Japan

KONFRONTASI - Nearly two dozen passengers have been injured when a South Korean Asiana Airlines Airbus A320 overran a runway at an airport in western Japanese city of Hiroshima.

On Tuesday, 23 people received minor injuries when the Asiana Airlines Flight OZ162 went off the runway while landing.

“Around 23 passengers were injured, but no one was killed,” an unnamed local fire department official said, adding, “So far we have heard that all of the injuries were not serious.”

KONFRONTASI-A court has issued an injunction ordering two nuclear reactors in western Japan to stay offline, rejecting regulators' safety approval of the reactors' planned restart later this year, a decision that could further delay the government's restart plans.

The Fukui District Court ordered the operator, Kansai Electric Power Co., not to restart the No. 3 and No. 4 reactors at the Takahama plant in Fukui prefecture, which is home to about a dozen reactors.

KONFRONTASI-An audio message purportedly from a Japanese journalist being held by Islamic State militants said a Jordanian air force pilot also held by the group would be killed unless an Iraqi female prisoner in Jordan was released by sunset on Thursday.

The message appeared to postpone a previous deadline set on Tuesday in which the journalist, Kenji Goto, said he would be killed within 24 hours if the Iraqi was not freed.

KONFRONTASI - A 72-hour deadline set by ISIL Takfiri militants for Japan’s government to pay a ransom to release two Japanese captives has come to an end, with no word on the fate of the hostages.

The ISIL militants posted an online warning after the deadline expired on Friday, saying the “countdown has begun” for the group to kill the two Japanese hostages, identified as Haruna Yukawa and Kenji Goto.

The terrorist group released a video on January 20, threatening to kill the two hostages unless Tokyo pays the 200-million-dollar ransom within 72 hours.

(Reuters) - Japan, fearing it could be a soft target for possible North Korean cyberattacks in the escalating row over the Sony Pictures hack, has begun working to ensure basic infrastructure is safe and to formulate its diplomatic response, officials said.

WASHINGTON, Dec 18 (Reuters) -

TOKYO (AP) — Japan's government will send a group of officials to North Korea next week for an update on the North's investigation into the abduction of Japanese citizens by North Korean agents in the 1970s and '80s.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said Wednesday that the officials will arrive in Pyongyang on Monday for a four-day trip.

KONFRONTASI-Prime Minister Shinzo Abe dissolved parliament's lower house on Friday for a snap election on Dec. 14, seeking a fresh mandate for his struggling "Abenomics" revival strategy just two years after he returned to power promising that "Japan is Back".

Abe had vowed to revive the economy with a mix of hyper-easy monetary policy, government spending and reforms, while moving ahead with plans to rein in Japan's massive public debt.

KONFRONTASI - Official data indicate that Japan’s economy contracted in the third quarter of the current year, sending the world’s number-three economy back into recession.

Preliminary data released on Monday showed a 1.6-percent fall in annual growth for Japan, raising the possibility that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe would postpone the implementation of a sales tax hike slated for October 2015.

KONFRONTASI- The time is "ripe" for Japan and the United States to reach a breakthrough in talks for a Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact, the U.S. commerce secretary said on Tuesday, adding that the two were "a lot closer" to a deal than in recent months.

Penny Pritzker, who is in Japan with a trade mission of U.S. energy and medical companies, said both countries needed to be "bold and creative" to reach a deal, and a summit between U.S. President Barack Obama and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was possible if the two sides got closer to agreement.