World
Japan’s Takaichi set to become country’s first female PM
Japan’s ruling party picked conservative nationalist Sanae Takaichi as its new head on Saturday, putting her on course to become the country’s first female prime minister.
The Liberal Democratic Party elected Takaichi, 64, to regain trust from a public angered by rising prices and drawn to opposition groups promising big stimulus and clampdowns on foreigners, Reuters reported.
A vote in parliament to choose a prime minister to replace Shigeru Ishiba is expected to be held on October 15.
PARTY IN CRISIS
The new LDP president is likely to succeed Shigeru Ishiba as leader of the world’s fourth-biggest economy because the party, which has governed Japan for almost all the postwar period, is the biggest in parliament. But this is not assured as the party and its coalition partner lost their majorities in both houses under Ishiba in the past year.
Takaichi, the only woman among the five LDP candidates, beat a challenge from the more moderate Shinjiro Koizumi, 44, who was bidding to become the country’s youngest leader in the modern era.
A former internal affairs minister with an expansionary economic agenda, Takaichi inherits a party in crisis.
Various other parties, including the fiscally expansionist Democratic Party for the People and the anti-immigration Sanseito have been steadily luring voters, especially younger ones, away from the LDP.
“Recently, I have heard harsh voices from across the country saying we don’t know what the LDP stands for anymore,” said Takaichi in her speech before the second-round vote.
“That sense of urgency drove me. I wanted to turn people’s anxieties about their daily lives and the future into hope,” she added.
Takaichi, who says her hero is Margaret Thatcher, Britain’s first female prime minister, offered a starker vision for change than Koizumi and is potentially more disruptive.
An advocate of late premier Shinzo Abe’s “Abenomics” strategy to jolt the economy with aggressive spending and easy monetary policy, she has previously criticised the Bank of Japan’s interest rate increases.
Such a policy shift could spook investors worried about one of the world’s biggest debt loads.
Takaichi has also raised the possibility of redoing an investment deal with U.S. President Donald Trump that lowered his punishing tariffs in return for Japanese taxpayer-backed investment.
Her nationalistic positions – such as her regular visits to the Yasukuni shrine to Japan’s war dead, viewed by some Asian neighbours as a symbol of its past militarism – may rile South Korea and China.
She also favours revising Japan’s pacifist postwar constitution and suggested this year that Japan could form a “quasi-security alliance” with Taiwan, the democratically governed island claimed by China.
If elected, Takaichi said she would travel overseas more regularly than her predecessor to spread the word that “Japan is Back!”
Takaichi is expected to hold a press conference around 0900 GMT.
World
Israeli attacks kill 31 Palestinians in Gaza, including children
At least 31 Palestinians, including six children, were killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza City and Khan Younis since early Saturday, according to medical sources cited by Al Jazeera.
The strikes came a day before Israel is scheduled to reopen the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt on Sunday, marking the first reopening of the border crossing since May 2024.
Gaza’s Government Media Office said that more than 500 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces since a United States-brokered ceasefire came into effect on October 10.
According to local health authorities, Israel’s military campaign in Gaza has killed at least 71,769 Palestinians and wounded 171,483 others since it began in October 2023. In Israel, at least 1,139 people were killed during the Hamas-led attacks on October 7, 2023, with approximately 250 people taken captive.
World
Guterres warns of UN’s ‘imminent financial collapse’
In his letter, Guterres said “decisions not to honour assessed contributions that finance a significant share of the approved regular budget have now been formally announced.”
The U.N. chief has told member states the organisation is at risk of “imminent financial collapse,” citing unpaid fees and a budget rule that forces the global body to return unspent money, a letter seen by Reuters on Friday showed.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has repeatedly spoken about the organisation’s worsening liquidity crisis but this is his starkest warning yet, and it comes as its main contributor the U.S. is retreating from multilateralism on numerous fronts.
“The crisis is deepening, threatening programme delivery and risking financial collapse. And the situation will deteriorate further in the near future,” Guterres wrote in a letter to ambassadors dated January 28.
The U.S. has slashed voluntary funding to U.N. agencies and refused to make mandatory payments to its regular and peacekeeping budgets.
U.S. President Donald Trump has described the U.N. as having “great potential” but said it is not fulfilling that, and he has launched a Board of Peace which some fear could undermine the older international body.
Founded in 1945, the U.N. has 193 member states and works to maintain international peace and security, promote human rights, foster social and economic development, and coordinate humanitarian aid.
In his letter, Guterres said “decisions not to honour assessed contributions that finance a significant share of the approved regular budget have now been formally announced.”
He did not say which state or states he was referring to, and a U.N. spokesperson was not immediately available for comment.
Under U.N. rules, contributions depend on the size of the economy of each member state. The U.S. accounts for 22% of the core budget followed by China with 20%.
But by the end of 2025 there was a record $1.57 billion in outstanding dues, Guterres said, without naming the nations that owed them.
“Either all Member States honour their obligations to pay in full and on time – or Member States must fundamentally overhaul our financial rules to prevent an imminent financial collapse,” he said.
U.N. officials say the U.S. currently owes $2.19 billion to the regular U.N. budget, another $1.88 billion for active peace-keeping missions and $528 million for past peace-keeping missions.
The U.S. State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the Guterres letter.
Guterres launched a reform task force last year, known as UN80, which seeks to cut costs and improve efficiency. To that end, states agreed to cut the 2026 budget by around 7% to $3.45 billion.
Still, Guterres warned in the letter that the organisation could run out of cash by July.
One of the problems is a rule now seen as antiquated whereby the global body has to credit back hundreds of millions of dollars in unspent dues to states each year.
“In other words, we are trapped in a Kafkaesque cycle expected to give back cash that does not exist,” said Guterres, referring to author Franz Kafka who wrote about oppressive bureaucratic processes.
World
Man sprays U.S. lawmaker Ilhan Omar with liquid, disrupting Minnesota event
Police arrested a man who sprayed Democratic U.S. Representative Ilhan Omar with a foul-smelling liquid in Minneapolis on Tuesday as she condemned the actions of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials in Minnesota.
Omar, the frequent target of political insults from President Donald Trump, was uninjured. A security guard immediately grabbed the man and took him to the ground, according to a Reuters witness and video of the town hall event, Reuters reported.
Police said they arrested the man for third-degree assault.
In her remarks, Omar was criticizing ICE and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, demanding that Noem resign after the recent shooting deaths of two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis during Trump’s immigration enforcement surge.
“ICE cannot be reformed, it cannot be rehabilitated, we must abolish ICE for good, and DHS Secretary Kristi Noem must resign or face impeachment,” Omar said, to applause.
Moments later, a man seated in a front row stepped toward her and sprayed her with the contents of what police described as a syringe, telling Omar, “You must resign.”
Omar defiantly took a few steps toward him, with her hand raised, before he was subdued.
She continued her remarks after a short break, resisting associates’ urging to seek medical attention, saying she just needed a napkin. Her office later issued a statement saying she was OK.
Forensic scientists were gathering evidence at the scene, Minneapolis police said in a statement.
A Reuters witness said the liquid smelled of ammonia and caused minor throat irritation.
“I learned at a young age, you don’t give in to threats,” Omar told the audience, after refusing to suspend the event. “You look them in the face and you stand strong.”
Trump has repeatedly targeted Omar in public remarks and social media posts, also taking aim at her Somali nationality.
“Ilhan Omar is garbage,” Trump said during a cabinet meeting in December. “She’s garbage. Her friends are garbage.”
Omar, 43, came to the United States as a 12-year-old girl and became a U.S. citizen in 2000.
On Tuesday, U.S. Capitol Police said its threat assessment cases rose in 2025 for the third year in a row, spiking nearly 58% from 2024.
In 2025, it investigated 14,938 instances of statements, behavior, and communications directed against members of Congress, their families, staff, and the Capitol complex, it added, up from 9,474 in 2024.
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