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WHILE theme parks across the UK are opening back up for the summer, a popular attraction in Japan remains shut after two decades.

The once popular Wild West land closed its gates for the last time in 2007, remaining frozen in time ever since.

Located in Nikko, around two hours drive from Tokyo, Western Village was once home to a bustling arcade and entertainment park, designed to resemble the American Frontier.

However, the once-buzzing family establishment is now only visited by urban explorers.

The park first opened its doors in 1973 as a small attraction called Kinugawa Family Ranch, offering guests a range of outdoor activities including fishing and horse riding.

Just two years later, the site was rebranded as Western Village, attracting tourists from all over the world with its impressive recreating of a 19th Century frontier town.

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The attraction included an old-timey bank, barber shop, sheriff’s office and general store, as well as arcades and animatronic displays.

Live stunt shows also took place at the park, with actors reenacting gunfights between cowboys and outlaws.

There was also a train that took visitors around the park which was often subject to a staged robbery by the park’s resident outlaws.

In 1995, the park added a £20million replica of Mount Rushmore, which measured one-third of the real thing and was even carved into the landscape.

Despite the park’s initial success, it eventually began to lose out to larger, better located competitors such as Universal Studios Japan and Tokyo Disneyland.

In 2007, Western Village shut its doors for the last time, with many sections remaining untouched in the years since.

From arcade machines and eerie animatronics covered in dust to bottles still sitting on tables, the entire park has a creepy abandoned feel to it.

The park has remained a source of fascination for those visiting the area, particularly urban explorers.

According to the website Offbeat Japan, the replica Rushmore is still attracting visitors in 2026.

The outlet reported that tourists “have to come back to check it isn’t a hallucination”, adding that what remains of the park is “now being demolished little by little”.

WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Marco Rubio stood silent and stone-faced behind Donald Trump on Wednesday as the president joked of passing the buck if his deal with Iran, under increasingly withering criticism and scrutiny, ultimately falls apart.

The blame, Trump said, would likely fall on his vice president, JD Vance, who led the negotiations toward a memorandum of understanding with Iran and will sign the agreement this week in Switzerland — a ceremony that will generate indelible images for a politician openly considering a run for the White House.

The controversial diplomatic breakthrough poses a quandary for Vance, whose aides see Rubio as his most viable challenger for the Republican presidential nomination should the secretary choose to run.

“If it works out, I’m going to take the credit,” Trump said of the Iran deal, with Rubio by his side.

“If it doesn’t work out, I’m blaming JD,” he joked. “You better be careful, JD!”

Silent secretary

Rubio, who also serves as the president’s national security advisor, has remained effectively mum since news of a preliminary peace deal was announced by the administration on Sunday.

His absence has drawn notice across foreign policy circles — not only because Rubio has served as chief architect of the administration’s global strategy thus far, but also because he has become one of the president’s most effective communicators, both at home and abroad.

By contrast, Vance, on a scheduled press tour promoting his new book, has emerged as the face of an agreement that appears to be fracturing a Republican Party already divided over America’s role in the world.

The administration’s internal divide over Iran extends beyond the war to broader U.S. support for its historic allies, including Israel in the Middle East, Canada and Mexico in this hemisphere, and Ukraine and Europe against a revanchist Russia.

“Rubio has always been a hawk on Iran, and Vance has always been an appeaser,” said Danielle Pletka, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, describing the vice president as positioning himself “as Trump without the flaws.”

“Rubio has a harder job because he’s more of a traditional Republican,” she said, adding that a competitive presidential run by the secretary might require him to pitch “a return to normalcy.”

No guarantee of success

Behind closed doors, Rubio advocated against the deal in its current form, citing intelligence reports that found it highly unlikely Tehran would give up its nuclear ambitions, according to two sources familiar with the matter. Rubio’s internal skepticism was first reported by Axios.

The deal kicks down the road highly technical discussions over the mechanics of unwinding Iran’s nuclear program — with no guarantee of success — while granting Tehran immediate relief, lifting a U.S. naval blockade of Iranian ports that will allow Iranian imports and exports to resume.

In exchange, Iran has only agreed in principle not to pursue nuclear weapons — a vow it has made multiple times before — and to do its “best” to return commercial shipping traffic through the Strait of Hormuz back to prewar levels. It commits in the deal to refrain from implementing a toll system in the strait, according to U.S. officials, for a mere 60-day period.

“This agreement is a road map for Iran to become a rising, stronger power in the [Persian] Gulf — stronger than it is even today,” said Robert Pape, a political science professor at the University of Chicago.

“That is going to be an issue for the balance of power with Israel, which before the Iran war was the rising power. Now it’s lost that paradigm,” Pape said. “And this is going to be an issue with the future disposition of American forces in the region, because the [memorandum of understanding] states quite clearly that Iran is expecting those forces to withdraw.”

Positioning by the vice president

Despite mounting skepticism, Vance has embraced his role in ending a war that a powerful faction of Trump’s base aggressively opposed from the start.

“I think there are some people who just want the bombing to continue, regardless of whether it accomplishes anything for Americans,” Vance told CBS News on Wednesday.

“I do think there are people,” he added, “who sometimes confuse the ends with the means.”

Because the preliminary Iran deal leaves key details unresolved, further negotiations virtually ensure the agreement remains in flux through the election season — potentially thrusting the talks into the center of the presidential primary campaign.

“Given the distance between the parties on the core nuclear issues, as well as the Trump administration’s poor track record with coercive diplomacy, I fully expect the 60-day window for talks to be extended, as the [memorandum of understanding] text permits, taking this issue to the heart of the midterms and beyond,” said Reid Pauly, a professor of nuclear security and policy at Brown University.

“There will be a lot of incentive in the administration,” Pauly added, “to distance oneself from this fiasco.”

As a guest on Megyn Kelly’s podcast this week, Vance acknowledged the political realities of Trump’s base splintering over the Iran war, noting that a coalition of isolationists — as well as those advocating what he called a more “aggressive” foreign policy — had together swept Trump back into office.

The war may be breaking that coalition apart, he said.

“We have a constituency right now that is saying, we’re going to send boots on the ground — they want Donald Trump to send hundreds of thousands of ground troops into Iran,” Vance told the former Fox News host.

“Those are Republicans,” Kelly said.

“We need people to be pushing back from inside the tent,” Vance replied.

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Michael Wilner
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Videos show Indonesia’s Mount Merapi spewing a column of ash around 2 kilometres high in West Sumatra’s Tanh Datar District. Authorities have enforced an “exclusion zone” within a 3-kilometre radius around Mount Merapi since an eruption in 2023.

May 10 (UPI) — British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s job was hanging in the balance Sunday in the aftermath of the worst local council election results for his Labor Party in its long history, analysts said.

Political rivals were circling around the prime minister after the ruling party’s support on councils in England and in devolved Parliaments in Scotland and Wales collapsed in Thursday’s voting, leave the right-wing Reform UK and left-wing Green Party as the biggest electoral winners.

In what was termed a “total bloodbath,” a “calamity” and a “wipe-out,” Labor was voted out of power in 40 local councils, losing about 1,500 councilors along the way, with the vast majority of the seats being seized by Nigel Farage’s Reform UK.

Starmer’s party also lost the Welsh Senedd to Plaid Cymru, surrendering its control of the body for the first time since the Welsh parliament was created in 1999.

The results came during what is essentially the mid-point of the Starmer government’s five-year term following Labor’s lopsided victory over the Conservative Party in 2024, and he vowed on Friday that he would not stand aside.

Labor, he said, was elected to meet the challenges faced by everyday Britons “and I’m not going to walk away from those challenges and plunge the country into chaos.

“I led our party to that victory, that is a five-year mandate to change the country. It was a five-year term I was elected to do, I intend to see that through.”

But the scale of last week’s losses have prompted calls for the prime minister’s resignation. As of Sunday, more than 40 Labor members of Parliament have publicly called on him stand aside.

“It is clear that Keir has fought his last election as Labor leader and, deep down, he will know it,” Labor MP Richard Burgon said in a statement. “The party should now work towards a timetable for an orderly transition to a new leader by the end of this year.”

“When you’re the leader, the buck stops with you,” Labor MP David Baines told the BBC. “There’s no doubt his popularity has plummeted and we’ve heard it on the doorstep.”

Starmer’s main party rivals spent Sunday voicing warnings that he rethink his determination to hang on to power ahead of what will likely be a “make-or-break” speech on Monday in which the prime minister is expected to outline sweeping changes to his government’s direction.

Angela Rayner, Starmer’s former deputy prime minister, issued what amounted to an ultimatum that he avoid mere “policy tweaks” and instead implement a sharp progressive turn to win back voters who are deserting Labor for the Green Party.

“The prime minister must now meet the moment and set out the change our country needs,” she said. “Change our economic agenda to prioritize making people better off, change how we run our party so that all voices are listened to, and change how we do politics.

“Labor exists to make working people better off. That is not happening fast enough, and it needs to change — now.”

Meanwhile, Health Secretary Wes Streeting has told Starmer he is preparing to make a bid for the top job should the prime minister resign or be forced from office, The Telegraph reported Sunday.

The favorite candidate of the “soft left,” Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham, has been blocked by Labor’s National Executive Committee from standing as a parliamentary candidate in a move engineered by Starmer in January.

But Rayner on Sunday called for Starmer to lift Burnham’s ban in the greater interests of the party and the country.

Keir Starmer is facing renewed calls for resignation after fresh revelations surrounding the appointment and vetting of former UK ambassador to the United States Peter Mandelson. The controversy has reignited scrutiny over governance standards inside the Labour government, coming at a politically sensitive time just months after Labour’s landslide election victory in 2024.

The Vetting Controversy:
The core of the scandal centres on reports that Mandelson did not properly pass security vetting before being appointed as ambassador. Despite this, official communications suggested that clearance had been confirmed. Downing Street has since dismissed a senior Foreign Office official, intensifying questions about how the appointment was handled and who within government was aware of the vetting status.

Political Fallout Inside Government:
The issue has exposed tensions within the Labour Party, with some lawmakers expressing concern over administrative failures while others defend the Prime Minister. Senior minister Darren Jones said Starmer was “furious” about not being informed of the vetting issues, while acknowledging serious breakdowns in communication between departments.

Opposition Pressure and Leadership Questions:
Opposition figures, including Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch, have accused Starmer of misleading Parliament and questioned his credibility. The central allegation is whether the Prime Minister knowingly misrepresented the status of Mandelson’s clearance when defending the appointment. These accusations have intensified calls for resignation from political rivals.

Wider Political Context:
The controversy comes at a politically sensitive moment for Starmer, as Labour prepares for key local elections across England, Scotland, and Wales. The government is also managing broader foreign policy challenges, including Britain’s positioning in global conflicts involving the United States and Middle East tensions, adding further pressure on leadership stability.

Institutional and Governance Concerns:
Beyond individual accountability, the scandal has raised broader concerns about administrative competence within the Foreign Office and Downing Street. The dismissal of senior officials has highlighted breakdowns in communication and vetting procedures, raising questions about how high-level diplomatic appointments are approved and overseen.

Analysis:
The Mandelson vetting scandal has evolved from a procedural controversy into a wider test of political authority and administrative control for Starmer. While there is no clear evidence yet that the Prime Minister deliberately misled Parliament, the perception of mismanagement and lack of oversight has created significant political vulnerability.

At its core, the issue reflects a deeper challenge of governance: maintaining institutional trust while managing complex bureaucratic systems. Even if the government survives immediate calls for resignation, the damage is likely to linger, particularly if further inconsistencies emerge. With elections approaching and internal party tensions rising, Starmer’s ability to project control and competence will be central to whether this episode becomes a temporary setback or a longer-term political liability.