Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe felt the heat yesterday after the suicide of a scandal-tainted minister, with media saying he bore partial responsibility amid a sharp drop in his approval rating.
Agriculture, Fisheries and Forest Minister Toshikatsu Matsuoka, a longtime Abe ally who was under fire over political donations and rigged contracts, hanged himself on Monday, sending shockwaves through the political establishment.
A grim-faced Abe and other ministers offered a one-minute prayer for Matsuoka at the beginning of a regular Cabinet meeting with a white flower placed on Matsuoka's empty chair.
"It was extremely regrettable that his life was cut short with things only half done," Abe told his ministers, asking them to stick together and keep working for the national good.
Lawmakers, ministers and business leaders paid their respects privately at a Tokyo funeral hall. His body was later driven past the parliament building on its way to the airport and his home in the southern province of Kumamoto.
Matsuoka, a career bureaucrat turned politician, had helped Abe rise through the ranks but suffered a poor public image due to his close ties with powerful lobbies.
He hanged himself in his residence hours before he was to be grilled in parliament over allegations of bid-rigging for public works.
In another suicide linked to the scandal, Shinichi Yamazaki, the former head of a public company handling forest work, apparently threw himself off his condominium yesterday.
Yamazaki had headed a government-affiliated company in charge of contracts for forest work. Investigators were probing whether bids were rigged to give projects to donors to Matsuoka.
Analysts said Matsuoka's suicide would be a severe blow to Abe, who has suffered a sharp decline in public support.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of