CHICAGO Khalil Mack Jersey , Nov. 9 (Xinhua) -- Pressured by student and faculty protests over racial issues, the president of the University of Missouri, Tim Wolfe, resigned on Monday, urging those involved to use his resignation to heal.

At the start of a special meeting called by the Board of Curators, the university system's governing body, Wolfe said his resignation was effective immediately.

Wolfe's resignation came at the culmination of mounting criticism of his handling of racism on the school's campus network.

"I take full responsibility for the inaction that has occurred," Wolfe said in a television broadcast. "I have asked everybody to use my resignation to heal. Let's focus in changing what we can change today and in the future, not what we can't change in the past."

For months, black student groups have complained about racial slurs and other slights on the overwhelmingly white flagship campus of the state's four-college system, local media reports said.

Black members of the football team joined the outcry on Saturday night and a campus sit-in was organized on Sunday.

Representing the 27,000 undergraduates at the university of Missouri's flagship institution, the Missouri Students Association also called for Wolfe to step down in a letter sent to the Missouri System Board of Curators on Sunday night.

"In August of 2014, the university of Missouri met the shooting of Mike Brown with silence. In the following months, our students were left stranded, forced to face an increase in tension and inequality with no systemic support," the letter published on Twitter said.

"The mental health, academic quality, and physical safety of our black students has been compromised time and time again. Now, the campus climate has grown so tumultuous that all of our students are unable to pursue the very reason they attend this institution," the letter wrote.

Moreover, the faculty council also issued a statement of concern about Wolfe.

Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon said he appreciated Wolfe's decision to step down.

"Tim Wolfe's resignation was a necessary step toward healing and reconciliation on the University of Missouri campus, and I appreciate his decision to do so," Nixon said in a statement.

"There is more work to do, and now the University of Missouri must move forward -- united by a commitment to excellence, and respect and tolerance for all," Nixon added.

TOKYO, July 28 (Xinhua) -- Japan's Defense Minister Tomomi Inada submitted her resignation on Friday to take responsibility for a scandal involving the coverup of logs that recorded the activities of Japanese ground troops serving as U.N. peacekeepers in South Sudan, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said.

Inada's duties as defense minister will be taken over by Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida in the meantime until the appointment of a new defense chief. Her resignation comes ahead of a planned Cabinet reshuffle by the prime minister next week.

Sources close to the matter said Friday that amid diminishing public trust in the Defense Ministry and the Self-Defense Forces, Abe is looking to replace Inada with someone with experience, with Itsunori Onodera's name being floated as her likely successor.

Abe first named Itsunori Onodera as defense minister in December, 2012.

Inada's resignation follows allegations that senior members of the Defense Ministry and top brass from the Ground Self-Defense Forces had knowledge of controversial mission logs containing the daily activities of troops deployed to South Sudan on a U.N. peacekeeping mission.

The logs, which showed the security situation where the troops had been deployed was deteriorating, were said by the Defense Ministry to have been discarded by members of the GSDF. The ministry later said that a digital version of the logs had been found.

Under intense media, public and political scrutiny over the coverup scandal, Inada's resignation to account for the alleged coverup has vehemently been called for by opposition parties, who suspect she knew the logs existed all along.

Senior SDF officials allegedly also knew at the time that the GSDF still had the data and government sources have claimed Inada had herself approved the coverup.

The Defense Ministry initially said in December last year that the mission logs from July detailing the increasingly severe situation for the Japanese troops, had been discarded by GSDF members.

The Defense Ministry in February, in a volte-face, said it had found the logs in digital format on a computer belonging to the Self-Defense Forces Joint Staff Office.

But the ministry, at this juncture, still falsely claimed that the GSDF had discarded the same data.

The descriptions in the controversial logs would have certainly seen the Japanese troops withdrawn from the area in South Sudan as the troops could have become caught up in fighting there, which would not only endanger their lives, but also contravene the nation's pacifist Constitution.

When Japan did finally pull its GSDF troops from the U.N. mission at the end of May this year, it said it was because the troops' activities had produced notable results during their five-year placement.

The government here made no mention of the troops being pulled because of the rapidly deteriorating security situation in South Sudan.

Inada has denied the allegations being levied at her and following a probe into the situation by the Defense Ministry, the ministry also denied on Friday that Inada had played a role in concealing the data.

Inada, a layer-turned-politician and close ally of the prime minister became defense minister in a Cabinet reshuffle in August last year.

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