TOKYO – Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Friday expressed “outrage” after the arrest of a US military base employee linked to the suspicious death of a woman on Okinawa, a week before a high-profile visit to Japan by President Barack Obama.

The southern island was the site of a brutal World War II battle but is now considered a strategic linchpin by hosting numerous US military bases that support the two countries’ decades-long security alliance.

“I feel extremely strong outrage,” Abe told reporters at his office, calling on the US to take action.

Okinawan police arrested Kenneth Franklin Shinzato for allegedly disposing of the woman’s body in a weed-covered area in southern Okinawa, a spokesman told AFP, without elaborating.

Local media said the man, a US citizen and former US Marine, lives in southern Okinawa and works at the US Kadena Air Base.

Police reportedly suspect that the victim, identified as 20-year-old Rina Shimabukuro and who had been missing since late April, was murdered.

Obama is due in Japan next week for a two-day summit of Group of Seven countries which concludes on Friday, before venturing the same day Hiroshima – becoming the only sitting US president to visit the world’s first atomic bombed city.

The Hiroshima visit by Obama, who has a record of calling for global denuclearisation, has been well received in Japan but the issue of the heavy US military presence on Okinawa has long been a periodic thorn in the side of relations.

More than half of the 47,000 US military personnel in the country are stationed there, and rapes and other crimes by service personnel have sparked local protests in the past.

In 1995 the abduction and rape of a 12-year-old girl by three US servicemen sparked massive protests, prompting Washington to pledge efforts to strengthen troop discipline to prevent such crimes and reduce the US footprint on the island.

But continued crimes by American personnel remain a potent rallying point for Okinawans and others in Japan who oppose the presence of the bases on the crowded island, where pacifist sentiment runs high.

Chief Cabinet Secretary and top government spokesman Yoshihide Suga described the recent murder as “abominable” but when asked if Abe would raise it with Obama he said only that the agenda for their talks was still being finalised.

Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida late Thursday summoned US ambassador Caroline Kennedy to lodge a protest, calling the case “very cruel and atrocious”.

Kennedy pledged to “co-operate fully with the Okinawa police and Japanese government and redouble our efforts to make sure that this never happens again”.

Okinawan Governor Takeshi Onaga, an outspoken critic of the US presence, told reporters Thursday the incident happened “because there are US bases” on the island.

In Washington, officials also spoke out against the incident, with State Department spokesman John Kirby calling it “obviously an outrage.”

Whoever said romance is dead might actually be right.

There are many romantic ways for a couple to spend their wedding night – most couples choose to spend it celebrating with their friends and family or scooting off to a dreamy destination, but a couple from China chose to do something completely different. 

Li Yunpeng and Chen Xuanchi decided to transcribe the entire Chinese Communist Party’s constitution by hand on their wedding night – mind you, the document contains 11 chapters and is over 15,000 Chinese characters long.

Mr Li and Ms Chen’s decision was sparked by a loyalty campaign titled “Hand Copy the Constitution for 100 Days”, which was adopted by state-owned Nanchang Railway Bureau for its employees in April this year.

Chinese couple spends wedding night copying entire Communist Constitution by hand

Click on thumbnail to view photos. Source: 

Nanchang Railway Bureau

As employees of the company, both Mr Li and Ms Chen wanted to take part in the initiative themselves – and thought it best to do so on their wedding day. 

According to Global Times, a state-run newspaper in China, the constitution-copying initiative comes after the government’s announcement on a new national education campaign that emphasises learning about the constitution, President Xi Jinping’s speeches as well as the Communist Party of China’s (CPC) rules. 

Nanchang Railway Bureau shared pictures of the couple as well as other employees who have copied out the constitution in a post on WeChat.

In its post, the bureau said that the newlyweds wanted to have “fond memories of their wedding night” and so made up their mind to copy the constitution on their wedding night. 

But netizens were skeptical.

“They’re faking it,” said one netizen on Weibo.

“I just want to know, who is in their bridal suite on their wedding night taking pictures of them?” said another.

“I haven’t read the Party constitution, can someone tell me which chapters tell you how to make love?” mocked another person. 

At the start of this year, China’s education ministry issued a directive urging all Chinese students in the country and those studying abroad to dedicate themselves more to “patriotic education”. 

This is in line with President Xi’s attempt to “amplify nationalist sentiments and consolidate the Party’s power over the country”, the Huffington Post reported.

While the campaign to write out the entire constitution was launched by the People’s Daily in March, many people were not aware about it. It was only after photos of Li and Chen surfaced that netizens found out about it.

mldas@sph.com.sg

TAIPEI – Official mainland Chinese news outlets largely snubbed the inauguration of Taiwan’s Beijing-sceptic new president Tsai Ing-wen on Friday, while searches for her name and “Taiwan” were blocked on social media.

Taiwan’s first female president, who is head of the traditionally pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), took the oath of office Friday morning at the presidential palace in Taipei, signalling the end of an eight-year rapprochement with China.

Taiwan president-elect Tsai Ing-wen’s inauguration

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Reuters, AFP

China and Taiwan split in 1949 after the Kuomintang nationalist forces lost a civil war to the Communists. But Beijing has always seen the island as a renegade province awaiting reunification, by force if necessary.

China’s state-run media were almost mute about the inauguration, with no coverage at all on national television or major newspapers such as the People’s Daily, the Communist Party’s mouthpiece.

The official news agency Xinhua took nearly three hours from when she was sworn in to report the fact in a 22-word dispatch in English.

Searches for “Taiwan” or “Tsai Ing-wen” on China’s Twitter-like Sina Weibo both returned the message: “Sorry, no relevant result is found”.

In an editorial, the Global Times – a newspaper owned by the People’s Daily group that often takes a nationalistic tone – said Tsai’s assumption of power heralded “a new era for a cross-Straits region that is characterised by uncertainty”.

Miniature portrait of Taiwanese president-elect

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Reuters

DPP rule will make Taiwan “take a larger step away from the mainland politically”, it said.

“Certain people are still holding on to the fantasy that ‘soft independence’ might be workable,” it added. “Perhaps a new round of contention is inevitable to completely drive the topic of Taiwan independence away.” Beijing has been sending assertive messages across the Taiwan Strait since Tsai was elected in January.

It has warned against any attempt to formally declare independence and the Chinese military has mounted at least three landing exercises in the country’s southeast this month – widely seen as a threat to Tsai not to rock the boat.

NEW DELHI – A city in northern India has shattered the national heat record, registering a searing 51 deg C – the highest since records began – the weather office said on Friday (May 20).

The new record in Phalodi, a city in the desert state of Rajasthan, is the equivalent of 123.8 Fahrenheit and comes as a heatwave sweeps the nation.

It tops a previous record of 50.6 deg C set in 1956.

“Yesterday (Thursday) was the hottest temperature ever recorded in the country… 51 degrees in Phalodi,” said Mr B.P. Yadav, a director of the India Meteorological Department.

Temperatures in northern India regularly hit the high 40s in May and June – the hottest months of the year – but topping 50 deg C is unusual.

The weather office has issued warnings of “severe heat wave” conditions across large parts of India’s northern and western regions through the weekend.

India declares a heatwave when the maximum temperature hits 45 deg C, or five degrees higher than the average for the area in previous years.