Overview
- The Diet approved a provisional budget covering April 1–11 with 8.5641 trillion yen in general-account spending, including funds for free high school tuition and free elementary school lunches.
- This is Japan’s first stopgap budget in 11 years following political disruption that derailed plans to pass the full-year budget by the end of March.
- About 2,500 Okinawa-based U.S. Marines from the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit arrived in the Middle East on March 27 aboard amphibious ships including USS Tripoli, with The New York Times reporting the move is tied to efforts to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, a key oil route.
- The International Atomic Energy Agency said Iran’s heavy-water reactor at Arak is not operating after an Israeli attack, a finding that weighs on regional security and nuclear diplomacy.
- Tokyo’s tax bureau found Toyota Mobility Tokyo concealed about 40 million yen in income over two fiscal years by not booking profits from reselling trade-in cars, triggering roughly 10 million yen in back taxes as staff steered the price gap into customer perks outside normal accounting.