Thursday’s Asahi carried an inside-page report saying that a local resident witnessed a U.S. military airplane conducting low-altitude flight training over Cape Hedo on the northern tip of the main island of Okinawa on Feb. 4. The paper wrote the move came just after Okinawa prefecture lodged a protest over low-altitude training flights conducted by the U.S. military in several areas in the Kerama Islands since the end of last year. The daily said that the Okinawa assembly convened an emergency meeting on Wednesday and drafted a resolution of protest calling for the immediate suspension of low-altitude flight training. According to Asahi, the U.S. military acknowledged that it conducted the training to maintain the skills of pilots and explained that all flights are being conducted based on the agreement between the U.S. and Japan.