#Attack on Shinzo Abe the Former Prime Minister of Japan

[howwelldoyouknowyourmoon]

Former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who was assassinated in July 2022. Inset: Unification Church founder Sun Myung Moon and his wife, Hak Ja Han Moon, in 1984.

SEPTEMBER 18, 2023

On the last morning of his life, Shinzo Abe arrived in the Japanese city of Nara, famous for its ancient pagodas and sacred deer. His destination was more prosaic: a broad urban intersection across from the city’s main train station, where he would be giving a speech to endorse a lawmaker running for reelection to the National Diet, Japan’s parliament. Abe had retired two years earlier, but because he was Japan’s longest-serving prime minister, his name carried enormous weight. The date was July 8, 2022.

In photos taken from the crowd, Abe—instantly recognizable by his wavy, swept-back hair; charcoal eyebrows; and folksy grin—can be seen stepping onto a makeshift podium at about 11:30 a.m., one hand clutching a microphone. A claque of supporters surrounds him. No one in the photos seems to notice the youngish-looking man about 20 feet behind Abe, dressed in a gray polo shirt and cargo pants, a black strap across his shoulder. Unlike everyone else, the man is not clapping.

Abe started to speak. Moments later, his remarks were interrupted by two loud reports, followed by a burst of white smoke. He collapsed to the ground. His security guards ran toward the man in the gray polo shirt, who held a homemade gun—two 16-inch metal pipes strapped together with black duct tape. The man made no effort to flee. The guards tackled him, sending his gun skittering across the pavement. Abe, shot in the neck, would be dead within hours.

At a Nara police station, the suspect—a 41-year-old named Tetsuya Yamagami—admitted to the shooting barely 30 minutes after pulling the trigger. He then offered a motive that sounded too outlandish to be true: He saw Abe as an ally of the Unification Church, a group better known as the Moonies—the cult founded in the 1950s by the Korean evangelist Reverend Sun Myung Moon. Yamagami said his life had been ruined when his mother gave the church all of the family’s money, leaving him and his siblings so poor that they often didn’t have enough to eat. His brother had committed suicide, and he himself had tried to.

“My prime target was the Unification Church’s top official, Hak Ja Han, not Abe,” he told the police, according to an account published in January in a newspaper called The Asahi Shimbun. He could not get to Han—Moon’s widow—so he shot Abe, who was “deeply connected” to the church, Yamagami said, just as Abe’s grandfather, also a prime minister and renowned political figure in Japan, had been.

Investigators looked into Yamagami’s wild-sounding claims and found, to their alarm, that they were true. After a quick huddle, the police appear to have decided that the Moonie connection was too sensitive to reveal, at least for the moment. It might even affect the outcome of the elections for the Upper House of the Diet, set to take place on July 10. At a press conference on the night of the assassination, a police official would say only that Yamagami had carried out the attack because he “harbored a grudge against a specific group and he assumed that Abe was linked to it.” When reporters clamored for details, the official said nothing.

After the election, the Unification Church confirmed press reports that Yamagami’s mother was a member, and the story quickly took off. The Moonies, it emerged, maintained a volunteer army of campaign workers who had long been a secret weapon not just for Abe but for many other politicians in his conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which remains in power under Prime Minister Fumio Kishida. Later that month, the Japanese tabloid Nikkan Gendai published a list of 111 members of parliament who had connections to the church. In early September 2022, the LDP announced that almost half of its 379 Diet members had admitted to some kind of contact with the Unification Church, whether that meant accepting campaign assistance or paying membership fees or attending church events. According to a survey by The Asahi Shimbun, 290 members of prefectural assemblies, as well as seven prefectural governors, also said they had church ties. The rising numbers exposed a scandal hiding in plain sight: A right-wing Korean cult had a near-umbilical connection to the political party that had governed Japan for most of the past 70 years.

The Japanese were outraged not just by the appearance of influence-peddling but by a galling hypocrisy. Abe was a fervent nationalist, eager to rebuild Japan’s global standing and proudly unapologetic for its imperial past. Now he and his party had been caught in a secretive electoral alliance with a cult that—it soon emerged—had been accused of preying on Japanese war guilt to squeeze billions of dollars from credulous followers.

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[samasmith23]

I’ve gotta say, Persona 5 Royal’s penultimate boss battle with the corrupt politician & candidate for Japanese Prime Minister, Masayoshi Shido, was FREAKING phenomenal!

Not only did I love the unique music for this fight, but the symbolism embedded in Shido’s golden lion & pyramid statues comprised of hundreds of regular humans was brilliant in conveying his distorted desire to both ride & subjugate the masses towards ruination for his own self-gain, and his Bane-like roided out second form showcases just how deep his ultra-nationalist “might-makes-right” ideology truly goes! And getting to fight Shido one-on-one as Joker in the final stage was so intense that I had to constantly stay on the defensive whilst timing my offensive techniques just right in order to avoid fatal damage from his powerful arsenal of special attacks!

You better believe that beating the royal crap out of and changing the heart of this dirtbag Donald Trump-wannabe fascist was oh so satisfying! Yes I know that Shido was meant to be a pastiche of Japan’s former prime minister Shinzo Abe, but every time I heard Shido’s dialogue I got some seriously uncomfortable “Make Japan Great Again” vibes from the bastard! I mean… Shido might as well wear that ugly red MAGA cap, he gives off the same kind of hatable energy…

Plus, it was satisfying getting revenge on Shido since he was also the one responsible for giving the protagonist Joker a false criminal record at the start of the game because the latter rightfully tried to stop a drunken Shido from sexually harassing a random woman on the streets, but Joker accidentally broke the Shido’s nose when he tried to pull the latter away from the woman. Unfortunately, Shido then used his powerful political & police connections to try and ruin Joker’s life by falsely accusing him of assault & battery, even blackmailing the woman he previously harassed to publicly testify against Joker.

So having the opportunity to beat the living crap out of Shido's shadow-self in the Metaverse was unbelievably cathartic!

And as I previously alluded to, the soundtrack for this fight, “Rivers in the Desert,” only serves to elevate the tension & atmosphere of this boss battle! BOTH the instrumental & vocal versions!

[warningsine]

An 86-year-old gunman who took a number of people hostage at a post office in Warabi City, just outside Tokyo, has been arrested by police.

An eight-hour-long standoff ensued with police communicating with the man by phone before finally storming the building and detaining him.

His motive remains unclear but police believe he was involved in an earlier incident at a hospital and have also linked him to a fire at an apartment near the hospital, which is reportedly the suspect's home.

What happened at the post office?

"At approximately 2:15 p.m. today, a person has taken hostages and holed up at a post office in Chuo 5-chome area of Warabi City... The perpetrator is possessing what appears to be a gun," said an official statement.

"Citizens near the scene are urged to follow police instructions and evacuate in accordance with police instructions."

Japanese broadcaster Nippon TV initially said that two female post office workers were among the hostages, citing police sources.

More than five hours after the standoff began, one member of staff came out uninjured.

The TBS broadcaster said that Saitama Prefectural Police urged 300 residents in the nearby area to evacuate.

Television footage showed the suspect inside the post office in a baseball cap and a white vest under a dark coat, apparently carrying a gun attached to a cord around his neck.

Police stormed the post office about an hour after the second hostage was released unharmed.

What do we know about the hospital incident?

The post office standoff came as police probed a shooting at a hospital in the same region earlier in the day that injured two.

Police said the victims, reportedly a doctor and a patient, are both conscious and their wounds are not life-threatening.

It is understood the man was at the hospital and then came to the post office, an official is quoted as saying.

Violent crime in Japan

Violent crime is rare in Japan, and it has one of the lowest murder rates in the world. The East Asian country has strict regulations on gun ownership.

Recent years have seen a number of high-profile violent crimes make headlines, including the assassination of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe last year.

In April, a man was arrested for allegedly hurling an explosive towards Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, who was unharmed in the incident.

In May, a man was arrested in central Japan after allegedly killing four people in a  gun and knife attack.

rc, sdi/rc (AFP, AP, Reuters)

[mariacallous]

As much of the world was focused on Chinese President Xi Jinping’s high-profile visit to Moscow last month, it was lost to many observers that Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida was in Kyiv at the same time on an equally consequential visit. Making an unannounced trip to see Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Kishida offered Japan’s solid support.

Three themes immediately stood out from the simultaneous presence of Xi in Moscow and Kishida in Kyiv. First, it pointed to East Asia’s active and growing role in shaping European security, perhaps for the first time since the medieval Mongol invasions. If China joins Iran in more actively supporting Russia in Ukraine, it would have profound implications for the course of the war—and the map of Eastern Europe. South Korea has emerged as a major weapons supplier to Poland, which is transforming into NATO’s most important military frontline state. The presence of the so-called AP4 (Australia, Japan, New Zealand, and South Korea) at NATO meetings is becoming routine.

Second, Kishida underlined that China’s view of the war in Ukraine is not necessarily the view in the rest of Asia.

And third, the parallel visits exposed the hollowness of Xi’s claims to be a neutral peacemaker in Ukraine. Even as some European leaders, like French President Emmanuel Macron, have hailed Xi as Europe’s savior who can mediate an end to Russia’s war, Kishida’s meeting with Zelensky served to highlight the one-sided nature of Beijing’s so-called peace initiative in Ukraine.

Traveling to Ukraine seems to have given a bounce to Kishida’s sagging ratings at home, but it also underlines the definitive break from decades of Japanese passivity on the world stage. Although it was perhaps coincidental that Kishida found himself in Kyiv at the same moment that Xi was in Moscow, his trip to Ukraine illustrated Japan’s emergence as a geopolitical actor to be reckoned with.

To be sure, the remaking of Japan as a key power in the security sphere began under the late Shinzo Abe, the former prime minister who undertook the onerous task of getting Japan to rethink its role in Asia and the world and shake off the political shackles of the past. Abe made much progress on revamping Japan’s national security policies during his two tenures as prime minister, from 2006 to 2007 and from 2012 to 2020.

But few expected Kishida to build on Abe’s strategic legacy. Abe’s shoes were big to fill, and Kishida was widely viewed as weak. The Ukraine crisis, however, offered a huge opportunity that Kishida seized with both hands to radically reorient Japan. If Abe had to struggle to get his ideas accepted by the political class, Russia’s attack on Ukraine has heightened popular awareness of the fundamental changes in Japan’s security environment. That a major power armed with nuclear weapons could invade a neighbor with impunity, seeking to unilaterally change borders by force, shook Japan to the core. Kishida’s plans to double defense expenditure over the next five years; modernize the military to better deter North Korea, Russia, and China; and take on a larger regional security role have thus found less resistance.

Long viewed as passive and pacifist, Japanese foreign policy seemed to produce few strategic ideas of its own. Tokyo was happy to follow Washington’s lead while avoiding challenging Beijing. Over the last decade and a half, however, Japan has begun to develop new geopolitical approaches, promote them, and get them accepted by allies and partners.

None of Japan’s foreign-policy innovations are more important than the invention of “Indo-Pacific” as a geostrategic concept and the establishment of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (or Quad), both of which are now integral to Asian geopolitics. Abe first outlined both ideas in an address to the Indian Parliament in August 2007. It was one thing to frame new ideas in a speech—and entirely another to get others to see their merit.

The initial international response to both ideas was skepticism among Japan’s friends and outright hostility from Beijing. But Japan’s sheer persistence and a rising China’s growing assertiveness saw Tokyo’s Quad partners—Australia, India, and the United States—come around to accepting Abe’s ideas.

In late March, Kishida also traveled to India to offer an upgraded vision for the Indo-Pacific that outlined a range of ideas to strengthen the region’s security, and he presented a more ambitious Japanese contribution to realizing it. This includes joint military training, and cooperation on maritime security.

A third important innovation from Japan was to transcend the “hub and spokes” system that defined the postwar U.S.-led security order in Asia. While Japan attaches great significance to its bilateral alliance with the United States, it has recognized the importance of directly connecting the spokes. Japanese efforts to build bilateral strategic partnerships with other countries in the region complement Tokyo’s alliance with Washington and deepen the basis for regional security amid growing Chinese military power and diplomatic assertiveness, with its destabilizing impact on the region. The strongest of these new regional relationships are with Quad partners Australia and India, but ties to South Korea and the Philippines are strengthening as well.

A key goal of Japan’s regional strategy is to strengthen the defense infrastructure and capabilities of Indo-Pacific states. If the Abe administration sought to give Japan’s substantial overseas development assistance a strategic character, Kishida is now developing a framework for overseas security assistance. These new Japanese initiatives have full U.S. support, with Washington eager to see its allies and friends become stronger by collaborating with each other and making themselves more capable in coping with the challenge from Beijing.

Just as important as Japan’s role in developing a new security architecture for Asia are Tokyo’s efforts to tie Europe to the Asian security order. Similar to the way Abe’s Indo-Pacific concept imagined the strategic unity between the Indian and Pacific oceans, he also recognized the deep interconnection between security in Europe and Asia.

It was nearly five years ago that Abe was inviting Britain and France, Western Europe’s leading military powers, to contribute to Asian security. Abe understood that isolationist pressures on U.S. foreign policy—which became so visible during the presidency of Donald Trump—meant that Asia couldn’t rely solely on the United States for its future security. Abe looked beyond the region for further partners to manage Indo-Pacific security challenges.

Since then, many European powers, including France, Britain, Germany, and the Netherlands, have outlined Indo-Pacific strategies. The 2022 U.S. National Security Strategy issued by the Biden administration also underlines the need for allies and partners in Europe and Asia to work together.

One of Abe’s last acts before his life was cut short by an assassin was to raise the question of Washington’s extended deterrence in Asia and to call for a debate on deploying U.S. nuclear weapons in the region. So far, Kishida has rejected nuclear sharing with the United States, and he has repeated the Japanese commitment to nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation. But the issue of a U.S. nuclear security commitment to Asia is unlikely to go away as China continues to modernize and expand its nuclear arsenal.

Underlying Japan’s new security vision is a clear recognition of the Chinese threat to Asia. Unlike many of its European peers who were or still are unwilling to come to terms with Russia’s or China’s aggressively revisionist ambitions, Tokyo has not let its massive economic exposure to Beijing get in the way of dealing with it. Proximity surely helped Tokyo perceive the problem clearly, but Japan had to overcome the inevitable constraints presented by the dangers of sharing a contested maritime frontier with China.

Equally significant has been Japan’s decision to highlight the implications of Russian aggression against Ukraine. In arguing that “Ukraine is the future of Asia,” Kishida has pressed Japan and Asia to see the implications of a nuclear-armed power unilaterally changing the territorial status quo.

With its increasingly clear-eyed security policies, Japan is reminding the West—especially Europe, which had become geopolitically complacent in the decades after the Cold War—that coping with the challenges presented by China and Russia demands greater discipline. This includes a much needed strategic outreach to the global south, where Kishida has called on other G-7 countries to do more to address developing countries’ own concerns and priorities instead of projecting Western policies and preaching to them about how to run their affairs.

As it rises to become a major geopolitical actor in Asia and the world, Japan has become the unlikely actor persuading the West to rethink its strategic assumptions. As France’s Macron and other European leaders struggle to come to terms with the challenges presented by Russia and China, Japan has injected a much-needed sense of clarity to the strategic discourse in Europe and Asia.

[head-post]

What do Japan’s PM’s words about Hiroshima tell us?

The risk of the use of nuclear weapons has been looming over the world recently. The escalation of multiple regional conflicts in Europe, the Middle East and Asia has kept the entire world community in suspense, forcing politicians to consider every step and every word, sometimes substituting historical concepts. However, a recent statement by Japan’s new Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba came like a thunderbolt.

Last week, live on Japanese TV during an election debate between the heads of political parties, the minister said:

“I will never forget the shock I felt as a sixth-grade junior high school student when I saw the US disclosed footage of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.”

Probably every schoolchild knows from the history of the course about the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with American bombs. The atomic bombs dropped by the Americans on Japanese cities were the first and so far the last combat use of nuclear weapons in history, which caused a lot of casualties and destruction. However, hearing this from a Japanese minister was quite a surprise.

Japanese officials have traditionally been silent about who dropped the bombs on their cities in 1945. Even at commemorations on the anniversaries of the deadly bombings, the US is not mentioned. It is therefore quite remarkable that Ishiba brought up the US. Yes, he said that the Americans showed the footage, not the bomb dropped, but for the Japanese and such a speech is a big deal.

In World War II, the Japanese, when they clashed with the US, showed themselves to be a motivated, disciplined and sacrificial opponent. Washington realised that he was unlucky with the enemy, but as it turned out, he was lucky to be defeated. After the deadly bombardments, the Japanese still continued to fight valiantly, but were later forced to surrender to the victor.

Now Japan is an ally of the US on many international issues, however, the Japanese mentality has a hard time accepting the fact that the government considers a friend of those who caused great damage and losses earlier. Therefore, the outcome of that war boils down to the formula “we asked for it, we got it ourselves, and now we just mourn.”

After the war in the 40s of the XX century, the Americans by right of the winner created the Japanese constitution, as well as literally “brought Tokyo down to earth,” showing that the “heavenly master, tenno” is no longer a descendant of the sun goddess. The US made Japan its outpost, while at the same time ostensibly making concessions, leaving Japan in its former status, abandoning the idea of turning it into a republic.

The same Tenno who ruled during the attack on Pearl Harbor was visiting Disneyland afterwards, but that’s no cause for surprise, but Shigeru Ishiba did give cause.

The PM broke the unspoken veto, which was inviolable even for Japanese ministers loyal to Russia, who built a neutral attitude towards the US, for whom Japanese soldiers of World War II are not only criminals, but also heroes in some places. One such minister was Shinzo Abe. Of course, he did not said these ideas directly; the minister visited the Shinto shrine of Yakusuni.

Ishiba is a long-time opponent of Abe, who challenged him even when the latter’s popularity among the people was enormous and his authority in the party was not questioned. The fact that Ishiba was able to lead the government after years of empty attempts looks like the final death of the long and fruitful “Abe era,” but it had been gone much earlier, even before Abe was assassinated, when Japan’s previous PM, Fumio Kishida, abandoned attempts to build balanced relations with Moscow in favour of pleasing Washington. This was his, Kishida’s, method, his principle, his “modus operandi.” Now, however, even hopes of restoring Japan-Russia relations are very, very transparent.

The new PM does not look like a politician from whom one can expect Moscow-Tokyo relations to be restored from the ruins. This contradicts most of the inputs, starting with the fact that, by his party’s standards, Ishiba is an extreme liberal, and liberals in Russia are not usually expected to do well. He has never said anything that would make him appear to be an opponent of the US; his focus on Washington as his main ally is what unites Japanese liberals with Japanese nationalists, because they are all equally afraid of Beijing’s power.

However, it should be recognised that Ishiba does know how to surprise. And he will surprise everyone – both Russians and Americans – many times over. And the Americans are more likely to be unpleasantly surprised.

The statement about nuclear bombing was made at an election debate, where every statement and every word is made with the expectation of political effect. Elections in Japan will be held very soon, in the last week of October, and the same party of Ishiba, Kishida, Abe will win them, it almost always wins and never seeks conflict with the US, unlike the left-wing opposition, which occasionally allows itself to do so.

However, having confirmed from the people a long-awaited mandate to govern the country, the 67-year-old Ishiba will try to change it, and this also applies to foreign policy. He is, extremely stubborn, principled and meticulous, and most importantly, he is a perfectionist and does not recognise many taboos like some young revolutionary.

For years he has been a dreamer, an individualist and even a rebel in a party and a country where standing out is not accepted and loyalty and obedience are honoured. There is no need to imagine Donald Trump in his place: Japan’s Prime Minister is an intelligent and polite man who, in his spare time from politics, enjoys a harmless hobby: gluing model aeroplanes. But he has publicly criticised the actions of his superiors, even though this is completely unacceptable in his country, and globally Japan’s superiors are the US.

Ishiba views Japan as an equal ally of the US. He did not specify what that alliance would look like, but it is certainly not what it is now, and it is certainly not what Washington would want. Americans value unequal alliances, where the bulls can’t even imagine what Jupiter is allowed to do, whereas Ishiba appears to want to put a new legal framework under the US alliance that would equalise Japan with America, i.e. the defeated with the victor.

It would seem that Moscow does not care what kind of relations Japan will have with America – equal or unequal, the main thing is that they will be. However, there is a difference: an equal alliance can at least theoretically be cancelled, unlike the situation when you are dictated policy by the right of the winner in the war.

It is not known whether Japan will be able to escape the net of American control, but if it does, it will be only through the stage of formal equality, when friendship is voluntary, not forced. At the same time, the role of the Washington White House is what primarily poisons Russian-Japanese relations. If it were not for the US, even on the Kuril Islands they would have reached an agreement decades ago.

After the words of the Japanese minister, Washington should get used to the fact that in Japan he is not remembered in the context in which he would like to be remembered. Because of traits that are rather individual and often contradict national ones, Ishiba is someone who is “not weak.” His meticulousness and perseverance are Japanese, but his willingness to sacrifice national traditions is exclusively Western. Today he reminded the US of Hiroshima, and tomorrow he will put in a word about Okinawa.

THE ARTICLE IS THE AUTHOR’S SPECULATION AND DOES NOT CLAIM TO BE TRUE. ALL INFORMATION IS TAKEN FROM OPEN SOURCES. THE AUTHOR DOES NOT IMPOSE ANY SUBJECTIVE CONCLUSIONS.

Emma Robichaud for Head-Post.com

[citizenrecord]

Japan PM Unhurt After Blast During His Speech, Attacker Caught: Report

Several reports, including by Kyodo news agency, said an apparent "smoke bomb" had been thrown but there were no immediate signs of injuries or damage at the scene.

Tokyo, Japan: Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida was evacuated from a port in Wakayama after a blast was heard, but he was unharmed in the incident, local media reported Saturday.

Several reports, including by Kyodo news agency, said an apparent "smoke bomb" had been thrown but there were no immediate signs of injuries or damage at the scene.

A person was detained at the site in western Japan's Wakayama where Kishida had been due to give a speech, national broadcaster NHK and others said.

There was no immediate official confirmation of the incident, with local police declining to comment.

NHK showed footage of security and police detaining an individual as a crowd scattered at the scene.

Japan has bolstered security after the assassination of former prime minister Shinzo Abe, who was shot and killed while speaking at a campaign event in July 2022.

The incident comes as Japan hosts G7 ministerial events in northern Sapporo and the city of Karuizawa in Nagano, and ahead of the May leaders' summit in Hiroshima.

[infoidiots]

Attack on Shinzo Abe the Former Prime Minister of Japan

Attack on Shinzo Abe the Former Prime Minister of Japan

Attack on Shinzo Abe the Former Prime Minister of Japan Today is a big day in world history because of the demise of the Former Prime Minister of Japan, Shinzo Abe as he was shot twice when he gave a speech in the southern city of Nara on July 8 Friday. The suspect gunman and a 41-year-old were caught at the scene and are now presented in police custody. Police made a search activity at the…

[underthewingsofthblackeagle]

          Former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has died after being shot on Friday during a campaign event in western Japan, the hospital where he was treated confirmed. "Shinzo Abe was transported to [the hospital] at 12:20 p.m. (0320 GMT) He was in a state of cardiac arrest upon arrival. Resuscitation was administered. However, unfortunately, he died at 5:03 p.m.," Hidetada Fukushima, a doctor at the Nara Medical University Hospital, said. Police said a 41-year-old man had been arrested. Local media reported the suspect had served in the navy and left Japan's Self-Defense Force in 2005. According to public broadcaster NHK, the suspect confessed to police that he was unhappy with Abe and intended to kill him. The attack has shocked a nation with some of the world's strictest gun control laws. NHK reported that the shooter used a homemade gun.

[iamvoid0]

Kojima Productions threatens Legal Action, Bayonetta 3 Gets Release Date, Nintendo Acquires new studio!

A few major hits this week, as Nintendo acquires a video production studio, Kojima finds themselves in the midst of an online joke gone sour, and Bayonetta is set to hit shelves sooner than you think!

🕹️ The Console War Rages On

Kojima Productions threatened legal action! - The report comes as internet users made a false post linking Hideo Kojima, creator of Death Stranding, to the assassination of former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. The posts were made in jest and were not meant to be serious, but several news stations from multiple countries, including a french politician falsely identified Hideo Kojima as the assassin. (Source)

Bayonetta 3 Gets Release Date! - Bayonetta 3 is set for release 28th of October 2022. The game will release on the Nintendo Switch. A physical edition of the original Bayonetta game is set for release as well, and a collectors edition of Bayonetta 3 will also be made available on release day. (Source)

Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth will be a PS5 exclusive - Square Enix has responded to the concerns about FFVII: Rebirth being PS5 exclusive by explaining why. They stated that the access times of the SSD were needed to prevent loading times from being too extreme, and that is why they aren't targeting a PS4 release as well. There are several other pieces of information surrounding FFVII in the source. (Source)  

Bandai Namco has been hacked - A ransomware group known as "ALPHV" claimed to have hacked Bandai Namco. Bandai Namco has confirmed that were indeed subject to an attack. They further clarified that their data in the Asia region was compromised (excluding Japan ) and potential customer data has been leaked. (Source)

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredders Revenge has sold One Million Units! - Developers of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredders Revenge, Tribute Games, have announced via Twitter that TMNT has sold over a million copies. (Source)

Nintendo has acquired Dynamo Pictures - Nintendo has made another acquisition this time, they will be acquiring the team who previously worked on Pikmin short movies. The studio will be renamed Nintendo Pictures. They have previously done Motion Capture and animation work for Death Stranding, Monster Hunter World, and a variety of different anime. (Source)

✨ Going to Events Spiritually

Pokemon Puzzle League will head to Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack.

New games coming for PlayStation Plus in July: Stray, Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade, Marvel’s Avengers, as well as Assassin’s Creed, Saints Row games, LocoRoco Midnight Carnival and more. (Source)

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[howwelldoyouknowyourmoon]

A sign of the Unification Church, or the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification, is seen in Tokyo's Shibuya Ward in this Oct. 20, 2022, photo. (Mainichi/Hiroshi Maruyama)

October 6, 2023

TOKYO (Kyodo) -- The Japanese government is making arrangements to seek a court order to disband the Unification Church as early as Oct. 13, government sources said Friday. •

The move would follow a months-long probe into the religious group found its practices, including pressuring followers to make massive donations, constituted violations of the law.

The Cultural Affairs Agency is considering convening a meeting of an advisory body on religious institutions next Thursday before proceeding with its dissolution request to the Tokyo District Court, which will make a judgment based on the evidence submitted by the government, the sources said.

Scrutiny of the group intensified after former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was fatally shot during an election campaign speech last year over his perceived links to the entity, an incident which also brought to light its connections with many ruling party lawmakers.

The government apparently aims to restore public trust by taking a firm stance against the religious group.

"As there are concerns about protests and other issues, we hope to file the request for dissolution after the (agency) meeting without delay," a government official said.

So far, only two religious organizations have received a dissolution order from a Japanese court because of legal violations. One was the AUM Shinrikyo cult, which carried out the deadly 1995 sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway system.

It took around four months for the dissolution order to AUM to be issued following the filing of the request, and it is expected that the Unification Church's case will also be prolonged.

The agency has invoked its authority to question and obtain documents from the group seven times since last November, while also collecting statements from victims pressured into making massive donations.

Examination of this information led the agency to conclude that the group's practices meet the requirements for a dissolution order under the Religious Corporations Act.

The law allows Japanese courts to order the dissolution of a religious group that has committed an act "clearly found to harm public welfare substantially."

If dissolved, the Unification Church, founded in South Korea in 1954 and formally known as the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification, would lose its status as a religious corporation in Japan and be deprived of tax benefits, although it could still operate as an entity.

Many in Japan have reported financial problems involving the Unification Church. It has also been notorious for "spiritual sales," in which followers are forced to buy vases and other items for exorbitant prices through coercion, such as invoking negative "ancestral karma."

The group has also been found responsible in some civil lawsuits filed over huge donations.

___________________________

Lawyers Report Huge Fraud Claims Against Unification Church, ‘Over ¥1.9 Billion Since March 2009’

Shocking video of UC of Japan demanding money – English transcript

Why did a Japanese UC member kill her Korean husband?

Suicide of Japanese ‘Moon money mule’ in Uruguay. Mother of three children

How “God’s Day” was established by Sun Myung Moon in 1968

Nansook Hong, transcripts of three interviews, including ‘60 Minutes’

6,500 Japanese women missing from Sun Myung Moon mass weddings

Moon extracted $500 million from Japanese female members

[don-lichterman]

World leaders react to shocking attack on Shinzo Abe

World leaders react to shocking attack on Shinzo Abe

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) — Friday’s shocking assassination of Japan’s former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in one of the world’s safest countries stunned leaders and drew condemnation, with Iran calling it an “act of terrorism” while Spain slammed the “cowardly attack.” Abe, 67, was shot from behind in Nara in western Japan while giving a campaign speech. He was airlifted to a hospital but was not…

[warningsine]

A new military recruit shot and killed two fellow soldiers and wounded a third at a training range in central Japan on Wednesday, the military said, with the 18-year-old suspect detained at the scene.

“During a live-bullet exercise as part of new personnel training, one Self-Defence Forces candidate fired at three personnel,” the Ground Self-Defence Force (GSDF), Japan’s army, said in a statement.

The shooter was an 18-year-old SDF candidate who joined the military in April, GSDF chief of staff Yasunori Morishita told reporters, adding he was detained on the spot by other soldiers.

“This kind of incident is absolutely unforgivable for an organisation tasked with handling weapons, and I take it very seriously,” Morishita said.

He said the three victims had been tasked with training new recruits, including the attacker, at the range, without further elaborating on their relations.

The suspect, whose identity is being withheld for now, has been charged with the attempted murder of a 25-year-old soldier, a local police spokesman said, declining to be identified.

The cadet “fired a rifle at the victim with the intent to kill”, the spokesman said.

National broadcaster NHK reported the casualties were a man in his fifties and two other men in their twenties.

Details of the casualties’ identities have yet to be officially confirmed.

Aerial footage broadcast by the station showed military and civilians gathered around an emergency vehicle and police blocking nearby roads. Some appeared to be investigators, wearing covers over their shoes and hair.

A local resident told NHK he saw several emergency vehicles rushing to the area at around 9:30am local time but had not heard anything before that.

Morishita said as far as he is aware, gun violence by GSDF personnel that resulted in injuries or fatalities last took place in 1984 at a camp in Yamaguchi.

The training range near Gifu is administered by the region’s Camp Moriyama and is a covered facility of more than 65,000 square metres.

Gun possession tightly controlled in Japan, where violent crime is rare.

But several high-profile incidents have rattled the country over the last year.

In July 2022, former prime minister Shinzo Abe was shot dead on the campaign trail by a man who allegedly targeted him over his links to the Unification Church.

The accused assassin, Tetsuya Yamagami, was due to make his first appearance in court this week, but the session was cancelled after a package sent to the facility set off a metal detector.

It was later found to contain no explosives, but rather a petition signed by thousands calling for a lenient sentence for Yamagami.

He has garnered surprise sympathy from some quarters over the effect his mother’s devotion to the Unification Church had on his family and childhood.

In April, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida escaped unharmed after a man threw an explosive device towards him at a campaign event.

That incident came shortly before Japan hosted the Group of Seven leaders’ summit in Hiroshima and prompted renewed calls for stepped-up security.

Thousands of police were deployed to secure the gathering, which passed without a security incident.

Last month, police in Nagano region west of Tokyo detained a man after an hours-long knife and shooting rampage, followed by an extended stand-off.

The man killed four people, including two police officers, before he was detained. He is reportedly the son of the speaker of the local city assembly.

[geezliberia]

Japan's longest serving Prime Minister Shinzo Abe confirmed d€ad, after multiple gunshots at campaign event

Japan’s longest serving Prime Minister Shinzo Abe confirmed d€ad, after multiple gunshots at campaign event

Former Japanese Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe has d!ed, according to Japan’s national broadcaster. Abe, 67, who remains Japan’s longest serving prime minister, was shot while giving a campaign speech on Friday, July 8 . The suspected attacker reported to be a man in his 40s was tackled at the scene by the Japanese secret service personnel and arrested. The motive for the attack is yet to be…

[battlestory]

TARO YAMAMOTO, also known as Japan's Bernie Sanders, turned from an actor to a politician and recently created a new party for the leftist populism, "Reiwa Shinsengumi." At the end of September, Jonathan Soble, a former New York Times journalist, flew to Hokkaido following Yamamoto, who started a tour around Japan.

On a bright, unseasonably warm fall afternoon in Asahikawa, Hokkaido, a man in a black motorcycle jacket was apologetically ringing strangers’ doorbells. Shitsurei shimasu—sorry to bother you. I’m Taro Yamamoto. Yamamoto, 44, is fit, youthful-looking, and possessed of mysterious reserves of energy. He walks fast. He talks in often emotion-laden torrents, especially about the subjects he is passionate about—nuclear power, poverty, and the state of Japanese politics, which is, in his view, terrible.

Yamamoto was a popular actor before he began speaking his mind, in the aftermath of the Fukushima nuclear meltdowns in 2011. Many of his views are controversial—he once called Japan a “terrorist state” for its flawed handling of the nuclear accident—though in Asahikawa that didn’t seem to matter much. Drivers who spotted him lingered at intersections to snap pictures with their phones. Homeowners, at least those who were around in the middle of a weekday, broke into smiles at the celebrity encounter.

Yamamoto was in Hokkaido drumming up support for a new political party, the leftist, populist Reiwa Shinsengumi. He founded the party in April, near the end of a six-year term in the upper house of Japan’s parliament, to which he was elected as an independent in 2013. In the latest upper house contest in July, Reiwa candidates secured two seats, but Yamamoto himself failed to win re-election. Although he is no longer in parliament, he remains the party’s leader, spokesman and all-around center of gravity.

Reiwa has big ambitions. Yamamoto wants to field 100 candidates in the next general election, which will take place in 2021 at the latest, but could happen sooner. That would be ten times the number of candidates the party fielded in July. Under Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, the conservative Liberal Democrats, long the dominant force in Japanese politics, have been enjoying a period of renewed vigor. Abe recently became Japan’s longest-serving postwar leader. The opposition is weak and fractured. Reiwa, Yamamoto and his supporters say, could deliver a shot in the arm to Japan’s beleaguered left. Critics argue it will simply deepen the disarray.

Whatever happens, Reiwa promises to be a kind of litmus test for Japan. At a time when anti-establishment insurgencies are on the march worldwide, forming governments from the United States to Europe to Asia, Japan has remained largely immune to the temptations of populism. Young people, in particular, seem content to leave things to Abe, the scion of a three-generation political dynasty, and his über-establishment LDP. To make headway, Yamamoto will have to prove two things: first, that after years as a sometimes theatrical one-man critic of the government, he can build and manage a political organization. And second, that Japan is sufficiently fertile ground for his people-versus-the-powerful message.

So far, Yamamoto has attacked the challenge with his most conspicuous assets: charisma and boundless energy. In Asahikawa, he hustled from house to house, shaking hands and appealing for support—and for wall space on which to paste Reiwa’s bright pink campaign posters. Reiwa has raised a little over 400 million yen from individual donors, and its showing in the July election ensured it will receive government subsidies as an officially recognized political party. But it is poor compared to its rivals. The posters, put up by squads of volunteers, are central to its PR strategy. “It’s the cheapest, most visible advertising,” Yamamoto says. “You have to win with the tools you have.”

Yamamoto was born in Takarazuka, in Hyogo Prefecture. His father died when he was just a year old, and he and his two older sisters were raised by his mother, who sold Persian rugs to support the family. By his own admission, he was an unruly child. “I could never sit still, I was a bit A.D.D.,” he says. “If something happened at school, I was the first one to be blamed. Eight out of 10 times, I deserved it.”

His family was Catholic, and for a while in the fifth and sixth grades he spent a lot of time at church. “For me it was a safe place, a way to get away from home.” He clashed frequently with his mother, who struggled to control him. “The priest was young, he put up with me. When it was time for dinner and I was still there, he’d cook for both of us—there wasn’t much choice. It was a small church, so often it was just the two of us.” He says he has never been especially religious, but these days he is more attracted to Buddhism, with its notion of endlessly repeating death and rebirth.

Yamamoto’s irrepressible energy made him famous as a teenager. On YouTube, you can still find clips of him capering in a red Speedo and yellow swim cap, on Beat Takeshi’s variety show Tensai Takeshi no genki ga deru terebi. His comical dance steps and faux-bodybuilder poses are simultaneously manic, graceful and mesmerizing. By 16, he had dropped out of school and was pursuing a career in entertainment. He was a mover more than a talker but, defying expectations, he soon began landing acting roles in television dramas and films, often playing tough-yet-good-hearted supporting characters. Before long he was an established star.

“I’ve become a kind of object lesson for entertainers—if you say something political, you’ll end up like that guy,” he says of the swerve his career took after Fukushima. “In the end, you’ll have no choice but to go into politics.”

In Japan more than in the United States or Europe, talking politics is a good way to wreck a show business career. Why Yamamoto, and not other celebrities, broke the industry’s taboo against controversy after Fukushima is hard to say. He claims he had little interest in politics before 2011. He had taken up surfing a few years earlier, and was curious enough about environmental causes to search for information online. When a massive tsunami knocked out power at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, he remembered a warning he’d seen, issued by Greenpeace, about the possible consequences—the meltdowns that ultimately split open the facility’s reactors and released their radioactive contents. In Tokyo, he watched like millions of others as the disaster unfolded on television. When rumors circulated that major companies were preparing to pull staff out of the city, he concluded that the government and the plant’s owner, Tokyo Electric Power, were keeping vital information from the public. Soon, he found himself expressing this belief on Twitter, and then in media interviews. By the time he decided to run for political office, in 2012, his acting work had all but dried up. (He blames nervous producers and corporate sponsors.) His first election campaign, for the lower house in 2012, failed, but he won a seat in the upper chamber in 2013.

“I don’t think I’ve ever done anything in a calculated way in my life,” he says, explaining his transformation as a series of small, mostly impulsive steps. “If I have any kind of plan now, it’s just to take political power. That’s it.”

Yamamoto found life as a legislator frustrating. His efforts to get Japan to abandon nuclear energy went nowhere. (Despite growing signs of climate change and its dangers, he still believes nuclear power to be a greater threat than fossil fuels.) Other opposition parties didn’t know what to make of him. Although he shared many policy positions with the established left—against free trade or a stronger military, for instance—his tactics were splashier and more confrontational. He sparked an outcry when, at a garden party in 2013, he handed Emperor Akihito a letter denouncing the government’s handling of the Fukushima accident. The act flouted both protocol and the constitutional divide between the emperor and politics.

“At the time I felt I had no choice,” Yamamoto’s says. “If I could go back in time, with the benefit of six years of experience, I probably would have found a different approach.”

Yamamoto’s personal life also took unexpected turns. He married a professional surfer in 2011, just as his anti-nuclear activism was blossoming, but the relationship ended in divorce three months later. He has not remarried, but he has one child, whom he is careful to keep out of the public eye.

In 2014, Yamamoto formed an alliance with the veteran political strategist Ichiro Ozawa, eventually joining Ozawa’s Liberal Party (now part of the Democratic Party for the People). The experience served as a kind of apprenticeship in the collective, organized politics that Yamamoto had until then avoided. He broadened the range of his concerns, taking a particular interest in economics. He read up on technical subjects like modern monetary theory—essentially, the idea that governments can pay for public services by printing money rather than levying taxes. He mastered statistics on poverty rates and suicide. One of his go-to lines became, “We have to stop being a society where people want to die.”

In attention-grabbing orations in parliament and at political demonstrations, he mixed indignation with wonky detail. His main target was Prime Minister Abe and the LDP, but there was a broader sweep to his indictments, which took in corporations, the bureaucracy and the media. In his telling, the elite’s inability to improve the lives of average Japanese was not just a failure, it was something closer to a conspiracy. “The more that people have to focus on the day-to-day just to get by,” he says, “the easier they are to control.”

@ gqjapan.jp

[newstfionline]

Headlines

Life on Venus? Astronomers See a Signal in Its Clouds (NYT) High in the toxic atmosphere of the planet Venus, astronomers on Earth have discovered signs of what might be life. If the discovery is confirmed by additional telescope observations and future space missions, it could turn the gaze of scientists toward one of the brightest objects in the night sky. Venus, named after the Roman goddess of beauty, roasts at temperatures of hundreds of degrees and is cloaked by clouds that contain droplets of corrosive sulfuric acid. Few have focused on the rocky planet as a habitat for something living. The astronomers, who reported the finding on Monday in a pair of papers, have not collected specimens of Venusian microbes, nor have they snapped any pictures of them. But with powerful telescopes, they have detected a chemical—phosphine—in the thick Venus atmosphere. After much analysis, the scientists assert that something now alive is the only explanation for the chemical’s source. Some researchers question this hypothesis, and they suggest instead that the gas could result from unexplained atmospheric or geologic processes on a planet that remains mysterious. But the finding will also encourage some planetary scientists to ask whether humanity has overlooked a planet that may have once been more Earthlike than any other world in our solar system.

Global views of U.S. plunge to new lows amid pandemic, poll finds (Washington Post) President Trump defended his handling of the coronavirus pandemic during an interview with Fox News over the weekend, arguing that he took “tremendous steps” early in the outbreak, which “saved probably two or two and a half million lives.” But the rest of the world does not appear to share in the conclusions of his self appraisal. In a new poll of 13 nations released Tuesday, a median of 15 percent of respondents said the United States had handled the pandemic well, while 85 percent said the country had responded poorly. The data, released by Pew Research Center, suggests that the international reputation of the United States has dropped to a new low in the face of a disorganized response to the novel coronavirus that saw the country come to lead the world in virus-related deaths. Among some traditional allies like Germany, views of the United States have declined to the lowest levels since Pew began tracking them nearly two decades ago.

400,000 Immigrants Can Be Forced to Leave the U.S., Court Rules (NYT) A federal appeals court ruled on Monday that the Trump administration acted within its authority in terminating legal protections that have allowed hundreds of thousands of immigrants to live and work legally in the United States, sometimes for decades, after fleeing conflict or natural disasters in their home countries. The 2-1 ruling by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit effectively strips legal immigration status from some 400,000 people, rendering them deportable if they do not voluntarily leave the country. The decision affects the overwhelming majority of beneficiaries of a program offering what is known as “temporary protected status,” which has permitted them to remain in the United States after being uprooted from their unstable homelands. The Trump administration has argued that the emergency conditions that existed when people were invited to come to the United States—earthquakes, hurricanes, civil war—had occurred long ago. The program, it said, had inadvertently conferred permanent immigration status for people from places like El Salvador, Haiti and Sudan, most of whom it said no longer needed safe haven. The long-awaited decision does not immediately end the protections. The Trump administration has agreed to maintain them until at least March 5, 2021, for people from five of the affected countries and until November 2021 for people from El Salvador.

Triple the U.S. population? (Washington Post) Much of the recent debate over immigration to the United States has been about how to reduce it. Matthew Yglesias, a Vox co-founder, offers a different idea: Increase immigration—by a lot. His new book, “One Billion Americans,” argues for radically increasing the country’s population through immigration and a higher birthrate. Yglesias points out that even if all of the new Americans lived in the continental U.S., it would still have less than half the population density of Germany. And only if the U.S. vastly increases its population can it hope to keep pace with the growing power of authoritarian China, he argues. “Rather than being paralyzed by racial panic, ecopessimism, or paranoia about the loss of parking spaces,” he writes, “America should aspire to be the greatest nation on earth.”

Choking air from Western fires just won’t ease up (AP) Relief from putrid, dangerous air spewing from massive wildfires across the West won’t come until later in the week or beyond, scientists and forecasters say, and the hazy and gunk-filled skies might stick around for even longer. People in Oregon, Washington and parts of California were struggling under acrid yellowish-green smog—the worst, most unhealthy air on the planet according to some measurements. It seeped into homes and businesses, sneaked into cars through air conditioning vents and caused the closure of iconic locations such as Powell’s Books and the Oregon Zoo in Portland, the state’s biggest city. The air was so thick that on Monday Alaska Airlines announced it was suspending service to Portland and Spokane, Washington, until Tuesday afternoon. Hazy, smoky skies fouled Washington state and experts said some parts of California might not see relief until next month. Some areas of central California blanketed by smoke are not likely to see relief until October, said Dan Borsum, the incident meteorologist for a fire in Northern California.

US tariffs on China ruled to be illegal by world trade body (AP) The World Trade Organization said Tuesday that Trump administration tariffs on Chinese goods totaling more than $200 billion are illegal under the rules of the global trade body. In its decision, the WTO ruled against the Trump administration’s argument that China has engaged in practices harmful to U.S. interests, on issues including intellectual property theft, technology transfer and innovation. The ruling, in theory, would allow China to impose retaliatory tariffs on billions worth of U.S. goods—if the process is completed. But the U.S. government can appeal the decision announced by the WTO’s dispute settlement body, and the WTO’s appeals court is currently no longer functioning—largely because of Washington’s single-handed refusal to accept new members for it. The U.S. tariffs target two batches of Chinese products. Duties of 10% were imposed on some $200 billion worth of goods in September 2018, and were jacked up to 25% eight months later. An additional 25% duties were imposed in June 2018 against Chinese goods worth about $34 billion in annual trade.

Venezuela says it has captured American ‘mercenary’ plotting to blow up power plants, oil refineries (Washington Post) Venezuela’s authoritarian government claimed Monday that it had dismantled a covert operation to blow up power plants and oil facilities to destabilize the socialist state, saying it had detained eight plotters including an American traveling with heavy arms, explosives, surveillance footage and cash. In a nationally televised address, Venezuelan Attorney General Tarek William Saab said active members of the Venezuelan military had aided the American, identified by authorities as Matthew John Heath. Saab said that Heath had a background working “as a mercenary” for U.S. intelligence in Iraq and that items in his possession had linked him to the CIA. Saab did not provide evidence for the claims. If true, the alleged plot would be the latest in a series of foiled operations against the government of President Nicolás Maduro. In May, two former U.S. Green Berets—Airan Berry, 42, and Luke Denman, 34—were detained on the Venezuelan coast in connection with a ragtag raid aimed at capturing or ousting the autocratic leader.

Fear in Northern Ireland, as Boris Johnson threatens the E.U. over Brexit (Washington Post) Boris Johnson is moving forward on his threat to override the Brexit withdrawal agreement with the European Union — a move that every living former British prime minister warns against — and the people of Northern Ireland again find themselves fearful that decisions made in London and Brussels could upend the hard-won peace and prosperity on the island. Britain will leave the European Union at the end of 2020, with or without a new free-trade deal, Johnson promises. With just three months to go before the end of a transition period, a pact between the sides seems as far away as ever. Relations between Europe and Britain have grown shouty, underlining the high stakes of the showdown, as Britain and Europe both struggle to recover from deep pandemic recessions. Rachel Powell grew up in South Armagh, where during the Troubles a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland was patrolled by British troops, often attacked by Irish Republican militants. She said she’s deeply concerned about what will happen next. “The British government has not got a clue about what it is like to live on the border, and it is again using it as a political football,” said Powell. Powell said border communities are “horrified” over the uncertainties and brinkmanship of Brexit.

Japan’s Next Prime Minister Emerges From Behind the Curtain (NYT) Yoshihide Suga charted an unlikely course to the cusp of Japan’s premiership. While most leading Japanese lawmakers come from elite political families, Mr. Suga is the son of a strawberry farmer and a schoolteacher from the country’s rural north. He is known more for expressionless recitations of government policy than flashes of charisma. And at 71, he’s even older than Shinzo Abe, who suddenly announced in late August that he was resigning as prime minister because of ill health. Yet on Monday, Mr. Suga, the longtime chief cabinet secretary to Mr. Abe, was overwhelmingly elected as leader of the conservative Liberal Democratic Party during a conclave at a luxury Tokyo hotel. The party has governed Japan for all but four years since World War II and controls Parliament, virtually assuring that Mr. Suga will be elected prime minister during a special session this week. He will have to hit the ground running. Mr. Suga will take office in the middle of a pandemic that has devastated Japan’s economy, effectively erasing years of growth under Mr. Abe. Japan also is facing deepening pressure from China and North Korea. While Mr. Suga has vowed to pick up where Mr. Abe left off, but he has never clearly articulated his own vision for Japan, the world’s third-largest economy.

Indonesia to beef-up patrols after China coastguard raises suspicion (Reuters) Indonesia will increase maritime security operations near some of its islands in the South China Sea after a Chinese coastguard vessel was spotted nearby, raising suspicions about its intentions, a senior security official said on Tuesday. The vessel entered Indonesia’s 200-mile exclusive economic zone (EEZ) off the northern Natuna islands on Saturday and left on Monday after radio challenges over jurisdiction, Aan Kurnia, chief of the maritime security agency, Bakamla, told Reuters. Wang Wenbin, China’s foreign ministry spokesman, said the ship was undertaking “normal patrol duties in waters under Chinese jurisdiction”. While China has made no claim to islands, the presence of its coastguard nearly 2,000 km (1,243 miles) off its mainland has concerned Indonesia, after numerous encounters between Chinese vessels in the EEZs of Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam, which disrupted fishing and energy activities. A weeks-long standoff occurred 10 months ago when a Chinese coastguard vessel and accompanying fishing boats entered the northern Natuna Sea, prompting Indonesia to send fighter jets and mobilise its own fishermen.

Violence in the Ivory Coast (Foreign Policy) Protests against Ivory Coast President Alassane Ouattara’s decision to seek a third term as president have turned violent in the country’s largest city, Abidjan. The violence centered on a district loyal to former President Laurent Gbagbo, whose loss to Ouattara in the presidential election in 2010 plunged the country into a civil war that killed around 3,000 people. The recent surge of violence has raised concerns that next month’s election could spark a return to war. Ouattara has faced widespread criticism due to the constitution’s ban on individuals serving more than two terms as president. But he and his supporters argue that because the constitution was ratified in 2016, it does not apply to Ouattara, who started his term in office in 2010.

Millions of African children rely on TV education during pandemic (Reuters) Five-year-old Kenyan student Miguel Munene sits between his parents, holding their hands as he watches cartoon characters teaching him to pronounce “fish”. The television has replaced Munene’s teachers and classmates after the government shut schools indefinitely in March to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus. They are closed until at least January. Many children don’t have the option to learn online—the United Nations children’s agency UNICEF says at least half of sub-Saharan Africa’s schoolchildren do not have internet access. So some, like Munene, watch a cartoon made by Tanzanian non-profit organisation Ubongo, which offers television and radio content for free to African broadcasters. “Other programmes are just for fun, but Ubongo is helping children,” Miguel’s mother Celestine Wanjiru told Reuters. “He can now differentiate a lot of shapes and colours, both in English and Swahili.” In March, programmes by Ubongo—the Kiswahili word for brain—were broadcast to an area covering about 12 million households in nine countries, said Iman Lipumba, Ubongo’s head of communications. That rose to 17 million in 20 countries by August.

Zimbabwe government abuses critics, allege rights groups (AP) Godfrey Kurauone, a Zimbabwean opposition official, sang a protest song at the funeral of a party member in July. For that, and other political charges, he spent 42 days in jail before the prosecution dropped one charge, and acquitted him of another charge of blocking traffic. Hopewell Chin’ono, an investigative journalist who used his Twitter account to expose alleged government corruption, was held in the notorious Chikurubi maximum security prison for nearly six weeks before being granted bail on charges of inciting violence for tweeting his support for an anti-government protest. Internationally acclaimed author and filmmaker Tsitsi Dangarembga spent a night in detention for standing by a Harare road and holding up a placard that said “We Want Better. Reform Our Institutions.” From tweeting to Whatsapp texting, singing in public or marching in the streets, those who speak out against President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s government are finding themselves in trouble. Some have been abducted and tortured, according to human rights groups.

[boijonmedia]

Sakura & Pearls by G. K. Hunter (3mins) from G. K. Hunter on Vimeo.

After World War II, the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were decimated by Atomic Bombs, The shores of Pearl Harbor were covered in debris and oil slicks. No cherry blossoms (Sakura) were in bloom in Japan. No more pearls were harvested from the dead oysters in Pearl Harbor. But the Cherry Blossoms bloom again in these Japanese cities today. Efforts are underway to restore the oysters to Pearl Harbor. Like the sakura and the pearls, the people of America and Japan are still recovering from World War II. Follow the healing process of 4 Japanese Atomic Bomb survivors and 3 American Pearl Harbor survivors as they meet face to face for the first time on the island of Oahu. The deep historic impact expressed by their children and grandchildren reveals that healing the aftermath of World War II will require multiple generations. Will they finally find forgiveness?

In 2016, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and former President Barrack Obama met to memorialize the Atomic Bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as well as the Attack on Pearl Harbor. The iconic photo of Hiroshima Atomic Bomb Survivor, Shigeaki Mori-san, crying in the arms of then President Obama, was seen on news stations and newspaper covers around the world. This moving display, 75 years after World War II ended, showed us that time had not healed all wounds from World War II. This simple, but profound, gesture between former enemies had started an important dialogue that Sakura & Pearls continues to document. Mori-san and other survivors from all three attacks, share their stories. Children and grandchildren of survivors reveal that they too feel the aftereffects of these historic events. What happens when these survivors and families meet face to face on the island of Oahu for a special healing gather? Will they find forgiveness? Will they make peace?