Japan files protest over newspaper cartoon about nuke emergency

Japan's Consulate General in New York lodged a protest with New York Times Co. on Thursday for publishing a cartoon in which Snow White, carrying a newspaper with the headline "Japan nuclear radiation," asks an old woman offering an apple if she comes from Japan. The consulate said that since the cartoon refers to a story in Grimm's Fairy Tales in which Snow White falls into a stupor after biting a poisoned apple, it may stir up what the consulate called unfounded anxieties over the safety of foods from Japan. The cartoon was carried on the editorial page of the International Herald Tribune, which is owned by the New York Times, in its Thursday edition. In the cartoon Snow White looks skeptically at the apple through a magnifying glass and says to the old woman, who is dressed like a witch, "Wait a minute! Do you come from Japan?"The cartoon was credited to Luojie of the English-language China Daily. It was not immediately known whether it appeared first in the Chinese paper before being reprinted in the International Herald Tribune.