A Japanese minister landed in hot water yesterday after saying a shocking school slaying by an 11-year-old girl was a sign that women have become more assertive in society.
"The number of lively females has increased in general in every society," disaster prevention minister Kiichi Inoue, 72, said in commenting on the context in which Tuesday's slaying of a 12-year-old girl by her 11-year-old female playmate could take place.
"Men have committed thoughtless, harsh acts but I think this is the first for a girl. Recently the difference between men and women is shrinking," he went on.
Satomi Mitarai, 12, died on Tuesday at the Okubo Elementary School in the southern Japan port city of Sasebo after being stabbed and slashed by her classmate, who has reportedly admitted to the killing.
Police have said the young attacker lashed out with a papercraft knife after being dubbed fat and ugly and a goody-goody in messages her classmate wrote on an Internet homepage they shared.
The minister's comments about gender equality drew harsh criticism from women's groups.
"By saying that this incident occurred because females are strong is just crazy," said Harumi Okazaki from the Women and Work Research Center in Tokyo.
"I think he's just making fun of women. I can't take it any other way. The comment itself is discriminatory," Okazaki said.
The top government spokesman, Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiroyuki Hosoda said in a separate news conference that the minister's statement was inappropriate.
"I don't think the central argument is whether the accused is a male or female," Hosoda said.
The government has recently been forced to backtrack on a number of outlandish statements by apparently out of touch senior lawmakers. In June last year, senior Liberal Democratic Party lawmaker Seiichi Ota was forced to apologize for saying that five university students arrested for gang-raping a woman were "fine as they are in good spirits."
Inoue used exactly the same term as Ota, who was commenting on Japan's falling birth rate -- genki -- which was controversial because it carries a positive connotation of health and vitality.
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