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Russia’s Gazprom PJSC isn’t confident in Japan’s future as a growing natural gas user, which may damp prospects of a proposed pipeline between the countries as Premier Shinzo Abe travels to Moscow later this month. [snip] Abe, seeking to deepen economic ties with Russia in an effort to resolve a 70-year-old dispute over islands off Hokkaido, is set to visit Moscow on April 27. Russian gas supplies to Japan, including the possible pipeline between the nations, could be discussed during the visit, Russia’s Kommersant newspaper reported last month. [snip] Russia has turned to Asia as a growth market for its...

The benchmark averages have surrendered earlier gains on news that China has deployed 150,000 troops to the North Korean border, and the U.S. is considering further sanctions against Russia. The reports caused the S&P 500 to falter at trendline resistance at 2,370 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average to fall back to support at the 50-day moving average. Stocks were cautiously higher before Monday's open amid geopolitical pressures and jitters ahead of Q1 earnings from the country's largest banks. As the morning progressed, the averages gained altitude before running into a wall of resistance that was exacerbated by reports of...

The money will be used to upgrade assembly technology at the Kentucky plant — the largest Toyota factory in the world. “This is more about job retention and setting up for the future,” Rick Hesterberg, a Toyota spokesman, told The Daily Caller News Foundation. “We’ve got 8,200 people working here and we build over half a million vehicles. We’re a thirty year old plant, and we needed the upgrades. The new technology will allow us to be much more flexible to adapt to market forces in the future.”

<p>Chinese media has revealed that the new Chinese aircraft carrier will be able to dock 36 Jian-15 fighters [J-15].</p> <p>According to Chinese news portal Sina, “At the moment, the aircraft carrier being prepared for launch is optimized in terms of load which compared to the Liaoning aircraft carrier can reach from 28 to 36 units of J-15 fighters.” Currently, the Chinese Navy arsenal consists of the Liaoning aircraft carrier, created on the basis of the Soviet cruiser Varyag. Liaoning can base 24 J-15 fighters.</p>

KIM Jong-un has placed his country on the “brink of war” as a high-profile defector urged US President Donald Trump to assassinate the despot North Korean leader before he fires his nuclear weapons at America and the UK. Yesterday Trump pledged to ramp up defences against Pyongyang as he met China’s president Xi Jinping for crunch talks in Florida.

China has started building a new generation of large amphibious assault vessels that will strengthen the navy as it plays a more dominant role in projecting the nation’s power overseas, military sources said. The 075 Landing Helicopter Dock is now under construction by a Shanghai-based shipbuilding company, the sources said. The amphibious vessel is far larger than similar ships previously constructed for the PLA Navy. The 075 can serve as a form of aircraft carrier and military experts said it would give China’s navy the ability to launch various types of helicopters to attack naval vessels, enemy ground forces or...

JAPANESE POLITICIANS WANT THE ABILITY TO BOMB NORTH KOREA FIRST BEFORE BEING 'DESTROYED' BY TOM O'CONNOR ON 3/27/17 AT 1:58 PM Top Japanese lawmakers have begun arguing for the capability to launch a preemptive missile strike on North Korea in the face of Pyongyang's increasingly active ballistic and nuclear weapons programs. In response to militant rhetoric from North Korea, a group of influential Japanese legislators has announced a public campaign to end the World War II-era restrictions, imposed on Tokyo by the U.S., that prevent Japan from initiating military action. The post-war scheme tasked the U.S. with defending Japan from...

China plans to increase the size of its marine corps from about 20,000 to 100,000 personnel to protect the nation’s maritime lifelines and its growing interests overseas, military insiders and experts have said. Some members would be stationed at ports China operates in Djibouti in the Horn of Africa and Gwadar in southwest Pakistan, they said. The expanded corps is part of a wider push to refocus the world’s largest army away from winning a land war based on sheer numbers and towards meeting a range of security scenarios using highly specialised units. Towards that end, Chinese President Xi Jinping...

Japan now has Asia’s only navy with two aircraft carrier-sized warships — the Kaga (pictured) The state-controlled Chinese media has sharply criticised the commissioning of Japan’s powerful new warship, which has the same name --- Kaga --- as one of the Imperial Japanese Navy’s aircraft carriers in World War II. The original Kaga, which Beijing’s English language daily, Global Times, terms a “notorious warship”, was sunk by the US Navy in the Battle of Midway in 1942. With Japanese Ship (JS) Kaga’s rebirth on Wednesday as a “helicopter destroyer”, Japan now has Asia’s only navy with two aircraft carrier-sized warships...

North Korea attempted to launch a missile on Wednesday morning but failed, according to authorities in several countries including South Korea and the United States. The South Korean Defense Ministry said North Korea appeared to have unsuccessfully tried to launch one missile, adding that it is still determining the type. A U.S. Pacific Command spokesman said the U.S. military detected a launch attempt, with the missile appearing to have exploded seconds after launch.

NORTH Korean tyrant Kim Jong-un has released a propaganda video showing a US aircraft carrier being blown up and a bomber shot down in flames. Snaps from the secretive state’s recent ballistic missile launches are shown alongside the haunting message: “A knife will be stabbed into the throat of the carrier.” It comes days after Kim Jong-un threatened the US with nuclear destruction

Japan withdrew from the London Naval Treaty in 1936. The chief Japanese negotiator, Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto, feared that concessions on the part of his negotiating team would lead directly to his assassination upon return to Japan. Japanese nationalists believed that the Washington Naval Treaty system was holding Japan back and preventing it from becoming a first-rate power. Freed from the constraints of international treaties, they believed that Japan could build a world-beating fleet that would push the Western powers out of Asia and help usher in a new era of Japanese dominance.

Saudi Arabia's King Salman Abdulaziz Al Saud began a month-long trip to Asia last week that has taken him to Malaysia and Indonesia, with stops in Japan, China and the Maldives to follow. Coming after high-level visits between Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states and Chinese government officials, the King's trip is a further indication of the deepening of relations between Arab Gulf monarchies and East Asia. While trade is an important focus for the Saudi delegation, Asia's growing role in Gulf security is going to be a major feature of the trip. The China-Saudi security relationship was emphasised during a...

In case anyone wondered what the Kim regime was up to yesterday, the North Korean state-run media would like to clear up the confusion. The simultaneous launch of four mid-range ballistic missiles was a practice run for the war than Kim Jong-un insists is coming, a little target practice using Uncle Sam as a bulls-eye. The firing range practice got a significant response from the US that raises the stakes for both China and South Korea: North Korea was practicing to strike United States military bases in Japan with its latest barrage of missiles, state media in Pyongyang reported...

March 6 (UPI) -- The four missiles North Korea launched on Monday were likely practice for targeting U.S. military bases in Japan. According to South Korea's joint chiefs of staff, three of the four missiles landed in Japanese territorial waters, making it likely North Korea is rehearsing attacks against U.S. military stations in Japan, from where reinforcements for the Korean peninsula would arrive in the event of war.

The Philippine defense chief and two other Cabinet members on Saturday toured a U.S. aircraft carrier patrolling the disputed South China Sea on the invitation of the navy, U.S. Embassy officials said. Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana, Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez and Justice Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre II visited the USS Carl Vinson along with three Philippine security officials, said U.S. Embassy spokeswoman Molly Koscina. The visit shows continuing top-level engagements between Philippine officials and the U.S. military despite Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s threat to scale back engagements with American forces while reaching out to China and Russia.

Identified only as "Joji", the 50-year-old Japanese man was buried alive under his beloved X-rated content. Whether he suffocated or suffered a heart attack remains to be established by the coroner, however it was noted that his eyes had popped out of his head. ...

Kim Jong-nam Agreed to a Meeting with Ishii, Former Minister of Home Affairs, Eleven Days before his Assassination 2017.3.1 /begin excerpts In an interview with Sankei Shimbun on Feb. 28 regarding the murder of N. Korea's Kim Jong-nam, Ishii Hajime, former Minister of Home Affairs, clearly indicated that Mr. Kim planned a meeting with him in Macau on Mar. 1. Mr. Ishii has been involved for a long time in normalizing diplomatic relationship with N. Korea. It is possible that Kim Jong-nam was pursuing a separate attempt to improve relation between two countries, independent of Kim Jong-un, Chairman of N....

“He rarely speaks logically, and he only emphasizes one side of things as if it were the absolute truth. There are lots of moments when I suspected his assertions were factually dubious,” said Chikako Tsuruta, who routinely covers Trump-related news as an interpreter for CNN, ABC and CBS. “He is so overconfident and yet so logically unconvincing that my interpreter friends and I often joke that if we translated his words as they are, we would end up making ourselves sound stupid,”...This challenge, the likes of which they claim was not an issue when interpreting for renowned orator Barack Obama

Japan's first submarine to be powered by lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries will be commissioned in March 2020, doing away with lead-acid batteries and a Stirling air-independent propulsion (AIP) system. With the arrival of this eleventh Soryu-class submarine the Japan Maritime Self-Defence Force (JMSDF) will be the world's first navy to field a conventional submarine powered by Li-ion batteries. VAdm (Retired) Masao Kobayashi, former commander of the JMSDF's Fleet Submarine Force, explained at UDT Asia in Singapore on 18 January that the new type 'will change conventional submarine operations dramatically'. While Li-ion batteries offered similar endurance to an AIP system combined with...