"We should hold a debate, including on what should be done if a nuclear missile comes flying toward us," Shoichi Nakagawa told a discussion programme broadcast by Fuji TV.

Japan watched nervously as North Korea fired off a series of ballistic missiles in July and tested a nuclear device last month.

As the only country to have suffered nuclear attacks, on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, Japan is highly sensitive about nuclear issues and even suggestions the country hold a debate about having nuclear weapons has created a controversy.

Nakagawa said he was not suggesting Japan acquire nuclear weapons. "I have never said that we should debate this on the premise that we should have nuclear weapons," he said.

But his comments drew criticism from Toshihiro Nikai, another senior member of the ruling party who opposed any debate over nuclear weapons.

"Of course one has the right to freedom of expression as a member of parliament. But freedom of expression doesn't mean you should just say anything you like," Nikai told reporters.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said last month the country would not lift its decades-old ban on nuclear weapons and denied the topic was up for discussion after his foreign and defense ministers clashed over the issue.

Foreign Minister Taro Aso called for a discussion on nuclear weapons while Defense Minister Fumio Kyuma said raising the issue at a time of high regional tension would be unwise.

Nikai said comments by Aso and Nakagawa could prove embarrassing for Abe.

"If they repeatedly issue statements that could be misleading, it may result in calls for the one who appointed them to take responsibility," Nikai told national broadcaster NHK.

Japan, with high technological standards and a stockpile of plutonium from its nuclear power industry, is widely thought capable of producing nuclear weapons relatively quickly, but many analysts say it is highly unlikely to do so, given internal opposition and the risk of raising regional tensions.

Since the mid-1980s, when Japanese automakers began making vehicles in large volumes in the United States, Detroit's automakers have talked of the need to better align production with demand and move to a model of just-in-time manufacturing.

But with the U.S. economy slowing and pressure to return to profitability mounting, DaimlerChrysler's Chrysler Group now has thousands of vehicles without any clear destination.

Larger rivals General Motors Corp. and Ford Motor Co. are grappling with inventory problems of their own even as they shut plants and shed tens of thousands of jobs.

"Things are starting to slow down and particularly for Chrysler trucks," said IRN Inc. analyst Erich Merkle. "And Chrysler has been slow to react to that."

Chrysler executives this week declined to say how many vehicles remain in its "sales bank": previously undisclosed parking lots are full of vehicles unassigned to any dealers.

The number of unsold vehicles swelled to 100,000 this year before dropping to about 50,000 last month, Chrysler has said. It has set a goal of eliminating the surplus by year-end.

But some dealers have pushed back, accusing Chrysler of trying to force too many vehicles into its sales channel when it should have been cutting production.

LAWSUIT CHALLENGES INVENTORY PRACTICE

A lawsuit pending in federal court in New York by Chrysler dealer Boss Motors is seeking $3 million from the automaker, claiming it tried to force the dealership to take cars it never ordered and then gave competing dealers unfair price breaks.

"We've also been hearing that this was a widespread practice," said lawyer Len Weber, who represents the dealership. "A lot of people are watching our case."

Chrysler spokesman Mike Palese said the suit lacked merit. "We normally look to resolve these issues in the normal course of business," he said. "I don't think it's a test case or a poster child. I think it's just one dealer with concerns that couldn't be resolved."

But larger dealership groups are also wary of being burned by financing costs on slow-moving models.

Medford, Oregon-based dealership chain Lithia Motors, which relies on Chrysler for more than 40 percent of its new car sales, said last week that Chrysler had asked it to accept 3,100 vehicles in a promotion earlier this year. The chain, which has 102 outlets, took only 50 vehicles.

"That's the kind of thing that's happening. We're only going to take what we can turn," Sid DeBoer, chief executive of Lithia, told analysts on a conference call.

DETROIT'S PROBLEMS UNDERSTATED

Meanwhile, Mike Jackson, chief executive of the No. 1 dealership group AutoNation Inc., has called for the Detroit-based car makers to revise their inventory reporting.

Jackson said Detroit's established practice of including fleet sales in inventory numbers "dramatically understates" the problem facing the old Big Three carmakers.

Excluding fleet sales, GM's inventory would have been at a 94-day supply instead of a 76-day supply at the end of the third quarter. He said Ford's inventory would be at 105 days instead of 75 days and Chrysler's at 126 days instead of 82.

By comparison, Toyota Motor Corp. runs lean, with about a 30-day supply of unsold vehicles, while still taking market share from all comers.

Chrysler is not the only U.S. automaker to face scrutiny on its inventory. Some analysts say GM overproduced GMT-900 SUVs in the third quarter at a time of heightened pressure to show improved results.

GM is relying on the GMT-900s such as the Chevy Tahoe and GMC Sierra to recover from a $10.6 billion loss in 2005 and slow its slide in sales and market share.

On a call with analysts last week, GM in-house sales analyst Paul Ballew said the No. 1 automaker now needed to reduce its large SUV inventory.

"The problem is that the Detroit automakers have excess capacity," AMR Research analyst Kevin Reale said. "And they have to keep plants running to maintain the cost structure of their vehicles."

IRN's Merkle said the longer-term worry was that a prolonged slowdown could show that the latest round of plant closures have not gone far enough.

"The thing that concerns me is ... if volumes continue to drop, which they likely will, given the economic slowdown, they will still be left with excess capacity," he said.

The Greenpeace report, "Plastic Debris in the World's Oceans" said at least 267 species -- including seabirds, turtles, seals, sea lions, whales and fish -- are known to have suffered from entanglement or ingestion of marine debris.

Some 80 percent of this debris comes from land and 20 percent from the oceans, the report said, with four main sources: tourism, sewage, fishing and waste from ships and boats.

The new report comes days after the journal Science projected that Earth's stocks of fish and seafood would collapse by 2048 if trends in overfishing and pollution continue.

Two weeks ago, the U.S. Institute of Medicine said the benefits of eating fish outweigh the risks of toxins detected in the animals.

STOMACHS FILLED WITH PLASTIC

Plastic pollution is a problem in all the world's oceans, the Greenpeace report said, but underlined the issue in the Pacific by sailing through the floating garbage dump and capturing images of wildlife interacting with plastic.

"It's not necessarily an area that's clearly defined; it's sort of a natural phenomenon ... wind and salt water break down the plastic," said Steve Smith, aboard the Greenpeace ship Esperanza.

The plastic trash, some in large pieces and others broken down to small but recognizable particles, is visible from the ship's deck, about 50 feet above the ocean surface, Smith said by telephone on Friday. Inflatable boats are dispatched from the ship to collect samples.

"We've been unfortunately finding a lot of stuff out here, floating by, which doesn't paint a very good picture, because some of it is from faraway places, has marine life like barnacles and other little creatures living on the plastic," Smith said.

By hitching rides on plastic debris, invasive species can be carried thousands of miles (kms) to interact with native creatures, Smith said. Plastic also poses a hazard to animals that mistake it for prey and eat it, he said.

"Plastics in the oceans act as a toxic sponge, soaking up a lot of the persistent pollutants out here," Smith said. "We've seen photos of albatrosses who eat this plastic ... Even though their stomachs are filled, they end up starving because there's no nutrients in there."

Discarded or lost fishing nets and traps can continue to catch fish when they are no longer in use, the report said.

The report said an international agreement known as MARPOL is aimed at ending the dumping of plastic debris at sea, but noted that since most debris originates on land, even total enforcement of this agreement would not eliminate the problem.

Greenpeace called for a global network of marine reserves, covering 40 percent of the world's oceans, and responsibility by coastal countries to cut down on "excessive consumption" and boost recycling.

Fishermen captured the four-finned dolphin alive off the coast of Wakayama prefecture (state) in western Japan on Oct. 28, and alerted the nearby Taiji Whaling Museum, the local museum director Katsuki Hayashi said.

The extra fins are about the size of adult human hands and protrude from the animal's underside, near the tail, Hayashi said.

The five-year-old dolphin, about nine feet long, is believed to be the first found with such well-developed and symmetrical secondary fins though others have had partial protrusions.

"This is an unprecedented discovery," said Seiji Osumi, an adviser at Tokyo's Institute of Cetacean Research. "I believe the fins may be remains from the time when dolphins' ancient ancestors lived on land."

Fossil remains indicate that dolphins and whales were four-footed land animals about 50 million years ago and shared a common ancestor with the hippopotamus and deer. Scientists believe they moved back to the sea and lost their hind limbs.

Dr. Ian Jackson, of Edinburgh University's Human Genetics Unit, said the discovery was significant and surprising. "You get cases of gene mutation that have given rise to things like extra fingers and toes in mammals," he said. "But this is more pronounced. The Japanese are right -- this is probably the mutation of a gene that was important in the evolution of the dolphin."

Around 10-15 typhoid patients are undergoing treatment in the district hospital and Tamakoshi Community hospital each day, according to the report.

"More than 10 new patients are coming to our hospital," an official at Tamakoshi Community hospital was quoted by the RSS as saying, adding that the disease is assumed to spread due to polluted water around the area.

"It leads to improved memory retention," said Jan Born, a neuroscientist at the University of Luebeck.

The scientists, whose results were published online by the journal Nature, believe brain stimulation could help people with memory problems and
Alzheimer's disease.

"This is an alternative way to intensify or to improve sleep and its memory function," Born told Reuters.

He and his team asked the students to learn a list of paired words in a standard memory test before they fell asleep. The researchers stimulated their brain while they slept. After they woke up, the students had to recall the words they had memorized.

If the currents were applied to the scalp during deep sleep, the first few hours of nocturnal sleep, the students recalled a greater number of words than if they had been given a sham brain stimulation.

"This is proof that this slow oscillation has a real function during sleep -- to build and consolidate memory," said Born.

"It is an eight percent increase overall. This is a striking increase," he added.

The students did not feel any sensation from the currents to the frontal cortex of the brain or any adverse side effects. The currents forced the brain more into the deep slow-wave sleep to improve the memory function, according to the scientists.

Memory function in the medical students was already very good before they received the brain stimulation but the currents managed to improve it.

"There is growing evidence that you can very effectively manipulate brain function by different types of electrical simulation," Born said.

He believes the natural slow oscillations and those induced by the electrical currents affect the hippocampus area of the brain which plays a part in memory.

"The slow oscillations during slow-wave sleep trigger a kind of replay of these memories in the hippocampus," he added.

The hippocampus is one of the first regions of the brain that is damaged in patients with Alzheimer's disease, a degenerative illness that robs people of their memory and cognitive ability.