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JAPAN
May 20, 2000

Ishihara to meet with Chen, Lee

Tokyo Gov. Shintaro Ishihara, scheduled to visit Taiwan for today's presidential inauguration, will meet with outgoing President Lee Teng-hui and new President Chen Shui-bian, sources said Friday. Lee has invited Ishihara to his weekend retreat in Tahsi, outside Taipei, for a round of golf Sunday, the...
JAPAN
May 20, 2000

Aoki misled to take over: DPJ

The Democratic Party of Japan filed a complaint with the Tokyo District Public Prosecutor's Office on Friday against Chief Cabinet Secretary Mikio Aoki for allegedly forging public documents and illegally naming himself acting prime minister.
JAPAN
May 20, 2000

LDP proposes longer juvenile prison terms

A Liberal Democratic Party panel proposed revising the Juvenile Law to increase the minimum prison time for juveniles found guilty of crimes that would carry the death penalty for adults.
JAPAN
May 20, 2000

Obuchi hospital photo raises questions for Aoki

The weekly photo magazine Friday published a closeup picture of the late Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi taken apparently after he suffered a massive stroke and fell into a coma on April 2.
JAPAN
May 20, 2000

Hokkaido trio reach Everest peak

A group of three climbers from Hokkaido, including a 34-year-old woman, on Wednesday reached the summit of Mount Everest, according to a local mountaineering association. Ruchia Takahashi, from Sapporo, became the fourth Japanese woman to scale the 8,850-meter peak in the Himalayas.
EDITORIALS
May 20, 2000

Risky missile defense

Since the end of the Cold War, hopes for a nonnuclear world have run high. In the real world, however, moves toward disarmament have suffered one setback after another. Now there are disturbing signs of a relapse in the U.S.-Russian strategic arms reduction talks. A chief stumbling block is the U.S....
JAPAN
May 20, 2000

Rainy season arrives late in Okinawa

The rainy season started in Okinawa Prefecture and a neighboring area Friday, eight days later than in an average year and 10 days later than last year, the Okinawa Meteorological Observatory said.
JAPAN
May 20, 2000

Tescon execs held in illegal funds scam

A former president of Tescon Co., a failed maker of semiconductor testers, and three others were arrested Friday for allegedly paying illegal dividends to shareholders in 1998 immediately before the firm went bankrupt. Former Tescon head Yoshinori Kikuchi, 60, and the three former executives falsely...
JAPAN
May 20, 2000

Africa calls on G8 for more help

Participants in a one-day seminar held Friday in Tokyo called for the Group of Eight countries to agree at the upcoming Okinawa summit to cooperate with African efforts to reduce debt, fight infectious diseases and meet the challenges of globalization.
JAPAN
May 20, 2000

Gas had same effect on civilians, army

Soldiers and civilians suffered similar health problems from working at toxic gas factories of the Imperial Japanese Army during the war and should receive equal government benefits, according to a Health and Welfare Ministry panel.
BUSINESS
May 20, 2000

FamilyMart opens joint e-commerce firm

Japanese convenience store operator FamilyMart Co. was to set up a joint venture with six other firms Friday to bring e-commerce to convenience stores.
JAPAN
May 20, 2000

Teachers told to take team approach, act fast to quell 'classroom collapse'

Teachers and other adults must take countermeasures at an early stage and deal with problems as a group to curb "classroom collapse," according to an Education Ministry report.
BUSINESS
May 20, 2000

Satellite TV option possible, but NTV denies tieup rumor

said Friday that it is considering establishing a planning company to enter the digital broadcasting business using an advanced communications satellite. The company, however, denied media reports that the new business will be centered on an alliance with Japan Satellite Broadcasting Inc. (Wowow).
JAPAN
May 20, 2000

Nissan falls from 'ni' to 'san'

Nissan Motor Co. fell to third place among Japanese automakers in terms of group sales in fiscal 1999, behind No. 1 Toyota and No. 2 Honda, according to Nissan's earnings report released Friday.
JAPAN
May 20, 2000

'Black money' scam hits Japan

Four foreigners have been arrested on suspicion of swindling two people out of about 5.4 million yen through a scheme dubbed "black money," police said Friday.
JAPAN
May 20, 2000

Dutch writer recounts flight from Nazis, Japan prison hell

They fled Belgium to escape Nazi persecution. They reached the Dutch East Indies, considered the "promised land" for the Dutch, only to be thrown into Japanese concentration camps. "We escaped one war to enter another one," recalls Lydia Chagoll, a Dutch-born writer based in Brussels. "In 1940, we left...
JAPAN
May 20, 2000

Varied policy measures considered to cut CO2 emissions costs

By introducing a tax on carbon dioxide emissions in conjunction with other related measures, the economic burden of efforts to curb global warming could be minimized, according to an Environment Agency report released earlier this week.
BUSINESS
May 20, 2000

End to deflation fears nearing, BOJ chief says

Bank of Japan Gov. Masaru Hayami said Friday that an end to deflationary fears is nearing -- which may mean an end to the zero-interest rate policy -- amid a brightening picture for the Japanese economy.
BUSINESS
May 20, 2000

Mitsubishi group's net profits drop 78% to 5.57 billion yen

Trading house Mitsubishi Corp. said Friday that its group net profits plunged 78 percent to 5.57 billion yen in fiscal 1999, on sales of 13.109 trillion yen, down 4.2 percent.
BUSINESS
May 20, 2000

Fast Internet server delays launch

SpeedNet Inc., which surprised the nation's telecom industry last year by trumpeting a much cheaper and faster wireless Internet service than other companies' offerings, announced Friday that it will postpone the service's launch, originally scheduled for this summer.
CULTURE / Music / HOGAKU TODAY
May 20, 2000

New made old, old new at Manabiya

I waited for the performance to begin, sitting amid the audience of 30 people or so, packed into the ground-floor room of a new building in the sprawling, nondescript suburbs of Yokohama.
JAPAN
May 20, 2000

Japan to recognize Palestinian state

Japan has pledged to immediately recognize a Palestinian state if it achieves independence peacefully during the first-ever ministerial dialogue between Japan and the autonomous Palestinian Authority.
BUSINESS
May 20, 2000

Panels to focus energies on digital divide, hacking

Reducing the digital divide between countries and combating hackers who seek to ravage the Internet were two of the pledges made Friday by two government panels formed to accelerate the spread of information technology.
BASEBALL / MLB
May 20, 2000

Carp swim past Giants in 11th

Eddy Diaz drilled a tie-breaking solo homer off Koichi Misawa in the top of the 11th inning, leading the Hiroshima Carp to a 3-2 victory over the Yomiuri Giants Thursday at the Tokyo Dome.
BUSINESS
May 20, 2000

FRC approves WL Ross to take over Kofuku Bank

OSAKA -- The Financial Reconstruction Commission has approved the sale of the nationalized Kofuku Bank to U.S.-based WL Ross & Co. LLC, which signed a basic agreement with the government-backed Deposit Insurance Corp.
BUSINESS
May 20, 2000

EPA revises downward March economic indicators

The Economic Planning Agency said Friday it has revised downward its three diffusion indexes of economic indicators for March from the preliminary figures released earlier this month.
BUSINESS
May 20, 2000

Virgin to launch mobile-phone venture in Japan

British tycoon Richard Branson's Virgin Group will announce a venture targeted at Japan's mobile phone market in two to three months, Branson said at press conference in Singapore on Friday. Branson was speaking after signing a memorandum of understanding with Singapore Telecommunications Ltd.'s mobile-phone...
JAPAN
May 20, 2000

Usu community relocation eyed

The government is considering relocating the entire community of the Lake Toya hot spring resort area, which lies at the foot of the erupting Mount Usu in southwestern Hokkaido, Construction Minister Masaaki Nakayama said Friday.
BUSINESS
May 20, 2000

Banks return to winning circle

The Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi and Sanwa Bank both returned to profitability in fiscal 1999, due largely to fewer bad-loan writeoffs than in fiscal 1998, according to the two major banks' earnings reports, released Friday.
BUSINESS
May 20, 2000

Nonlife insurance firms hit fork in road

Polarization between winners and losers became apparent Friday when the nation's major and second-tier nonlife insurance companies released their earning reports for fiscal 1999.

Longform

The students at Mitaka Municipal No. 7 Junior High School have access to various cooling devices for when they play sports.
Japan's extreme heat is causing a rethink of school sports