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decommissioning is progressing fine.
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Japanese stocks plunge 7.3 percent on bond yields, worse-than-expected China manufacturing
• BANGKOK (AP) -- Japanese stocks plummeted Thursday after a spike in government bond yields and unexpectedly weak Chinese manufacturing spooked investors sitting atop months of massive gains in share prices. The Nikkei 225 in Tokyo nosedived 7.3 percent to close at 14,483.98, its worst drop since the 2011 tsunami.
• Japan's 10-year government bond yield rose above 1 percent for the first time in a year, unnerving financial markets at a time when Japan's already overburdened government finances are vulnerable to rises in interest rates. It later slipped back to about 0.9 percent.
• The spike in long-term debt comes despite the Bank of Japan's aggressive efforts to keep interest rates down. It followed overnight news that some officials of the U.S. Federal Reserve are willing to scale back the American central bank's stimulus effort as soon as June if the economy perks up.
• Chris Weston, chief market strategist at IG Markets in Melbourne, said the Nikkei has been on such a tear this year that all it took was the convergence of a few negative events to spark a sharp correction. The Nikkei, even after Thursday's fall, is up 39 percent so far this year.
• "If everyone is standing on one side of the ship, it doesn't take too much to make it tip. All we needed was a cluster of negative events," he said.
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80-year-old Japanese extreme skier becomes oldest climber to reach summit of Mount Everest
• KATMANDU, Nepal (AP) -- An 80-year-old Japanese mountaineer became the oldest person to reach the top of Mount Everest on Thursday -- although his record may last only a few days. An 81-year-old Nepalese man, who held the previous record, plans his own ascent next week.
• Yuichiro Miura, who also conquered the 29,035-foot (8,850-meter) peak when he was 70 and 75, reached the summit at 9:05 a.m. local time, according to a Nepalese mountaineering official and Miura's Tokyo-based support team.
• Miura and his son Gota made a phone call from the summit, prompting his daughter Emili to smile broadly and clap her hands in footage on Japanese public (Continued on page 39)
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