NAHA--Even Liberal Democratic Party assembly members voted with the rest of the Okinawa prefectural assembly here on Oct. 16 to demand the U.S. military halt all use of helipads in its Northern Training Area.

The unusual unanimous vote followed the Oct. 11 helicopter crash-landing in the village of Higashi, close to the training area in the northeast of Okinawa's main island, where six new helipads were completed by late last year as part of a deal to return more than half of its forested area to Japanese sovereignty.

Dozens of landmarks across the nation were lit up in green on Oct. 16 to mark the 20th anniversary of the enforcement of the Law on Organ Transplantation, although donor participation in Japan is lagging far behind the United States and South Korea.

In Suita, Osaka Prefecture, the "Tower of the Sun," a 70-meter-high artwork symbolizing Expo '70, was illuminated in green, the symbolic color of organ transplants, along with Tokyo Tower and the Rainbow Bridge, both in Tokyo's Minato Ward.

Jiji Press KAWASAKI (Jiji Press) — The mother of a Japanese woman abducted to North Korea four decades ago pinned high hopes on Tuesday on a planned meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump in Japan next month.

It is a "big thing" that Trump said he wants to meet with the families of Japanese citizens abducted by North Korean agents, said Sakie Yokota, the 81-year-old mother of Megumi.

The Yomiuri ShimbunKansai Electric Power Co. intends to decommission the No. 1 and No. 2 reactors at the Oi nuclear power plant in Fukui Prefecture when the plant reaches 40 years of service in 2019, it has been learned.

KEPCO made the decision because the distinctive structure of the reactors' containment vessels would require massive spending to apply safety measures that would meet the new standards set after the crisis at Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc.'s Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant.

A survivor of the 1945 Nagasaki atomic bombing has urged countries around the world to sign a treaty banning nuclear arms at a UN meeting in New York.

Tokuko Kimura, an 82-year-old survivor - known as "hibakusha" in Japanese - spoke at a session organized by Austria's UN representative and a Japanese NGO on Monday. Austria played a leading role in the adoption of the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in July.

A search is under way for a Japanese Air Self-Defense Force helicopter that lost contact with ground controllers while on a training flight off Shizuoka Prefecture, central Japan.

Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera said the UH-60 rescue helicopter dropped off the radar just before 6 PM on Tuesday, Japan Time.

Families of Japanese nationals abducted by North Korea hope their planned meeting with US President Donald Trump will result in the safe return of the abductees.

The White House announced on Monday that the president will arrive in Japan on November 5th. He is scheduled to meet with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and families of Japanese abducted by North Korea.

Officials with Japan's Meteorological Agency say that successive eruptions of a volcano in southwestern Japan appear to have stopped.

Shinmoedake straddles Kagoshima and Miyazaki Prefectures. It started erupting earlier this month for the first time in 6 years.

Japan's Deputy Prime Minister Taro Aso and US Vice President Mike Pence on Monday confirmed that the 2 countries will coordinate to increase pressure on North Korea.

At the start of their second round of bilateral economic dialogue at the White House, Pence said the United States will work closely with Japan to further isolate the regime of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

To mark 1,000 days to the opening of the 2020 Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games on Oct. 28, the Mainichi Newspapers will be hosting a series of events to promote the global extravaganza.

The first event will see the front of the Palaceside Building in Tokyo's Chiyoda Ward that houses the paper's Tokyo Head Office covered in the flags of the 206 countries and regions which belong to the International Olympic Committee to highlight the Games, a festival for peace.

AKITA -- The bereaved family of a lawyer who was murdered by an intruder at his home here in 2010 -- after police officers held the lawyer thinking he was the intruder -- were awarded compensation on Oct. 16, but the murderer and not the police was ordered to pay.

Hirotaka Tsuya, who was 55 at the time of the incident, was killed by Katsuo Sugawara -- who now at age 73 is serving a life sentence in prison -- in the predawn hours of Nov. 4, 2010.

A number of inoperable Maritime Self-Defense Force (MSDF) shipborne missiles have been found, with the eventual cost of repairs still unknown as the missile parts' warranties have expired, the Mainichi Shimbun has learned.

The issue with the short-range RIM-162 Evolved Seasparrow missiles was discovered during a Board of Audit of Japan check on parts for the weapons, a source close to the matter told the Mainichi. However, the problem "will have no direct impact on national defense," an MSDF official said.

U.S. President Donald Trump will visit Japan from Nov. 5 for talks with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and a meeting with the families of Japanese nationals abducted by North Korea in the 1970s and 1980s, the White House said Monday.

During a five-nation Asia tour plus a stop in Hawaii from Nov. 3 to 14, Trump will "call on the international community to join together in maximizing pressure on North Korea," it said in a statement.

A Japanese atomic-bomb survivor joined activists and diplomats Monday to press Japan and other countries to quickly ratify a landmark treaty banning nuclear weapons.

"None of them having (nuclear) weapons will contribute towards having peace," Tokuko Kimura, 82, said to an audience at a New York event. She was 10 when the United States dropped an atomic bomb over Nagasaki on Aug. 9, 1945, three days after detonating another device over Hiroshima.