The F.B.I. is now investigating the $687 million payment, according to two people briefed on the case. The focus of the investigation is not yet clear, and a spokesman for the F.B.I. in New York, James M. Margolin, declined to comment.
KPMG was Olympus’s auditor in 2008; Ernst & Young in 2009. Both firms’ British offices placed a formal qualification on Gyrus’s accounts because the firm failed to show that it had no relationship to AXAM/AXES. However their Japan offices, though not required to follow the British decision, approved the Olympus group accounts without knowing the answer to this rather glaring conundrum.
Olympus’s odd transactions were first reported this summer by a small investigative magazine called Facta, but ignored by the mainstream Japanese press. Local media have made surprisingly little of the story, even as Olympus’s market value has roughly halved. Japanese regulators, too, have not made much fuss. Olympus suggests it may sue Mr Woodford for disclosing confidential information to the media. Mr Woodford says he would welcome that day in court.
The death toll from malaria seems to have responded to a big injection of money
OF 108 COUNTRIES where malaria is endemic, ten are on track to eliminate the disease in the near future, according to a report by Roll Back Malaria published on October 18th. For many others getting to zero deaths from the parasite is a distant dream. But that should not stop a celebration of the progress that has been made over the past decade, during which time deaths from malaria have fallen by 20% (see chart).
ここ10年でマラリア死亡者は20％低下した。
The correlation between reduced deaths and money spent is fairly strong, much more so than the correlation between conventional aid and economic development. Given that improved health often comes before advances in GDP per capita, spending on malaria may eventually show an even greater return than it already has to date.
Oct 14 (Reuters) - Promoted to CEO just two weeks ago, Michael Woodford was a star at Japanese camera and endoscope maker Olympus Corp , where he joined as a salesman in a British subsidiary more than three decades ago.
His bosses were so impressed by the Briton's cost-cutting efforts and deep understanding of the local culture that they made him CEO, adding to the role he took in April of President -- the first non-Japanese to run Olympus.
In a glowing tribute on his appointment, the Board's Chairman said Woodford's change initiatives had an "extremely positive effect" and Olympus praised him for showing "great sensitivity and understanding of the different cultures."
ONE hundred years ago on October 10th, a mutiny in the central Chinese city of Wuhan triggered the collapse of China’s last imperial dynasty. In Taiwan, which separated from the mainland in 1949 after a civil war and still claims to be the rightful heir of the republic founded in 1911, the anniversary will be celebrated with a parade, including a display of air power. But in China there are mixed feelings. The country is spending lavishly on festivities, too. But its ruling Communist Party is busily stifling debate about the revolutionaries’ dream of democracy, which has been realised on Taiwan but not on the mainland.
China and Taiwan have long disputed each others’ claims to be the heir of the 1911 revolution. Sun Yat-sen, regarded as the revolution’s leader, is officially revered on both sides of the Taiwan Strait. As usual around the time of the anniversary, a giant portrait of him was erected on October 1st in Tiananmen Square, opposite that of Mao Zedong (both wearing Sun suits, as they were known before their rebranding in Mao’s day). But the Communist Party’s efforts to play up the occasion have revealed its nervousness.
In late September, a film about the revolution, “1911”, starring Jackie Chan, a kung-fu actor from Hong Kong, was released. Officials trumpeted the movie but ticket sales have been lacklustre. The film carefully avoids dwelling on the sweeping political reforms initiated by the final imperial dynasty, the Qing, which precipitated its own overthrow. A popular television series, “Advance toward the Republic”, that focused on those reforms and was aired in 2003, was cut by censors before the series finished, and banned from rebroadcast. One scene showed Sun addressing politicians six years after the 1911 revolution with a lament that “only powerful people have liberty”. Echoes of China today were clearly too unsettling for the censors.
In the past year, officials have tried to stop discussion of the 1911 revolution straying into such realms. In November 2010 the Xiaoxiang Morning Herald, a newspaper in south China’s Hunan Province, got into trouble with the censors after publishing a supplement on the revolution. It quoted from a letter written by Vaclav Havel in 1975, when he was still a Czech dissident, to the country’s communist president, Gustav Husak: “history again demands to be heard”. The newspaper did not explain the context, which was Mr Havel’s lament about the Communist Party’s sanitisation of history. It did not need to. Its clear message was that the democratic demands of 1911 could not be repressed forever.
中国南部の新聞と検閲当局がトラブルになったり，
Two weeks ago the authorities suddenly cancelled the world premier of an opera, “Dr Sun Yat-sen”, which was due to be performed by a Hong Kong troupe at the National Centre for the Performing Arts close to Tiananmen Square in Beijing. “Logistical reasons” were cited, but Hong Kong media speculated that some of its content―including its portrayal of Sun’s love life―was deemed to be out of line.
孫文先生というオペラがキャンセルさせられたり。
But the authorities are not letting their political worries spoil a spending opportunity. In Wuhan, where the revolution began, they announced plans to splurge 20 billion yuan ($3.1 billion) on 1911-related exhibitions and on a makeover for the city. The Manchu emperor abdicated in February 1912, ending over 2,000 years of dynastic rule. Officials in Wuhan, and elsewhere, have been keeping quiet about the orgy of violence against Manchus that accompanied the upheaval (see article).
そうは言っても，革命の発祥地に革命を記念する展示のために二千億元を投資すると当局は発表。
Some Chinese scholars say the revolution did little for China except to usher in chaotic warlordism, followed by authoritarian government. Such accusations have some merit. China did indeed slide into disarray, warlordism and insurrection after 1911. Any hopes of a democratic republic were overwhelmed by efforts to bring the country under control, which the Communist Party achieved in 1949. Li Zehou, a Chinese intellectual, has stirred debate in recent years by arguing that China should have given the Qing reforms more of a chance.
The Communist Party maintains that the 1911 revolution was justified, but finds itself in a quandary. Another star-studded film released earlier this year to mark its own 90th birthday stirred audiences in an unintended way. The film, covering the period from the revolution of 1911 to the Communist Party’s founding in 1921, prompted numerous comments on Chinese internet forums about the lessons it offered for rebelling against bad government. Interesting idea.
Officially, the death toll in Otsuchi is put at 1,500.
公式には大槌での死者は1500人だ。
Simon: Think that's accurate?
この数字が正確だと思いますか。
Davis: I really don't. I don't. And I think that it has a lot to do with, the way the Japanese specify whether or not a person is missing. And until somebody reports them missing, they're not statistically missing. So in this case, if an entire family was lost, there's no one left to report someone missing.
The tsunami was so furious, it picked up boats from the sea and dropped them on roofs. And this one picture of this one boat has come to stand for the entire Japanese tragedy.
Mr Netanyahu says his ambassador will soon be back. Egyptian officials have voiced embarrassed regret. But even if Israel can find and fortify an alternative less vulnerable location, it sees the episode, with its display of deep antipathy towards Israel on the Egyptian street and the perhaps deliberately slow reaction of the Egyptian authorities, as ominous. And it looked on grimly as Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s prime minister, flying into Cairo on September 12th, was feted as a champion of the Palestinian and Muslim cause.
At street level, many Egyptians were delighted by the assault on the embassy. Last month a young man called Ahmed al-Shahat, dubbed “the flagman”, was hailed as a national hero for scaling the Israeli building and replacing the Star of David with a Palestinian banner. But reaction to the burning of the building on September 9th was more nuanced. Most prominent political groups, from the left-liberal April 6th Movement to the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood and even the more extreme Salafists, condemned the violence, though the Islamists were evasive about the entry into the building. And the interim military government took advantage of the assault to threaten a crackdown against street protesters continuing to call for faster reform.
But most groups dread the prospect of actual war. One of the few good things that many Egyptians have to say of Hosni Mubarak, their deposed and generally reviled president, is that he kept Egypt out of war with Israel. The military government says that policy towards Israel should be left to an elected government. Still, the embassy incident serves as a warning to Israel that a democratically elected Egyptian government may be a lot less friendly.
