Japan's new PM faces crisis within days of taking office.

(From Guardian Unlimited)

Taro Aso, Japan's new prime minister, is facing his first political crisis just days into the job with the resignation of his transport minister following a ferocious verbal assault on the country's teachers.

The resignation comes just weeks before the government faces the prospect of defeat in an early general election.

The transport minister, Nariaki Nakayama, had been in his post for only four days when he resigned on Sunday, following tirades against tens of thousands of teachers and campaigners in one of the country's longest-running civic protests.

He also ignored more than a century of discrimination against Japan's indigenous people when he described the country as "ethnically homogeneous". …