I try to read news in Japanese and sometimes I see equals sign used inside sentences. I tend to think text to the right side of "＝" is kind of a consequence of the left part. It does not look like it has anything to do with any sort of equality. This Wikipedia article notes that it can be used as the separator for names, but this usage doesn't seem to fit my case. Here is an example taken from Jiji Press' site:
安倍首相「どんな結果でも友好を」＝ヨルダン国王とサッカー談義.
I hope somebody can clear this out for me.
If you take a look at Japanese newspapers, you'll find that the headlines are often stratified in multiple levels. The biggest one is the eye-catcher, and the rest is some supplementary information to explain further situation.
Now, the questioned ＝ is mostly used to delimit the "main" and "sub" headlines in the one line environment. See this topic in a Japanese forum. I'm not familiar with English journalism at all, but if I had to name a closest equivalent, it could be semicolon, as I guess from this page.
Personally, I think it might function the same as a colon (:) does in English in a newspaper or magazine article.
安倍首相「どんな結果でも友好を」＝ヨルダン国王とサッカー談義.
If you saw this in a newspaper article, it would means Prime Minister Abe says "We wish mutual friendship whatever the outcome may be" = At the conversation with Jordan king about soccer.
I think it just makes a complement or something like that.
