Japanese Embassy

Three homemade rockets were fired at the U.S. and Japanese embassies Wednesday, and a car bomb went off outside a building housing Canada's mission, but no one was injured, Jakarta's military commander said. Maj. Gen. Sugito said none of the rockets exploded. The bomb destroyed the car in which it was planted and damaged five other vehicles. Intelligence sources said privately that the attacks appeared to be the work of a small extremist group with possible support from Libyans.

WASHINGTON - As Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe arrives for a Friday summit with President Obama, trade will be at the top of the diplomatic agenda along with security concerns, including new threats from North Korea and an escalating territorial dispute over islands near Japan. On almost every major issue, political and economic, China's shadow will hover over the talks. Abe, who took office in December as Japan's seventh prime minister in six years, will almost certainly push for strong U.S. backing in Japan's tense standoff with China over the Senkaku islets in the East China Sea, which the Japanese administer but which are also claimed by the Chinese, who call them Diaoyu.

Dozens of Chinese demonstrators rallied outside the Japanese Embassy then marched through rain-slicked streets to the Foreign Ministry on Saturday, belting out the national anthem and hollering nationalistic slogans against "foreigners" and the Japanese to protest the detention of a Chinese fishing crew. A demonstration of any kind is rare in this tightly controlled nation, and Saturday's protest was a deliberately understated affair. The marchers were carefully monitored by rings of police, who moved through the protest with an almost methodical choreography.

BEIJING - Newly installed Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was quoted Monday saying that he would revisit a 1995 apology made by his nation's government for suffering caused in World War II. Although other Japanese officials have suggested retracting apologies for wartime horrors, the words coming from Abe himself are bound to inflame anti-Japanese sentiment in China and the Korean peninsula and put the new government off to a bad start with...

BEIJING - The last week's anti-Japan demonstrations in China have been a spectacular display of just how easily the ruling Communist Party can harness the power of protest. In the aftermath of nationwide protests, in which mobs trashed Japanese-owned businesses and set fire to Japanese model cars, critics are questioning the degree to which the Chinese government fanned the flames as part of its dispute with Japan over an island chain both nations claim. "It is obvious that this was planned," said Ai Weiwei, the dissident artist, who videotaped some of the protests.

BEIJING - Anti-Japan rallies spread to dozens more Chinese cities Sunday, as thousands of people demonstrated against the Japanese government's plan to buy several uninhabited islands near Taiwan that China also claims. Protesters marched in front of diplomatic compounds, attacked Japanese businesses and burned Japanese flags. In the southern city of Guangzhou, demonstrators stormed into the first two floors of a complex that houses the Japanese Consulate, breaking windows in a hotel and smashing a vehicle.

The Japanese Embassy in Kuwait gave refuge to 16 American diplomats and their families shortly after Iraq's invasion, then helped them escape from the emirate, Foreign Ministry officials said Thursday. The Foreign Ministry had kept silent about the matter because it feared any publicity might lead to Iraqi reprisals against Japanese citizens held in Kuwait, the officials said.

BEIJING - The worst of the anti-Japanese protests that have swept China in recent days may be over. The financial fallout for the world's second- and third-biggest economies may be just beginning. Japanese-owned factories, restaurants, mini-marts and clothing retailers across China closed en masse Tuesday as protests continued in nearly 100 cities, sparked by a dispute over control of uninhabited islands near Taiwan. Automakers Nissan, Honda, Toyota and Mazda suspended operations at some plants, as did Sony.

A helicopter crashed in the port city of Tianjin on Friday, killing all 11 people aboard, including a Japanese pilot, the Japanese Embassy said. The helicopter, which belonged to the Japanese company Asahi Koyo, crashed near Tianjin airport, embassy officials said. According to the state-run Civil Aviation Administration of China, the helicopter had two pilots. One was Japanese, but he was not identified, the officials said; the other 10 people aboard were Chinese. The officials said the nature of the flight was not known although they said it was possible that Asahi Koyo is a company involved in marine resource development.

A U.S. hydrogen bomb was crushed by sea pressure when it fell into the Pacific Ocean off Japan 24 years ago, and its nuclear material has dissolved harmlessly on the sea floor, the United States has told Japan. The material poses no environmental hazard, the U.S. Defense Department said in a report given to the Japanese Embassy in Washington on Friday. A copy was given to the news services today after Cabinet members said Japan would check for possible environmental dangers. The Foreign Ministry later formed a team to evaluate the U.S. report and decide whether more studies are needed.

BEIJING - The $15,000 that factory worker Li Jianli saved up to buy his white Toyota Corolla turned out to be nowhere near the costliest part of the deal. He nearly paid with his life. Li was out in the central city of Xian on a recent Saturday afternoon looking for an apartment for his soon-to-be-married son when he happened to steer the car into one of the anti-Japanese demonstrations that were rocking China. Then Li made another mistake: He leaped out of the car to plead with the mob not to trash the vehicle, which he'd bought just last year.

BEIJING - The last week's anti-Japan demonstrations in China have been a spectacular display of just how easily the ruling Communist Party can harness the power of protest. In the aftermath of nationwide protests, in which mobs trashed Japanese-owned businesses and set fire to Japanese model cars, critics are questioning the degree to which the Chinese government fanned the flames as part of its dispute with Japan over an island chain both nations claim. "It is obvious that this was planned," said Ai Weiwei, the dissident artist, who videotaped some of the protests.

BEIJING - The worst of the anti-Japanese protests that have swept China in recent days may be over. The financial fallout for the world's second- and third-biggest economies may be just beginning. Japanese-owned factories, restaurants, mini-marts and clothing retailers across China closed en masse Tuesday as protests continued in nearly 100 cities, sparked by a dispute over control of uninhabited islands near Taiwan. Automakers Nissan, Honda, Toyota and Mazda suspended operations at some plants, as did Sony.

BEIJING - Anti-Japan rallies spread to dozens more Chinese cities Sunday, as thousands of people demonstrated against the Japanese government's plan to buy several uninhabited islands near Taiwan that China also claims. Protesters marched in front of diplomatic compounds, attacked Japanese businesses and burned Japanese flags. In the southern city of Guangzhou, demonstrators stormed into the first two floors of a complex that houses the Japanese Consulate, breaking windows in a hotel and smashing a vehicle.

  The old women, this time with hundreds of demonstrators shouting their support outside the Japanese Embassy in Seoul, on Wednesday marked the 1,000th successive weekly protest against Tokyo for a 7-decade-old war crime. The women's demands remained unchanged: Punish surviving members of the Imperial Japanese Army responsible for taking an estimated 200,000 young Korean women as sex slaves during World War II and pay governmental reparations. Those who fell victim to the Japanese military as young women, who during the war were called "comfort women," are still seeking closure.

With the seizure of a Chinese fishing boat by Japan last month still roiling relations, thousands of protesters turned out over the weekend in at least three provincial Chinese cities chanting anti-Japanese slogans and, in one case, smashing the windows of a Japanese store. Demonstrators apparently mobilized because of reports that there would be a Japanese protest near the Chinese Embassy in Tokyo. The largest demonstration was in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province.

The United States has told Japan that a hydrogen bomb lost off a U.S. warship near Okinawa 24 years ago has leaked radioactive material but poses no threat to the environment, the Foreign Ministry said Monday. Foreign Minister Sosuke Uno told a parliamentary committee that Japan accepts the U.S. evaluation but that an investigation is necessary to allay public fears. The four-paragraph Defense Department report, sent to the Japanese Embassy in Washington on Friday, grew out of disclosures last week that an H-bomb settled to the Pacific Ocean floor about 70 miles from Okinawa after an A-4E Skyhawk carrying the weapon rolled off the deck of the aircraft carrier Ticonderoga in December, 1965.

Japan joined the club of wary world powers this week after the capture by Peruvian guerrillas of hundreds of guests at a birthday party in Lima for Emperor Akihito demonstrated the frightening global ramifications of foreign policy lapses. "Like America, Japan has made enemies without even noticing, and now it must protect itself," said professor Koichi Oizumi, an international relations expert at Japan University. "We must take an 'eye-for-eye, tooth-for-tooth' attitude toward terrorism.

Demonstrators rallied outside the Japanese Embassy and marched through rain-slicked streets to the Foreign Ministry on Saturday, belting out the Chinese national anthem and hollering nationalistic slogans to protest the detention of a Chinese fishing crew by Japan. A demonstration of any kind is relatively rare in China, and Saturday's protest by dozens of demonstrators was a deliberately understated affair. The marchers were carefully monitored by rings of police. Events that unfolded on the edges of the main event were more dramatic.

Dozens of Chinese demonstrators rallied outside the Japanese Embassy then marched through rain-slicked streets to the Foreign Ministry on Saturday, belting out the national anthem and hollering nationalistic slogans against "foreigners" and the Japanese to protest the detention of a Chinese fishing crew. A demonstration of any kind is rare in this tightly controlled nation, and Saturday's protest was a deliberately understated affair. The marchers were carefully monitored by rings of police, who moved through the protest with an almost methodical choreography.