TOKYO: Japan’s next leader Yukio Hatoyama, fresh from a historic election win, faced the task on Monday of forming a government to tackle challenges such as reviving the economy and steering a new course with close ally Washington.
Sunday’s victory by the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) ends a half-century of almost unbroken rule by the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and breaks a deadlock in parliament, ushering in a government that has promised to focus spending on consumers, cut wasteful budget outlays and reduce the power of bureaucrats.
But the untested Democrats, which will face an upper house election in less than a year, will have to move quickly to keep support among voters worried about a record jobless rate and a rapidly ageing society that is inflating social security costs.
“Everything begins now. Everything depends on how we can modestly create politics which considers the people,” Hatoyama, the wealthy grandson of a former prime minister, told a news conference early on Monday.
Official figures have not yet been released, but media forecasts show the Democrats with about 307 seats in the 480-seat lower house, compared with only 119 for the LDP.
Hatoyama was expected to quickly set up a transition team to prepare to take power but said he would not name his cabinet until the new parliament voted him in as prime minister.
Financial markets are expected to welcome the end to a political deadlock that has stymied policies as Japan struggled with its worst recession since World War Two. The Democrats and its small allies won control of the upper house in 2007.
Analysts say the decade-old Democrats’ spending plans might give a short-term lift to the economy, just now emerging from recession, but worry that its programmes will boost a public debt already equal to about 170 percent of GDP.
The party has vowed not to raise the 5 percent sales tax for four years while it focuses on cutting wasteful spending.
“The problem is how much the Democrats can truly deliver in the first 100 days. If they can come up with a cabinet line-up swiftly, that will ease market concerns over their ability to govern,” said Koichi Haji, chief economist at NLI Research Institute.
The Democratic Party victory ended a three-way partnership between the LDP, big business and bureaucrats that turned Japan into an economic juggernaut after the country’s defeat in World War Two. That strategy foundered when Japan’s “bubble” economy burst in the late 1980s and growth has stagnated since.

Farewell My Concubine” director Chen Kaige, “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” star Zhang Ziyi and director John Woo were among the filmmakers honored at China’s Huabiao film awards in Beijing.
Veteran action stars Jackie Chan and Jet Li and actor Chow Yun-fat also walked the red carpet at the biennial awards ceremony held by China’s State Administration of Radio, Film and Television late Saturday.
This year’s ceremony was especially star-studded because the booming mainland market is becoming increasingly lucrative to actors and directors from Hong Kong and Taiwan.
Chen was named outstanding director along with Feng Xiaogang for his biopic of late Peking Opera star Mei Lanfang, “Forever Enthralled.” Feng won for his war movie “Assembly,” which revolves around the heroics of a People’s Liberation Army unit during the Chinese civil war in the 1940s.
Chen struck a patriotic note in his acceptance speech, shooting down recent speculation that he had become an American citizen.
“I don’t plan to become a foreign citizen and I have never done so. I will work hard to spread Chinese culture as a Chinese national. This is called not forgetting your identity,” Chen said.
Zhang shared best actress honors with Fan Zhibo for her performance as Mei’s love interest in “Forever Enthralled.” Fan won for the drama “Emergency.” Zhang Hanyu won best actor for “Assembly.”
He shared best acting honors with Guo Jinglin, who starred in a biopic of rice scientist Yuan Longping.
Woo received the prize for best ethnic Chinese director from outside the Chinese mainland. The Hong Kong native, known for his stylish action thrillers, recently returned from Hollywood to make the $80 million, two-part Chinese-language historical epic “Red Cliff,” which was a massive hit in China, earning 600 million yuan ($88 million).
Hong Kong action star Donnie Yen was named best ethnic Chinese actor outside the mainland for playing Bruce Lee’s kung fu master Ip Man. Taiwan’s Fanny Shu won best actress outside the mainland for her role in Feng’s romantic comedy “If You Are the One.”

WASHINGTON: In a shift in policy, President Barack Obama said on Friday his White House will release the names of most visitors to satisfy watchdog groups who demanded to know which lobbyists might be attempting to influence policy.
Obama’s White House until now had followed the same practice of past presidents of generally keeping the names of White House visitors secret.
This practice over the years has prompted lawsuits by organizations who wanted to know who was meeting with the president and White House officials to determine whether lobbyists were influencing the development of policy on such issues as healthcare and energy.
“For the first time in history, records of White House visitors will be made available to the public on an ongoing basis,” Obama said in a written statement.
He added, “Americans have a right to know whose voices are being heard in the policymaking process.”
Under the new policy, each month records of White House visitors from the previous 90 to 120 days will be made available online. Tens of thousands of people visit the White House each month.
The new policy will not include “a small group of appointments that cannot be disclosed because of national security imperatives or their necessarily confidential nature (such as a visit by a possible Supreme Court nominee),” the White House said.
A watchdog group called Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington had filed four lawsuits seeking visitor names.
The White House statement announcing the new policy included a statement from CREW approving of the new position.
“Providing public access to visitor records is an important step in restoring transparency and accountability to our government,” said CREW executive director Melanie Sloan.

LONDON: Chinese Finance Minister Xie Xuren said on Friday that the current economic stimulus measures should be maintained to ensure economic recovery and growth worldwide.
After a BRIC-country meeting held in London, Xie told a news conference that the four countries are now at a key stage of economic recovery, and should strengthen their coordination of economic policy.
The finance ministers and central bank governors of Brazil, Russia, India and China, the so-called BRIC countries, gathered in London on Friday to discuss the current situation of the world economy, as well as their governments’ fiscal and monetary policy responses.
Xie stressed that promoting the reform of international financial institutions is a common consensus reached at the G20 summit held in London in April, adding that “we must put it into practice in accordance with the timetable.”
The Chinese minister also called on the international community to attach great importance to the imbalance between the North and the South, and to further help developing countries realize common development, so as to achieve a fundamental balance and sustainable growth of the global economy
Officials from Brazil, Russia and India echoed Xie’s opinion, saying that they hoped the G20 countries would not abandon their fiscal stimulus packages too early.
They vowed to make more efforts to maintain world trade growth and sustainable economic growth, and looked forward to strengthening the role of the new emerging countries in the international financial institutions

Zhu Rongji, China’s premier between 1998 and 2003, is back in the limelight, talking once more with the media and the Chinese people.
This time, however, the words of the highly regarded orator are in written form.
Zhu Rongji’s Answers to Journalists’ Questions, published by People’s Press, has been getting good reviews and 27,000 copies flew off the shelves in the first two days.
“Whatever lies ahead, be it a field of landmines or unfathomable abyss, I will exert all my efforts and contribute all my best to the country,” the former premier said in the book, which is a collection of comments from domestic and international press conferences.
“Zhu seldom ignored the tough questions raised by foreign media, instead replying with confidence and humor,” said Wu Xuejin, co-editor of the book. “He left the reporters and the public with a strong impression.”
For example, the former premier once spoke about corruption, saying: “I’ll prepare 100 coffins. Ninety-nine for those corrupt officials and one for myself.”
Yu Guoming, vice-dean of the School of Journalism and Communication at Renmin University of China, said people in China relish an opportunity to learn more about their leaders.
Chen Pengming, editor in charge of the project, said: “Zhu’s personal charisma mirrored the collective wisdom of the Chinese leaders on dealing with the 1997 Asian financial crisis, deepening the economic reforms and the process of joining the WTO. Readers thus are able to gain a clear understanding of how the then central government succeeded in handling those issues.”
Ren Chao, vice-president of the People’s Press, said he believed the print run could hit 1 million.
Several publishing houses in Hong Kong, the Republic of Korea and Japan have shown interest in the book, which is likely to be translated into English early next year. Online booksellers, Dangdang.com and Amazon.cn have ordered 30,000 copies.
Zhu Rongji is donating proceeds from the book to Project Hope and to helping the poor according to Ren.

CIKANGKARENG, Indonesia: Indonesian rescue workers pulled bodies Thursday from homes buried in a landslide triggered by a powerful earthquake that killed at least 57 people and severely damaged more than 10,000 buildings.
At least 110 people were hospitalized with injuries from Wednesday’s 7.0 magnitude quake, centered just off the coast of densely populated Java island, Disaster Management Agency spokesman Priyadi Kardono said. Ten were in critical condition.
“Everything is gone, my wife, my old father-in-law and my house … now I just hope to find the bodies of my family,” 34-year-old farmer Ahmad Suhana said as he pried at giant stones with a crowbar.
Heavy digging equipment had not reached parts of the worst affected district in West Java province, which President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono visited Thursday. Police, military personnel and villagers used their hands to remove rubble.
Yudhoyono cautioned rescue workers to be wary of dozens of aftershocks “although they are becoming less powerful.” He pledged $500,000 in national assistance to help victims.
More than 24,800 homes, offices, schools and mosques were damaged, about 10,000 seriously, the Disaster Management Agency said on its Web site. At least 3,100 people were forced into temporary shelters, and the Red Cross said it distributed 1,500 tents, as well as blankets, clean water and other provisions.
Some rural areas, particularly along the southern coast, could not be reached by telephone and there may be more victims and damage, officials said.
Many of the deaths and injuries were caused by falling debris or collapsed structures.
The death toll continued to rise Thursday. More than a dozen bodies were dug out of the rubble in Cianjur district, where a landslide buried a row of homes in the village of Cikangkareng. Villagers were searching for more than 30 friends and relatives listed as missing and feared dead.
Maskana Sumitra, a district administrator, said 11 houses and a mosque were buried by the landslide.
“The chance of survival is so slim … but we have to find them,” Sumitra said.
When the quake struck Wednesday afternoon, it was felt hundreds of miles (kilometers) away on the neighboring resort island of Bali. In the capital, Jakarta, 125 miles (190 kilometers) north of the underwater epicenter, thousands of panicked office workers flooded out of swaying skyscrapers onto the streets, some of them screaming.
A tsunami warning was issued after the quake but was lifted an hour later.
Hospitals in towns and cities across West Java quickly filled with scores of injured people, most with broken bones and cuts.
In Cikangkareng, Dede Kurniati said her 9-year-old son was playing at a friend’s house when the earthquake struck and is now “buried under the rocks.”
“I lost my son … now I just want to see his body, I want to bury my lovely son properly,” she said, weeping.
Indonesia, a vast archipelago, straddles continental plates and is prone to seismic activity along what is known as the Pacific Ring of Fire. A huge quake off western Indonesia caused a powerful tsunami in December 2004 that killed about 230,000 people in a dozen countries, half of them in Aceh province.

NINGBO: China’s maritime rescue services staged their biggest ever exercise in the East China Sea Friday to test the country’s maritime rescue capabilities and security for the Shanghai World Expo in 2010.
The exercise, being jointly held by the Ministry of Transport and east China’s Zhejiang Province, involved 35 ships, three aircraft and more than 1,000 personnel, said He Yipei, deputy general director of the exercise and deputy director of the Zhejiang Maritime Safety Administration.
The exercise began at 9 a.m. off the coast of Ningbo and was scheduled to last about 90 minutes, He said.
The exercise simulated a collision between a passenger ship and a cargo vessel loaded with chemicals, resulting in a fire on the passenger ship and a benzene leak, He said.
Rescuers will transfer the people in danger, treat those overcome by fumes, control the chemical leakage, search for people in the water, put out the fire and evacuate 16,000 people living along the coast in the area of the exercise.

BELGRADE: Serbia may offer Iraq some planes from its aging air force and train pilots to partly make up for fighter jets sent here for maintenance during the Saddam Hussein era that have now been deemed useless, officials said Friday.
US officials are concerned about Iraq’s ability to set up and train a new force by the time most American troops withdraw at the end of 2011. Iraq’s financial crisis, caused by plummeting oil revenues, has slowed the process.
Iraq’s Defense ministry said earlier this week that it had found during a search of its files that the 19 planes – Soviet-built MiG-21s and MiG-23s – were sent for servicing in 1989 to what was then Yugoslavia.
They got stuck here because of an embargo imposed in 1990 against Iraq following its invasion of Kuwait, and because of the wars in the Balkans in the 1990s.
Iraqi officials said the planes could be critical in helping the country take responsibility for its own defense. But Serbia’s army commander said they are dilapidated.
“These planes have not been overhauled and they are not in flying condition,” army chief-of-staff Gen. Miloje Miletic told reporters. “I personally believe that when the Iraqi side gets to understand the condition of these planes, they will give up their demand.”
He said without elaborating that “another solution” was possible in solving the Iraqi demand.
Serbian air force officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak about the issue to reporters, said the government may offer Iraq a part of its aging fleet, including jets to train Iraqi pilots, to partly make up for the loss.
But Iraqi officials will inspect the jets before giving up hope.
“These jets are Iraqi property and we are the side that decides the fate of the jets,” Iraqi Defense Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Mohammed al-Askari told The Associated Press. “Our teams will evaluate the situation of the jets, then we will decide whether they are useless or not.
“Iraqi Defense Ministry officials are aware that these warplanes are somehow damaged and neglected for a long period of time, but Serbian officials told us that some of them are repairable.”
An Iraqi military delegation was in Belgrade, the Serbian capital, last week to negotiate the return of the jets.
But Serbian officials say that, if Iraq plans to use the MiGs to rebuild its air force, their hopes will be dashed: Most of the planes, they said, are useless.
Only two of the jets are still “in one piece,” including one that was until recently stored in Belgrade’s aircraft museum, the officials said. They spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss what they said was a military secret

WASHINGTON: The World Trade Organization has ruled that the European Union provided illegal subsidies to Airbus for its aircraft, a House Democrat said Friday.
Washington state’s Norm Dicks, who was briefed by US trade officials of the confidential decision, said the WTO ruling confirms a complaint by the US in 2004 that shows “all Airbus aircraft have received illegal subsidies and that these have caused material harm to Boeing.”
The WTO handed its interim ruling to the US and European Union, but didn’t reveal the results partly because of the sensitive company information contained in it. Both Washington and Brussels confirmed they received the ruling.
Lutz Guellner, spokesman for the European trade commissioner, said, “It is a long document of more than 1,000 pages which we will study carefully.”
In its suit, the US claimed government subsidies for Airbus created unfair competition in a market worth $3 trillion over the next two decades. The ruling could set important precedents on how far governments can go to support the aviation industry.
The EU is likely to appeal and the companies must wait for a decision next year in an Airbus challenge to what it sees as unfair US government support for Chicago-based Boeing Co. Some observers said the complexity of the two cases makes it more likely the issue will be resolved by negotiations between the parties than by the WTO.
Wall Street analysts seemed neither surprised, nor disappointed by the WTO ruling. Wayne Plucker, manager of Frost & Sullivan’s North American aerospace research, said well-developed areas like the US and the EU “don’t really need subsidies.”
Still, Plucker said Airbus enjoys a clear advantage over Boeing because of the European subsidies, and while many other countries are using government support for fledging aviation businesses “because it’s a great source of good jobs and high tech ventures … eventually Airbus and Boeing need to compete on an even playing field.”
The so-called launch aid were loans to Airbus that helped it develop new airplanes as it overtook Boeing as the world’s top producer of commercial airplanes.
Secretary Treasurer of the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, Paul Shearon, called on the US government to require Airbus to divest itself from any illegal subsidies used to finance bids for government contracts, including its offer for a $35 billion aerial refueling tanker for the Air Force.
Airbus, whose parent company European Aeronautic Defense and Space Company N.V. is partnered with Northrop Grumman Corp, is competing against Boeing on the tanker deal.
Both Boeing and Los Angeles-based Northrop have been competing for years over the tanker contract that could surpass $100 billion over two decades.
Dicks, and other Washington state lawmakers who represent areas with Boeing jobs at stake, contend that the Pentagon should account for the WTO’s decision as it picks a contractor for the deal.

BAGHDAD:Iraq has deployed thousands of reinforcements along its border with Syria to prevent insurgents from crossing the desert frontier, as the government said Friday it has provided Syria with evidence linking Iraqis there to bombings.
Extra police were sent to the border this week on the prime minister’s orders in response to the government’s assertion that former members of Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party based in Syria planned and financed last month’s attacks against the foreign and finance ministries, said Maj. Gen. Tariq Youssef, the police commander in western Iraq.
Iraq is seeking the extradition of two suspects, but Syria has refused, demanding to see proof of their involvement. The dispute has strained relations between the two countries and again put Syria on the defensive over accusations it is not doing enough to stop cross-border attacks.
The Aug 19 truck bombings outside the government ministries in Baghdad killed about 100 people. Iraq has blamed an alliance between al-Qaida in Iraq and the outlawed Baath Party.
Turkey, which has experience as a regional mediator, has tried to soothe the dispute between the two countries, which have both recalled their ambassadors.
“We have given them the evidence that we have through the Turkish foreign minister and we are waiting for their response,” Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said.
Iraq’s post-Saddam government has for years sought the handover of former Baath Party officials who fled to Syria after the 2003 US-led invasion. Iraqi officials say Damascus allows them to live and engage in political activity in Syria.
One of the Iraqis linked to the August bombings is Mohammed Younis al-Ahmed, who was high up in the Baath Party and has been near the top of Iraq’s most-wanted list for several years. The other suspect is Satam Farhan.
Iraq’s foreign minister gave a US congressional delegation led by Democratic Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan a tour of the shattered ministry building Friday. Crunching over shattered glass, the group walked up to the edge of the water-filled bomb crater in front of the building’s shredded front facade.
The American delegation also met with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who a day earlier accused Syria of sheltering the bombing suspects and appealed to the UN Security Council to investigate and set up an international tribunal to try those accused of involvement.
On Friday, al-Maliki stressed to the visiting Americans that Iraq would not tolerate interference by any nation in Iraq’s affairs, according to a statement from his office.
US and Iraqi officials have said fewer fighters are crossing into Iraq from Syria. In the past two months, Iraqi security forces have arrested two Syrians and one Jordanian trying to sneak across, said Youssef, the police commander in the former insurgent stronghold of Anbar province.