Japan targets global electric car standard

TOKYO — Four Japanese auto giants and the country's largest power company joined forces Monday to set up a common system to recharge electric cars, with the aim of creating a global standard.

The growth of the electric vehicle sector has been hampered by the chicken-or-egg question of what should come first: zero-emission cars or the networks of recharging stations to keep them on the road.

Toyota, Nissan, Mitsubishi Motors and Fuji Heavy Industries have linked up with Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) as the organising members of the new grouping called "CHAdeMO".

The name is derived from a combination of the words "Charge" and "Move" and a pun on a popular Japanese phrase.

In total 158 companies and government bodies are members, including 20 foreign firms, among them Bosch, Peugeot SA and Enel SpA.

Standardizing charging infrastructure is vital to making electric vehicles popular, TEPCO chairman Tsunehisa Katsumata said.

"We need to make this protocol a standard protocol outside of Japan," he told a gathering in a Tokyo hotel.

Zero-emission cars are gaining traction globally as concern has grown over pollution from the exhaust pipes of conventional petrol cars and its impact on the environment.

Mitsubishi Motors last year rolled out the i-MiEV and Fuji Heavy the Subaru Plug-in Stella, both in Japan. Nissan is set to launch the world's first mass market electric vehicle, the Leaf, later this year.

Toyota, which has focused on hybrids, has promised to launch its own version by 2012. It has already begun leasing a plug-in hybrid electric vehicle since late last year, one year earlier than initially planned.

Electric cars still face key hurdles such as costly batteries and the lack of conveniently-located recharging points, which limits their operating radius.

Standardisation would require all makers to agree on the kind of outlet and the voltage, which currently differ among firms.

"It's like establishing a common operation manual or a code that allows the charging machine to work across a broad range of electric vehicles," said Takafumi Anegawa, electric vehicle manager at TEPCO.

The Japanese government is throwing its support behind the move, and has earmarked 12.4 billion yen (13.7 million dollars) in the budget for fiscal 2010 starting in April to develop a recharging grid.

Some officials pointed at hurdles in creating a global standard.

"It will be a big and difficult challenge for the entire world to reach the same method" in charging EVs, Toyota managing officer Koei Saga said. "In the end, we may just need to adhere to the methods in each country."

Rare outspoken reform call from China state media

BEIJING — More than a dozen Chinese newspapers took a rare stand this week against a Mao Zedong-era system blamed for the wide gap between the country's rich and poor. Within hours, their jointly signed editorial had largely disappeared online.

Monday's editorial published in 13 newspapers across the country gave a glimpse of the tensions that exist behind the scenes ahead of China's largest political event, the National People's Congress, which begins Friday. The annual meeting tends to project a glossy surface of unity, but it's also a chance to lobby for change.

"China has been tasting the bitterness of the household registration system for a long time!" Monday's editorial began. "Freedom of movement is a human right," it added. It was "signed" with the logos of the 13 newspapers.

Household registration, or hukou, essentially identifies each Chinese citizen as urban or rural. It dates back to the time when the Chinese revolutionary Mao wanted to control migration to cities.

The system's limits became increasingly clear in recent years as millions of migrant workers left their rural homes to find work in China's booming cities. Their residence status, however, remains with their hometowns, and not having the proper classification restricts access to government services like education. Changing a hukou can be difficult.

Even children born to migrant workers in the cities are registered back home, keeping them outside the cities' normal education system. Many end up in sometimes makeshift migrant schools that fend for themselves for resources.

Premier Wen Jiabao responded to the rising public opposition to the hukou system during a rare online chat with citizens Saturday, saying the government would speed up its reform.

The editorial noted Wen's comments as a sign of hope.

Speaking with a coordinated voice isn't unusual for China's state-run media, but it is when that voice challenges the central government itself.

By Tuesday, several of the editorials, plus links to them, had disappeared from Web sites, likely falling victim to belated self-censorship.

The editor of the Yunnan Information Paper, Tan Zhiliang, said they published the editorial as a matter of routine because it came from the newspaper's owner paper, the relatively feisty Southern Metropolis News.

But then editors considered that the national congress starts this week, "assessed the risk" and took it down, Tan said.

"We'd better play it safe," Tan said.

The editor in charge of online articles for another participating newspaper, the Beijing Economic Observer, said the paper would not give interviews on why the editorial disappeared from the paper's Web site. She gave only her surname, Lin.

But some reporters were determined not to let the issue fade away.

On Tuesday, a reporter for a Hong Kong-based media outlet stood up during a news conference for a related national meeting, held up one of the newspapers with the editorial and asked officials if they had seen it.

Zhao Qizheng, spokesman for the China People's Political Consultative Conference, didn't answer.

Also Tuesday, the Communist Party's official newspaper reported that 700,000 police officers, security guards and volunteers will create a human "moat" across Beijing for security during the national congress.

The People's Daily said extra security forces will patrol streets and neighborhoods to protect "harmony and security." Officials worry that protests might disrupt the meetings.

Associated Press researcher Zhao Liang contributed to this report.

Dalai Lama awarded in US despite China anger

WASHINGTON — The Dalai Lama was bestowed with a US award for his commitment to democracy, the latest honor for the Tibetan spiritual leader despite China's angry protests over his White House welcome.

One day after President Barack Obama met the exiled monk at the White House in defiance of Chinese warnings, the National Endowment for Democracy on Friday gave the Dalai Lama a medallion before a packed crowd at the Library of Congress.

The Endowment, which is funded by the US Congress, hailed the Dalai Lama for supporting a democratic government in exile and his willingness to even abolish a centuries-old spiritual position if Tibetans so choose.

"By demonstrating moral courage and self-assurance in the face of brute force and abusive insults, he has given hope against hope not just to his own people but also to oppressed people everywhere," Endowment president Carl Gershman said before placing the Democracy Service Medal around the monk's neck.

The Dalai Lama, who fled his Chinese-ruled homeland for India in 1959, voiced admiration for US and Indian democracy and said China's authoritarian system was unsustainable.

"The Chinese Communist Party, I think, did many wrong things. But at the same time, they also made a lot of contribution for a stronger China," he said.

The Dalai Lama pointed to the growing interest of many Chinese in getting rich. Calling himself a Marxist in his support for a strong social safety net, the Dalai Lama joked: "Sometimes I feel my brain is more red than those Chinese leaders."

"Sometimes I express now the time has come for the Communist Party should retire with grace," he said in English, laughing that Chinese leaders would be "furious" at his comments.

China earlier protested Obama's meeting with the Dalai Lama, saying the United States had "grossly violated basic norms of international relations" and summoning the US ambassador, Jon Huntsman.

"The US action seriously interfered in Chinese internal affairs, seriously hurt the feelings of China's people and seriously harmed China-US relations," foreign ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu said in a statement.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Philip Crowley said the Dalai Lama's meetings with Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton were part of a longstanding US dialogue with the Tibetan leader.

"I think on this issue, obviously we just agree to disagree," Crowley told reporters.

The International Campaign for Tibet, which works closely with the Dalai Lama, quoted witnesses as saying that residents in Tibet and historically Tibetan areas of China's Sichuan province chanted prayers and set off firecrackers to celebrate the White House meeting, despite tight security.

Beijing accuses the Dalai Lama of trying to split China, although the exiled leader has repeatedly said he accepts Chinese rule.

In a nod to Chinese sensitivities, the Obama White House prohibited cameras from entering the meeting, which took place in the Map Room, not the seat of presidential power in the Oval Office.

But the White House later issued a statement voicing support for the Dalai Lama and his nonviolent quest for greater rights for Tibetans.

With Obama, the Dalai Lama has now met every sitting US president since George H.W. Bush in 1991.

Offering one tidbit from Thursday's meeting, the Dalai Lama revealed that Obama gave him a memento from a much earlier interaction with a US president -- a copy of a letter Franklin Roosevelt sent him in 1942.

Roosevelt mailed the Dalai Lama, who was then seven, the letter and a golden Rolex watch as a gesture to seek relations with the remote Himalayan land.

"At that time, my only interest is the gift of the watch, not the letter," the Dalai Lama said with a laugh.

"I actually don't know where that letter goes. Now after 68 years, just yesterday, President Obama gave me a copy of that letter."

The monk frequently tells the story of the watch, saying that fiddling with it helped spur his lifelong interest in science.

In 2007, he carried the gold watch in his pocket when George W. Bush presented him with the Congressional Gold Medal, the only time a sitting US president has appeared with him in public.

Japan may charge anti-whaling activist

TOKYO — Japan may press charges against a New Zealand anti-whaling activist who boarded one of its ships in Antarctic waters, officials said Tuesday.

Activist Peter Bethune climbed aboard the Japanese fleet's security ship, the Shonan Maru 2, from a jet ski under cover of darkness early Monday with stated plans to make a citizens' arrest of its captain Hiroyuki Komiya.

Bethune was captain of powerboat the Ady Gil, which was smashed in a collision with the whaling vessel on January 6, and wanted to detain captain Komiya over the "attempted murder" of its six crew in the crash. Related article: Greenpeace 'Tokyo two' plead not guilty

Instead, Japan may now arrest and charge Bethune, who remains in Japanese custody, in the latest chapter of the increasingly heated confrontations between the whalers and the militant Sea Shepherd activists who have harassed them for weeks in international waters.

Both sides have blasted each other with icy jets from high-pressure water cannon, while activists have also hurled rancid butter stink bombs at the whalers.

Fisheries Minister Hirotaka Akamatsu vowed to get tough with Bethune.

"As it is outrageously illegal behaviour, we want to deal with it strictly," Akamatsu told reporters Tuesday, the Jiji Press news agency reported.

Japan's fisheries agency, which runs the annual whaling expeditions, "wants to hand him over to the Japan Coast Guard," an agency official said, adding that a formal government decision had not yet been made.

"It has not been decided that we will seek criminal charges, but we are considering how to handle this problem, including this possibility," said the official, who declined to be named.

Japan's top government spokesman Hirofumi Hirano told reporters: "We are in the final phase of coordination on how to deal with the issue under Japanese law, including whether we'll bring him to Japan or not."

"We are studying the issue from the viewpoint that he is suspected of trespassing onto a Japanese ship."

If Japan decides to arrest Bethune, the Coast Guard would need to pick him up by sending a ship or aircraft to Antarctic waters or arrest him upon the Shonan Maru 2's return to Japan, the Mainichi Shimbun newspaper said.

The Sea Shepherds' Captain Paul Watson said: "Captain Bethune was entirely in his rights to confront the man who almost killed him and destroyed his ship.

"And now this same Japanese captain who destroyed a ship almost killing its crew is intent on bringing Captain Bethune back to Japan as his captive. The question must be asked -- who are the pirates here?"

The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society added that it sees this as an opportunity to rally support for Bethune in New Zealand and Australia.

"These Japanese poachers plunder the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary with impunity and now they are hauling a courageous Kiwi hero to the Land of the Rising Sun to crucify him for defending the whales," it said in a statement.

Commercial whaling has been banned worldwide since 1986, but Japan justifies its annual hunts as "lethal scientific research", while not hiding the fact that the meat is later sold in shops and restaurants.

N.Korea marks leader's birthday

SEOUL — North Korea Tuesday heaped praise on leader Kim Jong-Il as it marked his birthday with the customary national holiday, but took a softer tone towards the United States and South Korea after a turbulent year.

Children nationwide received bags of sweets and biscuits, and the birthday has also been marked by a synchronised swimming display and a festival featuring the national "Kimjongilia" flower, state media reported.

A meeting Monday of senior communist party, army and state officials lauded Kim, who turns 68 by official accounts, "as the most outstanding political elder and the peerlessly brilliant commander of the present era".

But in contrast to last year's birthday, when the North threatened South Korea and vowed to defy the world with a ballistic missile launch, the tone was softer.

Kim Yong-Nam, number two leader, underscored the need to end hostile relations with the United States "through dialogue and negotiations", and noted a desire to improve tense inter-Korean relations and to raise living standards.

The North's rocket launch in April 2009 brought international censure, causing it to quit six-party nuclear disarmament talks.

It staged a second atomic weapons test in May, and the United Nations responded with tighter sanctions which have crimped lucrative weapons exports.

A bungled currency revaluation last November reportedly intensified severe food shortages, sent prices soaring and fuelled unrest in the tightly controlled state.

Kim, shaken by a stroke in August 2008, is widely reported to be preparing for the eventual succession of his youngest son Jong-Un.

Under pressure from ally China, the North in recent months has expressed readiness to return to nuclear talks. But first it wants sanctions lifted and a US commitment to discuss a formal peace treaty -- conditions rejected by Washington.

Paik Haksoon, of Seoul's private Sejong Institute think-tank, said the North has toned down the rhetoric because it "is implementing a strategy for its survival and prosperity in the 21st century.

"What it needs as an 'exit' strategy is to improve ties with the United States, Japan and South Korea, and then to get help from them to survive," Paik told AFP.

"North Korea needs to supply ample consumer goods to enhance the living standards of people and pave the way for becoming a 'powerful and prosperous nation' -- as pledged," he said.

Pyongyang has set this goal for 2012, 100th anniversary of the birthday of Kim Il-Sung -- the country's late founder and the father of the current ruler.

Paik said he expects North Korea and the United States to hold talks to narrow differences early next month, with the six-party talks resuming later in March.

The intense personality cult surrounding the Kim dynasty has obscured even the birth year and birthplace of the current leader.

Official accounts say he was born on February 16, 1942, on Mount Paektu, a sacred site for Koreans, with a double rainbow and a bright star marking the event.

Most analysts believe he was in fact born in Siberia, where his father was in exile from Japanese colonisers. Some put the birth year at 1941.

China arranging foreign investment deal for N.Korea: report

SEOUL — China is arranging a huge foreign investment deal to revive North Korea's faltering economy amid an international drive to coax Pyongyang back to nuclear disarmament talks, a report said Monday.

Beijing is helping the communist state obtain more than 10 billion dollars in investment from Chinese banks and multinational firms, the South's Yonhap news agency said.

The deal was discussed a week ago when North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il met China's senior communist party official Wang Jiarui, it said.

A North Korean body known as the Korea Taepung International Investment Group plans to conclude the deal in March, Yonhap said, adding that Chinese capital would account for 60 percent of total investments.

Yonhap did not give any further details on what the investment plan would involve.

It said China was brokering the deal because North Korea is demanding economic aid from Beijing along with other incentives before returning to the six-party nuclear forum which the North quit last April.

South Korean officials were not available for comment.

Chinese and North Korean nuclear negotiators held several days of talks in Beijing last week aimed at restarting the forum chaired by China since 2003.

Media reports said Pyongyang was sticking to its two conditions for coming back: a lifting of sanctions and a US commitment to discuss a formal peace treaty.

Washington, Seoul and Tokyo say the North must return unconditionally and show commitment to scrapping its nuclear programme before other issues are dealt with.

Tough United Nations sanctions brought by the North's pursuit of ballistic missiles and atomic weapons have hurt its economy, restricting the communist state's access to international credit.

The nation has relied on foreign aid to feed its people since it suffered a devastating famine in the 1990s.

In recent years the regime has tried to reassert state control over the economy by restricting private markets, which sprang up after the state food distribution system collapsed in the famine years.

Last November it decreed a currency revaluation to flush out private wealth but analysts said the move backfired disastrously, intensifying food shortages and fuelling inflation.

The North is relaxing some curbs on the markets because of mounting public anger, South Korea's spy agency has said.

US refuses to cancel Obama's Dalai Lama meeting

WASHINGTON — The United States on Friday escalated a mounting row on multiple fronts with China, refusing Beijing's demand to cancel President Barack Obama's meeting next week with the Dalai Lama.

The deepening public spat over Tibet, a row over US arms sales to Taiwan, China's dispute with Google and trade and currency disagreements, come at a key diplomatic moment, as Obama seeks Chinese help to toughen sanctions on Iran.

The White House announced Thursday that Obama would hold his long-awaited meeting with the revered Dalai Lama at the White House next week, drawing an angry reaction from China and a demand for the invitation to be rescinded.

But Obama's spokesman Robert Gibbs signalled the White House would defy China's warning that the encounter would damage already strained Sino-US relations.

"I do not know if their specific reaction was to cancel it," Gibbs said.

"If that was their specific reaction, the meeting will take place as planned next Thursday."

Obama avoided the Dalai Lama when he was in Washington in 2009, in an apparent bid to set relations with Beijing off on a good foot in the first year of a presidency which included several meetings with President Hu Jintao.

But he warned Chinese leaders on an inaugural visit to Beijing in November that he intended to meet the Buddhist monk.

China's foreign ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu said earlier that Beijing firmly opposed "the Dalai Lama visiting the United States and US leaders having contact with him."

"China urges the US... to immediately call off the wrong decision of arranging for President Obama to meet with the Dalai Lama... to avoid any more damage to Sino-US relations."

The Dalai Lama fled Tibet into exile in India in 1959, after a failed uprising against Chinese rule. He denies he wants independence for Tibet, insisting he is looking only for "meaningful autonomy."

Obama's meeting with the Dalai Lama will take place in the White House Map Room and not, in an apparent effort to mollify China, in the Oval Office, where US presidents normally meet VIPs and visiting government chiefs.

The Obama administration has insisted disputes over Tibet, Taiwan, currency and Google will not hamper efforts to win the support of China, a veto-wielding member of the UN Security Council, on toughened nuclear sanctions against Iran.

China has yet to agree to the concept of toughened sanctions over Iran's nuclear program, calling for more negotiations, even as Russia appears closer to backing the move to punish Tehran.

US officials say that the Sino-US relationship is mature enough to override disagreements on key issues but the temperature of public disagreements has risen sharply in recent days.

The powers have clashed over a 6.4-billion-dollar US arms deal for Taiwan, with China accusing the United States of violating the "code of conduct between nations" with the sale to what it sees as a Chinese territory.

Beijing also has been angered by Washington's support for Google after the web giant announced it would no longer abide by China's strict Internet censorship rules and could quit the country over cyberattacks.

The foreign ministry denied involvement in the hacking of Gmail accounts and accused Washington of "double standards" after Secretary of State Hillary Clinton lamented the restrictions on China's 384 million Internet users.

Earlier this month, Obama said he planned to be "much tougher" about enforcing trade rules with China, and favoured constant pressure on Beijing over opening markets and on currency rates.

China responded by dismissing US "wrongful accusations and pressure."

Anti-whalers accuse Japan of lying over injuries

SYDNEY — Anti-whaling activists Saturday accused Tokyo of lying about an Antarctic clash in which three harpooners were hurt, claiming they had video proof the Japanese crew's injuries were self-inflicted.

The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society rejected claims from a furious Japanese government that their activists had wounded three whalers with rancid butter bombs, saying video footage clearly showed the men had injured themselves.

"In reviewing video footage of the confrontation, the Sea Shepherd crew discovered the real source of injuries for the three Japanese crew members," the Society said in a statement.

"The three crew were injured because they shot themselves in the face with pepper spray."

Sea Shepherd said the footage, which had been posted on the Internet, showed crew with metal cannisters strapped to their backs attempting to spray activists in a nearby inflatable boat.

"However the wind was not in favour of this Japanese tactic and the pepper spray is blown back into the faces of the three crew, who can be clearly seen rubbing their eyes," the Society said.

Japan expressed strong anger over the incident Friday, accusing the Sea Shepherd's butter bombs of causing "acid-splash chemical injury" to the whalers during a five-hour confrontation in the Southern Ocean on February 11.

But Sea Shepherd captain Paul Watson said the organisation had never injured a single person in its 33-year history.

"This video absolves Sea Shepherd of any wrong-doing and demonstrates that the Japanese whalers routinely spin their stories to demonise our efforts to defend the whales from their illegal activities," Watson said.

Commercial whaling has been banned worldwide since 1986, but Japan kills hundreds of the sea mammals a year in Antarctic waters in the name of scientific research. It does not hide the fact that the whale meat is later sold in shops and restaurants.

Last month, the Sea Shepherd's futuristic powerboat Ady Gil was sliced in two and sank after a collision with one of the Japanese ships, leading both Australia and New Zealand to call for restraint on all sides.

N.Korea nuclear negotiator to visit US: report

SEOUL — North Korea's chief nuclear negotiator plans to visit the United States next month, a media report said Friday, amid renewed efforts to bring the communist nation back to international disarmament talks.

South Korea's Yonhap news agency, quoting a diplomatic source, said the visit by Kim Kye-Gwan would be in return for a trip to Pyongyang in December by US envoy Stephen Bosworth.

"I believe the schedule for Kim's visit has already been fixed," it quoted the source as saying in a report from Beijing, where Kim has been holding talks with his Chinese counterparts. No precise date was mentioned.

China, which hosts six-nation nuclear disarmament talks, is trying to persuade the North to return to the negotiations which it quit last April -- a month before its second atomic weapons test.

But this week's meetings in Beijing have been hard going, according to media reports, with Pyongyang sticking to its demands that UN sanctions be lifted before it rejoins the nuclear dialogue.

The North also wants US agreement to hold talks about a formal peace treaty before it comes back to the forum also grouping South Korea, Japan and Russia.

It was unclear whether Kim's visit would go ahead if the parties fail to agree on restarting the nuclear dialogue.

Yonhap said Wu Dawei, China's chief nuclear negotiator who has been meeting Kim, would travel to other six-party member nations after the Lunar New Year this weekend.

"We exchanged important opinions with China on the matters of the peace treaty on the Korean peninsula and the resumption of the six-party talks," Kim told reporters in Beijing Thursday.

"Results of the meeting will be made known later."

China is North Korea's only major ally, its main trade partner and its chief supplier of desperately needed food and oil. But it was not clear whether it would be able to coax the North back to dialogue.

The two sides were trying Thursday to narrow differences on economic assistance, Yonhap said.

South Korean officials estimate the North will run short of 1.29 million tons of grain this year, equivalent to almost four months' supply.

UN chief Ban Ki-moon's top political advisor Lynne Pascoe was due Friday to wind up a mission to North Korea aimed partly at reviving the disarmament talks.

Pascoe met Kim Yong-Nam, the North's official number two leader on Thursday. He passed on a message from UN chief Ban Ki-moon to leader Kim Jong-Il, the North's media said, but no details were given.

No terms on nuke talks Japan, S.Korea tell N.Korea

SEOUL — Japan and South Korea told North Korea Thursday it should return unconditionally to nuclear disarmament talks, a day after Pyongyang reportedly restated its demands for sanctions to be lifted first.

International efforts have intensified to revive the talks, which the North quit last April following international criticism of its ballistic missile launch.

"The two shared the view that North Korea should first return to six-party talks and there should be practical progress in denuclearisation," South Korean Foreign Minister Yu Myung-Hwan said after talks with his Japanese counterpart Katsuya Okada.

Pyongyang staged its second atomic weapons test in May 2009 and said it had restarted production of weapons-grade plutonium.

The North's nuclear negotiators, meeting Chinese counterparts in Beijing Wednesday, reiterated demands for UN sanctions to be lifted before the nuclear talks resume, according to South Korean media reports.

They also reportedly restated another precondition: that the United States agree to start talks about a formal peace treaty.

The 1950-53 Korean war ended only in an armistice. The North says it developed its atomic arsenal to deter US aggression and there must be a formal peace pact before it considers scrapping it.

China, which hosts the six-party forum, was said to have stressed that the North should first return to dialogue and ease its tough conditions.

As part of the diplomatic drive, China sent senior communist party official Wang Jiarui to North Korea Saturday to try to coax it back to the forum which also groups South Korea, the United States, Russia and Japan.

UN chief Ban Ki-moon's top political adviser Lynn Pascoe is making a four-day visit to the North expected to focus on both nuclear matters and humanitarian aid.

South Korean Unification Minister Hyun In-Taek said separately the North must work towards scrapping its nuclear programmes if there is to be lasting peace on the peninsula.

"North Korea's proposal for a peace treaty is not a positive signal geared toward making progress in denuclearisation," Hyun told a forum.

"If we fail to create a breakthrough in resolving the North Korean nuclear conundrum in the near future, the political situation on the Korean peninsula will become extremely unstable," Yonhap news agency quoted him as saying.