Tag Archives: Japan

Philippines gets first coastguard boat from Japan to boost security

Japan giving Philippines ship

MANILA (Reuters) – Japan on Thursday delivered to the Philippines the first of 10 coastguard vessels to help it improve its maritime security and law enforcement in the South China Sea where tension has been rising over a territorial dispute with China.

China claims almost the entire South China Sea where about $5 trillion worth of sea-borne trade passes every year. Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam also have claims in the sea believed to have rich deposits of oil and gas.

Japan has no claims in the waterway but worries about China’s growing military reach across sea lanes through which much of Japan’s trade passes.

Philippine coastguard chief Rear Admiral William Melad said the 44-metre (144-foot) vessel from Japan would be sent out to sea on patrols and law enforcement operations.

“It can be used for maritime security operations but it’s not for combat,” Melad told reporters.

The boat would also be used for humanitarian work and disaster relief operations. Japan will supply nine more of the vessels under a 7.3 billion peso ($158 million) soft loan agreement.

Melad did not mention China but its increasingly assertive claims in disputed South China Sea waters pose for the Philippines its most pressing security concern.

China has dredged up sand and built up reefs to make seven islands in the Spratly islands, some with port facilities and air strips.

China says is has the right to do whatever work it wants on its territory, and its aims are entirely peaceful, but an arbitration court in The Hague last month rejected China’s historic claim to the South China Sea.

China did not participate in and has refused to accept the July 12 ruling by the Permanent Court of Arbitration.

Japan and the Philippines are in talks about two more large coastguard ships worth about 10 billion pesos ($215 million) and the lease of four TC-90 surveillance aircraft.

Japan has also warming relations with Vietnam, promising to help strengthen its coastguard with training, vessels and other equipment.

Philippine coastguard spokesman Commander Armand Balilo said the force would be expanded over the next two years with the recruitment of 6,000 more personnel and the acquisition of more boats and aircraft from the United States to protect the country’s exclusive economic zone.

(Reporting by Manuel Mogato; Editing by Robert Birsel)

New images suggest China has built reinforced hangars on disputed islands

Chinese dredging vessels are purportedly seen in the waters around Mischief Reef in the disputed Spratly Islands in the South China Sea in this still image from video taken by a P-8A Poseidon surveillance aircraft provided by the United States Navy

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Recent satellite photographs show China appears to have built reinforced aircraft hangars on its holdings in the disputed South China Sea, according to a Washington-based think tank.

Pictures taken in late July show the hangars constructed on Fiery Cross, Subi and Mischief Reefs in the Spratly islands, have room for any fighter jet in the Chinese air force, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

“Except for a brief visit by a military transport plane to Fiery Cross Reef earlier this year, there is no evidence that Beijing has deployed military aircraft to these outposts. But the rapid construction of reinforced hangars at all three features indicates that this is likely to change,” CSIS said in a report.

China claims most of the South China Sea, through which $5 trillion in ship-borne trade passes every year. The Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Taiwan and Brunei have overlapping claims.

The images have emerged about a month after an international court in The Hague ruled against China’s sweeping claims in the resource-rich region, a ruling emphatically rejected by Beijing.

The United States has urged China and other claimants not to militarize their holdings in the South China Sea.

China has repeatedly denied doing so and has in turn criticized U.S. patrols and exercises for ramping up tensions.

“China has indisputable sovereignty over the Spratly islands and nearby waters,” China’s Defence Ministry said in a faxed response to a request for comment on Tuesday.

“China has said many times, construction on the Spratly islands and reefs is multipurpose, mixed, and with the exception of necessary military defensive requirements, are more for serving all forms of civil needs.”

Ties around the region have been strained in the lead-up to and since The Hague ruling.

China has sent bombers and fighter jets on combat patrols near the contested South China Sea islands, state media reported on Saturday, and Japan has complained about what it has said were multiple intrusions into its territorial waters around another group of islands in the East China Sea.

The hangars all show signs of structural strengthening, CSIS said.

“They are far thicker than you would build for any civilian purpose,” Gregory Poling, director of CSIS’s Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative, told the New York Times, which first reported on the new images. “They’re reinforced to take a strike.”

Other facilities including unidentified towers and hexagonal structures have also been built on the islets in recent months, CSIS said.

(Reporting by Eric Beech and Idrees Ali in Washington and Michael Martina in Beijing.; Editing by Lincoln Feast)

Japan urges China not to escalate East China Sea tension

Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary Suga arrives at Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's official residence in Tokyo

By Kaori Kaneko

TOKYO (Reuters) – Japan said on Monday it would respond firmly after Chinese government vessels intruded into what Japan considers its territorial waters near disputed islands in the East China Sea 14 times at the weekend.

Ties between China and Japan, the world’s second and third largest economies, have for years been plagued by a dispute over the islands that Japan controls, and the waters around them.

The flurry of Chinese incursions into the waters follows a period of sustained pressure on China about its activities in the South China Sea, and a Chinese criticism of what it saw as Japanese interference in that dispute.

Chinese activity near the disputed East China Sea islands, known as the Senkaku in Japan and the Diaoyu in China, has heated up since Friday, Japanese officials said, prompting repeated Japanese protests, including three on Sunday alone.

Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said Japan would urge China not to escalate the East China Sea dispute, while also responding firmly and calmly.

Agencies including the coastguard would act closely together to deal with the situation, Suga said.

A Japanese government source, who asked not to be identified, said Japan’s coastguard had stepped up its patrols in the region at the weekend but declined to give further details.

About 230 Chinese fishing vessels were in the area on Saturday, Japan’s foreign ministry said.

China’s foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said in a statement on Saturday that China had indisputable sovereignty over the islands and nearby waters.

In the South China Sea, Japan has no claims and China recently rejected warned Japan not to interfere.

The United States, its Southeast Asian allies and Japan have questioned Chinese land reclamation on disputed islands in the South China Sea, especially after an international court last month rejected China’s historic claims to most of that sea.

China has refused to recognize the court ruling. Japan called on China to adhere to it, saying it was binding. China warned Japan not to interfere.

The spike in tension over the East China Sea also follows a Chinese accusation that Japan’s new defense minister, Tomomi Inada, had recklessly misrepresented history after she declined to say after her appointment last week if Japanese troops had massacred civilians in China during World War Two.

The legacy of Japan’s wartime occupation of parts of China is another thorn in relations between the neighbors.

China, and other counties in Asia, in particular South Korea, feel that Japan has never properly atoned for its aggression before and during World War Two.

Relations between South Korea and China have also been strained in recent days by a decision by South Korea and the United States to deploy an advanced anti-missile defense system, to guard against North Korean attacks, that China fears could be used against its military.

South Korea’s presidential office on Sunday rebuked China over its criticism of South Korea’s decision to deploy the anti-missile defense, urging China instead to play a stronger role against North Korea’s provocations.

South Korea and the United States began discussions to deploy the Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) unit in the South after the North’s fourth nuclear test in January and a long-range rocket launch in defiance of U.N. sanctions.

(Reporting by Kaori Kaneko, Nobuhiro Kubo, Tim Kelly and Kiyoshi Takenaka; writing by Linda Sieg; Editing by Paul Tait, Robert Birsel)

Knife attacker in Japan kills 19 in their sleep at disabled center

Police seen in front of disability center where mass stabbing took place

By Elaine Lies and Kwiyeon Ha

SAGAMIHARA, Japan (Reuters) – A knife-wielding man broke into a facility for the disabled in a small town near Tokyo early on Tuesday and killed 19 patients as they slept, authorities said, Japan’s worst mass killing since World War Two.

At least 25 other residents were wounded in the attack at the Tsukui Yamayuri-En facility for mentally and physically disabled in Sagamihara town, about 25 miles (40 km) southwest of Tokyo.

“This is a very heart-wrenching and shocking incident in which many innocent people became victims,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told a regular news conference in Tokyo.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe later told a gathering in Tokyo: “The lives of many innocent people were taken away and I am greatly shocked. We will make every effort to discover the facts and prevent a reoccurance.”

The suspect was a 26-year-old former employee of the facility who gave himself up to police. The man, Satoshi Uematsu, said in letters he wrote in February that he could “obliterate 470 disabled people”, Kyodo news agency reported.

He said he would kill 260 severely disabled people at two areas in the facility during a night shift, and would not hurt employees.

“My goal is a world in which the severely disabled can be euthanized, with their guardians’ consent, if they are unable to live at home and be active in society,” Uematsu wrote in the two letters given to the speaker of the lower house of parliament, Kyodo reported.

Uematsu was committed to hospital after he expressed a “willingness to kill severely disabled people”, an official in Sagamihara told Reuters. He was freed on March 2 after a doctor deemed he had improved, the official said.

Uematsu lived near the facility, and a neighbor described him as a polite, young man who always greeted him with a smile.

“It would be easier to understand if there had been a warning but there were no signs,” said Akihiro Hasegawa, 73. “We didn’t know the darkness of his heart.”

The suspect apparently began changing about five months ago, said Yuji Kuroiwa, the governor of Kanagawa prefecture, where the facility is located.

“You could say there were warning signs, but it’s difficult to say if this could have been prevented,” he told reporters.

“This was not an impulsive crime … He went in the dark of the night, opened one door at a time, and stabbed sleeping people one by one,” Kuroiwa said. “I just can’t believe the cruelty of this crime. We need to prevent this from ever happening again.”

Staff at the facility called police at 2.30 a.m. local time (1730 GMT Monday) with reports of a man armed with a knife on the grounds, media reports said. The man wore a black T-shirt and trousers, the reports said.

The 3-hectare (7.6 acre) facility was established by the local government. Surrounded by tree-covered mountains and on the banks of the Sagami River, it cares for people with a wide range of disabilities.

The facility’s website said the center had a maximum capacity of 160 people, including staff.

“IT MAKES YOU WEEP”

Japan has one of the lowest crime rates in the world and residents of Sagamihara said they were in shock. The last murder in the area was 10 years ago.

“This is a peaceful, quiet town so I never thought such an incident would happen here,” said Oshikazu Shimo, one of many residents of the town who gathered near the facility.

Taxi driver Susumu Fujimura said of the attacker: “He said ‘we should get rid of disabled people’ but he’s the worthless one.”

“That kind of person can’t defend themselves,” Fujimura said, referring to the victims. “That’s why so many died. It makes you weep to think of somebody just murdering them.”

The dead ranged in age from 19 to 70 and included nine males and 10 females, Kyodo said.

Police had recovered a bag with several knives, at least one stained with blood, a Kanagawa prefecture official said.

At least 29 emergency squads responded to the attack, Kyodo reported, with those wounded taken to at least six hospitals in the western Tokyo area.

Such mass killings are extremely rare in Japan and typically involve stabbings. Japan has strict gun laws and possession of firearms by the public is rare.

Eight children were stabbed to death at their school in Osaka by a former janitor in 2001. Seven people died in 2008 when a man drove a truck into a crowd and began stabbing people in Tokyo’s popular electronics and “anime” district of Akihabara.

A revision to Japan’s Swords and Firearms Control Law was introduced in 2009 in the wake of that attack, banning the possession of double-edged knives and further tightening gun-ownership rules.

Members of a doomsday cult killed 12 people and made thousands ill in 1995 in simultaneous attacks with sarin nerve gas on five Tokyo rush-hour subway trains.

(Additional reporting by Kaori Kaneko, Minami Funakoshi, Linda Sieg, Chang-Ran Kim, Olivier Fabre and William Mallard in TOKYO, Eric Beech in WASHINGTON and Jon Herskovitz in AUSTIN; Writing by Raju Gopalakrishnan; Editing by Sandra Maler, Grant McCool and Paul Tait)

North Korea fires three ballistic missiles in new show of force

KCNA file picture shows North Korean leader Kim Jong Un watching the ballistic rocket launch dri

By Jack Kim and James Pearson

SEOUL (Reuters) – North Korea fired three ballistic missiles on Tuesday which flew between 500 and 600 km (300-360 miles) into the sea off its east coast, South Korea’s military said, the latest in a series of provocative moves by the isolated country.

The U.S. military said it detected launches of what it believed were two Scud missiles and one Rodong, a home-grown missile based on Soviet-era Scud technology.

North Korea has fired both types numerous times in recent years, an indication that unlike recent launches that were seen as efforts by the North to improve its missile capability, Tuesday’s were meant as a show of force.

“This smells political rather than technical to me,” said Melissa Hanham, a senior research associate at the U.S.-based Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, California.

“I think the number and distance of the missiles lets them remind the ROK (Republic of Korea) of what they are up against,” she said, referring to South Korea by its official name.

North Korea and the rich, democratic South are technically still at war because their 1950-53 conflict ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty. The North regularly threatens to destroy the Japan, South Korea and the South’s main ally, the United States.

The launches came nearly a week after South Korea and the United States chose a site in the South to deploy the Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) anti-missile system to counter threats from the North, which had prompted Pyongyang to threaten a “physical response”.

“Our assessment is that it was done as a show of force,” a South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff official said at a briefing.

The missiles were launched from an area in the North’s western region called Hwangju between 5:45 a.m. South Korea time (04:45 p.m. EDT Monday) and 6:40 a.m., the South’s military said, an indication that the North was confident they would not crash on its own territory.

“The ballistic missiles’ flight went from 500 km to 600 km, which is a distance far enough to strike all of South Korea, including Busan,” the South’s military said in a statement.

Busan is a South Korean port city in the south.

North Korea has test-fired a series of ballistic missiles in recent months, in defiance of U.N. Security Council resolutions, including intermediate-range missiles in June and a submarine-launched missile this month.

“In addition to the basic goal of enhancing missile units’ readiness to fight, it might be a way of reminding their southern neighbors that the site chosen for a THAAD battery in South Korea is within reach,” Joshua Pollack, editor of the U.S.-based Nonproliferation Review, said of Tuesday’s launches.

South Korea announced last week the THAAD system would be deployed in the southeastern county of Seongju.

In addition to the decision to base a THAAD system in South Korea, the United States recently angered North Korea by blacklisting its leader Kim Jong Un for human rights abuses.

“The threat to our national security is growing very quickly in a short period of time,” South Korean Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn told parliament on Tuesday.

BOMBS, MISSILES AND SANCTIONS

North Korea conducted its fourth test of a nuclear device in January, and activity at its nuclear test site has increased recently, according to media reports in South Korea and Japan citing government officials, as well as a report by Washington-based North Korea monitoring project 38 North.

Following the latest nuclear test and a February space rocket launch that was widely viewed as a missile test in disguise, the U.N. Security Council imposed tough new resolutions that further isolate North Korea.

While China supported tougher sanctions against its neighbor and ally North Korea, it has sharply criticized the decision to base a THAAD battery in South Korea, saying the move would destabilize the security balance in the region.

“The situation on the Korean peninsula is severe and complex and all sides should avoid any actions that raise tensions,” China’s foreign ministry said, echoing previous statements.

Japan denounced the launches.

“The latest launch is a breach of the UN Security Council resolution and is extremely hazardous to shipping and aircraft and we have strongly protested,” the Japanese government said in a statement.

(Additional reporting by Ju-min Park, Tim Kelly in Tokyo and Ben Blanchard in Beijing; Writing by Tony Munroe; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan and Nick Macfie)

China fears that Pokemon Go may aid locating military bases

File photo of a virtual map of Bryant Park displayed on the screen as a man plays the augmented reality mobile game "Pokemon Go" by

By Paul Carsten

BEIJING (Reuters) – Not everyone loves Pokemon GO, the mobile game that has become an instant hit around the world since a limited release just a week ago.

The augmented reality game, in which players walk around real-life neighborhoods to hunt and catch virtual cartoon characters on their smartphone screens, has been blamed in the United States for several robberies of distracted mobile phone users and car crashes.

A U.S. senator has asked the developers of the game to clarify its data privacy protections.

And although the game is not available in China, the world’s biggest smartphone and online gaming market, some people there fear it could become a Trojan horse for offensive action by the United States and Japan.

“Don’t play Pokemon GO!!!” said user Pitaorenzhe on Chinese microblogging site Weibo. “It’s so the U.S. and Japan can explore China’s secret bases!”

The conspiracy theory is that Japan’s Nintendo Co Ltd which part owns the Pokemon franchise, and America’s Google can work out where Chinese military bases are by seeing where users can’t go to capture Pokemon characters.

The game relies on Google services such as Maps.

The theory is that if Nintendo places rare Pokemon in areas where they see players aren’t going, and nobody attempts to capture the creature, it can be deduced that the location has restricted access and could be a military zone.

“Then, when war breaks out, Japan and the U.S. can easily target their guided missiles, and China will have been destroyed by the invasion of a Japanese-American game,” said a social media post circulated on Weibo.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said he was unaware of reports that the game could be a security risk and that he didn’t have time to play with such things. He gave no further details.

Other government ministries did not respond to faxed questions about the game.

UNDETERRED FANS

But the calls for a boycott, and the fact that Pokemon GO hasn’t even been released in China, have not deterred fans.

“I really looked forward to playing the Pokemon artificial reality game since they first announced it. I really liked Pokemon as a kid,” said Gan Tian, a 22-year-old student at Tsinghua University. She plays an unofficial version with an artificial map based on countries where the game is available.

But for many others in the country, playing is proving a challenge. Not only is the game not on Chinese app stores, but Google services are blocked in China.

Nintendo has given no indication as to when or whether Pokemon GO will be released in China.

Niantic, the lab that developed the game, declined to comment on Friday on an eventual launch. Chief executive John Hanke said in an interview that it would be technically possible to launch in China, but noted a host of complex rules and restrictions.

(Reporting by Beijing Newsroom and Shanghai Newsroom; Additional reporting by Megha Rajagopalan, Ben Blanchard, Jake Spring and Jeremy Wagstaff; Editing by Ian Geoghegan and Raju Gopalakrishnan)

China vows to protect South China Sea sovereignty

Protesters throws flowers while chanting anti-Chinese slogans during a rally by different activist groups over the South China Sea disputes, along a bay in metro Manila

By Ben Blanchard and Martin Petty

BEIJING/MANILA (Reuters) – China vowed to take all necessary measures to protect its sovereignty over the South China Sea and said it had the right to set up an air defense zone, after rejecting an international tribunal’s ruling denying its claims to the energy-rich waters.

Chinese state media called the Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Hague a “puppet” of external forces after it ruled that China had breached the Philippines’ sovereign rights by endangering its ships and fishing and oil projects.

Beijing has repeatedly blamed the United States for stirring up trouble in the South China Sea, where its territorial claims overlap in parts with Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan.

“China will take all necessary measures to protect its territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests,” the ruling Communist Party’s official People’s Daily said in a front page commentary on Wednesday.

The case, covering a region that is home to one of the world’s busiest trade routes, has been seen as a test of China’s rising power and its economic and strategic rivalry with the United States.

Underscoring China’s rebuffing of the ruling, state media said that two new airports in the Spratlys, on Mischief Reef and Subi Reef, both received test flights from civilian aircraft on Wednesday.

Beijing called the Philippines’ claims of sovereignty in the South China Sea “baseless” and an “act of bad faith”. In a government white paper published on Wednesday, China also said its fishing boats had been harassed and attacked by the Philippines around the disputed Spratly Islands.

“On whether China will set up an air defense zone over the South China Sea, what we have to make clear first is that China has the right to… But whether we need one in the South China Sea depends on the level of threats we face,” Vice Foreign Minister Liu Zhenmin told reporters in Beijing, adding that China hoped to return to bilateral talks with Manila.

“We hope that other countries don’t use this opportunity to threaten China, and hope that other countries can work hard with China, meet us halfway, and maintain the South China Sea’s peace and stability and not turn the South China Sea in a source of war.”

U.S. officials have previously said they feared China may respond to the ruling by declaring an air defense identification zone in the South China Sea, as it did in the East China Sea in 2013, or by stepping up its building and fortification of artificial islands.

China’s Liu also took aim at the judges on the tribunal, saying that as not one of them was Asian they could not possibly understand the issue and it was unfair of them to try.

COMPLICATED, UNCLEAR

The Philippines reacted cautiously to the ruling late on Tuesday, calling for “restraint and sobriety”, but the mood at President Rodrigo Duterte’s cabinet meeting on Wednesday was “upbeat”, presidential spokesperson Ernesto Abella said.

Philippine Defence Secretary Delfin Lorenzana said he had spoken to U.S. counterpart Ash Carter ahead of the ruling who told him China had assured the United States it would exercise restraint, and the U.S. made the same assurance. Carter had sought and been given the same assurance from the Philippines, Lorenzana added.

“The ruling can serve as a foundation on which we can start the process of negotiations which hopefully will eventually lead to the peaceful settlement of the maritime dispute in the South China Sea,” Charles Jose, a spokesman for the Philippines’ Department of Foreign Affairs, said.

One of the lawyers who argued the Philippines’ case said how and when the country would enforce the tribunal’s ruling was complicated.

“There’s no timeline for this game. It might have an extended period of gestation,” said Florin Ternal Hilbay, a former solicitor general. “I would assume our diplomats have read the decision and understand the complexities and consequences of enforcing the decision.”

Global intelligence firm Stratfor said fishermen from China or the Philippines were the greatest potential disruptors in the region, beyond the easy control of law enforcement.

“The greatest struggle for both countries will be to rein them in, preferably before they get to sea, lest they disrupt the delicate peace,” Stratfor said in a note.

In moves likely to antagonize Beijing, the coastguards of Japan and the Philippines took part in simulated rescue and medical response exercises off Manila Bay on Wednesday, part of what the two countries have called efforts to improve maritime security and combat crime and piracy.

Japan and China are involved in a separate territorial dispute in the East China Sea and Beijing has warned Tokyo against meddling in the South China Sea dispute.

PIVOT PRESSURE

Beijing’s ambassador to the United States earlier blamed the rise in tension in the region on the United States’ “pivot” toward Asia in the past few years. Cui Tiankai said the arbitration case “will probably open the door of abusing arbitration procedures.

“It will certainly undermine and weaken the motivation of states to engage in negotiations and consultations for solving their disputes,” Cui said at a forum of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington. “It will certainly intensify conflict and even confrontation.”

South Korea on Wednesday announced the planned location of a U.S. THAAD anti-missile defense unit against North Korea’s missile and nuclear threats, a system that has angered China and prompted a North Korean warning of retaliation.

President Barack Obama’s top Asia policy adviser, Daniel Kritenbrink, said the United States had no interest in stirring tensions in the South China Sea as a pretext for involvement in the region.

“We have an enduring interest in seeing territorial and maritime disputes in the Asia Pacific, including in the South China Sea, resolved peacefully, without coercion and in a manner that is consistent with international law,” Kritenbrink said at the same forum.

Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen boarded a navy frigate in southern Taiwan ahead of its departure for the South China Sea early on Wednesday, a regular patrol pushed forward due to the Hague decision, which Taipei rejected.

“This patrol mission is to show the determination of the Taiwan people to defend our national interest,” Tsai said from the warship.

China considers self-ruled Taiwan a breakaway province to be united with the mainland eventually, and by force if necessary.

(Additional reporting by Manuel Mogato in Manila, John Walcott and David Brunnstrom in Washington, Engen Tham in Shanghai and JR Wu in Tapei.; Editing by Lincoln Feast and Nick Macfie)

China criticized Japan over dangerous jet scramble

A group of disputed islands, Uotsuri island , Minamikojima and Kitakojima, known as Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China is seen in

BEIJING (Reuters) – China strongly criticized Japan over a scramble of military aircraft from the two countries on Monday amid a dispute over islands in the East China Sea.

Two Japanese fighter jets took “provocative actions” at a high speed near a pair of Chinese fighter jets that were carrying out patrols in the East China Sea on June 17, China’s defense ministry said in a micro blog statement on Monday, without specifying where exactly the incident took place.

The Japanese planes used fire-control radar to “light up” the Chinese aircraft, the statement added.

Japan’s senior military officer has acknowledged there was a scramble but has denied that any radar lock by the Chinese jet occurred or that the incident turned dangerous.

“The Japanese plane’s provocative actions caused an accident in the air, endangering the safety of personnel on both sides, and destroying the peace and stability in the region,” China’s Defense Ministry said, adding the Chinese aircraft “responded resolutely”.

China called on Japan to cease all provocative action, the statement added.

The statement about the incident comes after Japan’s top military commander accused China of escalating military activity in the East China Sea, saying Japanese emergency scrambles to counter Chinese jets almost doubled over the past three months.

Japan is embroiled in a dispute with China in the East China Sea over ownership of a group of islands which lie about 220 km (140 miles) northeast of Taiwan, known as the Senkakus in Tokyo and the Diaoyu islands in Beijing.

Japan is worried that China is escalating its activity in the East China Sea in response to Tokyo’s pledge to support countries in Southeast Asia, including the Philippines and Vietnam, that oppose China’s territorial claims in the South China Sea.

(Reporting By Megha Rajagopalan, additional reporting by Tim Kelly in TOKYO; Editing by Nick Macfie)

Japan revamps child welfare, tens of thousands still institutionalized

Children are seen through a window as they play at Futaba Baby Home in Tokyo

By Chang-Ran Kim

TOKYO (Reuters) – A baby lies in a metal-bar cot drinking from a bottle perched on his pillow in a Tokyo orphanage. There’s no one to hold and feed him or offer words of comfort.

The director of the institution, nurses scurrying busily around him, says he would like extra time and staff to pay more attention to the 70 babies and toddlers under his care, but it’s not going to happen.

“I wish we could hold them in our arms, one by one,” says Yoshio Imada. “Some people call this abuse. It’s a difficult situation.”

Japan last month passed a bill overhauling its 70-year-old Child Welfare Law, recognizing a child’s right to grow up in a family setting. It is short on specific, immediate measures, but experts say it’s a first step to making institutions a last resort, rather than the default position.

A staggering 85 percent of the 40,000 children who can’t live with their parents in Japan are institutionalized, by far the highest ratio among rich countries and prompting repeated warnings from the United Nations. Even with the revised law, Japan’s goal isn’t lofty: family-based care for a third of those children by 2029.

The statistics raise the question: where can foster parents be found for tens of thousands of children in need?

“We do the best we can but it’s obvious that a one-on-one relationship that foster parents provide is better,” says Kazumitsu Tsuru, who heads another infant institution in Tokyo.

“All children need someone who is dedicated only to them.”

A major hindrance is a lack of awareness about the fostering system – there are just 10,200 registered foster families, while adoptions are even rarer, at 544 last year. And in a society that treasures uniformity and blood ties, fostered or adopted children are often stigmatized.

A rise in reports of child abuse has also proved a stumbling block. Welfare workers are too busy taking children out of immediate harm. Placing them in institutions is faster than finding a foster family.

Too busy with the next victim, welfare workers also have little time to follow up with those children, leaving them to languish for years.

STARVED OF ATTENTION

One foster mother knows all too well how harmful institutionalization can be.

Now 16, her foster son lulls himself to sleep by pounding his head against his pillow for several minutes. It’s a habit he picked up as an attention-starved child growing up in institutions until he turned six. He is a charming boy, his foster mother says, but erratic.

“When I call him out on something he does wrong, he lashes out at me as if he can do whatever he wants,” she says.

“He’ll do hateful things and at other times he’ll say, ‘Mummy, I love you,’ in a childish voice that’s not normal for a teenage boy. The emotional ups-and-downs wear you out.”

Another mother describes a child she took in from an institution at age five, just when he was beginning to realize he had no family. He flew into fits of rage at school and was afraid to leave the house. Needing to test his new family’s affection, he would ask: “Mummy, what would you do if I died?” At other times, he would beg to be fed milk out of a bottle in his foster mother’s lap.

The warehousing of Japan’s most vulnerable highlights the paradox in a country struggling with a stalled birthrate and ballooning social welfare costs as the population ages. Experts say institutionalization costs three times as much as fostering, and that Japan’s tight job market would be better-served by shifting those caregivers to daycare services to allow more women to work.

“I think the role of infant institutions will change,” says Tsuru, adding that, as the primary caregivers, institutions like his could help find babies a match in a foster or adoptive home.

“None of us wants to see a child stay longer here than they need to be.”

(Editing by Nick Macfie)

U.N. council to meet on North Korea’s missile launches

North Korean leader watching missile test

By Michelle Nichols

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – The United Nations Security Council will meet on Wednesday to discuss North Korea’s latest ballistic missile launches, at the request of the United States and Japan, diplomats said.

French U.N. Ambassador Francois Delattre, president of the 15-member council for June, said the missile launches were an “unacceptable violation” of a U.N. ban. A senior U.N. official will brief the council, diplomats said.

“We want a quick and firm reaction of the Security Council on this,” said Delattre. “We hope that … we’ll have a press statement on this.”

North Korea launched what appeared to be an intermediate-range missile on Wednesday to a high altitude in the direction of Japan before it plunged into the sea, military officials said, a technological advance for the isolated state.

The launch came about two hours after a similar test failed, South Korea’s military said, and covered 400 km (250 miles), more than halfway towards the southwest coast of Japan’s main island of Honshu.

The tests are the latest in a string of demonstrations of military might that began in January with North Korea’s fourth nuclear test and included the launch of a long-range rocket in February.

North Korea has been under U.N. sanctions since 2006. In March, the Security Council imposed harsh new sanctions on the country.

(Writing by Louis Charbonneau; Editing by Bernadette Baum)