AFN Launches First New FM Radio Station In Japan In 70 Years
The American Forces Network launched its first new FM radio station in Japan in over 70 years last week, AFN Sasebo FM 93.1. This comes after a decade-long effort to restore broadcasting capabilities to the southern Japanese port city.
The milestone marks a significant communications upgrade for U.S. military personnel and Japanese locals who have relied on streaming services since 2017.
The new frequency represents an engineering feat in Japan's challenging mountainous terrain. AFN-Pacific deputy director Scott Williams noted that 'standing up a new FM frequency had not been done before by AFN-Pacific anywhere in the Pacific region.'
The push for FM capability began in 2014 when Sasebo's AM tower faced severe maintenance issues. Three years later, AFN dismantled the deteriorating structure entirely.
'Our AFN station in Sasebo has a long history of service in that community and has always been one of our most popular stations,' Williams said. 'Since losing their AM tower, the AFN Sasebo station had to rely on AFN's streaming radio service, AFN Go, to keep its audiences informed.'
Initial attempts to restore service proved frustrating. AFN-Pacific sourced 1.5-watt mini-antennas from the United States and placed them around the base, but building structures blocked the signals.
The technical team then embarked on months of testing with Japanese regulators. Kenneth Burton, who leads AFN-Pacific's technical services, described the unique partnership: 'Working with the Japanese government on getting this frequency has been a unique experience. Nothing like this has been done in the past 70 years.'
Japan's Ministry of Internal Communications conducted monthly inspections as AFN gradually increased broadcasting power. The team started at 50 watts and reached 300 watts by March 2025.
'Every step of the way required thorough planning and testing,' Burton said. 'We drove all over the area while testing and despite the mountainous terrain were able to establish a clear signal with a new FM transmitter.'
The station's popularity extends well beyond the base fence. Williams recounted how one Japanese listener drove nearly 100 kilometers from Fukuoka just to tune in during testing phases.
'We have a huge shadow audience of local Japanese listeners at each of our stations,' Williams said. 'The Japanese people really value AFN and love listening to our local broadcasts.'
Local military leadership championed the project throughout its development. Fleet Activities Sasebo commander Capt. Michael Fontaine emphasized the practical benefits beyond entertainment value.
'AFN programming has long been an important source of news, entertainment, and emergency information for listeners both on and off the base,' Fontaine said. 'The ability to reach the entire Sasebo area during an emergency will improve our readiness and response capability.'
Still, the achievement represents just the beginning. Williams revealed plans to expand FM capabilities to other installations across Japan.
'Our work is not ending here in Sasebo,' he said. 'We are looking to bring this great FM broadcast capability to other bases in Japan, and we've begun scouting sites at MCAS Iwakuni and Misawa Air Base.'
The new station will broadcast music, news, command information, and emergency alerts covering typhoons and safety issues. For a network whose motto is 'We Bring You Home,' the FM launch delivers on a long-awaited promise to reconnect with audiences in southern Japan.

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


Tom's Guide
44 minutes ago
- Tom's Guide
Google Cloud is down — latest on Google outage impacting 50+ services
2025-06-12T20:15:59.586Z Earlier today, AWS, another provided like Cloudflare, saw a big spike of outage reports on Down Detector. My understanding is that many companies like Discord, which is showing issues, use multiple providers as a sort of redundancy, which may have been behind the spike for AWS. An AWS spokesperson reached out to Tom's Guide saying that Down Detector does not accurately reflect AWS issues. 'Currently there are no broad service issues with AWS. Our services are operating normally. The only resource on the internet that provides accurate data on the availability of our services is the AWS Health Dashboard," the AWS spokesperson said. 2025-06-12T20:03:42.146Z Google response A Google spokesperson responded to our inquiries, but did not provide any information on what might have caused problems today. Instead they pointed back toward the status page. 'We are currently investigating a service disruption to some Google Cloud services. Please view our public status dashboard for the latest updates," a Google Cloud spokesperson told us. 2025-06-12T19:52:55.167Z Current status According to the Google Cloud status page the company's engineers have "identified the root cause and applied appropriate mitigations." It adds that some people might still experiences some problems on an individual level. However, there is no ETA for full recovery. As for Nest, we're still waiting on an update. The last one was at 11:37 a.m. Pacific and the site claims another would come 60 minutes later. 2025-06-12T19:34:56.661Z Back up, mostly It looks Google may have solved whatever was plaguing its services. The Google Cloud status page now says that "All locations except us-central1 have fully recovered. us-central1 is mostly recovered." The update does say that there is no ETA for full recovery of the central region which is listed as Iowa. Over on the Google Workspace status page, it now says that every product except Google Meet has been recovered. No word on when Meet will come back. 2025-06-12T19:29:03.329Z Spotify With multiple services down, we're also tracking a Spotify outage that is currently ongoing. Follow along for updates here. 2025-06-12T19:22:58.153Z Spike Downturn? Over on Down Detector, every thing seems to be slowing down as the spikes are starting to decrease and crawl back down the mountain. Based on what've seen in some of the status pages, some places might be getting back online but it's clear that problems still abound. A few colleagues have reported that Google Drive won't let them upload or download documents or images right now. We're not out of the woods yet but some people might have more access than they did previously. 2025-06-12T19:16:08.277Z More Google Cloud sections down, no ETA on fix The Google cloud status page just got redder as more parts of the service are having problems. These include Memorystore, Vertex AI Search, Cloud Data Fusion, Cloud Shell, Cloud Workstations, Google Cloud Console and Google Cloud Bigtable. A report on the page says that engineers are "continuing to mitigate the issue." It says that there is recovery in some places but there is no ETA on a "full mitigation at this point." 2025-06-12T19:09:40.055Z Google investigating On the Google Workplace status page, a new report has gone up. Google says it is investigating an issue affecting: Gmail Google Calendar Google Chat Google Cloud Search Google Docs Google Drive Google Meet Google Tasks Google Voice The page adds that Google will provide more information "shortly." For now, it does not elucidate what might be causing problems. 2025-06-12T19:05:47.806Z Cloudflare also see reports Cloudflare another platform provider that undergird many sites and services on the internet is also showing spikes. The Cloudflare dashboard is showing a "broad" service outage. According to Cloudflare, the company is seeing "intermittent failures" that they are investigating. It's not clear yet what is causing these failures. 2025-06-12T18:59:45.552Z Google Cloud status update The Google Cloud status page just update showing global issues affecting the Cloud console, storage, Identity platform, Identity and Access Mnaagement, as well as data Dataproc. Drilling down by region, the page calls it an outage. The page has not provided a reason or if Google is investigating. Tom's Guide has reached out to Google for more information. 2025-06-12T18:51:49.564Z All of the affected Google services according to Down Detector Based on Down Detector reports, a number of Google services are experiencing issues. Here's what we see: Google Search Google Gemini Gmail YouTube Google Maps Google Drive Google Nest Google Meet Google Cloud A bit of YouTube Other services like Spotify, Discord, and Etsy, to name a few are also experiencing issues according to DD, though we don't know at the moment if those services run on Google platforms or another big provider like Amazon Web Services (AWS) which is also spiking right now. 2025-06-12T18:42:58.237Z Nest Status Page update The main Google status pages haven't changed but the Nest page just put up a new message. "We're currently experiencing an outage affecting Nest Home/App and other services. Our team is actively investigating the issue and working to restore full functionality as quickly as possible. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause." Currently, it says that Setup & Pairing and Nest Apps are experiencing an outage, while Nest Cam Video History and Nest Cam Live Video are in a partial outage. The page promises another update in an hour. 2025-06-12T18:38:59.461Z Users claim no access Looking through comments on Down Detector, it appears that for many people reporting issues the whole system is down for them. "On multiple Google apps like Gboard traduction/voice to speech it says 'non internet,'" one comment reads. Tom's Guide uses some Google services and as of this writing we aren't seeing anything affecting our access to various Google accounts. However, for those are affected, it sounds like all access has been blocked. 2025-06-12T18:27:22.768Z Google status pages show no problems We checked several status pages for Google including the Search, Nest, Cloud and main Google sites. As of this writing, none are showing any issues with green status across the board. We'll monitor these pages to see if any changes occur and if they provide any information about what could be causing potential outages.


CNBC
an hour ago
- CNBC
The U.S. dollar hasn't been this weak in 3 years. What that means for stock investors
The U.S. dollar index on Thursday hit its lowest level since late March 2022 — putting renewed spotlight on what has been one of the biggest stories in financial markets this year: the weakening greenback. As the world's reserve currency, the U.S. dollar is held in large quantities by global central banks. Key commodities such as gold and oil are priced in dollars. Many foreign transactions, even when American parties aren't involved, also are conducted in dollars. When something that important reaches multiyear lows, investors and consumers alike are forced to consider the implications of the move for U.S. markets and the economy as a whole. At the heart of it is exchange rates. What is the rate at which a foreign buyer can exchange their local currency for dollars? And what is the rate at which Americans can exchange their dollars for foreign currencies? Those who have traveled internationally are likely quite familiar with this. From the investor perspective, the question is how the strength of the dollar plays into our companies' sales and earnings. The U.S. dollar index, which measures the greenback against a basket of foreign currencies including the euro and Japanese yen, has trended lower since January. However, its losses picked up steam after President Donald Trump announced his "Liberation Day" tariffs on April 2. While many assets sold off then and have since recovered, the dollar hasn't shared the same fate. When the dollar is strong, foreign buyers need to trade in more of their local currency — the currency they save and spend in — for U.S. dollars in order to purchase any dollar-denominated goods. Keep in mind: Even if a European purchases an iPhone in euros, those euros are eventually converted to dollars and that conversion rate is going to factor into the euro-denominated price that European shoppers may see in their local store. On the other hand, a weak dollar means that foreign buyers have relatively more buying power. When their local currency strengthens against the dollar, they can trade in fewer local currency units such as euros for an equal number of dollars. In effect, the price has gone down, a dynamic that usually leads to an increase in demand — all else equal. Sales going up because the foreign buyer feels a relative increase in their buying power is one reason why a weaker dollar is generally positive for U.S. companies' overseas business. To be sure, in this scenario, the U.S. company may see an increase in costs for any supplies that it needs to import from foreign countries because their dollars are worth less. However, because companies sell goods and services for more than it costs to make them, the end result is generally a net positive for earnings — the magnitude of that benefit depends, of course, on the share of sales generated outside the U.S. and the makeup of the supply chain. On Microsoft's most recent earnings call, CFO Amy Hood illustrated this dynamic (FX is shorthand for foreign exchange): "With the weakening of the U.S. dollar in April, we now expect FX to increase total revenue growth by 1 point. Within the segments, we expect FX to increase revenue growth by 1 point in Productivity and Business Processes and less than 1 point in Intelligent Cloud and More Personal Computing. We expect FX to increase [cost of goods sold] operating expense growth by less than 1 point." As we see, Microsoft is expecting cost of goods sold to increase at a lower percentage than the benefit to revenue growth. Indeed, we heard similar commentary Thursday from Wall Street veteran and IBM Vice Chair Gary Cohn. Appearing on CNBC's "Squawk Box" on Thursday morning, Cohn affirmed that the weaker dollar is good for IBM. "Yeah, it is," he said. "IBM is an American-based manufacturing company that sells a lot of overseas and repatriates earnings. Think of U.S. domiciled multinational corporations that sell product overseas and report dollar-based earnings." To recap: For investors, a weaker dollar should generally be viewed as a tailwind for foreign sales of U.S. companies — even though some of the benefit may be offset by inputs sourced from foreign markets that are purchased in dollars. The net effect on the bottom line depends on each individual companies' mix of foreign and domestic sales and inputs. There are additional ripple effects on consumer behavior that investors should monitor, beyond the euro-denominated iPhone example we touched on above. Arguably the most important is travel demand, which obviously impacts all sorts of companies including Club name Disney and Bullpen member Airbnb . A weaker dollar means that U.S. citizens traveling abroad will need to convert more dollars than before into the currency of their destination. Consequently, U.S. consumer appetite for international travel should be expected to take a bit of a hit. Back in 2022, when the euro and dollar hit parity for the first time in two decades , everyone was talking about how good it was to be an American traveler going to Europe that summer. It's a different ballgame now. The beneficiaries this summer are foreign travelers coming to the U.S., who will arrive with relatively more buying power than they otherwise would have in January. The U.S. dollar index ended that month around 108. It's around 98 on Thursday. The implication is that a trip to Disney's theme parks in Florida and California is relatively more affordable for intentional travelers than it was just a few months ago. In this way, U.S. companies also may be able to benefit in the domestic market from an increase in foreign tourism — unless there are other countervailing forces that would make them want to travel elsewhere . How does all of this play into our investment decisions? The answer is that it's one data point that we consider in the much larger universe of data. As fundamental investors, we must be aware of the implications of macroeconomic forces such as currency markets. But they do not, by themselves, drive our moves. Consider the case of Apple , where its growth potential in foreign markets is a major opportunity and reason to be optimistic about its future. In that sense, it's reasonable to assume that a weaker dollar would be a positive for the company – and indeed, it is. However, it is not a large enough positive for us to forget about all the other headwinds for Apple. Sure, the dollar is weaker, but it still must deal with tariffs resulting from where its goods are manufactured. There are court battles threatening its lucrative services business. Of course, there's the seeming lack of progress on Apple Intelligence. History suggests Apple is a strong enough operator to navigate these issues – and we are not counting them out of the AI race just yet, given its record-high installed base is a major advantage. The point is that there are much bigger considerations in our investment decisions than currency fluctuations. Or consider the case of Home Depot , which does 92% of sales in the U.S. but sources many goods internationally. The dollar is headwind – to the tune of $275 million in sales in the first quarter – given that the bulk of demand comes from U.S. consumers and the weak dollar serves to increase the supply costs (not unlike an import tariff). However, that is not in our view enough to sell the stock, not when interest rates are expected to decline and in turn provide a boost to the housing market, whether that's through renovations or new building activity. Finally, while we won't get too political, investors should also keep tabs on what is fueling the move in currency markets. In a lot of cases, the "why" behind the move is likely to be far more useful to investors than the absolute strength or weakness of the greenback. In other words, we must ask ourselves what is causing the move, and then ask ourselves what that cause means for our investments. For example, consider a situation where the dollar is weakening simply because interest rates are expected to move lower as the rate of inflation declines – and so there's less demand for U.S. government bonds and the dollars needed to purchase those bonds. That's a pretty solid reason for a weakening dollar and there wouldn't be a cause for concern among investors. On the other hand, if the dollar – or any other currency for that matter – is weakening because investors are growing concerned about the stability in that country, that would likely be cause for concern because it may portend a fundamental shift in capital flow dynamics. In the end though, these are more so concerns for macro-oriented investors. As primarily bottoms-up fundamental investors with a long-term time horizon, we are much more focused on happening with companies themselves — and the industries they're operating in — than we are with the strength of the U.S. dollar in any given stretch of time. (Jim Cramer's Charitable Trust is long HD, DIS and AAPL. See here for a full list of the stocks.) As a subscriber to the CNBC Investing Club with Jim Cramer, you will receive a trade alert before Jim makes a trade. Jim waits 45 minutes after sending a trade alert before buying or selling a stock in his charitable trust's portfolio. If Jim has talked about a stock on CNBC TV, he waits 72 hours after issuing the trade alert before executing the trade. THE ABOVE INVESTING CLUB INFORMATION IS SUBJECT TO OUR TERMS AND CONDITIONS AND PRIVACY POLICY , TOGETHER WITH OUR DISCLAIMER . NO FIDUCIARY OBLIGATION OR DUTY EXISTS, OR IS CREATED, BY VIRTUE OF YOUR RECEIPT OF ANY INFORMATION PROVIDED IN CONNECTION WITH THE INVESTING CLUB. NO SPECIFIC OUTCOME OR PROFIT IS GUARANTEED.
Yahoo
4 hours ago
- Yahoo
Unclear when reduced Sunday rail service will end
A rail service says it is unclear when it will stop a reduced Sunday service it has been running since late last year. Northern has been running fewer services in north-west England every Sunday since 22 December 2024, because it has not been able to find enough conductors to work those days. The firm's managing director Tricia Williams told a Transport for the North Meeting on Tuesday the reduced service was "not what we all want" but did offer customers "predictability". Northern said it was still negotiating with National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT) over Sunday working. RMT confirmed discussions were ongoing. The firm has previously said the problem it faced on Sundays was it was contractually outside the working week for North West conductors. Affected services include routes from Barrow and Windermere to Manchester Airport, and from Barrow to Carlisle. Ms Williams said the reduced service currently relied on volunteers. "The success criteria for us is about achieving a truly seven-day railway," she said. She said the aim for the company was to ensure no more than 2% of services were being cancelled by the end of 2027 and that 90% of trains arrived within three minutes of schedule. RMT said it was conducting "detailed discussions with Northern Trains to bring together working practices for conductors from three legacy companies into a single, modern agreement". "The talks aim to ensure consistency, reflect advances in technology, and support reliable services throughout the week", a spokesperson said. Any proposals would be subject to government approval, they added. It follows Northern being issued a breach notice by the Department for Transport (DfT) in July 2024 for cancelling too many trains. Follow BBC North East on X, Facebook, Nextdoor and Instagram. Send your story ideas to northeastandcumbria@ Trains face delays over Sunday workers shortage Northern pins reliability hopes on new trains Northern Transport for the North