Japan Flights

AVIATION: NWA mulls more flights

2007-11-15T01:55:00.000-08:00

Northwest Airlines Corp., the overseas carrier with the most service to Japan, will consider adding flights to Tokyo from New York and Memphis, Tenn., as it takes delivery of new planes.
The airline may restart New York flights, axed two years ago, after it begins receiving 18 Boeing Co. 787s in February 2009, Chief Executive Officer Doug Steenland told reporters in Tokyo on Tuesday. The Dreamliner will help cut fuel costs compared with the larger-sized planes it flew before, he said.

A stronger yen against the U.S. dollar could also stimulate demand for flights to the United States from Japan, Steenland said.
Separately, Northwest shareholder Wellington Management Co. LLP raised its stake to 11.5%, becoming the carrier's biggest investor.
Wellington held 22.4 million shares of Eagan, Minn.-based Northwest as of Oct. 31, according to a U.S. regulatory filing Tuesday.
BANKING: Comerica to buy shares
Comerica Inc. said it plans to buy back up to 10 million of its shares or 6.6% of its outstanding common stock as of Sept. 30.
The Dallas-based bank will purchase the shares from time to time on the open market or through negotiated transactions.
The buyback is not part of an existing program that as of Sept. 30, had the authority to purchase up to 3.6 million of the bank's shares.
BOOKS: Borders signs TV deal
Borders Group Inc. is getting into the TV business.
The Ann Arbor-based company has signed an agreement with a California company to launch Borders TV, an in-store television network that will be shown at its superstores nationwide.
Borders is partnering with Ripple, a visual network marketing firm in El Segundo, Calif., to feature original video content that was previously only available on the Borders Web site.
Programming will include "Borders Live at 01," "Borders Book Club" and "Borders Presents," which will highlight performances by popular music artists, as well as interviews with public figures.
FOOD: Workers to seek damages
A judge has cleared the way for five former Nicaraguan banana plantation workers to seek punitive damages against Dole Fresh Fruit Co. for exposing them to a pesticide in the 1970s they say left them sterile.
Dole objected to punitive damages, but Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Victoria G. Chaney says it's up to the jury.
Last week, a jury decided six of the 12 men who sued Dole Food Co. and Midland-based Dow Chemical Co. were entitled to more than $3 million in damages. The jury will begin considering punitive damages for five of the men today.
Dow is exempt from paying punitive damages.
Dow made the pesticide DBCP, and Dole used it to kill microscopic worms in banana tree roots.
FURNITURE: La-Z-Boy reports loss
Furniture maker La-Z-Boy Inc. reported a quarterly loss because of a struggling furniture market.
The Monroe-based company posted a net loss of $9.9 million, or 19 cents per share, in its fiscal 2008 second quarter compared with a year-ago profit of $1.95 million, or 4 cents per share.
"While we are disappointed that, due to industry headwinds, the improvements we have made in our business model are not clearly evident in our results, we posted reasonable operating margins in each of our wholesale businesses on significantly lower volume," said Kurt L. Darrow, La-Z-Boy's president and chief executive.
PHARMACEUTICALS: Caraco pill backed
Caraco Pharmaceutical Laboratories Ltd. said the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has tentatively approved the company's abbreviated new drug application for Lamotrigine tablets.
The Detroit-based generic pharmaceutical company said its Lamotrigine tablets, in 25 mg, 100 mg, 150 mg and 200 mg doses, are used to treat partial seizures.
They can also be used with other medications to treat bipolar disorder.

Japan appears content with backseat role in Asian defense

2007-11-12T00:43:00.001-08:00

By Richard HalloranSunday, Nov 11, 2007, Page 9
After five years of solidifying Japan-US security relations under the leadership of former Japanese prime minister Junichiro Koizumi, the alliance over the past year has lurched into a sharp decline under his successor Shinzo Abe and Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda because Tokyo has reverted to the insular politics of yesteryear.
At issue has been a cynical ploy of the leader of the Democratic Party of Japan, Ichiro Ozawa, to use what he perceived to be public disapproval of Japan's maritime support for the US in the Indian Ocean to force out Fukuda, of the Liberal Democratic Party. Fukuda, in turn, dallied in a half-hearted effort to bring Ozawa around.
Both, it seems, misread public opinion. Polls taken by the Asahi, Yomiuri, Mainichi, and Nihon Keizai newspapers, and the Kyodo News Agency, found that 44 to 49 percent of Japanese approved of Japan's naval deployments. In contrast, 30 to 43 percent, a wider spread, disapproved.
As the Economist magazine said in an editorial: "So is this the Japan of old: self-absorbed, unashamed at leaving others to do the hard military tasks?"
Fukuda, who has been in office less than two months, was forced to withdraw Japanese vessels from the Indian Ocean because he had not persuaded the Diet to extend the law authorizing them to refuel ships of the US and three other nations there. In six years, the Japanese had performed 780 refueling operations. A less visible airlift in which Japanese military planes ferried people and cargo on 380 flights within Japan also ended.
Lieutenant Colonel Scott Graham, a US Air Force operations officer, was quoted in Stars & Stripes, the US military newspaper, as saying: "It allowed us to dedicate our aircraft to other missions," including flights into Iraq and Afghanistan.
A year ago, Japan pulled its contingent of 500 soldiers out of Iraq, where they had been assigned non-combatant tasks. The Japanese had rotated 10 such units through Iraq for six months at a time, the first overseas deployment of Japanese soldiers since World War II.
Moreover, several Tokyo press reports said Fukuda's government was planning to reduce its financial support for US forces in Japan when the fiscal year begins next April. Japan pays for most of the yen costs at US bases in Japan, such as rent, labor, and utilities. That runs to US$4 billion to US$5 billion a year, or about 10 percent of Japan's military budget.
Into this valley of disarray rode US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates seeking to get the alliance back on track. He told Fukuda, Japanese Foreign Minister Masahiko Komura and Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba last week it was "unfortunate" that the refueling operation had been suspended and urged Japan to "resume its leadership" in Asia. He told them the US was trying to mitigate the loss of Japan's fuel supplies.
US military officers informed on events in Japan contended, somewhat anxiously, that the damage to the alliance would be limited to the political sphere.
They said they expected agreements already reached with the Japanese, such as putting a US Army corps headquarters in Camp Zama alongside a Japanese headquarters, would go forward.The government in Tokyo, moreover, has agreed to pay for 60 percent of the US$10 billion cost of moving 8,000 US Marines and 9,000 dependents and civilian employees to Guam from Okinawa, leaving just under 10,000 Marines on Japan's southern island. That move is to be completed in 2014-2015.
Even so, the law of unintended consequences seemed to be at work. Japan's emergence from the postwar cocoon in which it had wrapped itself after World War II and from which it seemed to be shedding has come into question. Japan's hopes for attaining a permanent seat on the UN Security Council, always tenuous at best, have been set back.
The "Asian Gateway Initiative" proclaimed by Abe last spring appears in jeopardy. It was to have eased Japan into a "responsible role in the development of Asia" and to have had Japan take the lead in forging "an open regional order," emphasizing economic progress.
Just after he took office, Fukuda said in a policy address: "Maintaining the solid Japan-US alliance and promoting international cooperation are the foundation of Japan's diplomacy." He pledged "that Japan will realize its responsibilities commensurate with its national strength in the international community, and become a country which is relied upon internationally."
Those aspirations have dropped below the horizon, at least for the immediate future.
Richard Halloran is a writer based in Hawaii.

Typhoon Faxai Nears Central Japan; Flights Canceled

2007-11-11T23:56:00.003-08:00

By Ron Rhodes

Oct. 27 (Bloomberg) -- Typhoon Faxai is on a path to reach Japan's central island of Honshu tonight, bringing rain and winds gusting to 144 kilometers per hour (90 miles per hour), the Japan Meteorological Agency reported on its Web site.
The storm was moving northeast at 65 kilometers per hour and was expected to reach the Izu island chain about 200 kilometers southeast of Tokyo tonight, the agency said. As much as 200 millimeters (8 inches) of rain may fall in some parts of central Japan tomorrow.
All Nippon Airways canceled the day's flights between Tokyo and the Izu islands, the airline said on its Web site. Tokai Kisen, which operates ferries between the islands and Tokyo and Shizuoka Prefecture, canceled some services, the company said on its Web site.
The storm may weaken and spread as it makes landfall, the weather agency said. It issued advisories of heavy rain and six- meter waves off Japan's coast, predicting as much as 120 millimeters of rain and winds up to 90 kilometers per hour as Faxai passes the Kanto area, which includes Tokyo.
Faxai, which Japan counts as the 20th typhoon of the season, is expected to pass south of Japan's northernmost island of Hokkaido tomorrow, the agency said.
Japan is regularly buffeted by tropical cyclones during the northern hemisphere's summer. Three people died in July when Typhoon Man-Yi swept across Okinawa and Kyushu and two people were killed in September when Typhoon Fitow hit Tokyo.
A record 10 tropical storms and typhoons made landfall in Japan during 2004, killing more than 60 people and causing billions of dollars of damage.