Japan has put plans to airlift goods to Baghdad's airport on hold after a deadly mortar attack highlighted security concerns for its troops, reports said yesterday.
Japan's 200 air force personnel and three C-130 aircraft stationed in Kuwait were to begin transporting humanitarian goods into Iraq in mid-February using airports in Baghdad, Basra, Mosul and Balad.
But it has put off trips to Baghdad until after an investigation is completed into a mortar attack near Baghdad International Airport that killed one US soldier and wounded another Thursday, the Asahi and Nihon Keizai newspapers reported.
Defense Agency officials could not be reached for comment.
Shigeru Ishiba, director general of the agency, told reporters Friday he would order an inquiry into the incident.
"It could have a major impact" on the activities of Japan's Air Self-Defense Forces, Ishiba said.
The Japanese government's plan for using troops to provide humanitarian assistance in Iraq stipulates that it must be carried out "in areas where combat is not taking place and is not expected to take place."
The first group of 86 members of Japan's main contingent of ground troops is expected to roll into Iraq tomorrow from their base in Kuwait, joining an advance team of 39 troops who entered southern Iraq near Samawa last month.
The dispatch is Japan's first to a country where fighting is ongoing since World War II. All 600 ground troops are expected to be in place by the end of next month.
Showcasing phallus-shaped portable shrines and pink penis candies, Japan’s annual fertility festival yesterday teemed with tourists, couples and families elated by its open display of sex. The spring Kanamara Matsuri near Tokyo features colorfully dressed worshipers carrying a trio of giant phallic-shaped objects as they parade through the street with glee. The festival, as legend has it, honors a local blacksmith in the Edo Period (1603-1868) who forged an iron dildo to break the teeth of a sharp-toothed demon inhabiting a woman’s vagina that had been castrating young men on their wedding nights. A 1m black steel phallus sits in the courtyard of
HIGH HOPES: The power source is expected to have a future, as it is not dependent on the weather or light, and could be useful for places with large desalination facilities A Japanese water plant is harnessing the natural process of osmosis to generate renewable energy that could one day become a common power source. The possibility of generating power from osmosis — when water molecules pass from a less salty solution to a more salty one — has long been known. However, actually generating energy from that has proved more complicated, in part due the difficulty of designing the membrane through which the molecules pass. Engineers in Fukuoka, Japan, and their private partners think they might have cracked it, and have opened what is only the world’s second osmotic power plant. It generates
JAN. 1 CLAUSE: As military service is voluntary, applications for permission to stay abroad for over three months for men up to age 45 must, in principle, be granted A little-noticed clause in sweeping changes to Germany’s military service policy has triggered an uproar after it emerged that the law requires men aged up to 45 to get permission from the armed forces before any significant stay abroad, even in peacetime. The legislation, which went into effect on Jan. 1 aims to bolster the military and demands all 18-year-old men fill out a questionnaire to gauge their suitability to serve in the armed forces, but stops short of conscription. If the “modernized” model fails to pull in enough recruits, parliament will be compelled to discuss the reintroduction of compulsory service, German
Hundreds of Filipinos and tourists flocked to a sun-bleached field north of Manila yesterday, on Good Friday, to witness one of the country’s most blood-soaked displays of religious fervor, undeterred by rising fuel prices. Scores of bare-chested flagellants with covered faces walked barefoot through the dusty streets of Pampanga Province’s San Fernando as they flogged their backs with bamboo whips in the scorching heat. Agence France-Presse (AFP) journalists said they saw devotees deliberately puncturing their skin with glass shards attached to a small wooden paddle to ensure their bleeding during the ritual, a way to atone for sins and seek miracles from
RSS