Japan PM under fire after MP's suicide

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's cabinet met as fallout from a scandal-tainted minister's suicide and mismanaged pensions, threaten the ruling camp's chances of winning a July upper house election.

Agriculture Minister Toshikatsu Matsuoka's suicide on Monday, hours before he was to face questioning in parliament, coincided with a slump in Abe's approval ratings ahead of a July upper house election, his first big electoral test.

Now, a former executive of a public corporation at the centre of a bid-rigging scandal to which Matsuoka had been linked was found dead in an apparent suicide