MOVIES - April 24, 1987

Actress Elizabeth Taylor teamed up with Ryoichi Sasakawa, one of Japan’s wealthiest ultraconservative tycoons, on Thursday to bring her anti-AIDS crusade to Japan. The 55-year-old actress told a packed Tokyo news conference she joined the businessman to “stress the danger and the proper understanding of AIDS to the Japanese government and the Japanese people.” Taylor, who is scheduled to meet today with Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone, sported a badge proclaiming “Let’s eradicate AIDS together.” Sasakawa, 88, is a billionaire philanthropist who is widely respected outside Japan but who has been accused of trying to spend his way into a Nobel Prize. His Memorial Health Foundation is dedicated to the eradication of leprosy.