Officials were trying to determine who had dumped the carcasses into the river, the Huangpu, which slices through the heart of Shanghai. Some reports blamed farmers. Officials were seeking to track the source of the pigs from marks on their ears, and a preliminary inquiry found that the dumping occurred in Zhejiang Province, which is south of Shanghai and upstream on the Huangpu.

Photographs of the carcasses floating in the river were circulating widely on the Internet.One photograph on the Web site of Global Times showed sanitation workers in orange vests and blue uniforms lifting carcasses from Hengliaojing Creek with long wooden poles.

An accompanying report, citing a Shanghai news Web site, said the first carcasses were discovered Thursday near a water treatment plant in an area that is a protected water resource. Their numbers increased quickly over the weekend, and the tally was expected to grow further as search barges returned to Shanghai.

Shanghai Waterworks, which manages the city’s tap water, said Sunday night that the water still met drinking standards, according to Xinhua, the state news agency. Shanghai officials said the group was checking the water hourly.

“So far, water quality has not been affected, but we have to remove the pigs as quickly as possible and can’t let their bodies rot in the water,” Xu Rong, the director of Shanghai’s Songjiang District Environmental Protection Bureau, told Global Times, a state-run English-language newspaper.

Mr. Xu said samples of the pigs had been sent to an agricultural commission to determine what killed them. Officials will have answers within three days, he said.

A sample of the river water tested positive for porcine circovirus, which officials said does not spread to humans, Xinhua reported. One strain of the virus can cause pigs to waste.

Many Chinese are expressing growing concern over air, soil and water pollution. In recent weeks, several official news organizations have run articles and editorials casting a spotlight on pollution of some of China’s major waterways.

In one prominent case, a 39-ton chemical spill on Dec. 31 from a fertilizer factory in Shanxi Province affected two other provinces downstream. Local officials delayed reporting the chemical spill for five days.

A statement issued Monday by the Shanghai government and posted on its Web site said that there were piglets in the river as well as adult swine weighing hundreds of pounds. Residents in the Songjiang district, the area southwest of downtown Shanghai where most of the pigs have been discovered, said this was not the first time they had seen dead pigs in the Huangpu. But this time, the number was higher than in the past, according to the city government’s statement.

Songjiang district officials said they were gathering all the dead pigs in one place to safely dispose of them, Xinhua reported.

A committee of experts advising the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry last night recommended the price for solar power should be cut beginning April 1, and the payment for wind should remain unchanged. The government must endorse the proposal before it comes into force.

Investments on non-residential solar projects totaled 222 billion yen ($2.3 billion) in Japan last year, adding 580 megawatts of capacity, according to an estimate by Bloomberg. Spending this year is expected to rise to 438 billion yen for 1,460 megawatts, Bloomberg New Energy Finance forecasts.

“The solar market is expanding, and we don’t think the proposed tariff would change the trend much,” Hisao Kayaoka, secretary general of the Japan Photovoltaic Energy Association, said by phone. “The proposed tariff will allow for continued growth in the market.”

The association’s member companies include units of Suntech Power Holdings (STP) Co. Ltd,Kyocera Corp. (6971), Solar Frontier K.K. and Sharp Corp. (6753), which all make solar panels. The utility Kansai Electric Power Co. (9503) also is a member.

Japan’s introduction of incentives in July enticed panel makers such as Kyocera Corp. to begin building solar stations and encouraged new entrants such as Softbank Corp. (9984), a mobile- phone provider, to develop solar plants.

Plunging Prices

The cost of solar equipment has fallen so much that officials say incentives can be cut without squeezing development plans amid a push to diversify sources of energy after the nuclear meltdown in Fukushima.

Prices for silicon-based solar panels sank about 20 percent in the past 12 months, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Solar capacity, including both residential and non-residential, rose 29 percent in Japan from April to November as developers added 1,398 megawatts of installations to a base of 4,800 megawatts, according to trade ministry data.

The average system cost for non-residential solar has fallen 14 percent to 280,000 yen per kilowatt since October compared with the amount used by the committee to set the solar tariff for the year ending March 31, according to the ministry.

Recommended Rates

“Japan is emerging as a strong new leader driven by growth of commercial project installations,” said Shawn Qu, chief executive officer at Canadian Solar Inc. (CSIQ), an Ontario-based solar-panel company with manufacturing operations in China.

Even at the reduced rates, Japan’s support for solar is about three times the incentives offered in Germany and China, two countries that are among the biggest markets for the technology. Japan is likely to be one of the top three markets this year, according to BNEF.

The committee said the feed-in tariff guaranteeing above- market prices for solar energy should be cut to 37.8 yen per kilowatt hour for 20 years for applications from April 1. The current rate is 42 yen. The new rate is in step with an estimate from Bloomberg New Energy Finance that the rate of as low as 37 yen would still provide an incentive for developers to build new plants.

New rates for projects bigger than 10 kilowatts “remain attractive enough” since they will provide a 6 percent rate of return for developers, said Yugo Nakamura, an industry analyst at Bloomberg New Energy Finance in Tokyo. “We would, though, see slower applications in the second quarter 2013.”

Wind Impact

The panel is led by Kazuhiro Ueta, professor of environmental economics at Kyoto University. Toshimitsu Motegi, Japan’s minister of economy, trade and industry, must approve the recommendation for it to take effect.

Feed-in tariffs will be passed on to consumers as surcharges. The trade ministry estimates that it will total 120 yen a month after new tariffs are introduced compared with the current fee of 87 yen for an average household.

The panel also recommended the tariff for wind projects remain at 23.1 yen per kilowatt hour for 20 years. The Japan Wind Power Association said it welcomed the proposal.

“The current tariff is the minimum level necessary to develop wind projects in Japan,” Tetsuro Nagata, president of the wind association, said in an e-mailed statement. “If the tariff is to be kept at the same level, we welcome the decision. There remain major issues such as grid connection and deregulation, but we want to further expand wind power taking advantage of the tariff, to be held at the same level, for the second year.”

Pricing Review

The wind association’s members include Eurus Energy Holdings Corp., a project developer;Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. (7011), which makes turbines; Kajima Corp. (1812), a contractor; and Siemens Japan K.K., a unit of the German wind turbine and electrical equipment maker Siemens AG. (SIE)

The government panel recommended keeping tariffs at current levels for the four other types of renewable sources covered by the program, saying it lacked enough examples of new projects to review pricing.

For geothermal, the panel suggested 27.3 yen per kilowatt hour for plants with capacity of 15,000 kilowatts or larger, and 42 yen for smaller plants, both for 15 years.

The government panel also recommended keeping the tariff for small hydro at 25.2 yen to 35.7 yen per kilowatt hour for 20 years depending on plant size. For biomass, tariffs of 13.65 yen to 40.95 yen per kilowatt hour for 20 years were proposed, depending on type of fuel used.

They knocked on the door and asked to come in. About 45 minutes later, they came away peacefully with three firearms.

California is the only state that tracks and disarms people with legally registered guns who have lost the right to own them, according to Attorney General Kamala Harris. Almost 20,000 gun owners in the state are prohibited from possessing firearms, including convicted felons, those under a domestic violence restraining order or deemed mental unstable.

“What do we do about the guns that are already in the hands of persons who, by law, are considered too dangerous to possess them?” Harris said in a letter to Vice President Joe Biden after a Connecticut school shooting in December left 26 dead. She recommended that Biden, heading a White House review of gun policy, consider California as a national model.

As many as 200,000 people nationwide may no longer be qualified to own firearms, according to Garen Wintemute, director of the Violence Prevention Research Program at theUniversity of California, Davis. Other states may lack confiscation programs because they don’t track purchases as closely as California, which requires most weapons sales go through a licensed dealer and be reported.

“Very, very few states have an archive of firearm owners like we have,” said Wintemute, who helped set up the program.

Funding Increase

Harris, a 48-year-old Democrat, has asked California lawmakers to more than the number of agents from the current 33 who seized about 2,000 weapons last year, along with 117,000 rounds of ammunition and 11,000 high-capacity magazines, according to state data.

“We’re not contacting anybody who can legally own a gun,” said John Marsh, a supervising agent who coordinates the sometimes-contentious seizures. “I got called the Antichrist the other day. Every conspiracy theory you’ve heard of, take that times 10.”

The no-gun list is compiled by cross-referencing files on almost 1 million handgun and assault-weapon owners with databases of new criminal records and involuntary mental-health commitments. About 15 to 20 names are added each day, according to the attorney general’s office.

Probable Cause

Merely being in a database of registered gun owners and having a “disqualifying event,” such as a felony conviction or restraining order, isn’t sufficient evidence for a search warrant, Marsh said March 5 during raids in San Bernardino County. So the agents often must talk their way into a residence to look for weapons, he said.

At a house in Fontana, agents were looking for a gun owner with a criminal history of a sex offense, pimping, according to the attorney general’s office. Marsh said that while the woman appeared to be home, they got no answer at the door. Without a warrant, the agents couldn’t enter and had to leave empty- handed.

They had better luck in nearby Upland, where they seized three guns from the home of Lynette Phillips, 48, who’d been hospitalized for mental illness, and her husband, David. One gun was registered to her, two to him.

“The prohibited person can’t have access to a firearm,” regardless of who the registered owner is, said Michelle Gregory, a spokeswoman for the attorney general’s office.

Involuntarily Held

In an interview as agents inventoried the guns, Lynette Phillips said that while she’d been held involuntarily in a mental hospital in December, the nurse who admitted her had exaggerated the magnitude of her condition.

Todd Smith, chief executive officer of Aurora Charter Oak Hospital in Covina, where documents provided by Phillips show she was treated, didn’t respond to telephone and e-mail requests for comment on the circumstances of the treatment.

Phillips said her husband used the guns for recreation. She didn’t blame the attorney general’s agents for taking the guns based on the information they had, she said.

“I do feel I have every right to purchase a gun,” Phillips said. “I’m not a threat. We’re law-abiding citizens.”

No one was arrested.

“It’s not unusual to not arrest a mental-health person because every county in the state handles those particular cases differently,” Gregory said by e-mail. “Unless there’s an extenuating need to arrest them on the spot, we refer the case” to the local district attorney’s office, she said.

Convicted Felons

Agents more often arrest convicted felons who are prohibited from buying, receiving, owning or possessing a firearm, Gregory said. Violation of the ban is itself a felony.

The state Senate agreed March 7 to expand the seizure program using $24 million in surplus funds from fees that gun dealers charge buyers for background checks.

Andrew Arulanandam, a spokesman for the National Rifle Association, a gun lobby that says it has more than 4 million individuals as members, didn’t respond to a request for comment on the program.

Sam Paredes, executive director of the Folsom-based advocacy group Gun Owners of California, praised the program, though not how it is funded.

“We think that crime control instead of gun control is absolutely the way to go,” he said. “The issue we have is funding this program only from resources from law-abiding gun purchasers. This program has a benefit to the entire public and therefore the entire public should be paying through general- fund expenditures, and not just legal gun owners.”

Kim yesterday told front line units that “every day is a state of war,” official media reported. North Korea shut down a border hot line and declared the 1953 armistice ending the Korean War nullified as the U.S. and South Korea began annual military drills.

“Recently, North Korean officials have made some highly provocative statements,” Donilon said yesterday at the Asia Society in New York. “North Korea’s claims may be hyperbolic — but as to the policy of the United States, there should be no doubt. We will draw upon the full range of our capabilities to protect against, and to respond to, the threat posed to us and to our allies by North Korea.”

His comments signal U.S. skepticism over assertions that Kim’s regime possesses ballistic nuclear missiles and can target the U.S. and South Korea. Tensions on the Korean peninsula are at the highest since at least 2010 after North Korea last week threatened atomic attacks in response to tightened United Nations sanctions for its February nuclear test.

President Barack Obama’s administration, while open to talks with North Korea, “will not play the game of accepting empty promises or yielding to threats,” Donilon said. Obama will meet at the White House in May with newly inaugurated South Korean President Park Geun Hye, he said.

Won Unchanged

South Korea’s won was little changed at 1,094.07 per dollar at 11:26 a.m. after sliding 0.4 percent yesterday. The benchmarkKospi Index (KOSPI) was down 0.2 percent.

North Korea is combat-ready with strategic rockets and “diversified surgical nuclear strike mechanisms,” the state- run Rodong Sinmun newspaper said yesterday.

North Korea will stage a mass military drill on its eastern coast soon, South Korean Defense Ministry spokesman Kim Min Seok said at a briefing in Seoul today. The South advises its people not to get nervous, he said.

During a visit to a front-line artillery post on North Korea’s Wolnae Islet, Kim expressed confidence in the unit’s ability to turn South Korea’s Baengnyeong Island into “a sea of fire,” the official Korean Central News Agency said.

The location is significant because 46 South Korean seamen died in March 2010 after the naval ship Cheonan sank in waters near Baengnyeong, about 210 kilometers (130 miles) northwest of Seoul. While an international panel said the North torpedoed the ship, the Pyongyang government denied any involvement.

Key Resolve

South Korea and the U.S. yesterday began their “Key Resolve” exercise, a rehearsal for a possible conflict on the Korean peninsula, Defense Ministry spokesman Kim told reporters yesterday in Seoul. While no unusual North Korean troop movements have been spotted, the country will probably respond with its own military exercises soon, he said.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called on North Korea to continue to respect the 1953 armistice, according to his spokesman Martin Nesirky. In any event, neither side can unilaterally abandon the accord because it was adopted by the UN General Assembly, he told reporters in New York. The U.S. has taken the similar position in response to North Korea’s statements.

“We’re in a crisis situation with North Korea threatening war every day,” Park said yesterday at her first Cabinet meeting since taking office on Feb. 25. “Close cooperation with the international community is crucial in making North Korea give up its nuclear weapons and make the right choice.”

In Washington, the U.S. Treasury Department yesterday froze any U.S. assets of North Korea’s Foreign Trade Bank, saying the institution facilitates transactions linked to the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. North Korea’s primary foreign exchange bank “facilitated millions of dollars in transactions” which benefited the country’s premier arms dealer, Korea Mining Development Corp., the Treasury said a statement.

The demand, made in a speech byPresident Obama’s national security adviser, Tom Donilon, was the first public confrontation with China over cyberespionage and came two days after its foreign minister, Yang Jiechi, rejected a growing body of evidence that his country’s military was involved in cyberattacks on American corporations and some government agencies.

The White House, Mr. Donilon said, is seeking three things from Beijing: public recognition of the urgency of the problem; a commitment to crack down on hackers in China; and an agreement to take part in a dialogue to establish global standards.

“Increasingly, U.S. businesses are speaking out about their serious concerns about sophisticated, targeted theft of confidential business information and proprietary technologies through cyberintrusions emanating from China on an unprecedented scale,” Mr. Donilon said in a wide-ranging address to the Asia Society in New York.

“The international community,” he added, “cannot tolerate such activity from any country.”

Until now, the White House has steered clear of mentioning China by name when discussing cybercrime, though Mr. Obama and other officials have raised it privately with Chinese counterparts. In his State of the Union address, he said, “We know foreign countries and companies swipe our corporate secrets.”

But as evidence has emerged suggesting the People’s Liberation Army is linked to hacking, the China connection has become harder for the administration not to confront head-on. The New York Times three weeks ago published evidence tying one of the most active of the Chinese groups to a neighborhood in Shanghai that is headquarters to a major cyberunit of the People’s Liberation Army. That account, based in large part on unclassified work done by Mandiant, a security firm, echoed the findings of intelligence agencies that have been tracking the Chinese attackers.

American officials say raising the issue with the Chinese is a delicate balancing act at a time when the United States is seeking China’s cooperation in containing North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs, and joining in sanctions on Iran. Yet they have been expressing their concerns about cyberattacks with Chinese officials for years. Starting in 2010, they invited P.L.A. officials to discuss the issue — a process that has only just started — and last November, Mr. Obama broached the subject at a summit meeting with Prime Minister Wen Jiabao, a senior administration official said.

Since then, the official said, there has been a “perfect storm” of media coverage and protests from the corporate world. Still, he said, Mr. Donilon chose not to mention the P.L.A. in his speech because he did not want to engage in finger-pointing.

“What we are hoping to do,” another senior official said, “is force the Chinese civilian leadership to realize that the P.L.A. is interfering with their foreign policy.”

The Chinese have insisted that they are the victims of cyberattacks, not the perpetrators. On Saturday, Mr. Yang issued his own call for “rules and cooperation” on cybersecurity and said reports of Chinese military involvement in cyberattacks were “built on shaky ground.”

“Anyone who tries to fabricate or piece together a sensational story to serve a political motive will not be able to blacken the name of others nor whitewash themselves,” Mr. Yang told reporters at the National People’s Congress, which was preparing to ratify the ascension of Xi Jinping to the Chinese presidency.

Mr. Donilon said the threats to cybersecurity had moved to the forefront of American concerns with China, noting that he was not “talking about ordinary cybercrime or hacking.”

That distinction, a senior administration official said, was meant to separate the theft of intellectual property by Chinese state entities from small-scale hacking by individuals, or the use of cyberweapons by a state to protect its national security. But the distinction between cyberattacks aimed at intellectual property theft and those aimed at disabling a military threat is largely made by Western officials devising legal arguments, not one the Chinese have embraced.

Even as he emphasized the need for international rules to guide cyberactivity, Mr. Donilon made no reference to the billions of dollars the American military and intelligence agencies are spending to develop an arsenal of offensive cyberweapons — to be used against military targets, officials insist, not economic ones. The most famous of these operations was the covert cyberattack mounted by the United States and Israel to disable the centrifuges that Iran uses to enrich uranium at its site in Natanz.

Mr. Donilon sketched out a vigorous agenda in Asia, insisting the United States would keep pursuing its “strategic pivot” toward the region, despite cuts in military spending. He announced that the Treasury Department would impose sanctions on a North Korean bank specializing in foreign-exchange transactions — ratcheting up the pressure on the North Korean government on the day that Pyongyang announced it would no longer abide by the 1953 armistice that halted the Korean War.

With fears about North Korea’s increased nuclear and missile capabilities causing considerable anxiety in Seoul and Tokyo, Mr. Donilon restated a “declaratory policy” that was first formulated by President George W. Bush after the North’s first nuclear test, in 2006. He warned that the United States would reserve the option to retaliate against the North, not just if it used nuclear weapons but if it allowed the “transfer of nuclear weapons or nuclear materials to other states or nonstate entities.”

That formulation did not appear to cover, however, the transfer of technology to build nuclear facilities, as North Korea did in Syria. That reactor was destroyed by Israel in 2007.

“It’s understandable that the people of South Korea would be concerned about the threat they face from the North,” Mr. Donilon said, apparently alluding to talk in the South of building the country’s own nuclear arsenal, a move the United States halted decades ago. Mr. Donilon added that the United States had assets in place “to insure that South Korea’s defense is provided for.”

The currency slid against all of its 16 major peers as BOJ data showed today that prices for goods paid by companies fell for the longest period in almost three years, highlighting Japan’s entrenched deflation. The dollar snapped a decline versus the euro before a report tomorrow that may show U.S. retail sales improved last month.

“Dollar-yen has seen a big run up because of expectations for Bank of Japan easing,” said Imre Speizer, a strategist at Westpac Banking Corp. in Auckland. “The talk by officials is much more aggressive than it was previously. The market wants to see whether their actions will be much more aggressive too.”

The yen fell 0.3 percent to 96.57 per dollar as of 10:49 a.m. inTokyo after earlier touching 96.71, the weakest since August 2009. It declined to 126.04 per euro, a level unseen since Feb. 13, before trading at 125.91, down 0.2 percent from yesterday in New York. The dollar rose 0.1 percent to $1.3037 per euro following a 0.3 percent drop.

Iwata, a professor at Gakushuin University in Tokyo, told lawmakers today that the BOJ can meet its 2 percent inflation target in two years by buying bonds. Haruhiko Kuroda, the governor nominee, said yesterday the existing asset-purchase program isn’t enough to achieve the goal.

Easing Options

Minutes released today of the BOJ’s meeting last month showed some board members said that buying longer-maturity Japanese government bonds and increasing purchases of risk assets are options if the central bank needs to expand monetary easing in the future.

The BOJ’s corporate goods price index fell for an 11th month in February, the longest streak of declines since April 2010, with a 0.1 percent decrease from a year earlier.

The yen has tumbled 8.5 percent this year, the worst performance among the 10 developed-nation currencies tracked by Bloomberg Correlation-Weighted Indexes. The dollar has climbed 3.1 percent during the period on speculation stronger U.S. economic growth will prompt the Federal Reserve to reduce the pace of bond purchases.

The Commerce Department will probably say tomorrow that U.S. retail sales increased 0.5 percent in February from a month earlier when it rose 0.1 percent, according to a Bloomberg News survey of economists.

The extra yield that investors can get by holding 10-year Treasuries instead of Japan’s similar-maturity bonds climbed to 1.41 percentage points today, the most since August 2011. The Treasury will auction a total of $66 billion in debt this week.

“I’m closely monitoring the U.S. bond sales this week,” said Ken Takahashi, an assistant vice president of global markets in New York at Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Bank Ltd. “Lower demand at the auctions may raise yields,” driving yen weakness against the dollar further, he said.

Apple, which has been grappling with investor criticism over the handling of its $137.1 billion incash and investments, will add $42 billion in earnings to that sum in 2013, Ward said.

Greenlight Capital Inc.’s David Einhorn has been urging Cupertino, California-based Apple to issue high-yielding preferred shares to spread the funds among investors. Investors are also urging Apple to consider a higher dividend payout.

“We’re going to get an announcement from the company as to how they intend to reallocate some of their cash,” Ward said in an interview today on Bloomberg Radio’s “Surveillance” withTom Keene. “They will put a floor under their stock at a higher price than it is today.”

Apple climbed 1.4 percent to $437.87 at the close in New York, leaving the shares down 18 percent this year, compared with an 9.1 percent increase in the S&P 500 Index.

Keith Goddard, president of Capital Advisors Inc., said Apple will probably announce a dividend or buyback by the end of the year, possibly as early as April, when the company is scheduled to release second-quarter earnings.

“It really is mind-boggling to me that they’re being so stubborn about sitting on so much cash,” said Goddard, who said his firm owns 23,100 Apple shares.

Apple has said it’s in active discussions over how to manage the cash, and that it’s considering buybacks, a bigger dividend among other options.

Ward compared Apple’s shares to JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) stock a year ago, after the bank announced a multibillion-dollar loss at the hands of one trader.

“The stock was beaten up and it was at 30 dollars a share, and now it’s 50,” he said.

Apple is the largest holding in Gamco’s (GBL) fund, Ward said.

Panasonic Corp., the maker of Viera televisions, jumped 7.2 percent in Tokyo as the yen weakened, boosting the outlook for exporters. Harbour Centre Development Ltd. (51), a hotel and restaurant operator, jumped 4 percent in Hong Kong after its full-year profit increased.Woodside Petroleum Ltd. (WPL), Australia’s No. 2 oil producer, fell 1.4 percent after being rated a new underperform at CIMB Securities Ltd.

The MSCI Asia Pacific Index rose 0.3 percent to 136.97 as of 11:21 a.m. in Tokyo after yesterday closing at the highest level since August 2011. About four stocks gained for every three that fell today.

“We know the new governor is on the way to lead the BOJ and he’s going to be a lot more aggressive in stimulating the economy,” said Shane Oliver, Sydney-based head of investment strategy at AMP Capital Investors Ltd., which has $126 billion under management. “Pessimism and skepticism that dominated investors over the last few years are progressively fading and that’s causing investors to buy shares.”

The regional gauge advanced about 12 percent from the start of November through yesterday, led by Japanese shares as Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has pursued policies to beat deflation and pressured the central bank to ease monetary policy.

Asia’s benchmark index traded at 15.2 times estimated earnings as of yesterday compared with 14.1 for the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index (SPX) and 12.7 for the Stoxx Europe 600 Index (SXXP), according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Iwata Testimony

Japan’s Nikkei 225 Stock Average (NKY) gained 0.4 percent as minutes of the Bank of Japan’s February meeting highlighted expectations for increased monetary stimulus. BOJ deputy- governor nominee Kikuo Iwata said in parliament that decisive monetary easing was needed.

Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 Index slid 0.1 percent, while South Korea’s Kospi Index dropped 0.2 percent. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index (HSI) climbed 0.5 percent, led by property developers with trading volume about two-thirds of its 30-day average at the time of day.

China’s Shanghai Composite Index increased 0.7 percent, while Taiwan’s Taiex Index rose 0.3 percent. Singapore’s Straits Times Index gained 0.6 percent.

Japanese exporters advanced after the yen reached 96.71 per dollar today, the lowest since August 2009. A weaker yen boosts the value of overseas earnings when repatriated.

Panasonic Climbs

Panasonic jumped 7 percent to 717 yen in Tokyo. TDK Corp. (6762), an electronic components maker that gets most of its revenue outside Japan, climbed 6.5 percent to 3,450 yen. Mitsubishi Motors Corp., an automaker that gets about three-quarters of its sales from outside the country, increased 4.6 percent to 113 yen.

Harbour Centre climbed 4 percent to HK$16.04 in Hong Kong after its full-year profit increased to HK$3.06 billion ($395 million) from HK$1.1 billion a year earlier.

Futures on the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index (SPXL1) were little changed today. The index rose 0.3 percent at the close of trading in New York yesterday to be within nine points of its record high.

A judge invalidated New York City’s limits on large sugary drinks on Monday, one day before they were to go into effect, dealing a significant blow to one of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s signature public-health initiatives and a marquee project of his third term.

The decision by Justice Milton A. Tingling Jr. of State Supreme Court in Manhattan blocks the city from putting the rules into effect or enforcing them.

Justice Tingling said the rule banning the drinks was “arbitrary and capricious.”

In his opinion, Justice Tingling specifically cited a perceived inequity in the soda rules, which applies to only certain sugared drinks — beverages with a high milk content, for instance, would be exempt — and would apply only to some food establishments, like restaurants, but not others, like convenience stores.

“It applies to some but not all food establishments in the city,” Justice Tingling wrote. “It excludes other beverages that have significantly higher concentrations of sugar sweeteners and/or calories.”

The judge also wrote that the fact that consumers can receive refills of sodas, as long as the cup size is not larger than 16 ounces, would “defeat and/or serve to gut the purpose the rule.” The judge also appeared to be skeptical of the purview of the city’s Board of Health, which the Bloomberg administration had maintained has broad powers to seek to better the public’s health. That interpretation, the judge wrote, “would leave its authority to define, create, mandate and enforce limited only by its own imagination,” and “create an administrative Leviathan.”

After the judge imposed a stop to the ban, the Bloomberg administration quickly said it would challenge the decision.

“We plan to appeal the decision as soon as possible, and we are confident the Board of Health’s decision will ultimately be upheld,” Michael A. Cardozo, the Bloomberg administration’s chief counsel, said in a statement. “We believe the Board of Health has the legal authority — and responsibility — to tackle” the causes of obesity.

The ruling stunned the Bloomberg administration, which was deep into preparations to begin enforcing the ban and had even boasted on Monday that it should be applied nationally as a remedy to rising obesity rates. Mr. Bloomberg had scheduled a news conference for Tuesday morning to celebrate the inauguration of the new rule, when he would stand with lawmakers who supported the initiative, according to a person told of the plans.

At a news conference on Monday, hours before the ruling, Mr. Bloomberg predicted little resistance to the measure. “I think you’re not going to see a lot of push back here at all,” he said. “I think everybody across this country should do it.”

The American Beverage Association, the soft drink industry trade group that led a campaign against the plan, said the court decision “provides a sigh of relief.”

The industry stood to lose tens of millions of dollars if Mr. Bloomberg’s proposal had been put into place, and industry executives were concerned about a copycat effect, in which states and cities around the country would follow New York’s lead in cracking down on sweetened drinks. Taxes on soda are currently being considered in Hawaii and Nebraska.

During hearings in Justice Tingling’s courtroom over the past few months, at which he considered a challenge to the ban, lawyers for the beverage industry, which was represented by the high-powered corporate firm Latham & Watkins, presented their argument in high dudgeon, calling the rules “ludicrous.” At one point, James E. Brandt, the lead lawyer for the industry, described the regulation as having been created by “scientists in the room, working with the mayor, creating a regulation here that is going to cost people a ton of money.”

In contrast, lawyers for the Bloomberg administration offered a subdued, highly technical rebuttal that only occasionally addressed the broader rationale for the rule, which they said would fight obesity in the city. One city lawyer was asked by the court reporter to repeat his points, because she could not hear him.

A trade group for the city’s movie theaters was quick to hail the decision on Monday. “Serious problems like obesity cannot be addressed by the imposition of an arbitrary and porous Mayoral fiat,” wrote Matthew Greller, a spokesman for the National Association of Theater Owners of New York State. “This issue was never about obesity, nor about soda. This was all about power.”

The city’s attempt to limit soda sizes has been the subject of worldwide curiosity and debate — not to mention mockery — since Mr. Bloomberg unveiled the proposal last May. There were the usual late night television punch lines, but the plan also galvanized a growing movement among public health officials that believed sugary drinks were an outsize contributor to the nation’s runaway obesity rates. Officials in cities like Los Angeles and Cambridge, Mass., considered their own crackdowns on soda, a trend that further worried the soft-drink industry.