ISMAILIA, Egypt -- After three months impounded at a lake in the Suez Canal, the giant container ship Ever Given was allowed to set sail once again after Egyptian officials signed a compensation deal Wednesday with the vessel's owner.

The size of the contract has not been disclosed. The Suez Canal Authority had been seeking compensation of $550 million, while Shoei Kisen, the Japanese owner of the vessel, countered with $150 million.

The SCA originally sought $916 million to pay

TOKYO -- Japanese materials producer Showa Denko will sell its underperforming lead-acid battery operations to investment fund Advantage Partners and financial services company Tokyo Century for 60 billion yen ($540 million), looking to focus on growth areas and put its finances back in order after a costly acquisition, Nikkei has learned.

The business is handled by Showa Denko Materials, formerly known as Hitachi Chemical. Showa Denko reported revenue of about 160 billion yen for its battery operations last year. About 60 billion

TOKYO -- FC Barcelona sponsors Rakuten and Konami Holdings have spoken out against two players who were in a leaked video appearing to mock Japanese hotel employees.

Barcelona shirt sponsor Rakuten on Tuesday issued a statement expressing its disappointment over the incident. "These types of actions cannot be permitted under any circumstance," the online retailer said.

"We will lodge a formal protest against the club and seek an explanation," Rakuten Chairman and CEO Hiroshi Mikitani tweeted.

The video, recorded during a trip to Japan in 201

TOKYO -- Watami, one of Japan's biggest restaurant operators, debuts a fried chicken shop in Shanghai this month as the company hunts foreign growth while the industry remains under coronavirus restrictions at home.

The move reverses the company's exit from China last year when Watami, known for its namesake izakaya gastropubs, shut seven locations under this brand in the country as the pandemic upended the restaurant industry there.

Watami has teamed with TANSH Global Food Group, the operator of Shanghai Min restaurants, signing a franchise agreement with

NEW YORK/TOKYO -- Goldman Sachs on Wednesday received a license to operate banks in Japan, expanding the burgeoning business into a new market as its trading desk becomes less reliable as a cash cow.

Subsidiary Goldman Sachs Bank USA, which handles consumer and corporate banking, will offer services such as helping Japan-based multinationals with dollar funding. It is set to open a location in Tokyo in September.

Goldman is putting transaction banking -- handling cash management, payments and the like for corporate customers -- at the

NEW DELHI -- India's Health Minister Harsh Vardhan resigned on Wednesday amid a storm of criticism of the government's handling of the deadly second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Vardhan was among 12 ministers who quit on the day Prime Minister Narendra Modi carried out the first reshuffle of his cabinet of his second five-year tenure that began in May 2019.

The resignations come after the coronavirus spread rapidly through the country in April in May, overwhelming India's health care system

Katsuji Nakazawa is a Tokyo-based senior staff writer and editorial writer at Nikkei. He spent seven years in China as a correspondent and later as China bureau chief. He is the 2014 recipient of the Vaughn-Ueda International Journalist prize for international reporting.

TOKYO -- Tiananmen, or the Gate of Heavenly Peace, is a towering gate at the entrance to Beijing's Forbidden City, the former imperial palace where successive Chinese emperors lived.

For the 70,000 people gathered in Tiananmen

Naoya Yoshino is the Tokyo-based head of Nikkei's political news group. As a political reporter, he interviewed 14 Japanese prime ministers, from Morihiro Hosokawa to Yoshihide Suga, and covered the finance and economy ministries. He worked as a Washington correspondent from 2012 to 2017, reporting on the 2012 and 2016 presidential elections.

TOKYO -- Cyberattacks, unfolding out of the public eye, resemble an undeclared war, and losing such warfare can plunge a

William Pesek is an award-winning Tokyo-based journalist and author of "Japanization: What the World Can Learn from Japan's Lost Decades."

The Bank of Japan is turning heads as it joins peers in adding melting glaciers and environmental wokeness to the list of reasons to cut interest rates.

To monetary purists, combating climate change is central bank mission creep run amok -- this can only end badly. To others, it is wise recognition that rising temperatures and sea levels might soon erode growth and financial stability