Japanese PM announces Cabinet reshuffle

TOKYO - Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda on Monday announced his second cabinet reshuffle since he took office last September, replacing five ministers out of 18, in a move to win support from the opposition parties for his tax raise bill.    

Defense Minister Naoki Tanaka and Transport Minister Takeshi Maeda, who were both censured in April by the opposition-dominated upper house of parliament, were replaced by Satoshi Morimoto, a 71- year-old professor at Takushoku University, and Yuichiro Hata, the Democratic Party of Japan's Diet affairs chief in the upper house, respectively.

Morimoto became the country's first nonparliamentarian defense chief since World War II.