September 27, Wednesday, 2023

1. Okinawa’s governor has indicated he will not approve by Wednesday’s deadline the Japanese government’s project for the relocation of a US military base within the southwestern prefecture. Tokyo plans to shift the US Marine Corps Futenma Air Station from the densely populated city of Ginowan to an offshore site at Henoko in Nago City.
2. Nursery school children in the northern Japan prefecture of Aomori were recently given the chance to harvest soybeans whose earlier generations had traveled to space. A local variety of soybeans were brought to and kept at the International Space Station for four months in 2010 for experimental purposes. The beans were planted at a local agricultural high school after their return from space. Students at the school have continued growing the beans since then. 3. Children have returned to a school in a town near the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv after a charity group there set up a bomb shelter as classes resume. Japan helped fund the facility. UNICEF says one-third of Ukraine’s school-age children, about 1.5 million, rely on online learning as their schools were destroyed or have no bomb shelters.