Can China’s Baby Bust Be Reversed? Don’t Count On It

In late October, Chinese President Xi Jinping told the National Women’s Congress that “We should actively foster a new type of marriage and childbearing culture.” Such a statement is rich coming from a man, especially one who leads a party that for decades actively and sometimes brutally enforced family planning policies. It is also delusional: In all probability, China’s baby bust cannot be reversed, at least not anytime soon.

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For one, increasing fertility rates in China would require bucking a well-established global trend that when living standards rise, fertility rates tend to fall. Rising incomes often come with changing values and different lifestyle realities, particularly that children are less likely to need to support household incomes. The only country that stands as a marginal outlier is the tiny African nation of Equatorial Guinea—which, with a population of 2 million and a GDP of $28 billion, is hardly a helpful test case to China’s 1.4 billion-person, nearly $18 trillion economy.

Read More: China’s Population Is Shrinking—and Graying. Here’s What It Means for the Future

Secondly, significant efforts to increase birthrates elsewhere have been tried for years and have largely failed. Despite introducing tax incentives, investments in childcare and education, and public service announcements, the Japanese government’s years-long struggle to boost birth rates has borne little fruit—its fertility rate of 1.26 is well below the replacement rate of 2.1.

This should come as no surprise. Several academic studies have found that tax incentives have “positive, but very small” effects on family planning decisions. One 2018 study of alternative forecast scenarios found that only fertility rates “far above replacement levels” and “unprecedented, ultimately unrealistic, volumes of migration over coming decades” would reverse Japan’s population decline. The paper cites estimates that Japan’s population will decline from around 125 million as of 2014 to 97 million in 2050 in a base-case scenario.

South Korea, France, Australia, and Russia are among other countries that have tried to reverse population declines with limited success. Put simply, demographic trends are stubborn things, and hard to reverse.

But Chinese policymakers will press on. The China Family Planning Association has introduced “pilot cities” that “will focus on a range of tasks which include promoting getting married and having children at adequate ages, encouraging parents to share childbearing responsibilities, and curbing the high costs of betrothal gifts and other outdated customs.” As with Japan, certain “miracle towns” may emerge that are backed by incredibly robust incentives, but a nationwide turnaround is far more difficult. Our base-case forecast at the University of Denver’s Pardee Center for International Futures projects that China’s best efforts will produce only marginal gains.

Some China-watchers have speculated that the ruling Chinese Communist Party could take the dramatic step of resorting to abortion bans. However, such bans may simply push women toward less safe methods and will likely do little to change fertility rates, to say nothing of the major reproductive-rights rollback that would entail.

Yet even if China somehow does defy past trends and manages to boost its national fertility rates substantially, it will take nearly two decades to pay off as babies born today finally enter the workforce. Meanwhile, its top-heavy “constrictive” population pyramid thanks to a decades-long one-child policy—which was only abandoned in 2016—will mean increasing old age dependency and the social and economic costs that come with it.

Read More: China’s Aging Population Is a Major Concern. But Its Youth May Be an Even Bigger Problem

The U.S. has been spared a similar fate than China—all thanks to immigration. The more than 1 million immigrants who come to the U.S. every year are a key underwriter of U.S. national power, leaving aside the thorny domestic politics around immigration policy.

Like the U.S., mass immigration is the only plausible short-term fix for China’s population crisis. But China under Xi has no interest in a Western-style melting pot—like elsewhere in Asia including Japan—that brings in millions of immigrants. He has spent years promoting a Han Chinese national identity.

To what extent China’s baby bust will have implications for the country’s ability to engage in a sustained great-power competition with America remains to be seen. In all likelihood, the demographic headwinds China is straining under will begin to undermine its national power in the coming decades, even if China’s strength and influence continue to grow in the meantime. What is certain is that if China continues to rise as the world’s leading geopolitical player, it will be in spite of what has to date been an enormous advantage: its behemoth population.

source https://time.com/6341316/china-baby-bust-demographics/

OpenAI Will Add Microsoft as Board Observer, Plans Governance Changes

OpenAI said that Sam Altman was officially reinstated as chief executive officer and that it has a new initial board of directors, with Microsoft Corp. joining as a nonvoting observer.

The announcement Wednesday, a blog post penned by Altman, comes two weeks after the CEO’s shock firing from the artificial intelligence startup, followed by an operatic boardroom power struggle.

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OpenAI also said that Mira Murati — who had been chief technology officer until Altman’s ousting when she was briefly named interim CEO — is once again the company’s CTO. OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman will return as the company’s president after he quit in protest over Altman’s firing.

Microsoft, the company’s largest investor, had not previously had a position on the board before it took the observer role. The new directors are Bret Taylor, the former co-CEO of Salesforce Inc., who will be the chairman; Larry Summers, the former US treasury secretary; and Adam D’Angelo, a holdover from the previous board and the CEO of question-and-answer site Quora Inc. One of the directors’ primary tasks will be to build out a more permanent board. 

In an interview Wednesday, Altman said the new board will be selected “fairly quickly.” He did not specify how many people will eventually be part of the group, but said it will be “significantly enlarged” from the current number. Asked whether he will rejoin the board, Altman said it’s “not a top priority” right now.

“OpenAI is ending the month of November with stronger governance and a governance foundation than it had when the month began,” Microsoft President Brad Smith told reporters in London on Thursday. “These kinds of steps are giving us more confidence. I think they should give government and should give customers more confidence.”

“I don’t see a future where Microsoft takes control of OpenAI,” Smith added, when asked.

In a note accompanying Altman’s post, Taylor said the new directors will aim to create a “qualified, diverse board.” Taylor also said the company will “enhance the governance structure of OpenAI.” The startup has been criticized for a structure that allowed a nonprofit board to oust the company’s CEO without consulting its largest investors. 

OpenAI began in 2015 as a nonprofit research organization, but later shifted its structure to include a for-profit startup that has solicited investments and entered into partnerships with companies such as Microsoft to use its AI tools.The company is slated to be valued at $86 billion in a planned tender offer that will let some employees sell their stakes to outside investors.

As part of an an effort to “further stabilize the OpenAI organization,” Taylor said that company would convene an “independent committee of the board to oversee a review of the recent events.” Previously, Bloomberg reported that Altman agreed to an internal investigation of the conduct that led to his dismissal. Altman said in the interview that the new board members will oversee the inquiry and he “welcomes” it.

Summers said he will focus on increasing the size of OpenAI’s board and improving governance procedures for both the nonprofit and for-profit parts of its business. In an interview, he said the directors will undertake a “serious review and learn all the appropriate lessons,” but that he did not have any immediate comments on the investigation. He added: “We’ve only been on the board for half an hour.”

Ilya Sutskever, OpenAI’s chief scientist and co-founder, was one of the directors that fired Altman. Later, Sutskever said that he regretted his role in the ouster. Altman said in his blog post that Sutskever won’t be a board member, but that the company is “discussing how he can continue his work at OpenAI.” 

Directors Helen Toner and Tasha McCauley will no longer be on the board. In a post on X, formerly Twitter, Toner said she officially resigned, and added, “I’ll be continuing my work focused on AI policy, safety, and security.” 

Altman’s dismissal on Nov. 17 from the maker of the popular ChatGPT chatbot shocked the tech industry. That day, the board said in a statement that Altman was not “consistently candid” with OpenAI’s directors, “hindering its ability to exercise its responsibilities.”

The decision touched off a whirlwind five days at the company: Brockman quit in protest. Murati became interim CEO, moved to re-hire Altman, and was soon replaced as CEO. Meanwhile, nearly all of OpenAI’s roughly 770 employees signed a letter threatening to quit unless Altman was reinstated.

On Nov. 21, OpenAI said it reached a deal, in principle, to reinstate Altman as CEO and replace the board. In Wednesday’s post, Altman said that the company’s priorities going forward will be advancing its research, improving its governance structure and refocusing on its products. In the leadership chaos, some of the company’s customers had questioned how much to rely on the startup for their AI needs. Altman said that OpenAI didn’t lose any customers during the period in which he was ousted and then returned.

Asked how the startup plans to move beyond the events of the past few weeks, Murati said OpenAI will aim to make sure customers know it’s fully committed. “We need to get back to stability and get back on track this week,” she said.

After all that has happened, Altman said he feels tired, but also “more excitement and conviction than I’ve ever felt before.”

source https://time.com/6341039/openai-microsoft-board-observer-governance-changes/

Alistair Darling, U.K.’s Financial Crisis Chancellor, Dies at 70

Former Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling, who oversaw Britain’s economy during the 2008 global financial crisis, has died at the age of 70.

“Darling, the much-loved husband of Margaret and beloved father of Calum and Anna, died in Edinburgh this morning after a short spell in Western General Hospital under the wonderful care of the cancer team,” his spokeswoman said. 

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Darling served under former Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown from 2007 to 2010. His calmness and even temper stood in contrast to Brown’s abrupt mood changes during one of the worst periods of economic tumult in 30 years.

When the US subprime mortgage crisis spread to the U.K., causing a liquidity crisis in the banking industry and triggering a run on the British bank Northern Rock, Darling allowed the Bank of England to bail it out.

His stint in the Treasury ended when Labour lost the general election in 2010. Darling later led the Better Together campaign, a cross-party group that successfully campaigned for Scotland to remain part of the U.K. in the 2014 independence referendum. Darling became a member of the upper House of Lords in 2015.

“Alistair lived a life devoted to public service,” current Labour Party leader Keir Starmer said in a statement. “He will be remembered as the chancellor whose calm expertise and honesty helped to guide Britain through the tumult of the global financial crisis. He was a lifelong advocate for Scotland and the Scottish people and his greatest professional pride came from representing his constituents in Edinburgh.”

After becoming a member of Parliament in 1987, Darling rose quickly through the Labour ranks and became a key ally of Tony Blair and Brown as they sought to modernize the party and transform it into New Labour, going on to win a landslide victory in 1997. 

“I consider myself incredibly fortunate to have benefited from Alistair’s counsel and friendship,” Starmer added. “He was always at hand to provide advice built on his decades of experience – always with his trademark wry, good humor.”

source https://time.com/6341021/alistair-darling-uk-financial-crisis-chancellor-dies/

Nations Launch Climate Loss and Damage Fund on First Day of COP28

(DUBAI, United Arab Emirates) — The world just took a big step toward compensating countries hit by deadly floods, heat and droughts.

Nearly all the world’s nations on Thursday finalized the creation of a fund to help compensate countries struggling to cope with loss and damage caused by climate change, seen as a major first-day breakthrough at this year’s U.N. climate conference. Some countries started putting in money right away — if little compared to the overall anticipated needs.

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Sultan al-Jaber, the president of the COP28 climate conference in Dubai, hailed “the first decision to be adopted on day one of any COP” — and his country, the United Arab Emirates — would chip in $100 million to the fund. Other countries stepped up with big-ticket commitments, including Germany, also at $100 million.

Developing nations had long sought to address the problem of inadequate funding for responding to climate disasters caused by climate change, which hit them especially hard, and for which they have little responsibility — industrialized countries have spewed out carbon emissions that are trapping heat in the atmosphere.

But many details of the “loss and damage funds” were left unresolved, such as how large it would be, who would administer it, and more.

A recent report by the United Nations estimates that up to $387 billion will be needed annually if developing countries are to adapt to climate-driven changes.

Some activists and experts are skeptical that the fund will raise anything close to that amount. A Green Climate Fund that was first proposed at the 2009 climate talks in Copenhagen, and began raising money in 2014, hasn’t come close to its goal of $100 billion annually.

The fund will be hosted by the World Bank for the next four years and the plan is to launch it by 2024. A developing country representative will get a seat on its board.

A number of industrialized nations have insist that all countries should contribute to the fund, and the agreement will prioritize those most vulnerable to climate change — even though any climate-affected community or country is eligible.

___

Arasu reported from Bengaluru, India.

source https://time.com/6341016/climate-loss-and-damage-fund-cop28/

You’re Not Imagining It: Cell Phone Reception Is Getting Worse

It’s strange to have bad cell phone service in a place like Manhattan, a place that is packed with cell towers and technology and that is about as far from a rural, mountainous area as you can get. But I struggle to get a signal in my office in the middle of the city, and beyond—my phone calls at my house in Beacon, NY, frequently turn garbled and disconnect; I often can’t access data while a passenger in a car traveling around the suburbs of New York City, one of the most densely populated regions in the country; and trying to talk to my parents on their cellphones at their home in suburban Boston is like a version of the ‘Can you hear me now?’ commercials, except you replace the actors with Boomers and the answer is always ‘No.”

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I’m not the only one with complaints: on average, between April and June of 2023, U.S. cellphone users reported that out of every 100 times they tried to use data, text, or make a call, they had problems 11 times. That’s up from about nine problems per 100 connections in most of 2020 and 2021, according to a report from J.D. Power & Associates. All three major carriers—Verizon, T-Mobile, and AT&T had worse scores on this metric in the first part of 2023 than they’d had in early 2021.

“It’s gotten a little bit worse—there’s a problem more than there used to be,” says Carl Lepper, a senior director at J.D. Power. “The industry should be in the 8-9 range, My ears perk up when it gets above 10.”

When I did tests both at my office and at my house on my iPhone 14, the diagnosis was not good. When I turned off my Wi-Fi and relied solely on the cellphone network, speed tests on OpenSignal showed I could upload just 0.1 Mbps at the office and could not download anything, both numbers showing the Internet was practically unusable. A separate test to check my cell phone signal strength found that at home, I had something called RSRP of -108 – generally considered “poor signal,” and at the office, I had RSRP of -111, considered “very poor signal.”  

There’s no shortage of news stories in the past year about local areas complaining about a sudden uptick in dropped calls and spotty service. So what’s going on? Why, as we march forward into the future, half a century after the first mobile telephone call was made, do we still struggle so much with phone reception? 

I tried to find out. 

How cell phones actually work

Cell phones use electromagnetic radio waves to send signals from their antenna to an antenna on a relay tower. These waves aren’t all that different from those that carry music to your car radio—they are even measured on the same frequency, called megahertz. The FM radio spectrum goes from 88 to 108 megahertz (MHz)—cell phones use frequencies between 600 MHz and 40 Gigahertz (or 40,000 MHz). 

The higher the frequency, the faster a signal can travel—but these high frequency signals don’t go as long a distance and have a harder time penetrating physical barriers like windows, walls, and trees. The lower the frequency, the easier a signal can travel—AM radio tops out at about 1.6 megahertz, for example, and you can keep the same AM station on the radio as you travel extremely far from the radio tower.

The other important thing to know about the electromagnetic spectrum is that there’s only a certain amount of space available on each level of the spectrum, and there is less space available on the low and middle end of the spectrum than on the high. Low- and mid-band spectrum are very crowded because that’s what has been available, and as more people get cellphones and use more and more data, those lower spectrums have gotten clogged. “There’s nothing really available in the dial anymore in the attractive parts of the spectrum,” says Craig Moffett, a telecom analyst and senior managing director at Moffett Nathanson, a boutique research firm. Meanwhile, more and more people are watching streaming video and joining Zoom calls and making phone calls and sending texts. AT&T, for instance, said in September that total usage on its network is growing 30% per year. “Never in the history of our network have we seen so much traffic,” Chris Sambar, president of AT&T Network, said in a September blog post. 

This problem of crowding is exacerbated in places that have seen rapid population growth in recent years—places like the city of Beacon, N.Y., where I live. As more people move to exurbs and suburbs and use more data-intensive services, the competition for that limited spectrum is growing. To provide faster and better service, wireless companies need to build more towers so people can connect to higher spectrums, but cities and towns usually oppose the construction of more towers. There’s currently a Change.org petition in my city of Beacon, NY, for instance, to stop the construction of a 125 foot Verizon cell tower in a local cemetery.  

Why Verizon customers may be having more trouble

There’s a reason that I, as a Verizon customer, may be having more problems than my colleagues who use AT&T and T-Mobile, analysts say. It has to do with how much spectrum is available to each carrier. 

Verizon had, for some time, decided that buying more spectrum was too expensive, says Entner, the analyst. What’s more, Verizon focused what investment it did make on the ultra high-frequency spectrum—sometimes called “the millimeter wave spectrum”—which is very fast but does not go very far or penetrate buildings or walls. This spectrum was available because most people thought it was too cost-prohibitive to put up enough towers to relay these types of waves far enough to make them valuable. 

There are good uses for the millimeter wave spectrum—stadiums, for example, where you can put up lots of towers around the edge so everyone inside will have fast service on high frequency spectrum. But Verizon was focusing so much on the millimeter wave that it didn’t invest enough in low and mid-band spectrum, Moffett says.

By the time it became clear that the company had overcommitted to millimeter wave, he says, they had a huge deficit on mid-band spectrum. That’s why, in March 2021, Verizon spent a whopping $52.9 billion to buy mid-band spectrum called C-Band. But, the company is only using that new spectrum for its 5G ultra wideband network, which costs about $10 more per month. That means it is unaccessible to people like me who don’t want to pay even more on my phone bill.

Of course, I can still access other spectrums in Verizon’s network, but I am competing against all the other people trying to do that as well. Analysts I talked to say that T-Mobile has the most low and mid-band spectrum—which may be why OpenSignal, the crowd-sourced mobile measurement app, in July rated T-Mobile as having the best upload and download speeds, as well as the most consistent quality mobile experience. (A separate OpenSignal report gave Verizon top marks for 5G video experience and upload speed, though T-Mobile had the best 5G availability.)

Though a Verizon spokesman enlisted the company’s engineers to look at my cell service and tried to trouble-shoot, even saying the company would send more engineers to my office building to figure out what was going on, the company didn’t want to speak on the record about the issues. Instead, it sent a statement saying that Verizon engineers work everyday to provide the most reliable wireless experience for customers, and that it is in the middle of one of the fastest and biggest upgrades in the company’s history. “Our network is consistently rated the best in the industry for network quality by our customers,” including through the J.D. Power surveys, a company spokesman said, in a statement.

Analysts agreed that whenever carriers roll out a new technology like 5G, they have to do a lot of fine-tuning of their networks, which can lead to some temporary problems. 

They have to adjust signals and strength so that their radio waves reach far enough without interfering with other waves. “It’s a three-dimensional chess game they have to play, and it’s not easy,” says Entner. 

What you can do about bad cell phone reception

You’d think, by 2023, there would be lots of new technology that could improve reception despite the crowding of the radio waves. The problem though is that we have done just about all we can to optimize the spectrums that are available. There are technologies that allow cellphones to use the spectrum more efficiently, but they’re not effective enough to handle the giant increase in data usage that networks are experiencing right now. The amount of traffic each device puts out over the network doubles every two years or so, and there’s no real way to expand capacity that quickly, says Moffett. 

There are a few things that you can do if you have the same problems that I do—dropped calls, slow data, frustrating service. If you’re on the edge of a cell network, or if signals can’t penetrate the building you’re in, the best solution is to rely more on Wi-Fi. That helps avoid competing with all the people also using the wireless network, and also means you don’t have to worry about signals penetrating the walls or windows of my building. 

Sometimes, however, it’s not as easy as just turning on your Wi-Fi. Though I have Verizon Fios at my house, I was having a lot of trouble getting on Zoom calls and using the Internet. Then a neighbor recommended we get rid of the default Wi-Fi router that Verizon gave us when they installed our service, and replace it with what’s called a mesh network. We bought a (used) router and two satellites from a company called Orbi, hooked them up, and immediately had much faster Wi-Fi in the house.

It’s a solution, for now, and one that gets me off the increasingly crowded wireless network. But there are still times when I leave my house and can’t rely on Wi-Fi. The best solution for that is likely to hope that Verizon and other carriers build more towers near me. They might be ugly, but in an era where we can’t live without good reception on our phones, they may be better than the alternative: bad service and no way to improve it as the amount of data we consume keeps growing every year. 

source https://time.com/6340727/cell-phone-reception-is-getting-worse/

What Sultan Al Jaber’s Oil Lobbying Means for COP28

Alarm bells sounded earlier this week for observers of this year’s U.N. COP28 climate conference following the revelation that oil CEO Sultan Al Jaber had used his position as president of the talks to push his company’s fossil fuel interests. Leaked slides, published by the BBC, show his talking points for meetings with climate envoys from other countries that include offers to develop oil and gas projects.

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For some, the report was a realization of their greatest fears. In their view, Al Jaber is using the climate platform to disguise a dirty, polluting agenda. For others, it was shocking but not surprising. Al Jaber is, after all, the CEO of the state-owned Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC), and continues to oversee the 3 million barrels of oil the country produces every day.

In the past, outrage over Al Jaber being appointed to lead COP28 has led to calls for him to resign from that role, which he has summarily rejected. Now, of course, with the international conference kicking off on Nov. 30, it’s too late for such a move. But that doesn’t mean the revelation doesn’t matter. The unyielding criticism—intensified by the latest news—has placed Al Jaber and his team under enormous pressure to deliver a deal at the talks that acknowledges the urgency of cutting fossil fuels, including oil and gas. A failure to do so would not just spell trouble for efforts to address climate change but also for the whole United Nations climate process.

To make sense of the hubbub over Al Jaber’s talking points, it’s helpful to understand the role of COP president and how Al Jaber has approached it. Every year, the country hosting the U.N. climate talks designates an official from its own government to serve as COP president. These figures are typically government ministers, but they are meant to put aside their own national interest to find mutual agreement between the nearly 200 countries that participate in the talks. It’s because of the impartial nature of the role that Al Jaber’s promotion of national interest—in this case fossil fuel deals—has triggered such an outcry.

Read more: What Happens When You Put a Fossil Fuel Exec in Charge of Solving Climate Change

In my conversations with Al Jaber ahead of COP, he sought to underscore that his role is to push countries to come to an agreement, not to issue edicts. “I will be calling on all parties to engage in a collaborative manner, and to propose a solution,” he told me. “I will not be dictating.”

And yet as COP president he has significant sway to decide whose views to prioritize. Any single country can veto the deals that emerge and deciding who to listen to on particular elements of negotiation can pose a gargantuan task—one that often leaves delegates disappointed. We’ve seen this play out before. Two years ago, at COP26 in Glasgow, then-COP president Alok Sharma, who had served as U.K. Secretary of State for Business, Energy, and Industrial Strategy, made a decision in the final hours of COP to replace language referring to a “phase out” of coal to language referring to a “phase down” at the insistence of China and India. Other countries were not given a chance to respond before the deal was gavelled in, and Sharma was left to apologize through tears for the way the change occurred.

The drumbeat of criticism on Al Jaber may not have led him to resign, but it certainly has created pressure on the COP presidency to prove that it isn’t acting to favor the UAE’s oil and gas business. To do that, Al Jaber will have to thread a difficult needle, moderating not just the UAE’s interests but also those of influential oil-rich countries like Saudi Arabia that are keen to limit the scope of language seeking to phase out fossil fuels.

In September, I asked Al Jaber about the stream of criticism pointed at him. “I am genuine in addressing this,” he told me. “If you don’t want to believe me, all they have to do is just wait until the COP happens. And only then I will show them.” The opportunity to make good on that is now upon us.

source https://time.com/6340659/sultan-al-jaber-oil-lobbying-cop28/

U.S. Military Osprey Aircraft With 6 Aboard Crashes off Southern Japan, at Least 1 Dead

TOKYO — A crew member who was recovered from the ocean after a U.S. military Osprey aircraft carrying six people crashed Wednesday off southern Japan has been pronounced dead, coast guard officials said.

The cause of the crash and the status of the five others on board were not immediately known, coast guard spokesperson Kazuo Ogawa said. Initial reports said the aircraft was carrying eight people, but the U.S. military later revised the number to six, he said.

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The coast guard received an emergency call from a fishing boat near the crash site off Yakushima, an island south of Kagoshima on the southern main island of Kyushu, he said.

Coast guard aircraft and patrol boats found one person, who was later pronounced dead at a nearby hospital, and gray-colored debris believed to be from the aircraft, Ogawa said. The victim was only identified as a male. They were found about 1 kilometer (0.6 mile) off the eastern coast of Yakushima. An empty inflatable life raft was also found in the area.

The Osprey is a hybrid aircraft that takes off and lands like a helicopter, but during flight can rotate its propellers forward and cruise much faster like an airplane. Versions of the aircraft are flown by the U.S. Marine Corps, Navy and Air Force.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno said the Osprey disappeared from radar at midafternoon, a few minutes before the coast guard received the emergency call. The aircraft requested an emergency landing at the Yakushima airport about five minutes before it was lost from radar, NHK public television and other media reported.

NHK quoted a Yakushima resident as saying he saw the aircraft turned upside down, with fire coming from one of its engines, and then an explosion before it fell to the sea.

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said he planned to seek a further explanation from the U.S. military, but declined to say whether he would seek a temporary suspension of Osprey operations in Japan.

Ospreys have had a number of accidents in the past, including in Japan, where they are deployed at both U.S. and Japanese military bases. In Okinawa, where about half of the 50,000 American troops in Japan are based, Gov. Denny Tamaki told reporters Wednesday that he will ask the U.S. military to suspend all Osprey flights in Japan.

Ogawa said the aircraft had departed from the U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni in Yamaguchi prefecture and crashed on its way to Kadena Air Base on Okinawa.

Japanese Vice Defense Minister Hiroyuki Miyazawa said it had attempted an emergency sea landing and quoted the U.S. military as saying its pilot “did everything possible until the last minute.”

U.S. and Japanese officials said the aircraft belonged to Yokota Air Base in western Tokyo. U.S. Air Force officials at Yokota said they were still confirming information and had no immediate comment.

In December 2016, a U.S. Marine Corps Osprey crashed off the Okinawa coast, injuring two of the five crew members and triggering complaints among local residents about the U.S. bases and the Osprey’s safety record.

A U.S. Marine Corps Osprey with 23 Marines aboard crashed on a north Australian island in August, killing at least three and critically injuring at least five during a multinational training exercise.

It was the fifth fatal crash of a Marine Osprey since 2012, bringing the death toll at that time to at least 19.

source https://time.com/6340629/us-military-osprey-aircraft-crash-japan-deaths/