Free Republic

Japan has resumed operations at the world's largest nuclear power plant to help the country meet huge electricity demands during a global oil crisis, but the reboot highlights a big problem: Japan is running out of space for spent nuclear fuel and has no viable plans for permanent disposal of the radioactive waste. The restart of No. 6 reactor at Kashiwazaki-Kariwa Nuclear Power Station earlier this year was meant to spur a movement to bring more nuclear reactors online. Kashiwazaki-Kariwa is one of three plants whose cooling pools will be full in five years, according to the Federation of Electric...

Capt. Wendel Penetrante, Capt. Edwin Catubig and Master Chief Petty Officer Thomas Dean Howell were relieved on Wednesday. No specific reason for their firing has been given. The commanding officer, executive officer and senior enlisted leader of a Navy ship repair facility in Yokosuka, Japan, have been fired, service officials announced on Wednesday. Capt. Wendel Penetrante, Capt. Edwin Catubig and Master Chief Petty Officer Thomas Dean Howell were relieved of their duties on Wednesday as commanding officer, executive officer, and command master chief, respectively, a Navy news release says. They were all assigned to the U.S. Naval Ship Repair Facility...

The Chinese Coast Guard said on Monday it is conducting “law enforcement” patrols east of Taiwan in response to Japan and the Philippines reaching an agreement on maritime boundaries. China denounced the Japanese-Filipino agreement as “completely illegal, null, and void” because it could disrupt China’s expansive territorial claims. “This is a necessary action taken in response to Japan and the Philippines unilaterally announcing the initiation of maritime boundary delimitation negotiations in the waters east of China’s Taiwan island,” the Chinese Coast Guard said. “We urge Japan and the Philippines to immediately cease all illegal actions that infringe upon ​China’s sovereign...

Japan's Environment Ministry said 13 people were killed in more than 230 bear attacks in 2025, exceeding the number of fatalities and attacks in any preceding year. A bear injured four people in a residential area of Japan on Tuesday in the latest case of an attack by the animals in an area of the country where bears have increasingly encroached on the human population in recent years. Police and fire department officials rushed to the scene in the Sasakino district of Fukushima in northeastern Japan after receiving an emergency call from the Fukushima Steel Works reporting bear attacks on...

A decades-old bomb exploded beneath a home, killing at least five people. The explosive detonated in Biak Numfor Regency in Indonesia's Papua Province on Sunday, May 31, leaving at least five people dead and five others hospitalized with injuries, The Jakarta Globe and Antara reported, citing local authorities. Three more people are missing, according to the Indonesian news outlets. The Jakarta Globe reported that the explosion occurred below a stilt house located near the shoreline on Biak town's Walter Mongonsidi Street. Authorities believe the bomb was left in the area during World War II. “The explosion is suspected to have...

Reikado Hall on Miyajima Island's Mount Misen has been known as the home of the "eternal flame" for over 1,200 years. And the thing about eternal flames is that if they do get out of control, you can't really put them out. Otherwise they're not so eternal are they? And then the inevitable happens: A Buddhist hall in Western Japan known for housing an "eternal flame" that has been burning for over 1,000 years caught fire and burned to the ground on Miyajima Island. pic.twitter.com/8HPHGdDu4A— The Associated Press (@AP) May 21, 2026Yep, according to News on Japan, the eternal flame...

The Communist Chinese government rebuked a U.S. Army general for using the words “dagger” and “shield” to respectively describe regional allies South Korea and Japan. Four-star Gen. Xavier Brunson, the commander of the United States Forces Korea (USFK) and United Nations Command, made the analogy during a May 22 podcast interview conducted by the United States Army War College, the South China Morning Post (SCMP) first reported. Nearly a week later, the Chinese embassy in South Korea responded by issuing what it called a “solemn warn[ing]” to the general, claiming his use of figurative language to characterize the U.S.’s East...

A U.S. Navy sailor who died at age 17 aboard the battleship USS West Virginia during the 1941 Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor will be buried May 30 in his Arkansas hometown. Fireman 3rd Class Royle Luker will be buried with full military honors at New Bethel Cemetery in Plainview, where he was raised before enlisting in June 1941, according to a Navy news release Wednesday. He was the son of George Luker, a World War I veteran, and Nettie Estelle David Luker. He is survived by two nephews and a niece, according to his obituary on the Cornwell...

A genetic study of the remains of four 2,000-year-old dogs recovered from two archaeological sites on the Korean Peninsula suggests that the canines belonged to a lineage separate from other dog populations in East Asia, according to the Korea JoongAng Daily. It had been previously thought that dog populations in East Asian shared a single lineage. Hyeongcheol Kim of the Gaya National Research Institute of Cultural Heritage, Suyeon Kim and A-reum Yu of the National Research Institute of Cultural Heritage, and their colleagues determined that ancient Korean dogs resembled the Australian dingo and the New Guinea singing dog. Korean dogs...

The Free and Open Indo-Pacific vision, initially articulated by Prime Minister Abe Shinzō in 2016...includes capacity-building assistance aimed at strengthening governance, maritime security, and navigational safety. FOIP represented a major step forward in Japan’s strategic engagement in the Indo-Pacific region, particularly in Southeast Asia. For example, the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force has conducted Indo-Pacific Deployment long-range training missions, mainly in the South China Sea, since 2017. These deployments deliberately incorporate port visits and joint exercises with regional navies, reflecting broader strategic considerations. Over the past decade, China’s maritime law-enforcement capabilities and naval power have expanded significantly, fundamentally transforming the security...

A mutant super pig population has spiraled out of control — thanks to their inherited, rapid reproductive cycles — in the ghost towns of a nuclear fallout zone in Japan, according to reports and researchers. The 2011 Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant disaster, spurred by a massive 9.0-magnitude earthquake and tsunami, forced roughly 164,000 people to flee from their homes to escape the radiation zone. Amid the chaos, domestic pigs escaped into abandoned farmland and began interbreeding with indigenous feral boars — creating a mutant pig population with alarming genes, Popular Science reported. Researchers from Fukushima and Hirosaki Universities discovered...

Two Americans were arrested in Japan on Monday after breaking into the enclosure of the beloved Punch the monkey, the 9-month-old internet sensation, police said. Police in the Tokyo suburb of Chiba detained Reid Jahnai Daysun, 24, and Neal Jabahri Duan, 27, after one of the men allegedly jumped the fence to enter the enclosure while the other filmed.

How could the country that is now the foremost persecutor of Christians in the world have emerged from the work of a dedicated Christian missionary? Jonathan Cheng’s history of North Korea, "Korean Messiah," sets out to explain... Samuel Moffett, a Presbyterian missionary who arrived in ‘the Hermit Kingdom’ of Korea in 1890, built a vast mission compound in Pyongyang. His ministry helped spark the great Christian revival of 1907, which led to Pyongyang being called the ‘Jerusalem of the East’ with great churches and crowded Wednesday prayer meetings. Moffett ran a world-class seminary, and his theology carried a message of...

Fujisawa, Kanagawa Pref. – A mosque construction project in Fujisawa, a city of 440,000 about an hour south of Tokyo, has become a focal point for debate over how Japanese communities are adapting to a growing Muslim population.Sri Lankan businessman Mohamed Khaleel, 54, says the idea of building a mosque in his adopted hometown emerged over a decade ago among the local Muslim community. The closest big mosque to the city center, Ebina Masjid, is 20 kilometers away and has been struggling to serve the increasing Muslim population in the area. . . . Hirofumi Tanada, a professor emeritus at...

Trump Says U.S. Will Withdraw ‘A Lot’ More Than 5,000 President Donald Trump has said that far more troop reductions are in the offing after the Pentagon announced on Friday that some 5,000 U.S. soldiers would be withdrawn from bases in Germany over the coming year.“We’re going to cut way down. And we’re cutting a lot further than 5,000.” The U.S. leader had previously planned to bring back around 9,500 soldiers from Germany during his first term in office; however, his successor, Joe Biden, reversed the decision before it could be enacted. At present, approximately 36,000 troops are stationed in...

Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this story: While bones can regrow themselves when they break, teeth aren’t so lucky, and that leads to millions of people worldwide suffering from some form of edentulism, a.k.a. toothlessness. Now, Japanese researchers are moving a promising, tooth-regrowing medicine into human trials. If the trial is successful, the researchers hope the drug will become available for all forms of toothlessness sometime around 2030. The average adult human body contains 206 bones—the hardened mixtures of calcium, minerals, and collagen that provide the biological scaffolding that walks us through our day. While we may not...

Lost luggage and battered bags could soon be a thing of the past, as Japan Airlines starts testing robotic baggage handlers. Starting in May, human workers at Tokyo's busy Haneda airport will have a helping hand from an army of humanoid robots as part of a two–year trial. The Chinese–made bots will be trained to tackle ground handling tasks like loading cargo containers of luggage on and off flights. Japan Airlines (JAL) hopes that the new robotic workers will help ease staffing issues as Japan juggles a surge in tourism and a slumping workforce. The airport will trial two robots:...

Host Bill Hamblet speaks with Admiral Harry Harris on how a war with Iran could reshape global strategy across two theaters. The discussion explores impacts on U.S. commitments, Indo-Pacific stability, China’s role, and regional security dynamics, highlighting how crises in the Middle East reverberate across East Asia’s strategic and economic landscape.

In the summer of 1905, two men held a private conversation in Tokyo that the world wouldn't find out about for nearly two decades. No treaty was signed. No announcement was made. But in that room, the United States quietly handed an entire nation over to colonial rule — and set in motion a chain of events that would end at Pearl Harbor forty years later. This is the story of the Taft-Katsura Agreement, the secret deal that validated Japanese imperial ambition at the exact moment it needed validation most. We cover the Meiji Restoration and Japan's transformation from feudal...

The Finance Ministry said Tuesday it will issue commemorative ¥1,000 [US$6.25] coins marking the 100th anniversary of the 1926 start of the Showa Era. The coins will be priced at ¥34,800 [US$218] apiece. The obverse design features a Shinkansen bullet train, Tokyo Tower and expressways in color, symbolizing postwar reconstruction and rapid economic growth. The reverse depicts Mount Fuji, cherry blossoms and doves. A total of 40,000 coins will be issued. Japan Mint will accept applications for about three weeks starting Aug. 20. This marks the first coin honoring a Japanese era since silver coins were issued in 2018 to...