The Japanese government scored higher public approval ratings for Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s handling of the hostage crisis involving two Japanese captured in Syria and killed by Islamic State (IS) militants, polls published over the weekend showed.
Japan’s biggest daily, the Yomiuri Shimun, found that support for Abe’s government had risen to 58 percent from 53 percent last month. The paper surveyed 1,054 people by telephone on Friday and Saturday for the poll, which was the first since the hostages were killed.
A separate poll released by Kyodo News on Saturday also showed an increase in support for Abe. More than 60 percent of respondents said they approved of the government’s response to the hostage crisis.
The Islamic State, formerly known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, last month beheaded journalist Kenji Goto, a week after the group released footage appearing to show the beheaded body of another Japanese hostage, Haruna Yukawa.
Abe has vowed to step up humanitarian aid to the militant group’s opponents in the Middle East and bring the killers to justice. The gruesome executions and the recordings of Goto released by the militant group captured the attention of the pacifist nation.
A majority of the Japanese surveyed by both Yomiuri and Kyodo agreed with Japan’s plan to continue humanitarian aid to regions affected by the Islamic State.
In terms of how Japan should respond to the Islamic State threat, 57 percent of people polled by Kyodo said any response should be non-military.
Abe’s popularity had slipped in more recent polls after the resignations of key Cabinet ministers and due to Japan’s floundering economy, though his party won a landslide snap election in December last year.
The killings of the hostages have fanned calls to allow Japan’s long-constrained military to conduct overseas rescue missions as part of Abe’s push for a more muscular security posture.
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion
UNDER INVESTIGATION: Members of the local Muslim community had raised concerns with the police about the boy, who officials said might have been radicalized online A 16-year-old boy armed with a knife was shot dead by police after he stabbed a man in the Australian west coast city of Perth, officials said yesterday. The incident occurred in the parking lot of a hardware store in suburban Willetton on Saturday night. The teen attacked the man and then rushed at police officers before he was shot, Western Australian Premier Roger Cook told reporters. “There are indications he had been radicalized online,” Cook told a news conference, adding that it appeared he acted alone. A man in his 30s was found at the scene with a stab wound to his back.