Overview
- The five public elementary and junior high schools in Hikawa Town reopened Tuesday after a one-week delay while evacuees were consolidated into designated gymnasiums because classrooms had been used as shelters following a quake that registered seismic intensity 7 in parts of Kumamoto.
- Negotiations to merge three centrist parties broke down late last month and the Nakado Kaikaku Rengō (centrist reform union) is now effectively fragmented with Komeito stepping back from planned integration, reinforcing a ‘‘one strong, many weak’’ opposition dynamic.
- Hyogo police on Tuesday completed an administrative forwarding of documents to prosecutors (shorui sōken) in the June 28 Kobe killing, sending charges naming the suspect Ryō Tsubosaka despite his death to finish the procedural record.
- The Defence Ministry revised 2027 budget language after LDP defence faction criticism, dropping the proposed phrase 'new way of defending' and replacing it with wording framed as a response to 'new styles of warfare' to describe planned investments such as unmanned systems and AI.
- Japanese student peace envoys delivered more than 60,000 anti‑nuclear signatures to the U.N. in Geneva on Tuesday and Vietnam's UN ambassador met Hiroshima officials the same day to press for passing on survivors' testimony to younger generations, underscoring sustained civil and diplomatic pressure on disarmament.