Japan's government pledged an investigation yesterday into allegations that defense officials knowingly under-reported the amount of fuel Japan's navy supplied to a US-led coalition ship in the Indian Ocean.
The allegations, which concern the refueling of a single warship in February 2003, were trumpeted by the opposition and could further complicate the government's efforts to win parliamentary passage of an extension of the refueling mission.
Japan's navy has been providing fuel for warships supporting US-led forces in Afghanistan since 2001. The mission expires on Nov. 1, and Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda has strongly pushed for an extension.
The government acknowledged earlier this month that it had mistakenly reported providing 750,000 liters of fuel to a US warship when it had provided 3 million liters.
Major newspapers reported yesterday that defense officials knew about the misreporting back in 2003, but did not disclose it, keeping it from Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba.
Nobutaka Machimura, chief cabinet secretary, said the government would conduct a full probe.
"For the people responsible to have been aware of the facts but not report them properly is extremely regrettable. We don't know what their intention for doing so was, so we'd like to have it investigated thoroughly," he said.
Machimura said that the Defense Ministry was expected to deal strictly with the personnel involved.
Fukuda's government has come under increasing pressure from the US to extend the mission. The government has proposed a more limited version of the mission in hopes of winning cooperation from the opposition, which controls the upper house of the Diet, or parliament.
Far from the violence ravaging Haiti, a market on the border with the Dominican Republic has maintained a welcome degree of normal everyday life. At the Dajabon border gate, a wave of Haitians press forward, eager to shop at the twice-weekly market about 200km from Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince. They are drawn by the market’s offerings — food, clothing, toys and even used appliances — items not always readily available in Haiti. However, with gang violence bad and growing ever worse in Haiti, the Dominican government has reinforced the usual military presence at the border and placed soldiers on alert. While the market continues to
An image of a dancer balancing on the words “China Before Communism” looms over Parisian commuters catching the morning metro, signaling the annual return of Shen Yun, a controversial spectacle of traditional Chinese dance mixed with vehement criticism of Beijing and conservative rhetoric. The Shen Yun Performing Arts company has slipped the beliefs of a spiritual movement called Falun Gong in between its technicolored visuals and leaping dancers since 2006, with advertising for the show so ubiquitous that it has become an Internet meme. Founded in 1992, Falun Gong claims nearly 100 million followers and has been subject to “persistent persecution” in
ONLINE VITRIOL: While Mo Yan faces a lawsuit, bottled water company Nongfu Spring and Tsinghua University are being attacked amid a rise in nationalist fervor At first glance, a Nobel prize winning author, a bottle of green tea and Beijing’s Tsinghua University have little in common, but in recent weeks they have been dubbed by China’s nationalist netizens as the “three new evils” in the fight to defend the country’s valor in cyberspace. Last month, a patriotic blogger called Wu Wanzheng filed a lawsuit against China’s only Nobel prize-winning author, Mo Yan (莫言), accusing him of discrediting the Communist army and glorifying Japanese soldiers in his fictional works set during the Japanese invasion of China. Wu, who posts online under the pseudonym “Truth-Telling Mao Xinghuo,” is seeking
‘SURPRISES’: The militants claim to have successfully tested a missile capable of reaching Mach 8 and vowed to strike ships heading toward the Cape of Good Hope Yemen’s Houthi rebels claim to have a new, hypersonic missile in their arsenal, Russia’s state media reported on Thursday, potentially raising the stakes in their attacks on shipping in the Red Sea and surrounding waterways against the backdrop of Israel’s war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The report by the state-run RIA Novosti news agency cited an unidentified official, but provided no evidence for the claim. It comes as Moscow maintains an aggressively counter-Western foreign policy amid its grinding war on Ukraine. However, the Houthis have for weeks hinted about “surprises” they plan for the battles at sea to counter the