In a show of power, Japan, US begin joint naval drills off Korean Peninsula

Japan and the US on Thursday began joint naval drills south of the Korean Peninsula in a show of power against North Korea.

The US sent its nuclear-powered aircraft carrier Ronald Reagan, three destroyers and around 14,000 troops to participate in the drills that will be conducted until November 26 in waters near the Okinawa archipelago, the US Navy said in a statement cited by Efe news.

South Korea and the US on Sunday had launched other joint drills covering larger ground in the Sea of Japan (called East Sea in the two Koreas), also as "a show of might" to Pyongyang.

After a meeting with the Commander of the US Pacific Command Admiral Harry Harris on Thursday, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe had stressed on the need to reinforce the capacity of deterrence and joint response by Tokyo and Washington owing to a worsening security situation in the region.

The meeting between Abe and Harris in Tokyo comes a week after the US President Donald Trump's visit to Japan, as part of his Asia tour, during which he had urged Abe to jointly apply maximum possible pressure on Pyongyang to force it to abandon its weapons programmes.

From Japan, Trump had travelled to Seoul, where he had harshly condemned the North Korean regime in a speech at the South Korean National Assembly and underlined the strategic positioning of military assets in the region.
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Chinese fighter jets intercept US Navy plane over East China Sea

A US Navy surveillance aircraft was intercepted by two Chinese J-10 fighter jets in an "unsafe" manner over the East China Sea on Sunday, prompting evasive action by the former's pilot to avoid a collision, the Pentagon has said.

"(the US Navy aircraft) EP-3 flying in international airspace over the East China Sea was intercepted by two Chinese J-10s. One of them came underneath it at a high rate of speed, then slowed and pulled up. This caused the EP-3's T-Cast alarm to go off essentially, and it was forced to take evasive action to prevent the possibility of collision," Pentagon spokesman Capt. Jeff Davis told reporters yesterday.

"Obviously it's something we watch very closely," he said.

Another Pentagon official later described the Chinese action as "unsafe".

Davis said the incident took place on Sunday in the area between the East China Sea and the Yellow Sea, west of the Korean peninsula and east of Qingdao.

He said the Chinese fighter jets were there for a while and "flying wing-to-wing" as well.

"Again, such intercepts, when they're conducted safely, are not uncommon. This particular manoeuvre that took place during the course of it was not safe," Davis said in response to a question.

According to the Pentagon spokesman, the vast majority of interactions that they have with the Chinese military are perfectly safe.

"This was the exception, not the norm," he said.

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Missing US sailors found dead in ship damaged off Japan's coast: US Navy

A number of missing American sailors have been found dead in flooded areas of a destroyer that collided with a container ship off Japan's coast, the US Navy said today.

The sailors were missing for more than 24 hours after the USS Fitzgerald collided with a much larger container ship before dawn yesterday, causing heavy damage and flooding areas of the destroyer.

"A number of sailors' bodies that were missing from the collision between USS Fitzgerald...And a merchant ship have been found," the US 7th Fleet said in a statement.

"As search and rescue crews gained access to the spaces that were damaged during the collision...The missing sailors were located in the flooded berthing compartments.

"They are currently being transferred to Naval Hospital Yokosuka where they will be identified," it added.

Japan's public broadcaster NHK updated an earlier report that claimed all seven missing sailors were found dead inside the ship, saying instead that "several" had been found.

The accident sparked a major US-Japanese search and rescue operation.

The 154-metre (500-foot) Fitzgerald was pulled by a tugboat back to its base in Yokosuka, south-west of Tokyo, on Saturday, where divers searched damaged areas of the guided missile destroyer.

The 222-metre Philippine-flagged ACX Crystal had large scrapes on its bow, but none of its 20 crew were injured, Japan's coastguard said.
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