Free Republic

* Nikkei surges 4.8 pct to highest close since Nov 2007 * Asian shares extend gains made after U.S. GDP data lifts Wall Street * Dollars spikes 1.7 percent to near seven-year high against yen * Yen crosses surge after BOJ reignites carry trade Japanese stocks soared 4.8 percent to their highest close since November 2007 and the yen skidded to near seven-year lows against the dollar on Friday, after the Bank of Japan surprised markets with fresh easing steps it called a pre-emptive move to stoke inflation. The Nikkei stock average marked its biggest one-day gain since June 2013...

Japan's central bank shocks markets with more easing as inflation slows By Leika Kihara and Tetsushi Kajimoto TOKYO Fri Oct 31, 2014 10:47am GMT (Reuters) - The Bank of Japan shocked global financial markets on Friday by expanding its massive stimulus spending in a stark admission that economic growth and inflation have not picked up as much as expected after a sales tax hike in April. BOJ Governor Haruhiko Kuroda portrayed the board's tightly-split decision to buy more assets as a preemptive strike to keep policy on track, rather than an admission that his plan to reflate the long moribund-economy...

China is likely to purchase 5,000 R-73 and R-77 air-to-air missiles from Russia, writes Toshiyuki Roku, retired commander of the Japan Air Self-Defense Force's Air Development and Test Command, in an article for the Tokyo-based Japan Military Review. Since China's domestic air-to-air missiles such as the PL-12, the SD-10A and the PL-9C were designed based on technology from Ukraine and are still unable to compete against US counterparts, the People's Liberation Army realizes that it needs the more advanced Russian missiles to go head to head against the US and Japan in any potential future air combat, Roku wrote. He...

Officials from Japan's health ministry say they are testing a Canadian man for Ebola. The man entered Japan from the West African country of Liberia with a fever that may be a symptom of the deadly disease. Ministry officials say they will send a sample of his blood to the National Institute of Infectious Diseases to be tested for the Ebola virus and other pathogens. They say he will be treated at the National Center for Global Health and Medicine in Tokyo. The test results are due early Tuesday. The officials say they have not yet confirmed whether the man...

Japanese health officials tested a man for the Ebola virus on Monday, after the Japanese-Canadian showed a 100-degree fever at Haneda airport in Tokyo after traveling to Liberia. Test results were expected early Tuesday. The 45-year-old man is a journalist who spent two months in the West African country devastated by a massive Ebola virus outbreak, according to the Japan Times. He was transported to the National Center for Global Health and Medicine in Shinjuku, where his blood was tested by the National Institute of Infectious Diseases. The man flew to Belgium and the United Kingdom before arriving in Tokyo....

There's some interesting discussion points in the UK-based Absolute Return Partners October 2014 Letter, by Niels C. Jensen, most of which I agree with, others not. Japan-Style Deflation in Our Backyard? It is no secret that we have been long-standing believers in deflation being a more probable outcome of the 2008-09 crisis than high inflation. What has changed over the past six months is that the world has begun to move in different directions. Whereas rising unit labour costs in the U.S. make outright deflation in that country quite unlikely, the same cannot be said of the Eurozone. Japan-style deflation...

OKINAWA, Japan—Swooping down to 500 feet over the western Pacific, Cmdr. Bill Pennington pilots his U.S. Navy P-8 Poseidon surveillance aircraft toward an unidentified vessel off southern Japan. In the back of the plane, a heavily modified Boeing 737, the crew homes in on the vessel using a barrage of surveillance equipment, including radar, GPS and infrared cameras. Further down the fuselage stand rows of tube-shaped sonar buoys that the crew can catapult into the sea and that float for up to eight hours as they track objects underwater. This is a dummy run: Today’s target is a Singaporean container...

One Sunday morning last December, China’s defense ministry summoned military attachés from several embassies to its monolithic Beijing headquarters. To the foreigners’ surprise, the Chinese said that one of their nuclear-powered submarines would soon pass through the Strait of Malacca, a passage between Malaysia and Indonesia that carries much of world trade, say people briefed on the meeting. Two days later, a Chinese attack sub—a so-called hunter-killer, designed to seek out and destroy enemy vessels—slipped through the strait above water and disappeared. It resurfaced near Sri Lanka and then in the Persian Gulf, say people familiar with its movements, before...

The California city of Palmdale was ready to roll out the red carpet this summer when a Japanese company agreed to build a $60 million factory on a city-owned, vacant parcel on the southwest side of town -- but now the company is taking its project out of state and critics say union greed is to blame. As many as 300 people were slated to work at the 400,000-square-foot plant, painting and wiring light rail cars under a huge contract with the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transportation Authority. It was a coup for Palmdale Mayor Jim Ledford, and a plan that...

China has installed 17 sets of submerged buoys in "key marine areas" of the western Pacific Ocean, state media said, a move that could exacerbate territorial tensions in the region. The mission carried out by the Chinese research vessel Kexue "marks the first time that China has put an array of submerged buoys on such a big scale", the official Xinhua news agency reported late Tuesday.

JAPAN is preparing to change the sub-surface propulsion system for its Soryu submarines, dumping German and Swedish technology in a move that could clear a potential barrier to Australia purchasing the Japanese boats. Tokyo’s plans to switch from the Kockums propulsion system to specially developed lithium ion batteries eliminates the potential embarrassment for Australia in ­rejecting German and Swedish bids in favour of using a sub that is powered by their intellectual property. The Kockums air-independent propulsion (AIP) system was designed in Sweden but licensed to Kawasaki Heavy Industries to incorporate into the Soryu class to power the subs on...

‘Liaoning’ shut down during recent sea trials There’s no more of a conspicuous and potent symbol of China’s growing naval power than the aircraft carrier Liaoning. But the 53,000-ton, 999-foot-long carrier could be dangerous to her crew and prone to engine failures. If so, that makes the vessel as much of a liability as an asset to Beijing. The ex-Soviet carrier once went by the name Varyag until a cash-strapped Ukraine sold the ship to Beijing in 1998. The Chinese navy has since invested considerable resources into modernizing the warship and testing her at sea. But on at least one...

Japan’s trade and justice ministers resigned Monday after accusations they misused campaign funds in the biggest setback so far for Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s conservative administration. The two ministers were among five women Abe named to his Cabinet in a reshuffle early last month. Their resignations may help to control the damage to his relatively high popularity ratings, but are a blow to efforts to promote women in politics and business as part of economic revival policies. […] Two other female Cabinet members known as Abe’s close allies on the right have been criticized for suspected ties with racist groups....

Fifty years ago, the world woke up to news the nation - then at odds with Moscow and Washington - had detonated its own atomic bomb China's first atomic test on October 16, 1964, in Xinjiang. Mao wanted to prove the nation was a global power. Photo: SCMP Pictures Fifty years ago yesterday, China detonated its first atomic bomb, joining the United States, Soviet Union, Britain and France as the only nuclear powers at the time. The explosion in Lop Nur in eastern Xinjiang paved the way for the nation's further development of nuclear weapons and its emergence as a...

A Russian container ship carrying hundreds of tons of fuel was drifting without power in rough seas off British Columbia's northern coast Friday, a scenario a nearby First Nation community described as its "worst fear." The Canadian Forces' joint rescue coordination center in Victoria said the Russian carrier Simushir lost power late Thursday night off Haida Gwaii, also known as the Queen Charlotte Islands, as it was making its way from Washington state to Russia. Canadian Navy Lt. Paul Penderghast said the ship was drifting nine nautical miles from shore, though he said it was largely maintaining that position. "It...

A HIGH-POWERED German submarine delegation is in Canberra to demand an open competition for the nation’s biggest ever defence contract — a new navy submarine. German giant ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems (TKMS), the parent company of leading submarine builder HDW, has launched an aggressive bid to head off Japan for the multi-billion dollar job. And in good news for thousands of shipyard workers at the ASC yard in Port Adelaide and elsewhere around the nation, TKMS said it would be happy to build the boats in Australia. The company has built more than 160 diesel powered submarines and it has promised...

China will need to produce about 1,200 fourth-generation fighters to be able to confront the air forces of Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, if the three nations are successful in their bids to acquire advanced American fighters, in any potential conflict, according to the Moscow-based Russian Military Analysis on Oct. 9. Even though Taiwan maintains close economic ties with mainland China, the Russian-language newspaper said that the Taiwanese government under the leadership of Ma Ying-jeou has not given up its intention of purchasing advanced fighters from the United States such as the F-16C/D and even the F-35. Japan and South...

The United States and Russia are dangerously close to stumbling into a war over Ukraine that could go nuclear and kill hundreds of millions of people in a single day, a Nobel laureate who is one of the world’s leading experts on the dangers of nuclear weapons warned in Washington this week. “It’s an incredibly dangerous situation. …If there’s a nuclear war tonight, that’s the Northern Hemisphere (of the entire world) gone, Dr. Helen Caldicott told a National Press Club Newsmakers news conference on Wednesday. She was speaking on the topic: “Ukraine: Is Nuclear Conflict Likely?” Caldicott is an Australian...

Eurozone in danger of repeating Japanese stagnation, IMF chief warns By Benjamin Fox BRUSSELS - International Monetary Fund boss Christine Lagarde has warned that the eurozone risks following Japan and falling into a prolonged cycle of recession and stagnation. Speaking on Thursday (9 October) ahead of the IMF's annual meeting in Washington DC, Lagarde said: “We have also alerted to the risk of recession in the eurozone", putting the likelihood of a drop in output at "between 35-40%, which is not insignificant". “We are not saying that the eurozone is heading towards recession, but we are saying that there is...

The world is warming. The beasts are dying en masse. The oceans are rising. The deserts are roasting. It's the survival of the fittest out there, guys. Who's going to win, evolutionarily speaking? Men or women? It turns out that warming temperatures may have a surprising gender bias—in favor of women. That's the conclusion of a team of Japanese researchers who have discovered a "statistically significant" association between climate change—including rising temperatures and extreme weather events—and the birth rates of boys and girls in Japan. Warmer temperatures have accompanied an increased proportion of female babies in the population, and a...