THE $1 BILLION APOLOGY

Japan will set up a $1 billion fund to atone for its wrongs in World War II. The so-called friendship fund will finance projects over a 10-year period, including women's centers, cultural exchanges, and historical research on Japan's role in World War II. But it will not directly give any money to women from other Asian countries who were forced to serve in frontline brothels run by the Japanese Imperial Army. Groups representing these women from the Philippines and South Korea quickly blasted Japan's olive branch as inadequate.