Lee's blog for Jour 3101

In The New York Times article, Sony Corp., the Japan based company, announced on Tuesday saying it is slashing 4 percent of its workforce and is aiming to cut $1.1 billion in costs due to the global financial crisis. Sony has 185,000 employees worldwide; cutting 4 percent will be 8000 jobs. The company will complete the job cuts in electronics sector by the end of March 2010. Analysts thought the number will not be enough for Sony. Sony shares had fallen nearly 70 percent this year.

The USAToday article said that besides slashing 8000 jobs from the electronics sector, Sony is also cutting another 8000temporary and contract jobs. Sony will close several plants in order to cut investments. The company said this will save more than 100 billion yen a year. It is the biggest job cuts of Japan since the global financial crisis started this summer. Sony will reduce 30% of investment in electronics for the next fiscal year to March 2010.

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The Yahoo! News article said that a group of armed robbers wearing women's outfit robbed jewelry worth $108 million from a Harry Winston boutique in Paris on Thursday. It was one of the world's largest jewel heists. Isabelle Montagne, spokeswoman for the Paris prosecutor's office, said the gunmen forced store employees to strip rings, necklaces and earrings from window displays and pull more out of safes. Harry Winston was at one of Paris' toniest shopping locales on the Avenue Montaigne. Montagne said the incident "very well-organized." Investigators suspect the robbering group was the so-called "Pink Panthers," a ring of jewel thieves mostly from the former Yugoslavia. Harry Winston had been targeted in a heist last year and lost jewelry worth $28.4 million and the robbers were not caught.

The New York Times article said that some French newspapers branded the heist of the century. The heist happened on Thursday but was reported on Friday. It was the second robbery of Harry Winston in 14 months. Doron Lévy, a spokesman for the Union of French Jewelers said that Harry Winston was not the only one that was targeted of the robberies. Harry Winston, the New York-based company, issued a statement on Friday. “We are cooperating with the authorities in their investigation,� spokeswoman, Rhonda Barnat, said. “Our first concern is the well-being of our employees.�

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The Washington Post article said that the presidents of Georgia and Poland said they encountered gun fire while they were visiting a Russian checkpoint near the South Ossetian border on Sunday. Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili and visiting Polish President Lech Kaczynski said that the Russian troop fired machine guns while their car approached the checkpoint near South Ossetian, where Moscow thought as an independent state after defeating Georgia in August. No one was injured in the gun fire, but didn’t know where the shot come from and where was aimed. Grigory Karasin, Russian deputy foreign minister, told the Interfax news agency that it was “One more instance of wishful thinking on the part of Georgia." South Ossetian officials also denied firing any shots.

The New York Times article said Russia denied the claim of President Saakashvili and Kaczynski. The South Ossetian and Russian authorities said the two presidents intentionally provoked their forces. President Kaczynski and President Saakashvili first arranged a convoy of officials and journalists to visit refugees in a Georgian-held village. Instead, they changed the plan to visit the checkpoint. A Polish reporter along with the convoy said she heard the machine-gun fire and a Polish official said he heard three bursts of machine-gun fire, and that the party turned back. President Kaczynski is a passionate supporter of Georgia in its conflict with Russia. Saakashvili said Russia was in “the most extreme violation� of a French-brokered cease-fire.

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The New York Times article said that in Russia, a judge ruled that the trial of three men involved in killing of the journalist Anna Politkovskaya should be open to the public. Politkovskaya’s famlily was concerning about secret proceedings would harm the case. Politkovskaya was a journalist who covered the war in Chechnya and often criticized the Kremlin. She was gunned down in October 2006. The prosecutors denied the government was involved in the killing and who ever said that wanted to discredit the Kremlin. The judge’s decision came on a day after Mikhail Beketov, also a journalist, was in a Moscow suburb was beaten up last week and drew attention to the public.

The USA Today article only had three short paragraphs of the story. It was the Moscow District military court made the ruling. Both Politkovskaya’s colleagues and the defendants spoke in favor for an open trial. The article said that Politkovskaya’s reports on human rights embarrassed the Kremlin and she was killed outside of her apartment.

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The USA Today article said that regional haze, known as atmospheric brown clouds, contributes to glacial melting, reduces sunlight, and helps create extreme weather conditions that impact agricultural production, according to the U.N. Environment Program reported Thursday. The brown cloud included soot, particles and chemicals stretching from the Persian Gulf to Asia. This will threaten health and food supplies in the world. It has darkened 13 Asian cities which including Beijing, Shanghai, Bangkok, Cairo, Mumbai and New Delhi. It has been sharply "dimming" the amount of light by as much as 25% in some places. The brown clouds are caused by the burning of fossil fuels, wood and plants. It also exaggerates the greenhouse effect.

The New York Times article said that the report was released at Beijing, one of the world’s most polluted cities. The brown clouds had led to melting of the Himalayan glaciers. The Chinese Academy of Sciences said these glaciers have shrunk by 5 percent since the 1950s. The soot that blot out the sun have led to a 5 percent decline in the growth rate of rice harvests across Asia since the 1960s. Also, people who breathe the toxic mix had deadly impact, exports estimated that 340,000 people in China and India die each year from cardiovascular and respiratory diseases because of the air pollution issue.

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In The New York Times article, officials from China and Taiwan signed agreements to overcome economic slowdowns Tuesday. The agreements included expanding charter flights, maritime shipping and cooperation on food safety issues. The agreement was signed on the second day of the head of the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait Chen Yunlin’s five-day visit to Taiwan. Chen is the most senior Chinese Communist Party official to visit Taiwan for nearly six decades. In the agreements, the weekly charter flights tripled from 36 to 108 with 21 cities. The planes will also fly in a direct line between Taiwan and China, which currently have to take a longer route through Hong Kong for security concerns. China and Taiwan will add 60 direct cargo charter flights each month. The agreements also agreed to expand free exchange of information regarding food-safety issues. Direct mail service was also included in the agreements. Chen had encountered many protests during his visit in Taiwan.

The USA Today article said that Chen had been greeted by many anti-China demonstrations since the first day of his visit to Taiwan. The agreement signed on Tuesday will becomes effective in 40 days. The agreements allow cargo ships to sail directly across the Taiwan Strait, so the ships don’t have to stop at Okinawa, Japan, and this will save about 16 hours and cut costs by between 15 and 30 percent. Also, the air links will save the airlines about 2 billion New Taiwan dollars ($60 million) a year.

Posted by leex3102 at 11:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In the USA Today report, the Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso announced a 30 trillion yen, which is about $300 billion, stimulus package and credits to bolster the country's economy. Aso had this announcement on Thursday. Aso said that the package would include loans and credits for small and medium-sized businesses. It also will have reduction in highway tolls and 2 trillion yen, $20 billion, fixed-sum benefits to households. He is also considering raising consumption taxes.

In The New York Times report, Japan announced the stimulus package, which is said to be the boldest of several measures that officials took to try to stanch the global credit crisis. Aso had this announcement after Hong Kong and Taiwan cut interest rates on Thursday. This is the second stimulus package in two months of Japan government. The package includes 5 trillion yen in new government spending. Japan, the world’s second-biggest economy, is heading recession. The other package was announced in August before the Lehman Brothers collapsed.

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In The New York Times article, the Indonesian police raided two neighborhoods near to the capital, Jakarta, and arrested at least five suspects linked to regional Islamic terrorist groups on Wednesday. Police suggested that the group might have been planning attack a near state-owned oil storage facility. One of the suspects as Rusli Mardani, who is widely believed by the authorities to have been be an instigator of anti-Christian violence. The police said the suspects might have connections to Noordin M. Top, the most-wanted militants in the Southeast Asia. Tops is believed to be responsible for several major bombings in Indonesia. The suspects were thought to have connections with Tops was because the sophisticated bomb-making materials were similar to those used by Top in the pas, according to the police.

The Yahoo! News article reported that the police deputy spokesman Sulistyo Ishak said “It would have been very dangerous if the police had failed to find the explosives.� Ishak also said that the data and analysis showed the suspects had been students of Azahari Husin, a notoriously callous explosives expert who was killed in 2005. He also said that the printed circuit boards showed the suspects are making more sophisticated bombs than before. The other four suspects were identified as Muntasir, Hasan, Imam Basori alias Basar, and Budiman.

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In the Yahoo! news report, the Mexico federal prosecutors said they arrested two supporters of a protest movement for killing the 36-year-old American journalist Bradley Roland Will in 2006. Will was shot in was amid a throng of protesters on the outskirts of Oaxaca from a distance. A spokesman for the protesters denied the men were not the gunmen who shot Will. Federal deputy prosecutor Victor Corzo identified suspects Juan Manuel Martinez, was the gunman, and Octavio Perez was an accomplice in a news conference. Will's mother, Kathy, didn’t agree with the result. She thought that the federal police just wanted to close this case with two wrong men and she called the detentions "ludicrous."

The New York Times reported that Juan Manuel Martínez, was arrested in Oaxaca on Thursday and accused of homicide. Will had been in Oaxaca for four weeks shooting video of the protests. Besides Will, there were 17 other people were killed during the protest. But the federal government dropped the investigation of all the cases except Will’s. Human rights groups are inquiring if the arrested prosecutors are the real gunmen.

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From The New York Times report, China had banned one brand of a herbal medicine, which caused six people seriously ill and three of them death.

The State Food and Drug Administration posted a warning of this issue on its Web site late Wednesday.

Two batches of the medicine are discovered to be harmful. The drug is a preparation of Siberian ginseng made by Wandashan Pharmaceutical, which based in Harbin, the capital of Heilongjiang Province, northeast China.

The six victims became ill after being injected around 10 a.m. on Sunday at one hospital in Honghe Prefecture, in southwestern Yunnan Province. Three of them died Monday morning.

The herb is called ciwujia. It is used to treat “thrombosis caused by a weak liver and kidney,� and to address coronary problems and other illnesses.

USA Today interviewed a man who only gave his last name, Luan, on the phone at Wandashan's marketing department in Harbin.

According to Luan, the company had stopped selling the herbal injection and had sent the two batches to the SFDA for testing.

Luan said that Wandashan has used Ciwujia in its products for more than 30 years without a problem. The injectable form of the herbal remedy was a relatively new product, he said, but he did not hear any bad reaction of this injection.

The company produced more than 100 types of medicine and more than 10 types are made of Ciwujia in the form of capsules, injections and herbal tea, according to the company Web site.

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In The New York Times article, an x-rated video store was set to fire and killed 15 people in Osaka on Wednesday.

The authorities said that the people who died in the fire were sleeping small private cubicles as cheap overnight accommodations.

The police arrested Kazuhiro Ogawa, 46, as a suspect. Ogawa lived in Osaka and unemployed.

Ogawa deliberately set fire to newspapers in a cubicle just before 3 a.m., police said.

Video stores and Internet and comic book cafes equipped with cubicles at low prices for people who commute to stay overnight after the trains stop running is popular in recent years.

Cat, the name of the store, had 32 cubicles and $15 for a night. There were3 employees and 26 customers were in the store at the time of the fire.

The USA Today article said that there were at least 15 people were killed and 10 were injured.

Osaka police spokesman Kengo Hirami said that the suspect was a customer of the store. Ogawa admitted that he used a stash of newspapers in his bag to set the fire.

The Cats Adult Video Theater in located in an entertainment district in Osaka. The store had 32 cubicles, most were occupied during the fire, each equipped with a cot, a television and a DVD player.

Posted by leex3102 at 8:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In The New York Times report, in Finland, a gunman posted several violent clips on YouTube and was questioned by police the released before he shot 10 people and killed himself on Tuesday.

The gunman was questioned by the police on Monday because of his handgun-firing postings on YouTube. But the police released him because there was no legal reason to hold him.

The masked gunman dressed in black and carried a big bag entered the Kauhajoki School of Hospitality, 180 miles northwest of Helsinki. He started firing in a classroom, where students were taking exam.

Jari Neulaniemi, the police spokesperson, said the attacker armed with a .22-caliber pistol and some kind of explosive devices. He started fires to burn the 10 victim after killing them. Some victims were hard to recognize. He also wounded 2 other people.

The gunman was identified as Matti Juhani Saari, a 22-year-old student at the school.

A gunman killed eight people and himself in his high school last November in Finland, a country had deep-rooted tradition of hunting; a fierce debate about gun law after that. The government insisted that there was no need for broader changes to Finland’s gun laws.

Finland has a population of 5.2 million and 1.6 million licensed firearms. Civilian gun ownership per capita of this country is only behind the United States and Yemen.

USA Today reported that there were eight women and two men were killed in the Kauhajoki School of Hospitality.

Police said that Saari fired at them when they arrived, but no officers fired back.

It was the second school massacre in Finland less than a year. There were similarities between these two. They both posted video clips online before the killing, “they both fascinated by the Columbine school shootings in 1999 in Colorado, both attacked their own schools, and both died after shooting themselves in the head.�

Fredrik Almqvist, a professor of child psychiatry at the University of Helsinki, said that “there was growing evidence that the virtual world of the Internet can give some alienated youth a way to build an identity and copycat ideas for violent behavior.�

Posted by leex3102 at 11:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In The New York Times report, North Korea admitted it has begun to reassemble its nuclear complex on Friday. It also said that it the North is “no longer wished to be removed from the United States’ terrorism blacklist.�

“We neither wish nor expect to be delisted as a ‘state sponsor of terrorism.’ We can go our own way,� a ministry spokesman spoke through its state-run news agency, KCNA.

North Korea said that it disabled the Yongbyon complex and submitted a declaration of its nuclear activities last June and Washington agreed to remove it from the blacklist.

However, the United States said that the North should agree to a comprehensive inspection.

North Korea said it is a “gangster-like� inspection, which they will never agree with.

Analysts said the action of North Korea might be its tactic to win concessions.

USA Today said that North Korea blamed the U.S. for violating their agreement to remove it from the list of states that sponsor terrorism after it disabled the atomic reactor.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said that it is North Korea has to choose to have a better relationship with the world or keep isolated.

Kim Jong-il, the leader of North Korea who is 66-year-old and has diabetes and heart disease and suffered a stroke recently, had failed to appear to public view and reports. His health is skeptical.

The No. 2 leader of North Korea, Kim Yong Nam, said there is no problem with the leader’s health last week to a Japanese news agency.

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The New York Times reported that Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe and the opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai made a deal to share power.

South African President Thabo Mbeki was the mediator of this agreement. He had been staying Zimbabwe for four days to work on the deal between Mugabe and Tsvangirai.

“President Mbeki will address you, but I just want to tell you, we have a deal,� Tsvangirai said.

President Mbeki said that the details of the agreement would be released on Monday at a signing ceremony. He also said that African leaders will go to Harare, capital of Zimbabwe, to witness the signing ceremony on Monday.

Mugabe had been holding the power nearly three decades. Under his presidency, Zimbabwe’s economy had gone to hyperinflation. People has had been suffering hardships.

USA Today said that Mugabe has been the unchallenged leader of Zimbabwe for more than two decades. Mugabe agreed this deal reluctantly. He did not have instant statement yet.

African leaders did not want to criticize Mugabe. But now they had been impatient with him for political issues and “ruining the economy of what had once been the region's breadbasket,� especially neighboring countries that had taken Zimbabwean refugees.

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