Japan is to provide Myanmar with $615 million in government loans, a report said on Sunday, just days after the United States scrapped a ban on most imports from the long-isolated Southeast Asian nation.
Myanmar nominally ended nearly half a century of military rule last year and rapid changes have sparked a widespread lifting of sanctions and a scramble to tap a potentially lucrative market.
Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda will make the loans announcement when he meets Myanmar's President Thein Sein on the sidelines on a Southeast Asian summit in Cambodia on Monday, the Nikkei business daily said.
Japan's first low-interest, long-term government loans to Myanmar in nearly three decades will "back up moves by Japanese companies into the country and hold China in check after it increased its influence in Myanmar", it said.
Japan will provide the loans in the fiscal year to March 2013 while the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank and major creditor nations are expected to announce in January they will waive debts owed by Myanmar, the Nikkei said.
A 24-year-old woman was in a serious condition Friday after being stabbed by a man whom she reported to police for stalking her in Kurashiki, Okayama Prefecture. (Japan Today )
China's television regulator has ordered a crackdown on dramas about the country's battles with Japan during and before World War Two and demanded they be more serious, state media said on Friday, following viewer complaints about ludicrous storylines. (Reuters )
Police said Friday they have found four dead bodies in an apartment in Kashiwa, Chiba Prefecture, in what is believed to have been a family murder-suicide. (Japan Today )
Shukan Post (May 24) conveys the difficulties experienced by other parts of the adult-entertainment biz in servicing customers from the communist nation.
A deri heru (“delivery health”) call-girl tells the tabloid that she is often requested to arrive at major hotels in the Shinjuku and Ikebukuro entertainment areas of Tokyo by Chinese visitors. (Tokyo Reporter)
Six sailors were found dead after a fire on a foreign freighter docked at a port in Hokkaido, northern Japan.
The sailors are presumed to be Russians. (NHK )
Dozens of American children are abducted to Japan every year-not by strangers, but by parents after messy divorces. (thedailybeast.com 
) 
A 5-year-old boy sustained an injury at a shopping mall in Nagoya on Friday after his hand became trapped in an escalator. (Japan Today 
A 24-year-old woman was in a serious condition Friday after being stabbed by a man whom she reported to police for stalking her in Kurashiki, Okayama Prefecture. (Japan Today 
A 70-year-old woman has been rescued from a toilet in which she had been waiting for help for three days, Hiroshima police said Friday. (Japan Today 
A traditional dance was performed on Friday at an ancient temple in Nikko City, northeast of Tokyo. (NHK 
China's television regulator has ordered a crackdown on dramas about the country's battles with Japan during and before World War Two and demanded they be more serious, state media said on Friday, following viewer complaints about ludicrous storylines. (Reuters 
A bear was shot dead after it wandered into a school in Kanazawa, Ishikawa Prefecture, on Thursday. (Japan Today 
Police said Friday they have found four dead bodies in an apartment in Kashiwa, Chiba Prefecture, in what is believed to have been a family murder-suicide. (Japan Today 
Shukan Post (May 24) conveys the difficulties experienced by other parts of the adult-entertainment biz in servicing customers from the communist nation.
A deri heru (“delivery health”) call-girl tells the tabloid that she is often requested to arrive at major hotels in the Shinjuku and Ikebukuro entertainment areas of Tokyo by Chinese visitors. (Tokyo Reporter) 
Six sailors were found dead after a fire on a foreign freighter docked at a port in Hokkaido, northern Japan.
The sailors are presumed to be Russians. (NHK