日本：四位內閣大臣因募款醜聞辭職

Four cabinet ministers in Japan resigned on Thursday due to a fundraising scandal involving the ruling party's most influential faction. Allegedly, over a five-year span ending in 2022, more than 500 million yen (£2. 8 million; $3. 4 million) was misappropriated into slush funds.

Tokyo prosecutors have initiated a corruption investigation, according to Nikkei. This scandal is the latest setback for Japan's Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and his increasingly unpopular government, which has seen a significant drop in approval ratings. The ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which has been in power almost continuously since 1955, saw its public support fall below 30% for the first time since 2012, as per an NHK survey conducted on Tuesday.

The public's dissatisfaction is due to rising inflation and Mr Kishida's handling of previous scandals. The four ministers who resigned were Hirokazu Matsuno, Yasutoshi Nishimura, Junji Suzuki, and Ichiro Miyashita. Matsuno, the Chief Cabinet Secretary and top government spokesman, was the most prominent among them. Their successors are expected to be announced by the end of the day. In addition, five senior vice ministers and a parliamentary vice minister from the same faction also resigned. This leaves the LDP without any representatives from its largest and most influential faction within the cabinet.