TOKYO, Feb 3: The controversial mayor of Japan’s second city, Osaka, is to step down and seek re-election in a bid to prove he has public support for plans to reform local Government.
Toru Hashimoto, who caused an international stir last year when he said women forced into sexual slavery by Japan’s imperial army served a “necessary” purpose, is expected to submit his resignation later today.
Hashimoto, who doubles as co-head of the Japan Restoration Party, has long championed a plan to merge the prefectural and municipal Governments of Osaka, claiming it would cut out unnecessary layers of bureaucracy.
But a panel made up of representatives of the Osaka prefectural Government and Osaka municipal Government on Friday rejected plans to speed up the integration, prompting his decision to go over their heads to the electorate.
“If it is the will of voters, I will leave the world of politics without hesitation,” Hashimoto told a party convention at weekend, adding that a renewal of his mandate would prove the public was behind the plan.
But rivals have dismissed the move as self-indulgent and said they have no intention of fielding candidates.
“It is a ridiculous scheme to call an election just because the discussion is not going the way he wants it to,” the Yomiuri Shimbun daily quoted a senior member of the New Komeito party as saying. “He is like a child screaming.” (AGENCIES)

WASHINGTON, Feb 3: Facebook – with more than 1.2 billion users worldwide – is celebrating its 10th birthday amidst challenges of keeping its original base of young users with new innovative social networks coming to the fore.
The company was launched by Mark Zuckerberg on February 4, 2004, from Harvard University.
The site was conceived as a way to connect students, and let them build an online identity for themselves, ‘Computer World’ reported.
According to the company’s own recent figures, the social networking site has since expanded to cover a large swath of the world, with more than 1.2 billion people using its site on a monthly basis.
Zuckerberg, who turns 30 in May, reflected on the 10-year milestone at an industry conference in Silicon Valley last week.
He said he never envisioned Facebook, which made him one of the wealthiest people in the world, becoming so large or influential at the start.
“It didn’t even occur to me that it could be us,” Zuckerberg said.
Since then, Facebook’s site and its business, now a public company, have changed dramatically, the report said.
The company was slow to react to the important mobile market, however, last week it reported that more than half its ad revenue now comes from mobile devices, the report said.
Among the growing challenges is the soaring popularity of smartphone apps that let people share images, videos, thoughts or observations at any moment.
Social networking sites such as Pinterest, Twitter and SnapChat have sparked concerns that Facebook which set a social networking trend in motion may be losing its original teen base.
A recent Princeton University study suggested that Facebook may lose around 80 per cent of its users over the next three years, a claim which was challenged by the social networking site.
According to a recent report in iStrategyLabs, Facebook lost more than 3 million users in the age group of 13 and 17 between January 2011 and January 2014. (AGENCIES)

KAYSERI (TURKEY), Feb 3: Four policemen went on trial amid tight security in Turkey today, accused of beating to death a 19-year-old student in the huge anti-Government protests that rocked the country last June.
The high-profile court case comes as Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan battles his biggest crisis in 11 years in power, which has hit the economy and is threatening the strongman’s presidential ambitions.
Some 2,000 riot police were deployed in the central city of Kayseri for the start of the trial, roads around the courthouse were blocked and demonstrations banned for “security” reasons.
Activists trying to get to Kayseri for the trial said that several buses carrying demonstrators were prevented from entering the city overnight and this morning.
The case centres on the death of Ali Islmail Kokmaz, who died after being pummelled with baseball bats and truncheons in the western city of Eskisehir on June 2, one of one of six people to perish as three weeks of protests convulsed the country of 76 million.
The attack was recorded by security cameras and the 19-year-old student, wearing a “World Peace” T-shirt, suffered a brain haemorrhage and died after 38 days in a coma.
Eight men, including four plain-clothes policemen, are accused of premeditated murder and face life in jail if convicted.
In an attempt to avoid fresh trouble, authorities moved the trial some 550 kilometres east of Eskisehir to Kayseri.
“My son will never come back but I want his killers punished,” the dead student’s mother Emel Korkmaz told Turkish media, saying she would attend the trial to “look them in the eye”.
More than 8,000 people were injured, the Turkish Medical Association says, during the protests in June that began as a peaceful sit-in against plans to build on a Istanbul park.
Erdogan called the demonstrators “vandals” and branded Twitter, used to organise protests, a “troublemaker”. Heavy-handed police tools included tear gas, plastic bullets and even live ammunition.
Amnesty International said there were “gross human rights violations” and German Chancellor Angela Merkel at the time called the police response “much too harsh”. (AGENCIES)

DHAKA, Feb 3: The ruling Awami League would still bag more votes than opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) if elections were held today with the participation of all major parties, according to an opinion poll.
The study, conducted by US-based Democracy International a week after the BNP-boycotted the January 5 polls, found that if the elections were fully participatory, 42.7 per cent people would have voted for Awami League, while 35.1 per cent would have preferred the BNP.
The watchdog carried out the study between January 11 and 15 to gauge the post-election environment, quizzing 1,500 people, aged 18 and above in 39 districts in all the seven administrative divisions of the country.
In November 2013, a poll showed that the Awami League remained behind the BNP.
Democracy International described the new results as being a “statistical dead heat” because of the margin of error of plus or minus 2.5 per cent and showed that the political environment was ‘competitive’.
The poll found that the Awami League’s crucial ally Jatiya Party had 4 per cent support and BNP’s key ally in the 19-party alliance fundamentalist Jamaat-e-Islami 1 per cent.
Thirty two per cent of people said BNP must cut its ties with Jamaat while 19 per cent were undecided but around half of people surveyed said it did not matter to them who BNP’s political allies were.
Fifty two per cent of Awami League supporters quizzed in the survey said they were of the view that the BNP should cut ties with Jamaat while 17 per cent BNP supporters also expressed identical opinion.
Sixty-nine per cent of the respondents said Bangladesh was headed in the wrong direction and top three reasons for this were political conflicts, too many political shutdowns and price hikes.
The survey found that seven out of 10 supporters of the BNP and the AL want their parties to compromise and engage in talks to end the political stalemate.
Asked about the Government formed through the January 5 election, 40 per cent termed it “not credible”, 18 per cent credible, 25 per cent highly credible and 17 per cent less credible.
Fifty-nine per cent felt there should be another election within the next five years and 52 per cent said the BNP should immediately enter talks with the Government and stop protests.
Forty per cent believed the Government should complete its five-year tenure. (AGENCIES)

ATHENS, Feb 3: A strong 6.1 magnitude earthquake struck near the Greek island of Cephalonia in the Ionian Sea today, the the US Geological Survey (USGS) reported.
The quake hit at 5:08 am (0308 GMT) with its epicentre just 12 kilometres (7 miles) from the town of Lixourion, 300 kilometres west of Athens, the USGS said.
There were no immediate reports of any damage or casualties.
A 5.8-magnitude earthquake struck the same region late last month.
That quake was felt on several Ionian islands and as far away as the capital Athens.
Greece is one of Europe’s most earthquake-prone countries.
Cephalonia has previously been struck on several occasions and in August 1953 virtually every house on the island was destroyed during a major earthquake.
The island was also the setting for the popular novel Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, about a Second World War romance between an Italian soldier and a local woman. A 2001 movie of the same name, starring Nicolas Cage and Penelope Cruz, was filmed on the island.
The Mediterranean region as a whole is seismically active due to the convergence of the African and Eurasian tectonic plates. (AGENCIES)

SEOUL, Feb 3: North Korea today agreed to hold talks with South Korea on organising a rare reunion event for families separated by the 1950-53 Korean War, Seoul’s Unification Ministry said.
After days of silence following an initial proposal from Seoul last week, Pyongyang said it would be willing to participate in a meeting on Wednesday or Thursday at the border truce village of Panmunjom.
“We welcome that the North has finally come forward to discuss the reunion,” Unification Ministry spokesman Kim Eui-Do told reporters.
“Given the urgency of the matter, we will make preparations to hold the reunion as soon as possible,” Kim said, adding the ministry would notify Pyongyang which day it preferred for the Panmunjom meeting.
Millions of Korean families were left separated by the conflict that sealed the peninsula’s division.
Most family members have since died without ever meeting or talking to their relatives. Cross-border visits, along with postal and phone communications, are banned for ordinary citizens.
About 71,000 people — more than half aged over 80 — are on the South’s waiting list for a reunion opportunity.
Last week, South Korea proposed holding the event on February 17-21 at the North’s Mount Kumgang resort.
Around 100 people from each side would take part and, if it goes ahead, it would be the first such reunion since 2010.
Seoul had also called for immediate working-level talks to hammer out the logistical details, and some officials expressed frustration over the Lunar New Year weekend that the North was taking so long to respond.
A reunion was planned for last September but Pyongyang cancelled at the last minute. There are concerns it may do the same this time around, due to planned joint South Korea-US military drills likely to begin late this month. (AGENCIES)