Japan gets new PM
Junichiro Koizumi has been elected Prime Minister of Japan in a parliamentary vote.
He was elected by votes in both houses of Japan's bicameral Parliament.
In the more powerful lower house, he won with 287 votes, easily above the 240 majority he needed. Opposition leader Yukio Hatoyama, who had 127, was next.
He won 138 votes in the upper house, to 59 for Hatoyama, head of the Democratic Party. Koizumi needed a 124-vote majority to win.
Koizumi swept to power having promised to reform the long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party and to pull Japan out of its decade-long economic slump.
He is the country's ninth premier in 10 years, after sweeping virtually all of the primaries among the party's rank-and-file.
Many in the party fear the slow economy and disgust over the scandals and gaffes that dogged Yoshiro Mori could translate into a big loss in Parliament elections in July.
