News in Brief

Date: 21 July 2019 - 21:49

News ID: ۶۸۳۹۹

TOKYO (Dispatches) -- Japanese voters took to the polls Sunday to cast their ballots in an upper house election that could determine whether Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's ruling party would be allowed to realize a long-held ambition of revising the country’s U.S.-drafted pacifist constitution.
A total of 370 candidates are vying for 124 seats out of the 245 that make up the parliament’s upper house, known as the House of Councilors.
Opinion polls suggest Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and its coalition partner, the Buddhist Komeito, are likely to grab a two-thirds majority in the chamber.
Abe vowed earlier this month to "clearly stipulate the role of the Self-Defense Forces in the constitution," which prohibits Japan from waging war and maintaining a military.
The provisions, imposed by the U.S. after World War II, are popular with the public at large but frowned upon by nationalists like Abe, who see them as outdated and punitive.
The crucial vote comes at a time when Abe has been struggling to resolve the territorial dispute with Russia and establish a foothold in the South China Sea in the face of an assertive Beijing.
The U.S. supports Abe's push to renounce the pacifist constitution because it paves the way for the sale of American weapons to Japan.
Under Abe, Japan has already announced that it will spend a record $242 billion on military equipment over the next five years, 6.4 percent higher than the previous five-year plan.

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LONDON (AP) — British Treasury chief Philip Hammond said Sunday that he will quit if — as widely expected — Boris Johnson becomes prime minister this week on a promise to leave the European Union with or without a divorce deal.
Hammond said Johnson’s vow to press for a no-deal Brexit if he can’t secure a new agreement with the EU is "not something that I could ever sign up to.”
Hammond was almost certain to be removed from office by the new leader in any case. He has angered Brexit-backers, who now dominate the governing Conservative Party, with his warnings about the economic pain that leaving the EU could cause.
Hammond told the BBC that if Johnson wins, "I’m not going to be sacked because I’m going to resign before we get to that point.”
Johnson is the strong favorite to win a two-person runoff to lead the Conservative Party and the country. The winner is being announced Tuesday, with the victor taking over from Prime Minister Theresa May on Wednesday.
Britain is due to leave the EU on Oct. 31 but Parliament has repeatedly rejected the divorce deal struck between May and the bloc. Both Johnson and his rival Jeremy Hunt, the current foreign secretary, say they will leave the EU without an agreement if the EU won’t renegotiate.

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DERA ISMAIL KHAN, Pakistan (Reuters) -- A female suicide bomber in northwestern Pakistan killed at least eight people and wounded 26 more in an attack outside a local civilian hospital on Sunday, local officials said.
The attack in Dera Ismail Khan early on Sunday was claimed by Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, often known as the Pakistani Taliban, which is separate from the insurgent movement across the border in Afghanistan.
Local officials said the attack happened after two police were killed at a roadside checkpoint outside the city.
Muhammed Khurasani, a spokesman for the TTP, claimed responsibility for the attack, which he said was carried out in revenge for the killing of two Taliban commanders by counter terrorism police around a month ago. However he denied the bomber was female.
Dera Ismail Khan has seen a number of suicide attacks over the past decade as the Pakistani military carried out a campaign to suppress militant attacks in the area, an important hub in the $60 billion China Pakistan Economic Corridor.

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TUNIS (Reuters) -- Rached Ghannouchi, the influential leader of Tunisia’s moderate Ennahda party, will stand in the next parliamentary elections in October, a move widely seen as an attempt to seek a leadership position in the country.
Exiled in London for about two decades during the time of former president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, Ghannouchi has been a major force since Tunisia’s 2011 revolution, but he has never run for any official position.
The 78-year-old remains a dominant figure who critics say effectively controls the country in tandem with the secular-minded President Beji Caid Essebsi, 92, often dubbed the "two sheikhs” in reference to their age.
Ghannouchi’s candidacy for a parliamentary seat reinforces expectations that he is seeking to play a bigger role, possibly as prime minister or speaker of parliament, if his party wins the election.
Parliamentary elections are expected to be held on Oct. 6 with a presidential vote following on Nov. 17. They will be the third set of polls in which Tunisians can vote freely following the 2011 revolution.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- U.S. national security adviser John Bolton departed for a trip to Japan and South Korea, two key allies of Washington that are embroiled in a trade dispute.
A White House National Security Council spokesman said on Twitter that Bolton planned to "continue conversations with critical allies and friends”.
President Donald Trump on Friday offered his help to ease tensions in the political and economic dispute between the United States’ two biggest allies in Asia, which threatens global supplies of memory chips and smartphones.
Lingering tensions, particularly over compensation for South Koreans forced to work for Japanese occupiers during World War Two, worsened this month when Japan restricted exports of high-tech materials to South Korea.
Japan has denied that the dispute over compensation is behind the export curbs, even though one of its ministers cited broken trust with Seoul over the labor dispute in announcing the restrictions.