Japan plans to sign a military data protection pact with the US that could lead to increases in information sharing amid efforts by Tokyo to step up its coordination with Washington on defense matters, a news report said yesterday.
Defense Agency chief Fumio Kyuma is expected to announce Japan's plan to conclude the General Security of Military Information Agreement at a meeting in Washington next month, the Asahi newspaper said in an unsourced story.
The meetings bring together the defense and foreign ministers of each country to discuss a range of issues. Japanese media have been reporting that a meeting has been arranged for next month, but neither government has confirmed the reports.
The two sides have already reached broad agreement on the security pact in working-level talks, the Asahi said. The Japanses government hopes to formally conclude the pact and have it ratified by parliament as early as the first half of next year, it said.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has sought to bolster the country's defense coordination with the US, which bases some 50,000 troops here. The agreement would expand the amount of military information the two sides could share beyond what is permitted under their existing mutual defense agreement, the Asahi said.
It would also broaden the range of US military equipment that Japanese contractors could be called upon to service and repair, it said.
Neither Foreign Ministry nor Defense Agency officials could be reached for comment yesterday morning, with many government offices already closed for the year-end holidays.
Crowds in Bangladesh are flocking to snap photographs with an unlikely social media star — an albino buffalo with flowing blond hair nicknamed “Donald Trump” that is due to be sacrificed within days. Owner Zia Uddin Mridha, 38, said his brother named the 700kg bull over its flowing helmet of hair resembling the signature look of the US president. “My younger brother picked this name because of the buffalo’s extraordinary hair,” he said at his farm in Narayanganj, just outside the capital, Dhaka. Mridha said that a constant stream of curious visitors — social media fans, onlookers and children — have come throughout
The Bolivian government on Friday struck a deal with protesting miners, but was still grappling with blockades and demonstrations by other workers across La Paz. Other groups are still blocking access roads into the city, which is also the seat of the government. Police on Thursday prevented the miners from entering the main square by using tear gas, while the demonstrators hurled stones and explosives with slingshots. Protests against the policies of Bolivian President Rodrigo Paz have convulsed the Andean nation since early this month, and roadblocks were choking routes into La Paz throughout Friday, the national road authority said. Miners demanded that Paz
The Philippines said it has asked the country’s Supreme Court to allow it to arrest former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte’s chief drug war enforcer to stand trial in an international tribunal. The International Criminal Court (ICC) last week unsealed an arrest warrant against Philippine Senator Ronald dela Rosa, accusing him along with Duterte and other “coperpetrators” of the “crime against humanity of murder.” Dela Rosa briefly sought refuge in the Philippine Senate last week while asking the Philippine Supreme Court to stop an ongoing attempt by government agents to arrest him. “By his own conduct, he has placed himself outside the protection of
The researchers in Ireland looked at their computer screen, marveling at a medieval book tracked down in a Roman library. They flipped through its digitized pages and found their sought-after treasure: the oldest surviving English poem. “We were extremely surprised. We were speechless. We couldn’t believe our eyes when we first saw that,” said Elisabetta Magnanti, a visiting research fellow at Trinity College Dublin’s school of English. The poem was also within the main body of Latin text, she said, calling it “extraordinary.” Composed in Old English by a Northumbrian agricultural worker in the 7th century, Caedmon’s Hymn appears within some copies of
RSS