TOKYO (AP) — A defense paper released Friday by Japan's hawkish new government calls for an increase in the country's military capabilities and a more assertive role in regional security due to increased threats from China and North Korea.

If implemented, some of the changes outlined by the interim Defense Ministry paper would be a major shift in policy for a military that is currently limited to self-defense and is banned from operating in overseas combat zones under a pacifist constitution.

Now that he is back in power, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe wants the previous defense policy of the more moderate Democratic Party-led government revised to give Japan's military more freedom and strength.

The report repeatedly cited China's military and maritime activity as threats to regional peace and stability, and urged Japan to step up its capability to respond.

"China's military trend includes high-handed actions that could trigger unforeseen situations, and has become security concerns to the region and international society including our country," the report said. "National security environment surrounding our country is increasingly aggravating."

The paper said Japan should increase its surveillance capability and consider using drones, or unmanned surveillance vehicles capable of wide-range, high-altitude monitoring around the clock. The paper also proposed creating a marine force with amphibious functions to defend disputed islands in the East China Sea.

It said the Japan-U.S. security alliance remains "the cornerstone" of Japan's defense policy and urged Japan to step up its ability to respond to ballistic missile attacks amid concerns about North Korea's nuclear and missile development.

A final report is expected at the end of this year.

"This will guide the focus of the direction that the Self Defense Forces should be heading going forward," said Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera said, outlining key components such as boosting warning and surveillance capabilities, amphibious functions, integrated transport, and anti-ballistic missile response.

On Thursday, Tokyo expressed unease over Chinese military and maritime activity near a group of islands that Japan controls but China also claims.

Japan had scrambled fighter jets Wednesday to keep watch on a Chinese early warning plane flying over international waters between Japan's southern Okinawa island and an outer island relatively close to the disputed area. Around the same time, Japan's Coast Guard reported the appearance of four Chinese coast guard vessels near the disputed islands, called Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China.

PHOENIX (AP) — Rescue personnel who arrived on the scene where 19 firefighters died last month battling a ferocious Arizona blaze found sheer devastation described as a "moonscape" after an inferno so intense that only the metal part of one chain saw was found, according to records obtained by The Associated Press on Thursday.

After the crew's last radio communication indicated that they were deploying their shelters, air support was called in to search for them and provide medical assistance if necessary.

The records provided by the Arizona Department of Public Safety offer a glimpse into the difficult attempts to reach the men and the gruesome scene on the ground.

Pilots reported thick smoke, intense heat and blowing ash and dust making it difficult to land anywhere near their last known location.

Their yellow packs could be seen from the air, some appearing to have been burned.

An Arizona Department of Public Safety helicopter was eventually able to touch down about 500 yards from the site. One member of the rescue team hiked toward the men.

"As I got closer to the site I could hear voices coming from the area of the shelters. I yelled up to the shelters repeatedly but received no response," the official wrote in the records.

It turned out the voices were coming from the dead firefighters' radios.

"The ground around the deployment site was black and crusted with no visible vegetation and only occasional black branches sticking out of the ground," the report stated. "I can best describe the area as a moonscape."

The man reported finding a chain saw "that had only metal left on it" not far from the bodies, along with an ax head, its handle gone, likely burned in the flames.

A check of the men found "obvious rigor and no breathing or signs of life." Incident command was made aware that all 19 men had died as the first rescue personnel on the scene reported "firefighters were located in various positions around and under the shelters, obviously deceased and burned beyond recognition."

The wildfire began with a lightning strike on Friday, June 28, and worsened by the hour through the weekend — at one point causing flames up to 20 feet high. The elite Granite Mountain Hotshot crew was called in June 30 to help protect the town of Yarnell, about 80 miles northwest of Phoenix.

The 20-member team hiked into the boulder-strewn mountains before afternoon thunderstorms and erratic winds of more than 50 mph caused the blaze to shift directions, turning on the crew as they attempted to reach a nearby ranch. Only one member of the team who was serving as a lookout survived.

Officials believe they were forced to retreat into a bowl surrounded by mountains on three sides, the slopes way too steep to even attempt to outrun the flames. The crew radioed that they were deploying their emergency shelters, but the fire proved too intense.

The blaze ended up destroying more than 100 homes before it was fully contained on July 10.

A national team of investigators has finished gathering evidence from the scene and interviewing other firefighters. It's expected their report on the fatalities will be completed sometime in late August or early September.

By Rob Taylor

KABUL (Reuters) - Pockets of al Qaeda militants will endure in Afghanistan beyond next year's departure of most Western combat forces, but they have lost the ability to mount serious attacks of the kind that triggered the Afghan war, a senior U.S. commander said.

Major-General Joseph Osterman, the deputy operations chief of Afghanistan's NATO-led force, said small numbers of al Qaeda fighters remained entrenched in the rugged eastern mountain province of Nuristan, where the forested terrain and plunging valleys provided natural havens.

"They are less than 100, I would say, and they are in fact just trying to survive at this point," Osterman told Reuters in an interview late on Thursday. "I think what you find is that it's not necessarily that they have got a springboard in there."

Both Afghan security forces and NATO commanders have been keen to talk up gains in the 12-year battle against the Taliban and its insurgent allies, pushed from power by the U.S.-backed Northern Alliance following the al Qaeda attacks on U.S. targets on September 11, 2001.

But isolated Nuristan, alongside Pakistan and straddled by the Hindu Kush mountains, has been something of a void for NATO forces, although al Qaeda and allies have used it as a conduit for attacks on Kabul and nearby provinces like Nangarhar and Laghman.

While NATO occasionally says it has killed al Qaeda commanders or "facilitators" in the province, most recently in May, Afghan commanders say some districts in the province are at risk of falling completely into militant control.

The former U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, in 2010 ordered American troops out of Nuristan, although special forces still operate there alongside thinly stretched Afghan forces, as well as anti-Taliban militias in the main villages of Kamdesh and Barg-e-Matal.

Armed U.S. drone aircraft also carry on strikes against insurgents there, although the number of attacks by drones has fallen off amid concern about civilian casualties.

"They continue to push against these guys and they continue to kill them, and really keep them from being a viable entity," said Osterman, a Marine commander who first came to the country as part of a U.S. military surge in 2010.

It is not clear if the presence of al Qaeda militants could derail efforts to bring the Taliban into talks in the Gulf state of Qatar, given U.S. demands that the insurgent leadership renounce all ties to al Qaeda.

Osterman said in Nuristan, which has almost no roads or infrastructure, al Qaeda had become almost indistinguishable from the Taliban and other groups like Hizb-i-Islami Gulbuddin.

"They have been up there for a while, so they have inter-married with some of the population," he said.

"It's one of those things where they do have some local support in that regard. But it's not necessarily support for al Qaeda or support for the Taliban, in as much as they have been up there long enough that they have perhaps been accepted by some of the people."

(Editing by Robert Birsel)

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U.S. Navy sailors look at the littoral combat ship USS Freedom as it arrives in Changi Naval Base in this April 18, 2013 photo provided by the U.S. Navy. REUTERS/U.S. Navy/Mass Communications Specialist 1st Class Jay C. Pugh/Handout

By Andrea Shalal-Esa

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Navy officials on Thursday staunchly defended the newest class of U.S. warships despite a spate of technical glitches, and they warned lawmakers that halting funding for the ships or their equipment could drive up costs.

They rejected a report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released Thursday that blasted the acquisition program for the Littoral Combat Ships (LCS) as a risky "buy before fly" approach and urged lawmakers to limit funding for more ships until the Navy completed technical studies.

The GAO report raised concerns about the stability of the designs of the two different LCS models being built by Lockheed Martin Corp and Australia's Austal Ltd and questioned progress on three packages of equipment being developed for the ships.

Concerns about the ship and its ability to survive an attack came into sharp focus this week after two of four generators in the USS Freedom, the first ship built by Lockheed, failed as the ship was heading to a bilateral exercise with Singapore, forcing it to return to port.

Maintenance staff were able to repair the ship, allowing it to take part in the exercise, but the incident prompted repeated questions during a hearing about the LCS program by the seapower subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee.

"While expected in the first of class, the sheer number of casualties associated with the LCS-1 is troubling and needs to be quickly addressed," said Representative Randy Forbes, the Virginia Republican who heads the subcommittee.

Navy acquisition chief Sean Stackley conceded the program began with critical flaws but said the current approach was "following best practices in acquisition, holding requirements stable, holding the design stable, leveraging competition to the fullest." He said the Navy was committed to addressing remaining technical challenges and mitigating risks.

"Now is not the time to slow the program and add cost," Stackley told the hearing.

He said the cost of the ships themselves had been cut in half from the first ships in the program, largely because of a block buy of 20 ships, and the cost of mission modules for hunting mines, detecting submarines and carrying out surface warfare were also coming down. The average cost of the ships in the multiyear agreements with Lockheed and Austal is now around $350 million, roughly half the cost of the first two ships.

The Navy plans to spend $34 billion to buy a total of 52 LCS ships, which were designed to patrol coastal waters while addressing threats like mines and enemy submarines.

Stackley said changing course now by halting funding or slowing production would reverse those cost improvements and set back a program that he said was needed to fill gaps in the Navy's current capabilities and help it expand the current fleet of 286 ships to 300.

Such a move would also jeopardize the high-skilled workforce that is building the ships, he said.

Navy officials say the ship's high speed and slimmer manning requirements will help the Navy respond more quickly to emerging crises around the world. The ship was designed as a "truck" to carry different mission equipment that can be swapped out, and to easily take on additional missions in years to come.

Stackley said the problems with the design of the lead ships had been corrected and design changes had been reduced by up to 90 percent on follow-on ships.

He said three interchangeable mission packages being developed for the ships were on track to deliver the capability needed by the Navy and within preset cost targets.

"Today the greatest risk is that posed by the disruption and delay caused by stop and start and slowdown caused by continuing resolutions, sequestration and other budget reductions," Stackley told the hearing.

SCRUTINY URGED

Paul Francis, managing director of acquisition and sourcing management at the GAO, urged lawmakers to keep a close eye on the program and demand more detailed answers from the Navy before approving funding for the program in fiscal 2014.

"At this point, we're producing at full rate, yet we're still experimenting with the ship," he said, although he said the Navy had time to brief lawmakers on several technical and design studies under way and keep the program on track.

"I don't envision a scenario where the 2014 buy actually gets held up pending these studies," he said, noting that the Navy and GAO "might be in violent agreement" about keeping production of the ships to a minimal rate until operational testing was completed in 2019.

(Reporting by Andrea Shalal-Esa; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)

Most Americans continue to support legal abortion, as many oppose making it more difficult for abortion clinics to operate and two-thirds say the U.S. Constitution should trump state abortion laws. But views on legal time limits for abortions mark underlying ambivalence on the issue.

Fifty-five percent in this ABC News/Washington Post poll say abortion should be legal in all or most cases, while 41 percent believe it should be entirely or mostly illegal. Those almost exactly match their long-term averages, 55-42 percent, in more than 30 ABC/Post polls since 1995.

See PDF with full results and charts here.

A similar 54 percent oppose state laws that effectively make it more difficult for abortion clinics to operate (most of them “strongly” opposed), vs. 40 percent in support. And by more than a 2-1 margin, 66-30 percent, Americans prefer abortion laws to be decided constitutionally rather than by each state individually. Preference for federal over state abortion laws encompasses both 69 percent of those who support legal abortion and 63 percent of those who oppose it.

At the same time, reflecting underlying unease with abortion, more say it should be legal without limitation only up to 20 weeks (as in some recent state laws), as opposed to about 24 weeks, as the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the landmark Roe v. Wade case; the division is 56-27 percent (an additional 8 percent volunteer that it should never be legal).

Supporters of legal abortion divide fairly closely on the 20- vs. 24-week issue, with 49 percent supporting the former and 42 percent favoring the latter. On the other hand, not surprisingly, preference for the shorter option rises to 69 percent among those who oppose legal abortion, with an additional 18 percent of them saying the procedure never should be legal.

GROUPS – Support for legal abortion, as usual, includes similar numbers of men and women (56 and 55 percent, respectively). Also as is typical, religious, partisan and ideological differences are sharp in this survey, produced for ABC by Langer Research Associates.

Among evangelical white Protestants, for example, 66 percent say abortion should be illegal in all or most cases; among non-evangelical white Protestants, an identical 66 percent say it should generally be legal. Catholics divide more evenly, 50-45 percent, legal-illegal. Among those who profess no religion, by contrast – one in six adults – 73 percent support legal abortion.

Sixty-five percent of Democrats and 58 percent of independents support legal abortion, while 58 percent of Republicans are opposed (partly because three in 10 Republicans are evangelical white Protestants). Seventy-nine percent of “very” conservatives oppose abortion in all or most cases, while 80 percent of liberals support it (partly, in this case, because nearly three in 10 liberals profess no religion).

Hispanics, a growing segment of the population (and a disproportionately Catholic group), divide narrowly on abortion, with 46 percent saying it should generally be legal, 50 percent, illegal. That compares with 57-40 percent among all non-Hispanics.

Differences also are evident in opinions on state legislation limiting the operation of abortion clinics, one of which recently was signed into law in Texas. Evangelical white Protestants support such laws while non-evangelical white Protestants oppose them, in each case by 33-point margins. Democrats, independents, liberals and moderates oppose these measures, by margins ranging from 14 to a very wide 58 percentage points, while Republicans, conservatives overall and “very” conservatives are in favor, by 23- to 44-point margins.

As noted, most prefer federal law to take precedence over state laws on the issue, though that preference is higher among Democrats than independents and among liberals and moderates vs. conservatives. Republicans and strong conservatives divide on whether state laws or the U.S. Constitution should carry the day.

Despite broad preference for federal rule, majorities in most groups also prefer a 20- rather than 24-week unrestricted period, from 51 and 55 percent of Democrats and independents, respectively, to about seven in 10 Republicans, strong conservatives and evangelical white Protestants. Liberals are closely divided on the question, even though about eight in 10 liberals support legal abortion, want federal law to prevail and oppose state measures that limit clinics’ ability to operate.

In another example of the complexity of views on abortion, while similar numbers of men and women support legal abortion, women are more likely than men to oppose state laws restricting clinics (58 vs. 50 percent), but also are more apt to prefer a 20- to a 24-week unrestricted rule (60 vs. 53 percent).

METHODOLOGY – This ABC News/Washington Post poll was conducted by telephone July 18-21, 2013, in English and Spanish, among a random national sample of 1,002 adults, including landline and cell-phone-only respondents. Results have a margin of sampling error of 3.5 points, including design effect.

The survey was produced for ABC News by Langer Research Associates of New York, N.Y., with sampling, data collection and tabulation by Abt-SRBI of New York, N.Y