Samsung Seeks iPhone 4S Sales Ban in Japan, Australia

Samsung Electronics Co. said it is seeking to stop the sale of Apple Inc.'s new iPhone 4S in Japan and Australia, further ramping up a legal clash with the U.S. company after a series of setbacks in courts around the world in recent days.

The Korean company said it filed on Monday for preliminary injunctions in the Tokyo District Court and in the New South Wales Registry, Australia, to stop the sale of iPhone 4S smartphones in both countries. Samsung also asked the Japanese court to stop the sale of Apple's iPhone 4 and iPad 2 devices.

The filing in Japan cites infringements in technology and user interface patents, while in Australia Samsung cited patents related to wireless telecommunications standards.

The fresh legal action comes after key rulings in the sprawling legal dispute went against Samsung last week, and shows how critical the smartphone and tablet PC business has become to Samsung. The Korean giant is widely expected to have overtaken Apple in global smartphone sales in the third quarter.

"We are now counterattacking Apple again," said James Chung, a spokesman at Samsung Electronics.

Last Thursday, Apple won a victory in its global patent battle with Samsung when a judge in Australia issued a temporary injunction blocking the South Korean company from selling its Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet computer there—though Friday the judge rejected Apple's attempt to broaden the judgment so as to restrict Samsung's launching of new tablets and require it to give Apple advance notice of new products.

Also Friday, a Dutch court ruled against Samsung's claim that Apple violated its third-generation mobile network technology patents and rejected its call for a ban on Apple's products in the Netherlands.

The legal dispute started in April when Apple accused Samsung of copying key design elements in smartphones and tablets.

Samsung is also seeking to block sales of the iPhone 4S in Italy and France in separate legal action. The device went on sale in many markets last week.

Powerful Typhoon Roke hits Japan

A powerful typhoon has struck disaster-ravaged Japan, bringing heavy rains and floods that have killed four people.

Typhoon Roke is on course to hit Fukushima, where engineers are still struggling to bring a nuclear plant under control after the March tsunami.

There are concerns that rain could force radioactive water into the sea.

Across Japan more than a million people were urged to evacuate their homes; an advisory was later lifted in one area but 330,000 people remain at risk.

The typhoon made landfall on Wednesday afternoon (0500GMT), scouring its way up the main island of Honshu, bringing high winds and torrential rain.

The storm is tracking a path across Tokyo towards Fukushima prefecture and is then expected to travel up along the north-east coast, which was battered by the 11 March earthquake and tsunami.

Tokyo says pools of radioactive water remain at the Fukushima nuclear site, and there is concern that a heavy downpour could cause them to overflow into the sea or groundwater.

Four people have been found dead after heavy rain and flooding in central and western Japan due to the storm's approach.

Two people are missing in the central prefecture of Gifu, including a nine-year-old boy.

Several motorways have been closed and hundreds of flights cancelled. Car maker Toyota is suspending production at 11 of its 15 factories.

Japan's Meteorological Agency has urged "the highest level of caution be used because of the heavy rain, strong wind, and high waves."

The agency has warned of downpours over a wide area of the country on Wednesday, saying some places could be deluged by as much as 50mm of rain in an hour.

This is the second time in less than a month that Japan is being lashed by a typhoon. Talas ripped through the west of the country, leaving about 90 people dead or missing.

Japan PM to resign, successor race wide open

The race to pick Japan's sixth leader in five years was wide open on Friday after a scandal-tainted party powerbroker looked likely to refuse to back the most popular candidate just days before a vote.

Prime Minister Naoto Kan, who came under fire for his response to the massive March tsunami and the radiation crisis it triggered, confirmed his intention to step down at a gathering of ruling Democratic Party of Japan lawmakers, clearing the way for the party to pick a new leader on Monday.

"In a severe environment, I did what I should have done," Kan told party MPs after resigning as party head. He added he would work to achieve his vision of a society that does not rely on nuclear power.

His successor faces huge challenges, including a strong yen seen as a threat to the export-reliant economy, rebuilding from the devastation of the March disasters, ending the radiation crisis at a crippled nuclear plant, forging a new energy policy, and curbing huge public debt while funding the bulging social welfare costs of an ageing society.

Whether and when to raise taxes to curb a public debt already twice the size of Japan's $5 trillion economy is a focus of debate in the leadership race, but any decision by Ozawa on who to back is seen as likely to be decided more by his hopes of boosting his clout than by policy positions.

It was unclear if Ozawa, who heads the DPJ's biggest group despite suspension of his party membership over a funding scandal, would back an existing candidate such as trade minister Banri Kaieda or seek a new contender to support.

There is even speculation Ozawa might back Finance Minister Yoshihiko Noda, the most fiscally conservative of the current contenders.

Ozawa long ago proposed raising the sales tax to fund social welfare costs but in recent years has promoted populist policies to give consumers more spending power.

Most other candidates agree on the need to curb debt but are cautious about the timing of a sales tax hike and oppose higher levies for rebuilding from the March disasters.

"I've known Mr. Ozawa for 43 years and he has never acted based on policies," ruling party elder Kozo Watanabe told Reuters in a recent interview.

But in a sign of how divided the party has become, the Yomiuri quoted a source close to Ozawa as saying: "We definitely cannot trust Mr. Maehara."

Maehara promises to focus economic policy on promoting growth and beating deflation and is the most popular with voters among seven contenders jostling for the nation's top job.

But only DPJ lawmakers can vote in the Aug. 29 party leadership race, the winner of which becomes premier because of the party's majority in parliament's lower house. Should no candidate win a first-round party vote, a run-off will be held between the top two contenders.

DPJ voter support has sunk as it struggled to implement policies in the face of internal feuds and an opposition able to block bills in the upper house.

Maehara and Noda have both floated the idea of a "grand coalition" with the main opposition Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and its former partner, the New Komeito party, to break the legislative impasse. But both parties have been cool to the idea.

Kan pledged in June to step down but had not specified when. He confirmed his intention to resign on Friday after parliament's upper house enacted two key bills -- one to let the government issue more debt and another to promote renewable energy.

Asian Markets Rally After U.S. Debt Deal

Asian financial markets heaved a sigh of relief Monday over the last-minute agreement in Washington to raise the U.S. debt limit, shrugging off for now the lingering concerns about longer-term global growth prospects.

Stock markets rallied across the region on news that top U.S. policy makers had reached the framework for a budget deal that will clear the way for an increase in the U.S. government’s borrowing limit and could help avert a default.

The key indexes in Japan and South Korea jumped 1.3 percent in early trading and picked up steam as the deal was announced by President Barack Obama.

By early afternoon, the Nikkei 225 was up 2 percent, with investors also encouraged by the Japanese currency’s fall against the U.S. dollar after the debt deal.

The U.S. debt woes had undermined the dollar’s value in international currency markets in recent weeks, especially against the yen, which was bad for Japanese exporters, as a strong yen makes their goods more expensive for shoppers overseas.

 On today in Tokyo, the dollar bought 77.40 yen, compared to 76.75 yen late Friday in New York.

Echoing the general sense of guarded optimism overseas, Yukio Edano, Japan’s chief cabinet secretary, said the country welcomed the agreement and hoped that it would help stabilize the markets.

Also helping market sentiment was a fresh sign that the Chinese economy may not be slowing as rapidly as feared.

Elsewhere in the region, the Kospi in South Korea gained 1.8 percent, and the benchmark index in Australia jumped 2.1 percent.

In Singapore, the Straits Times index rose 0.6 percent and in Hong Kong, the Hang Seng rose 1.5 percent by early afternoon. In mainland China, the Shanghai composite edged up 0.2 percent.

Wall Street, too, appeared set to recoup some of the past week’s losses, with S.&P. 500 stock futures 1.5 percent higher.

Gold, which has struck multiple record highs recently amid the uncertainty of the past weeks, fell nearly 1 percent to $1,615 per ounce. Oil rose about $1, to $97 a barrel.

Japan Nuclear Leak: Radioactive Water Continues Pouring Into The Sea

Engineers pinned their hopes on chemicals, sawdust and shredded newspaper to stop highly radioactive water pouring into the ocean from Japan’s tsunami-ravaged nuclear plant Sunday as officials said it will take several months to bring the crisis under control, the first time they have provided a timetable.

Concrete already failed to stop the tainted water spewing from a crack in a maintenance pit, and the new mixture did not appear to be working either, but engineers said they were not abandoning it.

Experts estimate that about 7 tons an hour of radioactive water is escaping the pit. Safety officials have said that the water, which appears to be coming from the damaged No. 2 reactor at Fukushima Daiichi, contains one million Becquerels per liter of iodine 131, or about 10,000 times levels normally found in water at a nuclear facility.

The Fukushima Da-ichi plant has been leaking radioactivity since the March 11 tsunami carved a path of destruction along Japan’s northeastern coast, killing as many as 25,000 people and knocking out key cooling systems that kept it from overheating. People living within 12 miles (20 kilometers) of the plant have been forced to abandon their homes.

The government said Sunday it will be several months before the radiation stops and permanent cooling systems are restored. Even after that happens, there will be years of work ahead to clean up the area around the complex and figure out what to do with it.

“It would take a few months until we finally get things under control and have a better idea about the future,” said Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency spokesman Hidehiko Nishiyama. “We’ll face a crucial turning point within the next few months, but that is not the end.”

His agency said the timetable is based on the first step, pumping radioactive water into tanks, being completed quickly and the second, restoring cooling systems, being done within a matter of weeks or months.

Every day brings some new problem at the plant, where workers have often been forced to retreat from repair efforts because of high radiation levels. On Sunday, plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. announced it had found the bodies of two workers missing since the tsunami.

Radiation, debris and explosions kept workers from finding them until Wednesday, and then the announcement was delayed several days out of respect for their families.

TEPCO officials said they believed the workers ran down to a basement to check equipment after the magnitude-9.0 earthquake that preceded the tsunami. They were there when the massive wave swept over the plant.

“It pains us to have lost these two young workers who were trying to protect the power plant amid the earthquake and tsunami,” TEPCO Chairman Tsunehisa Katsumata said in a statement.

On Saturday, workers discovered an 8-inch (20-centimeter) crack in a maintenance pit at the plant and said they believe water from it may be the source of some of the high levels of radioactive iodine that have been found in the ocean for more than a week.

This is the first time they have found radioactive water leaking directly into the sea. A picture released by TEPCO shows water shooting some distance away from a wall and splashing into the ocean, though the amount is not clear. No other cracks have been found.

The radioactive water dissipates quickly in the ocean but could be dangerous to workers at the plant.

Engineers tried to seal the crack with concrete Saturday, but that effort failed.

So on Sunday they went farther up the system and injected sawdust, three garbage bags of shredded newspaper and a polymer – similar to one used to absorb liquid in diapers – that can expand to 50 times its normal size when combined with water.

The polymer mix in the passageway leading to the pit had not stopped the leak by Sunday night, but it also had not leaked out of the crack along with the water, so engineers were stirring it in an attempt to get it to expand. They expected to know by Monday morning if it would work.

Meanwhile, tens of thousands of people are still living in shelters, 200,000 households do not have water, and 170,000 do not have electricity.

Running water was just restored in the port city of Kesennuma on Saturday, and residents lined up Sunday to see a dentist who had flown in from the country’s far north to offer his services. Many were elderly and complaining of problems with their dentures.

Overhead and throughout the coastal region, helicopters and planes roared by as U.S. and Japanese forces finished their all-out search for bodies.

The effort, which ended Sunday, is probably the final hope for retrieving the dead, though limited operations may continue. It has turned up nearly 50 bodies in the past two days.