CheeseHeadNL comments

Heh? Japan's a "rich country" that is "saddled with debt." Yup, that makes sense. Japan is the most heavily bankrupt nation on the planet. Hardly "rich."

Actually, Japan is a very rich country. For example, Japan is the world largest creditor nation for 23 years in a row now. Japan's gross foreign assets totals 7.8 trillion dollars. It's just the Japanese government that has a large debt burden, not Japan as a whole (i.e. including the private sector).

Reporting the adjusted annual rate of 2.2% probably plays better than reporting the quarterly growth of only 0.4%.

They did the same with the anualized 6.4% decline in Q2, while it only was a decline of 1.6%.

The numbers are misleading. Households spend a lot in Q4 2013 and Q1 2014 due to the VAT increase last spring. The drop will be even larger next quarter, and in Q2 2015 there will be a large increase in household spending.

9.6 trillion yen for the fiscal year to March, up from a previous outlook of 9.5 billion yen. That's quite a difference ;-)

I'm sorry but Amsterdam #5 is total "#$%. According to Dutch newssource AD (granted dates from 2013, but i doubt crimerate doesn't go down that fast) Amsterdam is the unsafest city.

http://www.ad.nl/ad/nl/1401/home/integration/nmc/frameset/nieuws/misdaadmeter.dhtml

And yeah then there is that Osaka hiding 50% of their crimes. So I wont take this list that serious.

Yeah, within the Netherlands it might be one of the unsafest cities (which is logical, as larger cities tend to have relatively more crime than smaller cities due to smaller social control, etc.), but this is a list that only includes 50 world cities. Of these 50 cities, Amsterdam is apparently one of the safest places to be.

Interesting cars ? Yes if you like driving a CUBE, for me only Italian designer for cars....

For me price-performance ratio is more important than looks.

60 % plunge in global prices while at gas stations it comes down from roughly 160 Yen/L to 125 Yen/L , which translates roughly to 25% reduction.

Not just crude oil determines the price of fuel, but also factors such as processing costs, wages, etc. If those factors don't drop in price, then it is logic that the fuel prices decrease less than the crude oil prices.

I don't get why some companies build some plants in the US rather than in their own countries. Also Italian Fiat prefers the US over Italy, like if the labor cost was that cheaper there than in Italy. I can understand the logic about China, but the US?

Regarding car manufacturing; transport costs are an important factor as well. Producing close to your market saves a lot of transport costs.

As a result, Japan’s countryside is emptying out at an alarming rate, in a demographic shift that by government estimates will see the population drop to 86 million over the next four decades from about 127 million now.

I don't know where this number comes from, but according to the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research (2012) the population is projected to drop to 97.076 million in 2050.

The number of confirmed Dutch nationals on flight MH17 has been raised to 189. The nationality of four passengers are yet unknown.

The number of Dutch nationals perished in the crash has been raised to 174. The current list:

173 Dutch 44 Malaysians 27 Australains 12 Indonesians 9 Brits 4 Germans 4 Belgians 3 Filipinos 1 Canadian 1 New Zeelander 20 still unknown

May the ones responsible for this cowardly act brought to justice.

While the Yen may be low flights from the UK have gone up by 50% approx since 2010. I used to pay around £650 for a return trip with KLM. It's closer to £1000 now. True i could get a cheap flight via Dubai but I don't really want to spend 36 hours travelling. If European and British airport taxes weren't so high you would see even more tourists in Japan.

Actually, you could book direct flights with KLM from Amsterdam to Tokyo, Fukuoka or Osaka for just 550 euros (£460) last week for the December-Februari time span, including the holidays. Unfortunately this action has ended yesterday. At the time of writing, a two-way flight to Tokyo costs 645 euros (£540) in the holiday season (dep 27 Dec, return 6 Jan). Still far below the price you stated. I don't think a flight to Amsterdam costs £460 ;-)

Although Madrid is a great city, I doubt they will win the bid. Their current economic situation is quite bad, with unemployment rates hitting 27% and having economic decline for six straight quarters. Then again, Japan's financial situation isn't that great either. Istanbul is a nice city as well, but the situation is quite unstable there. This is going to be interesting!

Uh, actually not. They're good though, don't get me wrong.

The USMC is a well-equiped an trained expeditionary army, while the Royal Marines are a small commando unit. Two totally incomparable branches. The only things they share is their names. Given the fact that Royal Marines are commando units, I would say that they are better trained than the USMC.