CIA Director David Petraeus resigned on Friday, just three days after President Obama’s re-election, over an extramarital affair with a woman an FBI investigation identified as his biographer Paula Broadwell.

US President Barack Obama was reelected on Tuesday as he swept most battleground states to beat Republican challenger Mitt Romney in a race that was not as close as many experts had predicted.

Education Minister Makiko Tanaka on Friday unexpectedly reversed the approval of an advisory council for establishing three new universities in fiscal 2013, sparking a wave of criticism from across the nation.

Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara caught the nation by surprise on Thursday, when he announced that he would resign the post to form a new conservative party with like-minded people for the next general elections.

The Okinawa prefectural assembly unanimously adopted a protest resolution on Monday against the US and Japanese governments over last week’s assault on a Japanese woman by two US Navy servicemen.

Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda on Monday reshuffled his Cabinet for the third time since he took office, appointing 10 new ministers including outspoken Makiko Tanaka as education minister.

The Japanese government introduced an environment tax on Monday to curb greenhouse gas emissions across the nation, which is likely to lead to higher consumer prices.

The approval rating for Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda’s Cabinet plunged to its lowest level since he took office in September last year, with less than a quarter of those surveyed supporting it.

Celebrity lawyer Toru Hashimoto, who scored a landslide victory in Sunday’s Osaka gubernatorial election, will become the youngest of Japan’s 47 prefectural governors at the age of 38.