U.S. lawmakers warn Japan on beef ban

U.S. farm-state senators frustrated with Japan over its ban on U.S. beef exports threatened a trade war Wednesday.

Along with leveling a barrage of rhetoric, the senators introduced a bill that would impose tariffs on Japanese imports unless the Asian nation lifts its nearly two-year-old ban on U.S. beef by the end of the year. Japan had slapped the ban on after a mad cow scare in 2003.

“I think we’re being played for a bunch of suckers,” said Sen. Jim Talent, a Missouri Republican. Sen. Max Baucus, a Montana Democrat, chose the word “chumps.”

Most of the senators supporting the bill are committed to free trade and said they hoped that the threat of sanctions would give U.S. trade negotiators leverage to force the Japanese government’s hand.

If the tariffs in the bill were imposed, prices for such popular Japanese imports as cars and electronics would rise, and the economic effects would be dire.

Japan had been the biggest overseas market for U.S. beef, accounting for about one-third of foreign sales. But it banned U.S. beef in December 2003 after a cow in Washington state was discovered to have bovine spongiform encephalopathy, commonly called mad cow disease. That cow was later discovered to be from Canada.

U.S., Japan reach agreement on Okinawa

Tokyo Japan and the United States reached a deal Wednesday to consolidate U.S. Marine airborne operations in Okinawa, resolving one of the thorniest issues of their strategic alliance and laying the groundwork for a broader realignment of America’s more than 37,000 troops stationed on Japanese soil.

The plan calls for the relocation of aviation operations from the Marine Corps Air Station at Futenma – located near a densely populated civilian area of Okinawa – to another American base on the island, according to officials from both countries.

“There was a sense of emergency that not reaching agreement on the issue, a central part of the U.S.-Japan relationship, would seriously damage relations,” Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura told reporters.

Anti-terror legislation advances in Britain

London Prime Minister Tony Blair’s government won a crucial parliamentary vote on sweeping new anti-terrorism legislation Wednesday, but faced a further fight over plans to lock up terror suspects for 90 days without charge.

Following a lengthy debate in the House of Commons, lawmakers voted 472-94 to back the Terror Bill.

The main opposition Conservative Party supported the bill, but warned it would seek to block the legislation at a later stage if the government did not rethink some of the proposals.

In the wake of July’s deadly attacks on London’s transit system, the government said it wanted to extend the maximum 14-day detention without charge for terror suspects to three months, outlaw attending terrorist training camps and make it an offense to glorify or encourage terrorism.

The bill also aimed to outlaw preparing for an act of terrorism, publishing or selling material that incites terrorism, and giving or receiving training in terrorist techniques – such as how to spread viruses, place bombs and cause a stampede in a crowd.

Mormon missionaries will leave Venezuela

Caracas, Venezuela The Mormon church, citing difficulties with the government of President Hugo Chavez in renewing visas or obtaining new ones, said Wednesday it is pulling its foreign missionaries out of Venezuela and reassigning them to other countries.

The decision comes nearly two months after the government said it was temporarily suspending the granting of visas for foreign missionaries and two weeks after Chavez said he was booting U.S.-based New Tribes Mission from the country, accusing it of links to the CIA.

The U.S. Embassy said 219 American Mormon missionaries left the country over the weekend.