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A Japanese government team is in talks with at least two top British firms to help a Japanese consortium land one of the world's most lucrative defence contracts, sources in Tokyo said, a $50 billion (£32 billion) project to build submarines for Australia. Germany's ThyssenKrupp (TKMS), a rival bidder, is wooing anxious members of Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s ruling Liberal Party with the economic and political benefits of its proposal. Two Japanese government officials and a company source in Tokyo said Babcock International Group and BAE Systems had approached the consortium of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Kawasaki Heavy Industries with...

MOSCOW (AFP) - Astronauts from Russia, Japan and the United States Thursday docked successfully with the International Space Station after a two-month delay, despite a minor hiccup. The Soyuz TMA 17M rocket -- carrying cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko, US astronaut Kjell Lindgren and Kimiya Yui of Japan -- blasted off from the Baikonur cosmodrome on schedule after a two-month delay caused by the failure of a Russian rocket during an unmanned resupply mission. The launch and the docking were successful even though one solar array -- a type of power supply that captures energy from the sun -- did not deploy...

According to the Japanese Ministry of Defense (MoD) request for proposal (RfP) to bidding contractors, the 27DD destroyers will incorporate a number of design changes compared to the first batch of Atago class guided missile destroyers. 27DD AEGIS Guided Missile Destroyer technical specifications and layout First, the hull of 27DD has been enlarged to an empty displacement of 8,200 tons compared to the original Atago's 7,700 tons. It is believed in the Japanese defense community that the enlargement of the hull was conceived in order to provide a necessary growth space for advanced naval weapon systems that are currently under...

At China’s very farthest limits, a town sandwiched between North Korea and Russia stands at the heart of Beijing’s plan to revitalise its bleak, frigid northeastern rust belt. Beijing has a vision of turning the nondescript outpost of Hunchun into a regional Asian trading hub and is spending tens of billions of dollars to turn it into reality. Less than 70 km away in North Korea, the port of Rason offers access to the sea and a shorter trade route to Japan, one of China’s biggest trading partners, than almost any of its own harbours. But the ambitious plan relies...

A Japanese outcrop is giving new meaning to the term island hopping, with tourists flocking there to be smothered by dozens of bouncing bunnies at once. An increasingly popular destination for holidaymakers, Rabbit Island is home to hundreds of wild but friendly bunnies who are known to approach tourists in large groups to scavenge for food. And visitors are more than willing to get on the ground and allow the rabbits to crawl all over them – even though the damp patches on their clothes suggest the adorable animals have wet feet and potentially answered the call of nature while...

While Abenomics has been an unmitigated disaster for Japan's ordinary population, where the soaring stock market has benefited the top decile of the population while everyone has been slammed by a record 25 consecutive months of declining real wages and soaring input costs, there had been one bright spot: corporate earnings, which unlike in Europe or even the US, have been growing at a steady double-digit clip. What was surprising is that Japan was perhaps the one place where currency debasement was leading to an immediate flow through to rising EPS.Then on Friday, a report out of Reuters caught...

Rodney Johnson July 20, 2015There’s a village in Japan where the dead outnumber the living, and I don’t mean the ancestors in the cemetery. The bodies are dispersed around the small town of Nagoro. It’s a small community of some 35 people, most in their 60s or older. The place is so sparsely populated that the locals consider their 150-plus dead a part of their community. OK, so they aren’t literal dead bodies. Instead, the locals erected scarecrow-like figures in their likeness. Scarecrows fill the schoolhouse whose students long since graduated. They wait by an old bus stop, even though...

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Saying they felt a "deep sense of ethical responsibility for a past tragedy," executives from a major Japanese corporation gave an unprecedented apology Sunday to a 94-year-old U.S. prisoner of war for using American POWs for forced labor during World War II.At the solemn ceremony hosted by the Museum of Tolerance at the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, James Murphy of Santa Maria, California, accepted the apology he had sought for 70 years on behalf of U.S. POWs from executives of Mitsubishi Materials Corp.

Masses are about to come to Me, Not out of catastrophe but willingly, Soon you shall see My spirit pouring out "FREE", A Mountain of Love, Pouring down from above, And all the Earth shall see, My love for all humanity, A Love so Alive and True! And it's headed right at you, So My question to you from Me? Is "ARE YOU" ready for what you are about to see?! ( (( ( MY GLORY ) )) ) Joel 2:28-32Amplified Bible (AMP) 28 And afterward I will pour out My Spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your...

YOKOHAMA, Japan — Some of Japan’s biggest companies, best known for motorcycles, washing machines and laptop computers, are pitching a new line of global products: military hardware. Quiet-running attack submarines. Amphibious search-and-rescue planes. Ship-mounted radar systems that use lasers to help pinpoint approaching enemies. After a ban on weapons exports that the Japanese government had maintained for nearly 50 years, Mitsubishi, Kawasaki, Hitachi, Toshiba and other military contractors in this semipacifist country are cautiously but unmistakably telling the world they are open for business. A maritime security exposition here in May was the first military industry trade show in Japan,...

Japan is interested in joining a NATO missile building consortium that would give Tokyo its first taste of a multinational defense project, a move the U.S. Navy is encouraging because it could pave the way for Japan to lead similar partnerships in Asia, sources said. The 12-country NATO consortium oversees development and shares the costs of the SeaSparrow missile, an advanced ship-borne weapon designed to destroy anti-ship sea-skimming missiles and attack aircraft. The missile is made by U.S. weapons firms Raytheon (RTN.N) and General Dynamics (GD.N). In May, Japanese naval officers traveled to a North Atlantic Treaty Organization meeting in...

I was torn to lament over situations recently so I asked The Lord to explain His Grace to me and I share it for your consideration . . . Grace is sufficient is more than a statement it is an enactment for many in My Creation ask "Why"? When I have given them the gift to (( ( "DECLARE" ) )) ((( "GRACE" ))) ! And so it is with this enlightenment they "IN FACT" carry the KEY to their own Blessings and Grace ! For I AM GRACE ETERNAL and it is in this manner you must speak and...

Nearly $3trillion wiped off Chinese stock markets in just the last few weeks Government and investors launched campaign to prop up tumbling shares Experts draw parallels with the credit booms that led up to the 1929 crash Analyst: 'I've never seen this kind of slump before. Don't think anyone has' China's tumbling stock markets plunged even further today, intensifying fears the country was tail-spinning towards the biggest financial disaster since the 1929 Wall Street crash. Almost $3trillion (£2trn) – more than the entire economic output of Brazil – has been wiped out since markets went into reverse just a few...

Playing in a big game, United States women's national team star Carli Lloyd was ready for the spotlight yet again. Lloyd got the United States off to a fast start in the Women's World Cup final against Japan, scoring two goals in the first five minutes. ... Lauren Holiday joined the fun with a goal in the 14th minute, but moments later, Lloyd struck again. This time, it was on an unbelievable shot from near midfield. ... With her third goal of the match, Lloyd became the first American to record a hat trick in the Women's World Cup final

Today's World Cup Final - USA vs. Japan On Fox.

Archaeologists have discovered the wreck of a Mongolian ship that was part of a fleet dispatched by Kublai Khan to invade Japan in the 13th century. The ship is the second to be located off southern Japan from two massive armadas – each reputedly made up of more than 4,000 ships and with an invasion force of 140,000 men – sent by the emperor of the Yuan Dynasty to conquer Japan in 1274 and 1281. Both invasion fleets were destroyed by devastating typhoons, with the storms going down in Japanese history as "kamikaze", or divine wind, that saved the nation...

Alright I must have seen this clip a hundred times... a woman, dressed in white, kicks a soccer ball - it hits the bar, but then seems to go in, then bounces out. The goal is defended by a woman in a dark uniform with dark hair, I'm assuming she's Japanese. Now everyone is making a big deal of this saying she "scored her own goal" or some other BS and I'm sick of it can someone PLEASE explain to me what happened?

Runway could be used for military purposes, US think tank says Johnson South Reef features a small port and two helipads. China has nearly finished building an airstrip that could be used for military purposes on one of its biggest artificial islands in the disputed South China Sea, according to satellite images released by a US think tank yesterday. The Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) said images taken on June 28 by DigitalGlobe showed China had almost completed the construction of a 3,000-metre airstrip at Fiery Cross Reef, which China calls Yongshu Reef. The defence ministry refused to...

Women in Okinawa have more babies and live longer than women from almost anywhere else in Japan. If data from the statistics bureau and labor ministry are any guide, it has as much to do with work-life balance as the prefecture’s sun-drenched beaches and crystal-clear waters. According to the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare statistics on average number of children per woman, of which the most recent data is from 2013, women in Okinawa give birth to an average 1.94 children over their lifetime, the highest rate in Japan. Tokyo comes in last, with women in the capital on...

MOSCOW, June 16 (UPI) -- Russian President Vladimir Putin announced Tuesday Russia's nuclear arsenal would be would increase by 40 intercontinental ballistic missiles in 2015. Speaking at Army-2015 Expo, an international military trade show near Moscow, Putin said the new missiles could "overcome even the most technically advanced anti-missile defense systems," adding a new long-range early-warning radar "to monitor in the western direction" was also being prepared. It was a reference to plans by NATO to permanently place troops and heavy armaments in Poland, a Russian neighbor and former Warsaw Pact country. In reference to apparent plans to reinforce NATO's...