Japanese minister 'kills himself'
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Japan's agriculture minister dies in hospital after being found hanged in Tokyo, reports say.
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Japan's defense minister resigned on Tuesday over remarks that appeared to accept the 1945 atomic bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe quickly tapped a woman for the post to try to quell the furor ahead of an election this month.
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A Japanese government delegation on a visit to North Korea met Friday with a man supposed to be abductee Megumi Yokota&#39;s husband and a doctor at a hospital where Pyongyang claimed she committed suicide, according to the top government spokesman.
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A Japanese hostage taken in Iraq has been  killed, Kyodo news agency said on Saturday, citing information  obtained by the Japanese government.
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Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and his Cabinet resigned Tuesday, clearing the way for new ruling party leader Yasuo Fukuda to be named by parliament as his successor.
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Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, whose year-old government has suffered a string of damaging scandals and a humiliating electoral defeat, has told ruling party leaders he intends to resign, an official said Wednesday.
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A headless body found in Baghdad has been confirmed as that of a Japanese hostage whose captors had threatened to kill him if Japan did not pull out its troops, Japanese Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura said on Sunday.
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An executive allegedly involved in a bid-rigging scam that has been linked to the suicide of Japan's agriculture minister leaped to his death Tuesday, officials said. The deaths have added to the pressure on a government struggling against a series of scandals.
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TOKYO -- Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, whose year-old government has suffered a string of damaging scandals and a humiliating electoral defeat, has told ruling party leaders he intends to resign, an official said Wednesday.
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A scandal-tainted Cabinet member who headed Japan's powerful agriculture ministry hanged himself just hours before he faced questioning Monday over alleged bookkeeping fraud.
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Text of report in English by Japanese news agency Kyodo  Tokyo, 28 May: Farm Minister Toshikatsu Matsuoka attempted suicide in Tokyo on Monday, police sources said.  It is not immediately clear whether he remains alive.  (c) 2007 BBC Monitoring Newsfile.
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Japan&#39;s cabinet paid silent tribute Tuesday to the farm minister a day after his suicide as a second official killed himself in a scandal described as Prime Minister Shinzo Abe&#39;s most serious crisis.
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Japan&#39;s outgoing prime minister Shinzo Abe was hospitalized with exhaustion Thursday as his finance minister kick-started the race to succeed him by declaring his candidacy for the top job.
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Hundreds of mourners attend the funeral of Japan's scandal-hit agriculture minister, following his suicide.
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Japan's prime minister was treated at a hospital for exhaustion Thursday, a day after he announced he would quit amid failure at the ballot box and a political brawl over the country's aid to U.S.-led coalition forces in Afghanistan.
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Japan&#39;s government on Sunday said it is now certain that a 24-year-old Japanese backpacker taken hostage in Iraq has been killed.
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Japan's new farming minister admits illegal dealings at a private group he heads, in a fresh blow to the government.