef and automobiles. In his freewheeling speech Friday, Trump also took the opportunity to rip into his predecessor and longtime nemesis, President Barack Obama, with the president alleging that the former leader didn’t even know why he received the prize in 2009. “They gave it to Obama. He didn’t even know what he got it for. He was there for about 15 seconds and he got the Nobel Prize. He said, ‘Oh, what did I get it for?'” Trump said. “With me, I probably will never get it.” According to the Nobel Committee, Obama received his prize for his “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples” in 2009, a year he worked to curb the spread of nuclear weapons. He was the fourth U.S. president to be honored by the committee. This year, there are 304 candidates for the Nobel Peace Prize, out of which 219 are individuals and 85 are organizations, the Nobel Committee has said. The submission deadline was Jan. 31. According to Nobel rules, “neither the names of nominators nor of nominees for the Nobel Peace Prize may be divulged until 50 years have elapsed.” Trump has repeatedly boasted that he deserves much of the credit for the eased tensions on the Korean Peninsula. But observers say Trump’s string of bellicose threats directed at North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and his country in 2017 — including his vow to rain “fire and fury” on North Korea and to “totally destroy” the nation of 25 million people if it threatened the U.S. or its allies — contributed much to the fears of a bloody and possibly nuclear conflict at the time. In response to these fears, the leaders of U.S.-allied Japan and South Korea have sought to forge closer ties with the unpredictable Trump, and have also massaged his ego by crediting him with the burgeoning detente with Pyongyang. Last March, at a bilateral summit at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, Abe showered praise on the U.S. leader for his role in the crisis. “The situation surrounding North Korea, due to the decisive decision by President Trump on the first-ever U.S.-North Korea summit, is at a historical turning point,” Abe said. And in April last year, South Korean President Moon Jae-in said that Trump deserved the award, according to the South Korean presidential office, suggesting the credit-hungry U.S. president “can take the Nobel Prize” — so long as the two Koreas achieve peace. In January of that year, he also hailed Trump, saying he “deserves big credit for bringing about the inter-Korean talks.” This prompted some to suggest Trump may have confused Abe and Moon during his speech Friday. “I think President Trump has mistaken PM Abe with someone else. It simply doesn’t make sense,” Keio University professor Toshihiro Nakayama wrote on Twitter. If this is the case, “Then it almost automatically means President Moon showed a ‘beautiful letter’ to President Trump,” he added. Mintaro Oba, a former U.S. State Department official who worked on North Korean issues, noted Abe’s moves to cultivate a relationship with Trump, writing on Twitter that the news, if true, is “a pretty deft move to use on a man who has repeatedly proven receptive to flattery.” Whatever the case, if Trump were to oversee the verifiable dismantling of the North’s nuclear arms and missile programs and formally end the 1950-53 Korean War, he would claim an accomplishment that has eluded his predecessors. But much remains unsettled, and events could turn on Trump’s upcoming second summit with North Korea’s Kim on Feb. 27 and 28 in Hanoi.

nobel peace prize
shinzo abe
donald trump
north korea
nuclear weapons
awards
u.s.-japan relations


LDP lawmaker Tsuyoshi Tabata to leave ruling party over affair

Abstract: Liberal Democratic Party lawmaker Tsuyoshi Tabata has tendered his resignation from the ruling party due to his affair with a woman, sources related to the party said Friday. The LDP’s leadership team is expected to approve the resignation of Tabata, 46, soon, according to the sources. Some LDP executives are also urging Tabata to resign from the Diet’s Lower House. The scandal is expected to deal a blow to the administration of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who is also LDP president, in the run-up to the unified local elections in April and the Upper House election this summer, critics said. A former employee of the Bank of Japan, Tabata won a Diet seat for the first time in the 2012 Lower House election, in which he ran on the LDP’s ticket from the Tokyo bloc under the proportional representation system. He has been elected to the Lower House three times. In the previous Lower House election, in 2017, Tabata gained a proportional representation seat in the Tokai bloc after being defeated in the No. 2 constituency of Aichi Prefecture, which is part of the Tokai region. He belongs to the LDP faction led by Toshihiro Nikai, secretary-general of the party.


Change to labor survey method was conveyed to government spokesman Yoshihide Suga in 2015

Abstract: Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told a news conference Friday that he was informed of a change to the method for the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry’s monthly labor survey by a senior ministry official in March 2015. While noting that his memory of the matter is not perfect, Suga quoted a former aide as saying the ministry explained to him that it would hear opinions from experts about differences that appear in the results of the labor survey every few years due to a complete replacement of sample businesses covered by the statistics. The ministry made data adjustments for the survey from January 2018, without disclosing them, and year-on-year changes in nominal wages turned out rosier than they actually were as a result. Opposition parties believe that the labor survey irregularities reflected the intention of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s administration to exaggerate the government-claimed achievements of Abenomics, his economic policy mix. The opposition plans to grill the Abe administration over the statistics scandal during intensive deliberations at a meeting of the Budget Committee of the Lower House on Monday. Meanwhile, Motoya Nakae, a former aide to Abe, told a Lower House Budget Committee meeting Friday that his notification to the labor ministry in 2015 of the “recognition of issues” with the monthly labor survey was not intended to press the ministry to adopt an inappropriate surveying method. Nakae, now director-general of the Finance Ministry’s Customs and Tariff Bureau, admitted he communicated a “recognition of issues” when he was told by the ministry on March 31, 2015, that a planned reshuffle of sample businesses could greatly affect the survey’s results. Hiranao Honda of the major opposition Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan argued that bureaucrats could feel pressure to dress up the data if they are told by an aide to the prime minister about such awareness of issues. Nakae claimed that at the time he meant to underscore the need to consider the possibility of improving the labor survey to make it better reflect actual economic conditions. He said he understood that a change in sample companies was a technical issue and that he thus stopped short of reporting this matter to Abe. The labor ministry established a task force on improving the survey in June 2015, some two months after it reported the change in method to the administration. According to task force meeting records, Takeshi Anezaki, then chief of the ministry’s statistics and information division, said that wage movements were closely watched as one of the achievements of Abenomics. At a task force meeting in September 2015, Anezaki said the ministry aimed to study a method to partially reshuffle businesses covered by the survey. Nakae told Friday’s Budget Committee meeting that he has no memory of having received a report on the results of the study.

surveys
yoshihide suga
shinzo abe
scandals
mhlw


North Korea has secret base with intermediate-range missiles capable of hitting Okinawa: U.S. study

Abstract: WASHINGTON - North Korea has a clandestine base that houses intermediate-range ballistic missiles capable of hitting Okinawa Prefecture, a U.S. think tank said Friday. The Sangnam-ni missile operating base, located 250 km north of the demilitarized zone dividing the two Koreas, is one of an estimated 20 undeclared ballistic missile bases in North Korea, the Center for Strategic and International Studies said in a report. The report came ahead of a second summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un slated for Feb. 27 and 28 in Hanoi. The deployment of the Hwasong-10, with a range of more than 3,000 km, at Sangnam-ni is “a component of North Korea’s presumed offensive ballistic missile strategy that provides a strategic-level first strike capability against targets located throughout East Asia as far as U.S. forces in Okinawa and Guam,” it said. However, the base does not appear to be the subject of denuclearization negotiations between Washington and Pyongyang, according to the report. The CSIS warned any potential summit agreement that would lead to the dismantling of only the key missile test site in Tongchang-ri, to which North Korea has already committed, “would obscure the extant military threat to U.S. forces and South Korea from this and other undeclared ballistic missile bases.”

north korea
missiles
okinawa
north korea nuclear crisis


JR East project to build three new access lines to Tokyo's Haneda airport to begin in May

Abstract: East Japan Railway Co. has announced that it will launch a project in May to establish three new train routes linking central areas of the capital with Tokyo International Airport (Haneda). JR East will aim to open the new routes in 2029, it said Friday. “Creating various access routes to Haneda is socially important as the number of users of the airport is expected to continue increasing,” JR East President Yuji Fukasawa said in a speech at the Japan National Press Club in Tokyo the same day. The planned routes, which will also use part of existing train lines, will connect Haneda with Tokyo Station, Shinjuku Station and Shin-Kiba Station, respectively, according to the company. After the opening, the one-way travel time between Tokyo Station and Haneda will be cut to 18 minutes, compared with the current 30 minutes. A one-way trip will take about 20 minutes for both the Shinjuku and Shin-Kiba routes, compared to over 40 minutes now. JR East estimates construction costs for a section to be shared by the three routes and the rest of the Tokyo Station route at about ¥300 billion. Shinjuku and Tokyo stations are among the busiest rail hubs in the capital. Shin-Kiba Station is shared for use by JR East’s Keiyo Line, Tokyo Metro Co.’s Yurakucho Line and the Rinkai Line of Tokyo Waterfront Area Rapid Transit Inc.


Air Self-Defense Force jets scrambled as Russian bombers and fighters skirt Japanese coasts

Abstract: Air Self-Defense Force fighter jets were scrambled to intercept four nuclear-capable Russian Tupolev Tu-95MS strategic bombers and four Sukhoi Su-35S multirole fighter jets flying in two separate formations over the east and west coasts of Japan on Friday, the Defense Ministry said in a statement. The ministry said one formation consisted of two Tu-95MS bombers and the four fighter jets over the Sea of Japan, while a separate formation saw the other two Tu-95MS enter the Pacific side of Japan via the Sea of Okhotsk According to the Russian Defense Ministry, the ASDF intercepts took place in international waters and Japanese airspace was reportedly not violated. It said the crews of the bombers spent more than 15 hours in the air and carried out inflight refueling. While the Russian ministry confirmed that two Tu-95MS bombers and escort aircraft had carried out a “routine flight” over the Sea of Japan, the Sea of Okhotsk and the Western Pacific, it did not acknowledge the presence of the other two bombers. Media reports said the presence of eight aircraft Friday represented one of the largest-scale Russian military patrols near Japan since Moscow resumed regular long-range patrols in East Asia in 2014 following a deterioration of Russia-Japan diplomatic relations as a result of the Russian intervention in Eastern Ukraine. Russia has generally deployed its Tu-95MS bombers in pairs. But in January 2017, it sent three Tu-95 strategic bombers to circumnavigate Hokkaido, Honshu, Shikoku, and Kyushu — flights that were also intercepted and tracked by the ASDF. Late last month, the Japanese Defense Ministry announced the number of times it had scrambled fighters in the third fiscal quarter, with Russian incursions invoking such a response 270 times, or 36 percent of the total, 58 times fewer than the same time the previous year.

military
self defense forces
russia-japan relations


Understanding how social media can land you in hot water

Abstract: Only seven weeks into the year and Japan already has a new buzzword to worry about. In the past few weeks, baito tero (part-timer terrorism) has become a major talking point on social media following a string of incidents featuring workers at various chain establishments behaving badly. If you’re eating while reading this, it might be a good idea to finish what’s in front of you before going any further. The issue started to crop up at the end of January after a clip that was uploaded on YouTube included footage of a Sukiya employee throwing ice around the restaurant and while another placed a piece of kitchen equipment on their crotch. However, that was just an appetizer for a video that would turn this into a much larger discussion online. The upload captured a worker at a Kura Sushi restaurant in Osaka throwing sliced fish into a trash can before bringing it back to the cutting board . It didn’t take long for a persistent trickle of videos highlighting gross antics in the workplace to go viral online. Footage from December of a Big Echo karaoke box employee rubbing frozen chicken on the ground before throwing it into a deep fryer grossed netizens out, while a clip of a 7-Eleven worker eating oden and then goofing around with cigarettes drew similar outrage. Someone preparing pizza at Domino’s left a slice out on the metal counter after taking a bite from it. A Family Mart employee licked several items before placing them in a bag in Aichi Prefecture, while a cook at restaurant chain Bamiyan lit a cigarette using flames from a stove … and, er, smoked in the kitchen. Online reaction was, as you’d expect, harsh. A few vowed to refrain from ordering food from karaoke joints ever again, while other observers suggested this was just the beginning . Some proposed ways to counter such hijinks, with one user calling for the introduction of a system that’s common in China in which footage from the kitchen is broadcast to patrons. Others were quick to joke about the issue and praised local convenience stores for seldomly having to deal with such behavior. The companies affected by this behavior apologized, though by this stage the damage has been done. Kura Sushi appeared to suffer a significant drop in profit following its incident, which led a number of people online to express surprise at how one person’s social media creation could hit a company so hard. Trying to figure out why this seems to be happening so much lately became just as important as being disgusted by the videos themselves. Many attributed the incidents to the low wages part-time workers receive for their work . Since the money many make is as close to minimum wage as part-time workers can get, they don’t have much incentive to take the job seriously. Others argued that the labor dynamic needed to be examined, though plenty of web publications did explore this angle. Toyokezai dug deep into every angle of the story, while another blog post examined how McDonald’s appears to rarely have this problem, and why its practices appear to cultivate a better workplace. Still, some poked fun at this idea on Twitter by pointing folk back to the time a fancy kaiseki restaurant in Ginza found itself in hot water for reheating and serving leftovers to customers. However, the real reason such incidents are becoming more prominent online at the moment has less to do with underpaid part-time workers and more to do with internet users becoming more vigilant. Well, that and the fact that the young adults in the videos don’t seem to get how social media works. J-Cast noted that the original clips had all come from Instagram Stories, and it speculated that users didn’t appear to realize such uploads could be shared. It isn’t far-fetched to believe these individuals acted as they did with the intention of sharing their behavior with their friends. Nothing online is hidden and social media in Japan has turned into a watchdog of sorts in 2019. Users have used it to highlight cases such as a man shoving women at Shinjuku Station , an incident ignored by police but embraced by netizens as they tried to figure out who the person was. It’s far from perfect — take the recent copyright flap over tiramisu , which revealed a multitude of layers of allegations many ignored to shame the company they felt had acted inappropriately — but it’s becoming the norm. Who needs Chinese security measures when internet users in Japan can use evidence straight from the horse’s mouth to highlight such issues?