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The mother of the man arrested for the killing of former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe is a member of the Unification Church, the church's Japan head said on Monday (Jul 11). A police investigation into the assassination of former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe prompted the head of the country's branch of the Unification Church to confirm on Monday that the mother of the suspect in the killing is a member. Tetsuya Yamagami, an unemployed 41-year-old, has been identified by police as the suspect who approached Abe and opened fire during a campaign speech on Friday, an attack that...

The man who shot President Ronald Reagan in the early 1980s says he supports stricter gun control measures — including keeping firearms out of the hands of people with mental health problems. John Hinckley Jr. — who was released from court oversight last month – believes there are “too many guns in America,” he told ABC’s “Nightline” in an interview that aired Tuesday night. “I certainly don’t think the mentally ill should have access to guns, I mean that’s kind of obvious,’ Hinckley, 67, told reporter Juju Chang.

One of two men believed by British intelligence to have poisoned a Russian spy’s tea with a rare radioactive substance in London has died, according to a state-owned news agencyOne of the men accused of killing former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko in London has died of Covid-19 in Moscow, according to reports. Dmitri Kovtun was one of two men who a UK inquiry ruled had poisoned Litvinenko’s tea with a rare radioactive substance back in 2006. Reports from state-owned Russian news agency Tass said Kovtun contracted coronavirus before dying in a Moscow hospital. Kovtun, along with Andrei Lugovoi, was...

Dr. Cyril Wecht distrusts the US government. And he’s proud of it. The forensic pathologist — who declared in 1978 that Lee Harvey Oswald did not act alone in assassinating President John F. Kennedy — is now 90 and still sticking to his story. Wecht’s latest book, “The JFK Assassination Dissected” (Exposit Books), summarizes his six decades of research into the subject, and pokes holes in the conclusion made by the seven-man Warren Commission that Oswald, without any help, shot and killed Kennedy when his motorcade drove past the Texas School Book Depository in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963. “Young...

On Nov. 18, 1963, in the midst of a whirlwind campaign trip, President John F. Kennedy told Secret Service supervisor Floyd Boring that agents riding on special boards installed near the trunk of his car should drop back and tail him from a follow-up vehicle instead. “It’s excessive, Floyd. And it’s giving the wrong impression to people,” said Kennedy. “We’ve got an election coming up. The whole point is for me to be accessible to the people.” Kennedy’s bristling at the proximity of the agents was not uncommon for those being protected by the Secret Service, especially US presidents. But...

A British coroner has determined that an exiled Russian critic of President Vladimir Putin was strangled to death by "a third party" at his home in a southwest suburb of London. Self-exiled Russian businessman Nikolai Glushkov was found dead at his home in New Malden, England, in March 2018. Senior coroner Chinyere Inyama ruled that Glushkov was "unlawfully killed" after the West London Coroner's Court heard evidence suggesting his death was made to look like a suicide and that there had been "third-party involvement." Glushkov fled Russia after authorities accused him of fraud during his time as deputy director of...

When famous African-American guitarist and singer Jimi Hendrix was found dead in a London flat on September 18, 1970 aged a mere 27 years, newspaper reports claimed he had died from a heroin overdose while the autopsy report claimed he had drowned on his own vomit. It would take years to know the gifted entertainer was a victim of COINTELPRO which even in death slandered him. Jimi Hendrix was one of the highest paid musicians in the world by the end of 1969 after Woodstock festival – reportedly with a net worth of $175m (£141m) but life wasn’t always sweet....

Abdul Majed was hanged at the Dhaka Central Jail on Sunday after he was found hiding in India for nearly two-and-a-half decades.Bangladesh has executed a former military captain for his involvement in the 1975 coup in which the country's founder Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was assassinated, nearly four-and-a-half decades after the massacre. Abdul Majed was hanged at the Dhaka Central Jail in Keraniganj at 12:01 AM (local time) on Sunday, bdnews24.com reported. Jailor Mahbubul Islam said that Mazed was executed by hanging. He was arrested in Dhaka on Tuesday after hiding in India for nearly two-and-a-half decades. On Friday, Majed's...

A question that is just as important is whether assassinating Kim or the generals in charge of North Korea’s nuclear program, ballistic missile program, military or intelligence services would be a good policy. We tend to believe that if we just took out the top, bad guy in the regime, all of the other bad guys in that regime will be scared straight, change their behavior and suddenly turn their governments into bastions of human rights and democracy. We’ve had experience with his belief before: several days prior to major military operations in Iraq, Washington lobbed cruise missiles at Saddam...

BEYOND DOUBT — A Dossier on Gandhi’s Assassination: Compiled by Teesta Setalvad; Tulika Books, 35 A/1 (ground floor), Shahpur Jat, New Delhi-110049. Rs. 450. TOPICS books and literature history books June 25, 1934 has got a curious connection to the three shots fired at around 5:10 pm on the fateful Friday of January 30, 1948, shots that would go on to silence the life of a 79-year-old frail but resolute Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. For it was on that day, while on a visit to Pune, that Gandhiji witnessed the first of six attempts on his life, the sixth of which...

Maine has been the center of calls for civility and bipartisanship in politics in the past few months after Sen. Olympia Snowe resigned her seat, fed up with Senate’s lack of those two things. But one Maine Democratic legislator seems to have missed the memo, sending out a tweet in which he seemingly called for former Vice President Dick Cheney’s execution. Rep. Chuck Kruger, Democratic chairman of the Maine Legislature’s Moderate Caucus, tweeted in August, “Cheney deserves same final end as he gave Saddam. Hope there are cellcams #cheney.” The Maine Wire first reported this, and preserved the screen shot...

A RUSSIAN banking tycoon was in a coma last night after he was gunned down outside his London flat by a "drive-by" hitman. Exiled financier German Gorbuntsov, 45, fell in a hail of sub-machine gun bullets fired by the would-be assassin. Blood was smeared all over the walls of the lobby of his exclusive apartment block and the bullets also took out chunks of the front door and smashed windows. One witness to the terrifying shooting near the Canary Wharf financial district said Gorbuntsov seemed to be targeted by a drive-by gunman. Bart Fogler, 27, who works on the front...

An international arrest warrant for the head of Mossad should be issued following the assassination of a Hamas militant in Dubai, the emirate's police chief has said. Lt Gen Dahi Khalfan Tamim directly accused Israel's Mossad intelligence agency of orchestrating the hit on Hamas commander Mahmoud al-Mabhouh. He said Interpol should now seek out those those responsible and called for "a red notice against the head of Mossad" to be issued. He said: "Our investigations reveal that Mossad is involved in the murder of (Mahmoud) al-Mabhouh. It is 99 percent, if not 100 percent, that Mossad is standing behind the...

President Obama has gotten more death threats in a shorter period of time than any other president in US history. The legion of right side talk radio gabbers, the GOP induced professional mobsters who commit orchestrated mayhem at health care townhalls, the birthers, the countless websites and chatrooms that crackle with anti Obama venom, and the endless montage of race baiting cartoons, characterizations and depictions of Obama and First Lady Michelle have created a viperous climate of hate and that knows no bounds. The stock assumption is that race is the reason that Obama is a bigger target than any...

Journalist-turned-Croatian independence fighter Eduardo Rosza-Flores was asked in an interview a few years ago with the Hungarian edition of Elle Magazine if he would ever assassinate someone for a cause. "Only if [that person] comes to kill others," said Rozsa, according to an English version of the transcript posted on one of his blogs. "To protect and save the lives of my friends." The question now is whether Rozsa, a Hungarian-Bolivian, felt that way about Bolivian President Evo Morales. Rozsa was killed early last Thursday morning in a hotel room in the eastern Bolivian city of Santa Cruz. The government...

The murder of a Chechen man in Vienna on January 13 threatens to derail a torture case against Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov in Austria, in which the victim was a key witness. The 27-year-old Umar Israilov, a former anti-Russian guerrilla later forced to join Kadyrov's security forces, said he had himself seen the Chechen president and his men torture opponents, in an interview with the New York Times last December. "How can we go on without the main witness?" said a representative of the European Centre for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR), which filed a complaint last June in Vienna.

UN chief Ban Ki-moon was set Wednesday to announce a UN probe into the assassination of former Pakistani premier Benazir Bhutto during a flying visit to Islamabad, the foreign ministry said. Ban's visit here -- his first since taking office two years ago -- follows a stopover in Afghanistan and comes two days after unidentified gunmen kidnapped a top UN official in southwest Pakistan. It also comes amid rampant unrest in Pakistan's border areas, with Taliban rebels disrupting a crucial NATO supply route into Afghanistan and government forces engaged in bloody fighting in the northwest Swat valley. Ban's talks will...