Once again, inflation increased in China last month by more than economists expected, as rising commodity costs and inflows of capital threaten to overheat economies across Asia. China’s consumer prices rose 5.4% from a year earlier, the fastest pace since 2008, according to statistical reports coming out of China. Four interest-rate increases in China since […]
Prime Minister Naoto Kan mentioned Monday a need to freeze construction of new nuclear power plants in the wake of the crisis at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant. Even as Kan was being heckled by lawmakers from the opposition Liberal Democratic Party (which is a bit of a misnomer, being neither liberal nor democratic), […]
Tokyo Electric Power Co. released a blueprint Monday for ending the crisis at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant. TEPCO will first focus on cooling the reactors and spent fuel pools, reducing radiation leaks and decontaminating water that has become radioactive. The first step is estimated to take three months. The second step is to […]
The following article was written by Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan and sent to numerous English-language newspapers. “Japan’s Road to Recovery and Rebirth” By Naoto Kan On March 11, Japan was hit by one of the most powerful earthquakes in recorded history. We are making all-out efforts to restore livelihoods and recover from the series […]
The government said Friday that the Public Security Intelligence Agency inspected 32 facilities belonging to the Aum Shinrikyo cult last year in accordance to a law designed to curb the cult’s activities. The Aum Shinrikyo (Religion of Truth) cult is responsible for the the 1995 sarin nerve gas attack on the Tokyo subway system, which […]
Palagummi Sainath a renowned journalist and rural affairs editor of The Hindu delivered the First Maharaj Kaul Memorial Lecture at University of Berkeley, California on April 11. Sainath has written extensively on farmer suicide and paid news, issues that have not been widely reported in the mainstream Indian media. At Berkeley, Sainath choose to speak […]
In the aftermath of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami that left 13,392 dead and 15,133 missing (most of whom are assumed to have been washed out to sea), and the subsequent nuclear crisis at Fukushima, the Japanese are making a long-overdue assessment of their society. Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said Wednesday that former […]
The following is the U.S. State Department’s assessment of Bangladesh’s human rights record over the course of the last year. Without pulling any punches, at lenght: “Security forces committed extrajudicial killings and were responsible for custodial deaths, torture, and arbitrary arrest and detention. The failure to investigate fully extrajudicial killings by security forces, including several […]
It is abundantly clear that the Pakistani military intends to use the recent Raymond Davis affair as a bargaining chip that it hopes will keep rolling back to the negotiating table. Raymond Davis, a 36 year old man revealed to be a CIA contractor fatally shot two Pakistani men on the streets of Lahore earlier […]
Japan ranked the severity of the Fukushima nuclear crisis a level 7, the highest possibly rank on an international scale, putting the situation at Fukushima on the same level as Chernobyl. But as FPA blogger Jeff Myher pointed out in his Energy blog, there is a quantitative difference between the ongoing crisis at Fukushima and […]
A new study by The Economic Strategy Institute (ESI), commissioned by the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, called “The Evolving Role of China in International Institutions”, takes a thorough look into China’s growing influence in international organizations. The report contains two truisms, ten trends, seven recommendations, and a number of case studies on China’s […]
U.N. Special Representative for Disaster Risk Reduction Margareta Wahlstrom had nothing but praise for Japan’s preparedness for natural disasters, which apparently includes drills, building codes and risk assessment. Wahlstrom said Monday strong building codes, constant drills among the population and an effective warning system saved lives when the massive earthquake and tsunami hit Japan on […]
Popular from Press
