JAPAN
Most oppose new laws: poll
More than half of voters in Japan are opposed to their government’s plans to enact legislation this month that would allow Japanese troops to fight abroad for the first time since World War II, a newspaper poll showed yesterday. Despite big public protests, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s ruling bloc wants to pass the security bills before parliament ends its session on Sept. 27. A vote in the upper house is expected this week. A poll carried out over the weekend and published yesterday by the Asahi Shimbun showed 54 percent of respondents opposed the legislation, compared with 29 percent who backed it, while 68 percent saw no need to enact the bills during the current session. Support for Abe’s government fell to 36 percent, the survey showed, the lowest rate since he took the office in December 2013 and down from 38 percent in last month’s poll. Abe’s disapproval rating inched up to 42 percent from 41 percent.
PAKISTAN
Explosions kills at least nine
A police official said a blast outside of a bus terminal in central Pakistan has killed at least nine people and wounded 48. Khalid Rauf said several of the wounded from the explosion on Sunday night in the city of Multan are in critical condition. He blamed the blast on a remote-controlled bomb. Another government official, Zahid Saleem, said it appeared to be a suicide attack. There was no immediate claim of responsibility. Multan lies in a region dotted with thousands of religious seminaries, with several belonging to local al-Qaeda-linked militant outfits.
GABON
President Bongo tries again
The president on Sunday named a new opposition figure to a senior ministerial post a day after another senior opponent declined the job, in a setback to his efforts to forge a united government ahead of next year’s election. President Ali Bongo named Mathieu Mboumba Nziengui, executive secretary of the opposition Union of the Gabonese People (UPG), as minister of state for agriculture. On Saturday, the leader of another wing of the UPG, Dieudonne Moukagni Iwangou, rejected the offer of the position, calling for political change in the oil-rich central African country. The reshuffle, announced in a presidential decree on Friday, expanded the Cabinet to 41 members from 34 and was seen as an attempt to silence critics of the Bongo family’s domination of Gabonese political life since independence from France in 1960. The president also named technocrat Jean Sylvain Bekale Nze as minister for town planning and housing after Jean-Robert Endamane, from the Bongo-allied RPG party, refused the post.
INDIA
Truck crash kills at least 18
At least 18 workers were killed when their overloaded truck overturned in southern India early yesterday, police said. Another 17 people were injured in the accident near Gundepalli, a village in Andhra Pradesh state, police officer Ravi Prakash said. The truck carrying cement and other construction materials was taking the workers to a construction site 400km southeast of Hyderabad, the state capital. He said a preliminary investigation suggested that driver negligence caused the crash, as he appeared to have fallen asleep while driving. India has the highest annual road death toll in the world, according to the WHO. More than 110,000 people are killed every year in road accidents across India, according to police.
School bullies in Singapore are to face caning under new guidelines, but the education minister on Tuesday said it would be meted out only as a last resort with strict safeguards. Human rights groups regularly criticize Singapore for the use of corporal punishment, which remains part of the school and criminal justice systems, but authorities have defended it as a deterrent to crime and serious misconduct. Caning was discussed in the parliament after legislators asked how it would be used in relation to bullying in schools. The debate followed stricter guidelines on serious student misconduct, including bullying, unveiled by the Singaporean Ministry of
As evening falls in Fiji’s capital, a steady stream of people approaches a makeshift clinic that is a first line of defense against one of the world’s fastest-growing HIV epidemics. In the South Pacific nation — a popular tourist destination of just under a million people — more than 2,000 new HIV cases were recorded last year, a 26 percent increase from 2024. The government has declared an HIV outbreak and described it as a national crisis. “It’s spreading like wildfire,” said Siteri Dinawai, 46, who came to be tested. The Moonlight Clinic, a converted minibus parked in a suburban cul-de-sac in Suva, is
Jailed media entrepreneur Jimmy Lai (黎智英) has been awarded Deutsche Welle’s (DW) freedom of speech award for his contribution to Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement. The German public broadcaster on Thursday said Lai would be presented in absentia with the 12th iteration of the award on June 23 at the DW Global Media Forum in Bonn. Deutsche Welle director-general Barbara Massing praised the 78-year-old founder of the now-shuttered news outlet Apple Daily for standing “unwaveringly for press freedom in Hong Kong at great personal risk.” “With Apple Daily, he gave journalists a platform for free reporting and a voice to the democracy movement in
A MESSAGE: Japan’s participation in the Balikatan drills is a clear deterrence signal to China not to attack Taiwan while the US is busy in the Middle East, an analyst said The Japan Self-Defense Forces yesterday fired a Type 88 anti-ship missile during a joint maritime exercise with US, Australian and Philippine forces, hitting a decommissioned Philippine Navy ship in waters facing the disputed South China Sea, in drills that underscore Tokyo’s rising willingness to project military power on China’s doorstep. The drill took place as Manila and Tokyo began talks on a potential defense equipment transfer, made possible by Japan’s decision to scrap restrictions on military exports. The discussions include the possible early transfer of Abukuma-class destroyers and TC-90 aircraft to the Philippines, Japanese Minister of Defense Shinjiro Koizumi said. Philippine Secretary of
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