The U.S. military plans to airlift supplies from Jan. 17 to support Japan's relief efforts for areas in Ishikawa Prefecture damaged by a powerful earthquake on New Year's Day, Japanese Defense Minister Minoru Kihara says.
The Cabinet approves a revised 112.57 trillion yen ($774 billion) draft budget for the next fiscal year starting in April, allocating an additional 500 billion yen in emergency funds to tackle the fallout from a New Year's Day earthquake that ravaged central Japan.
The Japanese government says it has introduced a special relief measure to allow foreign trainees and skilled workers in the central Japan area hit by a recent powerful earthquake to remain in work even if their employers go out of business due to the disaster.
Tsunami waves generated by the powerful earthquake that jolted the Noto Peninsula and its vicinity in central Japan on New Year's Day swept across some 190 hectares of land in three municipalities, the government says