Japan

TOKYO (Reuters) - Oil prices rose on Thursday, recouping some of the losses from the previous session that followed a surprise increase in U.S. crude inventories, as the market mood switched to relief after OPEC forecast a supply deficit next year.

Brent futures LCOc1 rose 28 cents, or 0.4% to $64.00 a barrel, after skidding 1% on Wednesday on the U.S. stocks build-up.

West Texas Intermediate crude CLc1 was up 12 cents, or 0.2%, at $58.88 a barrel, following a 0.8% drop the previous session.

TOKYO (Reuters) - Oil prices fell on Monday after data showed that Chinese exports declined for a fourth straight month, sending shivers through a market already concerned about damage being done to global demand by the Sino-U.S. trade war.

Brent futures LCOc1 were down 21 cents, or 0.3%, at $64.18 per barrel by 0731 GMT, after gaining about 3% last week on the news that OPEC and its allies would deepen output cuts.

TOKYO (AP) — Japan’s economy expanded at a faster than earlier estimated annual rate of 1.8% in July-September, powered by stronger consumer purchases and corporate investment ahead of an Oct. 1 tax hike.

However that tax increase is expected to hurt growth in coming months.

The data issued Monday were a revision of the earlier reported 0.2% growth in the last quarter. The quarterly rate of expansion was 0.4%.

TOKYO (Reuters) - Tetsu Nakamura, the Japanese doctor and aid worker killed in Afghanistan on Wednesday, was inspired to make the country’s deserts green by the deaths of children in a clinic he ran in a drought-stricken rural area.

“You’d hear a child screaming in the waiting room, but by the time you got there they’d be dead,” he told NHK television in an October program.

3 December 2019; AFP: A Japanese pensioner has been arrested after ringing a phone company 24,000 times to complain they had violated his contract, police and local media reported.

Tokyo police said they took 71-year-old Akitoshi Okamoto into custody last week after he made hundreds of toll-free calls over eight days to the customer service section of major telephone operator KDDI.

TOKYO, Nov. 28 (Xinhua) -- The operator of the disaster-hit Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in northeastern Japan said Thursday that radioactive rainwater may be leaking into the ground through an exhaust stack.

According to Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), rainwater leaving the ducts of one of the crippled plant's 120-meter tall exhaust stacks contains high levels of radioactive materials.

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Thursday said that a missile launch by North Korea was a threat to Japan and the international community, and that Tokyo would be in close contact with its partners to monitor the situation.

“Multiple missile launches by North Korea are a serious challenge not only for Japan, but also international society,” Abe told reporters after the country’s defense ministry had confirmed that an object that appeared to be a missile was launched from North Korea earlier in the day.

TOKYO, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Monday agreed that both sides should work together to further improve bilateral ties and strengthen people-to-people exchanges.

TOKYO (AP) — Pope Francis met Monday with victims of Japan’s 2011 nuclear disaster and called for the world to rethink its reliance on nuclear power as it considers the planet it wants to leave to future generations.

Francis recalled that Japan’s Catholic bishops called for the abolition of nuclear power plants in the aftermath of the “triple disaster,” in which three reactors at a nuclear plant in Fukushima melted down after an earthquake triggered a tsunami.

Nagasaki, Nov 24 (AFP) Pope Francis Sunday railed against atomic weapons, the nuclear deterrent and the growing arms trade, as he paid tribute to the victims of the "unspeakable horror" of the Nagasaki bomb.

In a highly symbolic visit to the Japanese city devastated by the nuclear attack in August 1945, Francis said nuclear weapons were "not the answer" to a desire for security, peace and stability.

"Indeed they seem always to thwart it," he said.