South Korea protested the Japanese government’s approval of a textbook claiming the South Korean-administrated Liancourt Rocks Wednesday. South Korean foreign ministry spokesman Cho Byung Jae said his government remains firm in its response to Japan’s attempts to undermine South Korea’s territorial sovereignty over the islets. “We express a strong protest and demand an immediate retraction […]
The widely read Indian newspaper The Hindu reports that the Indian delegation to the 2005 South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC ) Summit refused to attend the affair hosted in Dhaka because of long-standing tension about a series of terrorist events throughout Bangladesh in 2004 and in early 2005. This revealing bit of information […]
The world’s shock at the loss of life and destruction to property in NE Japan was soon eclipsed by the worry associated with the possibility of an impending nuclear disaster. While the global community feels for the double whammy that struck Japan and is rallying around the nation, concerns about the short and long-term effects […]
A Tokyo ordinance starting April 1 will require publishers to impose self-restrictions on sexual depictions in manga comic books. Authorities will be able to ban books they judge have extreme sexual content to children. The ordinance was proposed by Tokyo governor Shintaro Ishihara (regular readers of my blog already know my opinion on him). The […]
An Associated Press investigation found that Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) officials ignored glaring scientific evidence regarding the risk of a major earthquake or tsunami in constructing the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant. In assessing the risk of a tsunami striking the Fukushima reactor, TEPCO officials did not account for a wave larger than 18 […]
Radioactive isotope iodine-131 has been found in water samples from six states: Massachusetts, Nevada, California, Hawaii, Colorado and Washington. The radiation undoubtedly came from Japan’s leaking reactors following damage from the Mar. 11 earthquake and tsunami. The radiation levels found in the samples were low, with a half-life of only eight days, and should not […]
A couple of weeks ago, our colleague, Adam Minter wrote an article looking at the Shanghainese response to the recent Sendai Earthquake. It was a good read, but I wanted to flesh out the topic a bit, expand it to the general Chinese internet blog/BBS (netizen world) response to the earthquake. Then, perhaps, look at […]
Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano urged Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) to be more transparent and provide information to the government more quickly. The government revealed a series of missteps taken by TEPCO Saturday, including sending workers into the radiation-leaking plant in Fukushima without protective foot gear. Two workers at the Daiichi plant suffered […]
After more than two weeks of unrelenting news from Japan following the March 11 9.0-magnitude quake, tsunami and nuclear crisis, here is a bit of soft news. Four major record labels–Sony Entertainment Music, EMI Music, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group–will collaborate to release a 38-track digital album with proceeds going to the Japanese […]
The Tokyo District Court sentenced Tomohiro Kato, who committed a stabbing rampage in 2008, to death Thursday. Kato had been caught red-handed by police in the rampage on June 8, 2008, in Tokyo’s Akihabara district. The rampage, which Japanese media refer to as the “Akihabara phantom-killer incident,” left seven people dead and 10 injured. While […]
India’s abstention on Security Council Resolution 1973 approving ‘no-fly zone’ over Libya and authorizing all necessary measures to protect civilians has disappointed India’s supporters and reinvigorated the critics. It is alleged that an ‘emerged’ India has still not come out of the diplomatic closet. It was expected that India would use the opportunity as non-permanent […]
The economic cost of the March 11 earthquake is estimated to be between 16 trillion yen ($198 billion) and 25 trillion yen ($309 billion)–7 percent of Japan’s GDP by purchasing power parity. This estimate comes from a government report released Wednesday. According to the Cabinet Office, this could slow Japan’s growth rate to 0.5 percent. […]
Last week, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao called for political reform once again, while at the same time he rejected (again) any comparisons between his country and the autocracies now collapsing in North Africa and the Middle East. Premier Wen is right when he says that the current socio-economic conditions in China are nothing like the […]
It is a testament to the broken, intractably conflict-ridden politics in Bangladesh, that respected jurists can claim that a dictatorial move remain in place in order to allow democracy to breathe and to burn bright. Jurist Dr. Kamal Hossain argued that the the institution of caretaker governments should remain in place while parties revolve in […]
Yesterday for World Water Day PBS Newshour, in partnership with the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, ran an excellent piece on new approaches to get clean water to Dhaka’s explosively numerous, and growing, slum dwelling population. Here’s the video that aired, with special correspondent Steve Sapienza: Please visit the PBS Newshour webpage dedicated to this rather excellent […]
