Japan

TOKYO, July 10 (Reuters) - Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida's ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) was projected to keep a majority in the upper house with its junior coalition partner in Sunday's election, public broadcaster NHK reported.

The widely expected outcome comes two days after the fatal shooting of prominent LDP member and power broker, former premier Shinzo Abe.

TOKYO (AP) — Japanese went to the polls Sunday in the shadow of the assassination of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who was gunned down while making a campaign speech. Abe’s governing party appeared to be cruising to a major victory.

As people voted, police in western Japan sent the alleged assassin to a local prosecutors’ office for further investigation. A day earlier a top regional police official acknowledged possible security lapses that allowed the attacker to get so close and fire a bullet at the still-influential former Japanese leader.

NARA, Japan, July 8 (Reuters) - Former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, the longest-serving leader of modern Japan, was gunned down on Friday while campaigning for a parliamentary election, shocking a country where guns are tightly controlled and political violence almost unthinkable.

Abe, 67, was pronounced dead around five and a half hours after the shooting in the city of Nara. Police arrested a 41-year-old man and said the weapon was a homemade gun.

"I am simply speechless over the news of Abe's death," Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, Abe's protege, told reporters.

NARA, Japan, July 9 (Reuters) - The man who killed Shinzo Abe believed the former Japanese leader was linked to a religious group he blamed for his mother's financial ruin and spent months planning the attack with a homemade gun, police told local media on Saturday.

Tetsuya Yamagami, an unemployed 41-year-old, identified as the suspect on suspicion of murder on Friday after a man was seen in videos repeatedly shown on Japanese television calmly approaching Japan's longest-serving prime minister from behind and firing.

TOKYO (AP) — A top police official on Saturday acknowledged possible security lapses that allowed an assassin to fire his gun into former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe while he was addressing a campaign rally, raising questions how could the attacker get so close behind him.

Abe was shot in the western city of Nara on Friday and airlifted to a hospital but died of blood loss. Police arrested the attacker, a former member of Japan’s navy, at the scene. Police confiscated his homemade gun and several others were later found at his apartment.

TOKYO (AP) — The assassination of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in broad daylight Friday shocked a world that has come to associate Japan with relatively low crime and strict gun control.

Japan’s longest-serving prime minister, Abe was shot in the back while campaigning in the city of Nara for parliamentary candidates. He died at a hospital, two days before the election.

NARA, Japan (AP) — Former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was assassinated Friday on a street in western Japan by a gunman who opened fire on him from behind as he delivered a campaign speech — an attack that stunned the nation with some of the strictest gun control laws anywhere.

The 67-year-old Abe, who was Japan’s longest-serving leader when he resigned in 2020, collapsed bleeding and was airlifted to a nearby hospital in Nara, although he was not breathing and his heart had stopped. He was later pronounced dead after receiving massive blood transfusions, officials said.

TOKYO, July 4 (Xinhua) -- Retail goods designed for combating heat are jumping off the shelves in Japan amid a record-breaking heatwave, local media reported Monday.

Innovative "cooling" products such as spray-on sunscreens that form a cool foam once released and similarly inventive products that cool the neck, as well as tech-infused face masks that are both cooling and breathable, have seen a surge in sales of late.

TOKYO, July 1 (Xinhua) -- The Japanese government for the first time in seven years requested Friday that businesses and households begin a three-month period of conserving electricity to avoid a power crunch as temperatures have hit record highs during a scorching heatwave.

The government did not specify an exact target for a reduction in power use through September, but urged people to lower power consumption levels without causing disruption to firms' operations or the daily lives of citizens.

TOKYO (AP) — Asian benchmarks were mostly lower on Friday, echoing a decline on Wall Street, after a quarterly report by Japan’s central bank rekindled worries about the world’s third largest economy.

Recent data suggest global growth is slowing as countries grapple with renewed waves of coronavirus outbreaks, soaring prices and the war in Ukraine.

Shares fell in Japan and South Korea, but rose slightly in Australia. Trading was closed in Hong Kong for a holiday.