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COMMENTARY
Aug 3, 2006

Blair is wrong on Lebanon

LONDON -- Opinion polls show that a large majority of Britons believe that the British government should have sided with the U.N. secretary general and other countries in demanding an immediate ceasefire in Lebanon. There is also increasing disquiet in Britain at the way Prime Minister Tony Blair publicly...
BUSINESS
Aug 3, 2006

McDonald's logs 545 million yen loss

McDonald's Holdings Co. (Japan) said Wednesday it booked a group net loss of 545 million yen in the first half of this year on impairment losses on fixed assets, while its sales expanded 8.2 percent to 170.60 billion yen.
BUSINESS
Aug 3, 2006

Tepco may sell ISP Fusion to Usen

Tokyo Electric Power Co. is studying a plan to sell off subsidiary Fusion Communications Corp., an Internet protocol telephony service company, to major cable music broadcaster Usen Corp., sources said Wednesday.
BUSINESS
Aug 3, 2006

Softbank cuts ties with SBI Holdings

Internet and telecom conglomerate Softbank Corp. said Wednesday its group has ended its capital ties with SBI Holdings Inc., the holding company of the SBI Group firms, with the sale of its remaining 19.2 percent stake in SBI Holdings to Goldman Sachs Japan Ltd.
BUSINESS
Aug 3, 2006

MMC manages to reduce red ink in first quarter

Struggling Mitsubishi Motors Corp. announced Wednesday it reduced its losses for the April-June quarter from the previous year.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Aug 3, 2006

Keisuke Shirota

Base Gallery Closes Saturday
BUSINESS
Aug 3, 2006

Hokuetsu mulls defense against Oji takeover bid

Hokuetsu Paper Mills Ltd., the nation's sixth-largest paper maker, said Wednesday it has asked an independent panel whether it should take measures to thwart a hostile takeover bid launched by Oji Paper Co. the same day.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 3, 2006

Death of the Doha round

LONDON -- When I came out of the house this morning, Jean-Baptiste was standing in the road gazing into the field opposite with a worried expression. He had lost two cows, he said. And he was obviously right, because there were only five cows in the field.
EDITORIALS
Aug 3, 2006

Keep an eye on U.S. beef

The government has lifted its ban on imports of U.S. beef, but suspicions about the safety of American beef still linger in Japan. This sentiment is epitomized by a statement by health minister Jiro Kawasaki. He said that if risk materials -- parts of the cow where prions, the infectious agents of bovine...
JAPAN
Aug 3, 2006

Japanese pops lag at quality time with kids

Japanese fathers spend an average of 3.1 hours per weekday with their children, placing second from the bottom in a six-country international comparison, according to a report by the National Women's Education Center.
JAPAN
Aug 3, 2006

Tohoku sees end of long rain season

The rainy season apparently ended Wednesday in the Tohoku region, bringing to an end this year's longer-than-usual wet season, according to the Meteorological Agency.
BUSINESS
Aug 3, 2006

Manufacturers to up spending 21.8%

Major Japanese manufacturers plan to spend 21.8 percent more on capital investment than they did in fiscal 2005, stretching the double-digit uptrend to a fourth consecutive year, the Development Bank of Japan said Wednesday.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Aug 3, 2006

Transience in art and life

One reason the Sistine Chapel in Rome is so venerated is that it represents one of the occasions when art did not lose out to religion when the two came together. Though religious constraints sometimes force artists to rise to the occasion -- as with Islamic art in which rich Arabesque patterns replace...
JAPAN
Aug 2, 2006

Japan lauds UNSC resolution on Iran

Japan on Tuesday welcomed a U.N. Security Council resolution calling on Tehran to suspend all uranium enrichment-related and reprocessing activities by Aug. 31 and showed determination not to compromise on its stance against nuclear proliferation because of its economic stake in Iran.
JAPAN
Aug 2, 2006

DPJ leaders go fishing to help Miyake

Top Democratic Party of Japan officials visited Miyake Island on Tuesday to help promote the island's tourism industry, which has been severely damaged in the wake of the volcanic eruptions that started in September 2000.
JAPAN
Aug 2, 2006

METI tells Paloma to resubmit heater report

The government demanded Tuesday that Paloma Industries Ltd. resubmit a report within a week on its probe into deadly carbon monoxide poisonings caused by defects in its gas water heaters.
MORE SPORTS
Aug 2, 2006

Suzuki to miss judo worlds

Athens Olympics over-100 kg gold medalist Keiji Suzuki will sit out the World Cup team championships in Paris on Sept. 16-17 due to a left shoulder injury, the All Japan Judo Federation said Tuesday.
JAPAN
Aug 2, 2006

Licensing rights to players' images belong to baseball teams, court rules

The Tokyo District Court ruled Tuesday that the right to license the names and likenesses of professional baseball players belongs to their ballclubs.
JAPAN
Aug 2, 2006

Paper hits North's missiles, China buildup

nuclear (arms) issue, are a destabilizing factor for the entire international community," the report reads. "The range of North Korean missiles is expected to be extended (farther), including possible derivatives of Taepodong-2 missiles," the paper, released Tuesday, says in reference to Pyongyang's...
JAPAN / Politics
Aug 2, 2006

Taiwanese to sue Yasukuni to have relatives' names struck

Ten relatives of Taiwanese who served in the wartime Imperial Japanese forces and are honored among the war dead at Yasukuni Shrine will file a lawsuit demanding that their kin be struck from the roster, their legal agents in Japan said Tuesday.
JAPAN
Aug 2, 2006

Sumitomo Light Metal dinged for 250 million yen in back taxes

Tax authorities have determined Sumitomo Light Metal Industries Ltd. gave more than 1 billion yen in undeclared donations to deficit-ridden subsidiaries over a four-year period through March 31, 2005, sources said Tuesday.
BUSINESS
Aug 2, 2006

Tobacco tax revenues rose 26% in June

Tobacco tax revenue rose 26.4 percent in June from the same month a year ago to 82.33 billion yen on higher demand for imported brands ahead of the July 1 tobacco tax increase, the Finance Ministry said Tuesday.
JAPAN
Aug 2, 2006

New ODA sections for Asia set up

The Foreign Ministry established two new departments Tuesday, one of which aims to improve planning for official development assistance in Southeast and Southwest Asia.

Longform

Figure skater Akiko Suzuki was once told her ideal weight should be 47 kilograms, a number she now admits she “naively believed.” This led to her have a relationship with food that resulted in her suffering from anorexia.
The silent battle Japanese athletes fight with weight