Briefly

JAPAN

LDP seeks spending boost on military

Japan's ruling conservatives unveiled their campaign platform on Tuesday, saying they would aim to boost military spending, possibly even doubling it. The long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party, led by new Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, is campaigning to maintain its majority in parliament in Oct 31 elections. It came as Kishida has a 49 percent approval rating, lower than that of his predecessors at the start of their terms, a poll by public broadcaster NHK showed, a week after he took the top job. That was well under the 62 percent who supported his predecessor Yoshihide Suga's administration at first, according to the NHK poll published late on Monday. In the poll, however, support for Kishida's new government was higher than the most recent ratings of Suga, who stepped down last month after only a year.

SYRIA

Israeli plan on Golan Heights condemned

The Syrian Foreign Ministry on Monday condemned the comments of Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, who announced a plan to increase the number of Israeli settlers in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, according to the state news agency SANA. The ministry said Bennett's announcement is "unable to change the eternal fact that Golan was and still remains an Arab and Syrian land". It noted that all measures adopted by the Israeli occupation are "null and void and have no legal effect", stressing that the Syrian army is "determined to liberate the Golan Heights from the Israeli occupation and foil the Israeli plots".

UNITED STATES

San Diego plane crash kills 2, burns homes

A twin-engine plane that killed at least two people and left a swath of destruction in a San Diego suburb nose-dived into the ground after repeated warnings that it was flying dangerously low, according to a recording. The Cessna 340 smashed into a UPS van, killing the driver, and then hit houses just after noon Monday in Santee, a suburb of 50,000 people. The pilot was believed to have died, and at least two people on the ground were hurt, including a woman who was helped out the window of a burning home by neighbors.

Agencies - Xinhua