The Ministry of Defense has revealed that a Ground Self-Defense Force member committed suicide early last year, bringing the total number of suicides by GSDF personnel after returning home following their Iraqi mission to eight.

Aboriginal concerns about the Northern Territory Intervention are about to be voiced on the world stage. A delegation of more than 40 Indigenous Australians left for New York to attend the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues.

The Japanese government has made it clear that it does not agree with the Nagoya High Court ruling that Air Self-Defense Force’s airlift missions in support of U.S. forces in Iraq is unconstitutional.

At the House of Councilors Foreign Affairs Committee meeting on April 8, Japanese Communist Party representative Inoue Satoshi urged the government to use its initiative for the upcoming G8 Summit at Toyako Town in Hokkaido to take up the issue of abolition of nuclear weapons.

The public is infuriated with the string of serious crimes committed by U.S. military personnel stationed in Japan as well as with the recent collision between a Self-Defense Forces Aegis-equipped destroyer that supports U.S. military operations and a Japanese fishing boat.

Anti-poverty advocates on March 29 held a gathering at a junior high school in central Tokyo to make known to the public the extent of poverty and to help find ways to solve the problem.

The revelations just keep on coming. Secretive and controlling Christian fundamentalist organizations fronting as mainstream services and businesses have hit the headlines of the Sydney dailies lately.

Thirty years have passed since the government started paying the costs for the stationing of the U.S. forces in Japan under the name of the “sympathy budget.”

After hearing the moving story of Edith Burgos, the mother of abducted land reform and farmers' advocate Jonas Burgos, the National Executive Board of the Asian-Pacific American Labor Alliance unanimously voted to endorse GMA Watch, a US based Philippine human rights monitoring network.

The Ministry of Defense has a plan to integrate the three security intelligence units now existing in each of the Ground, Maritime, and Air Self-Defense Forces by the end of March 2009. The ministry intends to submit a bill to revise the SDF Law for this purpose in the current session of the Diet.

The annual labor Spring Struggle is entering final stretch with the first round of management offers set for March 12.

The Japanese government and energy industry are trying to use nuclear energy as a “trump card” to fight global warming, advertising it as “clean energy” that does not cause CO2 emissions.

Anger is boiling up in Okinawa and across the country due to a recent rape of a junior high school girl by a U.S. Marine. Okinawa Governor Nakaima Hirokazu met with Prime Minister Fukuda Yasuo and other government officials in Tokyo to lodge a strong protest.

On the early morning of February 8, about 100 union members converged on Canon Inc. Headquarters in Tokyo to urge the major camera maker to fulfill its corporate social responsibility by increasing wages, promoting temporary workers to full-time positions, and by raising unit prices paid to suppliers.

For a very long time now, the US has been the main engine of growth in the global capitalist system, essentially through its voracious demand for imports which have caused significant increases in export growth in both other developed countries as well as the developing world.

Electronic Frontiers Australia (EFA) has attacked a federal government plan, championed by Communications Minister Stephen Conroy, that would mandate "clean feed" filtered internet connections to all homes and schools.

Indonesia's former dictator General Suharto has died in bed and not in jail, escaping justice for his numerous crimes in East Timor and throughout the Indonesian archipelago.

On February 10, a mayoral election will be held in Iwakuni City, Yamaguchi Prefecture, where the Japanese and U.S. governments are planning to bring in aircraft from a U.S. aircraft carrier as part of the ongoing U.S. military realignment in Japan.

The Australian government has declared that it is going to wage war against inflation as their number 1 economic objective at the present time. The rate of inflation reached 3.6 percent in the most recent figures announced by the authorities and this is outside the "comfort zone" of the Reserve Bank.

Since 4th January millions of Indonesians have been watching their TVs, listening to the radio, reading newspapers and chatting on the street about their former president, Suharto, as he lay in bed in an unstable and critical condition.