Japan’s Shinzo Abe on Wednesday appointed new foreign and defense ministers and promoted a popular rising political star, in a cabinet reshuffle that fueled speculation over the prime minister’s successor.

The spectacular appointment as environment minister of the telegenic Shinjiro Koizumi, the 38-year-old son of much-loved former PM Junichiro Koizumi, set tongues wagging in Tokyo political classes as the Abe era draws to a close.

“Abe intends to start an open race to pick the next prime minister or even the one after that,” said SMBC Nikko Securities chief market economist Yoshimasa Maruyama.

A darling of the Japanese media, Shinjiro Koizumi received blanket coverage for his recent marriage to television broadcaster Christel Takigawa, which was announced at the prime minister’s office.

He is the third-youngest minister appointed to the cabinet in Japan since the end of World War II, in a country where seniority is prized in politics and many other walks of life.

Despite intense media spotlight, he has been coy on expressing his view on the issues of the day and there will be close scrutiny over his policies on nuclear power, particularly on whether he will break with his father’s anti-nuclear stance.

Abe is set to become Japan’s longest-serving prime minister in November but is expected to step down at the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) leadership election in 2021 and the jostling for position is already beginning.

Japan’s new foreign minister is Toshimitsu Motegi, who was promoted as a reward for his work in negotiating a trade deal with the United States.

Outgoing foreign minister Taro Kono was shifted to the defense portfolio, in a move seen as reinforcing Tokyo’s hard line towards South Korea at a time of worsening ties between the two neighbours.

Kono, who has amused commentators by interacting with people on social media — even offering relationship advice at times — struck a hard line during the recent spat with Seoul that has infected their trade and security ties.

Motegi, 63, is a Harvard-educated political veteran who worked as a McKinsey consultant before winning a lower house seat in 1993.

Analysts do not expect the shake-up to herald significant changes to Japan’s diplomatic policy, which is managed largely by the prime minister’s office.

But it may also put Motegi in the starting blocks in the race to succeed Abe, noted Tobias Harris, an expert on Japanese politics at consultancy Teneo.

Speed skating Olympics minister

Abe retained the services of his trusted associate Taro Aso as deputy prime minister and finance minister, as well as Yoshihide Suga as the powerful chief cabinet secretary.

The PM also kept key allies and aides within the cabinet and top layers of the party to shore up his position for the next two years.

The Abe government is poised to hike its consumption tax from eight percent to 10 percent on October 1, amid fears this could act as a brake on the world’s third-largest economy.

He is also hoping to achieve his long-cherished ambition of amending Japan’s post-war constitution to change the status of the country’s Self Defense Forces.

Ahead of the cabinet announcement, Abe told party members he wanted a “united front in the party, and (to) powerfully push for a revision of the constitution,” calling it the LDP’s “long-term earnest desire.”

Abe also kept LDP Secretary General Toshihiro Nikai, who has deep contacts in China, as Japan prepares for an expected state visit by Xi Jinping in 2020.

Among other key figures are former Olympic speed skater Seiko Hashimoto, who became the latest in a string of Olympic ministers ahead of the 2020 summer Games.

Hashimoto is one of just two women out of 19 in the new cabinet despite Abe’s much-heralded “womenomics” programme. His previous cabinet included just one woman.

Japan ranked 125th in the 2018 World Economic Forum’s Gender Gap Report in terms of women’s political empowerment.

The other woman is Sanae Takaichi, appointed as interior minister. She is seen as a hard-right nationalist, who regularly visits the Yasukuni shrine housing war criminals that enrages South Korea and China.

During her previous stint as interior minister, she threatened to cut off TV news stations over perceived unfriendly coverage.

(Source: AFP)

An American political analyst and activist says leading US Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Biden’s prospects are even lower than previous elections’ also-ran Hillary Clinton.

Myles Hoenig, who ran for Congress in 2016 as a Green Party candidate, made the remarks in an interview on Sunday.

“Clinton’s political positions were so far to the right,” he said, adding, “Biden is in a similar situation.”

“His political views are very conservative, anti-environmental, and pro-war, nothing that would truly engage or electrify especially younger voters,” Hoenig noted.

As one instance of political posturing that shrinks Biden’s powerbase, he cited his views on the run-up to the 2013 US-led invasion of Iraq and the war itself.

Hoenig said Biden’s fellow Democratic presidential aspirants at least acknowledge that the invasion was “a mistake.”

Not only does not Biden do that, but also he “blames [former president George W.] Bush for convincing him to go to war against Iraq, rather than saying the war was an act of aggression on the US’s part,” the analyst observed, noting, “For that matter, there really isn’t any Democrat running who would say that.”

Many people, who would more likely vote for a progressive Democrat were, therefore, likely to stay home, “seeing only personality as a difference, not policy,” the expert stated. “That could mean another four years of a Republican administration, with or without [current President Donald] Trump,” he added.

In 2016, at the end of Barack Obama’s limit of consecutive presidential mandates, Trump raised eyebrows by stunning Clinton thanks to the US’s Electoral College system.

The system overrides the popular vote, which gives the victory to the candidate winning the most ballots. It instead makes 538 “electors” across different states, who are chosen based on each state’s representation in Congress, liable for electing the chief executive. Therefore, if a contestant secures at least 270 of the electoral votes, they have won the presidential race.

Trump’s victory came while Clinton had received three million more popular votes.

Earlier in the month, the results of an ABC News/Washington Post poll came out, showing that Biden, who used to serve as the US vice president under Obama, remained the favorite presidential candidate among Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents in the 2020 nomination field.

According to the survey, 27 percent of Democrats favored Biden as the party’s 2020 presidential nomination, followed by Bernie Sanders with 19 percent of support and Elizabeth Warren with 17 percent.

Source: Presstv

US President Donald Trump has claimed canceling peace talks with leaders of Afghanistan’s Taliban insurgents in a resort near Washington after the notorious militant group claimed responsibility for a recent Kabul attack that killed an American soldier and 11 others.

Trump revealed in a Twitter post on Saturday that he had planned a secret meeting with Taliban’s “major leaders” on Sunday at a presidential resort compound in Camp David, Maryland, adding that he also planned a meeting with his Afghan counterpart Ashraf Ghani, who was left out of the US talks with the militant group that seeks to topple the Kabul government.

The US president further stated that he immediately called off the talks after the insurgents declared responsibility for the attack on the Afghan capital.

“If they cannot agree to a ceasefire during these very important peace talks, and would even kill 12 innocent people, then they probably don’t have the power to negotiate a meaningful agreement anyway,” Trump wrote in the Twitter message.

Trump’s announcement came hours after US Defense Secretary Mark Esper said Washington is seeking a “good deal” with the Taliban even after a wave of recent attacks by Afghan insurgents overshadowed negotiations with the militant group.

“The United States’ view is that the best way forward is a political agreement and that (is what) we’re working diligently on right now, that doesn’t mean we’ll take any deal,” Esper said on Saturday during a press conference in Paris with his French counterpart.

“We will make sure we have a good deal, a good enough deal that guarantees at least the security of our countries going forward and a brighter path ahead for the Afghan people,” he stated.

The Taliban insurgents — who now control more Afghan territory than at any time since the US-led military invasion of the country in 2001 aimed at rooting out Taliban and terrorism across Afghanistan — launched new offensives against the northern cities of Kunduz and Pul-e Khumri over the past week and carried out two major terror bombings in the capital Kabul.

In one of the Kabul blasts on Thursday, a bomber set off his explosives near the American Embassy, killing a US Army Sergeant 1st Class Elis Barreto Ortiz of Puerto Rico, bringing the number of American forces killed in Afghanistan this year to 16.

The development came as a senior US military commander stated during a visit to Pakistan that the surge of attacks by Taliban insurgents in neighboring Afghanistan has been “particularly unhelpful” to what he described as “peace efforts” there.

Surge of Taliban attacks hindering peace talks: CENTCOM

“It is particularly unhelpful at this moment in Afghanistan’s history for the Taliban to ramp up violence,” said the head of US Central Command (CENTCOM) Marine General Kenneth McKenzie in a press briefing in Pakistani capital of Islamabad on Saturday.

McKenzie, who oversees American military operations in the region, declined to comment on the diplomatic negotiations between US and Taliban representatives, however.

McKenzie further underlined that for the peace process to move forward, “all parties should be committed to an eventual political settlement” which, in turn, should result in reduced violence.

“If we can’t get that going in, then it is difficult to see the parties are going to be able to carry out the terms of the agreement, whatever they might or might not be,” he added.

Many Taliban elements are also based in neighboring Pakistan, where McKenzie held talks on Saturday with a senior Pakistani general with more talks scheduled for Sunday.

The CENTCOM commander further stated that he was not aware whether any of the planning for the recent wave of Taliban attacks in Afghanistan came from Pakistan-based militants.

This is while US and Taliban negotiators struck just last week a draft peace deal that could lead to a a major withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan, where the American military has been bogged down in its longest war ever.

However, the recent wave of Taliban attacks in the country has cast a long shadow over a potential peace pact.

Under the draft accord, thousands of US troops would be pulled out over the coming months in exchange for Taliban guarantees that Afghanistan would not be used as a base for militant attacks on the United States and its allies.

But observers insist that a full peace agreement to end more than 18 years of war in the impoverished country would depend on subsequent “intra Afghan” talks. The Taliban, however, have rejected calls for a truce and instead escalated operations across Afghanistan.

Source: Presstv

US Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, who ran a presidential campaign centered on advocacy for women, ended her bid for the 2020 Democratic nomination on Wednesday after failing to gain traction in opinion polls or qualify for next month’s debate.

The move did not come as a surprise. Gillibrand, 52, languished below 1 percent in polls and struggled to raise money in a packed field.

“After more than eight months, and with clarity that she will not have access to the September debate stage, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand is suspending her campaign for president today,” her campaign manager, Jess Fassler, wrote in a memo distributed to the media on Wednesday.

Gillibrand, a senator from New York since 2009, is the latest in a spate of Democrats to end their campaigns in the past month after failing to make headway. Her departure leave 20 Democrats vying to challenge Republican President Donald Trump in the November 2020 election.

“I know this isn’t the result we wanted. We wanted to win this race. But it’s important to know when it’s not your time, and to know how you can best serve your community and country,” Gillibrand said in a video statement on Twitter.

Gillibrand did not make an endorsement with her exit but told the New York Times she would do so at some point. She suggested she would like to see a woman win the nomination.

“I think that women have a unique ability to bring people together and heal this country,” Gillibrand told the Times, saying: “I think a woman nominee would be inspiring and exciting.”

But she added: “I will support whoever the nominee is, and I will do whatever it takes to beat Trump.”

To earn a spot in the September debate, candidates had to draw at least 2 percent support in four national or early voting state polls, and have 130,000 unique donors, including 400 in 20 states. Gillibrand’s failure to qualify for the debate likely would have had a significant impact on her already dire financial position.

“Moving forward, Kirsten will focus on uniting our party and our country to beat Donald Trump, flip the Senate and elect women up and down the ballot,” Fassler wrote in the memo.

Source: Presstv

US President Donald Trump has slammed his preferred news network over its recent poll results.

Trump, who always attacks news media writing against him, claimed on Sunday that Fox had turned against him.

In a poll released on Wednesday, Fox, which is notoriously identified by the public as a supporter of Trump’s policies, revealed that Trump’s disapproval rating had risen to 56 percent following the recent mass shootings in El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio, which left 31 people dead.

Trump said something wrong was going on at Fox news.

He said he didn’t “believe” the poll results that Fox News had published.

“Fox has changed. My worst polls have always been from Fox,” he claimed.

“There’s something going on at Fox, I’ll tell you right now. And I’m not happy with it,” Trump complained.

Trump said he was of the opinion that the recent disapproval ratings were erroneous. “I think Fox is making a big mistake.”

Trump’s criticisms of Fox News is a small fraction of his unending attacks on the news media. Trump has accused the media of deliberately giving him negative coverage to damage his approval ratings in the run up to the 2020 presidential election. Trump accused US news media of chasing what he called a “racism witch hunt.”

He claimed the US news media were shifting their focus “from their Phony Russian Collusion Narrative (the Mueller Report & his testimony were a total disaster), to a Racism Witch Hunt.”

Source: Presstv

US President Donald Trump will drop out of the race for the 2020 presidential election and will not seek re-election, a former top aide says.

Former White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci made the remarks in an interview with Vanity Fair, saying, obviously, Trump would not be able to win the election.

“He’s gonna drop out of the race because it’s gonna become very clear. Okay, it’ll be March of 2020. He’ll likely drop out by March of 2020. It’s gonna become very clear that it’s impossible for him to win.”

“He’s got the self-worth in terms of his self-esteem of a small pigeon. It’s a very small pigeon. And so you think this guy’s gonna look at those poll numbers and say — he’s not gonna be able to handle that humiliation,” added Scaramucci, who worked under Trump for 11 days only.

The battle of words between Scaramucci and Trump has escalated in recent weeks.

Last week, Trump took to Twitter, charging that Scaramucci was “totally incapable of handling” the role of White House communications chief.

Anthony Scaramucci, who was quickly terminated (11 days) from a position that he was totally incapable of handling, now seems to do nothing but television as the all time expert on “President Trump.” Like many other so-called television experts, he knows very little about me…..

A day later, Scaramucci said on CNN that Trump had “gone off the rails,” adding, the president was “sounding more and more nonsensical.”

Scaramucci compared the US president to a “demagogue” and insisted the Trump administration’s conservative policy agenda is not worth the damage the Republican has inflicted upon America’s democratic institutions.

A new poll showed on Wednesday that Trump’s disapproval rating had risen to 56 percent.

The Fox News poll found a 5 percentage point boost in Trump’s disapproval rating from last month when 51 respondents disapproved the president’s performance.

In October 2017, Trump’s disapproval rating reached a record high of 57 percent, according to Fox News.

Only 43 people contacted for the latest survey said they approve of Trump’s job performance, down from 46 percent last month.

Source: Presstv

US President Donald Trump may need to be replaced with another candidate for the upcoming 2020 election, says a top GOP donor once working for Trump.

Former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci made the comments in an interview with Axios Sunday.

“We are now in the early episodes of ‘Chernobyl’ on HBO, where the reactor is melting down and the apparatchiks are trying to figure out whether to cover it up or start the clean-up process,” he said. “A couple more weeks like this and ‘country over party’ is going to require the Republicans to replace the top of the ticket in 2020.”

Scaramucci, who worked under Trump for 11 days only, further asserted that if the US president “doesn’t reform his behavior, it will not just be me, but many others will be considering helping to find a replacement in 2020.”

“Right now, it’s an unspeakable thing,” he continued. “But if he keeps it up, it will no longer be unspeakable. The minute they start speaking of it, it will circulate and be socialized. We can’t afford a full nuclear contamination site post 2020.”

The Republican National Committee has already voiced “undivided support” for Trump, whose reelection campaign is filled with party insiders.

The Trump reelection campaign has reportedly piled up an unprecedented amount of money to battle Democrats in 2020 and stay at helm in the White House.

Source: Presstv

US President Donald Trump has defended his administration’s unprecedented immigration sweeping operations that led to the arrest of nearly 700 undocumented migrants in the southeastern United States.

Speaking to reporters on Friday, Trump said, “I want people to know if they’re coming into the US illegally, they’re getting out,” noting, “And this serves as a very good deterrent.”

On Wednesday, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) said in a statement the agency had detained 680 people who were working illegally at seven food processing plants across the southern state of Mississippi.

About 600 ICE agents spread across the plants operated by five companies, surrounding the perimeters to prevent workers from fleeing.

Trump said when “people see what they saw (Wednesday), like they will see for a long time, they know that they’re not staying here.”

Meanwhile, Mississippi Attorney General Mike Hurst, who was in charge of the operation, also defended the raids, but said officers made sure that the children could reconnect with their parents.

“We are unaware of any child presently w/o (without) a parent as a result of this operation,” he tweeted on Thursday.

Many of those detained have been transported to an ICE facility in Jena, Louisiana, according to the US Attorney’s Office of the Southern District of Mississippi.

Some of them have been released for “humanitarian reasons” but required to appear in US immigration court.

Bill Chandler, executive director of the Mississippi Immigrant Rights Alliance, called the “terrible” raids “another effort to drive Latinos out of Mississippi,” blaming Trump for fanning racism with his past incendiary comments about immigrants.

“This is the same thing that Trump is doing at the border with the Border Patrol,” he said, referring to the increased crackdown on migrants coming into the US.

On Thursday, former vice president and the frontrunner in the Democratic presidential primary race Joe Biden criticized the raids too, saying the operation was “simply wrong.”

“What are we doing?” he asked during a meeting with Latinos and Asians as part of his campaign in Iowa.

“There are US-born children wondering whether or not they’ll ever see their parents again.”

The raids, planned months ago, happened just hours before Trump visited El Paso, Texas, a majority-Hispanic city near the US-Mexico border where a man linked to a white supremacist group was charged with fatally shooting 22 people.

Source: Presstv

US President Donald Trump has chastised French President Emmanuel Macron for sending Iran “mixed signals”.

Trump scolded Macron on Thursday telling him that no one was authorized to act in the role of mediator between the US and Iran.

“I know Emmanuel means well, as do all others, but nobody speaks for the United States but the United States itself,” Trump said in a tweet.

Donald J. Trump✔@realDonaldTrump · 11h

Iran is in serious financial trouble. They want desperately to talk to the U.S., but are given mixed signals from all of those purporting to represent us, including President Macron of France….

Donald J. Trump✔@realDonaldTrump

….I know Emmanuel means well, as do all others, but nobody speaks for the United States but the United States itself. No one is authorized in any way, shape, or form, to represent us!

It was not immediately clear what Trump was referring to, but a report earlier this week said Macron had invited Iranian President Hassan Rouhani to this month’s G7 summit to meet Trump.

European leaders are seeking to ease the escalating crisis between Tehran and Washington after Trump pulled out of the Iran nuclear last year prompting Tehran to scale back its commitments under the 2015 landmark nuclear deal with world powers officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

A main topic of the G7 summit later this month is expected to be the repercussions of European signatories to the Iran nuclear deal continuing to renege on their obligations.

Iran Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif says the US cannot change the fact that affairs were shifting in favor of Iran.

Zarif rebuked the hawkish group of politicians and regional leaders, often referred to as the B-team, who were trying to pressure and isolate Iran by undermining the Iran nuclear deal and instigating regional tensions.

Trump and his administration officials have previously claimed that the US leadership is open to talks with Iran and that the United States does not want a war with Iran.

Source: Presstv

US Democratic presidential front runner Joe Biden says President Donald Trump has “fanned the flames of white supremacy” in the country as Americans are yet recover from two deadly mass shootings in Texas and Ohio.

Speaking at a campaign event in Burlington, Iowa, Wednesday, the former US vice president directly attacked Trump for promoting hate and fear within America in the wake of the two shootings that left more than 30 people dead and many others injured.

“In both clear language and in code, this president has fanned the flames of white supremacy in this nation,” said the 76-year-old 2020 presidential candidate. “His low energy, vacant-eyed mouthing the words written for him condemning white supremacists this week, I don’t believe, fooled anyone at home or abroad.”

President with no ‘moral authority’

Biden further slammed Trump’s double policy in slamming what he refers to as “Islamic terrorism,” yet failing to condemn white supremacy.

“Trump readily, eagerly attacks Islamic terrorism but can barely bring himself to use the words white supremacy,” he said. “Our president has aligned himself with the darkest forces in this nation. It makes winning this battle for the soul of our nation that much tougher, harder.”

Biden made the comments as Trump was visiting Dayton, Ohio, and El Paso, Texas, to meet with police and some of the surviving victims but anti-Trump protesters were also there to shout that he is not welcome.

“Indeed we have a president with a toxic tongue who has publicly and unapologetically embraced the political strategy of hate, racism and division. So it’s up to us as it was in the 20s,” Biden said. “It’s up to us. We’re living through a rare moment in this nation’s history where our president isn’t up to the moment, where our president lacks the moral authority to lead, where our president has more in common with George Wallace than he does with George Washington.”

His comments are probably the harshest so far directed at the US president.

In his visit to El Paso, Trump asserted that he had an “amazing day,” further bragging about witnessing the “love for the office of presidency.”

Source: Presstv