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The rules governing air traffic over New York’s Hudson River need to be rewritten to prevent another mishap like this month’s fatal collision of a small plane and a sightseeing helicopter, federal safety investigators said Thursday.

The wreckage of a plane that collided with a helicopter is lifted this month from the Hudson River.

The recommendation comes three weeks after nine people were killed when the two aircraft collided in the congested airspace bordering Manhattan.

The recommendation is noteworthy both because of its sweeping nature and its timing. Ordinarily, the National Transportation Safety Board makes recommendations at the conclusion of its investigation, which typically take a year.

But in a letter to FAA Administrator Randy Babbitt, NTSB Chairman Deborah Hersman said that based on preliminary findings, the safety board is concerned about the “safety of flight” over the Hudson River. She outlined a series of changes, among them requiring that helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft fly at different altitudes over the river.

She also pointedly said board is concerned about “the performance of air traffic controllers” at Teterboro Airport in New Jersey, who were monitoring the plane’s flight during the August 8 collision.

“The NTSB is concerned with the complacency and inattention to duty evidenced by the actions of the [Teterboro] controller and the supervisor during the events surrounding this accident,” Hersman wrote.

She added the controller made a personal phone call about two minutes after clearing the plane for takeoff and “was not fully engaged in his duties” at the time of the accident, while the supervisor had left the building on a personal errand without telling the controller.

All six people aboard the helicopter and all three occupants of the plane died in the collision, which was witnessed by numerous people on the ground.

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Representatives of the air traffic controllers did not immediately respond to Thursday’s NTSB report. But previously, they have said it is wrong to place blame for the collision on the controller, saying the helicopter did not appear on his radar screen until after he had handed off monitoring of the plane to another tower.

Both aircraft were operating under visual flight rules, which place responsibility in the pilots’ hands to “see and be seen.”

The collision happened in the “Hudson River class B exclusion area,” a passageway that allows aircraft to fly north and south along the Hudson River without authorization from air traffic controllers who control traffic in the class B airspace surrounding New York’s major airports.

The NTSB said aircraft departing Teterboro can use the Hudson River exclusion area, but are required to remain at or below 1,100 feet.

“The FAA has established procedures for operation within the Hudson River class B exclusion area that are designed to minimize the risk of collision, but as this accident demonstrates, there are still situations when these established procedures are not enough,” Hersman said.

The recommendations ask the FAA to establish a special flight rules area (SFRA) for the class B exclusion areas near New York City; require vertical separation between helicopters and airplanes in these areas; require pilots to complete specific training on the SFRA requirements before flight within the area; and conduct a review of other airspace configurations where specific pilot training and familiarization would improve safety

Aug. 28 (Bloomberg) — Toyota Motor Corp. said it will shut a California auto-assembly plant that operated as a joint venture with General Motors Corp. for 25 years, the first time Japan’s largest carmaker has closed a factory at home or abroad.

New United Motor Manufacturing Inc. in Fremont, California, will end production of Corolla cars and Tacoma pickups in March 2010, Toyota said in a statement. GM in June said it would end assembly of Pontiac Vibes at the plant, known as Nummi, and quit the venture as part of its bankruptcy reorganization.

A collapse in U.S. auto sales to the lowest level since 1976 has left Toyota, the world’s largest automaker, struggling to keep North American plants running at capacity. Closing the San Francisco Bay area plant, where Toyota President Akio Toyoda spent two years, compounds economic woes in California, suffering from an 11.9 percent unemployment rate.

“Toyota wouldn’t be able to sustain the plant by itself,” said Yuuki Sakurai, chief executive officer of Fukoku Capital Management Inc. in Tokyo, which manages about 800 billion yen ($8.5 billion) in assets. “Nummi is unionized and expensive to operate. It’s a good decision.”

Nummi employs 5,400 people, including 4,550 United Auto Workers union positions. More than 1,000 suppliers work with the factory, which has annual payroll and benefits of $523 million, according to a plant publication. Possible severance packages for the workers have not been decided on, according to Toyota spokesman Yuta Kaga. Nummi, set up as a joint venture, will make the decision, he said.

Toyota gained 0.3 percent to 4,050 yen as of 9:15 a.m. in Tokyo. The shares have risen 39 percent so far this year, outpacing the 19 percent gain in the Nikkei 225 Stock Average.

Texas, Ontario

Toyota will shift production of Tacoma pickups to San Antonio and Corollas to its factory in Ontario, Canada.

“It just would not be economically viable to continue the production contract with NUMMI,” Toyota Executive Vice President Atsushi Niimi said in a statement.

In the U.S., the carmaker’s largest source of revenue, the Toyota City, Japan-based company’s sales fell 38 percent in the first half, following a 15 percent decline last year. Toyota had a record 436.9 billion yen loss in the fiscal year that ended in March, its first in six decades, and forecasts an even bigger 450 billion yen loss in the current business year.

Unprofitable Plant

Nummi has the capacity to make 420,000 cars and pickups each year. It only made money in 1992, the result of California’s taxes and labor and pollution rules, as well as the plant’s UAW contracts, according to an estimate by Tokyo-based Credit Suisse Group AG analyst Koji Endo.

Shared by GM and Toyota since 1984, Nummi was Toyota’s first U.S. auto-assembly factory. It’s the only large auto- assembly plant on the U.S. West Coast.

“We continue work already in progress with the U.S. Departments of Labor and Commerce, local government officials, Toyota, GM and the Japanese government to ensure appropriate employee severance, proper environmental remediation and assistance in transforming the site to alternative uses,” California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger said in a statement.

GM was the factory’s sole owner from 1963 until 1982, when it closed the Fremont Assembly plant owing to escalating costs and labor conflicts with union workers. Toyota initially invested about $150 million to renovate the plant and GM contributed the property and original factory building to create the joint venture.

Windows 7 may be the closest Microsoft (NSDQ:MSFT) has gotten to offering a desktop operating system as performance-nimble, aesthetically pleasing and, dare we say it, as potentially secure as Apple (NSDQ:AAPL) has delivered with OS X.
The relatively close release dates of both OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard and Windows 7 plus the awesomeness of both operating systems are generating much publicity. Inevitably, both OSes will also be the subject of much comparison. This may not be a true apples-to-apples comparison, depending on which side of the fan base you reside on, but here’s a look at features, side by side, of both Windows 7 and Snow Leopard:

Interface: Let’s face it: Microsoft has judiciously borrowed interface “ideas” from the Mac OS for years. There is some fine-tuning of the interface in Windows 7 from Vista, but not a real noticeable difference. After upgrading to Snow Leopard, Mac users also will not see a major interface overhaul. However, there are several improvements made within the UI involving Expose and the Dock.

Microsoft has tapped into the glassy, transparent look of OS X with Aero, and DirectX 11 promises much in the way of 3-D graphics. By the way, Microsoft’s DirectX 11 is the counterpart to Snow Leopard’s OpenCL technology. OpenCL, like DirectX is, in a nutshell, a way to offset resource-intensive processes to the graphics processor rather than having them all handled by the CPU. This is crucial for ultimate performance in gaming, 3-D modeling and any graphics-intensive application. It will be interesting to see how DirectX 11 and OpenCL stack up against one another as developers design applications around these technologies.

Search: Windows 7 builds upon the Windows Search feature introduced in Vista. Clicking on the Start button brings up a search bar, much like the same search fields you find in a browser. You can type a word or few letters of a word to search on and Windows Search will ferret out anything on your PC related to that search criteria.

Windows 7 also has a feature called Libraries. Libraries are used to collect all content of a particular type in one place (photos or documents, for example), making searching really simple.

Spotlight is OS X’s desktop search. Not only can users search for what’s on the system, but they can search the Web through bookmarks and through browser history. Apple has been criticized for not extending the powerful search features within iTunes to its desktop products, but there seems to be marked improvement in the responsiveness and search capabilities of Snow Leopard’s Spotlight feature. For instance, you can change the default behavior of Search to search the currently selected folder or a previous search location.

Architecture: It’s all about 64-bit. With 64-bit, memory amounts can be increased and the system can deliver faster performance. In addition, with the possible exception of some antivirus clients and device drivers, 32-bit applications run fine on 64-bit operating systems.

All editions of Windows 7 except for Home Basic include both 32-bit and 64-bit versions. Also, 64-bit Windows 7 Ultimate can support up to 192 GB of RAM.

Apple is stating that Snow Leopard is ready to support a staggering 16 Tbytes of RAM — of course, there aren’t desktop systems out there with that type of memory potential, yet. Native applications in Snow Leopard such as iChat, iCal, Finder and Safari are also 64-bit, making them more secure applications than the 32-bit version.

Desktop Navigation: In Windows 7 you can now dock (Microsoft calls it “pin”) any program to the taskbar. With a feature called Snaps, you can align windows side-by-side by grabbing them and pulling them to the edges of the screen. If you have multiple windows opened at once and want to minimize all but one, grab that one window, give it a shake and the other windows will minimize.

Apple has integrated Expose into the Dock. You can click and hold onto an application’s icon on the Dock and the windows for the application will unshuffle, making for a quick way to navigate through windows. Expose now displays windows in a grid with thumbnails. Finder also has an enhanced icon view.

Security: Security is always a touchy matter when it comes to Windows. Microsoft is touting security enhancements in Windows 7. It seems Microsoft has tightened up security in Windows 7 with features like Data Execution Prevention (DEP), Mandatory Integrity Levels and Kernel Patch Protection. Auditing has been beefed up, a good thing for organizations with compliancy requirements. BitLocker has been improved upon, providing reinforced AES encryption.

It’s just been recently confirmed that Snow Leopard comes with built-in antimalware protection. However, there are other features embedded within the OS to aid in keeping this version of OS X the safe, stable OS heralded by Mac users.

These features include: Library Randomization — which guards the targets of malicious commands, Execute Disable — which protects memory attacks, and inherent security controls within Safari, Mail and iChat to prevent malware from the Internet.

Networking, Business Use: Windows has always been the “business PC” and it doesn’t disappoint in the business-class editions of Windows 7. Features like offline domain-joining, BranchCache and DirectAccess all make the case for Windows 7 as a powerful system for businesses. SOHO users also have networking capability available with HomeGroup, a much-needed home networking improvement over the lacking Workgroup feature in Windows past.

Of course, the big news about Snow Leopard for the business set is its native support for Exchange. The caveat, however, is that you can only connect to an Exchange 2007 server.

The majority of Exchange servers in business are still at Exchange 2003; however, there is an increasing exodus from Exchange 2003 to 2007 in the small-business sector. Until a majority of Exchange seats sold are for Exchange 2007, it could take awhile for many businesses to consider Snow Leopard a viable option for the office. Of course, home users have Finder to browse other networked computers with file sharing enabled.

Upgradibility,Pricing: The price of $29 to upgrade to the latest Mac OS X is a pretty sweet deal for Mac users.

Users who have purchased a compatible desktop or server after June 8, 2009, are eligible for the Snow Leopard upgrade at a price of $9.95 (that’s about the equivalent of 9 iTunes!). Users on the older version of OS X, Tiger, will have to cough up $169.99 to trade in the stripes for spots. Snow Leopard is only compatible on Intel (NSDQ:INTC)-based Macs and users can do an in-place upgrade from Tiger (with the higher-priced CD) or OS X 10.5 (with the standard Snow Leopard CD).

As the world knows by now, there is no Microsoft approved upgrade path from XP to Windows 7, an annoyance to home users, but not of much concern to IT pros. An in-place upgrade from Vista is supported. Retail prices for Windows 7 differ between the upgrade product and the full version. The upgrade ranges from $119 for Home Premium to $219.99 for Ultimate. For the full version the range begins at $199.99 for Home Premium and $319.99 for Ultimate.

OAK BLUFFS, Mass. — President Barack Obama hasn’t even finished his Martha’s Vineyard vacation and already he’s being asked whether he’ll come back next year.

A local radio station reporter asked White House spokesman Bill Burton on Thursday whether the president was ready to commit to a return trip.

Burton says that while the president loves the island, staff members “haven’t thought ahead that far in terms of figuring out what he’s going to do on vacation next year.”

He also dodged a question about the trip’s highlight, but Burton says the president enjoyed a “really good” steak and rib dinner at The Sweet Life restaurant in Oak Bluffs.

Obama and his family are expected to return to Washington on Sunday

Apple has approved a streaming music application from Spotify for use on the iPhone, even though the program will compete with Apple’s own iTunes service.

Rumors have circled in recent weeks that the app had been denied.

Spotify is an advertising-supported music service that lets end-users stream music to their computers free of charge. The service is available in the U.K. and by invitation in countries including Sweden, Norway, Finland, France and Spain. Users can opt to pay for a version of the service without ads.

The iPhone offering will be available “soon” in those six countries, Spotify spokesman Jim Butcher said on Thursday. The company hopes to launch a PC-based equivalent in the U.S. early next year but has no current plans to offer the service there on phones, he said.

IPhone fans have been closely watching Spotify’s progress because Apple may consider it a competitor to its iTunes music store. Apple, which has never fully laid out its policy for accepting applications, has denied applications that it says duplicate existing phone functionality. For instance, the developer of Podcaster said Apple declined to include that application in the store because it duplicates the podcast functionality in iTunes.

While controversy has surrounded the approval process since the App Store first launched, the issue is particularly important now because the U.S. Federal Communications Commission is investigating the mobile-phone industry. Earlier this month, the agency asked Google, Apple and AT&T to answer questions about how and why the Google Voice application was recently denied by Apple for the iPhone. In its response last week, Apple said it hasn’t yet rejected the application but has concerns about it because it alters the iPhone’s user experience by replacing the mobile-phone functionality with a new interface.

The first Boeing 787 Dreamliner, which is more than two years behind schedule, should fly by year’s end, and the first of the largely composite jets will be delivered to All Nippon Airways by the end of 2010, the company announced Thursday.

Boeing Co. also intends to take a $2.5-billion pretax charge, or $2.21 a share, for the repeatedly delayed jet. The Chicago-based aerospace manufacturer is writing off the value of the first three Dreamliners it makes after determining there were no takers for planes that were tons overweight and that bear a patchwork of structural fixes.

The news cheered investors, who had feared that even lengthier delays would bedevil the Dreamliner. Boeing shares rose 8% Thursday to close at $51.82.

Analysts were relieved that Boeing finally revealed how production of the plane would be affected by structural issues that were disclosed in June, just days before the jet was to take its first flight.

But they will continue to be skeptical until the groundbreaking plane is finally certified for flight.

“Full speed ahead just don’t mean very much,” said Richard Aboulafia, aerospace analyst with Teal Group, a Virginia-based market research firm. “But it sure beats them not having dealt with that particular problem.”

Dreamliners were supposed to be rolling out of Boeing’s factory in Everett, Wash., at the rate of two a week by now. Instead, Boeing is putting the finishing touches on its first few planes, the result of a long string of embarrassing glitches.

Officials vastly underestimated the challenge involved in creating an all-new aircraft while simultaneously adopting a new means of manufacturing that placed most of the 787’s development in the hands of subcontractors, analysts said.

The delays have cost Boeing much of the five-year lead it once held over rival Airbus SAS, which also is developing a largely composite plane. The delays also have increased the pressure on Boeing Chief Executive Jim McNerney to get the program back on track.

McNerney assured analysts and reporters Thursday that despite the 787’s “challenges,” the plane “remains on track to be a true game-changer for our airline customers.”

One party that wasn’t cheering Boeing’s announcement was launch customer All Nippon Airways, which once had planned to showcase its first Dreamliners at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. The Japan-based carrier said Thursday that the “length of this further delay is a source of great dismay, not to say frustration.”

Boeing said the first two 787s are ready to fly, but are awaiting new fittings to fix a structural flaw discovered this spring. As engineers tested the strength of the 787’s wings, that stress caused the composite frame to tear in a handful of areas where the wing is joined to the aircraft body.

The company said it had completed initial testing on a fix and planned to begin reinforcing its jets within the next few weeks. A source close to the program said the plane’s first flight, an important milestone, would probably occur around the end of November.

Boeing said it aimed to make 10 Dreamliners a month by 2013 and was moving ahead with plans to open a second assembly line to speed manufacturing. Boeing plans to decide by the end of the year whether the line will be based in Washington state or South Carolina, where the company recently purchased facilities from Vought Aircraft Industries.

SAN FRANCISCO (Dow Jones)–Dell Inc.’s (DELL) fiscal second-quarter profit fell 23% on lower sales, as the world’s second-largest PC maker continues to battle weak technology spending, but the company said it saw some signs of improvement.

The Round Rock, Texas-based company said it saw demand “stabilizing,” driven largely by improving consumer demand. But sales to corporate customers – accounting for approximately 80% of Dell’s sales – remained challenging and that corporate customers were still taking a cautious approach to IT investment. Any significant uptick in spending likely won’t affect sales until 2010, executives said.

“If current demand trends continue, we expect revenue for the second half of the year to be stronger than the first half,” Dell’s chief executive, Michael Dell, said in a statement.

The results came out just before the closing bell and Dell shares initially rose, finishing up 6.7% at $15.65, flattening out after the market close. The stock is down 39% the past year.

For the quarter ended July 31, the computer maker reported earnings of $472 million, or 24 cents a share, compared with $616 million, or 31 cents a share, a year earlier. The latest quarter included four cents of restructuring charges.

Revenue dropped 22% to $12.76 billion.

Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expected per-share earnings of 23 cents on revenue of $12.59 billion.

Gross margin rose to 18.7% from 17.2%.

Revenue for desktop personal computers fell a third, while the mobility segment, mainly notebook computers but also other mobile devices, had a 21% decline.

Dell’s chief financial officer, Brian Gladden, told reporters on a conference call that while sales of computers to consumers were relatively strong, corporate customers were still holding back from committing money.

Revenues from sales to large customers declined 32% in the second quarter on a year-over-year basis, Dell said. Revenues from sales to small and medium-sized customers were down 29% on a year over year basis.

Some catalysts, such as the imminent launch of Microsoft Corp.’s (MSFT) Windows 7 operating system and the expected launch of a new suite of productivity software from Microsoft in 2010, should help spur corporate customer demand, Gladden said. But he said that the economy remained the driving factor in corporate purchasing decisions.

Executives said demand was improving more rapidly in the U.S. and Asia, and lagging in Europe.

Four years ago, Junichiro Koizumi led Japan’s ruling party to a landslide election victory.

The Liberal Democratic Party won a two-thirds majority and a seemingly unshakeable mandate.

The opposition was demoralised and Katsuya Okada, leader of the trounced Democratic Party of Japan, stepped down.

Now things have changed. Voters have deserted the ruling party; support for its beleaguered leader, Taro Aso, is less than 20%.

The DPJ looks set to oust the LDP for only the second time in five decades, perhaps even reversing the landslide of 2005.

So what went wrong for the LDP?

‘Losing touch’

Founded in 1955, the Liberal Democratic Party helped transform Japan into an industrial giant.

Working closely with bureaucrats and the business sector, the LDP-led government delivered high growth, ample jobs and a steep rise in living standards.

But cracks emerged when the bubble burst in the early 1990s.

There was a general feeling that the LDP was losing touch and that it wasn’t delivering for everybody

Dr Chris Hood
Jobs were no longer for life, a gap emerged between rich and poor and demographic change posed a challenge. Women were having fewer babies and the population was ageing – with serious implications for social security.

Reform was needed but the close bureaucratic and business links that had benefited the LDP also served to constrain it. Efforts foundered in the face of entrenched vested interests.

Part of the problem was that the LDP was slow to get things done, because it was trying to keep a variety of interest groups happy.

“Consensus style meant that strong leadership was not allowed, especially with respect to policy – because you might upset someone,” says Dr Steven Reed of Tokyo’s Chuo University,

“The LDP could deliver big building projects, but not fix the economy. Demands that were not met at all finally built up to the point where people were no longer interested in dams and roads.”

The LDP channelled funds to rural areas, where its support was strongest
Urban voters also felt marginalised as funds flowed to projects benefiting the LDP’s rural support base.

“There was a general feeling that the LDP was losing touch and that it wasn’t delivering for everybody – that it was working for small cliques and business groups, rather than what was good for Japan as a whole,” says Dr Chris Hood, director of Japanese Studies at Cardiff University.

Briefly ousted in 1993, the LDP got back in via a coalition deal with its rival, the Japan Socialist Party.

But over the next decade it did not, Dr Hood says, deal with the fundamental issue of why it had lost power – and calls for change were getting louder.

Koizumi-style

Then Junichiro Koizumi came along and bought the LDP more time.

He promised economic reform and reached out to urban voters by bringing more women and experts into his government.

He vowed to curb the giant public works projects that brought the LDP rural votes and to privatise the post office – a policy that put him on a collision course with his own party.

Junichiro Koizumi kept the LDP in power, but only by vowing to change it
When his reforms were voted down in parliament, he expelled LDP lawmakers who opposed him and called a snap election.

He portrayed the poll as a fight against traditionalists within his own party who were resisting change – and voters backed him in huge numbers.

“In 2005 it was not the LDP that was popular, it was Koizumi – and what Koizumi said was that he would change Japan by changing the LDP. That’s what people voted for,” Dr Reed says.

When Mr Koizumi stepped down in 2006, things quickly went downhill.

Japan’s system of hereditary politicians had led “to a significant diminishing in the pool of talent” within the LDP, according to Professor Koichi Nakano of Tokyo’s Sophia University.

Mr Koizumi’s three successors – all sons or grandsons of former prime ministers – lacked his style.

All came under fire for poor cabinet choices and their handling of ministerial scandals. Mr Koizumi’s reform agenda was also watered down, leaving some voters feeling betrayed.

‘Fed up’

Shinzo Abe, who replaced Mr Koizumi, focused on issues such as patriotism and constitutional reform.

But voters did not care. Instead, they were outraged by the loss of pension payment records and increasingly worried about whether the welfare system could cope with the population shift.

They vented their anger in upper house elections in 2007, awarding control to the DPJ. Mr Abe stood down and Yasuo Fukuda took over, but legislative deadlock led to his grey-faced resignation months later.

Then Taro Aso took office – and the economic crisis hit. Giants such as Toyota posted their first annual losses in decades. Businesses empowered by Koizumi-era labour reforms cut contract staff loose. Graduates failed to find jobs and unemployment soared.

Mr Aso did not help matters by making a series of embarrassing gaffes. His cabinet served him poorly too, his finance minister seemed to be drunk at a G8 summit, though he blamed cold remedies for his slurred speech.

A groundswell of public unhappiness coincided with the emergence of the DPJ as a credible alternative – and one with a manifesto promising welfare spending.

“It has reached a point where people want to try something new,” Dr Hood said. “They want change and they’re fed up with the LDP.

“There’s not a huge amount to choose between the two parties. But some of the things the DPJ are talking about are touching a nerve with the electorate.”

According to polls, the DPJ is on the brink of a fairly sizeable win.

Whether it can effect the change that voters want, though, is another question

Four years ago, Junichiro Koizumi led Japan’s ruling party to a landslide election victory.

The Liberal Democratic Party won a two-thirds majority and a seemingly unshakeable mandate.

The opposition was demoralised and Katsuya Okada, leader of the trounced Democratic Party of Japan, stepped down.

Now things have changed. Voters have deserted the ruling party; support for its beleaguered leader, Taro Aso, is less than 20%.

The DPJ looks set to oust the LDP for only the second time in five decades, perhaps even reversing the landslide of 2005.

So what went wrong for the LDP?

‘Losing touch’

Founded in 1955, the Liberal Democratic Party helped transform Japan into an industrial giant.

Working closely with bureaucrats and the business sector, the LDP-led government delivered high growth, ample jobs and a steep rise in living standards.

But cracks emerged when the bubble burst in the early 1990s.

There was a general feeling that the LDP was losing touch and that it wasn’t delivering for everybody

Dr Chris Hood
Jobs were no longer for life, a gap emerged between rich and poor and demographic change posed a challenge. Women were having fewer babies and the population was ageing – with serious implications for social security.

Reform was needed but the close bureaucratic and business links that had benefited the LDP also served to constrain it. Efforts foundered in the face of entrenched vested interests.

Part of the problem was that the LDP was slow to get things done, because it was trying to keep a variety of interest groups happy.

“Consensus style meant that strong leadership was not allowed, especially with respect to policy – because you might upset someone,” says Dr Steven Reed of Tokyo’s Chuo University,

“The LDP could deliver big building projects, but not fix the economy. Demands that were not met at all finally built up to the point where people were no longer interested in dams and roads.”

The LDP channelled funds to rural areas, where its support was strongest
Urban voters also felt marginalised as funds flowed to projects benefiting the LDP’s rural support base.

“There was a general feeling that the LDP was losing touch and that it wasn’t delivering for everybody – that it was working for small cliques and business groups, rather than what was good for Japan as a whole,” says Dr Chris Hood, director of Japanese Studies at Cardiff University.

Briefly ousted in 1993, the LDP got back in via a coalition deal with its rival, the Japan Socialist Party.

But over the next decade it did not, Dr Hood says, deal with the fundamental issue of why it had lost power – and calls for change were getting louder.

Koizumi-style

Then Junichiro Koizumi came along and bought the LDP more time.

He promised economic reform and reached out to urban voters by bringing more women and experts into his government.

He vowed to curb the giant public works projects that brought the LDP rural votes and to privatise the post office – a policy that put him on a collision course with his own party.

Junichiro Koizumi kept the LDP in power, but only by vowing to change it
When his reforms were voted down in parliament, he expelled LDP lawmakers who opposed him and called a snap election.

He portrayed the poll as a fight against traditionalists within his own party who were resisting change – and voters backed him in huge numbers.

“In 2005 it was not the LDP that was popular, it was Koizumi – and what Koizumi said was that he would change Japan by changing the LDP. That’s what people voted for,” Dr Reed says.

When Mr Koizumi stepped down in 2006, things quickly went downhill.

Japan’s system of hereditary politicians had led “to a significant diminishing in the pool of talent” within the LDP, according to Professor Koichi Nakano of Tokyo’s Sophia University.

Mr Koizumi’s three successors – all sons or grandsons of former prime ministers – lacked his style.

All came under fire for poor cabinet choices and their handling of ministerial scandals. Mr Koizumi’s reform agenda was also watered down, leaving some voters feeling betrayed.

‘Fed up’

Shinzo Abe, who replaced Mr Koizumi, focused on issues such as patriotism and constitutional reform.

But voters did not care. Instead, they were outraged by the loss of pension payment records and increasingly worried about whether the welfare system could cope with the population shift.

They vented their anger in upper house elections in 2007, awarding control to the DPJ. Mr Abe stood down and Yasuo Fukuda took over, but legislative deadlock led to his grey-faced resignation months later.

Then Taro Aso took office – and the economic crisis hit. Giants such as Toyota posted their first annual losses in decades. Businesses empowered by Koizumi-era labour reforms cut contract staff loose. Graduates failed to find jobs and unemployment soared.

Mr Aso did not help matters by making a series of embarrassing gaffes. His cabinet served him poorly too, his finance minister seemed to be drunk at a G8 summit, though he blamed cold remedies for his slurred speech.

A groundswell of public unhappiness coincided with the emergence of the DPJ as a credible alternative – and one with a manifesto promising welfare spending.

“It has reached a point where people want to try something new,” Dr Hood said. “They want change and they’re fed up with the LDP.

“There’s not a huge amount to choose between the two parties. But some of the things the DPJ are talking about are touching a nerve with the electorate.”

According to polls, the DPJ is on the brink of a fairly sizeable win.

Whether it can effect the change that voters want, though, is another question

WASHINGTON, Aug 27 (Reuters) – Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations could possibly resume without a complete freeze in Israeli building of Jewish settlements, a senior U.S. official suggested on Thursday.

The official, who spoke to reporters on condition of anonymity, said it was more important that the scope of a settlement freeze was acceptable to the Israelis and the Palestinians than to the United States.

The Obama administration hopes next month to announce a resumption of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, which have been stalled since December, but the pieces have not yet fallen into place, diplomats and U.S. officials said.

U.S. special envoy George Mitchell is trying get Israel to freeze its construction of Jewish settlements, a Palestinian condition for resuming talks. He has also asked Arab states to offer some gestures toward normalization of ties with Israel.

Even if Israel and the Palestinians agree to resume talks, analysts believe chances of a peace agreement any time soon are slim because of divisions among the Palestinians and a fragile, right-wing coalition in Israel.

The Obama administration has taken the public stance that Israel must halt all settlement activity, including so-called “natural growth” under which new homes are built within existing enclaves to accommodate growing settler families.

While saying this was still Washington’s position, the U.S. official suggested the United States would not stand in the way if the two sides could agree on something short of that.

“Are we going to argue, if at some point the parties say, ‘you know, this is not everything that we hope for but it’s enough?” asked the U.S. official. “That would then have us presenting an obstacle to the start of a negotiation.”

Mitchell and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued an unusually upbeat statement after meeting in London on Wednesday, saying that their talks were “very productive” and that they had made “good progress.”

However, Netanyahu on Thursday denied that they agreed on a temporary halt to settlement building. An Israeli team is due in the United States next week for more talks and Mitchell will return to the region in September.

About half a million Israelis live in settlements built in the West Bank and East Jerusalem in territory captured by Israeli forces in the 1967 Middle East War.

Palestinians want to establish a state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, with its capital in Jerusalem.

An Arab diplomat suggested neither side will get everything that it wants, with the Palestinians likely to accept something short of a total settlement freeze while Israel gets only symbolic normalization steps from Arab states.

“Whatever deal we get on the settlements will be less than perfect,” said the diplomat, who asked not to be named.

“In other words, there comes a point where they just have to take what they can get,” he said. (Editing by Alan Elsner)