East Asia, where China has been pursuing extensive maritime claims.

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Japan is likely to increase its defense spending at a faster pace in its next five-year plan from April 2019 than the annual 0.8 percent average rise in its current mid-term plan, the Nikkei business daily reported on Friday. Defense officials have said such a rise was desirable but finance ministry officials are cautious because of Tokyo’s mammoth public debt.

North Korea has repeatedly threatened to target Japan, which hosts around 54,000 U.S. military personnel, as well as South Korea and the United States with its missiles.

North Korean missiles would have to fly over Japan to reach the Guam area, worrying Tokyo that warheads or missile debris could fall on its territory.

The United States and SouthThe husband of the jailed Iranian dual national Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe has criticised Donald Trump’s killing of the Iranian general Qassem Suleimani, saying it is hard to demand Iran complies with the rule of law if its adversaries play fast and loose with the same law.

Richard Ratcliffe again urged Boris Johnson, the British prime minister, to find time to meet him to discuss his wife’s plight.

He also said the near-collapse in relations between the west and Iran made it more difficult to convince his wife that her release from Evrin jail in Tehran may be imminent.

Zaghari-Ratcliffe has been detained since 2016 after she was arrested on espionage charges and jailed for five years.

Ratcliffe, speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, said his wife and other British and Americans citizens