TOKYO (AP) — Japan on Friday approved a contentious plan to send its naval troops to the Middle East to ensure the safety of Japanese ships transporting oil to the energy-poor country that heavily depends on imports from the region.

The Cabinet’s decision reflects tensions that have escalated between Iran and the U.S. since President Donald Trump withdrew from Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal.

Despite being a U.S. ally, Japan’s troop dispatch is not part of a U.S.-led coalition protecting Middle East waterways, apparently an attempt to maintain neutrality in a show of consideration to Iran.

Under the plan, Japan will send about 260 Maritime Self-Defense Force personnel with a destroyer and a P-3C reconnaissance aircraft, mainly for intelligence-gathering in the Gulf of Oman, the Arabian Sea and the Bab el-Mandeb Strait connecting the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.

Japan will stay away from the Strait of Hormuz, where the U.S.-led coalition is operating.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe explained ..

(NEW DELHI) — Paramilitary and police forces were deployed and the internet shut down Friday in Muslim-majority districts in the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, which has experienced the highest death toll in protests that have erupted nationwide against a new citizenship law that excludes Muslims.

Security drones buzzed over western Uttar Pradesh, where protests turned violent after last week’s Friday prayers.

Twenty-three people have been killed nationwide since the citizenship law was passed in Parliament earlier this month in protests that represent the first major roadblock for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist agenda since his party’s landslide reelection earlier this year.

Most of the deaths — 16 people — have occurred in Uttar Pradesh, according to state government spokesman Awanish Awasthi. Twenty percent of the state’s 200 million people are Muslim. The state government is controlled by Modi’s governing Bharatiya Janata Party. Government officials have ..

North Korea’s “Christmas gift” for the United States never arrived, although it still could.

The ominous statement from a North Korean official that “it is entirely up to the U.S. what Christmas gift it will get” had the U.S. and its allies on alert this week. Many observers predicted the North was preparing to test its first intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) since 2017. Since then, President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un have temporarily ratcheted down tensions with face-to-face meetings. They are beginning to rise again.

Christmas came and went without a launch. Analysts say North Korea may still fire a missile. But, some say, the heightened anxiety over the North’s actions could be the point of the message.

Jenny Town, managing editor of the North Korea research group 38 North, notes that the “Christmas gift” comment was made by a lower-level official. “It wouldn’t have been uncharacteristic for them to do something like this [an ICBM test], but this wa..

(PALM BEACH, Fla.) — President Donald Trump is speaking out against the “carnage” involving thousands of civilians in a rebel stronghold in Syria.

In a tweet Thursday, Trump wrote: “Russia, Syria, and Iran are killing, or on their way to killing, thousands of innocent civilians in Idlib Province. Don’t do it! Turkey is working hard to stop this carnage.”

The tweet refers to an intense air and ground bombardment by government forces in southern and eastern Idlib province, the last rebel-held bastion in the country.

Syrian government forces about a month ago launched a renewed effort to take the province, which is dominated by al-Qaida-linked militants and is also home to 3 million civilians. The United Nations has warned of the growing risk of a humanitarian catastrophe along the Turkish border.

A Syrian relief group said Wednesday that more than 200,000 men, women and children fled their homes in buses, trucks and cars in recent weeks. Many have been heading toward the Turkish bord..

After the U.S. Ambassador to Zambia criticized the country’s harsh record on gay rights, the Zambian government considered his position “no longer tenable,” — effectively requiring him to leave Zambia, according to the U.S. State Department.

The State Department said in a statement emailed to TIME that it was “dismayed by the Zambian government’s statement,” which they “consider to be the equivalent of a declaration that the Ambassador is Persona Non Grata.”

Dismayed by the Zambian government’s decision requiring our Ambassador Daniel Foote’s departure from the country.

— Tibor Nagy (@AsstSecStateAF) December 26, 2019

Ambassador Daniel Foote had said in November that he was “horrified” by a recent 15-year prison-sentence doled out to a gay couple, according to the Associated Press. (Zambia is one of several African countries that criminalizes same-sex sexual relations; legal terminology refers to the act as a crime “against the order of nature.”) The ambassador stressed that the c..

Scandinavian writer Ari Behn — the ex-husband of Norwegian Princess Martha Louise and among the people who had accused actor Kevin Spacey of sexual misconduct — died this week, his manager said. He was 47.

Behn died by suicide Wednesday, his manager told the Norwegian news service NTB. Authorities said he was found at his home in Norway.

The Norwegian royal family said in a written statement that Behn was “an important part of our family for many years and we carry warm and good memories of him with us.”

Behn, who was Danish-born, and Martha Louise, the oldest daughter of Norway’s King Harald and Queen Sonja, were married for 14 years. The couple divorced in 2017 and have three children.

The match had critics before it even became official. Negative coverage dogged Behn after a Las Vegas travelogue he hosted on Norwegian TV in the early 2000s briefly showed him around prostitutes, some of them using cocaine.

Behn said at the time that it was mere reporting, not endorsement, and Ma..