Tag: Japanese

NEW DELHI - Japan imported about 60,000 tonnes soymeal from India this week, indicating a revival in demand after the twin disasters of an earthquake and tsunami, but import enquiries waned from major Asian wheat importers who have stocked up on the grain.
There had been expectation that soymeal exports from India, Asia's leading supplier, would have been hit due to poor demand from Japan, which imports an average 1 million tonnes of the feedstock from the south Asian nation.

TOKYO - Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan said on Friday he was ready for a long fight to bring a quake-hit nuclear plant under control but was convinced Japan would overcome the world's worst nuclear crisis since the Chernobyl disaster in 1986.
"I am prepared for a long-term battle over the Fukushima nuclear plant and to win this battle," he said in a nationally broadcast news conference as the country marked three weeks since a massive earthquake and tsunami triggered the

TOKYO - Japanese authorities evacuated workers on Sunday from a reactor building they were working in after radiation in water at the crippled nuclear power plant reached potentially lethal levels, the plant's operator said.
Tokyo Electric Power Co said radiation in the water of the No. 2 reactor at the Fukushima Daiichi plant was measured at more than 1,000 millisieverts an hour. That compares with a national safety standard of 250 millisieverts over a year. The U.S.

TOKYO - Movie bosses behind Hugh Jackman's upcoming 'Wolverine' sequel and James Cameron's 'Avatar 2' have reportedly put the projects on hold in the aftermath of the earthquake and tsunami disaster in Japan.
The Australian actor is due to reprise his role as the clawed superhero for a sequel to 2009's X-Men Origins: Wolverine, which will see much of the action set in Japan. The project suffered a blow with the recent departure of director Darren Aronofsky, and now plans to film

TOKYO - Smoke and steam rose from two of the most threatening reactors at Japan's quake-crippled nuclear plant on Tuesday, suggesting the battle to avert a disastrous meltdown and stop the spread of radiation was far from won. The world's worst nuclear crisis in 25 years was triggered by a huge earthquake and tsunami on March 11 that left at least 21,000 people dead or missing. Technicians working inside an evacuation zone around the stricken plant on Japan's northeast Pacific coast

BEIJING - Eighteen months before Japan's radiation crisis, US diplomats had lambasted the safety hief of the world's atomic watchdog for 'incompetence', especially when it came to the nuclear power industry in his homeland, Japan. Cables sent from the US embassy in Vienna to Washington, which were obtained by WikiLeaks and reviewed by Reuters, singled out Tomihiro Taniuchi, until last year head of safety and security at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
"For the

TOKYO - Early estimates indicate a steep drop-off in box office revenue outside the U.S. immediately following the earthquake and tsunami in Japan. The country is one of Hollywood's biggest international markets, although industry analysts say the disaster's long-term financial impact on movie studios should be limited.
Box office revenue in Japan plunged about 41 percent last weekend, compared with the prior weekend, according to data from Rentrak Corp. In the U.S., the decline

BERLIN/TOKYO/SENDAI - Germany announced on Tuesday the temporary shutdown of its seven oldest nuclear reactors while it conducts a safety probe in light of Japan's atomic emergency. "We are launching a safety review of all nuclear reactors ... with all reactors in operation since before the end of 1980 set to be idled for the period of the (three-month) moratorium," Chancellor Angela Merkel said.
This covers seven of the 17 reactors in Germany, which decided a decade ago to be

KARACHI - The KSE 100 index plunged 1.8 percent following massive declines in regional markets after the Japanese bourse plummeted. Rumors of foreign institutional investors selling off key oil and fertiliser stocks also dampened the morale of investors and dragged the index to touch a low of 11,768.
The KSE-100 index closed at 11,829.24 levels with a loss of 216.14 points, while total volume stood at 78,084,274 along with the total value of 4,982,157,632. KSE-30 index lost

LAHORE - Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JUD), a banned religious outfit, offered condolences over the earthquake and tsunami in Japan and has offered to help the Japanese government in rehabilitation of victims. In a letter written to the Japanese prime minister, JUD Ameer Hafiz Saeed reiterated that JUD was a welfare organization and had enough experience to tackle floods and calamities.
He wrote, "We showed this skill inside and outside our country. With such an experienced background, we

SOMA - High levels of radiation leaked from a crippled nuclear plant in tsunami-ravaged northeastern Japan after a third reactor was rocked by an explosion Tuesday and a fourth caught fire in a dramatic escalation of the 4-day-old catastrophe. The government warned 140,000 people nearby to stay indoors to avoid exposure.
Tokyo also reported slightly elevated radiation levels, but officials said the increase was too small to threaten the 39 million people in and around the

RIKUZENTAKATA - A widening cloud of radiation on Tuesday added to the misery of millions of people in Japan's devastated northeast, already short of water and food and trying to keep warm in near-freezing temperatures.
As bodies washed up on the coast from Friday's devastating earthquake and tsunami, injured survivors, children and elderly crammed into makeshift shelters, often without medicine. By Monday, 550,000 people had been evacuated after the cataclysmic events that

TOKYO - Last week Prime Minister Naoto Kan was in a precarious position as his approval ratings tumbled, his foreign minister resigned and funding bills for a $1.1 trillion budget were at an impasse.
Such issues have been put on the back burner after the government was confronted by the strongest earthquake on record ever to hit Japan and the subsequent tsunamis it unleashed, now set to claim well in excess of 1,300 lives.
The impact of the 8.9-magnitude quake may now

TOKYO - Japan's Foreign Minister Seiji Maehara announced his resignation on Sunday over donations received from a foreign resident in violation of the country's laws. Maehara -- who had been seen as a likely successor to embattled Prime Minister Naoto Kan -- said he would step down after admitting he received several hundred dollars from a restaurant owner of Korean ethnicity.
"I apologise to the Japanese people for stepping down after only six months and provoking distrust over

KARACHI: Pakistan would seek Japanese assistance in five broad areas including trade, development, security, energy and institution building during President Zardari's visit to Japan.
The president is likely to visit Japan by the end of this month as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has sought proposals from various government institutions, trade bodies and chambers of commerce for boosting the existing trade volume between Pakistan and Japan, sources said.
Zardari, who last

MOSCOW - The war of words between Russia and Japan escalated on Monday when Moscow called Tokyo's latest comments on a disputed island chain "clearly undiplomatic". Prime Minister Naoto Kan used a national remembrance day Monday to call President Dmitry Medvedev's November visit to the Kuril Islands -- which are known as the Northern Territories in Japan -- an "unforgivable outrage."
Russia's response was swift, with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov calling the comments hostile and

KARACHI - A delegation of Pakistani textile exporters is set to depart for Japan to evaluate the potentially lucrative market. A Pakistani mission in collaboration with Japan External Trade Organisation (JETRO) and Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) would assess the market in the foreign country.
This was stated by Trade Development Authority of Pakistan (TDAP) Chief Executive Tariq Iqbal Puri, while speaking to media personnel after communicating with Lahore based