• Conservative nationalist, 64, picked to lead ruling party.
• Investors wary of spending designed to win back voters.
• Takaichi defeated moderate Koizumi, a political scion.

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.

The former internal affairs minister, a conservative nationalist with an expansionary agenda, is expected to replace Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba since the LDP is the largest in parliament.

A vote in parliament to choose a prime minister 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 US 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.

• 1st Circuit upholds nationwide injunction blocking policy.
• 9th Circuit similarly held Trump’s order is unconstitutional.
• Trump administration wants Supreme Court to decide the issue.

President Donald Trump’s effort to curtail birthright citizenship was declared unconstitutional by a second US appeals court on Friday, handing him another defeat on a core piece of his hardline immigration agenda whose ultimate fate may lie with the US Supreme Court.

A three-judge panel of the Boston-based 1st US Circuit Court of Appeals upheld injunctions won by Democratic-led states and immigrant rights advocates that have stopped the Republican president’s executive order from taking effect nationwide.

Trump’s order, issued on his first day back in office on January 20, directs agencies to refuse to recognise the citizenship of US-born children who do not have at least one parent who is an American citizen or lawful permanent resident, also known as a “green card” holder.

US Circuit Judge David Barron said Trump’s order violated the US Constitution’s 14th Amendment, which states that anyone born in the United States is considered a citizen. He said the length of the court’s 100-page ruling should not be mistaken for a sign that the fundamental question was difficult.

“It is not, which may explain why it has been more than a century since a branch of our government has made as concerted an effort as the Executive Branch now makes to deny Americans their birthright,” Barron wrote in an opinion joined by two judges similarly appointed by Democratic presidents

White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said the court had misinterpreted the 14th Amendment.

“We look forward to being vindicated by the Supreme Court,” she said in a statement.

The 1st Circuit was reviewing rulings by US District Judges Leo Sorokin in Boston and Joseph Laplante in Concord, New Hampshire, who earlier this year in separate cases blocked Trump’s order from being implemented.

The 1st Circuit’s decision came after another appeals court, the San Francisco-based 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals, in July similarly upheld a nationwide injunction blocking Trump’s order from taking effect on the grounds that it violated the citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment.

The administration last week asked the US Supreme Court to hear its appeal in that case and a related one. If the Supreme Court agrees, it would mark the second time the litigation is before the high court, after its 6-3 conservative majority in June limited the power of judges to block that and other actions by Trump on a nationwide basis.

The Supreme Court at that time did not weigh in on the validity of Trump’s birthright citizenship order. But in three cases where judges had declared it unconstitutional, the court limited the ability of judges to issue so-called universal injunctions and directed lower courts that had blocked Trump’s policy nationally to reconsider the scope of their orders.

The Supreme Court’s ruling opened the door to Trump’s order taking effect in parts of the country. Yet judges have repeatedly since then kept blocking it nationwide.

Those judges include Sorokin, who reaffirmed his original decision to halt the policy nationwide, and Laplante, who issued a new injunction in a newly-filed nationwide class action, a vehicle the Supreme Court’s ruling suggested was permissible.

• US Defence Secretary  Hegseth confirms death.  
• Alleges without evidence that boat was carrying drugs.
• Strike is at least fourth in recent weeks in southern Caribbean.

The United States killed four people in a strike against a vessel allegedly carrying illegal drugs just off the coast of Venezuela, US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth said on Friday, at least the fourth such attack in recent weeks.

The strike is the latest example of President Donald Trump’s efforts to use US military power in new, and often legally contentious, ways, from deploying active-duty US troops in Los Angeles to carrying out counter-terrorism strikes against drug trafficking suspects.

Hegseth said Friday’s strike was carried out in international waters and that all of the people killed were men. He said the vessel was transporting “substantial amounts of narcotics – headed to America to poison our people.”

“These strikes will continue until the attacks on the American people are over!!!!,” Hegseth said in a post on X.

In a nearly 40-second video shared by Hegseth, a vessel can be seen moving through the water before a web of projectiles fall on the boat and the surrounding water, causing the boat to explode on impact.

Hegseth said, without providing evidence, that the intelligence “without a doubt” confirmed that the vessel was carrying drugs and that the people on board were “narco-terrorists.” He did not disclose the amount or type of the alleged drugs on board the vessel.

Trump, also without providing evidence, said the boat had enough drugs to kill 25,000 to 50,000 people.

The Venezuelan communications ministry did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

Military buildup

In the past, counter-drug operations have been generally carried out by the US Coast Guard, the main US maritime law enforcement agency, not the US military.

But earlier this week, the Pentagon disclosed to Congress in a notification reviewed by Reuters that Trump has determined the United States is engaged in “a non-international armed conflict” with drug cartels. The document aimed to explain the Trump administration’s legal rationale for unleashing US military force in the Caribbean.

Some former military lawyers say the legal explanations given by the Trump administration for killing suspected drug traffickers at sea instead of apprehending them fail to satisfy requirements under the law of war.

Trump has said his administration is also considering attacking drug cartels “coming by land”, actions that could raise further legal questions.

A large US military buildup is taking place in the southern Caribbean. In addition to F-35 aircraft in Puerto Rico, there are eight US warships in the region, carrying thousands of sailors and marines, and one nuclear-powered submarine.

The Trump administration has provided scant information on the previous strikes, including the identities of those killed or details about the cargo.

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has repeatedly alleged that the US is hoping to drive him from power. Washington in August doubled its reward for information leading to Maduro’s arrest to $50 million, accusing him of links to drug trafficking and criminal groups that Maduro denies.