News from Japan

Akira Saeki, known for developing Sharp Corp. into a leading electrical appliance maker under his long-standing presidency, died of chronic kidney failure on Feb. 1, Sharp officials said Thursday. He was 92. Saeki entered Sharp's predecessor Hayakawa Metal Works in 1935 and became senior managing director in 1958, to take over the management leadership from the company's founder Tokuji Hayakawa.

The predator responsible for the fatal attacks on crested ibises placed in a protective program in Niigata Prefecture has proven to be a marten, the Environment Ministry said Thursday. Investigators found footprints of a marten left on the surface of the snow leading to the cage at the Sado Japanese Crested Ibis Conservation Center, where nine ibises were found dead Wednesday with another critically injured.

The owner and chef of a high-end sushi restaurant in Santa Monica, California, are facing criminal charges for allegedly serving illegal whale meat, local reports said Wednesday. Staff members who worked on U.S. film ''The Cove,'' which won the Oscar for best documentary Sunday by shooting a controversial dolphin hunt at a Japanese town partly with hidden cameras, tipped off local authorities after visiting The Hump restaurant last year, secretly filming the meat in a $600 meal they ordered and pocketing samples, according to U.S. media.

The mayor of Tokyo's Bunkyo Ward, Hironobu Narisawa, plans to take about a two-week paternity leave in April to encourage other male employees at the ward office to follow suit, officials of the ward office said Thursday. ''I want to enjoy both the joy and pain of childrearing as a father,'' said the 44-year-old mayor, whose wife had their first child, a boy, on Feb. 5, during a press conference.

The mayor of Tokyo's Bunkyo Ward, Hironobu Narisawa, plans to take about a two-week paternity leave in April to encourage other male employees at the ward office to follow suit, officials of the ward office said Thursday. Narisawa, 44, told the ward assembly and ward officials that he will take the leave from April 3 through 15 after his wife gave birth to the couple's first child, a boy, on Feb. 5.

The number of victims of the 1995 sarin gas attack in the Tokyo subway by the AUM Shinrikyo cult is almost 6,300 in a nationwide police survey -- far more than the earlier estimate of over 5,000, the National Police Agency said Thursday. The tally as of the end of February shows that 6,252 people were either lightly or seriously injured, while raising the death toll to 13 from 12, adding the case of a man who died the next day in an accident after inhaling sarin during the attack on March 20, 1995, it said.

Selected editorial excerpts from the U.S. press: THE BUY BOEING PROVISION (The Wall Street Journal, New York)

Selected editorial excerpts from the U.S. press: IN VIRGINIA, LEGALIZED DISCRIMINATION IS ALIVE AND WELL (The Washington Post, Washington)

Japanese Crown Prince Naruhito arrived in the Kenyan capital Nairobi on Wednesday afternoon on the second leg of his African trip. The crown prince was greeted by Kenyan environmentalist and Nobel Prize laureate Wangari Maathai and Vice President Kalonzo Musyoka at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport.

Nine crested ibises have died and one remains critically injured at the Sado Japanese Crested Ibis Conservation Center in Sado, Niigata Prefecture, after being attacked in their enclosure apparently by an outside predator, the Environment Ministry said Wednesday. The 10 were in a program for release into the wild in September, along with another female ibis that was unharmed. Two male and seven female ibises were killed and a male was severely injured.

Japanese Crown Prince Naruhito left Ghana for the Kenyan capital Nairobi on Wednesday for the second leg of his official visit to the African countries. The crown prince is scheduled to visit a wildlife sanctuary and a paddy field where Japan has helped renovate irrigation facilities during his stay in Kenya through Saturday. He will also go to Nairobi National Museum, which Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko visited in 1983 when they were crown prince and crown princess.

Hong Kong raised its travel warning alert for Thailand on Wednesday as antigovernment protests are being planned in the capital city Bangkok. The Thai government decided Tuesday to impose the Internal Security Act in Bangkok and surrounding provinces from March 11 to 23 to maintain order in the country during antigovernment demonstrations by supporters of ousted Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra that are expected to begin Friday.

Dozens of Tibetan monks and nuns clashed with police Wednesday afternoon around the Chinese visa office premises in central Kathmandu. The protesters, who were wearing Free-Tibet T-shirts and chanting anti-China slogans, tried to storm the office while police used force to stop them.

The human rights panel of a television watchdog concluded Wednesday that a journalist remarking on a TV program that those abducted by North Korea must already be dead was ''inappropriate as it lacks consideration.'' Soichiro Tahara, a well-known journalist, told the TV Asahi program on April 25 last year that the abductees -- Megumi Yokota and Keiko Arimoto -- are no longer alive and the Foreign Ministry is aware of it, prompting their families and supporters to file a protest with the Broadcasting Ethics & Program Improvement Organization.

The Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama expressed disappointment Wednesday that there is little hope for an early settlement with China of the decades-old Tibet issue. ''Judging by the attitude of the present Chinese leadership, there is little hope that a result will be achieved soon,'' he said in a statement issued on the 51st anniversary of a failed uprising in Tibet that forced him to flee into exile in India.

As Wednesday marks the 65th anniversary of the Great Tokyo Air Raid, which claimed the lives of some 100,000 civilians, the first book about the Korean victims of the bombing has been published.

orphanage windowplastic flowers bloomin the snow--Victor Gendrano (Lakewood, CA, USA)

Eight crested ibises were killed and two critically injured at the Sado Japanese Crested Ibis Conservation Center in Sado, Niigata Prefecture, attacked in their cage apparently by outside predators, the Environment Ministry said Wednesday. The 10 were in a program to release them into the wild in September, together with another ibis that was unharmed.

A Tibetan concern group is being set up in Hong Kong to ''defend Tibetans' core value and promote ethnic harmony in China,'' the group said Wednesday. Richard Shum, secretary general and spokesman of the Hong Kong Tibetan and Han-Chinese Friendship Association, said they want to gather people who would defend Tibetan culture and to build strong ties with them.

Eight crested ibises were killed and two critically injured at the Sado Japanese Crested Ibis Conservation Center in Sado, Niigata Prefecture, attacked in their cage apparently by outside predators, the Environment Ministry said Wednesday. The 10 were in a program to release them into the wild in September, together with another ibis that was unharmed.