TMCnet News
Kyodo news summary -7-+(Japan Economic Newswire Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)TOKYO, April 25_(Kyodo) _ ---------- Suicide bomb attack in Sri Lanka kills 6, injures army commander COLOMBO - A female suicide bomber blew herself up at the army headquarters complex on Tuesday, killing six people and seriously wounding Sri Lanka's army commander, Minister Keheliya Rambukwella said. The woman, pretending to be an expectant mother, gained entrance to the military hospital within the complex on the guise of seeking treatment, according to Rambukwella, the defense spokesman. ---------- Chinese official says no to Koizumi successor's shrine visits BEIJING - A senior Chinese Communist Party official said Tuesday that Beijing would oppose any visits to the war-linked Yasukuni Shrine by a successor to Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, according to a Japanese lawmaker. Taku Yamasaki, an influential member of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, quoted Wang Jiarui, head of the International Department of the party's Central Committee, as making the comment in a meeting on the same day. ---------- Koizumi says China, S. Korea will regret not holding summit talks TOKYO - Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi said Tuesday he thinks China and South Korea will come to regret their refusal to hold summit talks with Japan, as a result of his visits to the war-linked Yasukuni Shrine. "There must come a time when they will regret they have said they do not want to hold summit talks due to this issue," Koizumi told reporters, reiterating that he "cannot understand" the positions of Beijing and Seoul. ---------- Panel to let planned postal entities expand into new services TOKYO - The postal savings bank and life insurance company to be created through the privatization of Japan's postal services would be allowed to expand into new businesses by stages even when they are partly owned by the government, the economist Naoki Tanaka, head of the government's postal privatization committee, says. New businesses "must be permitted" for the two postal business groups so as to prevent the Japanese economy from falling into "a rough sea" if they cannot survive as privatized companies, Tanaka said an interview with Kyodo News. ---------- Koizumi rebuts issue of economic disparities under his reform TOKYO - Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and four key Cabinet members on Tuesday defended the structural reforms of the past five years since he assumed the premiership on April 26, 2001, against criticisms that they have caused wider economic disparities in Japanese society. Koizumi told reporters economic disparities within society would have worsened had he not initiated the reforms, and that critics are seizing on the disparity issue as "an easy-to-use term" to criticize him. ---------- Okinawa Memorial Tower on Tinian Island vandalized NAHA, Japan - A memorial tower commemorating the war dead from Okinawa Prefecture on Tinian Island, part of the U.S. Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, has been found vandalized, an Okinawa group which built the memorial said Tuesday. Graffiti were found on the Okinawa Memorial Tower and its descriptive sign and flower stand were damaged, according to the Micronesia Repatriation Association. |