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OTTAWA

The idea that Japan would ever dump its $900 billion holdings of U.S. Treasurys, the second largest foreign ownership after China, has long been just that _ an idea never seriously entertained.

The long-standing argument paints a horrific picture of the consequences: The dollar would crash, world markets would be sent into a tailspin and the post-World War II military and political alliance between the U.S. and Japan would be shaken.

But after Washington’s credit rating was downgraded for the first time ever earlier this month _ from AAA to AA+ by Standard & Poor’s _ some daring advocates are voicing that taboo idea: Why not sell Treasurys?

Those playing devil’s advocate aren’t Japan’s mainstream policymakers by any means. But they aren’t totally fringe either.

“The holdings translate to 1 million yen ($13,000) per Japanese taking this risk in shouldering U.S. debt, all without their fully being aware of it,” said Kenji Nakanishi, a lawmaker in a new opposition party that made significant gains in the last election.

Nakanishi told The Associated Press that Japan shouldn’t sell all its holdings at once, but should reduce them by about 10 trillion yen ($130 billion) each year, and earmark some of that money for recovery spending in northeastern Japan, which was devastated by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami.

A simple explanation to Washington that the move won’t change the U.S.-Japan political and defense alliance should be enough, according to Nakanishi. It alarms Nakanishi that the government is trying to raise taxes to fix its deficit and finance the earthquake recovery, a move he fears would further squeeze the Japanese economy.

Views like Nakanishi’s may be winning some acceptance. No one expects them to be acted upon immediately.

The Japanese government and ruling party officials have repeatedly said Japan won’t sell U.S. bonds, and instead will keep buying them.

The common wisdom is that a weak dollar would prove devastating to the Japanese economy by making it more difficult for Toyota Motor Corp., Sony Corp. and other pillars of corporate Japan to sell their goods overseas.

Peter Schiff, chief executive of Euro Pacific Capital, a New York-based investment company, said the current accumulation of debt by the U.S. government is unsustainable.

“The more money the world lends to America today, the more money they’re going to have to lend tomorrow,” he said in a telephone interview. “It’s a giant Ponzi scheme. Nobody is ever going to get their money back.”

Japan would be venturing into untested territory if it decided to reduce Treasury holdings.

In 1997, mere musing by then Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto about selling Treasurys set off a Wall Street plunge until Japanese officials quickly jumped in for damage control and promised Japan had no such plans.

But Naoto Amaki, a writer and former government bureaucrat, thinks the time is ripe to start thinking the unthinkable.

Amaki has long advocated reducing Treasury holdings, but is only recently growing optimistic that others may finally see how his view may be good for Japan.

Japan, with its towering public debt, is in no position to help finance America’s deficit, especially after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, he said in a recent blog.

“Japan’s finances were already in serious trouble. Now, we are literally being backed into a crisis of no return,” Amaki said.

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Virginia and Florida are suing the Bank of New York Mellon over the institution’s handling of both states’ pension funds.

The Virginia lawsuit filed Thursday seeks $120 million in damages. It also seeks $811.6 million in civil penalties.

Florida also is seeking damages and civil penalties.

The Bank of New York Mellon holds about $54 billion in funds for the Virginia Retirement System. Florida’s system is worth some $120 billion.

Both lawsuits accuse the bank of overcharging those pension funds on foreign currency transactions.

The bank said in a statement that the lawsuits are unwarranted, and that the defendants will fight the claims in court.

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China’s state news agency says 10 families of the victims of a high-speed train crash have agreed to accept compensation from the government.

Xinhua News Agency reported Saturday that 10 families will receive about $142,000 each for their relatives who died in a train accident in the eastern city of Wenzhou that killed 40 and left more than 190 injured.

Public anger toward the government over safety concerns has grown after a high-speed train rammed into another a week ago.

In the latest attempt to assuage public anger, authorities nearly doubled the amount of compensation for each victim this week from an initial $78,000 to $142,000.

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Riot police in Bahrain fired tear gas and stun grenades Thursday to disperse thousands of opposition supporters gathered near the square that was the epicenter of the nation’s Shiite-led demonstrations earlier this year, an activist said.

The violence is a setback to efforts by the tiny island’s Sunni rulers trying to open reconciliation talks with the Shiite opposition in the Gulf kingdom.

Activist Nabeel Rajab said the protesters at Manama’s Pearl Square chanted: “Down, down Hamad” _ a reference to the Bahraini monarch. They also demanded that all demonstrators, opposition leaders and activists, detained during the deadly crackdown on the Shiite-led campaign for political freedom and greater rights, be released.

No injuries were immediately reported during Thursday’s demonstration.

The violence came a day after Bahrain’s King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa announced the creation of an independent commission that will investigate allegations that protesters’ rights were violated during the anti-government demonstrations that erupted in February.

The announcement was an apparent effort by the Sunni monarch to draw opposition groups into the government-sponsored talks, set to begin on Saturday.

Washington has encouraged dialogue in the island nation, home to the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet, and had urged the monarchy to meet some of the opposition’s demands.

But the king’s appeal for dialogue got a cool reception from opposition groups. The leaders of the biggest Shiite party, Al Wefaq, have not yet decided whether they will join the talks.

Reports by Bahrain’s rights groups that another protester died on Thursday as a result of injuries he sustained during the unrest could further erode Wefaq’s appetite for reconciliation talks with the monarchy.

The death of 30-year-old protester Majid Ahmed Mohammed brings to 32 the number of those killed since February, when Bahrain’s Shiites _ inspired by uprisings elsewhere in the Middle East _ started a campaign to end the Sunni minority’s hold on power. Four people have died in custody.

Bahrain’s Health Ministry confirmed Mohammed’s death in a brief statement, which said he died Thursday morning in a military hospital.

In another move to draw the reluctant Al Wefaq into the talks, authorities on Thursday halted bringing anti-government protesters to trial at a special tribunal with military prosecutors and transferred the cases to civilian courts, a lawyer said guaranteed high risk personal loans. The practice has been criticized as unfair by rights activists and the Gulf kingdom’s Western allies.

The special tribunal was set up in March, when Bahrain’s Sunni rulers imposed martial law to help quash protests by Shiites demanding political freedoms and greater rights. The trials of dozens of opposition figures, human rights activists and Shiite professionals continued even after the emergency laws were lifted earlier this month.

A lawyer for a doctor who is among 47 health professionals on trial after they treated injured protesters said the proceedings have been moved to civilian courts. The medical staff are charged with participating in an effort to topple Bahrain’s monarchy.

A hearing in the case of 20 doctors set for Thursday was canceled, the lawyer said, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of jeopardizing clients in custody.

In his speech Wednesday, the king said Bahrain is committed to reform and respecting human rights. But he accused the protesters of pushing the country into a “state of chaos” with the street marches and sit-ins during the turmoil.

The king said the government will not interfere in the commission’s probe into what he called the “unfortunate events” of February and March. The commission is to report its findings by Oct. 30.

The chairman of the five-member international panel, Mahmoud Cherif Bassiouni, on Thursday lauded the setting up of the commission.

“It is an important and a historic decision for an Arab Muslim country that has gone through a difficult time to have an independent investigation into what happened, irrespective of where the chips might fall,” Bassiouni told The Associated Press over the telephone.

U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay, who has repeatedly spoken out about accusations of abuse by Bahraini authorities, welcomed the formation of the commission and called it a “major development in Bahrain” during a news conference in Geneva on Thursday.

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Greece’s opposition leader wasn’t invited to Thursday’s European Union summit but he became its hapless star.

Antonis Samaras wants to block spending cuts, tax increases and economic reforms that Greece has to approve to win more loans next month and avoid what some fear would be economic catastrophe.

Samaras came to Brussels for a meeting on the sidelines of the summit and pushed other European conservative leaders to back a “corrected” version of the plan.

But he swiftly came under fire from the leaders of Germany, Netherlands and Sweden _ in an unusual case of collective meddling by EU leaders in a member country’s domestic politics.

EU leaders have been struggling for more than a year to keep Greece’s debt woes from bringing the rest of the eurozone down, and some appear to be losing patience.

Germany’s Angela Merkel said Samaras’ conservative party _ which was in power for years before rival Socialists took over and acknowledged crushing debt problems _ should take its “historical responsibility.”

Sweden’s Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt said: “It is very important that no Greek political leader tells the Greek people that they have a shortcut.”

Samaras acknowledged that he came under pressure Thursday by other European conservative leaders to lift his objections to the bailout agreement. But it’s unclear how much they chipped away at his resolve.

“European leaders listen to our view. Some agreed with our position, but most stuck to their own positions,” Samaras told Greek state-run NET television. “I explained to them that we cannot give our backing to a mistake.”

Samaras, a U.S.-educated economist, is a controversial figure in Greek politics, too.

He spent years in political exile after forming a breakaway party in the early 1990s that caused a damaging split in the conservative electorate.

A few months after he was elected leader of the New Democracy party, he expelled his predecessor after she voted for last year’s international rescue package for Greece.

Without the next euro12 billion ($17 billion) installment of its existing euro110 billion bailout, Greece will default on its massive debt my mid-July. The country is also negotiating a second rescue package as it remains stuck in recession and locked out of international debt markets.

Samaras’ party has stubbornly refused to back Socialist Prime Minister George Papandreou over the bailout program, arguing that its excessive reliance of tax hikes is counterproductive and locking Greece’s economy in recession.

Surprise talks with Papandreou this month to form a grand coalition government collapsed. Samaras’ party recently took a slim lead in opinion polls, after trailing for three years.

As a result, Samaras is demanding early elections.

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Hundreds of new website suffixes should begin appearing by late next year after the organization that oversees the Internet address system voted Monday to greatly expand domain names.

The new domains could be categorized by subjects including industry, geography and ethnicity and include Arabic, Chinese and other scripts, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers said at a meeting in Singapore.

“This is the start of a whole new phase for the internet,” said Peter Dengate Thrush, chairman of ICANN’s board of directors. “Unless there is a good reason to restrain it, innovation should be allowed to run free No teletrack payday loans.”

ICANN’s decision culminates six years of negotiations and is the biggest change to the domain name system since .com was introduced 26 years ago.

ICANN will receive applications for new domain names _ the fee is $185,000 and the form is 360 pages _ for 90 days beginning January 12.

ICANN said in a statement that it will embark on a global communications program to raise awareness of the opportunities to new domain names.

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ST. LOUIS

Russia promised Friday to lift its blanket ban on European vegetables once the European Union provides documented proof of their safety, and voiced hope that it could join the World Trade Organization this year after nearly 20 years of talks.

Russia has banned all fresh vegetable imports from the EU due to the E. coli outbreak that has killed 29 people and sickened 2,900 others. The EU has called the Russian ban disproportionate, and the controversy has clouded Russia’s WTO accession talks.

Speaking after a summit with an array of top EU officials in the Volga River city of Nizhny Novgorod, 400 kilometers (250 miles) east of Moscow, Russia’s President Dmitry Medvedev said the country will be ready to lift the ban after receiving the safety certificates from the EU.

“We are ready to resume the shipments under guarantees of the EU authorities,” Medvedev said at a news conference.

European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said the EU will send a form for issuing such certificates to Russia in the next few days.

“Our teams have agreed that the ban on vegetables from the EU will be lifted,” Barroso said. “The system of the certification of the vegetables will be put in place without any delay.”

Russian officials had said before the summit the ban will only be lifted once the EU determines what caused the outbreak and how the bacteria spread.

Despite the expressions of hope over the lifting of the ban, there’s still uncertainty as to when it will actually be done.

Gennady Onishchenko, Russia’s top sanitary official who attended Friday’s summit, wouldn’t say when the ban could be lifted, signaling that it could take longer than just a few days.

“The ball is at their court,” he told The Associated Press. “Everything depends on how hard they (the EU) try.”

Onishchenko said the EU has agreed to provide Russia with safety certificates for specific vegetables from individual countries.

Vegetable imports from EU countries last year accounted for nearly a quarter of all Russian vegetable imports, or 620,000 tons, Russian Agriculture Minister Yelena Skrynnik said this week.

Despite seeming benefits for local producers, Russia is paying a high price for the ban as officials warn it will likely fuel inflation, which is already running at an annual rate of 9.6 percent.

The dispute over the vegetable ban has also affected WTO talks, though Medvedev said Russia hopes to join the organization that sets rules for international trade by the end of the year payday loans for bad credit.

“The chances for that are high, and it will largely depend on our ability to understand each other,” he said, adding that Russia hopes to conclude the WTO talks with the EU within a month.

Barroso was more cautious, saying Russia and the EU need to continue a dialogue on a host of trade issues to achieve that goal.

“We believe that Russia’s WTO accession is still possible this year,” Barroso said.

He added that Russia and the EU would be negotiating in the coming weeks to deal with issues like Russia’s quotas on meat and dairy exports, sanitary control and the investment regime for the car industry in Russia.

Russian Economic Development Minister Elvira Nabiullina told reporters that Russia and the EU were hoping to reach a final agreement before the end of July.

Russia is by far the largest economy still outside the WTO, which regulates trade between its 153 member states, despite being in talks to join since 1993.

Medvedev said that Russia “is sick of ” 18 years of talks and described the remaining differences as insignificant.

“Russia needs to be a member of the WTO, but to be honest our partners also need it,” Medvedev said.

Medvedev said Russia also expects the EU to revise its energy market regulations that Moscow considers discriminatory against Russian energy supplies.

He also used the occasion to push for visa-free travel between Russia and the EU.

Relations between the two have been lukewarm over the past few years and on the summit’s eve, the European Parliament passed a resolution outlining conditions for better EU-Russia ties.

It urged Moscow to do more to protect basic human rights by ending “politically motivated court decisions,” remove curbs on press freedom and freedom of assembly and pull troops out of Georgia.

EU President Herman Van Rompuy told reporters after Friday’s talks that Europe is still concerned about the violations of human rights in Russia “despite the personal engagement and initiatives of the (Russian) president.”

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A strong new earthquake rattled Japan’s northeast Monday as the government urged more people living near a tsunami-crippled nuclear plant to leave, citing concerns about long-term health risks from radiation.

The magnitude 7.0 aftershock came just hours after people bowed their heads and wept in somber ceremonies to mark a month since a massive earthquake and tsunami that killed up to 25,000 people and set off a crisis of radiation leaks at the nuclear plant by knocking out its cooling systems.

“Even after a month, I still cry when I watch the news,” said Marina Seito, 19, a student at a junior college who recalled being in a basement restaurant in Sendai when the original 9.0-magnitude earthquake hit on March 11. Plates fell and parts of the ceiling crashed down around her.

Officials said Monday’s aftershock did not endanger operations at the tsunami-flooded Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear complex, where power was cut by the aftershock but quickly restored. The epicenter was just inland and about 100 miles (160 kilometers) north of Tokyo.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano told reporters that residents of five more communities, some of them more than 20 miles (30 kilometers) from the plant, were urged to evacuate within a month because of high levels of radiation. People living in a 12-mile (20-kilometer) radius around the plant already have been evacuated.

“This is not an emergency measure that people have to evacuate immediately,” he said. “We have decided this measure based on long-term health risks.”

Edano sounded a grave note, acknowledging that “the nuclear accident has not stabilized” and that “we cannot deny the possibility the situation could get worse.”

The latest quake, the second major aftershock in less than a week, spooked people yet again in a disaster-weary northeastern Japan. Customers in a large electronics store in Sendai screamed and ran outside and mothers grabbed their children, but there were no immediate reports of more damage or injuries.

Japanese officials said the quake was a 7.0 magnitude, but the U.S. Geological Survey said it measured magnitude 6.6.

With workers still far from bringing the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant under control, the bodies of thousands of tsunami victims yet to be found and more than 150,000 people living in shelters, there was little time Monday for reflection on Japan’s worst disaster since World War II.

People in hard-hit towns gathered for ceremonies at 2:46 p.m., the exact moment of the massive quake a month earlier.

“My chest has been ripped open by the suffering and pain that this disaster has caused the people of our prefecture,” said Yuhei Sato, the governor of Fukushima, which saw its coastal areas devastated by the tsunami and is home to the damaged plant at the center of the nuclear crisis. “I have no words to express my sorrow.”

In a devastated coastal neighborhood in the city of Natori, three dozen firemen and soldiers removed their hats and helmets and joined hands atop a small hill that has become a memorial for the dead. Earlier, four monks in pointed hats rang a prayer bell there as they chanted for those killed bad credit payday advance.

The noisy clatter of construction equipment ceased briefly as crane operators stood outside their vehicles and bowed their heads.

In the industrial town of Kamaishi, Iwate Gov. Takuya Tasso led a moment of commemoration as a loud siren rang through a high school gymnasium being used as a shelter. He bowed while people who have lived there since the tsunami kneeled on makeshift futons, bowed their heads and clasped their hands.

The school’s students will return to classes Tuesday even though 129 people are living in their gym. Some, like 16-year-old Keisuke Shirato, wore their baseball uniforms for Monday’s ceremony. Shirato’s family was not affected by the tsunami, but about half of his teammates lost their homes.

“A new school year starts tomorrow,” Shirato said. “Hopefully that will help give people hope and allow them to look toward a new start.”

The earthquake and tsunami flattened communities along hundreds of miles (kilometers) of coastline, causing what the government estimates could be as much as $310 billion in damage. About 250,000 are without electricity, although some of them because of the latest two quakes Monday and last Thursday.

Adding to the misery is radiation spewing from the Fukushima Dai-ichi complex, 140 miles (220 kilometers) northeast of Tokyo. The 70,000 to 80,000 people who lived within 12 miles (20 kilometers) of the plant must stay away from their homes indefinitely.

“We have no future plans. We can’t even start to think about it because we don’t know how long this will last or how long we will have to stay in these shelters,” said Atsushi Yanai, a 55-year-old construction worker. The tsunami spared his home, but he has to live in a shelter anyway because it is in the evacuation zone.

Plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. said its president, Masataka Shimizu, went to Fukushima prefecture Monday to relay his gratitude and apologies. Shimizu recently spent eight days in the hospital with dizziness and high blood pressure, but has since returned to work.

Shimizu told reporters in Fukushima that people who live near the plant are “suffering physically and mentally due to the nuclear radiation leak accident,”

“We sincerely apologize for this,” he said.

At TEPCO headquarters in Tokyo, hundreds of employees bowed their heads for a moment of silence at 2:46.

Japan’s government marked the one-month period by putting an ad in newspapers in China, South Korea, Russia, France, the United Kingdom and the United States _ a letter from Prime Minister Naoto Kan thanking people for the outpouring of support that followed the tsunami. The Red Cross alone said it has collected $107 million (9.1 billion yen) from overseas.

Kan described the outpouring as “kizuna,” the bond of friendship.

“We deeply appreciate the kizuna our friends from around the world have shown and I want to thank every nation, entity, and you personally, from the bottom of my heart.”

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