Japanese court convicts a US Marine in sexual assault, sentencing him to 7 years in prison
In sentencing, Judge Kazuhiko Obata said the victim's testimony, provided remotely and anonymously, was highly credible even though the defendant denied his charges brought by the prosecutors, who demanded 10 years in prison, according to Kyodo News.
Advertisement
It was one of a string of sexual assault cases last year in which the arrests of the suspects were initially withheld by local authorities on grounds of protecting the victims' privacy, triggering anger and criticisms of coverups.
Okinawa, where one of the fiercest battles of World War II was fought 80 years ago and under U.S. occupation until 1972, remains home to the majority of about 50,000 U.S. troops stationed in Japan under a bilateral security pact. The island, which accounts for only 0.6% of Japanese land, hosts 70% of U.S. military facilities.
Frustration runs high on Okinawa because of its continued burden with the heavy U.S. presence that includes noise, pollution, aircraft accidents and crime related to American troops.
Advertisement
There has been growing calls for a revision to the Status of Forces Agreement that gives the United States the right to investigate most accidents and crimes that occur on Japanese soil.
Japanese Prime Minister
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Politico
26 minutes ago
- Politico
Chris Murphy calls birthright citizenship ruling ‘dangerous'
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) on Sunday condemned the Supreme Court's decision to rule in President Donald Trump's favor over nationwide injunctions in its birthright citizenship case. Murphy on Sunday told MSNBC's Kirsten Welker that the ruling allows Trump to 'undermine' democracy. 'Taking away the power of courts to restrain the president when he's clearly acting in an unlawful manner, as he is when he says that children born in the United States are no longer citizens, you are assisting him in trying to undermine the rule of law and undermine our democracy,' Murphy said on 'Meet the Press.' Though the Supreme Court's decision did not give Trump a complete win, it did narrow nationwide injunctions that blocked his January executive order trying to end birthright citizenship for certain individuals. By a 6-3 ruling, the Supreme Court said that federal judges can't, with perhaps limited exceptions, issue injunctions that go beyond their regional authority. 'It's really dangerous because it will incentivize the president to act in a lawless manner,' Murphy added. 'Because now only the Supreme Court, who can only take a handful of cases a year, can ever stop him from violating the laws and the Constitution.' Trump has long supported ending birthright citizenship. On his first day in office this year, Trump signed an order to deny American citizenship to anyone born in the U.S. to foreigners on short-term visas or without legal status. But the 14th Amendment declares anyone 'born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof' as a citizen of the United States. The 6-3 decision down ideological lines did not weigh in on the constitutionality of Trump's order or interpret the meaning of that clause, but the White House declared Friday's ruling to be a major victory for the administration. 'I'm grateful to the Supreme Court for stepping in and solving this very, very big and complex problem, and they've made it very simple,' Trump said of the ruling. Still, Murphy said the ruling, which will take effect later in July, only creates a 'patchwork' of citizenship laws that could differ from state to state. 'Both the Constitution and the law is clear. If you're born in the United States of America, you're a U.S. citizen,' Murphy said. 'But now because there's no longer going to be a federal policy, it's going to be different in every state. A child born in the United States, born in Connecticut will be a citizen. But that same child if they were born in Oklahoma might not be. That's chaos.'
Atlantic
33 minutes ago
- Atlantic
How to Assess the Damage of the Iran Strikes
In August 1941, the British government received a very unwelcome piece of analysis from an economist named David Miles Bensusan-Butt. A careful analysis of photographs suggested that the Royal Air Force's Bomber Command was having trouble hitting targets in Germany and France; in fact, only one in three pilots that claimed to have attacked the targets seemed to have dropped its bombs within five miles of them. The Butt report is a landmark in the history of 'bomb damage assessment,' or, as we now call it, 'battle damage assessment.' This recondite term has come back into public usage because of the dispute over the effectiveness of the June 22 American bombing of three Iranian nuclear facilities. President Donald Trump said that American bombs had 'obliterated' the Iranian nuclear program. A leaked preliminary assessment from the Defense Intelligence Agency on June 24 said that the damage was minimal. Whom to believe? Have the advocates of bombing again overpromised and underdelivered? Some history is in order here, informed by a bit of personal experience. From 1991 to 1993 I ran the U.S. Air Force's study of the first Gulf War. In doing so I learned that BDA rests on three considerations: the munition used, including its accuracy; the aircraft delivering it; and the type of damage or effect created. Of these, precision is the most important. World War II saw the first use of guided bombs in combat. In September 1943, the Germans used radio-controlled glide bombs to sink the Italian battleship Roma as it sailed off to surrender to the Allies. Americans developed similar systems with some successes, though none so dramatic. In the years after the war, precision-guided weapons slowly came to predominate in modern arsenals. The United States used no fewer than 24,000 laser-guided bombs during the Vietnam War, and some 17,000 of them during the 1991 Gulf War. These weapons have improved considerably, and in the 35 years since, 'routine precision,' as some have called it, has enormously improved the ability of airplanes to hit hard, buried targets. Specially designed ordnance has also seen tremendous advances. In World War II, the British developed the six-ton Tallboy bomb to use against special targets, including the concrete submarine pens of occupied France in which German U-boats hid. The Tallboys cracked some of the concrete but did not destroy any, in part because these were 'dumb bombs' lacking precision guidance, and in part because the art of hardening warheads was in its infancy. In the first Gulf War, the United States hastily developed a deep-penetrating, bunker-busting bomb, the GBU-28, which weighed 5,000 pounds, but only two were used, to uncertain effect. In the years since, however, the U.S. and Israeli air forces, among others, have acquired hardened warheads for 2,000-pound bombs such as the BLU-109 that can hit deeply buried targets—which is why, for example, the Israelis were able to kill a lot of Hezbollah's leadership in its supposedly secure bunkers. The aircraft that deliver bombs can affect the explosives' accuracy. Bombs that home in on the reflection of a laser, for example, could become 'stupid' if a cloud passes between plane and the target, or if the laser otherwise loses its lock on the target. Bombs relying on GPS coordinates can in theory be jammed. Airplanes being shot at are usually less effective bomb droppers than those that are not, because evasive maneuvers can prevent accurate delivery. The really complicated question is that of effects. Vietnam-era guided bombs, for example, could and did drop bridges in North Vietnam. In many cases, however, Vietnamese engineers countered by building 'underwater bridges' that allowed trucks to drive across a river while axle-deep in water. The effect was inconvenience, not interdiction. Conversely, in the first Gulf War, the U.S. and its allies spent a month pounding Iraqi forces dug in along the Kuwait border, chiefly with dumb bombs delivered by 'smart aircraft' such as the F-16. In theory, the accuracy of the bombing computer on the airplane would allow it to deliver unguided ordnance with accuracy comparable to that of a laser-guided bomb. In practice, ground fire and delivery from high altitudes often caused pilots to miss. When teams began looking at Iraqi tanks in the area overrun by U.S. forces, they found that many of the tanks were, in fact, undamaged. But that was only half of the story. Iraqi tank crews were so sufficiently terrified of American air power that they stayed some distance away from their tanks, and tanks immobilized and unmaintained for a month, or bounced around by near-misses, do not work terribly well. The functional and indirect effects of the bombing, in other words, were much greater than the disappointing physical effects. Many of the critiques of bombing neglect the importance of this phenomenon. The pounding of German cities and industry during World War II, for example, did not bring war production to a halt until the last months, but the indirect and functional effects were enormous. The diversion of German resources into air-defense and revenge weapons, and the destruction of the Luftwaffe's fighter force over the Third Reich, played a very great role in paving the way to Allied victory. At a microlevel, BDA can be perplexing. In 1991, for example, a bomb hole in an Iraqi hardened-aircraft shelter told analysts only so much. Did the bomb go through the multiple layers of concrete and rock fill, or did it 'J-hook'back upward and possibly fail to explode? Was there something in the shelter when it hit, and what damage did it do? Did the Iraqis perhaps move airplanes into penetrated shelters on the theory that lightning would not strike twice? All hard (though not entirely impossible) to judge without being on the ground. To the present moment: BDA takes a long time, so the leaked DIA memo of June 24 was based on preliminary and incomplete data. The study I headed was still working on BDA a year after the war ended. Results may be quicker now, but all kinds of information need to be integrated—imagery analysis, intercepted communications, measurement and signature intelligence (e.g., subsidence of earth above a collapsed structure), and of course human intelligence, among others. Any expert (and any journalist who bothered to consult one) would know that two days was a radically inadequate time frame in which to form a considered judgment. The DIA report was, from a practical point of view, worthless. An educated guess, however, would suggest that in fact the U.S. military's judgment that the Iranian nuclear problem had suffered severe damage was correct. The American bombing was the culmination of a 12-day campaign launched by the Israelis, which hit many nuclear facilities and assassinated at least 14 nuclear scientists. The real issue is not the single American strike so much as the cumulative effect against the entire nuclear ecosystem, including machining, testing, and design facilities. The platforms delivering the munitions in the American attack had ideal conditions in which to operate—there was no Iranian air force to come up and attack the B-2s that they may not even have detected, nor was there ground fire to speak of. The planes were the most sophisticated platforms of the most sophisticated air force in the world. The bombs themselves, particularly the 14 GBU-57s, were gigantic—at 15 tons more than double the size of Tallboys—with exquisite guidance and hardened penetrating warheads. The targets were all fully understood from more than a decade of close scrutiny by Israeli and American intelligence, and probably that of other Western countries as well. In the absence of full information, cumulative expert judgment also deserves some consideration—and external experts such as David Albright, the founder of the Institute for Science and International Security, have concluded that the damage was indeed massive and lasting. Israeli analysts, in and out of government, appear to agree. They are more likely to know, and more likely to be cautious in declaring success about what is, after all, an existential threat to their country. For that matter, the Iranian foreign minister concedes that 'serious damage' was done. One has to set aside the sycophantic braggadocio of Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, who seems to believe that one unopposed bombing raid is a military achievement on par with D-Day, or the exuberant use of the word obliteration by the president. A cooler, admittedly provisional judgment is that with all their faults, however, the president and his secretary of defense are likely a lot closer to the mark about what happened when the bombs fell than many of their hasty, and not always well-informed, critics. *Photo-illustration by Jonelle Afurong / The Atlantic. Source: Alberto Pizzoli / Sygma / Getty; MIKE NELSON / AFP / Getty; Greg Mathieson / Mai / Getty; Space Frontiers / Archive Photos / Hulton Archive / Getty; U.S. Department of Defense
UPI
an hour ago
- UPI
U.N. watchdog: Iran could resume enriching uranium for bomb in months
1 of 2 | A satellite image shows a view of craters and ash on a ridge at Iran's Fordo underground uranium enrichment facility after U.S. airstrikes June 21. Satellite Image 2025 Maxar Technologies/EPA-EFE June 29 (UPI) -- Iran likely can resume uranium enrichment to make a nuclear bomb in a few months, despite damage to nuclear facilities by United States and Israel airstrikes, the United Nations' nuclear watchdog chief said. Rafael Grossi, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said there was a "very serious level of damage" to the nuclear facilities during an interview with CBS News on Saturday. U.S. President Donald Trump said U.S. airstrikes on June 21 "obliterated" the facilities, including Fordo, which is underground in a mountain. Initial intelligence assessments suggested that the strikes were successful but set back Iran's program by months -- not years. "It can be, you know, described in different ways, but it's clear that what happened in particular in Fordo, Natanz, Isfahan, where Iran used to have and still has, to some degree, capabilities in terms of treatment, conversion and enrichment of uranium have been destroyed to an important degree," Grossi said. "Some is still standing. So there is, of course, an important setback in terms of those of those capabilities." He explained what remains. "The capacities they have are there," Grossi said. "They can have, you know, in a matter of months, I would say, a few cascades of centrifuges spinning and producing enriched uranium, or less than that. But as I said, frankly speaking, one cannot claim that everything has disappeared and there is nothing there." He wants International Atomic Energy officials to be able to return sites for an assessment. "Although our job is not to assess damage, but to re-establish the knowledge of the activities that take place there, and the access to the material, which is very, very important, the material that they will be producing if they continue with this activity," Grissi said. "This is contingent on negotiations, which may or may not restart." Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, who said the facilities were "seriously damaged," posted on X on Friday that "Grossi's insistence on visiting the bombed sites under the pretext of safeguards is meaningless and possibly even malign in intent." Israel was fearful that Iran was nearly ready to have a nuclear bomb within months, and began airstrikes on June 13. Israel relied on American B-2 fighter jets that can send bombs deep into the ground. Earlier this month, the IAEA said Iran amassed enough 60% enriched uranium to potentially make nine nuclear bombs. Under the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA, nuclear deal, which was negotiated by Iran, the United States and the EU, Iran wasn't permitted to enrich uranium above 3.67% purity, which is the level need to fuel commercial nuclear power plants. Iran also was not allowed to carry out any enrichment at the Fordo plant for 15 years. In 2018, President Donald Trump abandoned the agreement among world powers, and instead reinstated U.S. sanctions in an attempt to stop Iran from moving toward making a bomb. Iran resumed enrichment at Fordo in 2021. On Friday, the IAEA said radiation levels in the Gulf region remain after the bombings. Grossi, citing regional data through the 48-nation International Radiation Monitoring System, said the "the worst nuclear safety scenario was thereby avoided." The main concern IAEA had was for the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant and the Tehran Research Reactor because strikes to either facility, including off-site power lines, would have cause some type of radiological accident felt in both Iran and neighboring nations, but "it did not happen," he said. Grossi noted that the airstrikes would have caused localized radioactive releases inside the impacted facilities and localized toxic effects, based on the roughly 900 pounds of enriched uranium Iran is thought to have had before the attacks. Trump has said he would "absolutely" consider bombing Iran again if intelligence found that it could enrich uranium to concerning levels.
