Single tuna fetches record $736k at Japan auction

A deep-pocketed restaurateur shelled out nearly $750,000 for a tuna at Japan's Tsukiji fish market on Thursday, smashing the record price for a single bluefin.

The 269-kilogramme (592-pound) fish -- caught off the coast of Japan's northern Aomori prefecture -- stood at an eye-popping 56.49 million yen ($736,500) when the hammer came down in the first auction of the year.

The figure dwarfs the previous high of 32.49 million yen paid at last year's inaugural auction at Tsukiji, a huge working market that features on many Tokyo tourist itineraries.

Thursday's winning bidder was Kiyoshi Kimura, president of the company that runs the popular Sushi-Zanmai chain.

At around 210,000 yen per kilogramme, a single slice of sushi could cost as much as 5,000 yen, but the firm plans to sell it at a more regular price of up to 418 yen, local media reported.

"The flesh is coloured in magnificent red and the quality of fat is very good," Kimura said. "It is very delicious. The taste is unbeatable."

A Hong Kong sushi restaurant owner bought the previous year's record tuna, and Kimura added: "I wanted to win the best tuna so that Japanese customers, not overseas, can enjoy it."

Bluefin is usually the most expensive fish available at Tsukiji.

Emiko Misumi, a 44-year-old woman who tasted a slice, said: "This tuna is so fatty and very delicious."

"It was sweet even without sugar or sake. It was a very delicate sweet taste," said another female customer Noriko Nakai, 63.

Decades of overfishing have seen global tuna stocks crash, leading some Western nations to call for a ban on catching endangered Atlantic bluefin tuna.

Japan consumes three-quarters of the global catch of bluefin, a highly prized sushi ingredient known in Japan as "kuro maguro" (black tuna) and dubbed by sushi connoisseurs the "black diamond" because of its scarcity.

"You know, good things like this are appreciated in the whole world," said 22-year-old male customer Hirotaka Higurashi when asked about the overfishing issue. "There is nothing we can do about it."

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South Korea says ready for talk with hostile North

South Korea reached out to rival North Korea on Thursday, nearly three weeks after the death of the North's iron-fisted ruler Kim Jong-il, saying it wanted to reopen dialogue despite the North's vitriolic outbursts.

"We are open to dialogue with North Korea," Foreign Minister

Kim Sung-Hwan told a news briefing in the South Korean capital, Seoul. "The ball is now in North Korea's court."

He said it appeared North Korea had not yet decided on its "postures in dealing with the outside world."

"We are not in a position to tell what is happening in North Korea," he added, saying Kim's youngest son and chosen "great successor," Kim Jong-un, appeared intent, for now, on exerting his influence over the military.

The outside world knows little about the North, and both the United States and its ally South Korea appeared to be caught off guard when state media announced Kim Jong-il's death last month.

The North has closed its borders since Kim's death, completely cutting it off from the outside world, although South Korean officials say they are unaware of any troubles in the hermit state.

"So far, its seems there are no big problems (with the succession process)," South Korean Unification Minister Yu Woo-ik told a separate news conference in Seoul. The ministry handles relations with the North.

CHINA URGED TO ACT
Since Kim's state funeral last week, the North has returned to using bellicose language against its neighbor, assailing conservative President Lee Myung-bak and his government for lacking the decency to mourn the death of a compatriot leader.

The North's Rodong Sinmun newspaper said on Thursday it was impossible to improve inter-Korean relations as long as the "Lee Myung Bak group of traitors stays in office."

Lee angered North Korea by cutting off aid when he took office in 2008, and demanding nuclear disarmament and economic reform as conditions for food aid and political engagement.

The top U.S. diplomat for East Asian affairs, Kurt Campbell, told reporters in Seoul that an essential component of any U.S.-North Korean talks was an improvement of inter-Korean relations.

Campbell, on his first visit to North Asia since Kim's death, also called on the North's main benefactor China "to make clear the importance of restraint by the new North Korean leadership."
Analysts say Kim Jong-un could take action, such as a military attack or more nuclear or missile tests, to burnish his credentials as a militaristic leader in the same mould as his father and grandfather.
SOLIDIFYING SUCCESSION

Over the last few months, officials from North and South Korea and the United States have met for a series of bilateral talks aimed at restarting stalled aid-for-disarmament talks.

The talks contributed to an easing of tension on the peninsula after 50 South Koreans were killed in two separate attacks a year earlier.
Washington appeared to be on the verge of resuming sending food aid to the impoverished North, and there were high hopes Pyongyang was prepared to halt its nuclear programs and allow the return of international nuclear inspectors.

Such moves by North Korea, which has twice tested nuclear devices, were preconditions set by South Korea and the United States for resuming the six-party talks, which offer the North aid and diplomatic contacts in return for disabling its nuclear weapons program.

The six party talks, involving the two Koreas, the United States, Japan, Russia and China, have been stalled since 2008 when the North walked away from the deal.

Unification Minister Yu said that the impoverished North stood to gain massive aid if it "makes a wise choice and determination" to engage in dialogue.

The South's Foreign Ministry said in its annual report issued on Thursday that its main goal this year was to maintain stability on the peninsula as the North sought to solidify the succession process.

"To that end, the government will strengthen cooperation with involved nations, including the United States, China, Russia and Japan," the ministry said.

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Obama unveiling strategy for slimmed-down military

President Barack Obama is putting his personal stamp on a rejiggered Pentagon strategy for absorbing hundreds of billions of dollars in defense budget cuts, marking a turning point in U.S. security policy after a decade of war.

Obama planned to make a rare appearance in the Pentagon press briefing room Thursday to announce results of a strategy review that he ordered last spring. The aim was twofold: Streamline the military in an era of tighter budgets and reassess defense priorities in light of China's rise and other global changes.

Obama's decision to announce the results himself underscores the political dimension of Washington's debate over defense savings. The administration says smaller Pentagon budgets are a must but will not come at the cost of sapping the strength of a military in transition, even as it gets smaller.

In a presidential election year, the strategy gives Obama a rhetorical tool to defend his Pentagon budget-cutting choices. Republican contenders for the White House already have criticized Obama on a wide range of national security issues, including missile defense, Iran and planned reductions in ground forces.

Obama also wants the new strategy to represent a pivot point in his stewardship of defense policy, which has been burdened throughout his presidency by the wars he inherited and their drag on resources.

The revamped strategy, to be outlined at a news conference also attended by Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and the Joint Chiefs chairman, Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, is not expected to radically alter defense priorities. It may set the stage, however, for expected cutbacks in Europe and big weapons programs.

It also will move the U.S. further from its longstanding goal of being able to successfully fight two major regional wars — like the 1991 Gulf War to evict Iraqi forces from Kuwait or a prospective ground war in Korea — at the same time. This takes into account a bigger focus on immediate threats like cyber warfare and terrorism.

The administration and Congress already are trimming defense spending to reflect the closeout of the Iraq war and the drawdown in Afghanistan. The massive $662 billion defense budget planned for next year is $27 billion less than Obama wanted and $43 billion less than Congress gave the Pentagon this year.

White House spokesman Tommy Vietor said Wednesday that Obama was closely involved in the defense strategy review, meeting six times since September with top defense officials, including Panetta and Dempsey. Vietor said the review established priorities to ensure that defense spending cuts are "surgical."

As for Obama's decision to make a personal appearance at the Pentagon, Vietor said, "It's a sign of how personally engaged he is in this process and the level of importance he puts in shaping our priorities for the next decade."

Factors guiding the Obama administration's approach to reducing the defense budget are not limited to war-fighting strategy. They also include judgments about how to contain the growing cost of military health care, pay and retirement benefits. The administration is expected to form a commission to study the issue of retirement benefits, possibly led by a prominent retired military officer.

The administration is in the final stages of deciding specific cuts in the 2013 budget, which Obama will submit to Congress next month. The strategy to be announced by Panetta and Dempsey is meant to accommodate about $489 billion in defense cuts over the coming 10 years, as called for in a budget deal with Congress last summer. An additional $500 billion in cuts may be required starting in January 2013.

A prominent theme of the Pentagon's new strategy is expected to be what Panetta has called a renewed commitment to security in the Asia-Pacific region.

On a trip to Asia last fall, Panetta made clear that the region will be central to American security strategy.

"Today we are at a turning point after a decade of war," Panetta said in Japan. Al-Qaida is among a range of concerns that will keep the military busy, but(...)More.

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Congress presses rating agencies on MF Global: report

Congressional investigators have stepped up their inquiry into the work of credit rating firms that examined MF Global's overly risky bets on European government bonds and whether they overlooked crucial information in their evaluations, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

The House Financial Services subcommittee's chairman, who is investigating the matter, sent letters to Moody's Corp chief executive Raymond McDaniel and Standard & Poor's Ratings Services president Douglas Peterson asking for detailed information about their procedures for determining MF Global's credit-worthiness, the Journal said.

The Journal said it reviewed the letter sent December 27 by Rep. Randy Neugebauer, a Republican congressman from Texas.

The House subcommittee has asked McDaniel and Peterson to testify in a new round of hearings on MF Global's demise, the Journal said, citing people familiar with the matter.

The hearings are expected to take place later this month or in early February, it said.

The rating agencies that had investment-grade ratings on MF Global played a key role in the events that led to the sudden downfall of MF Global. In late October the firms downgraded MF Global amid rising concerns about the European bet, thus triggering a bankruptcy filling.

Spokesmen for S&P and Moody's declined to comment to the Journal.

S&P and Moody's could not be reached for comment by Reuters outside of U.S. business hours.

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Four blasts kill 29, wounds dozens in Iraq's capital

Four bombs in mainly Shi'ite Muslim areas in Baghdad killed at least 29 people and wounded dozens of others on Thursday, police and hospital sources said, as fears of renewed sectarian strife in Iraq increase.

Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki sparked the worst political crisis in a year on December 19 when he sought the removal of two senior Sunni politicians just as U.S. troops withdrew from Iraq. Bombings on December 22 in the predominately Shi'ite parts of Iraq's capital killed 72.

On Thursday, in Baghdad's northeastern impoverished Sadr City slum, a bomb planted on a parked motorcycle and another roadside explosive killed at least 10 people and wounded 37 others, police and hospital sources said.

Police said they found and defused two other bombs.

"There was a group of day laborers gathered, waiting to be hired for work. Someone brought his small motorcycle and parked it nearby. A few minutes later it blew up, killed some people, wounded others and burned some cars," said a police officer at the scene, declining to be named.

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