US: Time Magazine has unveiled the cover of its forthcoming issue featuring ex-Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who was assassinated Friday while making an election speech in the western city of Nara. Abe, 67, was shot twice with a homemade shotgun and died at the Nara Medical University after blood loss from his wounds. A 41-year-old suspect, Tetsuya Yamagami, is in custody and has reportedly told police he initially wanted to attack the leader of a group he believed had defrauded his mother; he believed Abe had promoted that group within Japan. Abe’s body returned to Tokyo Saturday morning, greeted by a sea of mourners paying final respects to Japan’s two-time ex-PM.
In a moving tribute to Shinzo Abe, the Time wrote he would be ‘remembered for remaking Japan’.
This will be the fourth time Abe is featured on the cover of Time; the first was in September 2006, in the magazine’s Asia edition, just as he was poised to become Japan’s youngest prime minister since World War II. The cover described him as ‘a forceful leader for a revived nation’. – THE HINDUSTAN TIMES