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A powerful earthquake struck near remote Japanese islands and shook most of the country Saturday evening, but it occurred well beneath the earth's surface and did not trigger a tsunami warning. Two people suffered non-life-threatening injuries, and there were no reports of major damage. The magnitude-8.5 offshore quake struck off the Ogasawara islands at a depth of 590 kilometres, the Japan Meteorological Agency said. The U.S. Geological Survey said the quake had a magnitude of 7.8 and a depth of 678 kilometres. The temblor was powerful enough to rattle most of Japan, from the southern islands of Okinawa to Hokkaido...

Four students (out of the 35 currently in Israel) live at the Jerusalem Makuya Center, along with its new director Asher Seito Kimura, his wife Tzofiya and their children. Each Makuya member has a Hebrew name, taken, or given to him or her upon arrival in Israel. They chat easily about their faith, which is based heavily on the Old Testament and doesn't contain even a hint of proselytism. But none of the Makuya will discuss politics. They will talk with feeling, however, about their position on Israel. Every Makuya, they say proudly, identifies with -- and wholeheartedly supports --...

U.S. Senator Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., told the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations Saturday night that PLO leader Yasser Arafat must stop violence as a means to achieve his goals. Clinton, previously known as an outspoken supporter of the PLO agenda, said that she held Arafat responsible for the ongoing attacks and violence aimed at innocent Israelis. "He has failed as a leader to rein in the forces of violence and terrorism," the former First Lady said, adding that his use of force to advance the PLO agenda would not be successful. Senator Clinton also visited Israeli terror victims ...

A magnitude 7.8 earthquake has struck 194 kilometres off Japan's coast, according to United States Geological Survey (USGS), but there were no immediate reports of damage, public broadcaster NHK said. The quake, which hit off Japan's Bonin Islands, reportedly rocked buildings in Tokyo as it built in intensity about 8:30pm local time (9:30pm AEST). The Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre said: "There is no tsunami threat because the earthquake is located too deep inside the earth." The USGS reported the epicentre was approximately 874 kilometres south of Tokyo in the Pacific Ocean, while the Japan Meteorological Agency said the earthquake had...

Evacuations were ordered Friday after a volcano erupted on a small island in the Japanese island chain. Mount Shindake erupted at 9:57 a.m. Friday, local time, and caused a 4.0-magnitude earthquake, according to the United States Geological Survey. About 140 people living on the island were ordered to evacuate, the Japanese government said. The Japanese Meteorological Agency raised its volcano level to 5, its highest level, as a result of the eruption. Pyroclastic flows from the volcano reached the shore, Japanese broadcaster NHK reported.

The power vacuum created by the Obama administration’s withdrawal from world leadership and resistance to tyranny is not only being filled by the Islamic State and its terrorist affiliates like Boko Haram and state sponsors of terror like soon-to-be nuclear Iran but also by an increasingly belligerent and resurgent China. China’s State Council, the Communist giant’s version of our cabinet, has issued a policy paper declaring that Beijing is facing “a grave and complex array of security threats” that forces it to switch its strategy from defense to offense and that as a result China will increase its “open seas...

Visiting Chief of Staff of the Japan Air Self-Defense Force General Harukazu Saito and his Vietnamese host have agreed to intensify air defense cooperation between their two countries. The agreement was made between General Saito and Senior Lieutenant General Do Ba Ty, Chief of the General Staff of the Vietnam People’s Army, at their talks in Hanoi on May 25, according to the Vietnam News Agency. The Vietnamese official told his guest that the bilateral cooperation can be strengthened through sharing experience in aviation safety, disaster response, and rescue, as well as thorough exchanges of delegations at all levels. He...

Now, with Beijing set to enforce what is effectively a no-fly zone over its new sovereign ‘territory’ we bring you the following graphic from WSJ which shows that when it comes to sheer size, China’s air force and Navy are beyond compare. China’s promise to beef up its naval capabilities to prevent further “meddling” and “provocative actions” by rivals in the South China Sea is a daunting prospect for most of its neighbors, which already view Beijing’s fast-improving armed forces with trepidation... As a recent Pentagon review of China’s military modernization drive noted, “China is investing in capabilities designed to...

President Barack Obama is negotiating a multilateral trade agreement with the governments of 11 nations. These include Malaysia and Vietnam -- as well as Japan, Brunei, Australia, Singapore, New Zealand, Canada, Mexico, Chile and Peru. This so-called Trans-Pacific Partnership would govern most of the commercial relations between the nations that sign it. "With over 20 chapters under negotiation," explains a Congressional Research Service report published in March, "the TPP partners envision the agreement to be 'comprehensive and high-standard,' in that they seek to eliminate tariffs and nontariff barriers to trade in goods, services, and agriculture, and to establish or expand...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States vowed on Thursday to keep up air and sea patrols in international waters after the Chinese navy repeatedly warned a U.S. surveillance plane to leave the airspace over artificial islands China is creating in the disputed South China Sea. The Chinese navy issued eight warnings to the crew of a U.S. P8-A Poseidon, the U.S. military's most advanced surveillance aircraft, when it conducted the overflights on Wednesday, according to CNN, which was aboard the U.S. aircraft. When the American pilots responded by saying the plane was flying through international airspace, a Chinese radio operator...

The U.S. is considering deploying aircraft and ships to contest Chinese claims to disputed islands in the South China Sea, U.S. officials said Wednesday. Options are on the table to fly surveillance aircraft and sail Navy ships nearby in a move that puts the U.S. directly into a contentious territorial contest in East Asia, in which, until now, the U.S. has avoided overtly taking sides. The South China Sea is the subject of numerous rival -- often messy -- territorial claims, with China, Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam disputing sovereignty of several island chains and nearby waters. China...

Above the South China Sea (CNN)The Chinese navy issued warnings eight times as a U.S. surveillance plane on Wednesday swooped over islands that Beijing is using to extend its zone of influence. Seeking to further challenge China's military build-up in the South China Sea, the plane conducted a reconnaissance mission over a contested military installation being constructed on a manmade series of islands. A CNN team was given exclusive access to fly onboard the P8-A Poseidon, America's most advanced surveillance and submarine-hunting aircraft, as it flew over the islands. READ: China cautions U.S. Navy on patrols The U.S. is considering...

Japanese adult film star Rola Misaki has denied accusations that she signed a £5m deal with a Chinese businessman to become his personal assistant. The 22-year-old adult movie star, who also goes by the name of Rola Takizawa, has claimed that the story is a hoax created by the wealthy Chinese businessman in order to grab public attention, reports Tokyo Reporter. "The report is completely incorrect," Misaki wrote on her official Sina Weibo account, the Chinese equivalent of Twitter, a few days after the controversial news. Misaki appeared with the mysterious businessman from the Chinese entertainment industry at an event...

After two long years of forecasts, calculations, and waiting, it’s finally happening… The global weather event called El Niño is back. This happens every few years, when the waters in the Pacific Ocean, primarily off the coast of South America, become warmer. This heats the air above the ocean and disrupts the normal west-to-east flow of Pacific winds. In turn, this shifts the usual areas of cloud formation, causing unusual fluctuations in rainfall and temperatures. The Australian Bureau of Meteorology recently joined the U.S. Climate Prediction Center and the Japan Meteorological Agency in saying that Pacific Ocean temperatures have risen...

Japan would retaliate against North Korea if Pyongyang launched a missile attack on the United States, Japanese Defense Minister Gen Nakatani said. Nakatani said Sunday Japan would defend the U.S. because a North Korea missile attack would likely result in serious damage.

Big news hit the front page of the New York Times on Saturday, in the form of a long article on China’s efforts to miniaturize its nuclear arsenal. The article, using the annual Pentagon report on Chinese military capabilities as its primary source, noted that the decision to tackle the technical problems associated with miniaturization suggest (but only suggest) a larger shift in nuclear weapons doctrine. As the Times article notes, China has long had the latent capacity to MIRV its nuclear missiles, a step that the United States, the Soviet Union, France, and the United Kingdom took long ago....

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Foreign holdings of U.S. debt rose in March as China ramped up its purchases and displaced Japan as the leading owner of U.S. Treasury securities. The Treasury Department says overseas ownership of U.S. debt rose 2.1 percent in March to $6.18 trillion. That is below January's record of $6.22 trillion. China added $37.3 billion ... bringing its stockpile to $1.26 trillion... ahead of Japan, which added just $2.5 billion...to $1.23 trillion. ... The U.S. deficit topped $1 trillion from 2009 through 2012. Foreign governments...account for two-thirds of the foreign holdings...rose 1 percent from the previous month to...

China Retakes Top Spot as the Biggest Foreign Owner of U.S. Debt By IAN TALLEY It was a short-lived domination. After just a month of being the top holder of U.S. Treasury debt, Japan has once again been pushed into the No.2 slot as China bulked up on Uncle Sam’s bonds and notes. As we noted last month – and several times before that – Treasury’s data is a rough guesstimate. That makes it hard for analysts sifting through the obscure sheaves of digital data to glean anything but rough trends. It also makes it difficult to draw precise conclusions....

A leaked draft of a trade agreement under negotiation among 12 Pacific rim countries, including the US and Japan, contains language that could delay the entrance of generic competition for much-needed medicines and keep pharmaceutical prices high, according to the Foundation for Aids Research (amfAR), an international non-profit headquartered in New York. The organisation is lending its voice to those expressing similar concerns, like humanitarian organisation Doctors Without Borders. Although details of the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) have been kept confidential, leaked texts of the treaty have offered some clues, such as its embrace of intellectual property protections that go...

EXCLUSIVE: A former senior government adviser who enjoyed privileged access to top-secret information about the navy’s future submarine project has taken a high paid job with one of three foreign contenders for the $20 billion plus contract. Sean Costello was chief-of-staff to former Defence Minister David Johnston and left his $250,000-a-year government job in January this year. He began work in April — just four months later — as Chief Executive Officer with French Government shipbuilder DCNS Australia. The firm is engaged in a “competitive evaluation process” for the Navy’s future submarine contract alongside Germany’s Thyssen Krupp Marine Systems (TKMS)...