Japan’s ruling party will elect its new leader Friday, and the winner will become the country’s next prime minister.

Out of a record nine candidates, three frontrunners are fighting a very close race that will likely end in a runoff vote.

The winner will take the helm of the world’s fourth-largest economy at a time of rising living costs, exacerbated by the weak yen and high inflation, as Japan faces growing security challenges in the region and friction with neighbors including China.

Among the favorites vying to lead the long-ruling, scandal-plagued Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) is Sanae Takaichi, the conservative economic security minister who could become the nation’s first woman prime minister; Shinjiro Koizumi, a charismatic young surfer who hails from a popular political dynasty; and former defense minister Shigeru Ishiba, who is on his fifth and final bid for the top job.

The conservative LDP has ruled Japan almost continuously since the party’s founding in 1955. Owing to its majority in the lower house, the LDP’s chosen candidate will be approved by Japan’s parliament, the Diet, when it convenes in October.

General elections are scheduled for next year, but the winning candidate could choose to call a snap election before then. Some reports suggest this could happen even before the US presidential election in November.

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida is not in the running after his surprise announcement last month that he would step down following a series of political scandals that fueled calls for him to resign.

The winner will be tasked with improving the LDP’s image ahead of those general elections.

The ruling party has in recent months been embroiled in one of Japan’s biggest political scandals in decades.

Two of the most influential factions in the LDP have been accused of failing to properly declare their income and expenditure and, in some instances, allegedly rerouting political funds to lawmakers as kickbacks.

Scandals surrounding several high-ranking officials haven’t helped, with some accused of involvement with election law violations or of offensive past comments against minorities.

Kishida had tried to contain the damage, replacing several cabinet ministers last year and abolishing his own party faction.

With the upcoming US presidential election, the new prime minister will navigate Japan’s relations with a new American leader at a time of growing security challenges in Asia, including an increasingly assertive China and a belligerent North Korea.

Partnership with Japan has long been central to US strategy in the Asia-Pacific region, and Kishida this year expanded Tokyo’s defense cooperation with its key ally.

“It’s safe to assume that Ishiba, Takaichi, and Koizumi will do quite well, but I really cannot say who out of those three will win the race,” Yu Uchiyama, a professor of politics at Tokyo University, told Reuters. “I don’t think we’ll know until the very last moment.”

The candidates

If Takaichi, 63, wins it would be a significant moment for Japan, where men continue to dominate politics and boardrooms.

But such a victory would not necessarily herald a new progressive era. The political veteran is a staunch conservative from the party’s right wing and has promised to prioritize economic growth. She has also opposed legislation that could allow married women to keep their maiden names, and has described Margaret Thatcher, the conservative late former British leader, as a role model.

She is a protégé of the late former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and a supporter of his eponymous economic policies, and is similarly hawkish on security issues, favoring a revision of the country’s pacifist constitution.

Takaichi’s visits to Tokyo’s Yasukuni Shrine – which honors 2.4 million of Japan’s war dead, including convicted war criminals – have triggered protests from South Korea and China, victims of the country’s expansionist aggression during the first half of the 20th century.

Her plans to boost Japan’s economy include lowering interest rates, after the Bank of Japan hiked rates this year, and she has called for “strategic” fiscal spending to increase jobs and household incomes, according to Reuters.

Koizumi, 43, is the US-educated, charismatic son of popular former prime minister Junichiro Koizumi, and could be Japan’s youngest prime minister of the post-war period.

Koizumi has presented himself as a reformer – much like his father – and has promised to call a snap general election. He said he would continue the economic policies of outgoing leader Kishida.

Critics have pointed to his lack of experience in domestic politics and international relations, and an economic plan considered thin on details.

But Koizumi’s star power has made him popular with the public, especially among young voters and women.

He has supported legislation that could allow married women to keep their maiden names, and is in favor of women acceding to the imperial throne, something currently not permitted in Japan. Koizumi made headlines when he became the first cabinet member in the country to take paternity leave – only two weeks, but a significant move as Japan’s work culture means many new fathers don’t take any.

Ishiba, 67, is a veteran politician and serious about security issues. He has said Japan should reduce its dependence on nuclear energy in favor of renewables, and has called for an Asian version of the NATO security bloc to counter threats from China and North Korea.

In a political culture that prizes conformity, Ishiba has long been something of an outlier, willing to criticize and go against his own party. That willingness to speak out made him powerful enemies within the LDP but endeared him to more grassroots members and the public.

He sits on the more progressive wing of the conservative party.

Towns along Mexico’s southwestern coast are dealing with torrential rain, flooding and landslides after tropical storm John strengthened back into a Category 1 hurricane on Thursday, according to the National Hurricane Center.

John is considered a “zombie” storm – a term referring to systems that dissipate before strengthening back into a storm. After slamming into Mexico as a deadly Category 3 hurricane on Monday night, it dissipated before returning as a hurricane, battering Mexico’s Pacific coast. Even after initially dissipating, remnants of the storm continued to move along the coast, bringing continuous rainfall.

In the resort city of Acapulco, which still hasn’t fully recovered from the destruction of Hurricane Otis last year, several neighborhoods were flooded and residents in at-risk areas were told to evacuate to temporary shelters. Parts of the city have received over 500mm of rain this week, and 431mm over just the past 24 hours.

A video posted on social media shows a taxi being carried away by the raging floodwaters with people still inside. The car eventually came to a stop and the passengers were carried away to safety by authorities nearby.

Emergency workers have been deployed to the city with rafts and boats to rescue those trapped by the rising waters, Guerrero Governor Evelyn Salgado Pineda said.

Officials have suspended operations at the Acapulco airport and schools across the state have been ordered to close until further notice.

In rural towns around Acapulco, residents have reported temporary power outages from the rain. Some markets have closed, preventing people from buying critical supplies to deal with the storm.

The renewed hurricane is still expected to bring “very heavy to extraordinary” amounts of rain, strong winds and high waves in the southwestern part of the country, the Mexican National Water Commission said in a statement on Thursday.

Along Guerrero’s Benito Juárez municipality, a river has started overflowing from a section of its bank, with water levels almost reaching the height of a bridge overhead. Residents fear it could flood parts of the town of San Jerónimo. Officials there are urging people to avoid approaching the riverbank and bridge.

Hurricane John was located about 120 km west of Zihuatanejo, Guerrero at noon ET on Thursday, with maximum sustained winds of 120 km per hour.

The storm is expected to drop 10 to 20 inches of rain across the states of Guerrero and Michoacán through Friday, and up to six inches across Colima and western Oaxaca.

When award-winning actress Meryl Streep spoke on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly about cats, squirrels and birds, she wasn’t making a point about hunters and prey.

She was comparing all three with women and girls in Afghanistan – and pointing out that the animals have more rights.

“A cat may feel the sun on her face. She may chase a squirrel into the park… A bird may sing in Kabul, but a girl may not, and a woman may not in public. This is extraordinary,” Streep said on Monday. “This is a suppression of the natural law. This is odd.”

As Streep’s words ricocheted around social media, four countries stepped forward to announce “unprecedented” action against the ruling Taliban for its “systematic oppression” of women and girls.

Germany, Australia, Canada and the Netherlands on Thursday accused the hardline Islamist group of violating the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW).

The convention was ratified by the previous Afghan government in 2003, well before the Taliban re-seized power three years ago after the withdrawal of the United States and its allies following a 20-year war.

“We know that women and girls of Afghanistan are effectively being erased from public life by the various edicts the Taliban have issued,” Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong told reporters in New York.

“The steps we are taking with Germany, Canada and the Netherlands are unprecedented.”

Tightening restrictions

Since taking power, the Taliban has gradually tightened restrictions on women and girls.

They are no longer allowed to work or study beyond grade 6. Their bodies must be fully covered, and they are forbidden to look at men they are not related to by blood or marriage and vice versa.

The Taliban’s latest edicts last month, referred to by Streep, include the demand for women and girls to remain silent in public.

According to the Taliban’s own strict interpretation of Islam, a woman’s voice is deemed intimate and so should not be heard singing, reciting, or reading out loud.

This systematic oppression of women and girls, also alleged by the UN, has fueled a mental health crisis in Afghanistan’s female population.

Depression among women and girls is rising, according to health experts and rights activists – leading to a surge in suicide and suicide attempts.

Human Rights Watch says the legal move by the four Western nations could lead to proceedings at the International Court of Justice in The Hague.

As a signatory to CEDAW, Afghanistan is expected to respond to the complaint.

However, the document was signed by the previous government, and so far, the Taliban has shown no sign of changing its stance despite international condemnation.

The Taliban government has yet to respond to the CEDAW action.

“Erasure of an entire gender”

Fawzia Koofi, a former Afghan member of parliament, told Amanpour the Taliban had “failed to understand that Afghanistan has transformed.”

Despite the Taliban’s efforts to erase them, she said women were fighting to have their voices heard.

After the Taliban banned women’s voices in public, some posted videos of themselves to social media, singing in defiance.

“That is a sign of a different Afghanistan that the Taliban don’t get,” said Koofi. “Today, every woman in Afghanistan is a journalist, every woman in Afghanistan is a TV, by talking about what their experience is.”

Fereshta Abbasi, Afghanistan researcher at Human Rights Watch, said the action by Germany and its partners may mark the beginning of the path to justice for the Taliban’s “egregious human rights violations against Afghan women and girls.”

“It is vitally important for other countries to register their support for this action and for them to involve Afghan women as the process moves forward,” she said.

Hong Kong will roll out the red carpet Thursday to receive two giant pandas gifted by the Chinese government to mark 75 years of Communist Party rule, part of a citywide push by authorities to deepen patriotism.

An An and Ke Ke, both five years old, are expected to land shortly after noon at Hong Kong International Airport, where they will be greeted with a welcoming ceremony.

But fans hoping to catch a glimpse of them will have to wait for at least a month, as they will spend the next 30 days in quarantine in the southern Chinese city.

Elite police motorcyclists, who normally escort visiting VIPs, will reportedly usher them to their new home across town at Ocean Park, where the pair will join four other pandas at the theme park.

An An and Ke Ke arrive from a breeding center in mainland China’s Sichuan province. Staff in the metropolis of Chengdu sprung into action as early as 2 a.m. to ferry the pandas to the airport for the 1,350-kilometer (840-mile) journey, carried in crates with a supply of snacks.

They used forklifts to load the duo onto a truck, as a line of staff bade farewell from the curb, according to footage from Hong Kong’s public broadcaster RTHK.

A panda keeper from Ocean Park has been in Chengdu since July to enable the bears to acclimatize to his scent and voice, the theme park said on its Instagram page, adding that staff had also introduced bamboo from southern China to their diet.

An An, a male weighing 130 kilograms, is “strong, nimble and clever,” while Ke Ke, a female weighing 100 kilograms, is “good at climbing, gentle and cute,” the city’s Chief Executive John Lee told at a press conference on Tuesday.

They bring the total number of pandas in the city to six, joining Le Le and Ying Ying who were gifted to Hong Kong in 2007. Ying Ying made headlines in August by giving birth to twins, making her the oldest known first-time panda mother.

‘Panda diplomacy’

While these animals are not leaving China, their journey does carry an undertone of “panda diplomacy.” Beijing loans pandas to more than 20 countries as envoys of friendship, which is at times seen as a barometer of relations.

Similarly, An An and Ke Ke’s arrival in Hong Kong has a political objective, coming as Hong Kong officials drum up enthusiasm for the celebration of the 75th anniversary of the of People’s Republic of China on October 1.

“I would like to once again express my sincere gratitude to the central government for its care and support for Hong Kong for gifting two beloved and energetic giant pandas to Hong Kong,” Lee said on Tuesday.

Activists in Hong Kong used to protest for greater democracy on October 1. But crackdowns by city authorities have left opposition figures largely in jail or exile since Beijing imposed a sweeping national security law in 2020.

Chinese and Hong Kong officials say the law has helped return the financial hub to stability following mass protests in 2019. They have vowed to instill a new culture of Chinese patriotism among Hong Kongers and crack down on what they call “foreign interference.”

The US government, its allies and human rights groups have criticized the national security crackdown for eroding individual freedoms and ending the international business hub’s once outspoken and freewheeling culture.

Ahead of this year’s celebrations, Chinese flags are up in many parts of the city alongside giant billboards hailing the anniversary with preparations underway for a litany of events aimed at boosting patriotism, including a lengthy fireworks show on Tuesday evening.

Kevin Yeung, the city’s minister for culture, sports and tourism, said Wednesday he hoped the pandas’ arrival “can make Hong Kong feel more deeply about the care of the central government.”

The killing of a Japanese schoolboy in China has sparked an outpouring of anger and soul searching over the rise of extreme nationalism in the country, with some accusing the government of fanning anti-Japan sentiment and even the “education of hatred.”

The tragic loss of a young life has once again thrown a spotlight on the complex relationship between Asia’s two biggest economies, which has been shaped by their wartime history and changing power dynamics brought about by China’s rise.

The 10-year-old, born to a Japanese father and Chinese mother, was fatally stabbed on his way to school by a man in the southern city of Shenzhen last Wednesday. It was the second knife attack on Japanese children and third assault on foreigners in China in recent months.

Authorities in Beijing have refused to disclose the motive in each case, describing them as “isolated incidents” that could happen in any country.

But to some Shenzhen residents and online commentators, the daylight killing in one of China’s most cosmopolitan cities has prompted urgent reflection on the role of nationalistic propaganda and xenophobia in fueling such attacks.

“As a Chinese, I feel heartbroken, outraged and ashamed,” said a Shenzhen resident who laid a white rose outside the Japanese school following the boy’s death last Thursday.

“This kind of violence is the result of long-term education of hatred … There’s no good in instilling hatred from a young age,” said the resident, who requested anonymity for fear of reprisals.

The resident’s comments echo a groundswell of commentaries and online posts calling for a reckoning on anti-Japan sentiment, many of which have since been censored by Chinese social media platforms.

“The ‘anti-Japan rhetoric’ based on nationalist narratives has increased to dominate the internet,” a Chinese blogger said in a now-removed viral article on social platform WeChat. “These online remarks … will inevitably spill over from the screen and impact the ‘real world,’” they wrote.

The killing has shaken the Japanese community in China, with some of Japan’s biggest companies offering to repatriate staff members and their families. The development risks undermining Beijing’s recent efforts to court Japanese businesses to expand investment in China, amid a record exodus of foreign capital from the country’s flagging economy.

Historic anger

Japan has long been a target of Chinese nationalist ire, rooted in its brutal invasion and occupation of China in World War II. Generations of Chinese grew up learning about the atrocities committed by Japanese soldiers in school textbooks and on state television.

That feeling of resentment is further fueled by territorial disputes in the East China Sea and geopolitical tensions, as Beijing seethes at what it sees as Japan’s deepening alliance with the United States intended to contain its rise.

China has ramped up patriotic education under leader Xi Jinping, who frequently evokes the country’s “century of humiliation” by imperial powers to rally public support behind his nationalistic agenda to assert Chinese power on the world stage.

The fatal stabbing of the Japanese boy coincided with the anniversary of Japan’s invasion of northeast China, an emotionally charged day commemorated with sirens and moments of silence across the country.

The sensitive timing has further fueled speculation that the attack was motivated by hatred.

A rare statement issued last week by dozens of Chinese people living in Japan condemned the assault and called for reflections on the “underlying causes.”

“The extreme nationalist hate education against Japan has been prevalent in China for a long time. It has obscured some Chinese people’s understanding of Japan, and even indulged ignorance and evil,” the statement said.

Signed by intellectuals, professionals, businesspeople and students with their real names, the statement mounted a sharp criticism of Beijing’s policies and vowed to change the “disturbing situation.”

Beijing has denied the accusations.

“There is no so-called Japan-hating education in China,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said Monday.

“We advocate learning from history, not to perpetuate hatred, but to prevent the tragedy of war from happening again.”

Nationalistic clickbait

The ruling Chinese Communist Party has long cultivated nationalism to shore up legitimacy.

Under Xi, China’s heavily censored social media has seen a surge of ultra-nationalistic, anti-Japan rhetoric. In some cases, the anger appears to have been fanned by the Chinese government and state media to exert pressure on Tokyo, such as the coordinated outrage last year over Japan’s release of treated wastewater from the Fukushima nuclear plant.

In other instances, nationalism is used as clickbait by online influencers, who often peddle jingoistic rhetoric and conspiracy theories to compete for traffic. A Chinese man recently went viral after posting a video of himself defacing the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo, a controversial symbol of Japan’s military legacy that honors the country’s war dead, including some convicted of war crimes.

Some of that online hatred has turned to Japanese schools in China’s biggest cities with a large presence of Japanese businesses and workers. Since last year, hundreds of videos fanning hostility and suspicion of these facilities have emerged on Chinese video-streaming sites. Many called for the schools to be shut down, and some even accused them of secretly training Japanese spies.

“(Conspiracies against) Japanese schools have become a cheat code for viral content,” a blogger wrote on WeChat last week, after analyzing nearly 300 clips on video platform Kuaishou, which he said drew more than 2 million upvotes.

Following the article, Kuaishou suspended more than 90 accounts that fanned hostility between China and Japan, the platform said in a statement Saturday.

Some have voiced concerns about the effect of growing online xenophobia on Chinese children.

Zhang, a teaching assistant at a private school in Shanghai, said she noticed children as young as 6 portraying Japanese as villains.

‘Absolutely unacceptable’

On Monday, Japan’s Foreign Minister Yoko Kamikawa urged Beijing to crack down on online anti-Japan posts and ensure the safety of Japanese citizens in a meeting with China’s top diplomat Wang Yi in New York.

“Groundless, malicious and anti-Japanese social media postings and others, including those targeting Japanese schools, directly affect the safety of children and are absolutely unacceptable,” Kamikawa told Wang, demanding a thorough crackdown as soon as possible, the Associated Press reported, citing a statement from the Japanese Foreign Ministry.

Wang, according to the Chinese Foreign Ministry, vowed to protect the safety of all foreign citizens in China and urged Japan to “remain calm and rational” to avoid “policization and escalation.”

A Japanese mother of two in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou said her husband’s automotive company had given families the option to return home, but her family decided to stay.

The mother, who asked not to be named due to the sensitivity of the issue, said the extreme nationalist rhetoric online did not represent the views of Chinese people she has met during her two years living in China.

“I’m almost torn in the middle. I’m so sad about the tragedy. But at the same time, I’m also so sad that so many Japanese people are hating China about this one incident.

“One crazy person can do crazy things, doesn’t mean everyone in the country is crazy. I’ve only received love and kindness from the Chinese people I met in Guangzhou.”

She said some of her Chinese friends who live in nearby Shenzhen went to lay flowers at the Japanese school.

By Friday evening, the school had received more than 1,000 bouquets, according to the Japanese consulate in Guangzhou – including from residents of faraway cities.

Some tributes carried a note of apology. “Child, I’m sorry, please rest in peace,” said a note signed from “a mother in Shenzhen.”

“Wish there’s no hatred in heaven,” another reads.

A pair of blood-spattered trousers in a miso tank and an allegedly forced confession helped send Iwao Hakamata to death row more than five decades ago.

Now, the world’s longest-serving death row convict has a chance to clear his name.

A Japanese court on Thursday is set to hand down its verdict in the retrial of 88-year-old Hakamata, who was sentenced to death in 1968 for murdering a family in a marathon legal saga that’s brought global scrutiny to Japan’s criminal justice system and fueled calls to abolish the death penalty in the country.

During the retrial, Hakamata’s lawyers argued new information proved his innocence, while prosecutors claimed there was enough evidence to confirm he should be hanged for the crime.

Once a professional boxer, Hakamata retired in 1961 and got a job at a soybean processing plant in Shizuoka, central Japan – a choice that would mar the rest of his life.

When Hakamata’s boss, his boss’s wife, and their two children were found stabbed to death in their home in June five years later, Hakamata, then a divorcée who also worked at a bar, became the police’s prime suspect.

After days of relentless questioning, Hakamata initially admitted to the charges against him, but later changed his plea, arguing police had forced him to confess by beating and threatening him.

He was sentenced to death in a 2-1 decision by judges, despite repeatedly alleging that the police had fabricated evidence. The one dissenting judge stepped down from the bar six months later, demoralized by his inability to stop the sentencing.

Hakamata, who has maintained his innocence ever since, would go on to spend more than half his life waiting to be hanged before new evidence led to his release a decade ago.

After a DNA test on blood found on the trousers revealed no match to Hakamata or the victims, the Shizuoka District Court ordered a retrial in 2014. Because of his age and fragile mental state, Hakamata was freed as he awaited his day in court.

The Tokyo High Court initially scrapped the request for a retrial for unknown reasons, but in 2023 agreed to grant Hakamata a second chance on an order from Japan’s Supreme Court.

Retrials are rare in Japan, where 99% of cases result in convictions, according to the Ministry of Justice website.

A justice system under scrutiny

Even as his case is closely watched around the world, a possible acquittal would not likely register with Hakamata, who after decades of imprisonment has seen a decline in his mental health, and is “living in his own world,” said his sister Hideko, 91, who has long campaigned for his innocence.

“Sometimes he smiles happily, but that’s when he’s in his delusion,” Hideko said. “We have not even discussed the trial with Iwao because of his inability to recognize reality.”

But for Hakamata’s supporters, the case is about much more than one man.

It has raised questions about Japan’s reliance on confessions to get convictions. And some say it’s one of the reasons why the country should do away with the death penalty.

“I’m against the death penalty,” Hideko said. “Convicts are also human beings.”

Japan is the only G7 country outside of the United States to retain capital punishment, though it did not perform any executions in 2023, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

Hiroshi Ichikawa, a former prosecutor who was not involved in Hakamata’s case, said historically Japanese prosecutors have been encouraged to get confessions before looking for supporting evidence, even if it means threatening or manipulating defendants to get them to admit guilt.

An emphasis on confessions is what allows Japan to maintain such a high conviction rate, Ichikawa said, in a country where an acquittal can severely hurt a prosecutor’s career.

Japan’s Ministry of Justice said it could not comment on an ongoing case.

A long fight for exoneration

For 46 years, Hakamata was held behind bars after being convicted on the basis of the stained clothing and his confession, which he and his lawyers say was given under duress.

“The Japanese judicial system, especially at that time, was a system that allowed investigative agencies to take advantage of their surreptitious nature to commit illegal or investigative crimes,” Ogawa said.

Chiara Sangiorgio, Death Penalty Advisor at Amnesty International, said Hakamata’s case is “emblematic of the many issues with the criminal justice (system) in Japan” and that his conviction was “riddled with flaws and recognized as unreliable” by the fact that he was granted a retrial.

Death row prisoners in Japan are typically detained in solitary confinement with limited contact with the outside world, Sangiorgio said. Executions are “shrouded in secrecy” with little to no warning, and families and lawyers are usually notified only after the execution has taken place.

Despite his poor mental health, over the past decade, Hakamata has gotten to enjoy the small pleasures that come with living freely.

In February, he adopted two cats. “Iwao began to pay attention to the cats, worry about them, and take care of them, which was a big change,” Hideko said.

Every afternoon, a group of Hakamata’s supporters take him out for a drive, where Hideko says Hakamata “buys a large amount of pastries and juice.”

While Hakamata may not understand the significance of Thursday’s ruling, his family and throngs of supporters may finally see the world’s longest-serving death row prisoner declared innocent, once and for all.

“I hope he will continue to live a long and free life,” Hideko said.

A wildfire raging in Quito has forced residents to flee their homes and Ecuador’s president to make an emergency return from abroad, as heavy smoke spreads across whole neighborhoods of the capital city.

“I had two refrigerators, stoves, gas tanks, beds, dining tables, everything. As you can see, it’s all on fire … It’s terrible,” said Maria Sarango, who lost her home and all her possessions to the fire in Quito.

Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa canceled his visit to the United Nations in New York this week, where he was set to address the General Assembly, saying Tuesday night that he would return home to lead government response efforts.

Over 200 firefighters with 65 vehicles are trying to put out the fires, supported by at least 30 water tankers, Quito Mayor Pabel Muñoz said.

Schools were closed on Wednesday, Muñoz added, urging citizens to stay indoors to avoid health problems from the poor air quality.

“I left last night, at 9 p.m. I left because I was already suffocating, and it was affecting my eyes, so I left with my husband and we went another way and I came back this morning,” said a Quito resident named Margarita, who also evacuated.

Authorities suspect the fire was started intentionally and are investigating the situation as a “criminal and terrorist” act, according to the mayor.

“After the scourges that occurred yesterday in different places in the city, the Ecuadorian police are carrying out investigations to locate and capture those responsible for these events. We will not rest until we locate the people who put the safety of citizens at risk and damage the fauna and flora of our city,” the National Police said Wednesday as they called for citizens to provide information.

The out-of-control fire has come as Ecuador faces severe drought, causing authorities to impose scheduled power cuts in parts of the country.

President Vladimir Putin warned the West on Wednesday that Russia could use nuclear weapons if it was struck with conventional missiles, and that Moscow would consider any assault on it supported by a nuclear power to be a joint attack.

The decision to change Russia’s official nuclear doctrine is the Kremlin’s answer to deliberations in the United States and Britain about whether or not to give Ukraine permission to fire conventional Western missiles into Russia.

Putin, opening a meeting of Russia’s Security Council, said that the changes were in response to a swiftly changing global landscape which had thrown up new threats and risks for Russia.

The 71-year-old Kremlin chief, the primary decision-maker on Russia’s vast nuclear arsenal, said he wanted to underscore one key change in particular.

“It is proposed that aggression against Russia by any non-nuclear state, but with the participation or support of a nuclear state, be considered as their joint attack on the Russian Federation,” Putin said.

“The conditions for Russia’s transition to the use of nuclear weapons are also clearly fixed,” Putin said, adding that Moscow would consider such a move if it detected the start of a massive launch of missiles, aircraft or drones against it.

Russia reserved the right to also use nuclear weapons if it or ally Belarus were the subject of aggression, including by conventional weapons, Putin said.

Putin said the clarifications were carefully calibrated and commensurate with the modern military threats facing Russia – confirmation that the nuclear doctrine was changing.

Russia’s current published nuclear doctrine, set out in a 2020 decree by Putin, says Russia may use nuclear weapons in case of a nuclear attack by an enemy or a conventional attack that threatens the existence of the state.

The innovations outlined by Putin include a widening of the threats under which Russia would consider a nuclear strike, the inclusion of ally Belarus under the nuclear umbrella and the idea that a rival nuclear power supporting a conventional strike on Russia would also be considered to be attacking it.

The United States in 2022 was so concerned about the possible use of tactical nuclear weapons by Russia that it warned Putin over the consequences of using such weapons, according to Central Intelligence Agency Director Bill Burns.

Confrontation

The 2-1/2-year-old Ukraine war has triggered the gravest confrontation between Russia and the West since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis – considered to be the closest the two Cold War superpowers came to intentional nuclear war.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has been urging Kyiv’s allies for months to let Ukraine fire Western missiles, including long-range US ATACMS and British Storm Shadows, deep into Russia to limit Moscow’s ability to launch attacks.

With Ukraine losing key towns to gradually advancing Russian forces in the country’s east, the war is entering what Russian officials say is the most dangerous phase to date.

Zelensky has urged the West to cross and disregard Russia’s so-called “red lines,” and some Western allies have urged the United States to do just that, though Putin’s Russia, which controls just under one-fifth of Ukrainian territory, has warned that the West and Ukraine are risking a global war.

“Russia no longer has any instruments to intimidate the world apart from nuclear blackmail,” Andriy Yermak, Zelensky’s chief of staff, said in response to Putin’s remarks. “These instruments will not work.”

Putin, who casts the West as a decadent aggressor, and US President Joe Biden, who casts Russia as a corrupt autocracy and Putin as a killer, have both warned that a direct Russia-NATO confrontation could escalate into World War Three. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has also warned of the risk of nuclear war.

Russia is the world’s largest nuclear power. Together, Russia and the US control 88% of the world’s nuclear warheads.

In his remarks to Russia’s Security Council, a type of modern-day politburo of Putin’s most powerful officials including influential hawks, Putin said that work on amendments on changing the doctrine had been going on for the past year.

“The nuclear triad remains the most important guarantee of ensuring the security of our state and citizens, an instrument for maintaining strategic parity and balance of power in the world,” Putin said.

Russia, he said, would consider using nuclear weapons “upon receiving reliable information about the massive launch of aerospace attack vehicles and their crossing of our state border, meaning strategic or tactical aircraft, cruise missiles, drones, hypersonic and other aircraft.”

Pope Francis took the unusual decision Wednesday to expel 10 people – a bishop, priests and laypeople – from a troubled Catholic movement in Peru after a Vatican investigation uncovered “sadistic” abuses of power, authority and spirituality.

The move against the leadership of the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae, or Sodalitium of Christian Life, followed Francis’ decision last month to expel the group’s founder, Luis Figari, after he was found to have sodomized his recruits.

It was announced by the Peruvian Bishops Conference, which posted a statement from the Vatican embassy on its website.

The statement was astonishing because it listed abuses uncovered by the Vatican investigation that have rarely if ever been punished canonically — such as hacking someone’s communications — and cited the people the pope held responsible.

According to the statement, the Vatican investigators uncovered physical abuses “including with sadism and violence,” sect-like abuses of conscience, spiritual abuse, abuses of authority, economic abuses in administering church money and the “abuse in the exercise of the apostolate of journalism.”

The latter was presumably aimed at a Sodalitium-linked journalist who has attacked critics of the movement on social media.

Figari founded the movement in 1971 as a lay community to recruit “soldiers for God,” one of several Catholic societies born as a conservative reaction to the left-leaning liberation theology movement that swept through Latin America, starting in the 1960s. At its height, the group counted about 20,000 members across South America and the United States. It was enormously influential in Peru.

Victims of Figari’s abuses complained to the Lima archdiocese in 2011, though other claims against him reportedly date to 2000. But neither the local church nor the Holy See took concrete action until one of the victims, Pedro Salinas, wrote a book along with journalist Paola Ugaz detailing the twisted practices of the Sodalitium in 2015, entitled “Half Monks, Half Soldiers.”

An outside investigation ordered by Sodalitium later determined that Figari was “narcissistic, paranoid, demeaning, vulgar, vindictive, manipulative, racist, sexist, elitist and obsessed with sexual issues and the sexual orientation” of Sodalitium’s members.

The investigation, published in 2017, found that Figari sodomized his recruits and forced them to fondle him and one another. He liked to watch them “experience pain, discomfort and fear,” and humiliated them in front of others to enhance his control over them, the report found.

Still, the Holy See declined to expel Figari from the movement in 2017 and merely ordered him to live apart from the Sodalitium community in Rome and cease all contact with it. The Vatican was seemingly tied in knots by canon law that did not foresee such punishments for founders of religious communities who weren’t priests. Victims were outraged.

But according to the findings of the latest Vatican investigation, the abuses went beyond Figari, included Sodalitium clergy and also involved harassing and hacking the communications of their victims all the while covering up crimes committed as part of their official duties, according to the statement.

The investigation was carried out by the Vatican’s top sex crimes investigators, Maltese Archbishop Charles Scicluna and Monsignor Jordi Bertomeu, from the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, who travelled to Lima last year to take testimony from victims.

The highest-ranking person ordered expelled was Archbishop Jose Antonio Eguren, whom Francis already forced to resign as bishop of Piura in April over his record, after he sued Salinas and Ugaz for their reporting.

In addition to Figari’s own abuses, their reporting had exposed the alleged forced eviction of peasants on lands in Eguren’s diocese by a Sodalitium-linked real estate developer.

Ugaz, the journalist, welcomed the move to expel the 10 people and said the reference to Sodalitium hacking referred to her: She said her communications had been hacked in 2023 after she reported on the Sodalitium’s off-shore holdings and other financial dealings, and said she believed the group was trying to find out her sources.

“It is a demonstration that in Peru, the survivors would never have found justice and reparation (without Bertomeo and Scicluna) because the Sodalitium is an organization with a lot of political, social and economic power,” she said in a statement to The Associated Press.

The Vatican, in the statement, said the Peruvian bishops joined Francis in “seeking the forgiveness of the victims” while calling on the troubled movement to initiate a journey of justice and reparation.

Israel’s military chief told troops on Wednesday that its airstrikes in Lebanon were aiming to destroy Hezbollah’s infrastructure and to pave the way for a possible ground incursion by Israeli forces.

“You hear the jets overhead; we have been striking all day,” the head of Israel’s military, Herzi Halevi, told troops while visiting the country’s northern border with Lebanon.

“This is both to prepare the ground for your possible entry and to continue degrading Hezbollah.”

The goal of the incursion is to allow the tens of thousands of Israelis who have been displaced by cross-border fire in the north of the country to return to their homes, Halevi said.

“To achieve that, we are preparing the process of a maneuver,” he said. “It means your military boots, your maneuvering boots, will enter enemy territory, enter villages that Hezbollah has prepared as large military outposts.”

Entering into Lebanon “will show them what it means to face a professional, highly skilled and battle-experienced force,” Halevi said.

The comments come after Israel ramped up its airstrikes in Lebanon and shot down a missile that Hezbollah said it had aimed at the headquarters of Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency, near Tel Aviv – the first time the Iran-backed militant group has tried to strike so deeply into Israeli territory.

Earlier, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it was calling up two reserve brigades because of the conflict with Hezbollah. Israel’s top general in the north, Ori Gordin, had also warned the military “must be fully prepared for maneuvers.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his country “will not rest” until the northern residents can return home.

“I cannot detail everything we are doing, but I can tell you one thing: we are determined to return our residents in the north safely to their homes,” the prime minister said, amid Israel’s intense wave of airstrikes on Hezbollah targets in Lebanon.

“We are inflicting blows on Hezbollah that [they] did not imagine. We do it with power, we do it with guile. I promise you one thing – we will not rest until they come home,” he added.

Israel has drastically stepped up its strikes on Hezbollah targets in Lebanon this month, as it begins to pivot away from its nearly year-long war against Hamas in Gaza.

Last week, Israel made returning residents to their homes in the north an explicit war aim. The next day, hundreds of pagers belonging to Hezbollah militants exploded across Lebanon. The day after, Hezbollah walkie-talkies also exploded. The twin attacks killed dozens and injured thousands.

Israel did not say it was behind the attacks, but did claim responsibility for an airstrike on southern Beirut the next day, which killed the leader of Hezbollah’s elite Radwan Force, Ibrahim Aqil. This week, another airstrike on Beirut killed Ibrahim Qubaisi, a senior official who commanded Hezbollah’s missile units.

Reeling from the biggest-ever hits to its military structure, Hezbollah began to respond, firing hundreds of missiles into Israel over the past week, but Israel’s unrelenting escalations appear to have put the group on the back foot.

“You are coming in much stronger and far more experienced than they are,” Halevi told troops Wednesday. “You will go in, destroy the enemy there, and decisively destroy their infrastructure. These are the things that will allow us to safely return the residents of the north afterward.”