Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's new Cabinet took another blow yesterday as a minister in charge of political funding admitted that he had in the past mishandled a political donation.
Hiroya Masuda, who was appointed the minister of internal affairs and communications in an Aug. 27 Cabinet reshuffle, said that his political office when he was a prefectural governor had made the mistake.
CAMPAIGN
The office, tasked to manage his political funds, received a donation of ?1 million (US$8,700) when he was campaigning to be re-elected as the governor of rural Iwate in 2003.
But the office did not register the donation in the correct official report on political funding, although it issued a receipt for the money to the donor, another Masuda support group.
"It was an awful mistake. I feel deeply ashamed of my insufficient control over the matter," Masuda told a news conference.
"As the minister in charge of political funds, I take this matter very seriously. I wish to make earnest explanations and solicit understanding from the people as I continue carrying out my duties," he said.
DIFFERENT REPORT
Masuda, 55, who served as Iwate governor for 12 years until he retired last April, said that he had accounted for the donation in a different official report.
A number of Japanese ministers have apologized or resigned for financial irregularities just weeks after Abe reshuffled his cabinet in an effort to bolster his sagging support and wipe the slate clean of earlier scandals.
The reshuffle came after a shock defeat for Abe's Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in upper house parliamentary elections late July.
Abe's farm minister and a vice foreign minister both resigned on Monday over financial irregularities. One day later, an LDP lawmaker resigned over election fraud by his staff.
On Wednesday, the new environment minister and the state minister in charge of gender equality separately apologized for filing incorrect political funding reports.
Through the noise of rushing papers and whirring belts at a print factory in Kyoto, two creators watch their photo essay come to life in broadsheet form — part of an effort to win new audiences in the age of artificial intelligence (AI). Despite the decline of the publishing industry, self-publication and handmade “zine” magazines are growing in popularity in Japan, reflecting the nation’s enduring love of paper in the digital era. While speaking to Agence France-Presse at the plant, his hands black with ink, one of the creators, Kazuma Obara, said: “I think [paper] is a medium that engages all five
‘ABSURD MISTAKE’: The election commission said that there had been a failure to anticipate turnout after 14 polling stations ran short of ballot papers South Korean riot police yesterday cleared protesters from a Seoul polling station after a 35-hour blockade sparked by a shortage of ballot papers during local elections earlier this week. Wednesday’s election was the first nationwide vote since South Korean President Lee Jae-myung took office following the ouster of Yoon Suk-yeol over his short-lived martial law declaration. Lee’s ruling Democratic Party swept most races, but failed to flip the crucial Seoul mayoral seat. The South Korean National Election Commission apologized, blaming a failure to anticipate turnout after 14 polling stations in Seoul ran short of ballot papers. Some polling stations stayed open until 10pm to
France experienced its hottest spring on record, the French weather service said on Tuesday, after an exceptional early heat wave that also broke highs for the season in England and Wales. Meteo-France said the average nationwide temperature over March to May was 13.8°C — about 1.7°C above the norm, and surpassing records set in 2011 and 2020. “The warmest spring since records began in 1900,” it said in a bulletin. All three months were warmer than average, but the onset of an “unprecedented heatwave” late last month pushed the mercury to highs typically seen at the height of the summer. “Our country had never
A Sherpa guide was found crawling to base camp on Mount Everest a week after he went missing and was reunited with his family, who had given up hope he would return. Dawa Sherpa was last seen on Friday last week descending the mountain, but he did not reach base camp even though his client did. The pair were among the last climbers on the mountain as the climbing season came to an end and the route was dismantled. Dawa was located by a cleaning crew on Thursday morning as he was crawling down the snowy slopes around the Khumbu Icefall, just above
RSS