Japan beefed up security at the health ministry and urged top officials to take extra caution yesterday after the murders of a former vice health minister and his wife, and a stabbing of another former bureaucrat’s wife.
Health Minister Yoichi Masuzoe called the attacks “despicable acts” and said the ministry had asked police to guard current and former officials in the wake of the dual attacks. The motive for the attacks was unclear.
The ministry set up metal detectors to screen visitors and deployed more policemen around the building.
“We are extremely worried. We don’t know why they were targeted like this,” said ministry spokesman Akihiko Ito.
The ministry so far has not received any threatening phone calls or letters, Ito said.
On Tuesday morning, a neighbor found former vice health minister Takehiko Yamaguchi, 66, and his wife Michiko, 61, dead in their home with several stab wounds in Saitama, some 40km northwest of Tokyo, a Saitama police spokesman said on condition of anonymity, citing department policy.
Police found no weapons at the scene, the spokesman said.
Hours later, the 72-year-old wife of another former vice health minister was stabbed by a man at their home in Tokyo, a spokeswoman from the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department said yesterday, also on condition of anonymity, citing department policy.
The attacker, in his 30s, had pretended to be a delivery man, and when the woman opened the door he stabbed her in the chest several times before running away, the spokeswoman said. Her husband, Kenji Yoshihara, was not home at the time of the attack.
National Public Safety Commission Chairman Tsutomu Sato said yesterday the two attacks were possibly linked. Kyodo News agency said both former vice ministers were heavily involved in pension system works and speculated the attacks might be related to a pension record scandal.
The pension mess involved an astounding 64 million pension records, including 50 million that had not been matched with their owners, and another 14 million cases that had not been entered into the government’s computer system.
Of the 50 million accounts, the government said in September it had matched 30 million of the accounts with their rightful owners, leaving another 20 million to go. None of the 14 million cases in microfilm still have been computerized.
OPTIMISTIC: A Philippine Air Force spokeswoman said the military believed the crew were safe and were hopeful that they and the jet would be recovered A Philippine Air Force FA-50 jet and its two-person crew are missing after flying in support of ground forces fighting communist rebels in the southern Mindanao region, a military official said yesterday. Philippine Air Force spokeswoman Colonel Consuelo Castillo said the jet was flying “over land” on the way to its target area when it went missing during a “tactical night operation in support of our ground troops.” While she declined to provide mission specifics, Philippine Army spokesman Colonel Louie Dema-ala confirmed that the missing FA-50 was part of a squadron sent “to provide air support” to troops fighting communist rebels in
PROBE: Last week, Romanian prosecutors launched a criminal investigation against presidential candidate Calin Georgescu accusing him of supporting fascist groups Tens of thousands of protesters gathered in Romania’s capital on Saturday in the latest anti-government demonstration by far-right groups after a top court canceled a presidential election in the EU country last year. Protesters converged in front of the government building in Bucharest, waving Romania’s tricolor flags and chanting slogans such as “down with the government” and “thieves.” Many expressed support for Calin Georgescu, who emerged as the frontrunner in December’s canceled election, and demanded they be resumed from the second round. George Simion, the leader of the far-right Alliance for the Unity of Romanians (AUR), which organized the protest,
ECONOMIC DISTORTION? The US commerce secretary’s remarks echoed Elon Musk’s arguments that spending by the government does not create value for the economy US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick on Sunday said that government spending could be separated from GDP reports, in response to questions about whether the spending cuts pushed by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency could possibly cause an economic downturn. “You know that governments historically have messed with GDP,” Lutnick said on Fox News Channel’s Sunday Morning Futures. “They count government spending as part of GDP. So I’m going to separate those two and make it transparent.” Doing so could potentially complicate or distort a fundamental measure of the US economy’s health. Government spending is traditionally included in the GDP because
Two daughters of an Argentine mountaineer who died on an icy peak 40 years ago have retrieved his backpack from the spot — finding camera film inside that allowed them a glimpse of some of his final experiences. Guillermo Vieiro was 44 when he died in 1985 — as did his climbing partner — while descending Argentina’s Tupungato lava dome, one of the highest peaks in the Americas. Last year, his backpack was spotted on a slope by mountaineer Gabriela Cavallaro, who examined it and contacted Vieiro’s daughters Guadalupe, 40, and Azul, 44. Last month, the three set out with four other guides
RSS