Japan votes for key election in shadow of Abe assassination

Japanese went to the polls on July 10 in the shadow of the assassination of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, gunned down while making a campaign speech for the governing party that cruises to a likely major victory.

Amid voting Sunday, police in western Japan sent the alleged assassin to a local prosecutors' office for further investigation toward pressing murder charges, the day after a top regional police official acknowledged possible security lapses that allowed the attacker to get so close and fire a bullet into the still-influential former Japanese leader.
In a country still recovering from the shock, sadness and fear of Abe's shooting _ the first of a former or serving leader to be assassinated in postwar Japan _ polling started for half of the upper house, the less powerful of Japan's two-chamber parliament.

Abe was shot in Nara on Friday and airlifted to a hospital but died of blood loss. Police arrested a former member of Japan's navy at the scene. Police confiscated his homemade gun and several others were later found at his apartment.
The alleged attacker, Tetsuya Yamagami, told investigators he acted because of Abe's rumored connection to an organization that he resented, police said, but had no problem with the former leader's political view. The man had developed hatred toward a religious group that his mother was obsessed about and that bankrupted a family business, according to media reports, including some that identified the group as the Unification Church.
Abe's body, in a black hearse accompanied by his wife, Akie, returned to his home in Tokyo's upscale residential area of Shibuya, where many mourners, including Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, their predecessors and top party officials, paid tribute. His wake and...