Free Republic

The lords of finance are losing their touch. Institutions which dragged the world from its worst depression since the early 20th century are finally seeing their magic desert them, if conventional wisdom is to be believed. Eight years on the from the Great Recession, voices as authoritative as the International Monetary Fund and the Bank of International Settlements - dubbed the 'central bank of central banks' - have called time on the era of extraordinary monetary policy. Having hoovered up $12.3 trillion (£8.5 trillion) in financial assets and carried out 637 interest rate cuts since 2008, central banks have been stunned...

Egypt's culture minister blamed a Jewish "conspiracy" for his election loss to head a U.N. agency. Bulgarian diplomat Irina Gueorguieva Bokova, 57, edged Farouk Hosny, 31-27, in a fifth and final vote for general director by UNESCO executive board members at the Paris-based organization on Tuesday night. The previous evening, the candidates were tied with 29 votes each, forcing a new election. "It was clear by the end of the competition that there was a conspiracy against me," Hosny said Wednesday after landing in Egypt, The Associated Press reported. "There are a group of the world's Jews who had a...

Japan reports that it posted its biggest trade surplus in over four years in February, thanks to a strengthening in the yen and weak oil prices. The 242.8 billion yen ($2.2 billion) surplus reported Thursday compares with a deficit of 426 billion yen a year earlier and a deficit of 648.8 billion yen in January. …

As polls open for US primaries in Ohio and Florida, the political elite in Tokyo is starting to confront a disconcerting idea: that their indispensable US ally could actually elect Donald Trump as president. The controversial businessman, now favorite for the Republican nomination, hits Japan regularly in his stump speeches for supposedly unfair trade practices and freeriding on US military protection.

(トランプ氏の天安門事件「暴動」発言 謝罪求める声) (“Voices Now Demanding Apology from Trump Who Calls Tienanmen Massacre a “Riot”) (Translation from the original Japanese by FReeper AmericanInTokyo):”In the most recent TV debate between candidates for the Republican nomination for President in the USA, Mr. Trump referred to it as a “riot” (boudou: 暴動) when Chinese students stood up in Tienanmen Square and requested freedom, in Beijing, China in 1989. Real estate magnate Trump was answering a question from the moderator in the March 10 debate in Miami, with respect to the suppression of Chinese university students. They were only pleading for freedom but were...

The robots sent in to find highly radioactive fuel at Fukushima's nuclear reactors have “died”; a subterranean "ice wall" around the crippled plant meant to stop groundwater from becoming contaminated has yet to be finished. And authorities still don’t know how to dispose of highly radioactive water stored in an ever mounting number of tanks around the site. Five years ago, one of the worst earthquakes in history triggered a 10-meter high tsunami that crashed into the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station causing multiple meltdowns. Nearly 19,000 people were killed or left missing and 160,000 lost their homes and livelihoods...

AUSTIN -- President Obama defended government efforts to preserve law enforcement access to digital devices Friday, telling a crowd that included many technology innovators that society cannot end up "fetishizing our phones above every other value." Obama made his remarks during a keynote discussion at the yearly South by Southwest Interactive conference here, after being asked by Texas Tribune journalist Evan Smith to comment on the larger implications of the pending fight between the FBI and Apple over access to an iPhone used by one of the shooters in December's terrorist attack in San Bernardino. "The question we now have...

China is building aircraft carrier battlegroups and plans to deploy them not only in the disputed East and South China seas, but also to protect the country’s overseas ­interests. Rear Admiral Yin Zhuo, who served as a national political adviser and sits on the navy’s advisory board on cybersecurity, told the state-run Xinhua News Agency that building aircraft carriers served to “defend China’s sovereignty of the islands and reefs, maritime rights and overseas ­interests”. The defence ministry confirmed this year that China was building its second aircraft carrier, its first wholly home-made one. Xinhua mentioned China’s growing interests overseas, including...

Future talks will determine what defense equipment could be supplied, although Gazmin told reporters without elaborating that Japan has initially offered a surveillance aircraft. “This agreement would really substantiate the Philippines and Japan being strategic partners,” Gazmin said in remarks during the signing ceremony at the Department of Defense in metropolitan Manila which was not opened to the press. “Let me stress that what underpins this agreement is not only our desire to enhance our respective defense capabilities but also to contribute to regional peace and stability.” Neither side mentioned China’s increasingly assertive behavior in disputed areas but that has...

North Korea on Saturday boasted of a newly developed anti-tank weapon that its leader said was so powerful it could turn the most heavily armoured enemy tanks into "boiled pumpkin". Pyongyang's state media said leader Kim Jong-Un had watched tests of the portable, laser-guided rocket and declared it had the "longest firing range in the world", and was "as accurate as a sniper's rifle". "He noted with great satisfaction that even the special armoured tanks and cars of the enemies which boast their high manoeuvrability and striking power are no more than a boiled pumpkin before the anti-tank guided weapon",...

The Chinese navy has put into service a domestic-made advanced missile frigate in the East China Sea, upgrading the force’s combat capabilities amid rising maritime tensions. Xiangtan, named after Mao Zedong’s hometown, entered service with the East Sea Fleet on Wednesday in Zhoushan, Zhejiang province. The Type 054A frigate, which has a displacement of more than 4,000 tonnes, has long range surveillance and strong air defence capabilities, according to state news agency Xinhua. The news came a day after a senior US military official said China was “militarising” the South China Sea. Although the new ship will be stationed in...

Japanese media report that troubled Japanese electronics maker Sharp has agreed to a takeover offer from Taiwanese company Hon Hai, also known as Foxconn. Sharp Corp. would not immediately confirm the reports Thursday by Kyodo News Service and other media that it had opted for Foxconn rather than a competing consortium of Japanese investors to help restructure its once booming liquid crystal display panel business to cope with competition from Korean and Chinese rivals. ...

A controversial plan to move a U.S. Marine Corps base within Okinawa in southern Japan has been pushed back by two years, America's top military official in the Pacific said. Adm. Harry Harris, head of the U.S. Pacific Command, said Tuesday that the shift of the Futenma air station to a less congested part of Okinawa island would not happen until 2025 because work on a new facility has been delayed. "It's slowed," he told a congressional committee in Washington. "It's a little over two years late. ... Now we're looking at 2025 before that's done." The project faces stiff...

Former Major League Baseball player Yamaico Navarro has been arrested in Japan for concealing a bullet in his luggage. [...] The 28-year-old Navarro told police the bullet was from his home in the Dominican Republic but that he was not aware it was in his bag. ...

Donald Trump: “I like the mandate.” Donald Trump has often promised to repeal the “disaster” that is Obamacare and he’s right, it is a disaster.But at Thursday night’s CNN Republican Presidential Town Hall in South Carolina, Donald Trump embraced what is easily the worst part of Obamacare, the anti-free market “individual mandate” which forces Americans to buy only government-approved health care insurance, whether they want to or not.To justify his support for the Obamacare mandate, Donald Trump uses leftist talking points of not wanting people to “die in the streets,” as if they has ever happened in America — before...

Experts say one of Mount Paekdu's previous eruptions was 'one of the largest explosive events in human history' Seismologists have warned that North Korea's repeated nuclear tests could cause its highest mountain Mount Paekdu to erupt - and they add that one of the volcano's previous eruptions was "one of the largest explosive events in human history". More than 9,000 feet high, the volcano straddles the border between North Korea and China and last erupted in 1903. Experts have warned of increasing seismic activity beneath the peak in recent years, however, including seismic uplift and rising levels of sulphur dioxide,...

Citing civilian satellite imagery, US broadcaster Fox News reported on February 16 that the Chinese military has deployed an advanced surface-to-air missile system to one of its contested islands in the South China Sea. The report, which was based on pictures from ImageSat International, said the missiles appeared to be the HQ-9 air defense system. US officials and Taiwan's defense ministry were later quoted as saying that the missile batteries had been set up on Woody Island in the Paracels. China has controlled all of the Paracels, which are also claimed by Vietnam and Taiwan, since the mid-1970s and the...

China have given the green signal for exporting its domestically-developed J-10 fighter as the country looks to attract buyers at the Singapore Airshow, the media reported on Thursday. A large-scale model of the FC-20, the export version of the J-10, is on display at the China National Aero-Technology Import and Export Corp booth at the six-day Singapore Airshow 2016 that started on Tuesday. It is an unspoken rule in China's defence sector that weapons solely designed for the People's Liberation Army are never displayed at foreign exhibitions, so the model's appearance in Singapore carries a clear indication: that China now...

Asia markets extend rout as Nikkei plunges 5.3% Saheli Roy Choudhury | @sahelirc Markets in Asia dropped sharply on Friday, with the Nikkei tumbling, after a sell-off on Wall Street as oil remained volatile and concerns about how central banks' easing measures will affect banks' earnings persisted. "The idea that central banks are now fully targeting the interest rate structure and putting a gun to domestic banks heads in a fight to stoke credit growth is in no way an equity friendly story," wrote Chris Weston, chief market strategist at spreadbetter IG, in a morning note. The Bank of Japan...

The United States and India have held talks about conducting joint naval patrols that a U.S. defence official said could include the disputed South China Sea, a move that would likely anger Beijing, which claims most of the waterway. Washington wants its regional allies and other Asian nations to take a more united stance against China over the South China Sea, where tensions have spiked in the wake of Beijing's construction of seven man-made islands in the Spratly archipelago. India and the United States have ramped up military ties in recent years, holding naval exercises in the Indian Ocean that...