The Wall Street Journal - December 3 2012, Literatura, Gazety, Magazyny
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Taking Aim
At China’s Internet
BUSINESS & FINANCE
Page 17
OPINION:
Obama’s
No-Growth
Problem
Page 11
ASIA EDITION
VOL. XXXVII NO. 66
MONDAY, DECEMBER 3, 2012
Egypt Court
Postpones
Key Ruling
Several Are Feared Dead in Japanese Highway Tunnel Collapse
B
Y
S
AM
D
AGHER
ago and tasked with drafting
the new constitution.
The court later issued a
statement saying it was sus-
pending its sessions until the
safety of its judges and per-
sonnel can be guaranteed.
“It is a very dark day in
the history of the Egyptian ju-
diciary,” said the statement.
The incident is only the
latest installment in Mr.
Morsi’s standoff with the judi-
ciary.
On Nov. 22, the Egyptian
leader issued an edict which
among other things shielded
all his decisions and the Isla-
mist-dominated panel draft-
ing the constitution known as
the Constituent Assembly
from all judicial review.
Then the assembly rushed
to approve a constitution in a
marathon session last week
despite a boycott by more
than a quarter of its members
representing Egyptian secular
groups and the churches.
The assembly’s chairman
handed Mr. Morsi the final
Please turn to page 16
CAIRO—President Moham-
med Morsi of Egypt and his
Islamist allies appeared to be
on a collision course with sec-
ular and liberal groups and
large segments of the popula-
tion after he set a Dec. 15 date
for a referendum on a contro-
versial constitution that has
polarized the country.
Barring dialogue or last-
minute compromise by either
camp, many see the current
impasse as one of the gravest
dangers facing Egypt’s demo-
cratic-transition process since
the toppling of the regime of
former strongman Hosni
Mubarak nearly two years ago
in one of the most closely
watched uprisings of the so-
called Arab Spring.
On Sunday, hundreds of Is-
lamist supporters of Mr.
Morsi besieged the Supreme
Constitutional Court building
in Cairo to prevent judges
scheduled to hear a case
about the legitimacy of a spe-
cial panel formed six months
European Pressphoto Agency
Japanese police found several bodies in the wreckage of a partial tunnel collapse on a major highway linking the cities of Nagoya and
Tokyo, local media reported Sunday, after concrete roof panels in a section of the 4.7-kilometer tunnel fell. Page 5
KFC Owner Hits Snag in China
B
Y
L
AURIE
B
URKITT
Yum Brands
Inc.’s share
price sank 9.9% Friday after
Chief Executive David Novak
warned that same-store sales
in China would drop 4% in the
fourth quarter, compared with
a jump of 21% the same pe-
riod a year earlier. Yum’s
stock is still up nearly 14%
year-to-date. A slowdown in
China would have a huge im-
pact on Yum, which generates
nearly half of its revenue in
the country.
At a shopping mall in Bei-
jing with KFC outlets and a
Pizza Hut, 28-year-old Liu
Weiwei chose to eat at
Hui
Lau Shan
, a Chinese outlet,
instead.
“This place has the best
desserts,” said Ms. Liu. “I ac-
tually only eat at KFC when
I’m at the airport, when there
are no other options.” Five
years ago she visited Yum’s
restaurants about three times
a month, but now she rarely
goes because she has many
other choices, she said.
Ms. Liu’s sentiment illus-
trates some of the problems
that Yum faces in China,
where its glory days—marked
by sales growth of 30%—are
Please turn to page 16
BEIJING—After years of
meteoric growth in China, the
U.S. company that owns Pizza
Hut and KFC is starting to
stumble in its single biggest
market as intense competition
and fast-food fatigue cause
Chinese consumers to lose
their
appetite
for
fried
chicken and pizza.
Inside
Like Late Nights? Try Being an Analyst in Hungary
iii
Nation’s Big Companies Release Results After Midnight
B
Y
V
ERONIKA
G
ULYAS
for analysts and financial
journalists in Hungary, where
the country’s biggest blue-
chip companies publish their
results in the wee hours, after
markets in New York
have closed and long
before they open
anywhere in Europe.
“I’m a night owl,
so I don’t mind stay-
ing up,” Mr. Gabler
said.
The hard part,
the 28-year-old said,
is getting out of bed
the next day.
That morning, he
grabbed a red-and-
black can of Hell, a caffeine-
laden Hungarian energy drink,
to fuel his workday.
OTP said it lets earnings
fly at one minute after mid-
night to comply with local
stock exchange rules that
such announcements be made
outside trading hours.
Releasing them so far out-
side trading hours is meant to
give analysts, report-
ers and investors
time to digest them
before reacting.
Hungary’s biggest
energy company, oil
producer
MOL
,and
pharmaceutical giant
Richter Gedeon
also
post their results
just after 12 a.m. lo-
cal time, which is 6
p.m. in New York.
That means late
nights in newsrooms and bro-
kerages.
Business newspapers try
to get the stories online in the
wee hours about the results of
Please turn to page 16
Salesforce +
BUDAPEST—As the clock
ticked toward midnight on a
recent night, stock analyst
Gergely Gabler sat sleepily in
his pajamas at the small desk
in his bedroom, waiting.
Then, just after 12, he
sprang into action, evaluating
the newly released earnings
report of Hungary’s largest
bank.
For the next two hours,
Mr. Gabler worked on a report
about
OTP Bank
’s perform-
ance for clients of his firm,
Hungarian brokerage
Equilor
Investments
, before catching
some shut eye, only to awake
about 3½ hours later so he
could be in his office to field
questions by 7 a.m.
Burning the midnight oil is
a painful quarterly tradition
Seoul sees North
Korea’s timing of its
next long-range rocket
launch as just the latest
attempt to influence
presidential elections in
South Korea, an effort
that is losing strength
with each try.
World News...............3
Oneoftheworld’slargest
jet engine manufacturers is building
customer communities with Salesforce
Gergely Gabler
salesforce.com/like
Bank of America backs
down on new fees.
Business..................19
© 2012 salesforce.com, inc. All rights reserved. Salesforce, the Salesforce Corporate logo, and others
are trademarks of salesforce.com, inc. Other trademarks may be held by their respective owners.
2
| Monday, December 3, 2012
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.
PAGE TWO
What’s News—
Inside
In Depth:
CBS’s king
of TV girds for digital
battle.
14-15
The Business:
What
Sandy can teach about
management.
21
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas waves in the West Bank city of Ramallah as Palestinians celebrate their successful bid for United Nations nonmember
observer status. The 193-nation U.N. General Assembly on Thursday overwhelmingly approved the de facto recognition of the sovereign state of Palestine.
iii
Business & Finance
mature phase that could erode its
U.S. labor-cost advantage over do-
mestic rivals.
19
publishing company that will be
split off from the media conglom-
erate’s entertainment assets.
19
a 30-member commission to in-
vestigate last week’s crackdown
on protesters at a copper mine.
4
n
Delta Air Lines
has approached
Singapore Airlines to discuss buy-
ing its 49% stake in British carrier
Virgin Atlantic.
WSJ.com
n
Car makers in India
had mixed
sales in November, with Maruti
Suzuki and Mahindra & Mahindra
posting growth, while Hyundai
and others recorded declines.
20
n
Bharti Infratel is seeking
up to
$828 million in what could be In-
dia’s biggest IPO in two years.
22
n
Taliban insurgents launched
an assault on a coalition base in
eastern Afghanistan, in an appar-
ent attempt to break through the
perimeter of the installation and
killing at least five Afghans.
9
n
Spanish bonds
are trading
strongly, leaving the country and
the euro zone in a holding pattern
that has reduced the need for a
bailout of the country.
24
n
Global suppliers
are seeking
out Africa’s low-cost, English-
speaking labor and ports.
18
n
A natural-gas tanker
is travel-
ing through the Arctic Ocean to
Asia, potentially opening a new
trade route.
17
n
Syrian warplanes
and artillery
blasted parts of Damascus, activ-
ists said, while in the central
province of Homs, a car bomb
near a mosque killed at least 15
people.
WSJ.com/World
n
The U.S. House approved
a bill
to expand a visa program for for-
eign students graduating from
U.S. universities with advanced
scientific and technical degrees.
7
iii
World-Wide
n
ECB policy maker
Christian
Noyer said the bank’s latest bond-
buying program has had a signifi-
cant effect in lowering borrowing
costs for euro-zone countries.
8
n
The Hong Kong IPO of PICC
drew lukewarm support, under-
scoring recent difficulties for the
city’s market for IPOs.
22
Markets:
KKR
struggles to crack
Japan’s deal club.
23
n
Singapore authorities
will de-
port 29 Chinese bus drivers and
press criminal charges against five
others for participating in a rare
protest over wages.
5
n
Toyota is offering
retirement
incentives to 2,000 U.S. manufac-
turing workers, a sign of a more
n
News Corp. plans to name
Wall
Street Journal Managing Editor
Robert Thomson as CEO of the
n
Myanmar’s government
ap-
pointed Aung San Suu Kyi to head
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THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.
Monday, December 3, 2012 |
3
WORLD NEWS
South Korea Dismisses
North’s Plan for Rocket
B
Y
E
VAN
R
AMSTAD
conservative party.
Kang Won-taek, a political scien-
tist at Seoul National University,
said South Koreans have become so
accustomed to the North’s propa-
ganda and saber-rattling steps, such
as rocket launches, that they no lon-
ger have much effect.
“The main focus of voters lies on
domestic issues,” Mr. Kang said.
“This missile test could make some
impact, but very limited.”
According to an analysis by the
South Korean government, the
North’s regime is averaging about
150 statements a month critical of
the South’s election and conserva-
tive party, about three times the
volume it produced in 2007, the last
presidential election year in the
South.
SEOUL—North Korea’s timing of
its next long-range rocket launch is
being seen in Seoul as another at-
tempt to influence the South Korean
presidential election two days later.
The North plans to launch a mul-
tistage rocket sometime from Dec.
10 to 22. That is also near the one-
year anniversary on Dec. 17 of the
death of dictator Kim Jong Il.
South Korea’s main presidential
candidates—Park Geun-hye of the
ruling New Frontier Party and Moon
Jae-in of the Democratic United
Party—on Sunday joined the South
Korean government and others
around the world in urging North
Korea to drop the plan.
Saturday’s announcement of the
launch plan confirmed reports by
intelligence analysts and indepen-
dent researchers who detected ac-
tivity at North Korea’s launch facil-
ity via satellite photographs in
recent weeks.
South Korean President Lee
Myung-bak, in an interview with
news agencies conducted Thursday
but released on Sunday, said North
Korea “has continuously tried to in-
tervene in our elections,” but that a
launch “wouldn’t have any huge im-
pact.”
North Korea said the rocket
would carry a satellite into space.
But other countries see Pyongyang
as engaged in an effort to develop
long-range missile capability in vio-
lation of United Nations sanctions.
Four previous such launches, the
latest in April, failed to reach space,
though North Korea claims three
were successful.
The U.S. State Department said a
launch would be a “highly provoca-
tive act” and a threat to security in
northeast Asia. “Devoting scarce re-
sources to the development of nu-
clear weapons and long-range mis-
siles will only further isolate and
impoverish North Korea,” spokes-
woman Victoria Nuland said in
Washington.
In announcing the launch, North
Korea called it ”true to the behests
of leader Kim Jong Il,” the former
dictator who died nearly a year ago.
It portrayed its launch in April
this year as a tribute to Kim Il Sung,
the founder of North Korea, father
of Kim Jong Il and grandfather of
current dictator Kim Jong Eun.
Praising the Kim family is a top
priority of the North’s state propa-
ganda apparatus.
But with billions of dollars in po-
tential aid at stake, influencing
South Koreans to support politicians
who will provide it with money is
also important.
For months, North Korea’s state
media has been issuing statements
that are critical of South Korea’s
conservative ruling party, in an ap-
parent effort to boost liberal politi-
cians who favor financial outreach
and diplomatic engagement with
Pyongyang.
On Sunday, a North Korean
newspaper wrote, “If the conserva-
tive regime keen on confrontation
with fellow countrymen is allowed
to stay in power, the North-South
relations will become worse.”
But the ratcheting up of tension
with South Korea and other coun-
tries would appear to undermine
North Korea’s goal by potentially
leading South Korean voters to fo-
cus on the more security-minded
—Min Sun Lee in Seoul
and Jay Solomon in Washington
contributed to this article.
A North Korean soldier stands in front of a rocket near Pyongyang in April.
4
| Monday, December 3, 2012
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.
WORLD NEWS: ASIA
Suu Kyi to Head Probe Into Crackdown
B
Y
J
AMES
H
OOKWAY
shape her evolving political role. It
could also be something of a poi-
soned chalice as a settlement pleas-
ing all sides could prove difficult.
Previously developed by Myan-
mar’s military and Canada’s
Ivanhoe
Mining
, state-run
China North In-
dustries
Corp. acquired the Cana-
dian company’s stake in 2010 and
made plans to radically expand the
scope of the project, likely displac-
ing 26 villages numbering tens of
thousands of people. It is a poten-
tially valuable cash cow for Myan-
mar’s military, which is jointly de-
veloping it through one of its
holding companies, at a time when
the powerful army has begun loos-
ening its grip on other parts of the
economy through a series of privati-
zations.
The mine is also a priority proj-
ect for resource-hungry China. Bei-
jing was angered by Mr. Thein Sein’s
decision to suspend a $3.7 billion
hydropower dam at Myitsone in
northern Myanmar following pro-
tests against the project from envi-
ronmentalists and political oppo-
nents, including Ms. Suu Kyi. Some
analysts suggest that Myanmar is
wary of further worsening relations
with China by blocking the mine,
even though the U.S. and Europe
have dropped many of their trade
sanctions against the country, pro-
viding an alternative to Chinese in-
vestment.
Police officials attempted to
ameliorate some of the damage
from last week’s clumsy crackdown
on protesters at the mine, in which
many of the injured protesters and
monks appeared to have suffered
wounds caused by incendiary de-
vices. The state-run New Light of
Myanmar newspaper reported the
local police commander San Yu
apologized to senior monks at a
special ceremony for the injuries in-
curred by members of the Buddhist
order.
Yet the spreading protests about
police treatment of Buddhist monks
are complicating the future of the
mine.IfMs.SuuKyicanfindaway
to balance the interests of Myan-
mar’s military, local villagers, and
China, she might well burnish her
own chances of contesting a presi-
dential election.
—Celine Fernandez in Kuala
Lumpur contributed to this article.
Myanmar’s government ap-
pointed Aung San Suu Kyi to head a
commission to investigate last
week’s bloody crackdown on pro-
testers at a copper mine, underscor-
ing how the Nobel Peace Prize win-
ner and former political prisoner is
emerging as an important player in
the resource-rich nation’s new polit-
ical order.
State-run television announced
Ms. Suu Kyi’s appointment Saturday
evening, and her expected leader-
ship will likely provide the probe
with the credibility it might other-
wise have lacked. President Thein
Sein created the 30-member com-
mission by special decree, and it
will also determine whether the
copper mine, which is jointly owned
by Myanmar’s military and a Chi-
nese arms manufacturer, should be
allowed to continue.
Ms. Suu Kyi, who hasn’t com-
mented on the appointment, visited
the site of the protests on Thursday
and Friday after riot police raided
the protest camps that have mush-
roomed around the mine at Let-
padaung, near Monywa, firing tear
gas and smoke bombs and injuring
more than 25 people, including
many Buddhist monks who had
joined the protest. She offered to
mediate between the mine’s opera-
tors and villagers who for several
months have been protesting a $1
billion expansion of the project,
complaining about how their land
was appropriated by Myanmar’s
previous military regime and the en-
vironmental damage it might cause.
Over the weekend, Buddhist
monks protested in major cities
such as Yangon and Mandalay
against the crackdown at the mine,
echoing the 2007 popular revolt
that was led in large part by mem-
bers of Myanmar’s influential Bud-
dhist clergy. At least one influential
monk, Ashin Gambira, who was ar-
rested for his role in the 2007 pro-
tests, was detained on Saturday, ac-
cording to his brother, although it
wasn’t immediately clear why he
had been detained.
Speaking Friday, though, Ms. Suu
Kyi urged protesters to be patient
and warned that the project might
have to be allowed to continue in
order to avoid unnerving foreign in-
Myanmar policemen move arrested protest leader Aung Soe into a car during a protest rally in Yangon on Sunday.
vestors at a time when this strategi-
cally placed Southeast Asian nation,
which is also known as Burma, is
trying to open up its economy to the
rest of the world. She told a crowd
of around 10,000 villagers near the
mine that Myanmar may have to re-
spect the contract the previous gov-
ernment signed with the state-run
company from China.
Ms. Suu Kyi’s remarks hinted at a
pragmatic streak in her character
that appears to have grown stronger
since she was elected to the coun-
try’s Parliament in a series of spe-
cial elections in April this year. Ms.
Suu Kyi, 67 years old, has since sig-
naled her own aspirations to run for
president in the next national elec-
tions in 2015. It is a remarkable turn
of events that underscores how
quickly Myanmar has changed since
the former military government re-
leased her from house arrest in
2010 and handed power to Mr.
Thein Sein’s nominally civilian gov-
ernment a few months later. For
much of the past quarter century,
Ms. Suu Kyi was a prisoner in her
own home.
But to even compete for Myan-
mar’s top job against potential can-
didates such as Mr. Thein Sein or
House Speaker Shwe Mann, Ms. Suu
Kyi requires a degree of support
from Myanmar’s generals. Among
other things, a quarter of the seats
in the legislature are reserved for
military officers, and she will need
their support if she is to overturn a
constitutional ban on spouses of
foreign nationals running for presi-
dent. Ms. Suu Kyi is the widow of
British academic Michael Aris, and
the couple has two children.
Myanmar analysts such as
Maung Zarni at the London School
of Economics say a rapprochement
between Ms. Suu Kyi and her former
captors is well under way, although
it is still far from clear whether the
military will consent to changing
the constitution to allow her to run
for president. “The army calls her
sister,” he says. “They see them-
selves as having the same father,”
Myanmar’s founding hero, Aung
San, who helped guide the country
to independence from Britain.
In recent months, Ms. Suu Kyi
appears to have been careful not to
ruffle the military’s feathers too se-
verely. Many of her supporters out-
side the country have been per-
plexed by her National League for
Democracy’s attitude to the sectar-
ian violence between minority eth-
nic-Rohingya Muslims and majority
Buddhists in western Rakhine State
that has killed more than 180 people
since June and forced around
100,000 people to flee their homes.
Myanmar’s government consid-
ers Rohingyas to be illegal immi-
grants from Bangladesh, while Ban-
gladesh doesn’t recognize the
800,000 strong group either, effec-
tively making them stateless. Ms.
Suu Kyi has said several times that
she “doesn’t know” if Rohingyas,
many of whom trace their genealogy
back several centuries in Myanmar,
should be granted citizenship. Her
deputies refuse to the use the term
“Rohingya” at all, preferring the
term “Bengali,” which emphasizes
the perceived foreignness of the Ro-
hingyas.
She also initially dropped her
party’s objections to parts of Myan-
mar’s military-drafted constitution
so she could be sworn in to Parlia-
ment earlier this year.
The mining controversy at
Monywa, though, represents a fresh
test for Ms. Suu Kyi and could help
AbeWouldKeepMumonMonetary Policy as Leader
B
Y
T
OKO
S
EKIGUCHI
sures to directly affect the stock
market were worth considering.
“As for monetary easing, buying
foreign bonds or, just as the Fed
does, taking action to directly im-
pact the stock market are options
that could be taken,” Mr. Abe said
without elaborating.
But the LDP leader said it was
up to the BOJ to decide on specific
policy steps, and that if he becomes
prime minister, he will refrain from
commenting on particular mea-
sures.
“I’m touching on policy mea-
sures as I am still an opposition
leader,” he said.
Mr. Abe’s party has a clear lead
over other parties in voter support
ahead of the election, suggesting a
return to office. Mr. Abe was prime
minister for a year from September
2006.
However, the opposition leader
has been toning down his more
drastic proposals since markets
started reacting, especially remarks
that seemed to question the extent
shared with the government, but it’s
important that the BOJ retain its in-
dependence over implementing pol-
icy measures.”
Friday’s comments, made during
a debate between 11 leaders of par-
ties contesting the election, are
seen as part of Mr. Abe’s transition
from rabble-rousing opposition
chief to responsible and dependable
politician fit to lead the nation.
Asked about his past comments on
pushing for BOJ purchases of con-
struction bonds, Mr. Abe raised his
voice and denied that he had ever
suggested the central bank should un-
derwrite government debt, as had
been reported in the press, though he
said debt-buying operations should be
considered.
Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda,
who has criticized Mr. Abe’s propos-
als as unrealistic and problematic
for infringing on the central bank’s
independence, said, “underwriting
or through an operation, the BOJ
should not be financing the govern-
ment.”
TOKYO—Japan’s main opposition
leader Shinzo Abe said Friday he
will stop commenting on the specif-
ics of monetary policy if he be-
comes prime minister next month,
as is indicated by opinion polls.
“I won’t comment on the [mone-
tary policy] methods if I become
prime minister,” Mr. Abe said dur-
ing a debate with other political
party leaders ahead of the Dec. 16
general election.
The Liberal Democratic Party
leader’s monetary policy proposals
in recent weeks have caused the
yen to weaken and Japanese stock
prices to rise, an indication of in-
creasing market expectations that
he will become Japan’s next pre-
mier and pile pressure on the
Bank of Japan to ease more ag-
gressively.
Touching again on monetary pol-
icy during the Friday debate, Mr.
Abe said the purchasing of foreign
bonds and monetary easing mea-
Mr. Abe touched again on Japan’s monetary policy during a debate Friday.
of the BOJ’s independence.
Last week, Mr. Abe told The Wall
Street Journal in an interview: “I
feel that the central bank’s indepen-
dence is vital.”
“The problem is that [in Japan]
it’s out of line with the global stan-
dard. Its policy target should be
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.
Monday, December 3, 2012 |
5
WORLD NEWS: ASIA
Singapore Plans to Deport
Chinese Drivers Over Strike
Several Are Feared Dead
In Japan Tunnel Collapse
B
Y
C
HESTER
D
AWSON
television.
Police found several people in a
van, all of whom are feared dead.
The accident trapped at least
three vehicles, one or more of which
caught
B
Y
C
HUN
H
AN
W
ONG
more drivers, a statement said.
Alex Au, a social activist at Tran-
sient Workers Count Too, a nongov-
ernmental organization champion-
ing the rights of migrant workers,
predicted that the response to the
strike will have a “chilling effect” on
organized labor, but “this issue [of
perceived labor exploitation] will
boil over again.”
“This issue illustrates an under-
lying stress in the system” heavily
dependent on foreign workers, many
of whom “come from societies
where it is culturally acceptable to
protest,” Mr. Au said.
The strike, involving drivers em-
ployed by state-controlled
SMRT
Corp., marked the first major job ac-
tion since 1986. Singapore law re-
quires workers in essential services,
including public transport, to give
14 days’ notice before striking. A
person holding an illegal strike can
be jailed for up to a year or be fined
as much as 2,000 Singapore dollars
($1,636), or both.
“While the SMRT bus drivers
may have had grievances, these
should have been raised through the
legal and proper means available,”
the ministries said in their joint
statement.
The drivers have complained of
poor dormitory conditions and of
being paid less than drivers from
Singapore or Malaysia. SMRT says it
doesn’t discriminate based on na-
tionality but hires drivers on vary-
ing terms.
Four of the charged men are in
custody and unavailable for com-
ment. It wasn’t clear Sunday if the
fifth man had been detained. Nor
was it clear whether the five men
have sought counsel or will be as-
signed legal representation by the
state. The Attorney General’s office
declined to comment.
Singapore has long taken a tough
stance on industrial action to pro-
tect its image as a good place to do
business. There is no minimum
wage, and labor rules prevent
unions from providing foreigners
with full representative services.
Foreigners comprise about a
third of Singapore’s labor force.
TOKYO—Japanese police on Sun-
day found several bodies in the
wreckage of a partial tunnel collapse
on a major highway linking the cities
of Nagoya and Tokyo, according to
local media reports.
Concrete roof panels in a section
of the 4.7-kilometer Sasago tunnel
collapsed around 8 a.m. local time on
Sunday, closing sections of the major
traffic artery in both directions. The
tunnel is located about 80 kilometers
west of Tokyo.
Japanese television broadcast
grainy black-and-white footage from
police cameras inside the tunnel
showing large sections of the 20-cen-
timeter thick concrete panels on the
ground.
“We have no idea what the cause
was but we have begun an investiga-
tion into it,” said Takekazu Kaneko,
chief executive of Central Nippon Ex-
pressway Co., the government-owned
entity that operates the expressway.
Mr. Kaneko made his remarks at a
news conference at the company’s
headquarters in Nagoya, excerpts of
which were broadcast on Japanese
SINGAPORE—Singapore authori-
ties will deport 29 Chinese bus driv-
ers and press criminal charges
against five others for participating
in a rare protest over wages, the
city-state’s first strike in 26 years.
The walkout last week by 171
public bus drivers hired from China
underscored tensions over Singa-
pore’s reliance on foreign labor and
its treatment of low-skilled migrant
workers and prompted Beijing to ex-
press concern over the arrests of its
citizens.
The home affairs and manpower
ministries said Saturday that an un-
identified man will be prosecuted
Monday under a law prohibiting
workers from initiating, continuing
or furthering an illegal strike. Four
men were charged last week for al-
legedly instigating the walkout.
Work permits for 29 other driv-
ers have been revoked, authorities
said, enabling their deportation.
They weren’t identified. Authorities
don’t expect to charge or deport
fire, Japanese media re-
ported.
Two women who suffered injuries
were taken to the hospital, one of
whom had been in a van with five
others, the reports said.
Concrete roof panels in a
section of the 4.7-
kilometer collapsed
around 8 a.m. Sunday.
Seven others are reported miss-
ing, Kyodo News reported. A truck
company said it had been contacted
by one of its drivers who was
trapped in the wreckage, national
broadcaster NHK said.
A posting on Central Nippon Ex-
pressway’s official Japanese website
said it was unclear when the closed
sections of the road would reopen.
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