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.
BEYOND WASHINGTON: Although historically the US has been the partner of choice for military exercises, Jakarta has been trying to diversify its partners, an analyst said Indonesia’s first joint military drills with Russia this week signal that new Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto would seek a bigger role for Jakarta on the world stage as part of a significant foreign policy shift, analysts said. Indonesia has long maintained a neutral foreign policy and refuses to take sides in the Russia-Ukraine conflict or US-China rivalry, but Prabowo has called for stronger ties with Moscow despite Western pressure on Jakarta. “It is part of a broader agenda to elevate ties with whomever it may be, regardless of their geopolitical bloc, as long as there is a benefit for Indonesia,” said Pieter
US ELECTION: Polls show that the result is likely to be historically tight. However, a recent Iowa poll showed Harris winning the state that Trump won in 2016 and 2020 US Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris courted voters angered by the Gaza war while former US President and Republican candidate Donald Trump doubled down on violent rhetoric with a comment about journalists being shot as the tense US election campaign entered its final hours. The Democratic vice president and the Republican former president frantically blitzed several swing states as they tried to win over the last holdouts with less than 36 hours left until polls open on election day today. Trump predicted a “landslide,” while Harris told a raucous rally in must-win Michigan that “we have momentum — it’s
CARGO PLANE VECTOR: Officials said they believe that attacks involving incendiary devices on planes was the work of Russia’s military intelligence agency the GRU Western security officials suspect Russian intelligence was behind a plot to put incendiary devices in packages on cargo planes headed to North America, including one that caught fire at a courier hub in Germany and another that ignited in a warehouse in England. Poland last month said that it had arrested four people suspected to be linked to a foreign intelligence operation that carried out sabotage and was searching for two others. Lithuania’s prosecutor general Nida Grunskiene on Tuesday said that there were an unspecified number of people detained in several countries, offering no elaboration. The events come as Western officials say
TIGHT CAMPAIGN: Although Harris got a boost from an Iowa poll, neither candidate had a margin greater than three points in any of the US’ seven battleground states US Vice President Kamala Harris made a surprise appearance on Saturday Night Live (SNL) in the final days before the election, as she and former US president and Republican presidential nominees make a frantic last push to win over voters in a historically close campaign. The first lines Harris spoke as she sat across from Maya Rudolph, their outfits identical, was drowned out by cheers from the audience. “It is nice to see you Kamala,” Harris told Rudolph with a broad grin she kept throughout the sketch. “And I’m just here to remind you, you got this.” In sync, the two said supporters
RSS