A South Korean man suspected of being behind an explosion at a controversial Tokyo war shrine was re-arrested yesterday, accused of carrying and using gunpowder.
Tokyo police said Jeon Chang-han, 27, now faces a new charge of breaching Japan’s explosives control law after he was held for trespassing on the shrine last month.
“He allegedly filled a metal pipe with black gunpowder and carried it to a toilet inside Yasukuni Shrine,” a police spokesman told reporters. “He also allegedly blew up the pipe filled with gunpowder in the toilet.”
Prosecutors had Jeon arrested last month on the charge of illegal entry into the shrine after a suspected explosion damaged a bathroom there on Nov. 23 last year. No one was hurt, but the incident stretched already frayed nerves in the Japanese capital just days after terror attacks killed 130 people in Paris.
The Yasukuni Shrine in central Tokyo honoring millions of Japan’s war dead, including several senior military and political figures convicted of war crimes after World War II, remains a diplomatic flashpoint in Northeast Asia.
Those honored at the shrine include 30,304 Taiwanese soldiers killed in World War II.
Visits by senior Japanese politicians routinely draw an angry reaction from China and South Korea, which see it as a symbol of Tokyo’s militaristic past.
Jeon is believed to have initially left Japan after the blast, but was taken into custody when he re-entered the country early last month, reportedly carrying 2kg of gunpowder.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
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